Augustine’s Preaching and the Healing of Desire in the Enarrationes in Psalmos

Augustine has been massively influential for both Protestants and Catholics. Mark Boone shows that the Psalms were at the heart of Augustine's daily worship, reflection, and preaching. This book will be helpful for all those Christians who want to learn from one of the Church's greatest souls how to reorient our desires and how that happens through the Church. It will also help scholars trace the hermeneutics and theology of the theologian who did so much to shape later Christian thought and practice.--Gerald McDermott, author of The Great Theologians and Jesus Across the Millennia: How the Jewish Messiah Has Been Redeeming the World from Eden to the New Jerusalem This book represents an important contribution to the study of Augustine of Hippo and Latin Patristics more generally. The praying of the Psalms has always played an important role in the life and liturgy of the Christian church, and as such it is not surprising that they are central to Augustine's thinking. But his longest and deepest engagement with the psalms - the Ennarationes in Psalmos is rarely studied at length. Boone's careful and erudite analysis of the text shows how Augustine uses the psalms to develop a sophisticated theology of desire that informs his thinking on a wide range of issue. I can think of no better guide to Augustine's complex and rich text than Boone's volume. This book will be essential reading for anyone seeking to understand Augustine's theology.--Brian Harding, Texas Women's University