The life and work of St. Augustine of Hippo offer a heritage of distinction to enliven and enrich the vocations of contemporary scholars and teachers. Augustine’s known writings include over five hundred sermons, one hundred thirteen books, and two hundred seventy letters. His early search for truth and happiness, his conversion to Christianity at the age of thirty-two, and his thirty-five years as Bishop of Hippo in North Africa still yield both insight and inspiration sixteen centuries later. Catholics and Protestants, theologians and philosophers, believers and agnostics continue to find in Augustine a challenging companion, or a worthy adversary, for matters of the mind and habits of the heart.

In addition to Augustine’s own contributions, the religious men and women who have lived according to the monastic rule he wrote have enlarged and strengthened the Augustinian heritage. The medieval Augustinian school of thought, which originated in the early medieval universities, further broadened and deepened Augustine’s own insights and influence in Western thought. Drawing from Augustine himself, from the Order of St. Augustine, and from the medieval Augustinian school one can discern recurring themes that provide touchstones for an Augustinian spirituality that may enrich the life and work of contemporary educators and intellectuals. These themes are: the primacy of love; the mystery of Christ; the efficacy of grace; the importance of Scripture; and, a critique of human power and institutions. Each of these themes distinguish the Augustinian philosophy and praxis of education.

The Primacy of Love

When reading Augustine’s Confessions, his letters or his sermons, one sooner or later notices that he is almost never solitary, rarely removed from human companionship. His recollections of childhood and adolescence concern school, peer pressure and friendships—all very social experiences. The death of a friend, suffered when he was in his early twenties, devastated him, as he recounts at length in Book IV of the Confessions. Augustine’s remembrance of that severe loss is immediately followed in the Confessions by his beautiful hymn to friendship. As a young adult he seems to require the steady and supportive companionship of a woman. When he arrives in Milan, a retinue of family and friends soon join him, and he seems to think this very normal.

Even his deeply religious moments are shared. He reported his conversion experience in the garden at Milan immediately to his friend Alypius. His mystical experience in Ostia was shared with his mother. His ideal of Christian living was a community of friends, and he spent considerable energy on setting up and living in such communities. Friendships, relationships, community living all held the highest value for Augustine.

His conversion to Christianity prompted Augustine to reflect deeply on the nature of friendship and gave him new insights about love. In his works on the Gospel and Letters of St. John, Augustine delights in John’s affirmation that "God is love" and that when we live in love we live in the divine reality. Inspired by faith and by his reading of Scripture, Augustine begins to write about the importance of loving properly, that is, in ways and means appropriate to the object of one’s love. This "ordering of love" in the light of faith enabled Augustine, always the passionate lover and intense friend, to temper and tutor his desires so that all his loving led ultimately to the One Who Is Love. Aided by God’s grace we can learn to love all persons, indeed all creatures, in the proper measure and always within the ultimate context of the Divine Lover. The gift of the Holy Spirit in turn inflames and directs our loving.

It is no surprise, then, that in his scholastic theology Giles of Rome insists on the basic Augustinian principle that will is superior to intellect. The way in which we are most like God is not in our knowledge alone, but in our creative capacity to choose to love. The final purpose of theology, according to Giles and the Augustinian scholastics, is to deepen our desire for God and our love for God’s creation. Knowledge and understanding are always in the service of love.

Augustinian spirituality, then, rests not on asceticism or methods of religious observance, not on meditation or ritual practice, not on the rarified knowledge of religious ideas or secrets, but simply on love. The spiritual life is itself made possible by the gift of God’s love in the Holy Spirit. That gift guides us in the ways of love. Any efforts on our part are both inspired and aided by the divine love, and are all directed to the perfecting of our capacity to love God and each other.

The ideal of the Christian life for Augustine, then, is to live together in humble and sincere love as a community of friends, centered in Christ Who is the revelation of God’s love. His rule begins "Before all else, dearly beloved, love God and then your neighbor, because these are the chief commandments given to us…. The main purpose for your having come together is to live harmoniously in your house, intent upon God in oneness of mind and heart." The Rule provides the guidelines for a practical experience in Christian community based on love. Where one might expect to find a reference to a spiritual director or religious mentor, Augustinian spirituality directs one’s attention to the Divine Love directing and forming us in and through the Christ-centered community. When one seeks personal transformation in holiness, Augustine recommends daily common prayer. To the earnest scholar seeking truth, Augustine extends the invitation to sustained and engaging conversation among those many and diverse members "who have come together" in intentional community.

