Selected Letters Of St. Augustine to Women

The importance of the letters of eminent men, as illustrations of their life, character, and times, is too well understood to need remark. This is especially true of the Letters of Augustin. A large number of them are ecclesiastical and theological, and would in our day have appeared as pamphlets, or would have been delivered as lectures. There are none of his writings which do not receive some supplementary light from his letters. The subjects of his more elaborate writings are here handled in an easier manner, and their sources, motives, and origin are disclosed.

Augustine believed that Adam and Eve had both already chosen in their hearts to disobey God's command not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge before Eve took the fruit, ate it, and gave it to Adam. Accordingly, Augustine did not believe that Adam was any less guilty of sin. Augustine praises women and their role in society and in the Church. In his Tractates on the Gospel of John, Augustine, commenting on the Samaritan woman from John 4:1-42, uses the woman as a figure of the Church in agreement with the New Testament teaching that the Church is the bride of Christ. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her."