This volume is a part of the Reading Augustine series (Miles Hollingworth, series editor). The series’ goal is to connect Augustine to contemporary thought and show his relevance to current life and thought.

After an introduction, the book attempts to do this in the following eight chapters, each positing that an Augustine redivivus has appeared to present his alternative to modern viewpoints. The first two chapters are more about Augustine making a case for his own worldview or philosophy on moral empiricism (chapter 1) and confession (as opposed to chapter 2's “‘Scientific’ Philosophy”). The following chapters are more of an attack by Augustine on modernity, under six headings: autonomy (chapter 3), the state (chapter 4), political panaceas (chapter 5), utilitarians and Kantians (chapter 6), rights (chapter 7), and modern theology (chapter 8). Two final sections wrap up the argument in a more conversational way, with a “Brag” in which Augustine attacks relativism (chapter 9), and a humorous radio interview with the fifth-century bishop who has been displaced into the twenty-first century (Anna Rist is credited as “orchestrating” this section). The volume concludes with a short list of books for further reading and an index.

That the book splits into one-fourth of its chapters defending Augustine's worldview and three-fourths savaging modernity as incoherent and evil already anticipates my criticism of the work. This is not even a work of apologetics (which many would consider suspect already, but for which this reviewer would have some sympathy) but of polemics (which this reviewer finds less helpful). It could without any distortion be subtitled, “The Closing of the Augustinian Mind,” as its tone and constant use of modernity as a whipping-boy for every personal, societal, psychological, and moral ill (imagined or real) is vividly reminiscent of Allan Bloom's classic, polemical work; paragraphs could be swapped between the two volumes without the transposition even being noticed.

This reviewer was already ambivalent in the first two chapters. On the one hand, anything that seeks to appreciate and understand an ancient thinker is welcomed by me as salutary, challenging, ennobling. But insofar as we sift or ferret out of the ancient thinker, everything we personally find congenial and supportive of our already-held beliefs, the exercise seems solipsistic and pointless. But in the early chapters here, there was at least some attempt to ally Augustine with someone (other than the author himself) from modernity (e.g., Dostoevsky, 48), so that the contemporary world is presented at least as a complex phenomenon, and Augustine (and other ancients) can help us understand it, make distinctions, and see (and prefer certain) differences therein. The later chapters seem to me to drop any such pretense, and simply present, over and over, the evaluation that Augustine is right and good, and modernity is wrong and bad. Augustine need never change his mind on any issue, and there is no issue on which modernity even has a semblance or shadow of truth or virtue (e.g., “Many Western élites have no moral principles” [112]; the “Western liberal mind” will soon treat its enemies, such as Augustine, with “racking, hanging, castration and disemboweling” [143]). It is especially problematic that such bitter pillorying of modernity frequently singles out Islam as particularly violent (86, 135) and barbaric (“hopefully benevolent dictatorship” being the best option for the “contemporary Middle East” [82]), the LGBTQ community as “wicked” and “nihilistic” (135), women as especially heartless (Hillary Rodham Clinton is labeled “Miss Abortion USA” [79]) or dull (Virginia Woolf is singled out as “incoherent” [107], and when an example of an easy-to-understand author is needed, Jane Austen is the choice [134]), and environmentalism as mere “tree hugging” (136, 140).

A healthy skepticism about modernity—and indeed, about one's own, personal beliefs—is highly desirable and helpful. So is a fond admiration and honest consideration of Augustine (and many other ancients and medievals). Those two attitudes together could lead to open and productive dialogue between ancient and modern thought and between various, competing schools of thought in the modern world. This book provides none of those things.