Love and the Intellectual Life

It may be counter-cultural in contemporary American intellectual circles to suggest, as Giles did seven hundred years ago at the University of Paris, that learning should be ordered to love. An Augustinian vision of the academy, however, is founded on the primacy of love. It understands the academic community to be, above all else, a scholarly fellowship of friends. Those friends, from very different backgrounds, disciplines, persuasions and beliefs, can nonetheless be united by caritas. Caritas, or charity as Augustine understood it, involves a profound respect for and acceptance of one’s fellow searchers for truth. It exercises the necessary, and sometimes difficult self discipline to realize that respect and to sustain that acceptance. Caritas is willing to practice humility, that is, a realistic assessment of one’s own strengths and limits in light of the common search for truth. All members of the academic community should be afforded this respect and acceptance, as they engage one another in the important and sometimes difficult search for truth.

From an Augustinian perspective the scholarly fellowship of friends is called to grow together through knowledge to wisdom. Learning is valued because it opens opportunities for personal and societal transformation. Passionate learning, supported by a compassionate community of students and scholars, can be the beginning of life long transformation of self, and through ones service to others, of society. This is wisdom in the Augustinian tradition: knowledge put to work in the building of a new society, a society whose outlines and blueprints can already be found in the respect and acceptance, in the caritas of the collegiate community itself.

This Augustinian theology of love can also have an influence on the curriculum or course of studies in higher education. In an age of specialization, of isolated and esoteric academic disciplines, people are calling for ways to help students make connections. The emphasis of the Augustinian School on the primacy of love provides a principle of integration and of connection across the curriculum. The respect and acceptance of one’s academic colleagues includes, in an Augustinian approach, a respect for and acceptance of their particular disciplines, different from one’s own. Augustinian education calls for the exploration of ways to invite and engage students and faculty from different disciplines and majors into sustained and meaningful conversations on civilization and its many and diverse aspects.

The medieval Augustinian School asserted that theology has as its final purpose not only love of neighbor or caritas, but also love of God or affectio. All members of the typical contemporary college or university may not believe in God or in the reality of a transcendent being. An Augustinian spirituality, however, considers and sustains the possibility that human learning, in its many and diverse particulars, is ultimately a participation in the divine. Teaching, research, writing and study are sacred activities, containing within themselves the seeds of transcendence. The life of the student and the scholar are filled with a thirsting for knowledge which knowledge alone cannot quench. As theology is ultimately directed to the experience of God’s love, all learning in its proper way is directed to awakening within the student and the teacher an experience of self-transcendence that leaves one open to the possibility of the eternal. Indeed, for Augustine, all ventures searching for the "true" and the "good" are on the way to a discovery of God.

Most Catholic colleges and universities are associated with a community of religious men or women. These communities can be a sacraments of caritas and affectio to and for the wider academic community. They can enrich the larger scholarly fellowship of friends by hospitality of table and conversation, by openness of mind and heart, by the personal witness of these dedicated men or women to the charisms of their own religious communities.

The Mystery of Christ

Augustinian spirituality is deeply Christ-centered. Augustine understood Jesus to be the very mystery of the Divine One breaking personally and powerfully into human history and experience. To enter into relationship with Christ through Baptism, and to celebrate and sustain that relationship in the Eucharist, is to live in intimate and enduring love of the Holy One.

Augustine’s sermons elaborate in many, powerful ways this aspect of Christian doctrine. He puts flesh on the Christological controversies of the third and fourth centuries, as he constantly invites his people into ever deeper relationship with God through Christ. He tells his congregations what it means in every day life that Jesus is truly God and truly human. It means that they, and he, are invited by Christ into the mystery of the Eternal One.

Augustine’s conversion involved not only the discovery of Christianity as a convincing system of belief, thought and ethic. After his baptism Augustine, ever the restless searcher for truth, found within himself a new source of confidence and curiosity, a new font of love and learning that intensified his intellectual journey and deepened his spiritual search. He explores the soul, studies the Scriptures and critiques religion, philosophy and society with this new inner confidence, a confidence built upon Christ his "Inner Teacher". Certainly Augustine’s early life had been an odyssey of intellectual and existential searching. He would examine and explore on his own various schools of thought such as Manicheism, Aristotle’s categories, academic skepticism, astrology, and neo-platonism. At the same time he would long for a teacher or mentor who might show him the way. After his conversion Christ becomes for Augustine that teacher and mentor, an inner compass, a Virgilian companion, that guides him as he ventures forth into new territories of the soul and new vistas of Christian faith and philosophy.

