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A HOUSE DIVIDED: ST. AUGUSTINE'S DUALISTIC ECCLESIOLOGY

REVISITED IN LIGHT OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TOTUS CHRISTUS

Thesis

Submitted to

The College of Arts and Sciences of the

UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

The Degree of

Master of Arts in Theological Studies

Andrew McNeely

UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON

Dayton, Ohio

August 2020

A HOUSE DIVIDED: ST. AUGUSTINE'S DUALISTIC ECCLESIOLOGY

REVISITED IN LIGHT OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TOTUS CHRISTUS

Name: McNeely, Andrew

APPROVED BY:

______Jennifer Speed, Ph.D. Thesis Advisor

______Jana Bennett, Ph.D. Reader

______Dennis Doyle, Ph.D. Reader

______Jana Bennett, Ph.D. Department of Religious Studies Chair

ii ABSTRACT

A HOUSE DIVIDED: ST. AUGUSTINE'S DUALISTIC ECCLESIOLOGY

REVISITED IN LIGHT OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TOTUS CHRISTUS

Name: McNeely, Andrew University of Dayton

Advisor: Jennifer Speed, Ph.D.

This thesis examines St. Augustine's (354-430) ecclesiology as he derived it from his interpretation of the Psalms. To accomplish this task, this thesis contextualizes the scholarship that has interpreted his ecclesiology as a dualistic contradiction based on

Augustine's distinction between the visible and invisible Church. This scholarship asserts that Augustine struggled to render any validity to the visible Church as a result of using a

Neoplatonic framework that disconnected the two sides of this ecclesiological dialectic.

However, this scholarship tends to neglect Augustine's Enarrationes in Psalmos that provides insight into how his ecclesiology developed into what would become his doctrine of the totus Christus. For Augustine, this doctrine signified Christ as head over his body, the Church, converging into one whole Christ. As the totus Christus, the head speaks on behalf of the body to God, and the body speaks on behalf of Christ to the world. Therefore, the doctrine of the totus Christus reveals Augustine's emphasis on the sacramental, performative, and visible dimensions of the Church, and it discloses the logical, but not contradictory, distinction between the visible and invisible Church in his overall ecclesiology.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………….………….iii

INTRODUCTION………………………………….………………………………….1

CHAPTER 1. THE STATE OF THE QUESTION………………..……………….….3

Augustine's Contradictory Ecclesiology…………………………………….....8

The Young Augustine According to Ratzinger……………………………….14

The Mature Augustine According to Ratzinger……………………...……..…19

CHAPTER 2. AUGUSTINE'S CHRISTOLOGICAL REVOLUTION…..……....…..25

The Early Works of Augustine………………………………………………..29

Soliloquia...... 30

Contra Academicos...... 32

De Beata Vita...... 34

De Ordine...... 36

De Doctrina Christiana………………………………………………….…….37

The Neoplatonic Ascents in Confessions…………………………….………..43

The Photinian Embrace……………………………………………….……….46

The Ostia Ascent……………………………………………………….……...48

The Donatist Controversy…………………………………………….……….52

The Anti-Donatist Writings………………………………………….………..56

The Invisible and Visible Church……………………………….…………….65

Continuity or Contrast in Augustine?...... 66

Conclusion…………………………………………………………….………70

iv CHAPTER 3. AUGUSTINE AND THE PSALMS…………………...... …………...73

Prosopological Exegesis in the Patristic Tradition…………………………...76

Augustine's Early Use of Prosopological Exegesis…………….………….....79

Augustine's Prosopological Exegesis of the Passion Psalms………..………..81

Augustine's Christo-ecclesial Hermeneutic and Doctrine of the totus

Christus...... 87

The totus Christus as a Performative Reality…………………………..……..90

A Visible Ecclesiology……………………………………………….….……93

The totus Christus as the Pilgrim City of God………………………..………96

Summary…………………………………………………………....………..101

Conclusion………………………………………………………….……...... 103

BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………….…...... 105

INTRODUCTION

To date, St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE) remains one of the most analyzed figures of Western history, and not just for those who have spent their lives studying theology. Those who have spent their lives immersed in other disciplines such as philosophy, history, literary studies, psychology, art theory, and educational leadership will have had at some point encountered the precocious thought of the Bishop of Hippo.

Augustine's corpus is so massive that it is difficult to discover something that he did not commit his thought to, demonstrating his intellectual power.1 The 20th century church historian, Jaroslav Pelikan, claimed that since the Council of Orange (529 CE) Western theology is all but a “series of footnotes” to Augustine.2 Indeed, this African theologian has influenced the Western Christian Church to such an extent that his theology "seems so ordinary" to modern day readers.3 As Matthew Levering states, "Augustine speaks as powerfully today as he did sixteen-hundred years ago."4

Augustine was born in Thagaste, present-day Algeria, in 354. After years of pursuing a vocation as a teacher of rhetoric in Carthage, Rome, and Milan, as well as many years of participating in a Manichaean sect, Augustine encountered the Christian

1 Jaroslav Pelikan quotes Hans von Campenhausen in his foreword to the well-received encyclopedia on Augustine that "irrespective of school and denomination he attracts pagans and Christians, philosophers and theologians alike by his writings and makes them come to terms with his intentions and his person," see Jaroslav Pelikan, “Foreword,” in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan Fitzgerald and et. al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), xiii. 2 Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 1, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600) (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 330. Pelikan’s remark is mimicking Alfred North Whitehead's similar comment regarding Plato and Western philosophy. 3 Brian Daley, "Christology," in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 1999), 164. 4 Matthew Levering, The Theology of Augustine: An Introductory Guide to His Most Important Works (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), xii.

faith of his youth through the preaching of St. Ambrose in the 380s. He converted to

Christianity in 386, and in 388 Augustine lived in a monastic community until his election to the presbyterate in 391. In 396, Augustine was named Bishop of Hippo, a position he remained in until his death in 430. Throughout his Christian life, Augustine wrote theological treatises, homilies, Scriptural commentaries, letters, and his spiritual and theological autobiography, Confessions.5

While Augustine is certainly one of the major figureheads and theologians of the

Western Christian Church, he was also a deeply passionate and caring individual. In his

Confessions, for example, he articulates his life-experiences in such a way that the text captures the same moods and sensibilities of those who read it in the 21st century.

Augustine's sermons reveal a preacher deeply committed to the spiritual and moral well- being of his parishioners, and his Scriptural commentaries disclose a biblical theologian interpreting the text in light of the Incarnation. For these reasons, it is important to remember Augustine first and foremost as a theologian who consistently read Scripture in light of the Church community in which he was a bishop, because the Church, for

Augustine, really is the body of Christ.

5 For a great biography of Augustine's life and his thought, see Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, Forty-Fifth Anniversary Edition. (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000).

CHAPTER ONE

THE STATE OF THE QUESTION

The Western Christian tradition has had many figures with strong legacies, but St.

Augustine arguably is at the top of this list. According to Hubertus Drobner, Augustine can only be matched by St. Paul in terms of the sheer amount of scholarship that has been produced in the wake of Paul's life and writings.6 Indeed, over 50,000 publications worldwide have been produced regarding Augustine and some aspect of his thought or life.7 Augustine's corpus alone is so vast that one becomes suspicious of anyone claiming to have read it in its entirety. Even particular phrases uttered by the Saint have since become classic sayings in the Western canon. Whereas some of these quotes are heartfelt pleas, rapturous praises, and popular maxims, there are others that remain enthralled in controversy and dispute. Of this latter category, the one that stands out the brightest is

Augustine's discovery of "some books of the Platonists."8

Given to him by a "man puffed up with monstrous pride," Augustine would relate his contact with the books of the Platonists as the turning point in his conversion from

Manichaeism to Christianity in 386.9 He did not anticipate, however, that his discovery of the Platonists would become one of the most disputed areas of Augustinian scholarship to date. The question of Augustine's Platonism, and to what extent it influenced his thought, has produced a great deal of scholarship on aspects of his theology, most particularly his

6 Hubertus Drobner, “Studying Augustine: An Overview of Recent Research,” in Augustine and His Critics, ed. Robert Dodaro and George Lawless (London: Routledge, 2000), 18. 7 Drobner, "Studying Augustine," 19. 8 Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 121. 9 Augustine, Confessions, 121-124.

ecclesiology. Indeed, the ample amount of modern-day scholarship on Augustine’s view of the Church reveals the importance that theologians place on his ecclesiology.10

Augustine did not write a specific text treating ecclesiology though many of his writings were written within the context of larger ecclesial questions. It is from Augustine’s entire corpus that his ecclesiology continues to be debated and reconstructed among scholars, like a massive puzzle that is being meticulously shaped.

Augustine developed an ecclesiology that distinguished between a visible and an invisible Church. The visible reality seeks to function, operate, and perform certain ecclesial, sacramental, and missional works in the world. Subsequently, the visible

Church cultivates an “outer” reality that expresses itself in the world and is a tangible entity. The invisible reality is established by those who are truly elect by the predestining will of God. Hence, the invisible Church consists of a more spiritual communion of saints, thereby creating an “inner” reality that can only be known in the mind of God.

What substantiates this invisible reality of the Church is caritas (charity), in Christ.11

For two centuries now, Augustine's theology of the church has often been interpreted in Platonic categories, subsequently leading many scholars to conclude that he prioritized an inner, invisible reality over against the outward, visible community of the

Church. The majority of these scholars view this dualistic ecclesiology as evidence for

Augustine's incoherence on the subject. As a result of this complete separation between the visible and the invisible Church, Augustine's ecclesiology has been thought to operate

10 See Stanislaus J. Grabowski, The Church: An Introduction to the Theology of St. Augustine (St. Louis: Herder, 1957), xiv: "Although from time immemorial the Church hails [Augustine] as the 'Doctor of grace,' he merits equally as well to be honored as the 'Doctor of ecclesiology' since in this domain his teaching is so vast, penetrating, and complete that it constituted a rich fund for all ages of Christian thought." 11 J. N. D. Kelly, “Christ's Mystical Body,” in Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1978), 414-417.

on a two-tracked system that is ultimately incoherent, demonstrating a line of thought that

Johannes van Oort has termed a "two-fold ecclesiology."12

The concept of the invisible Church in Augustine’s writings has been emphasized in the last two centuries by many scholars who hold to particular doctrinal presuppositions.13 In fact, this interpretation of Augustine played a major role in the

Protestant Reformation insofar as the Reformers understood there to be a purely spiritual

Church existing within the visible, yet corrupt, Roman Catholic Church.14 Thus, many of these scholars concluded that Augustine developed an entirely separated ecclesiology between the visible and the invisible Church.15

The notion that Augustine's ecclesiology is incoherent held sway in scholarship beginning with the writings of Adolf von Harnack and still influences many today.

However, many 20th century scholars began to refute this incoherent reading of

Augustine's ecclesiology. Joseph Ratzinger, for instance, wrote a dissertation in 1954 that would provide a more nuanced view of Augustine's conception of the visible and invisible Church, his relationship to Platonism, and his use of philosophy.16 It was

12 Johannes Van Oort, Jerusalem and Babylon: A Study Into Augustine's City of God and the Sources of His Doctrine of the Two Cities (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991), 124. 13 Michael Fahey, “Augustine's Ecclesiology Resisted,” in Augustine: From Rhetor to Theologian, ed. Joanne McWilliam (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1992), 173: “The earliest studies…would have Augustine say what we would like him to have said in support of our confessional allegiances.” 14 See for example: John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1972), 288: “In this Church there is a very large mixture of hypocrites…Hence, as it is necessary to believe in the invisible Church, which is manifest to the eye of God only…” 15 The majority of these scholars, and all of the scholars in this camp that I will examine, are Protestant. To develop a reason as to why this is the case would go beyond the scope of this thesis. However, it should be noted that not all Protestants emphasized the invisible Church over the visible Church, most notably Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. See, Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, trans. A. T. Mackay et al., vol. 3/pt. 4, The Doctrine of Creation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1961), 489; Dogmatics in Outline, trans. G. T. Thomson (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1959), 142; Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, trans. R H. Fuller (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 115-19, 248-271. 16 Joseph Ratzinger, Gesammelte Schriften: Volk und Haus Gottes in Augustins Lehre von der Kirche (München: Verlag Herder), 2011.

Ratzinger's dissertation that inaugurated the scholarship that would present Augustine's ecclesiology in a new light. Subsequent scholarship reconsidered the Bishop of Hippo's view of the Church, providing a reading of Augustine that was more nuanced and coherent. Indeed, this scholarship attempts to take into account the entirety of the Saint's corpus and to identify a Christianly-vocational Augustine who preferred the Scriptures over the books of the Platonists.

One of the difficult paths to traverse within this scholarship concerning

Augustine's use of Neoplatonic philosophy centers around the debate regarding

Augustine's so-called Pauline revolution of the 390s. A Pauline revolution entails the idea that after Augustine had converted to Christianity in 386, it was not until 391 when he was ordained to the presbyterate that he developed Christian orthodoxy thanks to his studies of Paul's writings. The writings prior to 391 were merely Neoplatonic speculations with a little dash of Christianity mixed in. Augustine's contemporary biographer, Peter Brown, first suggested this reading of Augustine in 1967, and since then, a sharp contrast between the early Augustine of 386-91 and the "mature" Augustine of 395 onwards has been generally assumed in scholarship.17 Recently, Carol Harrison has questioned this, arguing for a strong continuity in Augustine's theology from 386 onwards, thereby proposing the notion that Augustine's real revolution took place at his conversion in 386.18

The debate continues to rage on in Augustinian scholarship, and for good reason.

Identifying to what extent Augustine used Neoplatonic categories throughout his writings

17 Brown, Augustine, 139-150. 18 Carol Harrison, Rethinking Augustine's Early Theology: An Argument for Continuity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). Harrison notes that Goulven Maldec anticipated this continuity prior to her own studies surrounding the subject (Harrison, Rethinking Augustine's Early Theology, viii).

can aid one in investigating his theological treatises and how they have impacted the

Western Church. This thesis will also enter into the conversation, but for a slightly different reason. Augustine did not experience a Pauline revolution in the 390s, as

Harrison has argued. However, this thesis aims to show that Augustine did experience a revolution in the 390s, one that this thesis will refer to as a Christological revolution. It was through his renewed sense of Christology that Augustine was able to read Paul

Christologically anew. This, then, led Augustine to developing his ecclesiology in an entirely new way, something that was non-existent in his early writings from 386-391.19

Whereas this dispute regarding Augustine's ecclesiology and the "Pauline revolution" of the 390s continues to occupy modern Augustinian scholarship, very few scholars acknowledge Augustine's doctrine of the totus Christus as a concept that discloses a robust ecclesiology informed by his Christology. Throughout his

Enarrationes in Psalmos, Augustine refers to the whole Christ, Head and body, as the hermeneutical key to interpreting the Scriptures. Augustine develops this idea of the totus

Christus in such a way that his Christology can be identified as his ecclesiology. The scholarship that emphasizes Augustine's Platonism plagued throughout his ecclesiology tends to neglect Augustine's Scriptural commentary on the Psalms and his coherent theology of the church therein. Thus, this thesis will portray Augustine's ecclesiology in a new light, one that was informed by his Christological revolution of the mid-390s and one that serves to disclose a coherent theology of the church as the totus Christus.

19 Nowhere in Harrison's account does she examine Augustine's ecclesiology. In examining the contrast between his early ecclesiology from his later ecclesiology, we will see how Augustine developed his ecclesiology based on his Christological revolution of the mid-390s onwards.

Chapter one will provide a survey of the scholars who have insisted that

Augustine has only provided a confused and incoherent ecclesiology. Second, it will examine Joseph Ratzinger’s reading of Augustine’s ecclesiology against those who insist on a strict Neoplatonic dualism, providing this thesis with an alternative interpretation of

Augustine's ecclesiology. Chapter two will examine Augustine’s early thought and extract his ecclesial concepts from the early writings. In the final chapter, this thesis will examine Augustine's Enarrationes in Psalmos and retrieve Augustine's doctrine of the totus Christus as a concept that sheds new light on Augustine's sophisticated ecclesiology.

AUGUSTINE'S CONTRADICTORY ECCLESIOLOGY

Adolf von Harnack was a Lutheran theologian who specialized in church history and was one of the first scholars to treat Augustine’s ecclesiology systematically. In volume five of his seven-volume set on church dogma, he explores Augustine’s approach to the Church.20 In order for Harnack to treat Augustine’s ecclesiology, he examined

Augustine’s polemical writings surrounding the history of the Donatist controversy. It is during this history that Augustine was forced to develop a sophisticated theology of the church in order to emphasize unity within the Church. Instead of clarifying the issues at hand, however, Harnack claims that Augustine generated “more problems than he had solved.”21

20 Adolf von Harnack, History of Dogma, vol. 5, trans. J. Millar (New York: Russell & Russell, 1958). 21 Harnack, History of Dogma, 142.

According to Harnack, Augustine posited a conception of the visible Church that is incoherent and suffered from “self-contradictions.”22 Augustine attempted to establish one Church full of believers, mixed with non-believers who also participated in the sacraments. Herein lies Augustine’s dilemma according to Harnack: the sacraments express the visible Church but the visible Church is blended in with the “wicked and hypocrites.”23 The true body of Christ is constituted by the invisible Church who participates in unity with the “Spirit of love.”24 Harnack reduces Augustine’s ecclesiology to the heavenly society that shares no resemblance with the Church on earth.25 Indeed, the earthly Church is mysteriously connected to the heavenly Church, but it would be “folly” to consider it as identical with the heavenly Church.26 Harnack construes Augustine’s visible Church as sacramentally ineffective and without the spiritual communion that the invisible Church possesses.27

Another theologian who argued that Augustine's ecclesiology was incoherent was

B. B. Warfield, one of the major figureheads of the Old Princeton school of theology.

Like Harnack, Warfield argued that Augustine's ecclesiology was a confusing model that he failed to make with any "logical completeness."28 Indeed, Augustine did not observe

"the distinction between the empirical and the ideal Church" by mixing "predicates" into each side of the ecclesiological dialectic.29 To be sure, Warfield notes that Augustine

22 Harnack, History of Dogma, 163: “His identification of the Church with the visible Catholic Church was not a success.” 23 Harnack, History of Dogma, 163. 24 Harnack, History of Dogma, 163. 25 Harnack, History of Dogma, 164: “What the church is, it cannot at all be on earth.” 26 Harnack, History of Dogma, 164 27 Harnack, History of Dogma, 165. 28 B. B. Warfield, Studies in Tertullian and Augustine, The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield IV (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2003), 121. 29 Warfield, Tertullian and Augustine, 121-122.

viewed the Church on earth as the body of Christ but maintains that he did not succeed in logically explaining how the "hierarchically organized Church" coincided with the "City of God."30 For Warfield, participating in this City of God (the invisible Church) constituted the possibility of "any communion with God," that is not thoroughly "Roman

Catholic," to be able to attain "eternal blessedness."31

Warfield's conclusion that Augustine prioritized the invisible Church as the true

Church would be more fully worked out in J. N. D. Kelly's Early Christian Doctrines. A scholar of patristics, Kelly argued that Augustine believed the Church to be unified through love and charity and that this constituted the Church’s very essence. That is,

Augustine’s idea of the Church’s “inward” reality of love and charity is what unified all

Christians together.32 Kelly points to Augustine’s argument in On Baptism where he shows that the Donatists were not a part of Church unity because they lacked this

“inward” grace of love and charity. Consequently, they failed to be a part of the “pure”

Church’s inward reality of grace. Kelly assumes this notion is due to Augustine’s

“Platonic background” because he distinguished between the invisible “essence” of the

Church as primary to the “embodiment” of the visible Church.33

Kelly perceives Augustine to be arguing for an affirmation that those “who are ablaze” with love and charity are truly a part of the Church.34 On the other hand, those who are not a part of the Church are merely mixed in with the whole congregation.

