Abstracts
Augustiniana 66(2016)1-4
Les quatre sermons en cause sont étiquetés s. 89, 133, 145 et Dolbeau 10 (162C). Ils ont en commun d’avoir été cités par Possidius (Indiculus X6. 104 et 112-114) et transmis par la collection de Mayence-Grande-Chartreuse (= K 17 et 26-28). Les s. 133, Dolbeau 10 et 89 – copiés à la suite et liés par des renvois internes – constituent une trilogie destinée à démontrer l’entière véracité des Écritures, un thème auquel fait écho le s. 145. La datation ici proposée (vers 396-398) repose, entre autres, sur leur parenté thématique avec les traités De mendacio et Ad Simplicianum que mentionnent les Retractationes en I 27 et II 1, c’est-à-dire de part et d’autre de la consécration d’Augustin comme évêque. La seconde partie de l’étude procure une édition critique des s. 89, 133 et 145, jamais révisés depuis les Mauristes.
key words
Augustin - prédication - sermons - véracité des Écritures - devoirs d'un évèque
In this essay I defend Augustine’s conception of the body against critics who maintain that Augustine ignores the fact of embodiment in his early writings. Instead of devaluing the body as some of his critics have done, a careful analysis of his writings reveals a more positive side of the body. In fact, a more positive assessment of the body is necessary if Augustine is to overcome the negative view of the body he held as a Manichaean. The body also holds a prominent place in Augustine’s early writings because it functions as a reminder of the fall and the penalty of sin that humankind must endure as a result of its misuse in paradise. Despite the fact that Augustine’s dependence on Platonism is at its strongest during this period, he develops an understanding of human nature that is compatible with Christian belief. In order to portray the positive aspects of the human body, I focus on three related topics: the body and its use, sensation, and the art of medicine. These topics correspond to the first three degrees of the soul that Augustine mentions in the De quantitate animae: animation of the body, sensation through the body, and art about the body.
key words
Body - Sensation - Art of medicine - Anthropology - Health
In this study of Augustine’s De catechizandis rudibus, an important early Christian catechetical text, I seek to highlight the role Augustine assigns to the Holy Spirit in granting Christians the ability to speak about the inexpressible mystery of the Trinity. Recent scholarship has emphasized the role that Augustine argues the incarnate Christ plays in making visible and expressible the essentially inexpressible Trinity. Yet it is worthwhile exploring the work of the Holy Spirit in Augustine’s theology of the incarnation and the church, Christ’s ecclesial body. Augustine shows how the Holy Spirit inspires in Christian believers modes of language appropriate to the Trinitarian mystery of love that always overflows the bounds of human expectation and conceptual capacity, paradigmatically in the free and surprising grace of the incarnation. For Augustine, the love granted to believers by the Holy Spirit propels them to exceed their own bounds, to imitate the inexpressible love of Christ and delve ever deeper into the body – into the mundane realm of human language and the church community. In the language and social bonds animated and secured by self-transcending love, Christians are able to glimpse in some small measure the ineffable Trinity. Augustine’s theology of the Holy Spirit, in its incarnational and ecclesiological dimensions, thus defies a strict distinction between the kataphatic and the apophatic. Through the gift of the Holy Spirit, God gives believers the words, the proleptic means of glimpsing and describing what they will only contemplate eschatologically: who God is as Trinity, that is, as inexhaustible, indescribable self-giving love.
key words
Holy Spirit - Incarnation - Revelation - Trinity - Church - De catechizandis rudibus
The Confessions challenges the modern sense of literary coherence. This is most obvious in the fact that the work is divided into two seemingly disjunctive parts: books I-IX provide an autobiographical account of Augustine’s conversion story, while books X-XIII address a number of philosophical questions. Various attempts have been made to reconcile these parts to one another, but with no universal acceptance. However, the very similar structural challenge posed by Book IX has received much less attention. Like the Confessions as a whole, Book IX consists of two distinct parts and poses similar questions to the reader regarding its coherence. In this article, I offer a reading of Book IX as a transitio from the autobiographical character of the first eight books to the more philosophical character of the final four. I argue that the literary structure of Book IX offers a link between the autobiographical books and the philosophical books by shifting the reader’s perspective from that of an individual’s journey of faith to an ecclesial meditation on divine truth. The transition that takes place within Book IX is at the same time the transition taking place in the work as a whole.
