Handbook on Hope, Faith and Love

Handbook on Hope, Faith and Love is Saint Augustine's compact guide to Christian doctrine, piety, and the theological virtues at the heart of Christian life. Written in response to a request from Laurentius, the work-also known as the Enchiridion-sets out to provide a concise model of Christian instruction. Augustine organises his treatment around faith, hope, and love, using the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and Christian charity as the central framework for understanding belief, prayer, grace, sin, redemption, and the end of human life.Composed late in Augustine's career, shortly after the death of Saint Jerome in 420, this short theological treatise distils many of the concerns that shaped Augustine's larger works: original sin, divine grace, free will, evil, forgiveness, resurrection, and the relation between knowledge and love. Its brevity makes it more approachable than The City of God or On the Trinity, but it remains a serious work of patristic theology and one of Augustine's enduring statements on Christian teaching. The work is traditionally understood as a manual or handbook for Christian catechesis, formed around the three graces necessary for worship and life before God. For readers of early Christian theology, Catholic and Protestant theological history, patristic literature, Christian doctrine, and the writings of Saint Augustine, Handbook on Hope, Faith and Love remains a concise and important classic of Western Christian thought.