User:Ayim93/Augustine of Hippo

Rhetoric in Augustine's Preaching
After converting to Christianity, Augustine turned against his profession as a rhetoric professor in order to devote more time to preaching. Furthermore, while Augustine was known for his major contributions regarding Christian rhetoric, another major contribution was his preaching style. Augustine was especially interested in discovering how his previous rhetorical training in Italian schools would help the Christian Church achieve its objective of discovering and teaching the different scriptures in the Bible. During this latter part of Augustine's life, he helped lead a large community of Christians against different political and religious factors which had major influence on his writings. Augustine preached around 6,000 to 10,000 sermons when he was alive; however, there are only around 500 sermons that are accessible today. When Augustine preached his sermons, they were recorded by stenographers. When serving as the Bishop of Hippo, his goal was to minister to individuals in his congregation and he would choose the passages that the church planned to read every week. As bishop, he believed that it was his job to interpret the work of the Bible. Bishops were the only individuals allowed to preach when Augustine was alive and he scheduled time to preach after being ordained despite a busy schedule made up of preparing sermons and preaching at other churches besides his own. Some of Augustine's sermons would last over one hour and he would preach multiple times throughout a given week. When talking to his audience, he would stand on an elevated platform; however, Augustine would walk towards the audience during his sermons. When Augustine was preaching, he used a variety of rhetorical devices that included analogies, word pictures, similes, metaphors, repetition, and antithesis when trying to explain more about the Bible. In addition, Augustine used questions and rhymes when talking about the differences between people's life on Earth and heaven as seen in one of his sermons that was preached in 412 AD. Augustine believed that the preachers' ultimate goal is to ensure the salvation of their audience.

note for dr. vetter
So far, I am focusing on the rhetoric in Augustine's preaching more so than his writing. I noticed that there are different Wikipedia pages on his writings so I am more interested in looking at the rhetoric in his preaching for my changes. I wonder if this would be okay. The section where I would add this information for Augustine would be Conversion to Christianity and priesthood. Also, can you lead me know if my wriitng is neutral enough along with anything else that I might be missing.

dr. vetter's feedback
Good work on this draft of your planned edits! You have plenty of really great sources, and you are very close to the required word count. If you can add a little more content, please do. Yes, it is definitely ok to look at the rhetoric in his preaching style.

As for the writing style, here are a few tips and recommended changes.


 * Footnotes (in-text citations) should be placed immediately after the end punctuation of a sentence (period). So delete the extra space between periods and footnotes. (X)
 * The phrase "even though he was really busy." feels a little informal. Maybe something like "despite a busy schedule made up of...." - what else was he doing that made him so busy? (X)
 * The clause "but have to ensure the congregation are actively learning from the sermon" doesn't connect well syntactically to the previous clause. Can you make a few changes so this flows better? (X)
 * What do you mean by "all available resources"? This could be expanded slightly and would help the reader better understand the rhetorical aspect of Augustine's preaching? (X)
 * In the clause, "Augustine questioned how his previous rhetoric training in Italian schools" - can you use a more specific verb other than 'questioned" - contemplated? or 'was interested in discovering'? Questioned doesn't help the reader understand that Augustine wanted to use his previous rhetorical training for Christian advocacy. (X)
 * The sentence "Augustine had turned against his profession as a rhetoric professor after converting to Christian." would be better placed near the beginning of the paragraph. (X)
 * Spelling errors in 'similes' and 'writings' (X)

Good work on this overall. I think it will be a great contribution to the article. DarthVetter (talk) 13:53, 15 March 2021 (UTC)