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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 REVIEW ARTICLE 8 9 10 11 Is there Theology in this Book? 12 13 Jonathan Teubner Q1 14 15 The Theology of Augustine’s Confessions, Paul Rigby, Cambridge University 16 Press, 2015 (ISBN 978-1107094925), xv + 340 pp., hb £67 17 Augustine’s Confessions: Philosophy in Autobiography, William E. Mann (ed.), 18 Oxford University Press, 2014 (ISBN 978-0199577552), xi +223 pp., hb £36 19 The Space of Time: A Sensualist Interpretation of Time in Augustine, 20 Confessions X to XII, David van Dusen, Brill, 2014 (ISBN 978-9004266865), xv + 21 358 pp., hb €149 22 23 Confessions: Books 1–8, Augustine of Hippo, trans. Carolyn J.-B. Hammond, Harvard University Press, 2014 (ISBN 978-0674996854), lxv + 413 pp., hb $26 24 25 Confessions: Books 9–13, Augustine of Hippo, trans. Carolyn J.-B. Hammond, 26 Harvard University Press, 2016, (ISBN 978-0674996939), xlii + 446 pp., hb $26 27 Confessions, Augustine of Hippo, trans. Sarah Ruden, The Modern Library, 2017 28 (ISBN 978-0812996562), xli + 484 pp., $28 29 30 31 Abstract 32 This review essay discusses three recent books on, and two new translations of, 33 Augustine’s Confessions. Long appreciated for its stylistic beauty and existential profun- 34 dity, the Confessions has recently become a resource for creative philosophical reflection in 35 both the analytic and continental traditions. However, there has not been a recent theolog- 36 ical treatment of the Confessions, a curious lacuna considering Augustine’s importance for 37 the history of Christian doctrine. This review probes three recent works – Paul Rigby’s The 38 Theology of Augustine’s Confessions, Gareth Matthews’ edited collection Augustine’s 39 Confessions: Philosophy in Autobiography, and David van Dusen’s The Space of Time: 40 A Sensualist Interpretation of Time in Augustine, Confessions X to XII – for how they 41 in turn attempt to address, avoid, and reject the theological subject matter within the text. 42 In each of them, a reader can discern an effort to translate Augustine’s language into a contemporary idiom that strays from traditional doctrinal location. Two new English Q2 43 translations by Carolyn J.-B. Hammond and Sarah Ruden demonstrate that conveying 44 the theology within the Confessions is a challenge even at the granular level of textual 45 46

47 Reviews in Religion & Theology, 24:4 (2017) 48 © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1 Review Article 633 2 3 translation. This review concludes by considering how this theological lacuna might be 4 filled, considering the complexity of Augustine’s language, argument, and self-presentation 5 that has made this text more than simply another work of theology. 6 7 Key Words: Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, theological interpretation, analytic 8 philosophy, continental philosophy, Latin translation 9 10 There is a curious lacuna within the study of Augustine’s Confessions that I 11 only discovered the first time I attempted to teach this most perplexing 12 work: There is no recent theological treatment of the Confessions. Surely, this 13 work that, for many programs in Europe and North America, stands at 14 the beginning of introductory courses to Christian thought has many 15 theological treatments, and certainly, they are coming off the press at a 16 ‘galloping pace’. While I confess not being familiar with every recent 17 monograph published on the Confessions – whatever modern language 18 skills I do possess stop very firmly at the western bank of the Oder – I sus- Q3 19 pect that this lacuna has just as much to do with the uncertainty of what 20 counts as ‘theology’ today as it does with the interpretive complexities 21 of the Confessions. Therefore, when I say that there is no recent theological 22 treatment of Augustine’s Confessions, I have to admit that I’m not entirely 23 sure what would count as a possible candidate. But three recent books 24 and two translations present, explicitly and implicitly, a range of difficul- 25 ties for theological interpretations of the Confessions. In their own ways, 26 they each demonstrate that an interpretation that relies on traditional 27 theological categories – sin, grace, Christ, salvation, etc. – can fail to grasp 28 the philosophical sophistication, argumentative innovation, or existential 29 sincerity of the Confessions. 