Augustine solved the “age-old” question of who really belongs to the “pure” Church by

30 Warfield, Tertullian and Augustine, 122. 31 Warfield, Tertullian and Augustine, 122; See also Pelikan's response: Jaroslav Pelikan, “An Augustinian Dilemma: Augustine's Doctrine of Grace Versus Augustine's Doctrine of the Church?,” Augustinian Studies 18 (1987): 1-29. 32 Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 414. 33 Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 415. 34 Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 415.

conceding that the Church contains only righteous people, yet these people would not be revealed until the final consummation. The righteous are an invisible people who are united in charity and are only known in the mind of God.35 Therefore, the genuine

Church is the invisible Church. Kelly concludes that Augustine never bothered to harmonize this dualist notion of the Church, and further asserts that if he had tried to do so, he would have struggled to give the empirical Church any “validity.”36

Phillip Cary, a philosopher and historian, published a trilogy of books treating

Augustine’s theology in which he argues that vestiges of Platonism remained in

Augustine’s thought throughout his life.37 In the first book of the trilogy, Cary aims to expose Augustine’s Platonic influences by examining his concept of the inward turn toward the self.38 He is suspicious of the Platonic system, especially when Christians tend to accept its philosophy wholesale despite its main incompatibility with the

Incarnation, namely, Christ’s flesh.39 The Incarnation speaks of the Creator entering the creation in human flesh, and Cary believes that this doctrine contradicts the Platonic turn toward the inner self. To turn inward, where Christ in his divinity rests, is to turn away from the body. Cary interprets Augustine as seeking the “inner place” of the soul where the divinity of Christ dwells, consequently discarding the flesh of Christ present in the sacraments.40

35 Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 416; Lee, Mystery of the Church, 67. 36 Kelly, Early Church Doctrines, 416-417. 37 Phillip Cary, Augustine's Invention of the Inner Self: The Legacy of a Christian Platonist (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Idem, Inner Grace: Augustine in the Traditions of Plato and Paul (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Idem, Outward Signs: The Powerlessness of External Things in Augustine’s Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 38 Cary, Augustine’s Invention, viii-xii. 39 Cary, Augustine’s Invention, x, 49-51. 40 Cary, Augustine’s Invention, 50.

Cary’s conception of a Platonized Augustine who stresses the inner self sets the stage for book two of his trilogy. He conceptualizes Augustine’s Neoplatonism as the lens through which he interpreted scripture, particularly the writings of St. Paul.41 In rejecting the notion that Augustine shed his Platonism later in life, Cary articulates how

Augustine synthesized Paul’s teaching on grace with the Platonic notion of turning to the inner self. It is in this inward place, the place where the soul resides and for one to turn, that Augustine believed God comes to dwell. According to Cary, grace can only be granted from seeking it within one’s own self where the Divine comes to be, and this synthesis has Platonic roots. Cary states that Augustine understood the outward “things” of faith as “delays” in the ascent away from what is visible and into the inner dwelling place of one’s self.42 This, then, renders the sacramental reality of the Church to the peripheral realm in Augustine’s ecclesiology.43

Book three of the trilogy serves to flesh out Cary’s understanding of Augustine’s notion of external signs and their signifying roles. Cary argues that Augustine diverted from Greek philosophy by establishing that words are external signs, originating their importance by signifying the interiority of the soul.44 In Cary’s view, Augustine’s devotion to Platonism blunts any use of the Christian sacraments because the external becomes inert. In other words, Augustine erects a “dualism” between the visible and the invisible to such an extent that the outward becomes “powerless” to affect the inward.45

41 Cary, Inner Grace, 4. “[Augustine’s] Pauline convictions about grace and human nature were made to fit into an overarching Platonist framework.” 42 Cary, Inner Grace, 62. 43 Cary, Inner Grace, 62. “So we cannot expect Augustine’s doctrine of grace to work like later Catholic and Lutheran sacramental theology…We may use them, even to that extent love them, but we must not think that they can give us the fruition we long for.” 44 Cary, Outward Signs, 17. 45 Cary, Outward Signs, 163; Lee, Mystery of the Church, xvii.

Consequently, the implications for the Church’s sacramental life suffers from its inability to affect grace in the visible Church.46 It is the invisible Church, unified through inward charity, that holds priority in Augustine’s ecclesiology.47

Cary's studies on Augustine culminates in his most recent published book, The

Meaning of Protestant Theology.48 In desiring to provide the Christian Church with the fruit produced from the Protestant tradition, Cary follows the same trajectories as in his trilogy on Augustine, and he contrasts the Bishop of Hippo's Neoplatonic epistemology with Luther's belief in an outward turn toward flesh in the sacraments and promises of

God. According to Cary, Augustine's inward turn was predicated on an epistemology that implicitly disregarded the flesh of Christ.49 As an antidote to this, Cary suggests that

Luther was the first to identify this epistemology as flawed by offering a newfound conception of the Gospel that is encapsulated in the incarnate Word of God, and this comes from an epistemology of hearing.50 Thus, in Cary's account, the Christian turns outward toward the flesh of Christ in the sacraments by way of hearing the Word of God, and in order to do this, one must simply place their faith alone in the promises of God.51

In this way, then, Cary's critique of Augustine maintains the wide chasm between the visible and invisible Church in the Saint's ecclesiology. Augustine's ecclesiology and sacramental theology fails to have any real significance for the believer since, according

46 Cary, Outward Signs, 200: “This inner gift is not conferred but only marked outwardly…And since the outward mark can be so easily misused and misappropriated, it is not even a sure sign of grace…Augustine never expects signs to provide certainty.” 47 Cary, Outward Signs, 198: “It is not anything that could be called the visible or institutional Church. It is all those holy and spiritual people anywhere in the world who are united inwardly by Christian charity…” 48 Phillip Cary, The Meaning of Protestant Theology: Luther, Augustine, and the Gospel That Gives Us Christ (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019). 49 Cary, Meaning of Protestant Theology, 68-71. 50 Cary, Meaning of Protestant Theology, 147-158, 162-174. 51 Cary, Meaning of Protestant Theology, 269-301.

to Cary, Augustine developed a Neoplatonic epistemology of the inward turn toward a vision of God. Therefore, grace does not come by way of external means, as Luther would later formulate it. Rather, Augustine viewed grace as interiorly located, and the

Church is connected to this inward charity with one another resulting in a contrast between the external and the inner, rendering it incoherent.52

These four scholars do not include all who have proposed Augustine’s ecclesiology as contradictory, but this survey of scholars does show a particular trajectory of interpreting Augustine's distinction between the invisible and visible Church as inconsistent with one another. According to these scholars, Augustine rendered the visible Church inefficacious and stressed primacy to the inner, invisible Church.

However, many Augustine scholars in the mid-to-late 20th century have strongly pushed back on Augustine’s supposed dualistic ecclesiology.53 They claim that Augustine presented a visible, sacramental Church that is not completely separate from the invisible

Church. This stream of scholarship can be attributed to a few scholars, but it is Joseph

Ratzinger’s analysis of Augustine’s ecclesiology that arguably has had the most significant impact. The next objective will be to examine Ratzinger’s treatment of

Augustine’s ecclesiology.

THE YOUNG AUGUSTINE ACCORDING TO RATZINGER

Joseph Ratzinger’s 1954 doctoral dissertation articulates concepts in Augustine’s ecclesiology that would serve later scholars in formulating new assessments in the saint’s

52 Cary, Meaning of Protestant Theology, 89-91. 53 Michael Fahey provides a list of scholars and their scholarship that have produced work in this direction: Fahey, "Augustine’s Ecclesiology Revisited," 174-178.

approach to a theology of the church.54 Ratzinger’s analysis of Augustine’s ecclesiology centers on his post-conversion context in 386.55 The question as to whether Augustine’s conversion in 386 was to philosophical speculation or to the Christian faith is fundamentally a question of his ecclesiology. Scholars prior to Ratzinger have generally argued that Augustine’s conversion was a spiritual decision influenced by Neoplatonic philosophy. Ratzinger’s solution to the question is more multi-dimensional. He locates

Augustine in his Neoplatonic context and interprets Augustine's writings between the relationship of philosophy and religion.

According to Ratzinger, Augustine did accept a philosophical position that consisted of an anagogical movement toward the eternal Being of wisdom. This notion of ascent was provided by the aid of Neoplatonic philosophy and is evident in many of

Augustine’s earliest writings. However, Ratzinger wants to position the philosophy of

Neoplatonism in its historic context so that Augustine’s allegiance to it may better explain his conversion experience testimony.56 In its ancient context, philosophy was used to discover the “first principles” of life in order to present it to its own religious community.57 Philosophy was used as a tool to ground and invoke religious beliefs, claims, and conversion for those in the community. Ratzinger connects this use of philosophy with Augustine and his quest to experience God; it was at once for himself

54 Joseph Ratzinger, Gesammelte Schriften: Volk Und Haus Gottes in Augustins Lehre Von Der Kirche (München: Verlag Herder, 2011). All translations will be my own unless otherwise noted. 55 James K. Lee, “The Mystery of the Church in the Theology of Saint Augustine” (diss., University of Notre Dame, 2012), 16. 56 Aidan Nichols, The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI: An Introduction to the Theology of Joseph Ratzinger (New York: Burns & Oates, 2007), 20. 57 Ratzinger, Volk und Haus Gottes, 8: “On this background, Augustine undertook a comprehensive examination of the non-Christian philosophies of his time. That then Platonism, especially that of Porphyry, understood itself quite practically as a philosophical foundation of pagan cults.”

and for the community of people that surrounded him.58 It would be a mistake to view

Augustine as one who disassociated himself from others in his search for God. On the contrary, Augustine was constantly in the company of family, friends, and acquaintances throughout his life.59

On the other side of the philosophy-religion relationship, Ratzinger views

Augustine's notion of the "way of authority" as a religious expression that is universally accessible, whether one be a philosopher or the common person. Augustine recognized that the Church mediates grace and salvation to all people, something philosophers believed could only be accessed by the intellectual minority.60 In recognizing this way of faithful living in the Church, Augustine comes to the realization that the formation of a

Christian's life in a community stems from the authoritative structures of the Church, and hence Augustine's title of the "way of authority." Thus, Augustine subverts the individual’s speculative search for Wisdom to the way of living life in a faith community.

An example that Ratzinger uses comes from Confessions, in which Augustine cannot recall an “inner” vision of God that he previously experienced.61 Augustine recognized that in order to recall these memories one needed to seek help outside of oneself through external means, hence a community of like-minded believers.62

Ratzinger acknowledges that Augustine, in his earliest writings, investigated the

Christian faith with the aid of philosophy. Augustine’s conception of the Church in these early writings is mostly expressed in philosophical terms. This is precisely the point at

58 Nichols, Thought of Pope Benedict, 20. 59 Nancy Bedford, “Liberating Augustine: Rethinking Augustine's Emphasis On Interiority,” Theology Today 71, no. 2 (2017): 151-52. 60 Nichols, Thought of Pope Benedict, 20; Lee, Mystery of the Church, xxviii. 61 Augustine, Confessions, 123. 62 Nichols, Thought of Pope Benedict, 20-21.

which Ratzinger perceives the originating form of Augustine’s ecclesiology. In order to show these forms, Ratzinger offers two concepts that help to situate Augustine's ecclesiology: people of God and house of God.63 In examining Augustine’s concept of faith, Ratzinger discerns the concept of Church as people of God. Additionally,

Augustine’s reflections on love lead Ratzinger to apply the concept of the Church as house of God. These two concepts help Ratzinger to better locate Augustine’s ecclesiology in his early writings.64

Ratzinger interprets Augustine’s constant wrestling with skepticism and authority as the impetus that led him to ratify the value of faith in a Christian community. For

Ratzinger, this alludes to a people of God ecclesiology. He argues that Augustine’s concept of faith serves as the invisible Church appearing in visible form. Faith serves as a kind of food to be fed upon by the visible Church.65 Therefore, the visible Church makes a real appearance as an imperative juncture during the ascent of the soul toward ultimate

Wisdom. Hence, a people of God ecclesiology is a visible Church when Augustine’s concept of faith is considered in light of the community’s inward seeking of divine

Wisdom.66

House of God does not appear in Augustine’s earliest writings though Ratzinger does point out the imagery’s connection to Augustine’s reflections on prayer and sacrifice. This is significant because as Ratzinger points out, they have an “intimate relation” with the visible Church.67 Moreover, Ratzinger concedes that Augustine, early

63 Nichols, Thought of Pope Benedict, 21; Lee, Mystery of the Church, xxviii; Fahey, "Augustine’s Ecclesiology Revisited," 175. 64 Nichols, Thought of Pope Benedict, 21. 65 Nichols, Thought of Pope Benedict, 21. 66 Nichols, Thought of Pope Benedict, 21. 67 Nichols, Thought of Pope Benedict, 22.

on, gives priority to the person’s interiority as the dwelling space for God. This focus, then, could potentially render the Church and the sacraments ineffective. However,

Ratzinger holds on to Augustine’s mentioning of the “temple of God” in On The Teacher and relates them to his concepts of unity and love. Both of these concepts of unity and love as well as the temple of God would hold potential for developing a more visible

Church once Augustine was to encounter the North African Church later in life.68

What is more, Ratzinger is careful not to lament Augustine’s Platonism. Rather, he is determined to show that there are certain Platonic beliefs that resonate with

Christianity. For example, Ratzinger notes the dualism existing between the finite and the

Infinite.69 In order for the finite to account for itself as a real object in the world, it participates in its transcendent source. That being said, Ratzinger believes that the early

Augustine had not yet fully comprehended the doctrine of the Incarnation: the Infinite descending to the finite.70 Due to humanity’s fallenness, subjects are incapable of comprehending the Divine, so the Word was revealed in human flesh that they would have access to revelation in the Church. This Incarnational connection to the Church was something that developed for Augustine as he began to embrace the scriptures as teaching the salvific, historical event of Christ in the 390s.

Contrary to the scholars who interpret Augustine's ecclesiology as contradictory,

Ratzinger historically and theologically contextualizes the middle path taken by

Augustine after his conversion. It is an intellectual journey that eventually turns into an

68 Ratzinger, Volk und Haus Gottes, 44: “From here, moreover, the line of connection to the philosophical concerns of the early Augustine became clear, which, enriched by the experience of African ecclesiology, acquired a new meaning in the examination of pagan theology”; Nichols, Thought of Pope Benedict, 22. 69 Nichols, Thought of Pope Benedict, 22. 70 Nichols, Thought of Pope Benedict, 22.

acceptance of the historical event of Christ inaugurating the visible Church. This move toward an acknowledgement of the visible, historical Church leads Augustine to attribute more value to concrete forms in the world.71 The concrete form that constitutes

Christianity is the visible Church. Ratzinger further notes that Augustine later established the visible Church at the center of the “intelligible world.”72 As Augustine’s theology develops, Ratzinger finds two contexts in which Augustine’s ecclesiology strongly appears: the controversy surrounding the Donatist Church in North Africa and the failing

Roman Empire inhabited by the pagans.

THE MATURE AUGUSTINE ACCORDING TO RATZINGER

After surveying the influences on Augustine’s ecclesiological thought,73

Ratzinger examines the history and controversy within the Donatist Church in the 4th and

5th centuries.74 The first point that Ratzinger considers is Augustine’s claim that the

Donatist Church is bereft of caritas. Ratzinger is careful to point out that the type of caritas that Augustine is referring to is not one of subjective giving and humility, but one of “belonging.”75 For Augustine, the Donatists were committing their greatest sin, not with the practice of re-baptizing converts, but in their schismatic posture toward the

Catholic Church. In recognizing this subtle description of caritas in Augustine’s ecclesiological context, Ratzinger coins a phrase for Augustine’s notion of caritas:

71 Nichols, Thought of Pope Benedict, 22-23. 72 Nichols, Thought of Pope Benedict, 23; Lee, Mystery of the Church, xxviii. 73 Concerning ecclesiology, Ratzinger suggests that Augustine was influenced by three in particular: Tertullian, Cyprian, and Optatus of Milevis. 74 Robert A. Markus, “Donatus, Donatism” in Augustine through the Ages, ed. Allan Fitzgerald et al. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), 284-287. 75 Nichols, Thought of Pope Benedict, 28; Root, Augustine and Modern Theology, 61-64.

“objective charity.”76 Ratzinger argues that Augustine understands the Church itself to participate in objective charity through a “Eucharist love-relationship” with Christians throughout the world.77 For the Church to take shape as a visible reality, the invisible

Church participates in the Eucharist through a charitable union with all Christians worldwide.

Ratzinger identifies the type of caritas that Augustine is referring to and connects it with the imagery of people of God. However, he specifies the dialectical nature that this imagery provides concerning Augustine’s conception of the Church. On the one hand, the Church functions as Christ’s Bride, a people of God that is at times faithful.

The Bride of Christ, therefore, participates in the external caritas seen and experienced throughout the world. On the other hand, the Church as the Bride of Christ can also be a people of God that is unfaithful and rebellious. The external means of caritas do not constitute the means for salvation. Salvation is a gift that comes from the Holy Spirit and belongs to Christians who remain in caritas together.78 Here, one can see the affinities between this imagery of the Church and the scholars who place a priority on the invisible

Church over the empirical Church. Ratzinger is unwilling to go this route, however, because he believes that while the invisible is distinct from the visible, Augustine does not entirely separate the two.

First, Ratzinger discloses a gradual change in Augustine’s ecclesiology from a vision of the truth of God to a charitable belonging to God. In Augustine’s eyes, the Holy

Spirit unites the external Church through a caritas of belonging (Eucharistic

76 Nichols, Thought of Pope Benedict, 28. 77 Nichols, Thought of Pope Benedict, 28. 78 Nichols, Thought of Pope Benedict, 28.

participation) and brings to fruition the visible Church from the invisible. The earlier

Augustine would have simply stressed salvation being obtained through intellectual apprehension, hence his enthusiasm for the inward turn toward Wisdom dwelling in the soul. In his later writings he relocates this saving grace to be a part of the invisible

Church appearing in the visible Church by way of caritas.79 Accordingly, the true and holy Church becomes something that is visible, external, and seen.

Secondly, Ratzinger claims that Augustine brings to light the essentiality of charitable unity with regard to salvation in the Church. Whereas the Eastern Fathers before him struggled to position the Church within the context of salvation, Augustine enables all discourse on soteriology to include the Church.80 Once again, the Donatists were not committing their greatest crime by practicing rebaptism; rather, it was their resistance to the Holy Spirit’s gift of charitable unity placed within the visible Church.81

After establishing these ecclesial themes in the anti-Donatist texts, Ratzinger is able to further identify ecclesiological concepts in Augustine’s City of God.

