When writing Being and Time, Heidegger envisaged the project to be more extensive than the text we now have. Only about a third of the material announced in the introduction has been published. Drawing on Heidegger’s retrospective comments, this chapter lays out the philosophical reasons why he abandoned the project. In published writings, Heidegger emphasizes the continuity between Being and Time and later works: the failure of Being and Time was a turn (Kehre) necessary to further advance on the path of thought. Heidegger’s private manuscripts present a more detailed and much more critical picture. In the ‘Running Notes to “Being and Time”’ (GA 82, 3-136), Heidegger rejects several methodological and substantial commitments of the book, including the ambition to answer the question of being and the commitment to temporality as the explanatory paradigm of ontology.

This chapter argues that Augustine preaches on the Trinity both in sermons devoted particularly to particular trinitarian questions, and throughout his homiletic corpus insofar as Augustine’s understanding of creation and salvation as a whole is founded on his understanding of the inseparability and co-equality of Father, Son and Spirit. Through these different types of sermons Augustine also consistently emphasizes both the importance of accepting in faith knowledge handed on to us, but which we cannot yet comprehend, and the importance of struggling to think of God in terms beyond the material and the temporal. It is also noticeable that Augustine makes little use of the language of persona and natura in his preaching, preferring to define his belief through a series of Nicene principles (such as the inseparability of the divine three in their acts), and through presenting Nicene exegeses of key verses as hermeneutical keys.

Before considering the goal of Augustine’s preaching, this chapter first of all considers Augustine’s understanding of the nature of reality and of human beings as wholly dependent upon God’s grace. In this context, it argues that the question of the goal of preaching is effectively turned on its head: that it is not so much a question of what the human preacher should say or do – of what they should give in order to achieve a particular goal – but rather a question of how they are to receive what is given to them so that their goal can be achieved. It suggests that the answer is found in Augustine’s identification of grace as the love of God, which is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, and demonstrates that love is the source, means, message and end, or goal, of preaching.

Augustine’s doctrine of the totus Christus, the whole Christ with Christ as Head and the Church as Body, developed within his preaching ministry. The doctrine emerges from Augustine’s prosopological exegesis of the Psalms and grows into a theological reflection on the enduring union of Christ and the Church that leads Augustine to say that Christ and the Church share a voice, an identity, and a life. This transforming union gives Christians a new identity as members of the Body of Christ through the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist. The life of the Church reflects the love and unity of Christ in its life and action in the world. Because of its deep roots in his preaching, Augustine’s doctrine of the totus Christus can be called a preached theology. That is, it is a theology developed within the context of preaching, both in the preparation for preaching and in the preaching itself.

These sermons were aimed at inspiring believers to imitate the martyrs, who themselves imitated Christ, their archetype. Christ’s voluntary suffering and self-sacrifice defeated the devil and death, expiated our sins, and restored to believers the possibility of eternal happiness, with God’s grace. Augustine modifies the traditional definition of “martyr” as “witness” to make martyrdom contingent on suffering and self-sacrifice: the essence of martyrdom and mandatory for all who would be Christian. He provides examples of this ideal behavior, such as calmly accepting the loss of one’s property. Suffering proves the cause for which martyrs died is true; otherwise they would have failed their ordeals. Augustine draws on Cyprian, recognizing a literal martyrdom in times of persecution, and in times of peace, a spiritual martyrdom fought daily against temptation and sin. These sermons also document the obstacles Augustine faced when preaching: not only correcting the errors of the Donatists, Manichees, and Pelagians, but also accommodating his flock’s limitations. He thus presents an inclusive church, a concord of different levels of expertise ordered hierarchically.

Augustine’s picture of the Christian life as a voyage to the heavenly homeland is central to his thought and preaching, especially prominent in his sermons on the Psalms. For Augustine, peregrinatio is a defining image for the earthly life as such as well as of the process by which the Christian believer seeks to travel home on the path made by Christ. Augustine’s vivid imagery for this spiritual journey traverses a varied landscape, which this essay traces through a range of his sermons. Augustine’s Christology is particularly powerful in these images, for it is Christ who makes a way across the sea and over land to the homeland. Yet to be able to take this path, the believer must also be taught and inspired by the Holy Spirit to desire this homeland. Augustine’s exhortations to cultivate desire and longing are thus also dominant features of his sermons on this theme.

