T&T Clark Companion to Augustine and Modern Theology (2013)

Journal of Reformed Theology, 2018

Reviews in Religion and Theology 21/4 (2014): 454-62

This review article explores a new indispensable reference work on the reception of Augustine. It offers an overview of its content, structure, and methodology, as well as a critical assessment of its overall contribution to the study of Augustine. Goethe once remarked that, in the world, there are just a few voices, yet so many echoes. Augustine is definitely among the ‘few voices’, which have provoked all manner of friendly and unfriendly echoes. It is particularly important to realize that, apart from explicit citations and references in western literature, Augustine has also profoundly shaped medieval and modern culture through the subtle dissemination of his ideas into various spheres of life. This reference work not only provides a description of the current state of the reception of Augustine, but also adds the new results of the diligent work of the contributing researchers and identifies several topics that still need to be investigated.

Horizons: The Journal of the College Theology Society, 1997

Augustinus who today is simply known as Augustine or Saint Augustine was a theologian and philosopher born into the Roman empire in the fourth century C.E. Today Augustine is remembered as a bridge between the patristic era of the first five centuries C.E. and the first fathers of western Christianity. Augustine's name looms large today not only because he represents a mirror to Roman antiquity, a man whose entire life we can trace from birth till death, but because his artistry with words left a lasting impact on the formation of western philosophy and the Christian doctrine. Augustine's true brilliance though is best understood within the context of his own age, for he was born into an age within the Roman world that stood at an intersection. Within this essay I will therefore not only examine the life and work of Augustine but the Roman world he found himself in. Firstly I will reflect on Augustine's early life and education between 354 and 373, secondly I will briefly touch on his teaching years which spanned from 374 -383, thirdly I will look at the years 384 -390 leading up to his conversion and lastly I will reflecting on his years in Hippo before his death in 430 C.E. Before we embark on the journey that is the life and works of Augustine it is important to first reflect back on the years before his birth, for without its context one can not fully appreciate the significance of Augustine's works for he would be born into a Roman world that stood at an intersection. Imperial Rome spanned across the Mediterranean and into Africa and Asia, its large size placed great strain on its governance and after three decades of bad rule Emperor Diocletian (Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus, Roman emperor from 284 -305 C.E.) would SN: 56038828 1 rise to the imperial throne, he did not only restore order but divided the empire into four, ruled by the tetrarchy (rule of four). Diocletian also wanted to turn the Christians back to the old Roman religion and thus enacted the great persecution of Christians that would last for eight years, it was a difficult time for Christians who were not only fined for their faith but tortured, jailed and in some cases executed. The tetrarchy functioned well though for a while until the death of Flavius Valerius Constantius (250 -306 C.E.), a Roman army officer who had became caesar in 293 and caesar augustus in 305, he would however only be the Emperor of the Western Roman empire for a year as part of the tetrarchy before his death, when his son Constantine I (Gaius Flavis Valerius Constantinus, Roman emperor from 306 -337 C.E.) became emperor in his stead. Constantine I would march his army on Rome to meet Maxentius (Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maxentius, Roman emperor from 306 -312 C.E.) at the Milvian Bridge in 312, this marked another significant change in the Roman empire and inadvertently would shape Augustine's life as well. By 324 and after many civil wars all of Rome was ruled by Constantine and by 330 he had moved the capital of Rome to Byzantium (Constantinople). Although Constantine lived most of his life as a pagan he was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity and just before his death he was baptized. The most influential moments in these pre-Augustine years that paved the way for Augustine's later success was that Constantine implemented tolerance of all religions, at the Edict of Milan in 313 an agreement was made declaring a kinder tolerance for Christians and in 325 at the first council of Nicaea a consensus was established for a canon of doctrinal orthodoxy within the church. It was here that the church adapted the Nicaea creed, a Christian statement of belief expressing the Catholic Trinitarian theology. The age of Constantine' thus significantly shaped the Roman world Augustine would find himself in. Within Augustine's work the Confessions, a prose-poem to God, composed between 397 -401 we are rewarded with rich biographical details of his early life, it states that Augustine was born in Roman North Africa on 13 November 354 in the municipium of Thagaste, Numidia Cirtensis (modern day Souk Ahras, Algeria). Both of Augustine's parents were most likely members of an indigenous group known as Berber who were Romanized and now spoke Latin. Augustine's mother, Monica was a devout Catholic while his father, Patricius was a staunch Roman pagan. Augustine also had two siblings a brother, Navigius and a sister, Perpetua. Although Augustine's

Vessey/A Companion to Augustine, 2012

Because of the immensity of Augustine's corpus and the complex intellectual patrimony that informs it, attempts to place him within the history of philosophical traditions are often partial and in need of supplementation. In treating below of Augustine's engagement with Aristotelianism, Middle Platonism, Neoplatonism, and Stoicism, I shall be drawing attention to particular topics, lexical points, and philosophical arguments that have not received much attention in the literature up to this point, despite their centrality to Augustine's own philosophical interests. Discovery of the new philosophical material I present here is possible thanks to the use of a method only recently beginning to gain currency: that of looking for philosophical arguments and developments in Augustine's sermons and other exegetical texts (see e.g. Atkins and Dodaro 2001: xi-xii; Byers 2003: 433-4). In the past, philosophical scholarship on Augustine has treated the genre of a text as indicative of its discipline, an approach that has resulted in a fairly strict separation of philosophical research from rhetorical, "theological," or "pastoral" texts (this approach relies on methodological assumptions more appropriate to medieval scholasticism than to Augustine). In contrast, the alternative "integrative" method employed here yields a more complete picture of Augustine's relationship to various philosophical traditions. The reliability of this method is clear from the fact that its results cohere with what Augustine says on the same topics in his other, more systematic or straightforwardly philosophical works, as we shall see below. Thus the new claims here do not concern whom Augustine read (Plotinus in the translation of Victorinus or someone of similar interests and abilities, Apuleius, Cicero, Varro, Gellius, and Seneca), but rather to what degree he assimilated what he read. We turn first to what is perhaps the most controversial question, that of Augustine's Aristotelianism.

Church History, 1997

This essay attempts to analyze Augustine’s hermeneutics and homiletics in his De doctrina christiana. I will offer a succinct synopsis of the work and highlight various points showing Augustine’s hermeneutical and homiletical characteristics. Augustine stresses the importance of humiliation in the study of Scripture. He also regards the duplex commandment of love in Matthew 22 as the heart of Christian faith. In Augustine’s hermeneutics, sign has an important role. God can communicate with the believer through the signs of the Scriptures. Thus, humiliation, love, and the knowledge of signs are an essential hermeneutical presupposition for a sound interpretation of the Scriptures. Although Augustine endorses some teaching of the Platonism of his time, he corrects and recasts it according to a theocentric doctrine of the Bible. Similarly, in a practical discipline, he modifies the classical theory of oratory in a Christian way. He underscores the meaning of diligent study of the Bible and prayer as more than mere human knowledge and oratory skills. As a concluding remark, Augustine encourages the interpreter and preacher of the Bible to seek a good manner of life and, most of all, to love God and neighbor. * Key words: Augustine, hermeneutics, humiliation, love, prayer

Revue d'études augustiniennes et patristiques, 2004

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