City of God is a text that Augustine wrote in order to address the pagans of Rome who claimed that the influence of Christianity led to the downfall of the Roman Empire.82

The Roman Empire was sacked in 410 by the Visigoths, causing many of Rome’s citizens to question their allegiance to Christianity. The pagans of Rome called for a return to the cultic practices of their ancestors. They believed that in doing so the State

79 Nichols, Thought of Pope Benedict, 28. 80 Nichols, Thought of Pope Benedict, 28. 81 Ratzinger uses this theme in his defense of the universal Church as having priority over the local church: Joseph Ratzinger, Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today, trans. Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996), 85-86; See also Volf’s helpful summary: Miroslav Volf, After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998), 46; For Volf’s critique on Ratzinger’s emphasis on the universal Church, see: Volf, After Our Likeness, 141-145. 82 Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 297-311.

would rejuvenate its welfare back into its former primacy. Through a mountain of theological, philosophical, political, and historical apologetics, Augustine defends the notion that humans can only obtain welfare by being in loving union with God. Sinful humanity participates in this charitable union through a means of grace, coming in the form of man. According to Augustine, the incarnate God serves as the Mediator of humanity through an act of self-sacrificial love, contrary to the sacrificial cults of the pagans. The sacrifice of the Mediator enables genuine worship of God in the earthly city; the city where no human being can escape its boundaries.83 Nevertheless, the question remained for the pagans: how does this sacrifice of the incarnate God become the ultimate sacrifice for human beings?

Ratzinger explains how Augustine understood the sacrifice of Christ to become the sacrifice for humanity by appealing to the Holy Spirit dwelling in humans. Augustine argues that upon grace in Christ and his resurrection, the Holy Spirit comes with the faith of Christ and settles in each believer’s heart. However, the Spirit of Christ operates in a mutually dynamic way with the grace of Christ and should not be separated because they are the same thing. The Holy Spirit, then, releases into the believer’s heart a charitable unity within the body of Christ, who is the Church. According to Ratzinger, because the body of Christ is not immediately accessible, it can only be discovered in a participation of the external sign of the Eucharist. Therefore, the invisible Church constituted by the charitable unity of its members, realized in the Holy Spirit’s fruition of Christ’s grace, is made visible in its practice of the Eucharistic celebration.84

83 Nichols, Thought of Pope Benedict, 31. 84 Nichols, Thought of Pope Benedict, 28.

For Ratzinger’s interpretation of Augustine, the charitable unity that stems from the Spirit of Christ in the believer’s heart becomes the very locus of union in the

Eucharist and the Church. This becomes evident in City of God where Augustine distinguishes between the heavenly city and the earthly city by revealing their orientations to separate loves.85 In particular, the earthly city finds its love with objects in the “here and now” while the heavenly city finds its love in God, the ultimate foundation of everything.86 Thus, one can seek out the signs according to each city: earthly love, as in lust; heavenly love, as in caritas.87 In its ecclesiological context, Augustine, once again, establishes caritas at the center of the Church.88 Subsequently, the city of God moves and performs within the visible community on earth via its sacramental presence.

The true Church as city of God, in its oriented signs of caritas, becomes a pilgrim people of God by way of charitable union in its participation in the Eucharist. Therefore, the city of God and the visible Church are not contrasting realities, operating on wholly different tracks.89

Ratzinger’s treatment of Augustine's ecclesiology serves to combat the scholarship that has portrayed Augustine's view of the visible and invisible Church as contradictory. Ratzinger is able to widen the lens of Augustine’s ecclesiology by examining not only his early writings, but also his mature writings thereby emphasizing the importance that Augustine places on the Church’s visible dimensions. Both become necessary for one another in that the visible springs from the invisible. There is a

85 Augustine, City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 593-94. 86 Nichols, Thought of Pope Benedict, 32. 87 For a deeper analysis, see: Van Oort, Jerusalem and Babylon, 93-154. 88 Nichols, Thought of Pope Benedict, 32. 89 Nichols, Thought of Pope Benedict, 32.

performative action that takes place, and it is by way of performance that this discloses an outward, visible appearance to the world. The whole body of Christ can be recognized in its mirroring of scripture’s performative demands. This will be discussed further in chapter three, but an analysis of Augustine's early writings will be surveyed first in order to set up the context of Augustine's Enarrationes in Psalmos.

CHAPTER TWO

AUGUSTINE'S CHRISTOLOGICAL REVOLUTION

Scholarship on Augustine has been divided as to whether the Saint developed an incoherent ecclesiology. As has already been shown, much of this dispute centers around the question of Augustine's distinction between the relationship of the visible and invisible Church. Ratzinger is helpful for this study because he perceived in Augustine more subtlety and sophistication than many have often granted the Saint. The Church is constituted by invisible and visible dimensions, but they are bound up with one another.

That is, the inner and outer aspects of the Church are distinct but not entirely separate.

Any overemphasis on Augustine's Neoplatonic "inward turn" tends to betray Augustine's emphasis on exteriority. As Rowan Williams has noted, any mention of interiority in

Augustine's writings is always linked to his conception of an outward dimension such as

Christ and the Church.90

While Ratzinger's examination of Augustine revolves primarily around his developing ecclesiology, this thesis will examine Augustine's Christological development in order to disclose the Saint's growing awareness of Christ and Church as one body. In order to make sense of Ratzinger's study more clearly, this chapter aims to show how

Augustine's Christology developed from his earliest writings to his writings as the Bishop of Hippo in 396. In order to show why Augustine did not have an incoherent ecclesiology, one must recognize how Augustine's Christology implied his ecclesiology and vice-versa. Augustine's ecclesiological development traversed on the same trajectory

90 Rowan Williams, "De Trinitate," in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan Fitzgerald and et. al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 845-851, esp. 846.

as his Christological development, and the purpose of this chapter will be to show why this was the case.

One reason that a Christological development can be seen in the 390's Augustine as opposed to the early Augustine is due to his appropriation of the Neoplatonic ascent.

Early on, Augustine struggled to maintain a clear vision of God through his inward turn toward intellectual ascent, something he describes several times in his accounts detailed in Confessions. The first two attempts at ascent disclose Augustine's inability to maintain a clear vision, causing him to become ever more persistent. The Ostia ascent, however, depicts Augustine's successful attempt at ascent, but this time it is uniquely through hearing God's Word rather than obtaining vision. The concept of hearing God's word,

"the Word made flesh," has deep implications for Augustine's readings of the Psalms and his subsequent formulating of the doctrine of the totus Christus.91 One aspect of this chapter, then, will be to investigate Augustine's use of Neoplatonism, his modification of the notion of Neoplatonic ascent, and how his developing Christology was behind the later Ostia ascent.

In Augustine's earliest extant writings, the Cassiciacum dialogues (386-87), the texts reveal a recently-converted-Christian who is working out a way to conceptualize how one might achieve the pathway to the happy life. The themes set forth in the early dialogues are far less Christological than Augustine's works from 392 onwards. From

386-391, Augustine's writings lacked the Christology found in his mid-390's writings, but rather than supposing that Augustine first converted to Neoplatonism and much later to

Christianity, this study rejects that notion. On the contrary, Augustine converted to an

91 This concept will be fully analyzed in chapter three.

orthodox Christianity, one that his mother had prayed for and one that Ambrose had been preaching prior to Augustine's conversion in 386. However, Augustine details in his

Confessions that it was in discerning how "Catholic truth is to be distinguished from the false opinion of Photinus" that he experienced a Christological revolution.92 This

Christological error in Augustine's thought, propagated by the heretic Photinus,93 influenced the way in which Augustine viewed one's ability to achieve the happy life.

Photinus (d. 376) was an adoptionist who taught that Christ was an exemplary model of human behavior thereby achieving divinity precluding any status of divine nature prior to his birth.94 By viewing Jesus as a mere human who was ordained by God to model intellectual ascent, Augustine accepted a faulty notion of the incarnation, demonstrating his failure to make the distinction between the "Catholic truth" and the "false opinion of

Photinus."95 Once this Christological error vanished, Augustine not only began to read

Paul in a much different light, but also he linked his Christology and ecclesiology together. Arguably, Augustine's use of "the way of authority" in the Cassiciacum dialogues reveals the young convert's Photinian Christology whereby the many were shown how to imitate Jesus Christ, the wise man, who modeled the way toward ascent.

Additionally, the young Augustine's use of "the way of reason" shows that he once privileged the pursuit of the liberal arts and philosophy.

Augustine's Christological and ecclesiological development coinciding into one totus Christus can also be attributed to the external factors of the Donatist controversy.

92 Augustine, Confessions, 129. 93 Augustine's Photinianism will be explored later in this chapter. 94 Brian Dobell, Augustine's Intellectual Conversion: The Journey from Platonism to Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 16-17. 95 It must be noted that this line of reasoning implies that Augustine swung the pendulum from holding to one view of the Manichaean Christ, who was entirely a spiritual agent, to the Photinian Christ, who was the very best example of a human reaching intellectual ascent and vision of God.

His move toward an orthodox Christology in the 390s subsequently provided Augustine with the polemical tools to deal with the Donatist Church, a schismatic sect originating in the early fourth century. Through many letters, homilies, and a theological treatise,

Augustine developed a sophisticated ecclesiology based on his understanding of the sacramental life of the Church and the authority of Christ over the Church. This chapter will retrieve the themes that Augustine used throughout his anti-Donatist writings in order to contrast his understanding of Christ and Church in the Cassiciacum dialogues.

Therefore, the Donatist controversy will be historically contextualized and examined so that the brunt of Augustine's developing Christology and ecclesiology are better enhanced.

Lastly, this chapter will examine whether there is continuity from the recently- converted Augustine in 386 to the Bishop of Hippo in 396. This question will be examined in order to make the case as to why Augustine experienced a Christological revolution in the mid-390s, while at the same time eschewing the popular notion that

Augustine experienced a so-called Pauline revolution. Based on this Christological revolution, it can then be shown that his ecclesiology was greatly impacted at the same time of his Christological development. A unique attempt, then, will be made in uniting the scholars who take different sides in this dispute, most notably Peter Brown and Carol

Harrison. The chapter will end by disclosing the developments in Augustine's

Christology and ecclesiology, demonstrating a trajectory in his thought from the beginning and also revealing an explosion of new Christological developments in 396.

THE EARLY WORKS OF AUGUSTINE The early writings of Augustine reveal not so much a theologian who has immersed himself in the scriptures as they do a philosopher who is primarily influenced by Plotinus (204–270 CE), a Neoplatonic philosopher. As is evident in these early writings, Augustine emphasized the Plotinian concept of a return to the One. According to Plotinus, the soul is corrupted by the material elements of this world and therefore required a "turning away" of the soul toward "the things above."96 This doctrine consists of the soul's intellectual ascent whereby the soul successfully leaves behind the sensible world and returns to "the Good and Beautiful," the One from which all things emanate.97

For Plotinus, intellectual ascent and a return to the One is key to the purification of one's soul.98 In doing so, the soul relinquishes all of its bodily entrapments and achieves the vision of truth residing in the immaterial One. Once this purification is achieved, the soul's journey yields a new way of seeing, and Plotinus urges his reader toward this ascent to the vision of the fullness of Being. Indeed, Plotinus insists, "this is the way of life of gods" and an assured "release from everything [in the sensible world]."99 A final refuge of the alone to the Alone.100 That is, no one will accompany the solitary soul that is ascending toward the vision of truth; the ascending will be accomplished alone, in complete solitude.

96 Plotinus, The Enneads, ed. Lloyd Gerson, trans. George Boys-Stones et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 98. 97 Plotinus, The Enneads, 99. 98 Plotinus, The Enneads, 102: "If you have become this and have seen it and find yourself in a purified state, you have no impediment to becoming one in this way nor do you have something else mixed in with yourself, but you are entirely yourself, true light alone, neither measured by magnitude nor reduced by a circumscribing shape nor expanded indefinitely in magnitude but being unmeasured everywhere, as something greater than every measure and better than every quantity." 99 Plotinus, The Enneads, 898. 100 Plotinus, The Enneads, 898. The Gerson translation renders it as "the refuge of a solitary in the solitary."

In the year 386, Augustine retired to Cassiciacum with a group of friends and his mother, Monica. This year marks the juncture at which Augustine converted to

Christianity and received his baptism in the spring of 387.101 While residing there,

Augustine completed four of his earliest works: Soliloquia, Contra Academicos, De beata vita, and De ordine. Each of these texts will be examined so that Augustine's Neoplatonic influences may be retrieved and contrasted to his later writings.

SOLILOQUIA

In his Soliloquia Augustine evidences strong traces of Neoplatonism in what he emphasized as seeking the vision of truth over and against the virtues of faith, hope, and charity.102 This becomes particularly evident when Augustine insists that he must return to a vision of God by rejecting the failing materials of this finite world and by setting his soul on fixed and everlasting things.103 He continues to explain that the "eye of the mind" is only "healthy" when it "is pure from every taint of the body" and is utterly removed from "the desire of mortal things."104 Apprehending the truth of vision becomes possible in Augustine's Soliloquies so long as one is able to discard material goods: "We need sound and perfect wings if we are to fly from this darkness to yonder light, which does not deign to manifest itself to [persons] shut up in a cave unless they can escape…"105

Most notably, Augustine's Soliloquia explicates the "two ways" whereby a person is able to become a "lover of Wisdom" either through the pursuit of philosophy or the

101 Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 108-120. 102 Lee, Mystery of the Church, 29-31. 103 Augustine, "Soliloquies" in Augustine: Early Writings, ed. and trans. John Burleigh, The Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1953), 38. 104 Augustine, Soliloquies, 30. Indeed, "only the healthy mind can see [God]." 105 Augustine, Soliloquies, 38.

embrace of Church authority.106 In borrowing the Neoplatonic language of viewing the

"sun" as comprehending Wisdom, Augustine compares this to the philosopher who has been trained in the liberal arts thereby enabling them to obtain vision.107 The majority, however, who have not been trained in the liberal arts will need to undergo a process of education and practice by "teachers" who help with the "students of wisdom who do not yet have sharp vision."108 This way of authority constituted the second path that leads to an intellectual ascent of vision and contemplation. The first path, designated for the trained philosophers, was where Augustine placed himself in contradistinction to Church authority. Indeed, the Soliloquia locates the significance and value of the Church as a back-up plan for those who were not trained in the liberal arts. If the Church's service was placed secondarily, then Christ's work through the Church was rendered inefficacious.

Consequently, Christ's presence was relegated to a lower status that resembled the philosopher who had obtained the skills necessary to reach this view of God in solitary pursuit–the Photinian Christ.

Before his death in 430, Augustine would revisit his early writings and retract this theme of two paths toward contemplation. He notes that in describing separate paths to

Wisdom, it presumed that there were paths "besides Christ, who said: I am the Way."109

Augustine's Christological revolution in the 390s would enable him to see Christ as the mediator between God and humanity, helping him to recognize that Christ could not exist outside the Church. For Augustine, a visible ecclesiology would become intrinsic to his

106 Augustine, Soliloquies, 37. 107 Augustine, Soliloquies, 37: "Some eyes are so strong and vigorous that as soon as they are opened, they can look at the sun without any hesitation." 108 Augustine, Soliloquies, 38. 109 Augustine, Retractiones, 1.4.3., retrieved from Augustine, "Soliloquies" in Augustine: Early Writings, ed. and trans. John Burleigh, The Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1953), 18.

view of the Church as an outer entity that gathers all those seeking union with God into his body. It comes as no surprise, then, that in revisiting this text near the end of his life,

Augustine would find the theme of two paths toward contemplation as an "offense to religious ears."110

CONTRA ACADEMICOS

The Contra Academicos finds Augustine questioning whether happiness can be attained by way of achieving truth or in the very search for this truth. He seeks the purification of the mind through the pursuit of philosophy and the liberal arts, concluding that it is the search for truth that leads to the happy life. However, Augustine views this as something that only the intellectual few can accomplish thereby requiring divine assistance for those not capable of reaching this intellectual ascent.111 In book two,

Augustine begins his critique of the New Academy and its position that truth cannot be attained with absolute certainty. Rather the Academics taught that truth can only be found in "what-is-like-truth," a puzzling position that Augustine believes is incoherent because one cannot know what truth is like if truth itself is not known.112 From this, Augustine believes that the certainty of truth must be found if one should continue to seek it.113 He concludes that truth can be achieved.114 Thus, in order to compel ascent to this absolute truth, Augustine implies that divine help must be granted beyond the human for the majority of people who have not been trained in the liberal arts and philosophy. Here,

110 Augustine, Retractiones, 1.4.3; Soliloquies, 18. 111 Augustine, Against the Academics, trans. Michael Foley (New Haven: Yale University, 2019), 39-47; 42-43: …it seemed to me that no fortune was favorable unless it granted the leisure of philosophizing and no life was happy unless it was lived in philosophy." 112 Augustine, Against the Academics, 57-58. 113 Augustine, Against the Academics, 59-60. 114 Augustine, Against the Academics, 65-66.

again, Augustine grants a realm of authority for those not capable of reaching ascent through their own intellectual power. Nevertheless, the Church, as this realm of authority, is given a backseat to the intellectual rigor of the liberal arts and philosophy.

Christ or the Church is also not given a full treatment in this text, even though

Augustine is insistent on never departing from "the authority of Christ" in his pursuit of intellectual ascent.115 Accordingly, the search for wisdom by way of "the Platonists" and their urgency to seek a vision of Truth is never "incompatible with [the Church's] sacred teachings."116 For Augustine, then, "we are urged on to learn by the twin weight of authority and reason."117 Thus, Augustine fails to incorporate a concept of a

Christological mediation into a true participation of the Church for the purification of the mind. Instead, there are two modes of access in the telos of vision: the Church's authority–which is something Augustine never precisely defines for his interlocutors–and through the philosophical pursuit of the purification of the mind.118 Furthermore, any embrace of the Church as a social and communal body is not developed or emphasized whereas intellectual ascent is prioritized in a strictly individualistic sense.

115 Augustine, Against the Academics, 112; Joanne McWilliam notes that there is no certainty as to why Augustine accepts the "authority of Christ" and suggests that both "complex motivation [and] psychological weariness must have played a part." See, Joanne McWilliam, “Contra Academicos” in Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan Fitzgerald et al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 4. I would contend that Augustine's acceptance of Christ's authority is predicated on his Photinian Christology that led him to believe Christ as the great human exemplar of intellectual ascent. This contention perfectly aligns with the trajectory that Michael Cameron finds in Augustine's three phases of Christological development. See, Michael Cameron, “The Christological Substructure of Augustine's Figurative Exegesis,” in Augustine and the Bible, ed. and trans. Pamela Bright (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1999), 74-103, esp. 80-82: "…God approaches lost humanity especially through the mind, sending the Word into flesh and history in order to reveal the way to the spiritual realm." Whereas Cameron thinks that Augustine maintained an orthodox view of Christology, albeit a developing one, I propose that this early view of Augustine's is Photinian. 116 Augustine, Against the Academics, 112. 117 Augustine, Against the Academics, 112. 118 Lee, Mystery of the Church, 32.