Augustine’s liturgical preaching is integral to his conception of the liturgical celebration as rendering present the unrepeatable saving acts of Christ. During the liturgical season from Lent to Easter, the north African bishop is consistently preoccupied with the present effectiveness of the mysteries of Christ’s death and Resurrection. During Lent, he invites his congregation to fashion a cross for themselves – through prayer, fasting, and alms – for the sake of communion in Christ’s crucifixion. On Good Friday, he invites his listeners to contemplate the suffering of the impassible God and to safeguard the integrity of the Church that is the fruit of his suffering. In the Easter celebrations, he instructs his flock to be strengthened in their Easter faith through participation in the Eucharist and through performance of works of mercy, and to hold fast to the objective content of their faith in the genuine corporeality of the Risen Lord. He guides them into an experience of Easter joy as a proleptic participation in the eternal joy of the Church’s communion in the body of the Risen Lord, which can only be attained through a sharing in his Crucifixion.

The medieval transmission of Augustine’s preaching, in particular that of the Sermones ad populum, has had a significant impact on which parts of his vast homiletic corpus have survived and what state the texts find themselves in after a millennium of being copied by medieval scribes. This chapter will sketch a broad overview of the way Augustine’s sermons were transmitted, focusing in particular on their dynamic organization in sermon collections throughout the Middle Ages. It will discuss the implications of the modes of transmission and the medieval afterlife of Augustine’s preaching for the usability of these sermons as primary sources.

This chapter explores Augustine’s preaching on the Old Testament in three primary collections: 1) Sermons to the People, 2) Explanations of the Psalms, and 3) the Dolbeau sermons. It begins by considering Augustine’s Christo-ecclesial hermeneutic for the interpretation of Scripture, which Augustine employs while preaching in the context of liturgical worship. Then it provides an overview of Augustine’s developing figurative exegesis of the Old Testament, especially during his debates with the Manicheans. Next, it examines how Augustine engages the different kinds of literature in the Old Testament, such as the Pentateuch, Psalms, and wisdom literature, in the aforementioned collections. The chapter concludes by arguing that Augustine’s sermons on the Old Testament demonstrate the unity of Scripture and the underlying Christo-ecclesial meaning of the Old Testament in Augustine’s thought.

Over the time of his ministry, Augustine came more strongly to see that only in heaven will we find the fullness of peace. This chapter reviews Augustine’s preaching on heaven and its peace first in its ecclesial and liturgical settings. It then takes into consideration objections faced by his people to Christian faith in the resurrection of the dead. Then it reviews the face-to-face vision of God and the communal dimensions of the heavenly Jerusalem where angels and saints experience peace together. The chapter focuses on Augustine’s preaching on the words “amen” and “alleluia” that express our whole activity in heaven’s peace.

This introduction extols reasons to study Augustine’s sermons for the academy and Church today. It introduces the sixteen chapters written by an international team of experts. It then lays the foundation of humility for the rest of the volume by considering this theme in the volume’s three parts: Augustine’s pastoral task of preaching sermons; sermons on the Scriptures and liturgical feasts; and preaching themes.

In his sermons, Augustine applies his more theoretical considerations of God’s impact on human willing to the concrete, day-to-day challenges of his flock. As he seeks to spur his congregation on in its mundane struggles of will, Augustine develops an account of God’s grace and our willing that is at once starkly realistic about human limitations and hopeful about what God can do in and for the faithful, even in this life. While Augustine frankly forecasts that ongoing wrongful desires, painful curative procedures, and inner turmoil will be the norm, he also emphasizes that love eases these burdens, enabling genuine progress and human contributions. The resulting vision carries, rather than dissipates, the energy generated by the biblical friction between such realistic and optimistic assessments of God’s mercy at work in human life. In this sense, Augustine’s preaching on God’s grace and our willing is charged, never neutral.