Augustine and Social Justice

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This volume brings into dialogue the ancient wisdom of Augustine of Hippo, a bishop of the early Christian Church of the fourth and fifth centuries, with contemporary theologians and ethicists on the topic of social justice. Each essay mines the major themes present in Augustine's extensive corpus of writingsfrom his Confessions to the City of God with an eye to the following question: how can this early church father so foundational to Christian doctrine and teaching inform our twenty-first century context on how to create and sustain a more just and equitable society In his own day, Augustine spoke to conditions of slavery, conflict and war, violence and poverty, among many others. These conditions, while reflecting the characteristics of our technological age, continue to obstruct our collective efforts to bring about the common good for the global human community. The contributors of this volume have taken great care to read Augustine through the lens of his own time and place; at the same time, they provide keen insights and reflections which advance the conversation of social justice in the present.

Reviews

The temptation in much conventional theological talk about Augustine is to reduce him to a limited set of clichs concerning the several heresies he critiqued: Manichaeism, Donatism, and Pelagianism. This fine collection of essays of course does not avoid all theoretical issues and abstract questions, but it primarily shows the way in which this practicing church theologian had a continuing concern for the administration of the city of man. These scholars trace the ways in which his commitment, from classical categories, to order led him to think about justice as giving to each what belongs to him. This book will be a significant contribution to current thinking about justice and the theological underpinnings that are required for faithfulness about the political economy. This discipline of first order thinking is indispensable in the face of crusading fads. -- Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary
Sixteen hundred years later, Saint Augustine is as popular as ever. A plethora of scholarship on the Bishop of Hippo's political theology and theological ethics is now available, even with different schools of Augustinian thinking circulating. Just when one might believe that Augustine's work and legacy have been exhaustively mined, along comes Augustine and Social Justice, a lode containing rich veins of original contributions by established and emerging scholars. With topics ranging from just war to restorative justice, and from consumerism to family ethics, this volume is a must-read for anyone interested in Augustine for today. -- Tobias Winright, Hubert Mder Chair of Health Care Ethics, Saint Louis University
How I would have loved a volume like Augustine and Social Justice to help me explore the implications of such reflections on justice. Despite the many works written on Augustine, including those that address Augustines understanding of justice, very few helped me probe what Augustines thought means for how we conceptualize and seek social justice. This volume does just that. The essays in this volume represent an impressive diversity of perspectives and cover a remarkable array of topics. * Reading Religion *

Author Bio

Teresa Delgado is associate professor of religious studies and director of the Peace and Justice Studies Program at Iona College. John Doody is professor of philosophy and Robert M. Birmingham chair in humanities at Villanova University. He is also director of the Villanova Center for Liberal Education. Kim Paffenroth is professor of religious studies at Iona College and the interim director of the Iona College Honors Program.