On Augustine
ROWAN WILLIAMS

Here is a collection that brings together essays written for a variety of audiences over more than 25 years. Some address individual texts; others treat themes which underlie most or all of Augustine’s writings. Rowan Williams’ interest here is less in the doctrines and disputes with which Augustine is most famously associated (his disputes with Donatists and Pelagians; his doctrines of sin, grace, and the Church), and more in the concerns from which, for Augustine, they arise: the importance of human embodiedness and the meaning of the embodiment of God’s wisdom and love in Christ; the role of narrative, time, and memory in the divine-human relationship; the character of Trinitarian divine love.

Several chapters are thematically linked. Chapter 4 defends Augustine’s doctrine of “creation out of nothing” against criticisms by some recent theologians, arguing that it is less dualistic, less hierarchical, and more subtle than has been recognized. Williams sees in Augustine’s thinking a God who does not make the world by imposing the divine will on “some recalcitrant stuff”, but rather delights in creating an other out of nothing, endows it with freedom, beauty, and reason, and longs for it to love and delight in its turn. Chapter 5 discusses the insubstantiality of evil in this scheme. Given, Williams argues, that Augustine regards evil not as an entity but as a process, we can only understand it in relation to his understanding of the divine-human relationship and the way that relationship exists in time.