Augustinian Piety and Catholic Reform: Augustine, Colet, and Erasmus
The argument of this excellent study is that Augustine’s position on the collaboration of human will with divine grace suggests an unmediated divine presence in personal righteousness. Professor Kaufmann terms this “voluntarist mysticism,” and tracks the development of the phenomenon in the thought of Augustine, in some twelfth-century recapitulations and in the moral theology of John Colet and Erasmus.
This is a learned study of a difficult but important subject, yet in clear and readable language. Students of the history of the Christian traditions are familiar with the connection between personal righteousness and institutional reform. Professor Kaufmann’s study has taken him behind the precedents and institutional consequences to the understanding of personal righteousness that associated humanistic Catholicism, and therefore the Catholic reform of the early sixteenth century, with a particular line of thought developed by Augustine. Students of medieval and Reformation history will be interested in this fresh study of the foundations of the Catholic Reformation and Counter-Reformation.
Peter Iver Kaufmann is Professor of the History of Christian Tradition in the Department of Religion at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.