"
Taken together, the Confessions and the Enchiridion give us
two very important vantage points from which to view the
Augustinian perspective as a whole, since they represent both his
early and his mature formulation. From them, we can gain a
competent -- though by no means complete -- introduction to the
heart and mind of this great Christian saint and sage. There are
important differences between the two works, and these ought to be
noted by the careful reader. But all the main themes of
Augustinian Christianity appear in them, and through them we can
penetrate to its inner dynamic core.
There is no need to justify a new English translation of
these books, even though many good ones already exist. Every
translation is, at best, only an approximation -- and an
interpretation too. There is small hope for a translation to end
all translations. Augustine's Latin is, for the most part,
comparatively easy to read. One feels directly the force of his
constant wordplay, the artful balancing of his clauses, his
laconic use of parataxis, and his deliberate involutions of
thought and word order. He was always a Latin rhetor; artifice of
style had come to be second nature with him -- even though the
Latin scriptures were powerful modifiers of his classical literary
patterns.
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