mpiled letters present a more human and pastoral and less stentorian and authoritarian personality than the figure traditionally identified with the patristic body of Christian, or specifically Roman Catholic, thought. On the other hand, Augustine's Confessions must be seen as representative of the image that the good bishop desired to convey about himself. Further, one important purpose of publishing the Confessions was undoubtedly to implement an institutional ethos and formalize Christian teaching, which in the fourth and fifth centuries was still in flux. For example, Augustine spent years as a secular intellectual who was persuaded by Manichaeanism and the beauties of classical Greco-Roman texts. In Book III, he characterizes Manichaeanism as "a lot of nonsense" and "deep darkness" in order to valorize by contrast his embrace of orthodox Christianity. More institutionally relevant was what the orthodox ecclesia referred to as the Arian heresy was exactly contemporary with Augustine, and some 400 years of early ecclesiastical history was taken up with identifying and suppressing heresies of various kinds. Particularly in Book VII, Augustine answers the Arian view of Jesus by expatiating on His dual nature, or more exactly on how Augustine himself came to appreciate the world-historical importance of that dual nature:
I tried to find a way of gaining the strength necessary for enjoying you, and I could not find it until I embraced that Mediator betwixt God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who is over all, God blessed for evermore, calling to me and saying, I am the way, the truth and the life, and mingling with our flesh that food which I lacked strength to take; for the Word was made flesh, so that your wisdom, by which you created all things, might give its milk to our infancy.
The missional objectives of the Confessions are difficult to overstate, although Brown views the emotional tone of the text, suffused with the fervor...