DE BEATA VITA

In De beata vita, Augustine employs Plotinian categories in his exploration of what constitutes the happy life. In Neoplatonic fashion, Augustine prioritizes the soul's journey toward truth by way of an inward turn in order to reach the final vision of God through solitary contemplation. At the very outset, Augustine echoes the concept he set forth in Contra Academicos by naming philosophical pursuit as the sea "port" through which only "very small numbers" will be able "to reach."119 The sea of life, embedded with all its tossing and turning from the stormy winds, causes the majority to be distracted and set off its course.120 Augustine, therefore, establishes the "seafaring" people into three categories "whom philosophy is able to receive."121 The first group is constituted by those who obtain "reason" and "with a little sweep and stroke of the oars" arrive at the port of philosophy, the happy life.122 This first group, for Augustine, is the

"shining bright standard" for the rest.123 The second group comprises those who take up the material goods of this world and treasure it above the pursuit of philosophy and reason. They happily neglect a pursuit of the happy life in being swept by every wind that seems "favorable."124 However, once the person in the second group experiences some sort of tragedy, they return to philosophy and those who have set standards from the first group which ultimately guides them to the port. The third group consists of those who leave land and head for the port of philosophy after being inspired by those who have set

119 Augustine, On the Happy Life, trans. Michael Foley (New Haven: Yale University, 2019), 17. 120 Augustine, On the Happy Life, 17. 121 Augustine, On the Happy Life, 18. 122 Augustine, On the Happy Life, 18. Notice here that Augustine seems to preserve some space for humanity's capabilities of achieving the happy life, a theme he would later come to reject in his anti- Pelagian writings. 123 Augustine, On the Happy Life, 18. 124 Augustine, On the Happy Life, 18.

the standards before them but find themselves being distracted by the "clouds" or

"sinking stars" until a favorable wind draws them to the port.125

Augustine's brief description of the three different ways in which one reaches the port of philosophy, and thus the happy life, is to identify himself among one of the three.

After asking his interlocutor, Theodorus, which of these three he believes that Augustine belongs to, Augustine confesses his position in group three.126 Here, Augustine emphasizes the pursuit of philosophy to such an extent, that any mention of mediation through the Church is given very little, if any, priority. Augustine does, however, discuss the merit of Christ for the first time in the Cassiciacum dialogues. He emphasizes wisdom as the spiritual measure in which the soul longs for and desires, and then subsequently relates this wisdom with the Wisdom of God.127 Augustine frames this supreme measure within a Neoplatonic framework and views Wisdom (Jesus Christ) as the one who leads the subject to union with God by way of vision. This, again, is reserved for the majority who have not been trained the liberal arts or philosophy, and therefore requires a way of authority to obtain salvation. This Wisdom of God is merely the human Jesus who models how to reach spiritual ascent, and the two ways of reason and authority are securely placed in one's achieving of the happy life. Within this framework, the young

Augustine remains enthralled by reaching the contemplative life through the means of wisdom and intellectual ascent.

125 Augustine, On the Happy Life, 18. 126 Augustine, On the Happy Life, 20-21. 127 Augustine, On the Happy Life, 49.

DE ORDINE

In the final text of the Cassiciacum dialogues, De ordine, Augustine explores the question of theodicy–how God can be good and omnipotent while evil continues to plague the world. He begins by rejecting the dilemma altogether and proclaims that the human mind should instead attempt to perceive the whole divine order. According to

Augustine, this can only be accomplished through the discipline of intellectual practices such as the liberal arts and philosophy. Using Plotinian methods, Augustine recommends one to withdraw from the knowledge of the sensible world in order for the real truth of the intelligible world to be completely comprehended. The liberal arts and philosophy are held in such great esteem that Augustine emphasizes their pursuit of achieving the truth.128 Augustine reassures the reader that the pursuit of philosophy will not contradict the authority of the Church, but nevertheless, the practices of the Church are located in the peripheral when it comes to the primacy of intellectual ascent.

Furthermore, Christ is treated in De ordine with strong Photinian characteristics.

In book two, for example, Augustine states that divine authority129 "acts beyond all human power with miracles" in order to lead humanity "to soar above the intellect."130

Additionally, divine authority "further commands [humanity] not to stick to the level of the senses" so that it can leave behind all the "vain things" that are earthbound.131 This path toward salvation, then, has been taught by divine authority through "deeds,"

"miracles," and "mercy."132 Augustine's understanding of divine authority is that of a

128 Augustine, On Order, trans. Silvano Borruso (South Bend: St. Augustine's Press, 2007), 85-86. 129 Augustine does not make any reference to Christ in this passage, but he is clearly referring to him by using the term divine authority. See, Dobell, Augustine's Intellectual Conversion, 50. 130 Augustine, On Order, 87. 131 Augustine, On Order, 87. 132 Augustine, On Order, 87.

teacher who models how to turn inward and arrive at intellectual ascent, captivating souls who set out on this journey of vision of God.

DE DOCTRINA CHRISTIANA

These early extant writings during his period in Cassiciacum are clearly influenced by Plotinian philosophy that emphasizes the doctrine of the One and its prioritizing of intellectual ascent.133 Regarding Augustine’s ecclesiology, it suggests that

Augustine viewed the inward turn of the soul as a liberating act contrary to grace coming through material, outward means. Hence, a distinction is assumed between the two in that the external and sacramental channels of grace, which is practiced by the visible Church, is ultimately excluded or placed secondarily.134 Any effort on Augustine's part to develop a space for authority and community is still located as a penultimate place because contemplation through intellectual ascent triumphs all forms of attaining happiness and truth. Augustine would later be selected to a clerical position providing him with the opportunity to study the scriptures with far more interest in how they might speak to the mysteries of the Christian faith located in the Church.

Augustine would come to modify the Neoplatonic ascent in his later writings, including De doctrina christiana. 135 The writings that would follow Augustine's

Christological revolution discard solitary contemplation but not intellectual ascent.

However, this Plotinian theme of ascent would undergo serious appropriations that would

133 See Andrew Louth’s essay on the affinities between Augustine and Plotinus: Andrew Louth, “Augustine,” in The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 2006), 128-53. 134 Lee, Mystery of the Church, 32. 135 Augustine, Teaching Christianity, ed. John Rotelle O.S.A., trans. Edmund Hill O.P. (Hyde Park: New City Press, 1996).

prioritize the communal aspects in achieving intellectual ascent.136 Augustine begins to strike a new tone in the way that he conceptualizes the happy life and how it might be attained. No longer does achieving intellectual ascent require the solitary pursuit of the soul but rather a commitment to faith, hope, and charity.137 The Church community constituted in charity is the means through which the person participates in the happy life.

For instance, Augustine claims that humans were created to enjoy the goodness of the

Triune God in whom the Church participates, and this causes in each Christian "to enjoy

[God]" so that they might "enjoy one another in [God]."138 Andrew Louth views this change in Augustine as a replacement due to a newfound conceptualization of the

Incarnation and the Holy Spirit's indwelling among the Church's members.139

The main theme for Augustine in De doctrina christiana is how might the Church interpret scripture faithfully and properly. He argues in the prologue of the text that a proper interpretation of scripture can only come through the community in which one participates. Whereas he grants that some might learn on an individual basis by way of the Holy Spirit illuminating the text for the reader, Augustine notes that they were still trained in some fashion by a community. This is a clear move away from Augustine's earlier emphasis on solitary contemplation and attaining wisdom by one's own solitary ascent. Augustine is beginning to envision community as a necessary need for the

Christian to be educated in the happy life rather than his earlier priority of individual ascent.

136 Lee, Mystery of the Church, 34. Lee, however, misses the importance of hearing God's Word spoken in the intellectual ascent. 137 Augustine, Teaching Christianity, 130-131. 138 Augustine, Teaching Christianity, 126. 139 Louth, The Christian Mystical Tradition, 158: "The soul's ecstasy–so important for Plotinus–is replaced, we might almost say…by God's ecstasy in the condescension of the Incarnation and the pouring forth of the Holy Spirit, as love, in the hearts of Christians."

The theme of journey also takes on a modification in De doctrina christiana when

Augustine establishes his famous distinction between things to be used and things to be enjoyed.140 “To enjoy something” he believes “is to hold fast to it” with a passionate love for the sake of the object itself.141 On the other hand, “to use something” is to simply utilize an object with the purpose of acquiring what one really desires. For Augustine, this distinction is important in order for humanity to recognize where it is that their happiness belongs. For example, Augustine makes use of a captivating analogy that depicts a wanderer who is “unhappy” because they miss their “homeland.”142 If the wanderer were to travel by land and sea, it would be nonsense for them to be “fascinated by the delights of the journey” instead of “using” the transports for their intended object: their homeland.143 In the same way, Augustine is claiming that humans need not be wholly committed to the things of this world, but to use them on their way toward the eternal rest in the Triune God.144 This by no means negates the validity of the things of this world because they are created by God in order to be used, thus rendering them necessary for the journey. Even other people are included in this journey for one to use, disclosing Augustine's conception of the Church community as having a unique role in participating in God.

A theme that seems mostly lacking in the Cassiciacum dialogues is one that is primarily Incarnational. De doctrina christiana serves as the first text in which Augustine develops a robust doctrine of Christ as mediator.145 Here, he describes the greatest

140 Augustine, Teaching Christianity, 110-113. 141 Augustine, Teaching Christianity, 110. 142 Augustine, Teaching Christianity, 111. 143 Augustine, Teaching Christianity, 111. 144 Augustine, Teaching Christianity, 111-113. 145 Lee, Mystery of the Church, 37-40.

impediment to union with God is sin rather than the material elements of the sensible world. Humanity is encapsulated in a constant state of sin and this prevents the Church community from entering into the full participation of God.146 Thus, the Wisdom of God came into the world in order to heal humanity of their "sickness."147

Furthermore, we are still on the way, a way however not from place to place, but one traveled by the affections. And it was being blocked, as by a barricade of thorn bushes, by the malice of our past sins. So what greater generosity and compassion could he have shown, after deliberately making himself the pavement under our feet along which we could return home, than to forgive us all our sins once we had turned our back to him, and by being crucified for us to root out the ban blocking our return that had been so firmly fixed in place?148

The Plotinian theme of solitary ascent is appropriated to account for an Incarnational path forward in the Church's process of purification from sin. Christ, the mediator, has now become central in Augustine's ecclesiology by way of attributing the forgiveness of sins to the Incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ. Augustine no longer views a solitary ascent as the means through which one achieves the vision of God. On the contrary, God became the "pavement under our feet" to help guide the Church back to their heavenly home. This is set in contradistinction to the Neoplatonic One who holds no regard for the solitary soul's journey of ascent.

Augustine also seems to lose interest in the prioritizing of the liberal disciplines as the way to contemplate truth. In establishing a twofold ordering of learning and morals,

Augustine is able to create a way forward for there to be a use of the liberal arts that is subordinate to the scriptures.149 That is to say, the former serves as a tool in understanding and teaching the latter. The liberal arts function differently than they had

146 Augustine, Teaching Christianity, 110. 147 Augustine, Teaching Christianity, 115-116. 148 Augustine, Teaching Christianity, 117. 149 Dobell, Augustine's Intellectual Conversion, 204.

in the Cassiciacum dialogues. The study of arithmetic, for instance, becomes a tool for allegorical interpretation.150 Rhetoric is solely dedicated for the purpose of preaching from the scriptures, even though Augustine is cautious of teaching this art in order to prevent one from being prideful.151 He even cautions against the study of astronomy due to its affinities with astrology.152 Augustine adds a few disciplines not found in the

Cassiciacum dialogues such as geography, history, and science so that the scriptures might be enhanced in their readings. Therefore, it is clear for Augustine in De doctrina christiana that the liberal arts are only worth studying if they can help to provide greater clarity of the scriptures.153

Having established the proper place of the liberal disciplines, Augustine continues his modification of the Plotinian ascent. In book two of De doctrina christiana, he writes what constitutes the seven stages of ascent to wisdom: (1) fear of God, (2) piety, (3) knowledge, (4) fortitude, (5) counsel of mercy, (6) purifying the eye of the heart, (7) wisdom.154 The first stage requires the fear of God because the concept of God's wrath and judgement produces fear of death in the finitude of human beings, thereby demolishing pride. Once pride has been removed, piety can rest in the heart of the believer and humility can come to fruition. This humility leads to knowledge (scientia) which in turn functions as an aid to scripture. Fortitude replaces the fear of God in the fourth stage of the ascent in order for the contemplator to turn outward toward eternal things–that is, the Trinity–as opposed to turning inward. However, because the turn

150 Augustine, Teaching Christianity, 148-150. 151 Augustine, Teaching Christianity, 207-248. 152 Augustine, Teaching Christianity, 162: "…and because it is so closely related to that most baleful error of those who chant the fatuous follies of Fates, the most appropriate and correct thing to do is to ignore it." 153 Augustine, Teaching Christianity, 168-169. 154 Augustine, Teaching Christianity, 136-139; Dobell, Augustine's Intellectual Conversion, 206.

outward to the Trinity is impossible to manage all on one's own, Augustine states that it can be best practiced in loving one's neighbor. Augustine continues that in order to move beyond the fifth stage to the sixth stage, one must first learn to love their enemies. Once this is accomplished, the eye of the heart will be opened and the vision will be as clear, though "through a glass darkly." The final stage, Augustine concludes, will not be able to occur in this life but in the life to come.

In this way, then, Augustine does not think an intellectual ascent toward solitary vision is totally possible, thus rendering his earlier writings obsolete on this matter. What exactly invoked this change from the Cassiciacum dialogues in 386-87 to the mid-390's?

Here again, Augustine's Christological revolution comes to the surface. He states that "we are walking more by faith than by sight" demonstrating the need of Christ, the mediator.155 Augustine has come to the realization that attaining the vision of God through contemplation is impossible independent of Christ and the forgiveness of sins.

The happy life is not obtained through reason and the liberal arts, but rather by Christ who "appear[ed] to mortals in mortal flesh."156

Still, the reader must reckon with Augustine's Neoplatonic ascents described in the Confessions. If Augustine has set forth an entirely new way of thinking about the

Neoplatonic ascent, how should one interpret his ascents detailed in book VII and book

IX of the Confessions? Augustine claims two separate accounts of Neoplatonic ascent in

Confessions 7.10.16 and 7.17.23 and a final description of an ascent in Confessions

9.10.23-26. Before examining this seeming dilemma, it might be useful first to

155 Augustine, Teaching Christianity, 138. 156 Augustine, Teaching Christianity, 115.

distinguish between the voices in the text. The "recently-converted-Augustine" serves as the name from which "the narrator" of the Confessions speaks.

THE NEOPLATONIC ASCENTS IN CONFESSIONS

In Confessions 7.10.16, the narrator of the text details the impetus behind the young Augustine's first Neoplatonic ascent: "the Platonic books."157 The narrator describes that upon reading these texts, the recently-converted-Augustine desired to

"return into" himself so that he might reach his "innermost citadel."158 From here, the narrator discloses how the recently-converted-Augustine, with his "soul's eye," attained the outermost heights of "immutable light" that "transcended [the] mind."159 This was a light that was "utterly different" from all other forms of light, an "eternal truth and true love and beloved eternity."160 The narrator is describing the recently-converted-

Augustine's direct apprehension of God by the inward turn of the self and intellectual ascent. Yet, the narrator follows this description with what seems to be a contradiction in the narrative,

When I first came to know you, you raised me up to make me see that what I saw is Being, and that I who saw am not yet Being. And you gave a shock to the weakness of my sight by the strong radiance of your rays, and I trembled with love and awe. And I found myself far from you 'in the region of dissimilarity' and heard as it were your voice from on high: 'I am the food fully grown; grow and you will feed on me. And you will not change me into you like the food your flesh eats, but you will be changed into me.'161 The narrator follows the first half of the ascent's account by stating that the recently- converted-Augustine was, at first, incapable of attaining a vision of God. How can this

157 Augustine, Confessions, 123. 158 Augustine, Confessions, 123. 159 Augustine, Confessions, 123. 160 Augustine, Confessions, 123. 161 Augustine, Confessions, 123-124.

make sense since the first half of the ascent's account details a vision of God whereas the second half of the ascent's account expresses a weakness of sight?

Here, it seems that the narrator is summarizing the experience of the recently- converted-Augustine's intellectual ascent after having read the books of the Platonists.

The narrator of the Confessions, then, follows this summary with a description of what actually occurred by retrospectively looking back into these events and proclaiming that his attempt at a vision of God was a relatively failed one. The recently-converted-

Augustine, the narrator recalls, was given a "shock to the weakness" of his gaze and consequently found himself "in the region of dissimilarity."162 Therefore, this ascent discloses that there is certainly something to see (i.e. Being) but that because of the- recently-converted Augustine's inferiority, he could not fully hold this vision.

In addition, it is noteworthy that the narrator incorporates a Eucharistic component in this account of the first ascent. As the recently-converted-Augustine found himself far away from the object of his vision, the voice of God speaks from a distance, urging him to "feed on [God]" in order that Augustine might be changed into God.163 The narrator highlights that the successful path toward this vision is antecedently bound to the

Incarnation.164 In this way, then, the Plotinian ascent is appropriated from a hurrying flight from the sensible world to a recognition of the Incarnational boundedness of human history.

162 Augustine, Confessions, 123-124. The region of dissimilarity is a statement given by Plotinus who, in turn, retrieved it from Plato. Plotinus, The Enneads, 121; Plato, “Statesman,” in Complete Works, ed. John Cooper, trans. C. J. Rowe (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 315. 163 Augustine, Confessions, 123-124 164 Louth, The Christian Mystical Tradition, 145: "…in Augustine's treatment of the soul's ascent to God in the Confessions, we find that, though he owes a very great deal to neo-Platonism, yet, in his fundamental appreciation of the soul's way, his understanding of the Incarnation is more important."

The second account of ascent that the narrator of Confessions relates is found in

7.17.23. Here, the narrator recalls that the recently-converted-Augustine was "caught up to [God]" and then immediately "torn away from [God]" by the sexual sins of his past.165

On recognizing this, the recently-converted-Augustine, again, attempted to reach a vision of God through "the power of reasoning" that ultimately leaves behind "the bodily senses."166 In the "flash of a trembling glance," he is again brought to a vision of God, yet unable to "keep [his] vision fixed."167 So it is that for the recently-converted-Augustine, the vision of God cannot be wholly maintained on one's own. It requires more than solitary ascent by way of intellectual strength.

Interestingly, the narrator's voice intervenes and summarizes both of these ascent accounts by retroactively critiquing the recently-converted-Augustine. In Confessions

7.18.24, the narrator states that the enterprise of seeking a vision of God through one's own strength is fruitless. The narrator confesses that this can only be achieved by an embrace of "the man Christ Jesus."168 Indeed, the narrator finally comes to understand that in order to "possess my God, my humble Jesus," one must humble themselves first, precisely like "the Word made flesh."169 To recall, this is the method in which Augustine established in the second stage of ascent in De doctrina christiana. A healthy fear of God will always give way toward a humble and pious heart, something the books of the

Platonist could not provide. On the contrary, the books of the Platonists only provided the recently-converted-Augustine "puffed up knowledge," as the narrator confesses in

165 Augustine, Confessions, 127. 166 Augustine, Confessions, 127. 167 Augustine, Confessions, 127. 168 Augustine, Confessions, 128. 169 Augustine, Confessions, 128.

