New Testament I and II represents Vol. I/15 and I/16 in the Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century. The present volume contains the translations of four works, all of which are exegetical treatises of one sort or another: The Lord's Sermon on the Mount, Agreement among the Evangelists, Questions on the Gospels and Seventeen Questions on Matthew. Each of the four works are accompanied by its own introduction, general index, and scripture index. The Lord's Sermon on the Mount (translated by Michael Campbell, OSA) is an exegesis of chapters five through seven of Matthew's Gospel, but Augustine's explanation of the Sermon is more a charter of Christian morality and spirituality than mere exegesis of the text and brings a unity to the lengthy discourse that goes far beyond an account of what the text says. Augustine wrote Agreement among the Evangelists in 400, contemporaneously with the composition of his Confessions (397 - 401).The treatise, translated by Kim Paffenroth, is an attempt to defend the veracity of the four evangelists in the face of seeming incompatibilities in their record of the gospel events, especially against some pagan philosophers who raised objections to the gospel narratives based on alleged inconsistencies. Questions on the Gospels and Seventeen Questions on Matthew are translated by Roland Teske, SJ. Questions on the Gospels is a record of questions that arose when Augustine was reading the Gospels of Matthew and Luke with a disciple. The answers to the questions are not intended to be commentaries on the Gospels in their entirety but merely represent the answers to the questions that arose for the student at the time. Seventeen Questions on Matthew is similarly in the question-and-answer genre and is most likely by Augustine, but it includes some paragraphs at the end that are certainly not his. For all those who are interested in the greatest classics of Christian antiquity, Augustine's works are indispensable. This long-awaited translation makes Augustine's monumental work approachable.ABOUT THE AUTHOR Augustine of Hippo (354-430) is one of the greatest thinkers and writers of the Western world. After he converted to Christianity he became bishop of Hippo in North Africa, where he was influential in civil and church affairs. His writings have had a lasting impact on Western philosophy and culture.

Of the different controversies that preoccupied Augustine during his lifetime, Pelagianism was indisputably the most important for the subsequent history and theology of the western Church. It touched on any number of issues central to Christianity, most notably grace, predestination, original sin and baptism, all of which in turn could be reduced to the fundamental question of the exact nature of the relationship between God and his human creation. The six major treatises presented in this volume amply illustrate Augustine's struggle with the theological problems that Pelagianism raised. They begin with the Miscellany of Questions in Response to Simplician. Although written in 396, before Pelagianism even appeared on the scene, this work shows in a few pages the remarkable evolution of Augustine's thought on the matter of grace and the position at which he arrived and to which he clung for the rest of his life. The two final treatises, The Predestination of the Saints and The Gift of Perseverance, written in 428/429 shortly before Augustine's death, indicate where the position that he had elaborated more than thirty years before was fatefully destined to take him. The three middle treatises show Augustine in the process of refining - but not altering - his thinking in the face of what he rightly saw as Pelagianism's terrible threat to orthodox Christianity's central tenets.