key words
Ascent - Augustine - Book 9 - Confessions - digressio - Monica - Ostia - transitio
This paper first presents and discusses the Dominican theologian Bernard of Auvergne’s reprobatio of James of Viterbo’s Quodlibet 1, question 5 on the ontological status of divine ideas and possibles. It then examines the criticisms of that same doctrine by Godfrey of Fontaines and William of Alnwick, with a view to gaining a better understanding of the critical reception of James’s theory of possibles in the late-thirteenth and early-fourteenth centuries. The critical edition of Bernard’s reprobatio follows in the appendix.
key words
Ideas - Divine knowledge - Possibles - Cognized object - Act/Potency
Johann von Staupitz, the longtime Vicar General of the German Congregation of the Augustinians, sponsor and spiritual advisor of Martin Luther, resigned his office in 1520 when his crisis management in the controversy surrounding Luther had failed. As the pressure on the formerly prominent though now retired Augustinian continued, he joined the Benedictine order two years later, most probably on the suggestion of the Salzburg archbishop Cardinal Lang, who had provided Staupitz with a dispensation from Rome, and the former friar became Abbot of St Peter’s in Salzburg. Cautiously analysing the sources, the essay describes the development in its historical context.
key words
Johannes von Staupitz - German observant congregation - Luther - Reformation - Change of religious order
- François DOLBEAU, Quatre sermons prêchés par Augustin au début de son épiscopat. Augustiniana 66(2016)1-4 : 7-62
Les quatre sermons en cause sont étiquetés s. 89, 133, 145 et Dolbeau 10 (162C). Ils ont en commun d’avoir été cités par Possidius (Indiculus X6. 104 et 112-114) et transmis par la collection de Mayence-Grande-Chartreuse (= K 17 et 26-28). Les s. 133, Dolbeau 10 et 89 – copiés à la suite et liés par des renvois internes – constituent une trilogie destinée à démontrer l’entière véracité des Écritures, un thème auquel fait écho le s. 145. La datation ici proposée (vers 396-398) repose, entre autres, sur leur parenté thématique avec les traités De mendacio et Ad Simplicianum que mentionnent les Retractationes en I 27 et II 1, c’est-à-dire de part et d’autre de la consécration d’Augustin comme évêque. La seconde partie de l’étude procure une édition critique des s. 89, 133 et 145, jamais révisés depuis les Mauristes.
key words
Augustin - prédication - sermons - véracité des Écritures - devoirs d'un évèque
- Marianne DJUTH, The Body, Sensation, and the Art of Medicine in Augustine's Early Writings, 385-395. Augustiniana 66(2016)1-4 : 63-83
In this essay I defend Augustine’s conception of the body against critics who maintain that Augustine ignores the fact of embodiment in his early writings. Instead of devaluing the body as some of his critics have done, a careful analysis of his writings reveals a more positive side of the body. In fact, a more positive assessment of the body is necessary if Augustine is to overcome the negative view of the body he held as a Manichaean. The body also holds a prominent place in Augustine’s early writings because it functions as a reminder of the fall and the penalty of sin that humankind must endure as a result of its misuse in paradise. Despite the fact that Augustine’s dependence on Platonism is at its strongest during this period, he develops an understanding of human nature that is compatible with Christian belief. In order to portray the positive aspects of the human body, I focus on three related topics: the body and its use, sensation, and the art of medicine. These topics correspond to the first three degrees of the soul that Augustine mentions in the De quantitate animae: animation of the body, sensation through the body, and art about the body.