7.20.26.170 In a sense, the narrator is interrogating his younger, prideful self: "Where was the charity which builds on the foundation of humility which is Jesus Christ? When would the Platonist books have taught me that?"171

THE PHOTINIAN EMBRACE

This calls to question, however, what Augustine thought of Christ prior to his

Christological revolution in the mid-390s. What was Augustine's conception of Christ in that year when he wrote the Cassiciacum dialogues (386-87)? The narrator of

Confessions also answers this question immediately after critiquing the recently- converted-Augustine's second account of ascent in 7.19.25. Without realizing it until after he was selected to the presbyterate in 391, Augustine held to a Photinian doctrine of

Christ during this period. The narrator confesses his Christological error as linked to his failed attempts in intellectual ascent,

I had a different notion, since I thought of Christ my Lord only as a man of excellent wisdom which none could equal. I thought his wonderful birth from a virgin was an example of despising temporal things to gain immortality for us, and such divine care for us gave him great authority as a teacher. But the mystery of the Word made flesh I had not begun to guess…I thought that he excelled others not as the personal embodiment of the Truth, but because of the great excellence of his human character and more perfect participation in wisdom…For my part I admit it was some time later that I learnt…how Catholic truth is to be distinguished from the false opinion of Photinus.172 As it turns out, the recently-converted-Augustine was still working with a flawed

Christology that hindered his path toward a vision of God because Christ was not yet understood as "the mediator between God and [humanity]."173 Indeed, the narrator

170 Augustine, Confessions, 130. 171 Augustine, Confessions, 130. 172 Augustine, Confessions, 128-129. 173 Augustine, Confessions, 128.

describes that after realizing his errors, he "seized the sacred writings of [scripture] and especially the apostle Paul."174 Herein lies Augustine's confession of experiencing a

Christological revolution, which is also evident in De doctrina christiana, in which he transforms the Neoplatonic ascent into a Christological way of ascent.

Augustine's Photinian Christology was directly linked to his inability to obtain a successful ascent. In fact, it was precisely this heresy that hindered Augustine from developing an ecclesiology toward a mature view that would eventually become evident in his Enarrationes in Psalmos. Some scholars have argued that this period of accepting the Photinian error was short-lived, ending only a few months after embracing it sometime between 386-387 while in Cassiciacum.175 However, this fails to recognize the nature of Photinian Christology inherent in Augustine's writings prior to 392. Whereas

Augustine acknowledged Jesus as a model for all humans to imitate and even distinguished Jesus as unique from the rest of humanity, the recently-converted-

Augustine failed to recognize that Jesus was united with Truth and Wisdom, not a mere participatory agent in these attributes.176 Augustine's Photinian Christology can be

174 Augustine, Confessions, 130. 175 William Mallard, "Jesus Christ," in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan Fitzgerald and et. al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 466. Mallard, mentions that Pierre Courcelle first argued against the thesis that Augustine's Photinianism continued for a few years after Augustine's conversion in 386; Dobell mentions that Tarsicius Van Bavel also argued against the theory of a drawn-out acceptance of the Photinian heresy and placed Augustine's rejection of it in 387 (Dobell, Augustine's Intellectual Conversion, 23). 176 Dobell, Augustine's Intellectual Conversion, 79. I agree with Dobell insofar as Augustine was truly Photinian in his Christology as is evident in the early writings. However, Dobell argues that Augustine held this Photinian heresy until c. 395, causing Augustine to experience a radical breakthrough once he accepted an orthodox Christology, and thus, experienced an intellectual conversion to Christianity. This intellectual conversion resulted in Augustine producing his mature works from De doctrina christiana (396) onwards. I do not think Augustine held to the Photinian concept of Christ until 395, nearly ten years after his conversion and baptism. On the contrary, Augustine was on a trajectory toward a more robust, orthodox view of Christ and one can see this in his Enarrationes 1-32 (written between 392-395) where a development of uniting the two natures of Christ–divine and human–begin to make appearances. Interestingly, Dobell makes note of this and states that it is possible to "push Augustine's orthodoxy back as far as 392." This is an awkward claim since Dobell argues for an intellectual conversion in 395 yet affirms the possibility of an earlier embrace of an orthodox Christology (Dobell, Augustine's Intellectual

viewed in his Cassiciacum dialogues and his subsequent writings up to 391 in which he consistently portrayed Christ as a teacher endowed with divine authority.177 Michael

Cameron, for instance, suggests that the young Augustine was a proponent of an exemplar Christ whose "humility formed a prototype or exemplum of humility" for the rest of humanity.178 The young Augustine's Christ, according to Cameron, primarily served as one whose "beauty breaks in, stirs love, and initiates the rise into the spiritual world."179 This ultimately came to a head when Augustine would experience a

Christological revolution in 392-93 after his encounter with the Psalms, causing him to discover the significance of the union between Christ's two natures. The final ascent recounted in Confessions discloses a successful attempt after coming to this embrace of an orthodox Christology.

THE OSTIA ASCENT

The final ascent recounted in Confessions 9.10.23-26 points to a more robust

Christological way of ascent as opposed to the recently-converted-Augustine's

Conversion, 83). I agree with Robert O'Connell who argues that the Photinian heresy was present in Augustine's writings until 391, which coincides perfectly with Augustine's first written material on the Psalms beginning in 392 (Robert O'Connell, St. Augustine's Early Theory of Man: A.D. 386- 391 (Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 1968), 259-78). 177 O'Connell, Early Theory of Man, 265-278. In addition to surveying the Cassiciacum dialogues, O'Connell examines Augustine's writings from 387-391. O'Connell argues that in these latter writings Augustine began to move away from, rather than toward, the Photinian heresy he later rejected. 178 Cameron, The Christological Substructure, 81. Indeed, Cameron argues that the young Augustine's view of Christ served as a "didactic" model until 393: "he 'teaches' (On the Teacher 11.38), 'admonishes' (On Free Choice 3.10.30), 'persuades' (De uera religione 16.31), 'demonstrates' (On Faith and the Creed 4.6)"; Interestingly, Cameron notes the "spirited debate" that took place between O'Connell and Goulven Madec in the 1970s regarding to what extent Augustine remained Photinian throughout his early writings. Cameron sides with Madec, who argued that the Photinian heresy was quickly relinquished upon Augustine's conversion in 386, yet Cameron seems to find Augustine in this odd position of elevating Christ to a position of exemplar in the writings from 387-393; See, Michael Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere: Augustine's Early Figurative Exegesis (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 311n33. 179 Cameron, "The Christological Substructure," 81.

Neoplatonic ascent. Often referred to as the "Ostia ascent", the narrator begins by describing his location in Ostia, peering out of a window into a garden with his mother,

Monica.180 They are speaking about the life of the saints and their lives in eternity when suddenly they are rapturously "lifted up by an ardent affection towards eternal Being itself."181 The narrator mentions that they moved "step by step" beyond the material objects of the sensible world and "bound to that higher world."182 It is in this moment of ecstasy that the narrator makes an important distinction from that of the Neoplatonic ascent: he only mentions hearing sound rather than attaining vision. "We returned to the noise of our human speech" so that it might be compared with the Word of God which

"gives renewal to all things."183 Indeed, Confessions 9.10.25 culminates in the narrator emphasizing the hearing of the Word, not through others "but through [Christ]" in others.184

What can be drawn from the Ostia ascent regarding Augustine's modification of

Neoplatonic ascent? First, it should be mentioned that this emphasis of hearing over vision coincides with the narrator's account of the first ascent. The recently-converted-

Augustine found it difficult to apprehend a vision of God and was subsequently given a

"shock" that forced him to lose his focus. Instead, he heard God speak to him while remaining in "the land of dissimilarity," an experience that left him unsatisfied.185 In the

Ostia ascent, however, the narrator is content with hearing the Word rather than seeing

180 Augustine, Confessions, 170-171. 181 Augustine, Confessions, 171. 182 Augustine, Confessions, 171. 183 Augustine, Confessions, 171. 184 Augustine, Confessions, 171-172. Hearing the Word speak in others is a significant point for Augustine. As we will see in his struggle with the Donatists, Christ is always behind the function of the sacraments through the Church body. 185 Augustine, Confessions, 123-124.

God. What often goes unnoticed in Augustine's famous remark in the opening paragraph of his Confessions186 is the answer he gives to the very question of how one rests in God four sections later.

Who will enable me to find rest in you? Who will grant me that you come to my heart and intoxicate it, so that I forget my evils and embrace my one and only good, yourself? What are you to me? Have mercy so that I may find words…If I do not love you, is that but a little misery? What a wretch I am! In your mercies, Lord God, tell me what you are to me. "Say to my soul, I am your salvation" (Ps. 34:3). Speak to me so that I may hear you. See the ears of my heart are before you, Lord. Open them and "say to my soul, I am your salvation." After that utterance I will run and lay hold on you.187 Augustine understands the soul to have ears because it is precisely the Word that speaks to the one pursuing God, but it cannot maintain a pure vision of God. It is in hearing the

Word of God that one will find rest, which is what Augustine explains at the very beginning of Confessions and details in the successful Ostia ascent in book nine.188 As will be shown in chapter three, Augustine's emphasis on hearing the Word of God speak was derived from his study on the Psalms, especially Psalms 1-32 written between 392-

395.

In addition to hearing the Word speak, the Ostia ascent is characterized by a social element as opposed to the Plotinian theme of the soul's solitary journey.189 As

186 Augustine, Confessions, 3: '…you have made us for yourself, and out heart is restless until rests in you." 187 Augustine, Confessions, 5, (my italics). 188 In a recent essay published by Sarah Catherine Byers, she argues that an emphasis on hearing is wrongheaded for two reasons: (1) Augustine's first ascent in book VII depicts Augustine hearing and (2) Plotinus also described mystical ascent as hearing "the sounds from above" (Plotinus, Enneads, 547). See Sarah Catherine Byers, “Love, Will, and the Intellectual Ascents,” in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine's Confessions, ed. Tarmo Toom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 173. Regarding the first point, Augustine did hear the voice of God speaking in the first ascent of book VII, but this by no means suggests that Augustine understood the significance of hearing over seeing in this ascent. Regarding Byers's second point, I would contend that this is a misreading of the Plotinus passage she cites. In this text, Plotinus uses hearing as an analogy and does not prioritize hearing over seeing anywhere else in the Enneads. In light of Augustine's concept of the una vox totus Christus, it will become clearer that hearing is given priority over the pursuit of vision, a concept that Augustine had already come to while writing his Confessions (see chapter three). 189 Dobell, Augustine's Intellectual Conversion, 217.

Brian Dobell notes, this is particularly interesting because Monica has no formal training in philosophy or the liberal arts, reserving the Christian ascent for those who obtain faith in Christ over those who use the power of reason.190 The Church body "walks by faith, not by sight"191 in its pursuit of God thereby signaling Augustine's reconfiguration of the

Neoplatonic ascent toward vision to one that is entirely achieved by way of faith.

These radical transformations of Plotinian categories into incarnational themes reveal an Augustine who had been deeply affected by his coming to an orthodox conception of Christ. It is no coincidence that right after Augustine experienced this

Christological revolution, he began to think about ecclesiology in a new light. De doctrina christiana and Confessions both show that Augustine had started to remove himself from the recently-converted-Augustine who prioritized solitary contemplation and intellectual ascent of vision. Augustine was at the beginning stages of perceiving a

God who thought the world was worth saving, so much so that this God became incarnate. This would play a new role in his understanding of the whole Christ who constitutes the entirety of the Church body. Prior to this point in time, Augustine found himself enmeshed in an ecclesiological controversy that had been ongoing for close to a century. The Donatist Church and Augustine's struggle with them would force him to develop a theology of the Church in far greater detail than anything he had done up to that point.192

190 Dobell, Augustine's Intellectual Conversion, 217. 191 2 Cor. 5:7. 192 David Alexander, in his study on Augustine's early ecclesiology from 386-391, states near the beginning: "This book's approach follows a historical, not a theological, perspective and it does not deal with Augustine's ecclesiology per se or aim to add to the explanation of his mature ecclesiology." His study helps one see "the processes, emergent forms, and coalescence of ideas" that would serve as the foundation for some of his later ecclesiology but it by no means shows a trajectory of ecclesiology between these two

THE DONATIST CONTROVERSY

As noted above, Augustine was ordained to the presbyterate in 391, and immediately devoted his time to studying the Scriptures.193 In addition to these responsibilities, Augustine used this time to familiarize himself with the history of the split between the Catholics and the Donatists.194 In order to understand how Augustine formed an ecclesiology during this period of controversy, it is vital that a survey of

Donatist history is provided so that the background of Augustine's anti-Donatist writings are given greater clarity.

The split between the Catholic and Donatist Churches can be traced back to the persecutions of Christians in the Roman Empire administered by Decius and the later emperor, Valerian, in the mid-third century.195 The final period of persecutions came by decree of the emperor, Diocletian, in the first years of the fourth century. The former period of persecutions brought with it a variety of brutal tactics that would result in churches being burned to the ground along with their scriptures, and the clergy were physically forced to offer sacrifices on behalf of the emperor's personally chosen god.196

During the first persecutions under the emperor Decius (250-251), Cyprian, exiled outside of Carthage, was the bishop of this region and the crisis required his constant attention. With no bishop present, many of the laity and clergy apostatized in order to live

periods; See David Alexander, Augustine's Early Theology of the Church: Emergence and Implications, 386-391 (New York: Peter Lang, 2008), 18. 193 Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, Forty-Fifth Anniversary Edition. (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), 131-38. 194 Maureen Tilley, “General Introduction,” in The Donatist Controversy I, ed. Boniface Ramsey and David Hunter, trans. Maureen Tilley and Boniface Ramsey (Hyde Park: New City Press, 2019), 13. There are numerous studies and texts published on the Donatist controversy and Augustine's role in it. For the sake of brevity, I will mainly rely on Tilly's introduction in this recently published and updated translation in the New City Press series. 195 Tilley, "General Introduction," 14. 196 Tilley, "General Introduction," 14.

safer lives during the crisis. After the first wave of persecutions subsided, many of these same North African apostates sought repentance and reconciliation with the Church.197

This required Cyprian to formulate some type of reconciliation process by which apostates might be received back into the Church's fold.

Cyprian would establish a rigorous process of penance for those who betrayed their allegiance to the Christian Church. Maureen Tilley notes that the penance was "to be long and arduous and might extend to one's deathbed."198 The posture the Church took after the first wave of persecutions is critical because it remained characteristic of the

Donatist Church in Augustine's day. Cyprian's treatment of the matter resulted in the establishing of hard boundaries around the Christian Church which brought to mind the question concerning baptism and the possibility of rebaptism.199 In other words, with clear boundaries, entrances are then required for one to enter, and for the Christian

Church this was the rite of baptism. However, what about the apostatized clergy who performed baptisms? Should they be rebaptized as part of their reconciliation into the

Church? Should those baptized by an apostate priest also be rebaptized?

Cyprian took his cue from an earlier regional council (220) that deemed it necessary to rebaptize heretics who had received a false baptism on account of their being outside of the true Church, and thus, required a true baptism.200 Likewise, Cyprian proposed the same concept with the apostate Christians and those baptized by them: if a true baptism could not be conferred in a heretical community, neither could it be

197 Tilley, "General Introduction," 14. 198 Tilley, "General Introduction," 14. 199 Tilley, "General Introduction," 14-15. 200 Tilley, "General Introduction," 15.

conferred by those baptized by apostates.201 Indeed, Cyprian emphasized a strong pneumatological concept in the baptismal font. "Water alone is not able to cleanse away sins," Cyprian urged, "unless he has also the Holy Spirit."202 Cyprian's linking of the

Holy Spirit to baptismal theology was based on a literal concept of the Spirit indwelling in the newly baptized.203 The same position would apply in regard to the ordaining of the presbyterate and the administering of other sacraments. Cyprian spearheaded the move toward rebaptizing apostates and heretics who had already received a baptism, a position that Augustine would wrestle with years later when he took up his offensive against the

Donatist Church.

After the Valerian persecutions ran their course (257-260), the same harsh reconciliation process articulated by Cyprian would reappear after the Diocletian persecutions of 303-305.204 What is noteworthy during the Diocletian persecutions was the confiscation of the copies of scriptures mandated by Roman officials. In many cases, apostates willingly handed over the scriptures to the Roman authorities. The Church considered this a blasphemous act of traditio, a handing over of the scriptures, subsequently reserving these apostates with the nickname traditores, traitors or betrayers.205

201 Tilley, "General Introduction," 15. 202 Cyprian of Carthage, Epistles, 74.5 (CESL 3:803). Translation and quote from Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 1, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600) (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1971), 166. Cyprian concludes: "Therefore it is necessary that they [his opponents on the question of rebaptizing heretics] should grant the Holy Spirit to be there, where they say that baptism is; or else there is no baptism where the Holy Spirit is not, because there cannot be baptism without the Spirit." 203 Tilley, "General Introduction," 15. 204 Tilley, "General Introduction," 15. 205 Tilley, "General Introduction," 15-16.

Following the Diocletian persecutions, North African Christian laity and clergy began to polarize into separate factions. Elections would take place once a bishop were to die as a result of health, age, or persecution. The two sides involved in electing a new bishop constituted a traditionalist wing, who identified themselves with the legacy of

Cyprian, and a progressive wing, who thought the standards by which the traditionalists required were too difficult to be met.206 The traditionalists followed Cyprian's theology in not wanting clergy who were a traditor or a clergy member who was ordained by traditores. The progressive faction of the Church did not think that continuing this standard of ordination should be required of electing the clergy.207

The official schism began after the election of Caecilian to the see of Carthage in

311. Caecilian was tainted with a poor reputation by the traditionalist faction of the

Church regarding his unsympathetic treatment of them in addition to the rumor that he had been ordained by a traditor. This led to the traditionalist faction recognizing

Caecilian's rival in the election, Majorinus, as their true bishop.208 From this moment onward the North African Church community was officially split. Bishop Donatus, who succeeded Majorinus after his death in 317, became the namesake of their community: the Donatist Church.209 Donatus would remain the bishop until his death in 347, seven years prior to Augustine's birth.

206 Tilley, "General Introduction," 16. 207 Tilley, "General Introduction," 16. 208 Tilley, "General Introduction," 16-17. 209 Robert Markus notes that "the designation 'Donatists' was vigorously rejected by its adherents, who considered themselves to be simply 'Christians' in North Africa." See Robert Markus, “Donatus, Donatism” in Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan Fitzgerald et al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 285.

By the time that Augustine arrived to his presbyterate in North Africa, the schism had completely dominated the history of that region.210 Cousins, spouses, parents, and children were divided against each other.211 Gillian Clark even suggests that Monica,

Augustine's mother, may have grown up in the Donatist Church.212 Augustine wrote treatises, sermons, letters, and made references in his scriptural commentaries on the

Donatist Church, all aimed at their theological errors. Many of the scholars who view

Augustine's dualistic ecclesiology as incoherent find in these writings the evidence for their positions. However, these arguments betray the Christological revolution that

Augustine was experiencing during this period of intense controversy. The anti-Donatist writings disclose an Augustine who was in the beginning stages of developing a sophisticated ecclesiology, one that would work hand-in-hand with his Christological development.

