Books by Eugene Teselle

In this Saint Augustine Lecture, Professor TeSelle draws together from the various writings of Augustine the major themes in his approach to non-Christians. Highlighting Augustine's emphasis upon the moral and personal attractions of the Christian life that go beyond mere argumentation, he examines three successive concerns. During the years following his conversion, Augustine appealed to those who had some philosophical knowledge and tried to show how Christianity fulfills and puts into effect their highest aspirations. Then during the period between 399 and 410 he joined in the Empire's attack upon pagan religion, adding to his moral and intellectual claims a fateful justification of religious persecution. And at the last, in The City of God, he discovered that he must acknowledge the shortcomings, and not merely celebrate the glories, of "Christian times." It is here, Professor TeSelle suggests, that Augustine's apologetics comes to its appropriate climax--and perhaps speaks most eloquently to our contemporary situation.

Description:In Augustine the Theologian Eugene Teselle surveys the whole of Augustine''s theological achievement, viewing it not according to the rubrics of later systematic theology, as it is so often viewed, to the detriment of both Augustine and ""theology"", but as an inquiry progressing according to the problems with which Augustine was concerned and the historical challenges he faced.Teselle sketches the broad outlines of Augustine''s thought in six major periods, periods characterized by the basic orientations in the often perplexing variety of Augustine''s writings. This comprehensive method brilliantly delineates Augustine the theologian at work. It provides the framework of his problems, showing what is taken for granted, what options are at hand, what resources Augustine has for affecting a resolution. It is a sourcebook of the nature of the theological enterprise, one which may aid the present generation to think problems through once again with a measure of the breadth and originality Augustine exemplified. It is the inward history of a brilliant mind, a mind many complexities of which are still veiled by chronological unknowns, but which always gains by careful estimations like TeSelle''s. It is above all a reliable guide to the major themes in the constantly developing thought of this major Christian thinker, a co-dweller with us in an age of philosophical and theological uncertainties.