Augustine

Augustine′s conversion to Christianity in A.D. 386 is a pivotal moment not only in his own life, but in Christian and world history, for the theology of Augustine set the course of theological and cultural development in the western Christian church. But to what exactly was Augustine converted? Scholars have long debated whether he really converted to Christianity in 386, whether he was a Platonist, and, if he adhered to both Platonism and Christianity, which dominated his thought. The debate of (...) the last thirteen decades spans an immense body of literature in multiple languages. In this literature, four major views on Augustine′s conversion may be discerned. The first view is associated with Gaston Boissier and Adolph von Harnack, and was famously championed by Prosper Alfaric: that Augustine in 386 converted to neo-Platonism but not to Christianity. Second, there is the view recently promoted by Catherine Conybeare: that Augustine in 386 converted to Christianity and rejected neo-Platonism. Third, there is the view that he converted to Christianity and was also a neo-Platonist; the most famous adherents of this view are Robert J. O′Connell and Pierre Courcelle. Finally, there is the view recently promoted by Carol Harrison: that Augustine committed to Christianity in 386, yet did not utterly reject neo-Platonism; rather, he aimed to develop a Christian faith that was informed by neo-Platonic insight. In this article, I first explain and distinguish these four general views, and then I explain why I prefer the fourth view. -/- More Info: This is the pre-peer reviewed version of Boone, Mark, "The Role of Platonism in Augustine's 386 Conversion to Christianity," Religion Compass 9.5 (May 2015), 151-61. This article has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rec3.12149/abstract. (shrink)

Augustine is commonly interpreted as endorsing an extramission theory of perception in De quantitate animae. A close examination of the text shows, instead, that he is committed to its rejection. I end with some remarks about what it takes for an account of perception to be an extramission theory and with a review of the strength of evidence for attributing the extramission the- ory to Augustine on the basis of his other works.

The Enarrationes in Psalmos is the collection of Augustine’s commentaries and sermons on the Psalms. Although Augustine is often at his philosophical best here, bearing various resemblances to the Platonists and other philosophers, he also articulates a distinctively Christian view on what we should desire, on how desire has gone wrong, and on how it is healed. The renewal of desire takes place as a result of and through the unity of Christ and the church, which is the guiding theme (...) of the Enarrationes. Augustine’s Preaching and the Healing of Desire in the Enarrationes in Psalmos traces this theology of desire as it connects to Augustine’s Christology, his ecclesiology, his account of happiness and well-being, and his eschatology. The book closes with some suggestions on what the church can learn today from the Enarrationes in the areas of psychology and wellbeing, biblical exegesis, and homiletics. (shrink)

Noting how an hypothesis can turn into a truth simply by being repeated, this article examines carefully the basis for the date normally given for this sermon and the frailty of the textual tradition that is the basis for the Morin edition of this sermon. After a careful analysis of the factors that might help to date it, it is assigned an uncertain date. It remains, however, plausible to think that it was delivered ad mensam Cypriani. The analysis of the (...) transmission of this sermon includes several new manuscripts, a new stemma and several general observations about its transmission. This article concludes with comments about the content and a new edition of the Latin text of the sermon. (shrink)

In his Confessions, Augustine says that he achieved great intellectual insight from what he cryptically calls the “books of the Platonists.” Prior to reading these books, he was a corporealist and was unable to conceive of incorporeal beings. Because of the insurmountable philosophical problems corporealism caused for the Christian belief he was seeking, Augustine claims that this was the greatest intellectual barrier he faced in converting to Christianity. As such, the specific contents and effects of these Platonist books are of (...) great biographical and philosophical interest. Heretofore, the explanation of the contents and effects of these books has not been forthcoming. This essay aims to supply it. I argue that Augustine learned the mereological distinction between pertensive and entensive presence in the books of the Platonists. This distinction is required for properly conceiving of incorporeal beings. In support of this thesis, I show that Augustine himself says that he learned this very distinction, that the distinction is present in Platonist texts that scholars agree were among “the books of the Platonists,” that the distinction is present in one of Augustine’s earliest works, and that this distinction is uniquely capable of resolving the philosophical difficulties he faced as a corporealist. (shrink)

St. Augustine, pictured by Western painters holding in his hand his heart blazing with passionate love, consistently and repeatedly insisted―from his earliest writings until close to his death―that the essential characteristic of God is “God is love” (1 John 4:16). Yet he also insisted on the doctrines of original sin and everlasting punishment for the massa damnata. This article will not explore the rationale or semantics of his arguments, nor the detail and nuance of the doctrines of predestination and perseverance. (...) Rather, I seek to understand, from Augustine’s last writings, how he reconciled his strong conviction that God is love with doctrines requiring belief in a God who determined the fate of individuals to eternal reward or punishment “before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4), a God indifferent to individuals’ actions, struggles, or longings. My primary interest is not on Augustine’s ability to render these two apparently opposing ideas of God intellectually compatible, but rather on his feeling, gathered from his last sermons, as he approached death. In brief, how could Augustine love the God in whom he believed? (shrink)