Faith in Christ and the Search for Truth

It is clear that conversion to Christ did not mean the end of intellectual activity for Augustine. Christian faith for him rather inspired a return to a life dedicated wholly to study and reflection, as well as to prayer. Faith and reason were not only compatible; they were both necessary and reliable guides in Augustine’s search for truth. Christianity can never, in its best understanding, be used to foreclose any avenue of truth. The Catholic intellectual must cherish and nurture freedom and openness in intellectual, scientific or professional research, writing or teaching.

This continuing search for truth, however, presents an ambiguity for the Christian intellectual, an ambiguity canonized in the opening paragraphs of John Paul II’s Ex Corde Ecclesiae where he appeals directly to the thought of St. Augustine: "A Catholic University’s privileged task is ‘to unite existentially by opposition as thought they were antithetical: the search for truth, and the certainty of already knowing the font of truth’" (Ex Corde Ecclesiae, #1). How does one continue the search for truth after conversion to Christ, Whom believers hold to be the Truth? This is a particularly acute question in the modern Catholic college or university with its great diversity of opinions, religious traditions, and philosophical schools.

The question is less problematic perhaps when one is speaking of search for discernable facts in science, or in the interpretative and imaginative pursuits of literary exegesis. It is, however, in the areas of theology, philosophy, and ethics where difficulties about truth and search for truth arise. Are students and faculty who believe in Christ less engaged, by virtue of their faith, in a true, open and continuing quest for truth? Are scholars and teachers who do not believe in Christ, or in God, by virtue of their positions or opinions, on an endless and fruitless search until and unless they eventually discover God in Christ? How can members of the scholarly fellowship of friends continue together on the search for truth within an academic community that includes everything from conviction to agnosticism to atheism about Ultimate Truth?

It is clear how Augustine continued that search after his conversion. Christ became his Inner Guide, his Inner Light, in the post-conversion intensification of his intellectual life. He explored the meanings and implications of Christian doctrines; he elaborated them and broke new ground in the theologies of grace, sin, ministry and Church. He invited others, even those with whom he had basic disagreements, into continuing dialogue about religious and philosophical issues. He had various friendly dialogues, both friendly and stormy, with contemporary pagan intellectuals of his day.

The contemporary Catholic college or university should be a place where Christians can explore faith and philosophy, science and business in the context of a community of faith. Such a college, however, should also be a place where persons of other philosophical persuasions or religious commitments can, as full members of the scholarly fellowship of friends, follow their search for truth in ways that remain faithful to their best selves. Augustine would probably find the great diversity of faiths and philosophies in the contemporary Catholic college or university interesting and, indeed, invigorating. While he knew significant philosophical and religious pluralism in his time and place, the contemporary convergence of world religions would no doubt challenge his religious imagination in new ways. In the end though, were he to be consistent with the value he put on intellectual freedom and respect for all sincere adherents to truth, Augustine would enter the debates, conversations, disagreements with his characteristic enthusiasm and passion. That passionate engagement should be a hallmark of the Catholic intellectual life, wherein the engagement should be a hallmark of the Catholic intellectual life, wherein the scholarly fellowship of friends entertain and enjoy and engage all seekers of truth.

The Total Christ

A further aspect of Augustine’s Christology is his use and development of Paul’s image of the Church as the Body of Christ. This image appears again and again in Augustine’s preaching and writing. To be baptized is to become part of, a member of the infinite mystery of the total Christ, the Totus Christus. In inviting the assembly to share communion at the Eucharistic table in Hippo, he proclaims: "See what you believe! Become what you receive!" To be a Christian then is to become one with the mystery of Christ in the world, loving the world, working to transform the world. 

This theme of the Church as the Body of Christ is the foundation for Augustine’s option for the poor. In writing and preaching about the Last Judgment scene in Matthew 25, Augustine calls his people to remember that Christ is truly present in the human community, and especially in those who suffer in any way. The Christian has a baptismal responsibility to respond to, care for and relate to persons in distress, poverty and persecution.

