Augustine of Hippo is history's best-known Christian convert.
The very concept of "conversio" owes its dissemination to
Augustine's "Confessions," and yet, as Jason BeDuhn notes,
conversion in Augustine is not the sudden, dramatic, and complete
transformation of self we likely remember it to be. Rather, in the
"Confessions" Augustine depicts conversion as a lifelong process, a
series of self-discoveries and self-departures. The tale of
Augustine is one of conversion, apostasy, and conversion again.In
this first volume of "Augustine's Manichaean Dilemma," BeDuhn
reconstructs Augustine's decade-long adherence to Manichaeism,
apostasy from it, and subsequent conversion to Nicene Christianity.
Based on his own testimony and contemporaneous sources from and
about Manichaeism, the book situates many features of Augustine's
young adulthood within his commitment to the sect, while pointing
out ways he failed to understand or put into practice key parts of
the Manichaean system. It explores Augustine's dissatisfaction with
the practice-oriented faith promoted by the Manichaean leader
Faustus and the circumstances of heightened intolerance,
anti-Manichaean legislation, and pressures for social conformity
surrounding his apostasy.Seeking a historically circumscribed
account of Augustine's subsequent conversion to Nicene
Christianity, BeDuhn challenges entrenched conceptions of
conversion derived in part from Augustine's later idealized account
of his own spiritual development. He closely examines Augustine's
evolving self-presentation in the year before and following his
baptism and argues that the new identity to which he committed
himself bore few of the hallmarks of the orthodoxy with which he is
historically identified. Both a historical study of the specific
case of Augustine and a theoretical reconsideration of the
conditions under which conversion occurs, this book explores the
role religion has in providing the materials and tools through
which self-formation and reformation occurs.
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