Not many read scripture as closely as Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430), but not many have paid close attention to how Augustine's reading of scripture developed as he grew in both philosophical insight as well as theological depth. As an imperially employed orator, Augustine had always been attracted to the power of words, but as he came to deepen his understanding of the central Christian mysteries, the words of scripture began to allure with a new veracity. In his latest, Michael Cameron of the University of Portland astutely traces this development in three major movements of Augustine's life: first, Novice: Rhetor, Convert, Seeker of Wisdom (386–391), then Journeyman: Priest, Apprentice, Student of Paul (391–396), concluding with Master: Teacher, Defender, Pastor of Souls (396-c. 400).

The first section thus treats the early allure of rhetoric upon the young Augustine's soul. While his formative years and Manichean adherences are well-traced narratives, Cameron ingeniously plays upon the many factors comprising a Latin boy's grammatical training as well as a Manichean hearer's observances to show what Augustine brought to Milan where he first encountered the kind of more learned Christianity which would eventually win him over. Accordingly, Cameron shows that a part of the many-pieced mosaic by which scholars have thus far explained Augustine's Catholic conversion is how “rhetorical figuration allowed him to render the God of Scripture as an orator who used different devices at different times to communicate with humanity” (49). Once Augustine could see the grammar of scripture (especially in the Old Testament) as that of a loving pedagogue calibrating his lesson and his language to his students' abilities and sensibilities, Augustine's soul began to receive God's W/word with a new clarity and appreciation. Reaching back to Cicero and Quintilian, then, Cameron shows how various components of the classical tradition (complete with helpful charts providing definitions and examples of terms) came to play in Augustine's writings at this time—with special attention to his On Genesis, Against the Manicheans, the Practices of the Catholic Church and of the Manichees (de moribus), as well as On True Religion.

Next we come to see Augustine as an apprentice curator of souls. Ordained to the priesthood in 391 and enabled with special faculties to preach on the sacred scriptures (a duty at this time normally reserved for those of episcopal rank), Augustine had to shift his relatively private reading of scripture to a more public proclamation. Here St. Paul and the Psalms proved indispensable, and Cameron spends this second section exploring how both scriptural as well as Christological unity emerges as the lasting fruit of Augustine's newly embraced reading of scripture. Through his own study as well as his tutelage under Valerius (whom Cameron rightly depicts not as the senile old bishop in need of help, but as a cagey ecclesiastic who saw in Augustine nothing but future success), Augustine came to read the Old through the New Testament, especially Paul's epistles. For Paul's recognition of Christ as the “New Adam” taught Augustine the expositor of scripture to find Christ on every page, especially in “the Man” of the Psalms. Forced to contend with the particularly Manichean form of “Gnosticism,” Augustine had to maintain that Jesus was born unto Mary without any diminishment of his eternal and divine sonship; he simultaneously had to show that in his crucifixion, Christ not only provided an external model of obedience but in his truly dying as a man, he reconciled all men and women to the Father from whom each has proven wayward. Here is where the “curse” of Moses (Deut 21:23) becomes the blessing of Paul (Rom 6:6): that the crucifixion “disclosed the death of evil in the soul and exemplified ‘co-dying’ with Christ in moral renewal” (141). Against the “learned” Manichees he abandoned, as well as for the “simple” Christians entrusted to him, Augustine the cleric learned to see in the Cross of Christ God's taking all our sin and decay upon himself (Augustine's reliance upon suscipere [154]) so as to unite the perfection of divinity with the powerlessness of humanity in the supreme mediation of Jesus Christ. This middle section is a beautiful exploration of the growing importance of the Cross in Augustine's scriptural as well as pastoral pursuits, with Cameron commenting most closely on the Confessions, the Commentaries on Romans and Galatians, as well as the earlier (1–32) Expositions on the Psalms.

The third part takes up the final years of the fourth century, Augustine's budding episcopacy (395) and increasing influence throughout North Africa. While Cameron does not make this point explicit, this reader at least came away with a picture of Augustine's early episcopal work as a Christ-like “mediator” himself. From “above” Bishop Augustine employs an anagogic approach to scripture in his Christian Teaching (De Doctrina Christiana) in order to teach those who were already seeking to interpret biblical passages correctly, while simultaneously elucidating scripture from “below” with a mystagogic elementariness in the Instructing Beginners (De Catechizandis Rudibus) so as to bring God's parvuli into a fuller and more robust embrace of the Faith. Included in this final section is also an explanation of how the Contra Faustum employs Augustine's episcopal hermeneutic in a polemical way to defend his Church from lingering Manichean claims that Catholic Christianity is the fullness of the Father's promises to Israel, and that in the Christ all truth and salvation is not only offered but fulfilled—the Law of the Lord is the Lord himself (exp. 1 of Ps 18:8 [288]).

This magisterial monograph serves as both a survey of Augustine's theological development as well as a mini-commentary on his most foundational works. It depicts an eager son of Monica who had to learn to deepen his thought in order to facilitate his own faith and apologetic; it also shows a son of the Church who was called to stoop downward to make mystery accessible to all of God's people. And, in the end, Cameron does the same for us: providing all students of Augustine with a text that is at once both educative as well as erudite, uncomplicated while also being unmatched.