Recently discovered letters of Augustine show him involved in issues of his day which concerned justice for the poor and dispossessed. He asked the emperor to promulgate new laws against slave trade, he worried about the sale of children by very poor families, and he administered his Church’s aid and support of the poor of Hippo. It mattered not who the person was--prostitute, fighter in the arena, known sinner: in Augustine’s way of thinking, we all stand in need of God’s grace and forgiveness. Christians must never discriminate against anyone. Humility calls us to recognize that we are all in need of God’s love and forgiveness, healed and made whole not by our own ministrations, but by being made members of the Body of Christ. Ultimately it is Augustine’s Christology that informs his political and social themes in the City of God.

For Augustine, then, Christ is the foundation of his life, Christ is his Inner Guide and Teacher on the journey of life back to God. The mystery of Christ embraces all of humanity and calls Augustine and those who share his vision of the spiritual life to serve the needs of all.

The Efficacy of Divine Grace

The Christ-centeredness of Augustine’s own spiritual life is the foundation for his understanding of divine grace. Grace is a continuing theme in Augustine’s Confessions. As he looks back over his life, he sees God working in, through, around and under all his experiences to draw him into loving union. This pervasive, persistent yet gentle and loving divine work is grace. Grace is the on-going divine creation wherein the Holy One continues to mold and shape all created reality into the divine image. The power of God which made all that exists, is the very same power which guided Augustine to his conversion and life in Christ, God’s "new creation". It is no accident that the Confessions end with reflections on the Book of Genesis.

For Augustine there is no compromising the importance of grace. As with St. Paul, who also had a powerful conversion experience, so for Augustine, all is grace, all is God’s pervasive power and presence constantly calling and nudging us into ever closer union through Christ. While respecting our free will, since love must be free, God’s purpose is to complete creation by re-uniting all things in Christ.

A contemporary of Augustine, the British monk Pelagius taught that we are called to grow in perfection, and that God’s grace can help us. That grace, however, as Pelagius understood it, is more an external aid provided us by God as we strive mightily toward holiness. Augustine responded to Pelagius’ teaching, which had spread throughout the Mediterranean church, with his full rhetorical vim and vigor. In Augustine’s experience divine grace was not a spiritual add-on that assisted our efforts in becoming like Christ. Grace illuminates our minds, strengthens our faltering wills, guides our insufficient efforts, shows us the way, and assists us with every step. Even our responses to God’s continuing initiatives toward us are themselves also made possible by grace. Augustine argued that human experience is much more complex and dynamic than Pelagius imagined. We cannot simply identify a goal, religious or otherwise, and naively begin the ascent to achieve it. Our wills are weak; we are compromised by conflicting desires; we lack insight and perspective; we hurt and betray one another. So we stand absolutely in need of divine grace, of God’s on-going creative, redemptive activity on our behalf. Our redemption is not the result of our efforts, but of our surrender to God’s transforming love. This primacy of grace is reflected in the Augustinian School from Giles of Rome up to and including the Reformation and the theology of Luther.

Grace and the Complexity of Human Experience

Augustine’s theology of grace contains an affirmation of God’s freedom and creativity. Divine grace is not a commodity of the Church nor a monopoly of believers. Grace moves where it will within society and the individual, creating ever new opportunities for the discovery of divine love. The "Inner Teacher" teaches each in quite different ways sometimes.

Augustine’s radical affirmation of grace, therefore, calls Catholics and other Christians in the scholarly fellowship of friends to respect the consciences of those whose intellectual and religious journeys differ from their own. Augustine discerned a complexity in the many intertwining levels of intellect, will and affect in human experience. The scholarly fellowship of friends in an Augustinian model acknowledges that complexity and its ensuing ambiguity by a profound respect for each other’s thoughtful opinions, careful convictions and earnest doubts. A kind of intellectual humility is essential for the Augustinian scholarly fellowship of friends. This complexity of mind, heart and will undergird the basic paradox inherent in Augustine’s intellectual Christianity, the paradox of continuing the search even as one believes that the Truth has been revealed in Christ. Appreciating such complexity and sustaining that paradox inspire a radical Augustinian tolerance of others and a profound Augustinian respect for differences. Complexity and paradox hold search and discovery in a creative tension. Complexity and paradox invite searchers and believers to recognize and respect that in each and every person at diverse times and on different levels there is believer, searcher, agnostic, atheist. Augustine’s theology of grace affirms and is affirmed by recognition of the complexity in all persons. In parallel fashion his theology of sin allows for the paradox of faith and failure simultaneously—simul justus et peccator, as Luther put it. An Augustinian spirituality affirms both complexity and paradox; it encompasses both the possession of truth and the continuing desire for truth; and it embraces all the many and varied expressions of both.