Although Mencius (fourth century BCE) and Augustine (356–430 CE) were centuries apart with very different philosophical vocabulary and metaphysical outlooks, both thinkers were progressive in their positive assessment of feminism characteristics. They brought the hidden feminine element in their respective traditions to the foreground. Both thinkers emphasize the affective dimension of morality and propose a political philosophy built on love and the family model. Contrary to accepted cultural norms, they repudiated the viewpoint that regards the female body and female gender (...) as merely a means to an end. Strongly opposing the stance of social contractarianism and political realism, they espoused a social-political theory based on a developmental and relational account of human being and embraced a complementary model of cooperation, care, and governance rooted in humaneness and rightness, love and justice. (shrink)

This article investigates the place of De magistro within Augustine’s developing theology of words and the Word through a reverse chronological reading. This is necessary because, despite its emphasis on words, De magistro never refers to Christ as the “Word.” It would be easy, therefore, to see it as unrelated to the theological emphasis on that title in later works such as De trinitate. A reverse chronological reading, however, establishes Augustine’s developing understanding of the relationship between words and the Word (...) in a way that moves us from a full-throated theology of divine and human speech backward into more exploratory engagements with nascent ideas. When this reverse trail is traced, we can begin to see De magistro as one key starting point for it by providing warrant for seeing the inner Christ as necessarily the Word of God, even if not explicitly named as such. Such a reading adds deeper theological significance to a text often read only in terms of its contribution to semiotics and epistemology. In this reading, De magistro is an essential text for understanding Augustine’s fuller theology of language not only because of its early sign theory but because it sets the soteriological stage for our growth into the likeness of Christ the Word. (shrink)

This article aims to offer an overview of the problem of suicide in Augustine of Hippo, from the anti-Manichean texts of the late 380s CE to De ciuitate dei and the rejoinder to Gaudentium (Contra Gaudentium). A transversal analysis of the evolution of the concept of voluntary death throughout the work of Augustine allows us to identify up to four different conceptions of suicide, each of them corresponding to a rather well-defined chronological period: a philosophical conception, that we find in (...) De libero arbitrio; a moral one, that we can excerpt from De mendacio; a polemical approach in the context of controversy against Donatism, which we can retrace in a set of writings from 400 to 412 CE, and especially in Contra epistulam Parmeniani; and, finally, the conception of suicide as homicide, that appears in De ciuitate dei and that will define the decisive and most widespread doctrine of Augustine in this matter. In this way, this paper aims to enrich, from a transversal and chronological perspective, the studies that have been carried out over the last decades on suicide in Augustine. (shrink)

Throughout the Confessions, Augustine repeatedly complains about heresy with a special focus on the heresy he once belonged to, Manicheanism. To those of us who live in a culture in which respectable people rarely, if ever, care about religious orthodoxy to such a degree, these complaints seem rather bizarre. Despite this initial appearance, Augustine presents in the Confessions several plausible reasons for thinking heresy is sinful and, therefore, detrimental to a person’s sanctity and ultimate salvation. In this paper, I argue (...) that Augustine considers heresy sinful because it involves as many as three kinds of idolatry: loving a lie/false conception of God instead of the true God, loving one’s own beliefs more than the Truth, which is God, and loving the worldly praise one receives from developing novel opinions more than God. (shrink)

In the eleventh book of the Confessiones Augustine puts forward several considerations about the nature of time. The received view is that he held that only the present exists, while the past and the future do not exist. This received view has recently been attacked by Paul Helm and Katherin Rogers, who have offered alternative interpretations according to which Augustine held that the present has no privileged ontological status, and that past, present and future all equally exist. The aim of (...) this paper is to defend the received view vis-à-vis these attacks. I argue that the received view fits best Augustine’s view of God’s eternity and relation to time and should therefore be preferred. (shrink)

The 14th-century plague tractate by Augustine of Trento addresses the matter of plague before the Black Death. The text aims both to predict plague epidemics and to prevent the disease’s spreading. The author attempts to forecasts the outbreak of plague epidemics thanks to the methods of judicial astrology. He also advises hygiene rules and dietary precepts in order to counter the spread of the disease. Moreover, Augustine makes clear that astrological knowledge and techniques serve medical purposes and medical practice can (...) benefit from astrology. In fact, he discusses the topic of medical prognostication and defends the idea that medical practice should not be empirical but guided by astrological principles. The treatise draws on the major astrological and medical sources of Greek and Arab origin and contains references to contemporary masters of medicine. The article updates the author’s biography, examines the manuscript tradition, analyzes the two redactional stages of the text, and provides a new critical edition. (shrink)

This article expands our knowledge of the historical-philosophical process by which the dominant metaphysical account of the Christian God became ascendant. It demonstrates that Marius Victorinus proposed a peculiar model of ‘consubstantiality’ that utilised a notion of ‘existence’ indebted to the Aristotelian concept of ‘prime matter’. Victorinus employed this to argue that God is a unity composed of Father and Son. The article critically evaluates this model. It then argues that Augustine noticed one of the model's philosophical liabilities but did (...) not publicly name Victorinus when he rejected it in De Trinitate, thereby exemplifying the practice of private ‘rebuke’ (ἐλέγχɛιν). (shrink)