30 Augustine’s Confessions entered the postwar world as generally accept- 31 able reading in the cafés of la rive gauche. Yet, despite being the subject of 32 several learned studies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, 33 the Confessions did not become a scholarly blockbuster until 1950, when 34 Pierre Courcelle published his Recherches sur les Confessions de Saint 35 Augustin. Courcelle’s initial study quickly spawned a deep and reflective 36 scholarly industry, even bringing about several controversies regarding 37 whether and to what Augustine actually converted in the pages of the 38 Confessions. These historical and literary studies were then surpassed by 39 far more fashionable Freudian, Foucaldian, and Ricoeurian readings of 40 the Confessions in the 1970s and 1980s. A turning point came with James 41 O’Donnell’s 1992 commentary, which, among other things, made much 42 of the European historical and philological scholarship on the Confessions 43 easily accessible to readers in the British Isles and North America. Then, 44 in the 1990s began the recovery of Augustine’s theological voice by Rowan 45 Williams and some of his doctoral students at Oxford, all of whom were 46 deeply indebted to French and German theological and historical scholar- 47 ship. The many shifts and scholarly reboots in the study of the Confessions, 48 © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1 634 Review Article 2 3 of which these are but a few, can easily confuse readers who would rather 4 sit with Augustine’s literary masterpiece in a café than schlepp to a 5 modern research library. What has lurked below the surface of all of these 6 develops has been a concern that Augustine’s Confessions has grown stale 7 and alien to modern life. 8 To revivify the Confessions, Paul Rigby draws upon a mixture of 9 hermeneutics, literary theory, psychoanalysis, and critical philosophy in 10 his The Theology of Augustine’s Confessions. For Rigby, it is Paul Ricoeur 11 in particular whose philosophy ‘might provide the witness stand 12 on which [Rigby] might conduct a theological cross-examination of 13 Augustine’s testimony’ (p. 2). Rigby’s task is fitting for his imagined uni- 14 versity audience, for whom Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and 15 Heidegger still offer all of the excitement of a forbidden first date. These 16 philosophers have, however, become our secular divines. Inspiring grati- 17 tude, wonder, and awe, they model for us intellectual virtues proper to 18 the modern university. 19 In light of the subsequent developments in the study of the Confessions, 20 Rigby’s book is a curious throwback to certain concerns of the 1970s and 21 1980s. For his contemporary reader, the challenge that Rigby sees is that, 22 in the wake of Marx and Freud, we cannot but see false consciousness and 23 Oedipal complexes on every page. A deeper, more disconcerting concern 24 of Rigby’s seems to be that we have become too alienated from traditional 25 Christian piety to appreciate the rawness of Augustine’s Confessions. In 26 fact, Rigby takes Augustine and his Confessions to be emblematic of what 27 makes traditional theological commitment all but impossible for the 28 contemporary world: ‘The righteousness we encounter in Augustine is 29 strange, his counsel alien … The Enlightenment and its modern and late 30 modern heirs have interposed themselves between him and us, making 31 his voice alien but not exotic, stale as belonging to last year’s speech’ 32 (p. 2). This is not only a problem that Rigby imagines plagues the secular 33 inhabitants of today’s university but also the contemporary scholarly 34 Augustinian Christian, who has, on Rigby’s imagining, ‘grown weary 35 of antiquarian attachment to the lost Augustinian consensus and 36 the doomed attempt to answer the secular critique with a revamped 37 Augustinianism’ (p. 3). The task Rigby gives to himself is to find ways 38 to bring Augustine ‘closer, to bridge the gap, so that I could hear his 39 Confessions with the same shocking freshness it had for his contempo- 40 raries’ (p. 2). In other words, Rigby does not want an Augustinianism 41 but rather Augustine himself. Rigby aspires to be, for us Anglophones, 42 a Frédéric Boyer, but without the literary verve simply to re-write the 43 Confessions as a thirteen-book admission of guilt. 