Review by Choice Review
Fox (emer., Oxford) is a top-tier classicist whose work on Alexander the Great has earned him scores of awards and widespread acclaim. He is a meticulous scholar who has a knack for writing at a level that academic and general audiences alike can appreciate. It is, therefore, no surprise that his biography on Saint Augustine has generated rave reviews from a host of critics. But with several excellent biographies on Augustine already on the shelves--most notably, Peter Brown's new edition of Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (2000) and Henry Chadwick's more recent Augustine of Hippo: A Life (2009)--one may reasonably ask why readers would reach for Fox's instead of the others. For one thing, Fox draws interesting parallels with other classical figures such as Libanius and Synesius, creating, as Fox puts it, "a triple set of sketches" with Augustine as the central panel. Fox also shows appropriate reverence for Augustine's religious conversion and convictions--something that cannot be said about James J. O'Donnell's judgmental and somewhat bitter Augustine: A New Biography (2005). Altogether, this is an engaging, respectful, and highly erudite yet readily accessible study worthy of its glowing commendations. Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. --Francis A Grabowski, Rogers State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
MIHI QUAESTIO FACTUS SUM. This Latin phrase bounces around the screen of my sleeping laptop, reminding me of something I know only too well: "I have become a problem to myself." It comes from St. Augustine's "Confessions," his powerful spiritual autobiography that has shaped how Christians and non-Christians in the West have conceived of their life journeys for over 1,500 years. So successful is the book in making readers identify with the author that it has never gone out of print and never seems to age. The book presents itself as one long continuous prayer, inviting readers to think they are listening in on a spontaneous unguarded monologue. In fact, Augustine had mastered the rhetoric of sincerity, and the work is composed with great artistry. First we are charmed with stories about his youthful transgressions, which don't seem so terrible - most memorably, his throwing away pears he had just stolen. Yet this tale leads to a profound digression on the nature of sin. "I had no motive for my wickedness except wickedness itself," he writes. And we realize that the triviality of the example reveals the real core of evil: its gratuitousness. Augustine then presents himself as a relentless seeker after truth. A change comes over him when reading a book by Cicero, and he experiences an inner conversion to the philosophical life, now seeking out teachers and companions with whom he can discuss God and the good life. Eventually he comes across the teachings of Mani, the mystical sort-of Christian guru prone to captivating dualistic visions of a cosmic battle between the Kingdom of Light and the Kingdom of Darkness, and whose influence stretched from Spain to China. Augustine would remain with the sect for nine years, converting many of his friends along the way. Up to this point "Confessions" resembles other books that circulated in antiquity, describing philosophical quests for the truth or laying out spiritual exercises for reaching inner serenity. But then the story takes an unexpected turn. Augustine had been brought up nominally Christian by his devoted and overbearing mother, St. Monica, but had never been baptized, to her great regret. The reason, he told himself, was that the Bible seemed preposterous and no Christian could explain to him how a good God could have created evil. But while teaching in Milan he began listening to the sermons of St. Ambrose, then the city's bishop, who proposed an altogether fresh way of understanding Scripture. Think of the stories in it, he said, as allegories, not literal accounts of events. Who knows if creation took six days or 60 million years? The first chapter of Genesis is there only to provoke meditation on the goodness of the natural world God created and our place in it. A major stumbling block to baptism disappeared. Yet still he couldn't make the step. And he began to realize why: His quest for knowledge was really a dodge to avoid experiencing the overwhelming anxiety and despair he felt inside. He was unhappy, and, after the death of a friend, unhappier than he had ever been. Pursuing philosophical truth was one way of avoiding this existential truth. Another was to lose himself in physical pleasures that did nothing to fill the emptiness inside. (He kept a concubine and had a child with her.) And yet he couldn't give them up. He was a living contradiction. "Grant me chastity and continence," he prays to God, "but not yet." A crisis was brewing. And when it arrived, God in his grace made the first move. "You took me up from behind my own back," Augustine prays, "where I had placed myself because I did not wish to observe myself." An extraordinary image, as if Augustine's true visage was laminated to the back of his head, so that no matter which way he turned he could not see it. What confronted him when God peeled