Evil and the Augustinian Tradition explores the "family biography" of the Augustinian tradition by looking at Augustine's work and its development in the writings of Hannah Arendt and Reinhold Niebuhr. Mathewes argues that the Augustinian tradition offers us a powerful, though commonly misconstrued, proposal for understanding and responding to evil's challenges. The book casts new light on Augustine, Niebuhr, and Arendt, as well as on the problem of evil, the nature of tradition, and the role of theological and ethical discourse in contemporary thought.
Charles Mathewes is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. He spent much of his childhood in Saudi Arabia, and was educated at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago.
He works mostly in theology and ethics, with some attention to religion, politics, society, and culture as well. In 2003 at the age of 34 he was appointed Editor of The Journal of the American Academy of Religion, the flagship journal in the field of religious studies, and is the youngest editor ever of that journal, where his tenure ended in 2010. He is also Associate Editor of the forthcoming third edition of the Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics, and currently serves on the House of Bishops Theology Committee of the Episcopal Church.
He lives with his family outside Charlottesville, Virginia, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