44 Rigby identifies five kinds of problems whereby ‘Augustine’s testimony 45 has become incredible for the modern reader’ (p. 4), structuring the eleven 46 chapters accordingly. If his problems are not exactly new (or surprising), 47 his performance lends each of them new drama. Rigby’s problems begin 48 © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1 Review Article 635 2 3 with testimony itself, which is not a perception but a story or a narration of 4 an event. As with a witness in a courtroom, the testimony is liable to be 5 false and thus requires interrogation and ultimately judgment from the 6 listener as to whether it is reliable. The judge then needs to assess not only 7 the content of the testimony but the witness’ reliability. In Chapter 2, we 8 encounter Rigby exposing, via Freudian archeology and Hegel’s philoso- 9 phy of will, the problem of Augustine’s view of God as a rewarding and 10 punishing father God with its penal view of salvation. And in Chapter 11 3, we find Rigby turning to Augustine’s problem of religious narcissism 12 that is intertwined with pessimism, ascetical detachment, and salvation. 13 As Rigby sees it, this is an interrogation of Augustine’s ‘secret self- 14 complaisance’ (p. 33). From here, Rigby moves onto more traditional terri- 15 tory for readers of Augustine: evil and sex. Chapters 4–9 treat doctrines of 16 original sin, election, and predestination as responses to the problems of 17 evil and suffering, and Chapters 10–11 cross-examine Augustine’s ‘ideal 18 of a celibate, male community alongside the Christian sense of an ending 19 with its consoling plot which acts as a vital lie’ (p. 5). 20 Rigby seems most concerned that we are failing to capture what is at 21 stake in reading the Confessions today. There is, no doubt, some truth to 22 this. But is our deafness so resounding, so complete that it is a ‘scandal’ 23 to us that the Confessions were a ‘powerful statement for generations of 24 believers’ (p. 213)? Can we really ‘no longer grasp the force of the scandal 25 caused by and the pleasure given by Augustine’s testimony to his contem- 26 poraries’ (p. 214)? This returns us to the pessimism with which Rigby 27 began: In the silence left by our culture’s inability to confess, we still hear 28 Augustine confessing, but ‘we miss the freshness with which it spoke to 29 his contemporaries’ (p. 2). Again, Rigby highlights aspects of late modern 30 life that do indeed limit our ability to hear Augustine’s Confessions,andhe 31 is surely right to claim that the Augustinian Christian has grown weary of 32 stale Augustinianisms that seem constantly to be recovered, revamped, 33 and restyled. However, is a Ricoeurian Augustinianism really the 34 Augustinianism to end all Augustinianisms? 35 The contributors to Augustine’s Confessions: Philosophy in Autobiography 36 seem, however, to ignore or reject Rigby’s questions altogether. Initially 37 planned as a co-edited volume by the late Gareth Matthews and William 38 Mann, this collection of essays seems at first like a grab-bag of topics 39 and methodologies. While in his introduction, Mann describes the 40 Confessions as a ‘well-stocked bazaar’ of Augustine’s philosophical wares 41 (p. 2), there is a rather limited range of philosophical inquiry displayed 42 in the volume. Matthews was part of the Anglophone resurgence of inter- 43 est in Augustine’s more philosophical treatises. Invariably,this movement, 44 if you want to call it that, was populated by those (mostly men) trained in 45 American and British philosophy departments in the second half of the 46 20th century. The analytic approach to Augustine certainly has its detrac- 47 tors, but it is difficult to deny the contributions to Augustine studies made 48 © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1 636 Review Article 2 3 by, among others, Peter King, Stephen Menn, and Christian Tornau, all of 4 whom appear in this volume. 