In all his writings there is a strong concern and moving power to
involve his reader in his own process of inquiry and perplexity.
There is a manifest eagerness to have him share in his own flashes
of insight and his sudden glimpses of God's glory. Augustine's
style is deeply personal; it is therefore idiomatic, and often
colloquial. Even in his knottiest arguments, or in the
labyrinthine mazes of his allegorizing (e.g., Confessions, Bk.
XIII, or Enchiridion, XVIII), he seeks to maintain contact with
his reader in genuine respect and openness. He is never content
to seek and find the truth in solitude. He must enlist his
fellows in seeing and applying the truth as given. He is never
the blind fideist; even in the face of mystery, there is a
constant reliance on the limited but real powers of human reason,
and a constant striving for clarity and intelligibility. In this
sense, he was a consistent follower of his own principle of
"Christian Socratism," developed in the De Magistro and the De
catechezandis rudibus.
Even the best of Augustine's writing bears the marks of his
own time and there is much in these old books that is of little
interest to any but the specialist.
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