Inner Grace

The controversial thesis of Inner Grace is indicated in the subtitle: that Augustine's concept of grace is not only Pauline (i.e. Biblical) but Platonist (i.e. philosophical). Most theologians want to paint the development of Augustine's doctrine of grace as a turn away from Platonist philosophy to something more distinctively Christian, but Phillip Cary argues it is a synthesis of the two; a development within Augustine's Christian Platonism. Here, as in his previous book, Augustine's Invention of the Inner Self, I make Augustine out to be more philosophical, more Platonist than most people who love reading him want to acknowledge.