5 But what is at stake, and why ply these wares to this figure? In light of 6 Rigby’sanxietyaboutthesequestions,itis,notwithoutsomeguiltyplea- 7 sure, a relief to have a ‘moral holiday’ from such concerns. However, it is 8 worth reflecting for a moment on the answer tothesequestionsimplicitly 9 given by analytic philosophy of history, particularly with reference to the 10 study of Augustine’s Confessions.Itishardtoimagineamodeofinquiryfur- 11 ther from the contemporary practice ofanalyticphilosophythanthatofthe 12 Confessions.Besidesitsaversiontoliteraryflourishes, analytic philosophy as 13 aprofessionprioritizesthepresentist argument over even the historical 14 claim. On the basis of these representative essays, it is safe to assume that 15 for his claims to find acceptance, Augustine’sargumentsmustbenewly 16 rendered into a modern analytic discourse: Augustine’sliteraryplayfulness 17 must be translated into the serious academic argument of the philosopher. 18 In one way or another, then, the essays in Mann’s collection all attempt 19 to translate Augustine’s text into an analytic idiom. In what is probably 20 the most robustly analytical essay, Blake Dutton’s ‘The Privacy of the 21 Mind and the Fully Approvable Reading of Scripture: Augustine on 22 Genesis 1:1’ ascribes to Augustine a plenitude of meaning thesis. In 23 Dutton’s version, Augustine’s steadfast commitment to the privacy of 24 minds – i.e., one mind cannot truly know another mind – would cut off Q4 25 any possibility to obtain an author’s intent. Augustine, believing God to 26 be the author of Scripture, would on this theory have no access to the 27 meaning of Scripture. In Dutton’s analysis, the plentitude of meaning 28 thesis relieves this difficulty by allowing ‘incorrect’ (i.e., not corresponding 29 to the author’s intent) interpretations as ‘fully approvable’ (p. 179). One 30 can, however, hear Dutton’s analytic machinery creak throughout: The 31 essay does not so much follow the ‘logic’ of Augustine’s text but is rather 32 buoyed on by Dutton’s own argument, the point of which, it seems, would 33 be to establish a form of interpretation that would escape the problems of 34 ‘authorial intent’, a concern conceived by and debated in the terms of 35 modern hermeneutics. In a more refined way, Nicholas Wolterstorff 36 similarly places Augustine’s text under the analytic philosopher’s magni- 37 fying glass. His previous essays on the topic of eudaimonia in Augustine’s 38 work were mainly interested in Augustine’s (alleged) rejection of various 39 theses espoused by ancient eudaimonists. But here, Wolterstorff is trying 40 to establish, more positively, that Augustine employs the term beatitudo 41 in such a way that it can never be achieved here on earth (pp. 69–70). 42 While this may sound like a straightforward enough interpretation of the 43 text, it is animated, à la analytic philosophy, by specific claims Wolterstorff 44 stipulates and defends. I, too, think Augustine has something to contrib- 45 ute to debates on interpretation and eudaimonism, but I wonder if we 46 render his contributions rather less persuasive when we force his words 47 into a foreign tongue. 48 © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1 Review Article 637 2 3 Not all the essays are so thoroughly structured and guided by the style 4 of Anglo-American analytic philosophy. The three stand-out essays – 5 Peter King’s ‘Augustine’s Anti-Platonist Ascents’, Stephen Menn’s ‘The 6 Desire for God and the Aporetic Method in Augustine’s Confessions’, 7 and Christian Tornau’s ‘Intelligible Matter and the Genesis of Intellect: 8 The Metamorphosis of a Plotinian Theme in Confessions 12–13’– 9 demonstrate sophisticated textual interpretation and argumentative 10 clarity. What these essays also have in common is participation in a 11 long-running debate on Augustine’s Platonism (or lack thereof), initiated, 12 in its modern form, by Courcelle’s Recherches. Readers will have much to 13 learn from each of these essays on the complexities of Augustine’s 14 relationship to Platonism and Plotinus. However, the more significant 15 commonality vis-à-vis my concern for the status of a theological treatment 16 of Augustine’s Confessions is a shared interest in and knowledge of the 17 precise philosophical and theological context of Augustine. King, Menn, 18 and Tornau each demonstrate that it is in and through the specifics of 19 Augustine’s arguments and religious commitments that non-theological 20 methods bear relevance for theologians. In other words, non-theologians 21 do not need to be acting like theologians to be relevant to theology, but 22 must rather practice their own particular craft – in King, Menn, and 23 Tornau’s case, it is the history of ancient philosophy – expertly and with- 24 out fear of theology. From the theologian’s perspective, then, there is noth- 25 ing wrong with non-theological interpretations of Augustine’s Confessions 26 insofar as they attend to the topography of the text itself. 