At the age of seventy-one, four years before he died on August
28, A.D. 430, Aurelius Augustine handed over the administrative
duties of the church in Hippo on the northern coast of Africa to
his assistant Eraclius. Already, in his own lifetime, Augustine
was a giant in the Christian world. At the ceremony, Eraclius
stood to preach, as the aged Augustine sat on his bishop’s
throne behind him. Overwhelmed by a sense of inadequacy in
Augustine’s presence, Eraclius said, “The cricket chirps, the
swan is silent.”1 If only Eraclius could have looked down over
sixteen centuries at the enormous influence of Augustine, he
would have understood why the series of books beginning with The
Legacy of Sovereign Joy is titled The Swans Are Not Silent. For
1,600 years Augustine has not been silent. In the 1500s his
voice rose to a compelling crescendo in the ears of Martin
Luther and John Calvin. Luther was an Augustinian monk, and
Calvin quoted Augustine more than any other church father.
Augustine’s influence on the Protes