The transmission of sin is a translation of Pier Franco Beatrice's Tradux peccati: alle fonti della dottrina agostiniana del peccato originale, which was published in 1978. It thus brings into Anglophone scholarship a work that has influenced discussion of the Augustinian doctrine of original sin for a generation. Beatrice's thesis is quite clear: the doctrine of original sin is not an Augustinian invention, but one very much in the air in fifth-century Africa. Beatrice locates the ultimate basis of the doctrine in Jewish-Christian Encratism, the radical Eastern ascetic movement whose condemnation of marriage and procreation earned it rejection by Clement of Alexandria and Irenaeus.

The trick is in establishing the historical career of the doctrine over more than two centuries. Before setting this out, though, Beatrice provides a comprehensive primer on the Pelagian dispute over original sin. Beginning with Augustine's debates with Julian of Eclanum, Beatrice provides a lucid overview of Augustine's thinking, highlighting the rhetorical significance of the massa peccati, the maturation of Augustine's theology following the treatise to Simplician, and the crux of the debate (then as now) – infant baptism and the perdition of newborns. Part ii analyses the sources that Augustine credits: Scripture, especially Romans; Ambrosiaster; Ambrose; and Cyprian. The chapter (ch. vi) on Paul and Romans v and vii is remarkable on its own terms as a piece of biblical scholarship in which Beatrice shows unequivocally (as have many others) Augustine's error in understanding the in quo of Rom. v.12, even as he clarifies that Augustine was not isolated in his interpretation, and that the Pelagians fared little better in Pauline exegesis. Following this, Beatrice carefully dismantles other putative Augustine sources, showing that, while he cannot have invented the transmissibility of original sin, neither can he legitimately have derived the doctrine from the theologians named above.

Thus the Encratites. Based on a passage from Clement's Stromateis (3.100.4–7) and the pseudo-Cyprianic sermon De centesima, sexagesima, tricesima, Beatrice traces out a trajectory from the Encratites, to the Messalians, to Tertullian whereby teaching on the hereditary nature of sin in Adam's descendants and the culpability of infants was uncoupled from condemnation of marriage and procreation (and was confused with Manichean teaching along the way), thus making it legitimate intellectual currency in Italian and African ecclesiastical circles. Here Beatrice is at his most controversial: his argument depends on a few isolated texts, and in considerable part on the always-suspect testimony of heresiologists. That considered, his argument is at least plausible. Somewhat more unclear is the distinction between Augustine's own understanding of his sources and Beatrice's assessment of their legitimacy.

Adam Kamesar's translation is invisible and thus felicitous. Many will wish that he had provided some discussion of the scholarly reception of Beatrice's argument, which is controversial and was rejected by Russell De Simone in 1980. As it stands, The transmission of sin appears in something of a vacuum. That notwithstanding, even for those who will not accept the Encratite origin of Augustine's teaching, the first two-thirds of the book are as lucid, comprehensive and contextual an account of the Pelagian debate on original sin and infant baptism as has appeared since, and Beatrice's genealogy deserves careful study.

David Meconi's book contrasts with Beatrice's in many ways. Where Beatrice is historically attentive to Augustine's intertexts and internal development, Meconi's work is thoroughly theological and synchronic in orientation. It is a sympathetic argument seeking to demonstrate that deification is central to Augustine's thought, and to illuminate why Augustine has been read as so uninterested in the terminology of deificare and the larger theological theme of becoming divine that is so characteristic of his Greek confreres.

The heart of The one Christ is focused on showing how Augustine's Christology wholly defines his theology of becoming divine. The book falls into three parts: first, an examination of Augustine's theology of creation; second, the Trinitarian articulation of the incorporation of the faithful into the divine life; and third, the ecclesiological and eschatological dimensions of this incorporation. Meconi operates in Neoplatonist idiom throughout the first two chapters, locating creation within a Plotinian pattern of emanation and conversion toward the source, expressed as a dialogical relationship of Father and Son in the Trinity. Olivier du Roy would have been comfortable with Meconi's reading of creation, but this simply sets up the meatier central chapters (certainly Meconi's most substantive contribution), which identify the incarnational context of divine union through various metaphors and clusters of ideas. In his most substantive work in contextualising Augustine, he points out that use of the language of deification by the Manichees and Donatists goes a long way toward explaining Augustine's polemically minded hesitation about it.

The most important finding here is that ‘every time deificare is used in the 400s, it is used in close connection to and emphasis with the flesh of Christ’ (p. 133). Meconi then shows how this theme is essential for understanding Augustine's pneumatology and ecclesiology: the Spirit is the gluten of charity that binds believers in the sacramental body that is, in turn, the ‘one Christ’, Augustine's well-known totus Christus. Humans ‘become Christ’ in the sacramental economy.

Readers might find themselves wishing for more explanation at various points in Meconi's exegesis; his treatment of the will in the section on charity is not as strong as might be desired, particularly insofar as the later development of Augustine's theory of the will and its relationship to divine election makes for the most substantive objections to Meconi's argument: does Augustine maintain his Christological focus in, say, the 420s? Augustine's homilies on the Psalms are such a rich resource for this theme that it is surprising that Meconi does not discuss them more than he does. From a different angle, Meconi hints at ideological trends in twentieth-century scholarship, but his foils are too chronologically and disciplinarily scattered for the corrective thrust of his study to land fully. On the other hand, he is surely correct when he suggests that understanding Augustine's theology of the ‘one Christ’ has potential for ecumenical concerns and for rereading Western theologies of justification, with, for example the Finnish reading of Luther as one illuminating possibility of such a reconsidered genealogy.