THE ANTI-DONATIST WRITINGS

Augustine's first written statement against the Donatists comes from a letter he wrote to a Donatist bishop, Maximian, in 392.213 Letter correspondences would travel back and forth during the years prior to Augustine's election as Bishop in 396. Sermons against the Donatists, too, were beginning to surface in Augustine's homilies, as well as a song he had written in order to inform "the very simplest of people" on how to counteract the claims and teachings of the Donatist Church.214 As early as 392, Augustine and his

210 Markus, “Donatus, Donatism,” 284. 211 Alden Bass, “Ecclesiological Controversies,” in Augustine in Context, ed. Tarmo Toom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 145. 212 Gillian Clark, Monica: An Ordinary Saint (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 136-38. 213 Tilley, "General Introduction," 20. 214 Augustine, “Psalm against the Party of Donatus,” in The Donatist Controversy I, 32-46.

presiding bishop, Aurelius, would set into motion reform within the Catholic Church to foster a stronger unity in the North African Church body.215 Augustine's polemical agenda onward with the Donatists would center around their ecclesiology and the sacramental life of the true Church.216

Augustine's first major opponent was Petilian, the Donatist bishop of Cirta (later known as Constantine).217 In a brief and partial letter written for his own congregation that reached Augustine near the year 400, Petilian made allegations against the Catholic

Church claiming three major charges. First, the Catholics participated in traditio during the Diocletian persecutions thereby deeming them as traditores. Second, the Catholic

Church violently opposed the martyred Church of the Donatists. Third, the Catholic

Church did not obtain a true baptism because their priests were part of a genealogy that stretched back to the traditores, rendering void the sacrament.218 Augustine immediately responded to these charges in book one of his Contra Litteras Petiliani, believing that

Petilian's accusations were successfully persuading ignorant Catholics to join the

Donatist Church.

In book one, Augustine begins with the question surrounding rebaptism. Petilian was concerned with sinless status ("conscience") of the clergy in administering the baptism.219 Can a sinful minister, like the ones in the Catholic Church, administer a

215 Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 223; Pamela Bright, “Donatist Bishops” in Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan Fitzgerald et al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 283. 216 Augustine's polemical agenda with the Donatists would phase out once he began to focus his energy on the Pelagians beginning in 412. 217 Maureen Tilley, “Contra Litteras Petiliani” in Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan Fitzgerald et al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 504. 218 Tilley, “Contra Litteras Petiliani,” 505. 219 Augustine quotes Petilian from the letter Augustine came by: "What is at issue is the conscience of the giver [of baptism], which would the cleanse [the conscience] of the recipient [of baptism]." Augustine, “Answer to the Writings of Petilian,” in The Donatist Controversy I, ed. Boniface Ramsey and David Hunter, trans. Maureen Tilley and Boniface Ramsey (Hyde Park: New City Press, 2019), 55.

baptism that cleanse the sins of the recipient?220 Augustine's response is obvious for one reading it today, but perhaps it was not so obvious in fourth and fifth century sacramental thought: "What if the conscience of the giver is concealed and perhaps stained?"221 Here is a first glimpse into Augustine's main argument against rebaptism, something he would continue to develop much further in his later anti-Donatist tract, De baptismo. There is no decisive way to know the faithful or guilty status of the minister. So, according to the

Donatist's logic, the recipient is wholly dependent on the (hopeful) sinlessness of the priest.222 This, then, leads Augustine into the thrust of the dispute. The status of the minister is entirely irrelevant because the validity of the sacrament comes solely through

Christ, and not by "placing hope in [humanity]."223 Indeed, Augustine argues that the baptized receive grace through Christ who is "head" over "the whole body."224

After Augustine had received a copy of the entire letter that Petilian wrote, he wrote the second book of Contra Litteras Petilian. It consisted of Augustine rebutting

Petilian's exegetical charges against the Catholic Church by responding to each exegesis line-by-line.225 In addition, the second book is where Augustine first distinguished between the validity of the sacrament, on the one hand, and the efficacy of the sacrament, on the other.226 For example, in responding to a particular New Testament passage that

Petilian misquoted, Augustine seized the opportunity to exegete the passage that Petilian intended to cite.227 The verse in question was Luke 9:50: "Do not forbid him; he who is

220 Augustine, Writings of Petilian, 55. 221 Augustine, Writings of Petilian, 55. 222 Augustine, Writings of Petilian, 55-56. 223 Augustine, Writings of Petilian, 56. 224 Augustine, Writings of Petilian, 58. 225 Tilley, “Contra Litteras Petiliani,” 505. 226 Tilley, “Contra Litteras Petiliani,” 505. 227 Augustine, Writings of Petilian, 152-153. Petilian rendered the scripture passage, "Let them be; if they are not against us, they are for us."

not against us is for us." Augustine explains that the context of this verse, centering around the man who was using Christ's name to cast out demons, entails the distinction between the validity and efficacy of the sacrament.

For, just as the holiness of Christ's name had a great effect even outside the community of the disciples, so does the holiness of the sacrament have an effect outside the communion of the Church, for baptism is not consecrated except in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…But clearly neither he by whom an evil spirit is cast out nor he who is baptized attains eternal life apart from the communion of the Church and the most holy bond of unity and the most lofty gift of charity, just as those who seem to be within by reason of communion in the sacraments are understood to be outside by reason of the wickedness of their behavior.228

The Church body, guided by the work of the Spirit, participates through the bond of charity with the one body of Christ. The holiness of Christ, though, can additionally reach beyond the community and provide a valid baptism for those washed in the Trinitarian name. However, by forfeiting communion through the bond of charity with the Church body, the Donatists are forfeiting the efficacy of the sacrament. Augustine's distinction between the validity and efficacy of the sacrament is starting to become clearer by this point in the debate (401). The Donatists obtain the validity of the baptism, but not the efficacy of it.229

Petilian would follow up the first and second books of Contra Litteras Petiliani by writing a response of his own to Augustine. The third book is Augustine's final response which mainly focuses on reiterating the same arguments he developed in books

228 Augustine, Writings of Petilian, 153. 229 Michael Root notes that the categories "validity" and "efficacy" are modern categories, and thus, Augustine never fully developed a rigorous definition of these terms. I agree that Augustine does not develop these categories in the proper sense, but it seems that by his emphasizing the holiness of the Trinitarian name in the event of a baptism, he implicitly renders the sacrament valid. See Michael Root, “Augustine on the Church,” in The T&T Clark Companion to Augustine and Modern Theology, ed. C. C. Pecknold and Tarmo Toom (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 59. See also, Lee, Mystery of the Church, xxv, n54.

one and two and addressing Catholic Christians who were directly involved in the dispute.230 The writings against Petilian reveal Augustine's emerging ecclesiology, one that identifies the sacramental life of the Church solely predicated on Christ, the mediator between God and humanity. As part of this Church community, Augustine views the bond of charity as the fundamental link for those who participate in the Church's sacramental, efficacious benefits. Augustine would write De baptismo in 401, around the same time he was also writing the second book of Contra Litteras Petiliani. De baptismo ultimately addressed the heart of the dispute and what Augustine believed was so urgently at stake in the schism: the Church as the one, body of Christ.

To recall, the Donatist Church practiced rebaptism based on a strong pneumatology that can be traced back to the sacramental theology of Cyprian posited between the first and second persecutions. The Holy Spirit must reside in the minister, the

Donatists believed, in order for the Holy Spirit to be imparted to the recipient at baptism.

Accordingly, this could not be done if the minister did not obtain the Holy Spirit, including a minister who came from the line of the traditores, which constituted the

North African Catholic Church. Augustine's seven-book rebuttal in his treatise, De baptismo, was threefold: first, rebaptism is unnecessary; second, the Catholic Church, not the Donatists, were the true heirs of Cyprian's heritage; and third, the unity of the universal Church belonged to the Catholic Church, not the Donatist Church.

De baptismo consists of the same line of reasoning that Augustine used in his

Contra Litteras Petiliani, albeit in a more repetitive and rigorous fashion. He begins by acknowledging that Catholics and Donatists both agree that those who were baptized in

230 Tilley, “Contra Litteras Petiliani,” 505.

their respective churches and then apostatized nevertheless retain their baptism upon a penitential return.231 The same, Augustine argued, should apply to the schismatics for

"they certainly have the baptism that they received before they left..."232 This leads

Augustine into a brief explanation as to why both Catholics and Donatists can validly perform a proper baptism, even in the rare case of a Catholic convert needing a baptism while on "the brink of bodily death" and must solely rely on a Donatist bishop due to the urgency of the situation.233 However, the Donatists insisted that an apostate cleric subsequently lost their sacramental ministry, thereby forfeiting the indwelling of the Holy

Spirit. Therefore, all those who had been baptized by the apostate cleric must be rebaptized.234 According to Augustine, this simply did not make sense if the ordained minister kept their baptism, even after their apostasy, for the minister's sacramental ministry would still be operative.235

As Augustine had been so apt to reiterate throughout the dispute regarding rebaptism, the fundamental issue revolved around who is behind the work of the sacrament: is it the cleric's work or is it Christ's work? Augustine enthusiastically claimed that the grace of baptism is delivered solely through Christ, and the minister is merely an instrument who God uses to perform the washing.236 Yet, Augustine is reluctant to grant the efficacy of the baptism if it is done with a rejection of charity. A baptism performed

231 Augustine, “Baptism,” in The Donatist Controversy I, ed. Boniface Ramsey and David Hunter, trans. Maureen Tilley and Boniface Ramsey (Hyde Park: New City Press, 2019), 391-392. 232 Augustine, "Baptism," 392. 233 Augustine, "Baptism," 394: "…we not only do not condemn what he did but we even praise him with utter assurance and truth, because he believed that God was present in his heart, where he preserved unity, and he did not wish to depart from this life without the sacrament of holy baptism, which he knew– wherever he found it–was not men's but God's." 234 Maureen Tilley, “De baptismo,” in Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan Fitzgerald et al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 91. 235 Augustine, "Baptism," 392. 236 Tilley, "De baptismo," 91.

in the trinitarian name, then, does not warrant salvation in the proper sense. For

Augustine, "baptism is one thing and conversion of the heart is another, but that a person's salvation is completed by both."237 Whereas the schismatic obtains a valid baptism, they cannot obtain its efficacy because the conversion of the heart requires participation in the unity and bond of peace through the Spirit's encompassing work of grace in the Church's life. In other words, by separating from the unity of the Church, the

Donatist are forfeiting their position in the Spirit's work of uniting the universal Church through the bond of peace; and, where there is no Holy Spirit, there can be no forgiveness of the heart. Therefore, "they have a lawful baptism…but they do not have it lawfully" because they lack the unity of peace, provided by the work of the Spirit who grants the forgiveness of sins.238

One can begin to see why Augustine believes so strongly that the Catholic Church draws from the tradition of Cyprian and his pneumatological-sacramental theology. 239

What is more, Augustine sketches out an ecclesiology that is built on the pneumatological-sacramental theology of Cyprian. In emphasizing purity over unity, the

Donatists were missing the wider point that Cyprian was concerned with making: a true ecclesiology must be built up by the sacraments through the work of the Holy Spirit uniting the universal Church into one whole entity by way of charity. Augustine stressed the unity of the Spirit and the unity of charity as inseparable precisely because he viewed the Church as constituted by the Holy Spirit granting charity to the body of Christ.240

237 Augustine, "Baptism," 497. 238 Augustine, "Baptism," 506. 239 One might even analogously echo here B.B. Warfield's famous claim that the Reformation was battled out in the mind of Augustine: the Donatist controversy was battled out in the mind of St. Cyprian. 240 Root, "Augustine on the Church," 62.

The term "unity" was a key concept for Augustine in terms of his ecclesiology.

After one is baptized, according to Augustine, they receive the Spirit and charity, enabling them to enter into unity with the whole body of Christ. Thus, only in the

Catholic Church, argued Augustine, can a true participation in unity (charity, Christ, and the Spirit) enable the sacraments and salvation efficacious.241 Whereas the Donatists were not total pagans and therefore provided their congregants with a valid baptism, their lack of participation in unity hindered the recipient's access to the benefits of baptism.242

Michael Root notes that Augustine here is articulating a distinction between a "moral" failure "rather than [an] ecclesiological" one because the Donatist Church still provided a valid baptism.243 Augustine, instead, argued that schismatics are not the only group to receive baptism while lacking charity because carnal Catholics also exist in the true

Church. "It is not only those," Augustine asserts, who live in schism and "do not belong to [the Church]."244 Indeed, even "those who, while corporeally mingled in its unity, are separated through their wicked life."245 Augustine refers to this group as Catholics who have been baptized but remain carnal through a refusal and lack of charity. Here, the carnal Catholic is used somewhat synonymously with the Donatist, both of whom have received baptism but did so with a lack of charity.246

241 Root, "Augustine on the Church," 62. 242 Root, "Augustine on the Church," 62. 243 Root, "Augustine on the Church," 62. Keep in mind that Augustine granted the efficacy of the sacrament in the rare case of a Donatist bishop baptizing a Catholic who was in need of one right before their impending death. Having a Donatist bishop baptize the recipient in this scenario would not have hindered Christ's efficacious work. 244 Augustine, Baptism, 405. 245 Augustine, Baptism, 405. 246 Root, "Augustine on the Church," 65. I can't help but make the observation that Augustine's equating of the carnal Catholic with the Donatist seems to be an ecumenical move on his part, despite his harsh language throughout De baptismo. His tone seems to slightly change whenever he brings up the case of the carnal Catholic. Instead of saying, "become like us Catholics!" it seems to me Augustine is saying something more to the tune of, "you are already Catholics, you just don't realize it yet!"

However, another important note here must be made, and it is one that is either too often ignored or not recognized. Augustine's critique of the Donatists in stressing unity over purity does not primarily stem from an ecclesiological concern or a moral failure. He instead shares a larger Christological concern. On Augustine's view, the

Donatists were threatening to separate the Church body into dissected parts, and it is precisely these parts that Augustine sees as a splitting of Christ's body.247 This is vital to keep in mind because it is Augustine's comprehension of unity that, for him, establishes

Christ and Church as one speaking voice, and as one whole person.

To summarize up to this point in Augustine's dealings with the Donatist schism, there arises in his ecclesiology three stages where any parishioner might find themselves.

First, unity in the sacraments; second, unity by way of charity in Christ and the Spirit; and three, unity in the visible communion of the Catholic Church.248 The Donatists participate in the first category since they provided a valid baptism but nevertheless remain outside of a visible communion with the Catholic Church through their refusal of charity, and therefore, the Spirit. The carnal Catholic participates in categories one and three because they receive the sacraments and belong in the Church, but they do constitute the Church due to their refusal of category two. The fully realized and spiritual

Catholic participates in all three categories thereby constituting the Church as the body of

Christ.249 For Augustine, the acknowledgement of the Church as the body of Christ does not entail a clean and tidy picture of a triumphalist Church. Augustine is aware that the

247 Byassee, Praise Seeking Understanding, 60: "For Augustine, Christ is always head and members, the church is always Christ and us, with our head at the right hand of the Father, and our members spread throughout the world…The Donatist attempt to sever the body into pieces is, of course, an ecclesiological heresy, and just so, it is also a Christological one, for it is an attack on the whole body of Christ, totus Christus, head and members." 248 Root, "Augustine on the Church," 65-67, esp. 67. 249 Root, "Augustine on the Church," 67.

Church is a "mixed body," one that is on pilgrimage toward its heavenly home. It is from these three categories that scholars have distinguished between Augustine's use of a visible and invisible Church. The mixed body constitutes the visible, outward Church that one can see with their own eyes. The invisible Church constitutes the communion of believers who will one day be revealed in the final consummation during the eschaton.

THE INVISIBLE AND VISIBLE CHURCH

It comes as no surprise that in Augustine's anti-Donatist writings, whenever he mentions the Church, he is mainly referring to the visible Church. In doing so, Augustine is merely showing his interlocuters that it is the visible Church body that they refuse to be a part of and the visible communion that they are in schism with, leaving the Church altogether. There is, however, the invisible Church Augustine sometimes refers to in these writings as well. He heavily draws from the imagery of the Song of Songs and reserves this imagery as the spiritual communion constituting the true Church. He claims that "an enclosed garden," "a sealed fountain," "a well of living water," and "the fruits of the orchard" all pertain to the inner Church community, invisible, with exception only to

God.250 Indeed, Augustine does not include those who "had baptism in common with the righteous" and yet "did not have charity in common."251

As this survey of Augustine's anti-Donatist writings has hopefully shown,

Augustine's ecclesiology is far more complex and sophisticated than what has been stated in the past by the scholars who interpret it as contradictory. His ecclesiology is of but one

250 Augustine, Baptism, 528. 251 Augustine, Baptism, 528. Augustine finishes his point by adding: "As I have often mentioned, we learn this in detail and cite it from the writings of Cyprian himself."

Church body, and this body is constituted by outward and inward dimensions; but this by no means reveals an overly-dualistic ecclesiology as a result of Augustine's use of

Neoplatonic categories. Instead, Augustine views these two dimensions as distinct but certainly not separate. The outward, visible Church is a medium of salvation through one's participation in the sacramental life of the Church. That is, in order for one to participate in the body of Christ, they must partake of the sacraments by which the invisible Church is built up. The invisible Church, then, is the final destination of the visible Church's pilgrimage. One cannot exist without the other, and both are essential to

Augustine's ecclesiology.

CONTINUITY OR CONTRAST IN AUGUSTINE?