it off was horrifying, unbearable. Something in him said: Enough. At that moment an inner muscle grasping his old life relaxed and he could finally let God in. And a new life began. "Confessions" is so perfect that one can't help wondering why anyone would accept the challenge of writing a biography of its author. What could a historian possibly add to this unforgettable story? Fifty years ago we learned how much more there was to say when Peter Brown published his magnificent life, "Augustine of Hippo." Brown placed Augustine squarely in the world of late antiquity, the first few centuries of the Common Era when Roman and Greek pagans, Christian sectarians and mystics of every stripe competed for allegiance, and individuals floated from one community to another or mixed their own eclectic spiritual cocktails. In the popular imagination the advent of Christianity ended the classical age and inaugurated the medieval period, as if one day people woke up to find the old temples gone and crucifixes everywhere. In fact, the transition was a long one, confused, and in retrospect quite fascinating. Brown's approach made "Confessions" appear even more remarkable. Robin Lane Fox, a British historian retired from Oxford, has now done Brown one better. The author of "Pagans and Christians," a superb and accessible study of late antiquity, he has now given us a massive book on roughly the first half of Augustine's life, running from his youth to the writing of "Confessions." Brown managed to tell the whole story, from birth to death, with great economy and flair. Fox aims for full immersion, and he conjures the intellectual and social life of the late Roman empire with an almost Proustian relish for detail. Augustine left behind dozens of books and hundreds of letters, all of which Fox seems to have consulted. He also provides vivid sketches of the saint's friends, acquaintances, correspondents, patrons and spiritual enemies. Less might surely have been more. At points I had the sense of being in an American restaurant where each portion is large enough to feed an entire family. But Fox is such a good writer that interest never flags, and you always feel that "you are there." The most absorbing and rewarding chapters are those devoted to Augustine's intellectual quest and, in particular, the ones about Manichaeism. Fox gives the clearest short exposition of Mani's bizarre doctrines that I have ever read, no easy task given that his visions involved things like divine messengers who appear as beautiful naked girls, causing demons caught in the zodiac to ejaculate into the sea, producing monsters. But he also explains plausibly why someone like Augustine might have been attracted to this teeming myth. Christians could never explain adequately why God permitted evil. Mani claimed that evil was never created, it was always there, even before God. Next question, please. The weakest chapters of this excellent book are, oddly, those devoted to Augustine's actual conversion. Fox is rather obsessed with sex, in the way erudite English scholars tend to get as they age. (No one knows why.) The problem of wayward desire was obviously urgent for Augustine, and indeed sexual renunciation was something of a competitive sport among the religious sects of his time. But Fox makes it so central to Augustine's inner struggles that the future saint comes off as an insatiable, guilt-ridden pickup artist. This approach culminates in the flat emphatic statement that Augustine's "is not a conversion to Christian faith. ... It is a conversion away from sex and ambition." As if celibacy were all Augustine really needed to open himself to God. But this is not the way Augustine tells his story. The problem of sex is just the shell around a much deeper mystery, the workings of the human will. It is a subject Augustine turned to time and again in his sermons and books. The mind commands the body but cannot command itself. Why can't we will ourselves to will? Or, often we decide to do something, but the will proves too weak to follow through. How, if the will is one thing, can that be possible? To explain these puzzles, Augustine hit upon an idea that would shape Western consciousness for centuries: the notion that human beings have two wills within, a defiant one that wants autonomy and a chastened one that wants to serve God. The only way to achieve happiness, Augustine believed, was to subordinate the former to the latter. For a millennium Augustine's portrait of himself served as a model for self-cultivation in Christian civilization. The imitation of Christ was the ideal, but those falling short could turn to "Confessions" for help getting there. It was during the Renaissance that this conception of the self came under serious challenge, most powerfully in Montaigne's "Essays," which mocked the idea of sin and preached self-acceptance. To Augustine's anxious admission that he was a problem to himself, Montaigne simply responded, So what's the problem? Don't worry, be happy. As modern people we have chosen Montaigne over Augustine. We traded pious self-cultivation for undemanding self-esteem. But is love of self really enough to be happy? You know the answer to that, dear reader. And