The closing chapters of Augustine's City of God display before the reader a panoramic vista. Almo... more The closing chapters of Augustine's City of God display before the reader a panoramic vista. Almost as though he had never put aside the question that animated his conversation with Monica, recorded in Book 9 of the Confessions, Augustine invites the reader to reflect on what the eternal life of the saints might be like. It will consist in the vision of God, as Augustine and his mother realized. And because it is the peace of God, it will surpass all understanding (Phil. 4:7). So far so goodhe and his mother had concluded, with the prophet Isaiah, that it is something eye has not seen nor ear heard nor human heart conceived (Is. 64:4, 1 Cor. 2:9-10), as they just touched the edge of this vision, as a kind of promissory note for another day. 1 But at the end of the long and arduous pilgrimage that is the City of God, as he brings us readers to the brink of the vision of the promised land of eternity, the original question is now more specific. It is not only about what the eternal life of the saints will be like, but "what the saints will be doing when they are clothed in immortal and spiritual bodies" (civ. Dei 22.29; Dyson, emended). What it means for the vision we will then have to surpass understanding is also intensified and specified by the focus on the embodied eternal life of the saints. Augustine opens for the reader a more dramatic and perhaps even unsettling view as he entertains the possibility that we might actually be able to see God with our bodily eyes. Although the resurrection body is a "spiritual" body, it is still a body, and the eyes may be enough like our eyes that we will be able to open and close them (civ. Dei 22.
The Structure and Intention of Augustine's De trinitate. 1 Augustine often commented on the "extr... more The Structure and Intention of Augustine's De trinitate. 1 Augustine often commented on the "extreme difficulty" of his work On the Trinity, repeatedly remarking that it would be comprehensible only "to few."2 This may explain why, while there is a surfeit of modem discussions which draw upon material from the De trinitate, there are virtually no modem treatments of the work as a whole.3 Perhaps this is because, of all of Augustine's works, the De trinitate appears to us to be the most moorless, an intractable mass of speculation floating oddly aloof from foundation in any particular social context Peter Brown, commenting on the De trinitate in his biography of Augustine, warns us that we are wrong if we do not think that Augustine was capable of writing a book out of purely speculative motivation. 4 But perhaps this too is merely a polite way of suspecting that the work is essentially irrelevant, and indeed Brown immediately drops the work from further consideration, and others have followed suit In this paper I would like to take an exploratory first step towards removing the stigma of pure speculation from this work by suggesting a location for it within a circle of discourse peculiar to Augustine's intellectual milieu, and I would like to propose that the key to such an enterprise will lie in a consideration of the structure of the work as a whole.
In the spirit of Augustine's own "Reconsiderations," and inspired by Peter Brown's act of "recons... more In the spirit of Augustine's own "Reconsiderations," and inspired by Peter Brown's act of "reconsidering" in the Epilogue to Augustine of Hippo (new edition), this essay offers a reconsideration of Augustine's work On Marriage and Concupiscence. Key to the reconsideration of this text is a reconsideration of the role of the "sacrament" of marriage in Augustine's articulation and defense of the goods of marriage and of human sexuality. For Augustine, Julian's advocacy of concupiscence as an innocent natural desire amounts to a dangerous sentimentalization of fallen human freedom. Such sentimentalization masks the investments of the fallen will in the will to power or, in Augustinian terms, the preference for power over justice. Because sexual concupiscence, as Augustine famously argued, has no natural object, but, rather, is invested only in its own gratification, it is therefore a function of the preference for power over justice without remainder. It is a mark of the Fall that the procreative increase in human community willed by God is now ineluctably linked to the will to power, as though the will to power were the true source of social solidarity. The sacramental good of marriage enables married couples to "use" concupiscence in such a way that all of the goods associated with human sexuality can be experienced as true goods instead of as realities constitutively defined by the will to power. "Must We Burn Sade?" This question forms the title of a famous essay by Simone de Beauvoir, or perhaps I should say an infamous essay, for her answer is resoundingly in the negative. She answers in the negative not on the formal principle of defending free speech, but because she finds much to admire in the work of the Marquis de Sade, something worth preserving as a good. She admires his celebration of the free expression of
