The Mystery of Continuity

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A distinguished scholar's learned but dry exegesis of the often obscure, always crucial emphasis on "continuity" in St. Augustine's teachings on God, self, and the Church. To Pelikan, the generally accepted view of Augustine as a teacher of discontinuity, particularly those between nature and grace and between the City of Earth and the City of God, is false. "Beneath and behind these discontinuities, " argues Pelikan, "there lay deeper continuities." The first lecture, for example, examines Augustine's renowned conversion, which Pelikan sees not as a departure from classicism but as a continuation of it, Platonism in particular. Pelikan then explores Augustine's thought on God, the Church, and the self in the same fashion, showing how an abiding faith in the necessity for continuity between past and present, between Heaven and Earth, underlies the teachings. Unfortunately, while the author obviously knows his Augustine, there is little here to make the general reader pick up his ears other than bold assertions about Augustine's importance and an insightful final lecture dealing with Augustine's influence on subsequent thinkers from Luther to Hegel. A thoughtful work which will intrigue students of Augustine - and send all others in search of some strong black coffee. (Kirkus Reviews)