A proper understanding of Augustine's ecclesiology is one that hinges on his

Christological revolution of the 390s. However, in order to verify this claim, it must be shown that Augustine did develop Christologically in the mid-390s, while at the same time doing away with the common notion of Augustine's revolutionary encounter with the writings of Paul during this same period. This development in Augustine's life has been well documented, especially "The Lost Future" chapter in Peter Brown's biography.252 Brown pinpoints this transition to a "new reading" of Paul (rather than a discovery of Paul) to the year 394.253 Indeed, Brown suggests that Augustine merely read

Paul as a Platonist prior to this point in time but would later experience a Pauline

252 Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, Forty-Fifth Anniversary Edition. (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), 139-150. 253 Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 145.

revolution in the 390s.254 Michael Cameron, following in the wake of Brown's influential biography, also suggests that Augustine developed an "incarnational paradigm" in 394.255

On Cameron's account, Augustine developed a disjunctive Christology between the human and divine dimensions of Christ, and that this "spiritualist" paradigm would completely shift into an incarnational paradigm after reading Paul's Galatians in 394.256

However, both Brown and Cameron do not see this transition in Augustine as a major contrast per se. Brown claims that this change should not be considered, "as some neat scholars have done," a conversion to Neoplatonism and a subsequent conversion to orthodox Christianity in the mid-390s.257 Likewise, Cameron emphasizes this

254 Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 145, 147-48. To recall, Phillip Cary agrees with Brown's point that Augustine read Paul as a Platonist but goes further and argues that Augustine never ceased his reading of Paul through Platonic categories throughout his life. This view, however, neglects the extent to which Augustine developed his Christology in such a way as to reconfigure his Neoplatonic categories into biblical and Christological categories. Augustine's ecclesiology would follow the same trajectory of development based on this Christological revolution. 255 Cameron, "The Christological Substructure," 75. Cameron, unfortunately, argues that Augustine still maintained an orthodox Christology from the time of his conversion: "Meanwhile, Augustine's Christology, while orthodox from the time of conversion, emphasized the distinction between the Word in heaven and the assumed man Jesus on earth. He understood the divinity of the Word to have used the man Jesus didactically as an exemplar of humility who opened the way to the spiritual realm. But in time Augustine's restless desire to understand what he believed forced a revision of that disjunctive perspective, because it only partly explained the function of the Word's assumed mutability and weakness." Here, I think Cameron is on the right track but neglects the Photinian heresy Augustine admits to accepting after his conversion. Cameron's notion of Augustine's new "incarnational paradigm" would be more complete if he were able to see Augustine's repudiation of the Photinian heresy derived from his reading of the Psalms that led Augustine into shifting his Christology from a "materialist paradigm" in the 380s and a "spiritualist paradigm" after his conversion into a robust orthodox Christology in the mid-390s. It was precisely the spiritualist paradigm that caused Augustine to view Christ in the Photinian sense, and this error would not shift until Augustine eventually accepted an orthodox Christology in the mid 390s, causing him to reread the writings of Paul Christologically anew. 256 Cameron, "The Christological Substructure," 82-83. Prior to making this point, Cameron notes that Augustine's transition from a spiritualist paradigm to an Incarnational paradigm can be seen in his "first homilies and notes" in Augustine's Enarrationes as early as 392. The significance of this comment discloses Augustine's developing Christology as a result of his studying the Psalter. Augustine's Christological revolution, then, was not so much Pauline as it was a Christology retrieved from studying the Psalms Christologically–a practice that by no means started with Augustine; See, Brian Daley and Paul Kolbet, eds., The Harp of Prophecy: Early Christian Interpretation of the Psalms (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2015). 257 Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 140.

development as a trajectory "through the accumulation of insights" as opposed to a moment of radical breakthrough.258

Carol Harrison, on the other hand, emphasizes a theological continuity from

Augustine's conversion throughout the rest of his writings.259 She maintains that

Augustine's Cassiciacum dialogues reveal Augustine's theological continuity with the supposed "mature writings of the 390s."260 Concepts such as grace, original sin, free will, theodicy, and creation can all be found in Augustine's writings from 386-391 thereby revealing Augustine's encounter with the writings of Paul much earlier than Brown's proposal. If Harrison is correct on this front, then Augustine did not experience a Pauline revolution in the 390s. Rather, the real revolution, according to Harrison, took place at the moment of Augustine's conversion.261

Whereas Harrison finds a pattern of gradual process in Augustine's trajectory,

Brown (and Cameron) view there to be an explosion of new ideas culminating in the mid-

390s following his stagnant period prior to being selected to the presbyterate in 391.

Regarding Augustine's Christology and ecclesiology, Brown seems to suggest that

258 Cameron, "The Christological Substructure," 74. Yet, Cameron later confuses the supposed Pauline revolution with a Christological revolution when he states in his study on Augustine's early figurative exegesis: "Coming to believe, however inchoately, that the Word conjoined the man Jesus made clear that just as his historical flesh conjoined divine revelation and grace so also does the whole biblical story, including Israel's history. Augustine therefore turned eagerly to reread Paul from this new angle." If Cameron were to recognize that this inchoate view of Christ was a break from the Photinian doctrine, then I think Cameron would agree that this was a Christological revolution and not so much a Pauline revolution. See, Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 112. 259 Harrison, Rethinking Augustine's Early Theology, 6-7. 260 One of the major difficulties with Harrison's thesis–one that she acknowledges from the beginning and asks for the readers' "sympathy"–is that she ends up leaving very little room, if any, to Augustine's theological development because she "foist[s] too much of the later Augustine on the young Augustine's shoulders" (Harrison, Rethinking Augustine's Early Theology, vii). 261 Harrison, Rethinking Augustine's Early Theology, 7. Harrison suggests that Brown is the frontrunner of this contrast narrative of Augustine, but as we have just shown, Brown was careful to suggest that this transition was merely a development and not so much a change in the strong sense of the word. In rightly being cautious of the claims made by von Harnack and the others in his wake, Harrison might be conflating Brown's position with the radical-break narrative. Either way, Harrison is correct to note that Brown set into motion the emphasis on Augustine's Pauline revolution in the mid-390s.

Augustine experienced a moment of punctuated equilibrium in his trajectory; a moment at which his Christology and ecclesiology experienced rapid change based on the social, vocational, and cultural factors he underwent in the 390s (e.g. the Donatist controversy).

Harrison would object by claiming that these two subjects can be found in Augustine's early writings and that through a mode of gradual process, Augustine merely expressed these subjects differently according to his new vocation with the clergy. Despite their differences, this study finds elements in both proposals helpful in considering Augustine's ecclesiological development being impacted by a Christological revolution in the 390s.

Harrison is correct to note that Augustine did not experience a Pauline revolution in the 390s because he had already "read through all of it [Paul] with the utmost attention and piety" prior to the mid-390s.262 However, as Michael Foley notes in his translation of

Contra Academicos, when Augustine speaks of reading "all of it" (totum), "it is unclear whether an entire passage or section, an entire epistle by St. Paul, or the entirety of Paul's epistles is being indicated."263 Harrison fails to inform the reader of this when she quotes this line in order to show that Augustine knew the writings of Paul well in advance of his supposed Pauline revolution of the mid-390s.264 Foley's quote suggests that Augustine certainly knew Paul and was reading the apostle well before the 390s, but it does not indicate if Augustine was reading Paul through the lens of an orthodox Christology.265 It would not be until Augustine's Christological revolution in the mid-390s that he would begin to read Paul more clearly, setting into motion Augustine's incarnational paradigm

262 Augustine, Against the Academics, 43; Harrison, Rethinking Augustine's Early Theology, 117. 263 Augustine, Against the Academics, 247n33. 264 Harrison, Rethinking Augustine's Early Theology, 117. 265 It is precisely Augustine's new "lens" or hermeneutic that points us back to a Christological revolution (i.e. an apprehension of Christ as fully human and fully divine) occurring in the 390s. This hermeneutic will be discussed in chapter three.

shift. Brown and Cameron recognize this shift in Augustine from 391-396, but they unfortunately ground this development in his reading of Paul rather than in his embrace of an orthodox Christology. In this way, then, Harrison is correct that there was no

Pauline revolution in mid-390s whereas Brown and Cameron are correct in noting a blossoming Christology beginning in the 390s. So, while Augustine did have a

Christology that was undergoing a gradual process, according to Harrison, his

Christology was encapsulated by the Photinian error, eventually culminating in a rapid

Christological development effected by his social location and clerical vocation.266 In colloquial terms, with Augustine's new position in the priesthood and his struggle with the Donatists, these events caused him to speed up the process of developing his

Christology and ecclesiology (Brown and Cameron), even though his trajectory was in place the whole time (Harrison).

CONCLUSION

Augustine's Christological revolution developed between the years of 391-395. It started when he took up his new clerical position in 391 and his subsequent turn to an orthodox Christology. By comparing his Cassiciacum dialogues (386-387), which were greatly influenced through his readings of the books of the Platonists, and his writings beginning in 396-397, it becomes evident that his Christology underwent a rapid development. This study has argued that this rapid development can be attributed to

Augustine's rejection of a Photinian Christology and the embrace of a robust, orthodox

266 Additionally, both sides eschew the radical-break narrative as articulated in the thought of von Harnack and the others who have followed his lead. Each side, then, emphasizes different angles in Augustine's trajectory.

Christology. Once this transition occurred, a revolution in the Bishop of Hippo's thought resulted in an explosion of new writings that emphasized Christ, Church, and the sacraments as unifying themes. De doctrina christiana discloses the Bishop's newfound affirmation of the temporal world as "things" to be used on their journey toward the

"homeland." The incarnation brought with it a sense of affirmation of the material goods in God's creation, granted these were merely penultimate in comparison to the Good itself, God. In addition to this, Augustine radically alters the Neoplatonic ascent by implementing a seven-stage process of ascent that is thoroughly Christological. This new version of Christian ascent can be seen in Confessions when comparing his first two ascents in book seven with the Ostia ascent taking place in book nine. A hearing of the

Word takes precedence over a vision of the Word, and this is best communicated through a community of believers rather than solitary ascent toward vision. The Church, for

Augustine, helps the believer who "walks by faith and not by sight"267 to recognize their need for authority over the philosopher's way of reason.

The ecclesiology Augustine developed during this period (396-403) would also take on new orientations and contours, highlighting his Christological turn. For

Augustine, the incarnation was made visible through the manifestation of the mystery of

God in the sacraments, and likewise, the Church as the body of Christ was made visible in the world.268 This is why a failure to see the ecclesiological development in

Augustine's thought during this period would also betray Augustine's Christological development because they were both developing on the same trajectory. Christology and ecclesiology go hand-in-hand, and it is Augustine's link between the two that will enable

267 2 Corinthians 5:7. 268 Lee, Mystery of the Church, 2.

him to develop the doctrine of the totus Christus. The head (Christ) and the body

(Church) cannot be entirely severed because this would ultimately dissolve the Church, which is why he stressed the significance of unity over purity throughout his anti-

Donatist writings.

Studies that have been conducted during these transitional years in Augustine's life have often shown this Christological turn as well as his ecclesiological development.

However, few studies stress the importance that Augustine's Enarrationes in Psalmos had on his Christological and ecclesiological development. In fact, this study will make the claim that it was primarily through his reading of the Psalms that prompted Augustine to envision the Christ proclaimed by the Church. For Augustine, it was precisely through the Church that one could hear the Word speaking to the world. From a survey of

Augustine's Enarrationes, the final part of this thesis will attempt to show how Augustine viewed ecclesiology as a complex, coherent whole.

CHAPTER THREE

AUGUSTINE AND THE PSALMS

Chapter two demonstrated Augustine's Christological revolution of the 390s based on his rejection of the Photinian Christ and his reconfiguration of the Neoplatonic ascent.

The groundwork conducted in chapter two will aid this chapter in disclosing Augustine's developing ecclesiology along the same lines that his Christology began to shift into an orthodox conception of Christ. For Augustine, the incarnation was very much tied to an ecclesiology that visibly performs and speaks for all those listening "with ears to hear."269

This chapter will show precisely how Augustine developed his ecclesiology after his incarnational paradigm shift, and how this was derived from his studies on the Psalms beginning in 392.

After his move away from a Photinian Christology, Augustine's reading of

Scripture would immediately begin to take a Christological shape. The Psalms in particular would play a unique role, not only in Augustine's own faith, but also in his theology. Indeed, the Confessions was a spiritual text in which Augustine incorporated the voice of the psalmist into his own autobiographical voice.270 He described the way in which the Psalms "kindled" his love for God during the early days of his new-born

Christian faith and how they "fired" a passion within him to read, pray, and sing them.271

No one, thought Augustine, could refrain from feeling the radiance of the Psalms' "heat"

269 Matthew 4:23. 270 Rowan Williams, On Augustine (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016), 25. 271 Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 160.

being sung throughout the world.272 It comes as no surprise, then, that Augustine would spend twenty-six years of his life writing his massive Enarrationes in Psalmos.

According to Michael Cameron, the Enarrationes in Psalmos exceeds twice the length of the City of God and could be considered the most neglected in his massive corpus.273 All 150 of the Psalms were treated by Augustine in commentary form or homiletic fashion, demonstrating the Bishop of Hippo's hermeneutical and exegetical patterns. Moreover, Augustine's interpretative renderings show his theological development in ways that are not seen in his treatises. In fact, Augustine would quickly begin to identify Christ and the Church as one-whole unit in order to inform his congregations that they "are Christ too" as participants of his body.274 This would constitute for Augustine the doctrine of the totus Christus (the whole Christ) where head and body are tethered together as one.

Augustine's doctrine of the totus Christus could only be conceived of through the use of an ancient Patristic grammatical and rhetorical tool called prosopological exegesis.

This literary device was used in the Patristic tradition to distinguish the voice(s) speaking in the text of any given psalm. Prosopology aided Augustine in perceiving Christ as the mouthpiece of the psalmist who spoke on behalf of his body, thereby establishing a

272 Augustine, Confessions, 160. 273 Michael Cameron, “Enarrationes in Psalmos,” in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan Fitzgerald and et al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1999), 290. The Enarrationes are to be considered a unified whole, something that Augustine himself attests to when he states in the prologue to his commentary on Psalm 118: "With the Lord's gracious help I have expounded as best I could all the other psalms contained in the book which, as we all know, is by the church's custom called the Psalter." See, Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms 99-120, ed. Boniface Ramsey, trans. Maria Boulding, vol. 5 (Hyde Park: New City Press, 2003), 342. 274 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms 1-32, ed. John Rotelle, trans. Maria Boulding, vol. 1 (Hyde Park: New City Press, 2000), 275.

"Christo-ecclesial" hermeneutic in Augustine's Enarrationes.275 Ultimately, this grammatical tool helped Augustine not only read the Psalms Christologically, it shaped his ecclesiology as a performative, visible enterprise that functioned in the world, and audibly speaks in the divine drama between the Triune God and the Church.

The ecclesiology that saturates Augustine's Enarrationes is one that is complex but consistent, providing an alternative to the conception articulated by the scholars examined in chapter one. To show how Augustine's concept of an invisible and visible

Church is consistent, this chapter will examine his oft-neglected Enarrationes in Psalmos in order to retrieve and construct his overall ecclesiology. It will show that the body of

Christ serves as the visible dimension of the Church in the world and seeks to make itself heard through its performative actions as mirrored in the voice of the Psalms.

First, this chapter will locate Augustine in his historical context by way of disclosing his reception of prosopological exegesis. Second, it will explain his use of prosopology within the Psalms. Third, it will argue that Augustine's Christo-ecclesial hermeneutic helped to shape his doctrine of the totus Christus. Fourth, it will disclose the implications that the doctrine of the totus Christus had on Augustine's conception of the visible Church. Lastly, this chapter will explicate the dynamic relationship between the invisible and visible Church as seen throughout Augustine's Enarrationes and City of

God.

275 Michael Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere: Augustine's Early Figurative Exegesis (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 287-288. The term, "Christo-ecclesial," is a term that Cameron names and uses to describe Augustine's hermeneutic of the Psalms.

PROSOPOLOGICAL EXEGESIS IN THE PATRISTIC TRADITION

In chapter ten of the book of Hebrews, the author cites Psalm 39:7 LXX276 and writes that "when Christ came into the world, he said: 'sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me."277 This statement is a curious one considering the author identified Christ as the speaker even though there is no line in the text that claims Christ as having spoken. In fact, Christ is not mentioned anywhere in the psalter, let alone chapter 39. So, if Christ is nowhere to be found in the psalm, how can the author identify it as Christ speaking? Moreover, if Christ is the one speaking, who exactly is he speaking to? Is the author suggesting that there is a dialogue taking place in

Psalm 39? These questions, although new to the modern-day readers of Scripture, would not have been asked in the ancient world. As it turns out, this practice of ascribing the speaking voice in a psalm to that of Christ's was a common grammatical practice, not only with the authors of the New Testament, but also many Patristic authors. Scholars today name this literary tool prosopological exegesis and, as will be shown, Augustine mastered this device in order to read the Psalms Christologically.278

Prosopology began during the Greco-Roman period when the Grammaticus would teach their students to apply this technique to their readings of Homer, Plato, and

Virgil. Students were instructed to distinguish the persons (prosopon) in the text because many ancient works were written without line breaks, punctuation, and sometimes spaces

276 The Septuagint numbered Psalms 9-147 one behind the Hebrew enumeration used in modern Bibles. Here, the author of Hebrews is reading our Psalm 40:6. Augustine's Latin Bible followed suit with the Septuagint's enumeration of the Psalms. This chapter will adhere to Augustine's enumeration of the Psalms. 277 Hebrews 10:5 citing Psalm 39:7 LXX. Unless otherwise noted, all biblical passages referenced are in the New Revised Standard Version. 278 The example of Hebrews 10:5 as a text that shows the use of prosopological exegesis was retrieved from, Matthew Bates, The Birth of the Trinity: Jesus, God, and Spirit in the New Testament & Early Christian Interpretation of the Old Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 1.

between letters.279 Exercises consisting of recognizing when a change in dialogue occurred between characters or identifying types of speech and applying it to the appropriate character were practiced rigorously.280 These literary techniques shaped the students' reading of the text. Identification of the person in the text by way of perceiving the character's voice as speaking allowed grammarians to better comprehend the dialogue in a text and its overall meaning.

The church Fathers stand in a long line of this prosopological use as is evident from their commentaries on the Psalms, most especially Augustine's Enarrationes in

Psalmos.281 The main task of using prosopological exegesis in Scripture was to discern the voice or voices in a text, identifying the speaker and their interlocutors. In doing so, the reader was then able to interpret a particular meaning from the Scripture passage.

Some of the early church Fathers used prosopological exegesis to analyze the Persons of the Trinity and their relations to one another, the hypostatic union, and Christ's relationship to humanity.282 Origen, for example, heavily employed prosopology in a

Christological fashion more so than the Fathers before him. Origen was the first of the

Fathers to read a Psalm as a word spoken in the person of Christ, and Origen understood

Christ speaking therein to be the incarnate God who assumed humanity.283 This prosopological reading of the Psalms, then, entailed a unity of Christ with humanity.

Hilary of Poitiers, while exiled in the East, studied the Scriptural commentaries of

Eusebius of Caeserea who was in turn using the exegetical methods of prosopology he

279 Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 171. 280 Adam Ployd, Augustine, the Trinity, and the Church: A Reading of the Anti-Donatist Sermons (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 59. 281 Michael Fiedrowicz, “General Introduction,” in Expositions of the Psalms 1-32, ed. John Rotelle, trans. Maria Boulding (Hyde Park: New City Press, 2000), 50-51. 282 Ployd, Augustine, the Trinity, and the Church, 59. 283 Ployd, Augustine, the Trinity, and the Church, 60.

studied in Origen's commentaries.284 This prosopological reading of Hilary's included

Origen's conception that Christ, in his humanity, assumed all of humanity through means of his incarnation and therefore, when Christ spoke in the Psalms it was Christ speaking on behalf of his body, the Church.285 Ambrose of Milan too, serving as the closest direct influence on Augustine's use of prosopological exegesis, continued Origen's and Hilary's exegetical methods in his reading of the Psalms.

