Augustine’s Preaching on Stephen and Paul

Scholars have long noted that Paul’s biography—the story of a grave sinner converted though God’s grace—is as theologically relevant to Augustine as the apostle’s ideas. But scholars have also argued that Augustine’s account of Paul’s story misconstrues the apostle’s own concerns: whereas Augustine discovers in Paul the paradigm of how God saves the individual’s soul, Paul himself was more interested in salvation history and the extension of God’s covenantal promises to the gentiles. The present article, however, seeks to show how, in at least one way, Augustine’s attention to Paul is bound up with history and the community. Specifically, the article explores how Augustine’s preaching on Paul’s conversion is, in several instances, preceded by a recounting of Paul’s presence at the martyrdom of Stephen. In his predicatory exegesis of these events, Augustine highlights and dramatizes a mimetic chain of mercy from the crucified Christ through the martyr Stephen to the persecutor-turned-apostle Paul. Augustine brings these biblical figures to life before his congregants’ mental eyes, thereby connecting his hearers to seminal moments in salvation history and, in the process, extending that history and the growth of the church into the present and the future.