Fire on the Altar: Setting Our Souls Ablaze through St. Augustine's Confessions

by C. C. Pecknold

Overview

In Fire on the Altar, renowned Augustinian theologian C. C. Pecknold provides readers with a genuinely Catholic understanding of Augustine's Confessions. Setting out to free readers from liberal and individualistic distortions of Augustine's anthropology, Pecknold argues that a religious and liturgical understanding of Augustine's famous work unlocks a more Catholic approach. Strikingly, Fire on the Altar demonstrates that Augustine's anthropology is essentially built around the concept of an "altar" at the center of the soul and culminates in the Eucharist setting fire to our hearts and minds. Examining Augustine's orientation to the altar, Pecknold explores:

Our duty to worship God
The "religious" nature of our sins
What we offer to God through our hearts
The kind of worship that the mind can make
The vicarious sacrifices that we can make for the love of neighbor
The intercession of saints
The importance of friends and a social understanding of the person
The place of bishops
The sacraments
The Blessed Virgin Mary
The nature of conversion
And the mission of the Catholic Church
Dr. Pecknold's unique companion to a classic of western civilization shows that the entire Confessions coheres around the Sacrifice of the Mass, revealing that it is only by union with the fire of divine charity on the Church's high altar that we can make a sacrifice acceptable to God.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940184743813
Publisher:	Emmaus Road Publishing
Publication date:	09/10/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

C. C. Pecknold is Associate Professor of Theology at The Catholic University of America in Washington D.C. An internationally recognized scholar of St. Augustine’s theological and political thought, Pecknold has written a wide range of essays and books interrogating modernity with sharp Augustinian insight. He is the author of Christianity and Politics and the T&T Clark Companion to Augustine and Modern Theology. Dr. Pecknold is also Theologian-in-Residence at The Basilica of St. Mary, the oldest parish in the Commonwealth of Virginia. With his wife and five children, he calls the colonial port city of Alexandria home.