ABSTRACT
This chapter explores what is Augustine’s mature attitude toward the liberal education of his youth and young adulthood? and what are the implications of such a view upon the relationship of Christianity and liberal education? It also examines if, in fact, Augustine saw Christian faith and liberal education as disjunctive, what can modern Christian scholars and academic institutions do? Augustine’s hostility toward classical liberal education in his later writings seems clear enough. Augustine’s Confessions is ripe with reflections upon his own education and his career as a teacher of rhetoric—in fact, one could argue that education forms one of the thematic centers of the work. Augustine gives systematic treatment to the liberal arts, at least insofar as they are useful for understanding Scripture, in De doctrina Christiana. Augustine’s educational program, if it can be called such at all, is strictly ad hoc and unselfconscious as a “curriculum.”
