AUGUSTINE IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY

Augustine's body eventually rested in the now obscure Church of San Pietno in Ciel d'Oro in Pavia, but his influence remained alive and visible. Had he lived longer, he would have continued the contemporary debate about the quality of his own work. Suppose him to have been allowed to return to life in the late twentieth century to write his Reconsiderations over again. Suppose that, in so doing, he were not only to update his material where he found it necessary, but to persist with one of the principal objectives of the original work: to leave behind a set of writings from which the enemies of the Church, above all Pelagians of various stripes, could draw no comfort.

One of the reasons for the surviving historical influence of Augustine is that he escaped from his own philosophical past and bequeathed himself, apparently – but only apparently – without such a past, to his Western successors. But if Augustine's philosophical and theological strength derives in part from his comparative intellectual isolation, that isolation contributed in less happy ways to the reception of his writings and to the nature of his influence, both before and after his death.