key words
Body - Sensation - Art of medicine - Anthropology - Health
- Douglas FINN, Expressing the Inexpressibility of God : A Trinitarian-Ecclesiological Reading of Augustine's De catechizandis rudibus. Augustiniana 66(2016)1-4 : 85-134
In this study of Augustine’s De catechizandis rudibus, an important early Christian catechetical text, I seek to highlight the role Augustine assigns to the Holy Spirit in granting Christians the ability to speak about the inexpressible mystery of the Trinity. Recent scholarship has emphasized the role that Augustine argues the incarnate Christ plays in making visible and expressible the essentially inexpressible Trinity. Yet it is worthwhile exploring the work of the Holy Spirit in Augustine’s theology of the incarnation and the church, Christ’s ecclesial body. Augustine shows how the Holy Spirit inspires in Christian believers modes of language appropriate to the Trinitarian mystery of love that always overflows the bounds of human expectation and conceptual capacity, paradigmatically in the free and surprising grace of the incarnation. For Augustine, the love granted to believers by the Holy Spirit propels them to exceed their own bounds, to imitate the inexpressible love of Christ and delve ever deeper into the body – into the mundane realm of human language and the church community. In the language and social bonds animated and secured by self-transcending love, Christians are able to glimpse in some small measure the ineffable Trinity. Augustine’s theology of the Holy Spirit, in its incarnational and ecclesiological dimensions, thus defies a strict distinction between the kataphatic and the apophatic. Through the gift of the Holy Spirit, God gives believers the words, the proleptic means of glimpsing and describing what they will only contemplate eschatologically: who God is as Trinity, that is, as inexhaustible, indescribable self-giving love.
key words
Holy Spirit - Incarnation - Revelation - Trinity - Church - De catechizandis rudibus
- Michael GLOWALSKY, Coherence, Transition, and the Ascent of the Reader : The Literary Significance of Confessions IX. Augustiniana 66(2016)1-4 : 135-149
The Confessions challenges the modern sense of literary coherence. This is most obvious in the fact that the work is divided into two seemingly disjunctive parts: books I-IX provide an autobiographical account of Augustine’s conversion story, while books X-XIII address a number of philosophical questions. Various attempts have been made to reconcile these parts to one another, but with no universal acceptance. However, the very similar structural challenge posed by Book IX has received much less attention. Like the Confessions as a whole, Book IX consists of two distinct parts and poses similar questions to the reader regarding its coherence. In this article, I offer a reading of Book IX as a transitio from the autobiographical character of the first eight books to the more philosophical character of the final four. I argue that the literary structure of Book IX offers a link between the autobiographical books and the philosophical books by shifting the reader’s perspective from that of an individual’s journey of faith to an ecclesial meditation on divine truth. The transition that takes place within Book IX is at the same time the transition taking place in the work as a whole.
key words
Ascent - Augustine - Book 9 - Confessions - digressio - Monica - Ostia - transitio
- Antoine CÔTÉ, Bernard of Auvergne on James of Viterbo's Doctrine of Possibles : with a critical edition of Bernard's Reprobatio of James's Quodlibet 1, question 5. Augustiniana 66(2016)1-4 : 151-184
This paper first presents and discusses the Dominican theologian Bernard of Auvergne’s reprobatio of James of Viterbo’s Quodlibet 1, question 5 on the ontological status of divine ideas and possibles. It then examines the criticisms of that same doctrine by Godfrey of Fontaines and William of Alnwick, with a view to gaining a better understanding of the critical reception of James’s theory of possibles in the late-thirteenth and early-fourteenth centuries. The critical edition of Bernard’s reprobatio follows in the appendix.
key words
Ideas - Divine knowledge - Possibles - Cognized object - Act/Potency
- Hans SCHNEIDER, Johannes von Staupitz' Amtsverzicht und Ordenswechsel. Augustiniana 66(2016)1-4 : 185-231
Johann von Staupitz, the longtime Vicar General of the German Congregation of the Augustinians, sponsor and spiritual advisor of Martin Luther, resigned his office in 1520 when his crisis management in the controversy surrounding Luther had failed. As the pressure on the formerly prominent though now retired Augustinian continued, he joined the Benedictine order two years later, most probably on the suggestion of the Salzburg archbishop Cardinal Lang, who had provided Staupitz with a dispensation from Rome, and the former friar became Abbot of St Peter’s in Salzburg. Cautiously analysing the sources, the essay describes the development in its historical context.
key words
Johannes von Staupitz - German observant congregation - Luther - Reformation - Change of religious order
- Johannes VAN OORT, Review Essay. Once again: Augustine's Manichaean Dilemma. Augustiniana 66(2016)1-4 : 233-245
- Book reviews. Augustiniana 66(2016)1-4 : 247-346