the New Pantagruel

Augustine: An Imperialist Life?

by Joshua Skinner

Reviewed in this essay:

Augustine: A New Biography, by James J. O’Donnell. Ecco, 416 pp. $26.95.

ESPITE the conflicts that have marked Christian history, Christians of the past, whether Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant, have agreed that a Christian should seek what is true and condemn what is false or heretical. Thus, while the various traditions might disagree in their interpretation of what constitutes heresy, they are unified in the principle that heresy should be avoided. James O’Donnell’s Augustine: A New Biography takes a different slant. O’Donnell’s view of Augustine is filtered through his claim that the natural and healthy state of Christianity was one rife with “heresies” and that Augustine is ultimately to blame for the elimination of “legitimate” forms of Christianity such as Manicheanism and Donatism. O’Donnell’s criticisms stem from a reluctant observation that the Church has not, throughout its life, moved in the direction of a catholicism that “enfolds more religious traditions than the ones that claim a home in Jerusalem.” As the author explains,

The Jesuits of the sixteenth century spoke for a vision of universal Christianity that went beyond what the papacy of their own time could tolerate, and the lapse that followed as they were pulled back from China and checkmated in South America begat centuries of narrow community-building. The twentieth century saw another exhilarating movement into openness in the papacy of John XXIII, but popes since have retreated into narrower definitions of community.

O’Donnell does not speak as a promoter of Manicheanism or Donatism, however, but as an altogether contemporary type: a promoter of diversity instead of truth. This positioning, along with O’Donnell’s contention that Augustine was motivated primarily by ambition rather than faith, is a pervasive and debilitating influence on the book.

O’Donnell’s stated intention is to show Augustine’s life from the perspective of his contemporaries in Africa. He argues for this Afro-centric interpretation of Augustine on the grounds that it will provide a new and deeper understanding of the man’s life and work. Whether such a view would in fact provide a new and deeper understanding of Augustine remains to be seen because O’Donnell’s work quickly becomes mired in his theories about the origins and development of Christianity. Perhaps because O’Donnell relegates to one chapter the portion of Augustine’s life about which we know the most (that covered by Augustine’s Confessions), this biography spends too little time on Augustine’s life and too much time on O’Donnell’s case against Augustine.

O’Donnell devotes significant space to analyzing Augustine’s efforts against various heretical groups, especially the Manicheans, the Donatists and the Pelagians. He criticizes Augustine’s efforts because, in his view, a diversity of practice and belief was the natural form of Christianity; because Catholicism had an unhealthy interconnection (almost identification) with the Roman government; and because Augustine’s undermining of Donatism left northern Africa so weakened that the Vandals and subsequently the Muslims were able to conquer it.

In a section largely free from citations, O’Donnell explains, as if it were fact, that Christianity was an invention of the Fathers of the Church and that Christianity, in its original form, was widely dis-unified in doctrine and practice. O’Donnell argues that there was an original diversity (disunity) of belief and practice within the early church and proposes that this disunity is the healthy and normative state for Christianity. With its heavy reliance on conflict among the apostles and particularly between Peter and Paul, O’Donnell’s interpretation of the early church faces a heavy burden in explaining the Council of Jerusalem, recounted in the Acts of the Apostles, where Paul came to Jerusalem to consult with the apostles on the question of gentiles, conversion and keeping with the Law of Moses. After some discussion, Peter stood up and ended the arguments by proclaiming Paul’s interpretation the authentic faith passed to them by Christ. Leaving aside the question of Petrine authority (which O’Donnell dates centuries later than Augustine), the Council of Jerusalem seriously undercuts O’Donnell’s argument that the natural state of Christianity was dis-unified.

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