Augustinian complexity and paradox, founded on Augustine’s theology of grace, not only call for intellectual inclusion. They also comprise an invitation to transcendence. Augustinian spirituality inspires a continuing and creative invitation to all members of the fellowship of friends to ask their questions, debate their positions, and construct their theories provisionally. It also encourages all members of the fellowship to consider how the possibility of transcendence might reframe their work, illumine heretofore ignored implications of their thought, open new considerations of their basic pre-suppositions.

Augustine re-invigorated many aspects of Platonism and neo-Platonism when, after his conversion, he re-considered it in light of his faith. Thomas and Giles expanded the uses of Aristotelian categories in light of faith in the Eternal and Holy. In the same way Christian and other religious scholars both learn from and give to their agnostic or atheistic colleagues when conversation includes the possibility of the transcendent, even if only as a tempting proposition or friendly amendment. Complexity, paradox and the possibility of transcendence do not lead to a unified school of thought. These do, however, provide enough common ground, indeed, a worthy and expansive campus for serious, exciting, enriching and ennobling work in the scholarly fellowship of friends.

To all this Augustine would add, relying on his understanding of the Totus Christus, an invitation to the fellowship of friends to travel beyond the campus, to embrace the less advantaged in society and in the world. An Augustinian spirituality, to be faithful to its heritage, must constantly ask questions about the relationships between the scholarship and learning it encourages and allows, and the needs, problems, hopes and crises of wider social, political and economic communities. It is not enough to accept and explore differences among those in the fellowship of friends. That fellowship must extend itself, transcend the limitations often self-imposed by an academic community, and with the help of divine grace engage the wider and diverse world by dialogue and service.

The Importance of Scripture

In his early years in Carthage, Augustine had read some of the New Testament. He found its literary quality so inferior, that he dismissed both the text and its message. Augustine was indeed reading Latin translations that had not yet had the advantage of Jerome’s landmark, literary translation, called the Vulgate, which began to be available toward the end of the fourth century. Scripture, however, played a key role in Augustine’s conversion, in his study and reflection as a new Christian, and in his pastoral role as bishop. His preaching is filled with quotes from Scripture. His homilies are invitations to ever deeper understandings of the texts which have just been read during the liturgy. A close analysis of his sermons suggests that he would start a passage from the Psalms, or the Gospel, and his congregation would often finish it, somewhat in the responsive style of Afro-American churches today.

His exegetical works on Genesis, the Old and New Testaments, and his homilies on the Johannine books of the New Testament and on the Psalms comprise a large proportion of his entire corpus. These biblical commentaries by Augustine inspired the medieval Augustinian School’s extensive use of Scripture, and its importance in the religious life of Augustinian religious.

The Role Of Sacred Text In The Intellectual Life

The Hebrew Bible and the New Testament can have a significant place in the discourse and prayer life of the contemporary intellectual and of the academic community. Augustine’s reliance on the scriptures, and the attention given to scripture in the medieval Augustinian School, challenge the scholarly fellowship of friends at a contemporary Catholic college or university to honor and cherish the sacred texts. Teachers and students at these schools can experience how scripture enriches faith and prayer as they study the origins, genres, uses and meanings of scriptural texts.

It is also of great value for the sacred texts of other religious traditions to be learned and studied. Such consideration could make members of those traditions feel affirmed and valued in their faith, and accepted as full and equal members of the scholarly fellowship of friends.

Finally, since for Augustine scripture by its very nature and purpose led to prayer and praise, an Augustinian approach values opportunities for individual prayer and common worship in the academic or intellectual community. The fostering of a habit of contemplation, of considered reflection on experience, is one that can greatly benefit all contemporary scholars who so often are overburdened by committees, projects, and who can be distracted or enervated by the stresses of our extraverted, market-driven society. Sacred scripture can provide categories and texts for such contemplation, as can the sacred texts of other traditions. Liturgical celebrations for the Catholic and Christian members of the community and worship services for other religious traditions can also affirm God’s grace, power and presence in ways that benefit the entire fellowship.