This article aspires to make a modest contribution to the study of the De Trinitate of St. August... more This article aspires to make a modest contribution to the study of the De Trinitate of St. Augustine, by way of suggestion, though in a somewhat curious way. I hope to clarify some of the issues of intention and character of the De Trinitate largely by studying not that work, but another of Augustine's major works, the City of God. Because the largest concentration of patristic theology on the Trinity is in works directed against heretical Christians, such as Tertullian's Adversus Praxeam, Athanasius's Orations or Hilary's De Fide, and indeed, in part, Augustine's De Trinitate, we have come to think of the Trinity as a subject mainly for intra-Christian theological conversation. We can forget that the Trinity was also a subject taken up in ancient apologetics. One need only recall Justin Martyr's exposition and development of his Logos theology in his First and Second Apology as one of the most brilliant illustrations of how true this is. Justin, on the one hand, wants to show how faith in Christ is, with the philosophers and against pagan mythology, on the side of "reason" or logos, and yet he also wants to show, against pagan philosophy, how the doctrine of "Reason" Incarnate does not leave one with a "religion within the limits of pure reason alone," as though "Reason" itself could be fully known apart from Christ. Rather, the Incarnation of the Logos reveals the philosophical reasoning of even someone as great as Socrates as merely a "seed" of something whose full stature cannot be imagined apart from Christian faith that "Reason" became Incarnate in Christ, suffered and died for us. 1
In the beginning of de ciuitate dei (ciu.), Augustine announces the subject of his work, namely, ... more In the beginning of de ciuitate dei (ciu.), Augustine announces the subject of his work, namely, "to defend (defendere) the most glorious City of God, both as it is living by faith in the course of time, a pilgrim among the impious, and in the stable security of its eternal seat, which it now awaits through patient endurance." Augustine goes on to remark that, in order to accomplish this task, he will not be able to "pass over in silence whatever the plan and logic of the task," that is, the defense of the city of God, "stipulates to be said about the earthly city." This city is one that, "in its desire for domination is itself dominated, even when peoples are enslaved to it, by the lust of domination itself." 1 In the whole of ciu. there are few passages that are more familiar than this one, yet it is probable that we only rarely if ever hear it fully. It is interesting to note that discussion of the earthly city is not the primary aim of ciu., but, because it is something which is required by the primary subject matter, it "must not be passed over in silence." From the very outset of the treatise, discussion of the earthly city is secondary and derivative to discussion of the "most glorious City of God.
Horizons: The Journal of the College Theology Society, 2006
Education in the Catholic faith takes place on three levelsprimary evangelization, catechesis, an... more Education in the Catholic faith takes place on three levelsprimary evangelization, catechesis, and theology. Presupposing that the student has become a believer through evangelization and has learned the principal teachings of the Church through catechesis, theology engages in a systematic search for deeper understanding. In his 1998 encyclical on faith and reason-Fides et Ratio-Pope John Paul II defined theology as a "reflective and scientific elaboration of the understanding of God's word in the light of faith." The pope went on to say that to understand revelation and the content of faith, one must analyze carefully the texts of Scripture and the texts "which express the Church's living tradition." Theology has traditionally had a home in Catholic universities, though today some deny that theology belongs in the university at all on the grounds that it is dogmatic and uncritical. In the 19th century, Cardinal John Henry Newman, among others, brilliantly made the case for giving the discipline a prominent place in the university because it deals with a significant body of truth that has a bearing on practically every other branch of knowledge. Pope John Paul II, in his 1990 Apostolic Constitution, Ex Corde Ecclesiae, taught that theology together with philosophy enables university scholars to overcome the fragmentation of disciplines and synthesize their specific contribution in the light of Christ, the Logos, the center of creation and of human history. "Because of its specific importance among the academic disciplines," he wrote, "every Catholic university should have a faculty, or at least a chair, of theology." Later, in an allocution to the most recent general congregation of the Society of Jesus, the same pope declared that the teaching of theology in Jesuit universities "must strive to provide students with a clear, solid, and organic knowledge of Catholic doctrine, focused on knowing how to
Book Review: Le Christ de Saint Augustin: La Patrie et la voie
Theological Studies, May 1, 2003
pages from the treatment of the Beguines. And despite the compression, the same topic might appea... more pages from the treatment of the Beguines. And despite the compression, the same topic might appear more than once—for example, the Fourth Lateran Council. Each of the six parts concludes with a brief but useful bibliography of recommended readings. Although the selected titles are solid and diverse, any teacher using the volume as a textbook will need to supplement this list, particularly with primary sources. The Paulist Press series, Classics of Western Spirituality, comes to mind as a source to flesh out the bones provided by I. and S. The indexing by name and subject is thorough enough, the illustrations are well chosen and well produced, but the maps are merely impressionistic.
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