vigorously insisted on both double predestination and irresistible 
grace.

     For all this the Catholic Church was fully justified in 
giving Augustine his aptest title, Doctor Gratiae.  The central 
theme in all Augustine's writings is the sovereign God of grace 
and the sovereign grace of God.  Grace, for Augustine, is God's 
freedom to act without any external necessity whatsoever -- to act 
in love beyond human understanding or control; to act in creation, 
judgment, and redemption; to give his Son freely as Mediator and 
Redeemer; to endue the Church with the indwelling power and 
guidance of the Holy Spirit; to shape the destinies of all 
creation and the ends of the two human societies, the "city of 
earth" and the "city of God." Grace is God's unmerited love and 
favor, prevenient and occurrent.  It touches man's inmost heart 
and will.  It guides and impels the pilgrimage of those called to 
be faithful.  It draws and raises the soul to repentance, faith, 
and praise.  It transforms the human will so that it is capable of 
doing good.  It relieves man's religious anxiety by forgiveness 
and the gift of hope.  It establishes the ground of Christian 
humility by abolishing the ground of human pride.  God's grace 
became incarnate in Jesus Christ, and it remains immanent in the 
Holy Spirit in the Church.

     Augustine had no system -- but he did have a stable and 
coherent Christian outlook.  Moreover, he had an unwearied, ardent 
concern: man's salvation from his hopeless plight, through the 
gracious action of God's redeeming love.  To understand and 
interpret this was his one endeavor, and to this task he devoted 
his entire genius.

     He was, of course, by conscious intent and profession, a 
Christian theologian, a pastor and teacher in the Christian 
community.  And yet it has come about that his contributions to 
the larger heritage of Western civilization are hardly less 
important than his services to the Christian Church. He was far 
and away the best -- if not the very first -- psychologist in the 
ancient world.  His observations and descriptions of human motives 
and emotions, his depth analyses of will and thought in their 
interaction, and his exploration of the inner nature of the human 
self -- these have established one of the main traditions in 
European conceptions of human nature, even down to our own time.  
Augustine is an essential source for both contemporary depth 
psychology and existentialist philosophy.  His view of the shape 
and process of human history has been more influential than any 
other single source in the development of the Western tradition 
which regards political order as inextricably involved in moral 
order.  His conception of a societas as a community identified and 
held together by its loyalties and love has become an integral 
part of the general tradition of Christian social teaching and the 
Christian vision of "Christendom." His metaphysical explorations 
of the problems of being, the character of evil, the relation of 
faith and knowledge, of will and reason, of time and eternity, of 
creation and cosmic order, have not ceased to animate and enrich 
various philosophic reflections throughout the succeeding 
centuries.  At the same time the hallmark of the Augustinian 
philosophy is its insistent demand that reflective thought issue 
in practical consequence; no contemplation of the end of life 
suffices unless it discovers the means by which men are brought to 
their proper goals.  In sum, Augustine is one of the very few men 
who simply cannot be ignored or depreciated in any estimate of 
Western civilization without serious distortion and impoverishment 
of one's historical and religious understanding.

     In the space of some forty-four years, from his conversion in 
Milan (A.D.  386) to his death in Hippo Regius (A.D.  430), 
Augustine wrote -- mostly at dictation -- a vast sprawling library 
of books, sermons, and letters, the remains of which (in the 
Benedictine edition of St.  Maur) fill fourteen volumes as they 
are reprinted in Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus, Series 
Latina (Vols.  32-45).  In his old age, Augustine reviewed his 
authorship (in the Retractations) and has left us a critical 
review of ninety-three of his works he judged most important.  
Even a cursory glance at them shows how enormous was his range of 
interest.  Yet almost everything he wrote was in response to a 
specific problem or an actual crisis in the immediate situation.  
One may mark off significant developments in his thought over this 
twoscore years, but one can hardly miss the fundamental 
consistency in his entire life's work.  He was never interested in 
writing a systematic summa theologica, and would have been 
incapable of producing a balanced digest of his multifaceted 
teaching.  Thus, if he is to be read wisely, he must be read 
widely -- and always in context, with due attention to the 
specific aim in view in each particular treatise.  

     For the general reader who wishes to approach Augustine as 
directly as possible, however, it is a useful and fortunate thing 
that at the very beginning of his Christian ministry and then 
again at the very climax of it, Augustine set himself to focus his 
experience and thought into what were, for him, summings up.  The 
result of the first effort is the Confessions, which is his most 
familiar and widely read work.  The second is in the Enchiridion, 
written more than twenty years later.  In the Confessions, he 
stands on the threshold of his career in the Church. In the 
Enchiridion, he stands forth as triumphant champion of orthodox 
Christianity.  In these two works -- the nearest equivalent to 
summation in the whole of the Augustinian corpus -- we can find 
all his essential themes and can sample the characteristic flavor 
of his thought.