27 This détente of mutual respect is, however, not endorsed by everyone. 28 In his The Space of Time: A Sensualist Interpretation of Time in Augustine, 29 Confessions X to XII, David van Dusen suggests that the use of 30 ‘theologistic reasoning’ is rather a diversion from what’s really going on 31 in key places in Augustine’s time-investigation (p. 57). For example, 32 Augustine’s use of Ambrose’s verse Deus creator omnium remains a ‘pious 33 flourish’, for ‘any pagan phrase … could replace Ambrose’s line without 34 in the slightest affecting the sense, or the persuasiveness, of Augustine’s 35 analysis’ (p. 56; author’s emphasis). Despite the tendentious nature of this 36 comment, van Dusen does have a valid point: The interpretive aides one 37 requires to interpret Augustine’stime-investigationdonotobviouslycome 38 from the disciplinary toolkit of theology. In distinction from the commonly 39 accepted axiom that Augustine’sconceptionoftimeis‘metaphysical’ 40 (as opposed to Aristotle’s ‘physical’ conception), van Dusen proposes what 41 he calls a ‘sensualist interpretation of time’.ForvanDusen,‘the soul that is 42 dilated in Augustine’stime-investigationisessentiallyandincommutably 43 the life of a body (vita corporis) – not intellectus,notmens’ (p. 17). The 44 distentio animi of the Confessions resolves itself not into an ‘interiority of 45 the mind’ but rather into an ‘outness of the soul’ (p. 17). The highly loaded 46 (and contested) term distentio is thus understood by van Dusen as a ‘dila- 47 tion, refraction and spatialization of the soul’ (p. 17). The chief payoff for 48 © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1 638 Review Article 2 3 Van Dusen’ssensualinterpretationisthatAugustinecanbelocatedwithin 4 an Aristotelian time-question that is physical and an Epicurean time-concept 5 that is sensual, thereby fully dismissing the medieval diagnosis that 6 Augustine, contra Aristotle, holds a ‘metaphysical’ conception of time. 7 The major shortcoming of van Dusen’s book is his aversion to the 8 theological tradition. While he explicitly identifies himself at one point 9 as a ‘perfectly impious researcher’ (p. 101), van Dusen does not deny that 10 a theological interpreter such as Goulven Madec has ‘an incomparably 11 subtler knowledge of Augustine’s corpus’ than the non-theological inter- 12 preters he engages (pp. 53–4). However, Madec’s (and Jean-Luc Marion’s) 13 interpretive claim that Augustine’s time-investigation must be under- 14 stood as an exercitatio animi is dismissed not for any of the reasons that 15 Augustine’s theological interpreters – e.g., John Cavadini and Lewis Ayres 16 – express but because Augustine’s time-investigation must never be less 17 than ‘an objective philosophical enquiry’ (p. 55). It is not exactly clear 18 why van Dusen wants to be constrained thusly, but at one point, van 19 Dusen posits that a ‘pious’ time-concept must, at the end of the day, 20 ‘accord with whatever is convincing in secular philosophy’ (p. 55). The 21 secular philosophy with which it must accord is, in this case, that of the late 22 antique philosophical schools. Van Dusen’s fear of ‘theologistic’ interpre- 23 tations is that they seem to deny the relevance of Augustine’s actual 24 arguments and their place in the ancient philosophical schools. However, 25 à la Pierre Hadot, these ancient schools themselves carry ‘pious flourishes’ 26 and ‘theologistic reasonings’. I wonder, then, whether van Dusen would 27 equally unyoke non-Christian philosophical schools from their religious 28 context. Or has the de-contextualization already occurred to such an ex- 29 tent that a perfectly impious reader no longer has to fear religious contam- 30 ination from Epicureans and Neoplatonists? 