Saint Augustine's Enchiridion is a compact classic of Christian theology, written as a guide to faith, hope, love, grace, sin, redemption, and the Christian life. Sometimes known in English as The Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love, the work condenses Augustine's mature theological thought into a form intended for instruction, reflection, and doctrinal clarity. Its central concern is practical and spiritual as well as intellectual: what Christians are to believe, what they are to hope for, and how divine love orders the life of the soul.
Augustine addresses creation, evil, original sin, free will, grace, baptism, forgiveness, resurrection, judgment, prayer, and the meaning of Christian charity. The work is not a full systematic theology, but it has long served as one of Augustine's most accessible summaries of doctrine, joining philosophical seriousness to pastoral purpose. Its influence reaches across Catholic, Protestant, and broader Christian intellectual history, especially in discussions of grace, salvation, human weakness, and the relation between faith and moral transformation.
This SMK edition presents a foundational work of early Christian theology and one of Augustine's most enduring shorter writings. For readers interested in Christian doctrine, patristic literature, church history, theology of grace, faith and reason, salvation, sin, love, and the development of Western Christian thought, Enchiridion remains a concise and powerful introduction to Augustine's religious mind.