Critique of Human Power and Institutions

Augustine’s knowledge of himself, his struggles with social institutions first as a teacher and then in the imperial court, and the social and religious conflicts which preoccupied so much of his ministry, kept him from ever being Pollyannaish. His critique of power, and of its potential for corrupting individuals, institutions and society, serve as a powerful preventive against naïveté in Augustinian spirituality.

From his early student days, Augustine struggled with the notion of evil. His detour into the dualistic world of the Manicheans was his first serious attempt to wrestle with the nature and existence of personal and social evil. The idealism he later found in neo-Platonist mysticism was soon balanced by his Christian understanding of sin and of our need for redemption. Augustine’s reflections on and convictions about evil coalesce in his teaching on original sin.

In elaborating the sin of the primal parents, Augustine challenged his readers to consider sinfulness at the "origins" of humanity as a compelling and convincing theological explanation for the pervasiveness of sin and suffering. In his understanding we enter, at our very conception, a world compromised by sin. Humans are not necessarily bad, in Augustine’s understanding; we are rather disabled by our immersion into this world of sin and we need the constant help of grace to do the right thing. We cannot escape sin on our own, whether by citizenship in some utopian society, by withdrawal from the world altogether, or by a program of self-improvement.

One need not accept every detail in Augustine’s theory of original sin to appreciate his willingness to take evil seriously, to struggle to account for the very real pain, ambiguity and suffering which he witnessed and participated in as a pastor. He understood that we all have mixed motivation; we are all sinners. A selfish love of self and a selfless openness to God and others co-exist, even within the same person. As Augustine writes in The City of God, goodness and evil exist side by side in the same society or community. We cannot in this world ever escape the consequences of sin. It is only in Christ’s redeeming love and by the power of grace that the way out of sin and evil becomes a possibility. Thus it is good to sustain healthy critique of power, to develop a holy hermeneutic of suspicion toward our motivations, our society, our institutions, even, Augustine would agree, toward our Church.

The Transformation of Society

Augustine’s trust in human power and institutions continued to diminish over the years. In many ways Augustine came to see civilization as a thin veneer over human greed and power. He did not, however, disengage from efforts to improve the lot of society, and especially of the people in his city. His vision of human development and social improvement, however, drew more and more from his faith, from scripture and from his conviction that true and lasting change must be built on the personal, inner conversion of heart and mind made possible by divine grace. He learned to rely on God and God’s grace alone when hoping and working for improvements in society. This is the major theme of The City of God. Augustinian spirituality counsels scholars to engage in the issues of wider society beyond the academy, and strive to become critical catalysts in social development and human welfare. By an informed, inspired and critical understanding of political and social theory and praxis one can become part of the divine work of continuing creation, a "subcontractor" in the work of building the City of God. Such concerns and themes were part of the great movement of Florentine humanism in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and in the Renaissance. The Augustinian community at Santo Spirito in Florence engaged thinkers, scholars and artists in vibrant debate about civic humanism and the life of the spirit. The community there was often visited by Dante, Petrarch, Bocaccio and Michelangelo and by many other luminaries in literature, philosophy, art and science.

Augustinian spirituality also counsels continuing self-critique, a constant and vigilant personal semper reformanda. The medieval Augustinian School was noted for its capacity to maintain a critical stance toward its own tradition and to revise, reframe and recast even basic elements of that intellectual tradition. Augustine would agree. No institution, no person, no matter their history or accomplishments, should ever rest content with their laurels. The reality of sin is too pervasive for such inattentiveness; restless search and striving are essential to and salvific for our human nature. The vocation to the intellectual life, in an Augustinian perspective, involves the willingness and the humility to remain as open as possible to the gentle, persistent promptings of grace that call us to continual growth and redemptive change.

Summary

These five characteristics of Augustinian thought have distinguished and enriched higher study and Christian education for centuries. The Augustinian intellectual and spiritual tradition has brought learning and love, grace and sacred text, social critique and service to sustained inquiry and engaging search. Each of these characteristics offers much to deepen and broaden the contemporary scholar’s understanding of her or his vocation to the intellectual life.

Joseph T. Kelley
Merrimack College

May 17, 1999