31 Van Dusen’s concern that theological interpretations ignore 32 Augustine’s arguments is understandable in light of Rigby’s Theology of 33 Augustine’s Confessions. Rigby’s approach to theology is characterized, 34 above all, by an anxiety that occludes serious consideration of 35 Augustine’s actual arguments. But this is itself a kind of theologizing that 36 was especially prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. Anyone who has taught 37 or attended a university divinity faculty or school in the recent past will 38 easily recognize Rigby’s style. For these scholars and students of religion, 39 criticisms of the discipline, real or imagined, lurk behind every corner on 40 campus. They are petrified at the prospect of becoming an object of 41 derision or pity by their colleagues in other social science and humanities 42 departments, not to mention by those newly crowned queens and kings 43 of the university in the natural and mechanical sciences. Those who might 44 be accused of doing theology are then especially anxious to attach them- 45 selves to someone else’s discourse: They want to be seen doing the very 46 best critical theory, or engaging with the very latest research in sociology, 47 politics, and psychology. What theology becomes in this context is an 48 © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1 Review Article 639 2 3 endless entertainment of concerns from other disciplines: It is all throat 4 clearing and no speaking. This is, of course, not true for all religion 5 scholars and theologians, but it seems to inform Rigby’s unwillingness 6 to engage the theological features of Confessions without considering 7 Rigby’s bevy of secular divines. Q5 8 While one wonders whether Rigby has truly given Augustine’s 9 arguments a fair hearing, there is a limit to what can be gained by simply 10 exposing the philosophical features of Augustine’s arguments as van 11 Dusen has done, or rendering them into a contemporary analytic dis- 12 course as many of the contributions to Philosophy as Autobiography have 13 done. The impulse to ‘get to the argument’ often requires paring away 14 the religious, social, and political contexts in which these arguments were 15 given and received. To return to Dutton’s admirable essay, the end-run 16 around authorial intention toward a plenitude of meaning thesis that pri- 17 oritizes truth is valuable, but to what end is this maneuver taking place? 18 There is much debate over Augustine’s practice of Scriptural interpreta- 19 tion, but there seems to be a baseline agreement that for Augustine 20 Scripture functions within the economy of salvation. Augustine reads 21 Scripture to discern both the character of God and the structure of 22 Christian existence. There is no interpretation for Augustine – and thus 23 no Augustinian theory of interpretation – that is not concerned with 24 how it informs the Christian life. There is a legitimate debate over which 25 philosophical resources help to elucidate these features, but if they are 26 performing only one of the two desiderata above, then they fail to capture 27 what Augustine found most salient about Scripture in the first place: its 28 capacity for social and epistemic repair. In other words, Augustine’s 29 philosophical arguments are enriched when handled within the context 30 of his own religious commitments and practices, and the austerity of the 31 analytic approach fails to capture the theological stakes that Augustine 32 wanted his readers to appreciate. 33 Capturing the theological stakes of the Confessions has, I believe, 34 become a little more realizable with the help of recent translations by 35 Carolyn J.-B. Hammond and Sarah Ruden. Because scholarly conventions 36 force the commentator into discrete judgments of a specific passage or 37 work as a whole –Augustine means this or that – the ambiguity and 38 vagueness inherent in all language, especially in poetry and prayer, is 39 often pushed off the page. But a talented and effective translator can be 40 more playful, witty, and even whimsical through the painstaking and 41 difficult process of matching language with language, with all that neces- 42 sarily intervenes between Augustine’s late fourth century Latin and early 43 twenty-first century English. These two translations of the Confessions are, 44 in different ways, exemplary cases of translators outshining expert 45 commentators. Attempting to stay more closely to the syntax and grammar 46 of the original Latin, Hammond’snewtranslationfortheLoebClassical 47 Library series provides the student with no Latin or poor Latin the 48 © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1 640 Review Article 2 3 linguistic signposts of Augustine’snativelanguage.Asaconsequence, 4 Hammond stays closer than expected to Henry Chadwick’s1991transla- 5 tion that has become the standard text for students reading in English 6 translation (see, e.g., her translation of Conf.10.38,thecelebrated‘Late have 7 Ilovedthee,soancientsonew’ passage). 