On Signs, Christ, Truth and the Interpretation of Scripture (Reading Augustine)

Susannah Ticciati draws on Augustine to address the question of truth in the public sphere. In the face of the degeneration of public normative discourse, the book finds in Augustine the resources for the repair of a series of (post)modern oppositions, making way for a rehabilitation of public normativity. The book discovers in Augustine a truth that is at once inward and public. It is a truth which both scriptural author and interpreter, prompted by the words of Scripture, seek in common. It is a truth which Christ speaks on behalf of others, and which others in turn are liberated to speak in Christ. Through Augustine, Ticciati offers a scriptural hermeneutic that overcomes a false opposition between modern and postmodern modes of reading, and arrives at a Christologically informed vision of coinherence rather than inclusion, of substitutionary rather than tokenist representation, and of cosmic rather than colonial breadth.

Dr. Susannah Ticciati is Professor of Christian Theology at King's College London.

Miles Hollingworth is Research Fellow in the History of Ideas at St. John's College, Durham. His writing on Augustine has won awards from the Society of Authors (2009 Elizabeth Longford Grant for Historical Biography) and the Royal Society of Literature (2009 Jerwood Award for Non-Fiction). He is the author of The Pilgrim City: St. Augustine of Hippo and his Innovation in Political Thought (also published by Bloomsbury), which was shortlisted for the Royal Historical Society's Gladstone History Book Prize.