Augustine's professional training was that of a rhetorician. If he had persevered, he might have ended his life as the governor of a province and earned an occasional reference in later Roman history. In the event, he became a bishop, and enjoys a dominating place in western Christian cultural history. He never, however, abandoned his professional rhetorical training, but adapted it to the service of Christ the King. It is easy in our age, where oratory is a relatively minor accomplishment, to overlook how dominant a force it was in the Greco-Roman world, and Paul Kolbet is to be congratulated on this book, which reminds us what Augustine owed to the dominant cultural force of his society.

Kolbet's first two chapters describe the development of the art of rhetoric, down to Augustine's lifetime. Even though seen as a concession to human weakness, Plato's psychagogic theory in the Phaedrus rehabilitated rhetoric as a discipline, and gave it a role in the complex business of guiding the human soul to apprehend the truth. Plato's rejection of sophistry necessitated a rejection of rhetoric as a tool of moral philosophy, and this principle was observed by his successors, in the Latin West Cicero and Seneca. Cicero was, in particular, the great pagan influence on Augustine's mental formation, and his Hortensius was the work which ‘changed Augustine's whole attitude and turned his prayers to God’. Augustine, as a Christian, found a new vocation in which he made use of Cicero: ‘What Augustine sought to banish from Cassiciacum was not rhetoric, but the pretensions, cultural ambitions, and affective distortions it had in the late Roman Empire’ (p. 95), and to this end the inspiration of Cicero materially contributed. ‘In this way Augustine taught Christian philosophy at Cassiciacum’ (p. 101), while recognising that a devout Christian like Monnica might come to the truth without its aid (p. 103). It was here that the authority of the Christian Church played its part. ‘However noble and true were the ideals of the Greek philosophers, they lacked an effective psychagogy to incarnate those ideals and truly heal the fissures troubling soul and society’ (p. 115), and the only source of that psychagogy is Jesus Christ. Pagan philosophers, who influenced the psychology of Pelagius, attributed too much to the human will – the philosopher revealed the truth, and the disciple was then free to act upon it. Augustine came to see that this psychology was inadequate. Only when the heart is aroused by love can it find the strength to do right (conf. 10, 3, 4). This was, for Augustine, the essence of his case against Pelagius: Pelagius did not recognise the utter dependence of the individual on divine grace for his moral, as well as for his physical, actions. Although a sincere Christian, Pelagius had inherited the pagan view: when the truth has been shown by the philosopher, it is for the individual to apply it to his own case. So he could tell Demetrias: ‘Let us be subject to God and merit divine grace by doing His will and more easily (facilius) resist the evil spirit, by the help of the Holy Spirit’ (De Grat. Christi i.xl.44). The decision remains ultimately with the individual: the philosopher reveals the truth, but it is for the hearer to decide whether he will act on it. Augustine saw Pelagius propagating a ‘cure’ that appealed to the very pride and egotism that were the root of the soul's problems (pp. 133ff). Kolbet suggests (pp. 133ff.) that Augustine's reaction to the ascetic elitism of Pelagius and his followers may have been affected by his continuing rejection of Donatism. Pelagians and Donatists had, to all outward appearances, little in common, but to Augustine they shared a common characteristic: a belief in the capacity of the individual to act for himself, while using the grace given to him by his creation and baptism. ‘Augustine felt that the Donatists and Pelagians each shared a concern for Christian purity that was not so much entirely wrong as it was being asserted prematurely… Rather than oppose the Church and Empire, Augustine preferred to think of two entwined communities spanning them both and awaiting separation at the Last Judgement’ (p. 135). Thus, unlike some Catholic predecessors like Cyprian, Augustine did not renounce his secular training, but adapted it to commend the Christian Gospel to his hearers. In this, of course, he was not an innovator, nor did he impose his predestinarian theology upon the African Catholic Church. Augustine was the literary propagandist of African Catholicism from the publication of the De peccatorum meritis et remissione in 411/412 until his death in 430; but the mind of the African Church had been expressed by the condemnation of Caelestius at the conference of Carthage in 411, at which Augustine was not present. Augustine wrote the theology of the African doctrine of original sin; but the doctrine itself was that of the African Catholic Church, which has appealed to western theologians down the ages. It was this doctrine which the Emperor Honorius imposed upon his empire in the rescript of 30 April 418, to which Pope Zosimus eventually assented. It may be argued that the Augustinian doctrine of predestination and original sin is the outstanding contribution of the African Church to Christian belief.

Of particular interest is Kolbet's seventh chapter on ‘The Christian rhetor’, where he discusses Augustine himself as a preacher. For Augustine, it was now baptism, rather than education or status, that qualified the individual to participate in the Christian mysteries, and he ‘openly opposed any material polarity between the milk given to [Christ's] little ones and the solid food of the more mature’ (p. 177). The only way in which the hearers could come to further knowledge was to grow in the love that they had already received (p. 179). And yet, ‘The great irony of Augustine's reception of classical traditions of philosophical therapy is that his sermons and treatises presuppose to a remarkable degree the very classicism that he endeavoured to qualify’ (p. 198).

Paul Kolbet has written a study which will be of the greatest value to all who seek a better understanding of the shaping and operation of Augustine's remarkable intellect.