Reconsiderations

Toward the end of his life, St Augustine began a project called in Latin the Retractationes. Often mistranslated as "retractions," the title actually is closer in meaning to "reconsiderations" or "revisions," because, in its two parts, Augustine looks back on his extensive writings and comments on the ways in which he'd erred, was unclear, or had otherwise failed to get his point across to the reader. Often, this was due to his excessive use of rhetoric in the heat of a theological dispute, of which he had taken part in many. Consequently, the Retractationes is an important document in better understanding what Augustine actually thought rather than what others mistakenly understood him to be thinking.I was reminded of the Retractationes during my recent trip. Eight and a half hours in a plane each way gives a man a lot of time to kill and I did so by rereading Peter Brown's 1967 biography of Augustine. While Brown doesn't devote many pages to the Retractationes, his discussion of…