so did Augustine. MARK LILLA is the author, most recently, of "The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 5, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Perhaps only Newton's apple tree has attracted more attention than the fig tree that shaded Augustine when he heard a child's voice prompting him to read the scriptural passage summoning him to a new life as a Christian saint. By transporting readers to that tree, Fox places them in that pivotal moment when a philosophically sophisticated rhetorician decisively repudiates the worldly ambitions and carnal lusts that have long delayed his baptism into Christianity. The richly detailed narrative indeed guides readers beyond this decisive moment through 11 years of further transformations before Augustine records his life in his inimitable Confessions. Carefully unfolding the structure and themes of this masterpiece, Fox establishes its character as an extended prayer often misread as a protomodern autobiography. To clarify the origins of this singular prayer, Fox contrasts the life of its author with the lives of two prominent contemporaries the gifted pagan orator Libanius and the devout Christian bishop Synesius men whose life trajectories provide illuminating context for Augustine's account of his life's pilgrimage. Readers who unlike Fox share Augustine's faith may resist the psychologizing glosses for key spiritual experiences. But readers pious and skeptical alike will recognize Fox as an exceptionally insightful and probing biographer.--Christensen, Bryce Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
Fox (classics, Oxford Univ.; The Classical World; Alexander the Great) adds another weighty tome to his long list of impressive works on ancient history. This volume follows the life of the North African saint Augustine (354-430), beginning, as the author's previous work Confessions does, with his childhood. His complicated youth follows, in which the young man takes a concubine, fathers a son, and accepts a heretical Manichaean gospel. Augustine is then transformed many times, undergoing several conversions. Fox presents the various contexts and many philosophies that influenced his subjects, including a substantial discussion of Manichaean and Platonic philosophy; all the while comparing Augustine to his contemporaries, especially the rhetorician Libanius. Highly intriguing is the exposition on the role of Platonic philosophy in Augustine's metamorphosis, his allegorical biblical exegesis, and his mystical ascent toward divine union. VERDICT Fox presents a complex, ever-changing, articulate, introspective, and idealistic philosopher sinner, revealing elements from Confessions and the author's many other titles. The volume would be best for readers to have some familiarity with the ancient Mediterranean or early church history. While this mountain of a book requires dedication and discipline, knowledge awaits those who reach the summit.-Jeffrey Meyer, Mt. Pleasant P.L., IA © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A comprehensive literary biography of the great Christian thinker Augustine (354-430). Fox (Ancient History/New Coll., Oxford Univ.; Travelling Heroes: In the Epic Age of Homer, 2009, etc.) adds a hefty tome to the library of works on St. Augustine of Hippo, focusing mostly on his famous Confessions. Written in the late fourth century, Confessions remains a foundational work of Christian thought. Fox guides readers on an epic journey through the book and the life that inspired it. Presuming a familiarity from his audience with Confessions and with Augustine, Fox systematically explores his subject's well-documented life and provides in-depth background and commentary capable of assisting even seasoned scholars in a deeper understanding of the great autobiography. For instance, Fox presents a lengthy, detailed, and nuanced explanation of the Manichaean heresy that Augustine fervently followed for a time. Thorough background on topics such as this, obscure today but foundational to a full reading of Confessions, provides a true service to readers. Fox sees Augustine's early life as a series of conversions, either toward ways of thinking or away from certain lifestyles. Once he had thoroughly accepted orthodox Christianity, however, in the famous garden scene described in Confessions, the focus changed. Augustine ceased to undergo conversions and instead began a period of confession in his life, a grappling with his past that culminated in his writing (or dictating, as Fox theorizes) his great prayer, the Confessions. As Fox notes, "books and people alternate importantly in Augustine's intellectual journey," and he explores the many ancient texts that influenced the young Augustine as well as the many people who helped shape him. Fox's writing is coherent and approachable, but the book is not for casual readers of Augustine. It represents a close analysis of both Confessions and of Augustine himself, leaving few stones unturned. An erudite and ordered reading of Augustine's Confessions and a worthy addition to any library on early Christianity. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
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