Ty Paul MONROE, Putting on Christ: Augustine’s Early Theology of Salvation and the Sacraments. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2022. 319 + viii pp. $75.00. Reviewed by Robert McFADDEN, CSC, Holy Cross College. 

In Putting on Christ: Augustine’s Early Theology of Salvation and the Sacraments, Ty Paul Monroe sets out to undertake “a narrowly thematic and lexical study” of Augustine’s use of the term humilitas (7-8). Augustine, according to Monroe, gained deeper insights into the sacrament of baptism as he continued to think about Christ’s act of humility on the Cross. Because Monroe conducts such a precise study, he avoids ongoing issues about continuity or discontinuity of Augustine’s conversion. As a result, Monroe shows how Augustine attempts to comprehend what it means for human beings to be saved by Christ via the sacraments despite the rupture caused by sin (9).

Monroe analyzes the Confessions and the significance of Augustine’s baptism in part one. Although Augustine barely mentions this event in his narrative, Monroe demonstrates that it reveals how Augustine conceives of the work of Christ in baptism. Augustine argues against the Manicheans in books one to six of Confessions that because Christ mediation is embodied, baptism is necessary for grace (56). When Monroe considers Augustine’s conversion in books seven to ten, he rightly notices that Christ could not just be a mere model of humility. In taking on humanity and rising to new life, Christ became for Augustine the way of humility and the sacramental source from which the grace of baptism flows. By pointing to the healing of Augustine’s divided will in baptism, Monroe correctly illustrates that Augustine can “take up” the humanity of Christ in baptism and can be healed from his radical pride (98-99).

With the analysis of the Confessions as his foundation, Monroe proceeds to conduct his lexical study of humilitas and the development of Augustine’s soteriology from his earliest days as a Christian. When Augustine writes his first Christian works at Cassiciacum, Augustine shows that he always saw salvation asChrist’s work and possessed an epistemic humility. In the beginning, Christ’s life helped to reveal to Augustine Christian moral qualities and life about God in the intelligible realm (174-175). As Augustine continued to write against the Manicheans in the 390’s, he came to see salvation in terms of superbia and humilitas. For this reason, Augustine understood more concretely the importance of the event of the Cross and Resurrection as more than just the basis of an epistemic faith (227-228). In his last chapter, Monroe considers the Donatist controversy. Noticing correspondences between the Confessions and other Donatist works, Monroe correctly shows that Augustine developed his soteriology and understanding of humilitas in light of the objective efficacy of baptism (281-282).

As it can be seen, Monroe does not present an exhaustive study of Augustine’s soteriology and theology of the sacraments. Instead, he correctly provides a study which imitates cinema, where he begins at the end of the narrative with the Confessions in order to let Augustine to speak on his own terms concerning sin, salvation, and Christ (284). In this way, Monroe has done a great service for Augustinian studies. From the moment Augustine converts to Christianity until the time he writes the Confessions, scholars have continued to try to comprehend discontinuities and continuities in his thought. Building on previous scholarship, Monroe shows that while Augustine always maintains an incarnational perspective, his theology of humilitas and his theology of sacramental efficacy grew over time and eventually became irrevocably interconnected (284, 288). Augustine eventually saw the significance of Christ’s humility in the concrete event of his Passion and the humility needed by the Christian to accept the mediation of the sacraments. Monroe rightly reveals an Augustine who was a complex thinker. Augustine experienced discontinuity and continuity in his thought, but always sought integration due to his desire to know and to love Christ. Thus, this book will be foundational for scholars who wish to explore Augustine’s thought itself, or even see how his soteriology and sacramental theology was received in subsequent centuries.