The Augustinian Person [Paperback]

Augustine's notions of human nature and of person have not received adequate systematic treatment, despite their centrality to all the important areas of his thought. Although he notoriously changed his mind on many major points, his explorations of human nature and person remained central and to a great extent consistent across his mature and most important works. In this insightful and accessible book, Peter Burnell examines the crucial issues in Augustine's understanding of these two related subjects, and concentrates on Augustine's fullest development of that understanding.

Through careful analysis of Augustine's writings, Burnell concludes that Augustine conceives of human nature as a unity at every levelsocially, morally, and in basic constitutiondespite very common objections that he fails to achieve such a conception. Furthermore, Augustine's doctrine of the Incarnation is the basis of his notion of personnot only human but divine. Thus the eternal relationships of God's interior life, though unchanging, have always had an outward bearing, in the sense of being eternally oriented on the Incarnation.

Continued interest in Augustine as a historical figure and a resource for contemporary reflection, as well as contemporary theorizing, by both philosophers and theologians, about the human person makes this study significant not only for the understanding of Augustine but for more general questions raised today regarding the human person.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Peter Burnell is professor of history and Classics at the University of Saskatchewan.

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK:

Reading The Augustinian Person is an adventure for the mind. Burnell's delicately framed questions about Augustine's understanding of the human person allow him to enter into conversation with other writers about evil and good, justice and compassion, grace and concupiscence, and life in this world and in the next. Showil£!