Augustinian Studies

An ancient Hebrew poem of uncertain background and fastidiously subtle formal technique is made the subject of a commentary by a fifth-century Latin bishop with no Hebrew, working with a poor Latin translation, who, moreover, dismisses the formal complexities of the composition as irrelevant to interpretation. Claiming to detect hidden depths beneath the Great Psalm’s limpid surface, Augustine uses it as an opportunity to revisit some of the favorite themes of his own later writing. Has he read the text with sufficient sympathy to discover anything in it that might correspond to the poet’s intentions? Comparing his approach with Ambrose’s earlier and very different one, we notice some unexpected interpretative strengths in the earlier work. But Augustine’s attentiveness to connections between lines and stanzas and to the repetition of key vocabulary reveals a close attunement to the emotional movements of the poem. His contention that the Psalmist’s “law” is to be understood as Saint Paul’s “law of faith” is not imposed on the text, but allowed to emerge from its sequential development, and especially from its opening and closing lines.

The following article examines Augustine’s efforts in De gestis Pelagii (gest. Pel.), the bishop of Hippo’s commentary on the acts of the Synod of Diospolis at which Pelagius was acquitted of heresy in December 415 CE. Gest. Pel. is far from an attempt to offer an impartial account of the synod’s events. Rather, it forms a key part of Augustine’s efforts in the aftermath of Diospolis to re-interpret what appeared to be a disaster for the anti-Pelagian cause. In this sense, gest. Pel. is a work with a clear rhetorical purpose. The question at the heart of this article is whether, as two scholars have recently suggested, Augustine’s rhetorical aims in this work led him to consciously misrepresent the facts—about the synod’s decision, Pelagius’s views, and his own history with Pelagius. I will argue that we can plausibly take Augustine at his word in gest. Pel.

The majority of contemporary presentations of Augustine’s spirituality focus on the interior, personal dimensions of prayer and contemplation. This article argues that Augustine also has a rich but underappreciated liturgical spirituality, wherein regular participation in the liturgy, with its external and ecclesial elements, is important for Christian spiritual formation and expression. Examining a variety of texts from the Augustinian corpus, this article outlines major themes in Augustine’s liturgical spirituality and encourages further scholarly engagement with this theme.

When Augustine wrote about having discovered a hope (diuersa spes) different from the political ambitions that drew him to Rome then Milan (spes saeculi), he referred to Christians’ hopes for celestial reward. But several colleagues suggest that he also harbored hopes for a kinder political culture. Discussions of Augustine’s hopes have enlivened the study of political theory and political theology for several generations. During the twenty-first century two influential volumes took him as their inspiration for “hopeful citizenship” and “democratic citizenship.” Recently, two perceptive studies propose variations on the themes introduced there. What follows deploys several of Hannah Arendt’s observations about Augustine to suggest that his political hopes were somewhat more restricted but more radical than the latest contributions to his political theology suggest.