Augustinian Studies

Although the doctrine of the affections constitutes an essential part of both psychology and ethics for Classical Greek philosophy, the passion of sorrow was seldom discussed. The Bible, by contrast, frequently mentions the feeling of sorrow, and Christianity, unlike Stoic ethical ideals, assigns sorrow a positive significance—at least to a degree.While it is true that the Gospels generally prefer to paint a picture of Christ as a quiet teacher and master, a few pericopes—especially within the Gospel of John—narrate the sorrow of Jesus in some detail. Integrating the Johannine depictions of Jesus’s sorrow proved quite a challenge for patristic and medieval exegetes, including Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Both thinkers wrote a Commentary on the Gospel of John and, in their systematic works, both treated the emotions in a principled and philosophical manner. Having engaged Classical Greek and Hellenistic theories on the emotions, Augustine and Aquinas went on to develop a uniquely Christian understanding of the passiones animae, which, in turn, became paradigmatic for the generations that followed. Focusing on their respective commentaries on the Gospel of John, this essay explains what the passiones animae are and why they were seen as an ethical problem in the patristic and medieval periods. It highlights the connection between Augustine and Aquinas as well as their respective contributions both to the doctrine of affections in general and to Christianity’s understanding of sorrow in particular.

Scholars agree that Christology is at the center of the In Iohannis euangelium tractatus. In his exegesis of the Gospel of John, Augustine particularly highlights the human nature of the Incarnated, even as he integrates Trinitarian arguments (which he had developed earlier in his De trinitate) as a cornerstone of his homiletic teaching. This may have been important for the later reception of Augustine’s Trinitarian thought. Christology is clearly present throughout the various parts of the work. The differences between the parts can be traced to the various contexts in which they were composed and/or delivered: e.g., the Anti-Donatist controversy that is behind the first sermons, and the Anti-Pelagian and Anti-Homean controversies that often fueled the later ones. Sometimes anti-heretical strategies are used as a crucial step for advancing the teaching of the preacher (not least because they can directly promote knowledge of the fundamentals of the faith), even if the heresy being opposed is of no immediate relevance or importance to the North Africa of Augustine’s day (e.g., that of the “Sabellians” or the “Apollinarians”). Surprisingly, the second half of the work (consisting as it does of shorter homilies or, better, drafts of homilies) contains various passages in which anti-heretical strategies were clearly pursued. It is particularly Augustine’s Anti-Pelagian strategy that provides us with clues regarding the historical context of this part of the work.

How did John’s Gospel draw and compel Augustine before and during the composition of Confessiones? Analyzing references to John in Augustine’s works from his embrace of Nicene Christianity to the writing of Confessiones, this paper finds a growing (and Johannine-based) emphasis on the importance of Christ’s humanity. Augustine strategically invokes two texts in Confessiones’ crucial seventh book: John 1:14, “the Word was made flesh,” and John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” This paper considers three features: First, how the rhetorical device of anticipation (prolepsis) allows Augustine simultaneously to unify his developing Christological perspective and to build drama into his conversion narrative. Second, how the structure of Confessiones, which first works to understand divine transcendence and then seeks to relate that divine transcendence back to time, emphasizes the central role played by the Gospel of John in advancing Augustine’s conversion story. Third and finally, how invocations of John’s Gospel typify the way that, for the Augustine of Confessiones, reading scripture had become the means of achieving new spiritual self-comprehension. Texts from John were not mere receptors or reflectors of spiritual forces that moved Augustine toward conversion, but, rather, powerful agents of conversion in their own right.

In book 10 of City of God, Augustine appeals to the notion of true sacrifice in order to counteract the attraction of pagan worship. This appeal to the concept of sacrifice gives a distinct shape to the Christology and ecclesiology he develops in this book. Set against this polemical horizon, and within the context of his wider thought, it becomes clear that sacrifice is itself soteriological motif for Augustine. The work it does in this context is to serve as another way of describing the return of humanity to God through the Incarnate Christ. The cross, the Eucharist, the moral life, and the church itself are all identified as instances of the one true sacrifice of Christ. In this way, sacrifice provides an integrative motif for discussing Augustinian Christology, ecclesiology, sacramental theology, and soteriology.