8 The advantage of Hammond’s approach can be seen when compared 9 with Sarah Ruden’s lively and evocative translation. Preferring to usher 10 the reader toward the emotional core of Augustine’s text, Ruden has 11 opted for more concrete language. Augustine’s Dominus becomes 12 ‘Master’, conversio becomes ‘turning around’, and confessio ‘testimony’. 13 While these choices might be shocking to readers who have been reared 14 on Chadwick’s words, they are decisions proper to the translator. But 15 for those who have grown accustomed to the now theologically 16 established (albeit politically and socially contested) language of ‘Lord’, 17 ‘conversion’, and ‘confession’, Ruden’s earthiness will be rather more 18 alienating than possibly intended. Hammond’s traditionalism brings the 19 text into the life of the ongoing worshiping community, who continue to 20 speak in language of the authorized version of the Bible that Chadwick’s 21 translation evokes so nicely. 22 Ruden and Hammond, as well as Rigby, Matthews et al., and van 23 Dusen, are each attempting, with the diverse resources they each have, 24 to make Augustine accessible to today’s readers, whether café patrons 25 or denizens of faculty lounges. Of the three reflective books, Rigby’s 26 (despite its title) most sharply and severely calls into question whether a 27 traditional theological treatment of the Confessions is possible. The point 28 is well-taken from all of these offerings that an exclusive focus on the 29 theological loci would, in some way, fail to come to terms with Augustine’s 30 Confessions.Butinamorefundamentalway,Rigby,Matthews,andvan 31 Dusen cut off the possibility of a robust theological investigation by dealing 32 exclusively with the text as a bearer of ideas or arguments. This same 33 dilemma is recapitulated in the translations. Ruden provides a text for 34 those who have stayed on the sidelines of the theological debates and 35 church controversies but seeks to taste the passion and excitement of 36 Augustine’sspiritualitinerary.ButRuden’stranslationalsodeservesto 37 be taken seriously by Augustine scholars. And yet, Augustine’stextcannot 38 be reduced to its emotional impact. There are theological claims advanced 39 throughout and to obscure them is to miss a vital aspect of what motivated 40 Augustine in the first place. Hammond’stranslationmoreobviouslyfits 41 the demands of the theological reader. 42 There is, alas, still the lingering question regarding whether a theologi- 43 cal interpretation of Augustine’s Confessions is possible. While there are 44 many criteriological questions that still need to be addressed, I wonder 45 in all of this what has happened to Augustine’s actual practices?Has 46 Hammond’s theological translation brought Augustine the Christian 47 practitioner any closer to us, the Augustine who day-in-and-day-out 48 © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1 Review Article 641 2 3 celebrates the Eucharist with his monastic-cum-priestly confrères? Not 4 even in Rigby’s au courant exploration of sexuality and missing female 5 bodies does the question of Augustine’s actual practices arise. It is often 6 supposed – and acknowledged by all three books – that Augustine 7 composed the Confessions as a prayer. Although it is as yet unclear what 8 a salutary theological treatment of the Confessions would look like, I think 9 it would have to include some connection between reading the Confessions 10 as a prayer, Augustine writing the Confessions as a prayer, and Augustine’s 11 actual practices of prayer evinced throughout the book, none of which 12 could be achieved without close attention to Augustine’s text. If, however, 13 Augustine’s Catholic way of life becomes lost, whether through a philoso- 14 pher’s skepticism of the persuasive power of Augustine’s own language 15 or through the philologist’s disregard for how Christian communities 16 are informed by the text, then one wonders whether any interpretation 17 of Confessions can show us anything more than its own reflection. 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd