Augustine chose obscurity over ambition and labored a lifetime in a backwater without thought of making a name for himself. He died in an African city about to be overrun by invaders who spoke a German dialect and destined to be taken twice more in two centuries by other invaders speaking Greek and Arabic. All but the most trivial material traces of his life have vanished from the earth, and the faith for which he lived is widely thought obsolete. He survives in the books he wrote, but he wrote so many of them that he was not long dead before people began to say that anyone who said he had read all of Augustine was a liar; he wrote most of those books in heated controversies now long grown cold. But through all the centuries since his death, he has always had faithful disciples and outspoken adversaries.

Today Augustine is variously neglected, misunderstood, and taken for granted. Those who would understand our heritage cannot afford to pass over him lightly. This book is for those who care to look at the man squarely and to let his thoughts live anew, even if fleetingly. Those who read this book will, no less than its writer, fail in the desperate effort to bring a dead man back to life, but failure of this sort can be glorious. The effort requires no further justification.