This study draws attention to an overlooked dimension of Augustine’s doctrine of the two cities in Enarrationes in Psalmos, wherein the earthly city is transformed into the heavenly city during the present age. In contrast to scholarship that overemphasizes the eschatological aspect of the two cities at the expense of the church’s transformation, this study demonstrates how Augustine’s doctrine is not limited to an eschatological grammar of separation, but employs the figure of the two cities in order to develop an ecclesiology of transformation. For Augustine, the church is built up as the city of God on pilgrimage, precisely by the celebration of the sacraments. A one-sided analysis that focuses solely upon separation from an eschatological perspective neglects the richness of Augustine’s teaching on the transformation of the earthly city of Babylon into the heavenly city of Jerusalem.

This article simultaneously expands and refines the interpretive space within which we understand Augustine’s statement that he lay down under a fig tree when he converted to Christianity in 386 (conf. 8.12.28). It rejects the claim that this fig tree is a reference to Nathanael’s fig tree at John 1:48 on both philological and contextual grounds. Nathanael is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit (John 1:47), but this is inconsistent with the Augustine whose life is narrated in conf. 1–8. Instead, Augustine’s fig tree is best interpreted in the context of the fig leaves of Gen. 3:7, the withered fig tree of Matt. 21:18–22 and Mark 11:12–14 and 20–25, and the good and bad trees of Matt. 7:15–20 and Luke 6:43–45. Together, these biblical passages indicate that the Augustine who lay down under the fig tree was still a liar by profession and deceived in his philosophical beliefs. Thus, his departure from the tree is symbolic of his conversion from the mendacious life he once led as a Manichee and rhetorician.

Augustine’s homiletical exhortations display a strong eschatological emphasis in his approach to cultivating rightly ordered emotions. According to critics such as Hannah Arendt, Martha Nussbaum, and Thomas Dixon, this orientation risks denigrating the earthly life and its attendant emotions, while also promoting a crippling resignation to suffering. This article discusses Augustine’s eschatological frame for ordering the emotions through a focused treatment of en. Ps. 36 (particularly the first homily) in conversation with Nussbaum’s critique in particular. In en. Ps. 36.1, Augustine deploys eschatological rhetoric to discourage the believer’s envious response to a prosperous, profligate neighbor. This entails disposing the believer in weariness toward life’s temporal disparities and exhorting the believer to work in love to alleviate suffering with a view to heavenly flourishing. In this sense, a disposition of “world-weariness” works in concert with eschatological hope to rightly order both emotion and action in this present world.

This article, which is an adaptation of a lecture delivered at Villanova University in the Fall of 2015, proposes a reading of Augustine’s Confessions (conf.) with the assistance of the notions of absorption and theatricality. The very use of those notions is meant to counterbalance the readings generated by our overfamiliarity with Augustinian interiority. By replacing interiority with a concept that, heretofore, is alien to the Augustinian vocabulary, it becomes possible to block facile access to mystical interpretations of conf. on the one hand, and to embark upon the (admittedly challenging) task of reassessing the nature of “confessing” on the other. This new reading demonstrates the difficulties involved in approaching the confessor fully involved in his act of sustained confessing. A comparison is also made with the notion of absorption in the visual arts. Just as spectatordom becomes problematic vis-à-vis a painting whose personae look inward rather than outward, so too the position of the reader vis-à-vis a text whose confessing creator uninterruptedly addresses his Confessee demands a redefinition of the reader’s role and place in the process.

A debate over whether God predestines some to reprobation broke out in the ninth century. No one actually taught this view, but both John Scotus Eriugena and Hincmar of Rheims, among other churchmen at the time, presumed it to be the view of those who referred to themselves as “double predestinarians.” In part, this was because the double predestinarians had made much of Augustine’s phrase “predestined to punishment,” a phrase that can in fact be found in several of his writings. This article, which is the second of two parts (for Part I, see AugStud 46, no. 2: 155–184), argues that Eriugena and Hincmar had difficulty avoiding the appearance of disagreeing entirely with Augustine’s use of that phrase. Eriugena said the phrase is to be understood a contrario to the divine nature; Hincmar said it is to be understood in a generic sense about God’s judgment on sin. Of the two, Hincmar came the closest to acknowledging that Augustine might have erred in using the phrase as he did.