Reformed Covenanter
Cancelled Commissioner
Near the end of his life, Augustine of Hippo meticulously reviewed everything he had ever published. He wrote an entire catalogue of his own works, a painstakingly annotated bibliography with hundreds of revisions and amendments to correct flaws he saw in his own earlier material. The book, titled Retractationes, is powerful evidence of Augustine’s humility and zeal for truth. Not one of his earlier publications escaped the more mature theologian’s scrutiny. And Augustine was as bold in recanting the errors he perceived in his own work as he had been in refuting the heresies of his theological adversaries.
Because he reviewed his works in chronological order, Retractationes is a wonderful memoir of Augustine’s relentless, lifelong pursuit of spiritual maturity and theological precision. His forthrightness in addressing his own shortcomings is a good example of why Augustine is esteemed as a rare model of both godliness and scholarship.
John MacArthur, ‘Reexamining the Eternal Sonship of Christ’, Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, 6, no. 1 (Spring 2001), p. 21.
Because he reviewed his works in chronological order, Retractationes is a wonderful memoir of Augustine’s relentless, lifelong pursuit of spiritual maturity and theological precision. His forthrightness in addressing his own shortcomings is a good example of why Augustine is esteemed as a rare model of both godliness and scholarship.
John MacArthur, ‘Reexamining the Eternal Sonship of Christ’, Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, 6, no. 1 (Spring 2001), p. 21.