Augustine continued this exegetical trajectory of prosopology in his Enarrationes in Psalmos. According to Fiedrowicz,

Augustine followed the pattern customary in early Christian exegesis, which interpreted the Psalms either as a word to Christ (vox ad Christum), or as a word about Christ (vox de Christo), or as a word spoken by Christ himself (vox Christi), or in an ecclesiological perspective as a word about the Church (vox de ecclesia), or finally as a word spoken by the Church (vox ecclesiae).286

Whereas the Bishop of Hippo retained much of the influence he received from the

Fathers that preceded him, he journeyed on in developing a prosopological exegesis that would inform his ecclesiological development in formulating his doctrine of the totus

Christus. Augustine, as will be shown, inherited these exegetical methods used in his

284 Hilary, Homilies on the Psalms in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: The Select Works of St. Hilary of Poitiers, ed. W. Sanday, trans. E. W. Watson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 236: "The primary condition of knowledge for reading the Psalms is the ability to see as whose mouthpiece we are to regard the Psalmist as speaking, and who it is that he addresses. For they are not all of the same uniform character, but of different authorship and different types. For we constantly find that the Person of God the Father is being set before us…"; See also, Ellen Scully, "The Assumption of All Humanity in Saint Hilary of Poitiers' Tractatus super Psalmos" (PhD diss., Marquette University, 2011), 44-53, esp. 52: "A more fruitful avenue of exegetical similarity between Origen and Hilary is found in the prosopological exegesis Hilary employs in the Tractatus super Psalmos…[Hilary] develops it in line with the methods of Origen." 285 Scully, "The Assumption of All Humanity," 183-192. This would greatly influence Augustine's development of a Christo-ecclesial hermeneutic. 286 Fiedrowicz, "General Introduction, 44-45." Fiedrowicz is quick to note that this systematization does not serve as an exact science because the Christological and ecclesiological interpretations of the Psalms often times "intermingle" with one another. Thus, this systematization serves merely as a loose scheme from which to read Patristic interpretations of Scripture and the Psalms.

Enarrationes while at the same time developing it in unique way that would impact the

Saint's view of the Church.

AUGUSTINE'S EARLY USE OF PROSOPOLOGICAL EXEGESIS

In a sermon on Psalm 39 delivered sometime between 411-415,287 Augustine reminded his congregation that if someone were to ask who is speaking in this Psalm, it is

Christ. "It can never be said too often," Augustine remarked, who it is that speaks in the

Psalter: Christ.288 Augustine then immediately directed his congregation's attention to the reality that "Christ sometimes speaks in his own person, as our Head."289 This prosopological reading of Psalm 39 is something that Augustine employed all throughout his Enarrationes in order to read the Psalms Christologically. However, Augustine would later draw out an even more radical prosopological reading of the Psalms, one that would no longer aim to identify the distinct voices in the text as spoken by Christ or the Church but would rather unify head and body as the one voice of the totus Christus.

During his priesthood, Augustine first studied, drafted notes on, and preached

Psalms 1-32 before he was named Bishop of Hippo in 394-395.290 It was during this period of Augustine's priesthood that he was rereading Paul's corpus alongside his reading of the Psalms.291 As has been shown in chapter two, Augustine's Christological

287 On the date of Augustine's expositions, Fiedrowicz helpfully graphs the scholars who have estimated dates for each exposition. This particular sermon has been dated by three separate scholars who concluded three distinct dates all between 411-415. See, Michael Fiedrowicz, Psalmus Vox Totius Christi: Studien Zu Augustins Enarrationes in Psalmos (Freiburg: Herder, 1997), 432. 288 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms 33-50, ed. John Rotelle, trans. Maria Boulding, vol. 2 (Hyde Park: New City Press, 2000), 200. 289 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 200. 290 Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 166-167. 291 Charles Kannengiesser, “The Interrupted De doctrina Christiana,” in De Doctrina Christiana: A Classic of Western Culture, ed. Duane Arnold and Pamela Bright (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 3.

revolution enabled him to read Paul through a new lens, one that would be thoroughly

Christological and ecclesiological. In chapter's 1-32 of his Enarrationes, Augustine's early Christological attempts at reading the Psalms reveal him seeking the audible voice within the texts.

At the very outset of his Enarrationes, Augustine begins by stating that the

"blessed man"292 in Psalm 1:1 should be referred to Christ, "that is, the Lord-Man."293

Two chapters later Augustine would then take up the Lord-Man again and apply it to the actual voice speaking in the text. Augustine comments that Psalm 3:1 "should be understood as spoken in the person of Christ" in light of Psalm 3:6.294 Verse six stood out to Augustine in that imagery suggesting the passion and resurrection narratives were used, helping him to identify the proper voices speaking in the Psalm. Psalms 3:1-8, then, were read Christologically by way of prosopological exegesis as a prayer offered by the head of Christ's body.295 Curiously, Augustine in verse nine reads "salvation is from the

Lord" and switches the voice speaking in the Psalm to that of Christ's body. "In these prophetic words," Augustine told his congregation, it is the voice of the totus Christus; that is, "the church is speaking together with its Head."296 In ending his commentary on

Psalm 3, Augustine for a third time switches the voice speaking to a faithful member of the body who uses the psalm as a prayer to God when they are in need of strength and

292 The Latin vulgate from which Augustine was reading translated verse one as the "blessed man." I advocate using inclusive language and will substitute inclusive imagery for male imagery in places where Scripture or the church Fathers use it exclusively. However, because the male imagery in verse one is rendered by Augustine as referring to Christ's, I will keep it. The NRSV translates verse one as "Happy are those…" rather than "Blessed is the man…" 293 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 67-68. 294 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 76. 295 Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 172. 296 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 81.

hope.297 Three separate times in this psalm Augustine is able to identify three distinct voices through his prosopological analysis, demonstrating his earliest attempts at a

Christological interpretation of the Psalms. These earlier uses of prosopology would begin to morph into a consistently-used hermeneutic where Christ and his body, the

Church, constituted one speaking voice together.

AUGUSTINE'S PROSOPOLOGICAL EXEGESIS OF THE PASSION PSALMS

Psalms 15, 16, 17, 21, 27, 29, and 30 are the first Psalms in which Augustine begins to view the Church as speaking with the same voice of Christ. These are passages where Augustine hears the moaning voice of Christ during his passion.298 The passion narratives that Augustine detects in these seven Psalms, and as Augustine is at pains to display here, also includes Christ's body–a word that signifies the Church for Augustine.

This, then, discloses the ecclesiological possibilities that Augustine finds in his reading of the Psalms. When the head speaks as the voice of Christ, Augustine merged the head's voice with the voice of the body until they were one whole voice.

Augustine takes the inscription "of David himself" in Psalm 15 to be referring to

"our king" who took up "human nature" and was crucified. This leads Augustine to ascribe the voice spoken in verse two as the very words of Christ while hanging on the cross.299 Verse two encapsulates Christ on the cross calling out for his Father to preserve him, "preserve me, Lord, for I have hoped in you." Since Christ is suffering on the cross in this psalm, Augustine is able to pick up on the future tenses the text reveals: "I will

297 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 83-84. 298 Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 196. 299 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 182.

gather" (4); "you will restore" (5); "my flesh will rest" (9); "you will not abandon" (10);

"you will not give" (10); and "you will fill" (10).300 In verse five which states that the

"Lord is my allotted inheritance and my cup" Augustine interprets this as the body of

Christ who receives the inheritance of the Lord himself. Indeed, Augustine claims that the "my" referenced here is meant to be referred to as the Church "because where the

Head is, there the body is too."301 Verse five reveals one of Augustine's first epiphanies, so to speak, of head and body being inseparable when he images Christ on the cross, body and all, crying out to the Father.

Augustine continues to hear the crucified Christ in Psalm 16 crying out in prayer to the Father. Psalm 16 is a retelling of Christ's arrest prior to the crucifixion scene and a prayer for God to rescue his tortured, human soul.302 In interpreting verse one, Augustine immediately assigns this prayer as one that belongs to the Church, "which is his body."303

In verse ten which reads "They cast me out and now they surround me," Augustine understands to mean Christ relating his having been casted out of the city and being surrounded by gazers at the foot of the cross.304 Christ continued to relate his past events prior to the crucifixion in verse eleven where it says "They captured me like a lion ready for its prey." Augustine views the people to have mistakenly captured Christ when they thought they had arrested "that adversary who roams about seeking whom he may devour."305 Augustine summarizes verse thirteen, "Arise, Lord, outwit and overthrow them," to the soul being delivered from the ungodly by calling forth a resurrection from

300 Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 201. 301 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 183. 302 Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 204. 303 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 185. 304 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 186. 305 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 187.

his inevitable death.306 Here, Augustine emphasizes Christ's prayer from the cross, along with his body, in relating the passion narrative before the cross was raised up. Once raised, Christ calls out to the Father to preserve his soul by means of a coming resurrection, a resurrection that would include his body.

In Psalm 17, Augustine announces that this prayer constitutes Christ and the

Church speaking together in the voice of the totus Christus.307 This is first place in the

Enarrationes where Augustine uses the term totus Christus to describe head and body speaking in one voice. As with Psalm 16, this psalm is also a prayer spoken by Christ from the cross, the Church included. The title of this psalm begins with "To the end" which Augustine reads to mean Christ, "strong-handed in his humanity."308 Augustine interprets "my strength" in verse two to signify Christ "through whom I am strong," identifying the Church to be bound up in the strength of Christ.309 So it is that the Church speaks together with its head, who is Christ, the body's strength. The psalm ends with a final signature that charges its readers "to David and to his descendants forever."

Augustine quickly paraphrases this line in a Christological fashion: "To the strong-armed liberator who overcame the world…whom he has begotten for life eternal."310

In interpreting Psalm 21, Augustine would find even greater cause for incorporating Christ's body, the Church, into fulfilling this new concept of the totus

Christus. It would serve as the hermeneutical touchstone in his Enarrationes.311 Psalm 21 is the most striking passage in which Augustine identifies Christ and Church as totus

306 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 187. 307 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 189. 308 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 189; Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 204. 309 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 189. 310 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 197. 311 Jason Byassee, Praise Seeking Understanding: Reading the Psalms with Augustine (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 2007), 70.

Christus. Delivered as a sermon on Good Friday,312 Augustine begins his exposition of

Psalm 21 by settling the commonly-asked question as to whether God abandoned Christ on the cross or not: "God had not abandoned him, since he himself was God."313 His reasoning for this claim stems from his reading of the Gospel of John's prologue.

Augustine then returned this question, as it were, by rhetorically asking a question of his own: "For what other reason was this said then that we were there, for what other reason than that Christ's body is the Church?"314 In answering his own question, Augustine first states that Christ made this Psalm his own on the cross so that later Scripture readers would find his voice speaking elsewhere in the Scriptures (Old Testament). Second,

Augustine argues that Christ was speaking not for himself, as if he were really abandoned by God, but he was speaking on behalf of his body, the Church. It is something he continued to allude to in his preaching on verse 3:

Beyond doubt, he was speaking of me, of you, of him over there, of her, for he was acting as his own body, the Church…Why did he make that prayer [Ps. 21:3], then, except because he was bearing our weakness, and made it for those members of his body who still fear death? That was where the words came from; this was the voice of his members, not of the Head, as also are these words of the psalm: I have cried by day and by night, and you will not listen [Ps. 21:3].

In rhetorical and dramatic fashion, Augustine informed his congregation that as readers or hearers of Psalm 21, they are witnesses to a divine dialogue between the Son and the

Father, in which the Son speaks on behalf of the Church. Moreover, Augustine was explaining to the congregation that Christ makes them righteous by way of this unifying of head and body and "bearing our weakness." This concept of being made righteous in

312 This sermon has been dated by scholars anywhere between 407-415. See, Fiedrowicz, Psalmus Vox Totius Christi, 431. 313 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 229. 314 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 229.

the unification of head and body is further elaborated by Augustine's notion of transfiguration in his reading of Psalm 30, another psalm where he hears the voice of

Christ crying out during his passion.

In 411, while visiting a small country church near Carthage, Augustine preached a sermon on Psalm 30.315 After giving an explanation of the Psalm's title and a brief commentary on verse one, Augustine goes on a tangent in describing the head and body speaking as one voice. Drawing on Philippians 4:6-7, Augustine the preacher distinguishes between the form of a slave and the form of God in explicating how God was able to assume human flesh. He then uses this distinction as an exegetical principle in claiming that humanity was "transfigured" into Christ, "and to speak in our words, so that we in our turn speak in his."316 By this, Augustine understands the body being transfigured into the head as the "wonderful exchange" where Christ takes on humanity and humanity takes on divinity.317 "When he said that his soul was sorrowful to the point of death, we all unquestionably said it with him," Augustine claimed, and "in him we too are Christ."318 Augustine further elaborates that this transfiguration gives way to the totus

Christus consisting of head and body.319 Whereas in his earlier reading of the Psalms,

Augustine interpreted the voices of Christ or the Church in the mouth of the psalmist, he later rendered the voice of Christ and the voice of the Church as one speaking voice. This notion of transfiguration would additionally play into the way Augustine interpreted

Psalm 30:6.

315 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 321n1. 316 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 322-323. 317 Byassee, Praise Seeking Understanding, 74. 318 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 322-323. 319 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 322-323.

In the Gospels of Luke and John, Christ proclaims the psalmist's words: "Into your hands I commit my spirit."320 Augustine reads this in Psalm 30, as the head transfiguring the body into himself and owning the words that were crying out from the

Son on behalf of the body. Augustine explains that this was done in order for later readers of the Psalms to see themselves as the body hanging on the cross, crying out with its head to the Father.321 Taking up the words of the psalmist, the Son not only represents the

Church to the Father, but the Church is also transfigured into the image of Christ, thereby speaking in unison as one voice.

Therefore, the passages examined here are essential in tracking Augustine's development of prosopological exegesis as he continued writing and preaching his way through the Psalms. The passion Psalms in particular find Augustine starting to develop a somewhat nuanced prosopological method that placed more emphasis on the merging voices of Christ and the Church. In Psalms' 15 and 16, Augustine emphasized the body, as the Church, to be an integral part of the passion narrative when Christ spoke from the cross in these passages. In his interpretation of Psalm 17, Augustine identified the totus

Christus as a unified, speaking subject for the first time in his Enarrationes. Augustine introduces the concept of transfiguration from his reading of Psalm 21 and incorporates this famous psalm into the voice of Christ who speaks on behalf of his body, the Church.

Psalm 30 goes the furthest in Augustine's prosopological reading when he amplifies the very unity of Christ and the Church speaking together as one voice by way of transfiguration. Consequently, these readings of the one voice of the totus Christus opened up new Christological and ecclesiological possibilities that would give Augustine

320 Luke 23:46 and John 19:30 citing Psalm 30:6 LXX. 321 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 331.

fresh concepts for a robust ecclesiology. Yet, whereas prosopological exegesis helped

Augustine to parse out the distinct voices in the psalter, it would be Augustine's Christo- ecclesial hermeneutic that would impact his conception of the doctrine of the totus

Christus.

AUGUSTINE'S CHRISTO-ECCLESIAL HERMENEUTIC AND DOCTRINE OF

THE TOTUS CHRISTUS

In a sermon delivered sometime between 407-408,322 Augustine reflects on Psalm

45, immediately commenting on the title of the psalm: "It is concerned with what is hidden…he who was crucified on Calvary rent the veil asunder so that the secret places of the temple were exposed to view. Our Lord's cross was like a key for opening what was locked away."323 In a later sermon,324 Augustine preached on Psalm 79 where he made known what the total mystery of all the Scriptures were for those trying to understand them.325 The psalm "sings of the coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ," a testimony that confesses "in short, Christ and his Church, the total mystery with which all the Scriptures are concerned."326 In the first sermon, Augustine discloses the cross of

Christ as the interpretative key for reading the Scriptures in order to unlock the mysteries that lurk beneath. In the second sermon, Augustine reveals what the totally mystery that lurks beneath the Scriptures actually is: Christ and his body. Accordingly, Augustine

322 On the date of this psalm, see: Fiedrowicz, Psalmus Vox Totius Christi, 432. 323 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 310. 324 Fiedrowicz dates this in 412. See Fiedrowicz, Psalmus Vox Totius Christi, 434. 325 On the date of this psalm, see: Fiedrowicz, Psalmus Vox Totius Christi, 434. 326 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms 73-98, ed. John Rotelle, trans. Maria Boulding, vol. 4 (Hyde Park: New City Press, 2002), 141.

believed that the cross of Christ unlocked the total mystery of the Scriptures and discovered in them the totus Christus.

The main concept of the totus Christus is that the head and the members are distinct while remaining inseparable, and it is precisely this mystery–Christ and the

Church–that Augustine believes Scripture readers should seek to uncover.327 This is what forms Augustine's Christo-ecclesial hermeneutic throughout his reading and preaching of the Psalms. Augustine's ecclesiology, therefore, implies his Christology and vice-versa, demonstrating a theology of the church which is founded on the totus Christus. This becomes more apparent to Augustine as he works deep into the psalter and develops an ecclesiology that is performative, sacramental, and visible.

Augustine's aim in establishing the doctrine of the totus Christus as a hermeneutical principle for reading the Scriptures is not to teach correct Christological or ecclesiological doctrine in some objective form. On the contrary, Augustine wants to bring out the totus Christus so that his listeners will place themselves under their head, who is Christ. Indeed, as Augustine proclaimed in a sermon on Psalm 100, "we are part of Christ; and since we are his limbs and his members, we form one single person with our head."328 Augustine so often began his sermons with sayings like this one in effort to remind them their place as members of Christ's body. In another sermon on Psalm 85,

Augustine announced with good tidings that God graciously gifts his people by causing his Son "to be their head and fit them to him as his members."329 In the same way,

Augustine took up Psalm 142 and immediately reminded the congregation that Christ, as

327 James K. Lee, Augustine and the Mystery of the Church (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017), 1. 328 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 33. 329 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms 73-98, ed. John Rotelle, trans. Maria Boulding, vol. 4 (Hyde Park: New City Press, 2002), 220.

head of the body, "has made us his members."330 In constantly reminding his parishioners of their place as members of Christ's body, Augustine frees up the faithful to become actual, real-time participants in the voice speaking throughout the psalter.331

In helping the faithful to understand their position as part of the totus Christus,

Augustine was determined to awaken in them the desire to pursue the same performative actions as their head. This can only happen, according to Augustine, by way of transfiguration between Christ and his Church. Thus, because Christ transfigured his body into himself, the inverse becomes true whereby the body takes up the actions of the head.332 For Augustine claims that at the crucifixion scene, "we too were there":

Is it not obvious that there is movement between head and members, members and head? My spirit was dismayed within me, he says, and we cannot but be reminded of the words: My soul is sorrowful to the point of death. Yet we too were there. He took over into himself our lowly body and transformed it, configuring it to his own glorious body. Our old self was nailed to the cross with him.333

Augustine's Christo-ecclesial hermeneutic exhorts readers to take up their location as members of Christ's body so that they can also take up Christ's actions presented in the head's voice speaking in the psalter. The Church, while distinct from its head, remains inseparable through its one speaking voice of the totus Christus.

The hermeneutic that Augustine developed in his Enarrationes was meant to reveal the total mystery of Scripture which, for Augustine, was the totus Christus. Christ and Church merged together and would take on the mouthpiece of the psalter. However,

Augustine did not mean for this doctrine to simply be a way to have the psalms teach

330 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms 121-150, ed. Boniface Ramsey, trans. Maria Boulding, vol. 6 (Hyde Park: New City Press, 2004), 346. 331 Cameron, "Enarrationes in Psalmos," 293. 332 Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 289. 333 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 352.

content about Christ or the Church; rather he used a Christo-ecclesial hermeneutic to disclose the totus Christus as a way for his listeners to place themselves under their head.

Once Augustine was able to convince his audience, the Church, to place themselves accordingly under their head, he then stressed the necessity of performing and embodying the psalms as the totus Christus. For Augustine, the performative reality of the Psalms would be where the totus Christus would visibly reveal itself in the world and speak to those carefully listening.

THE TOTUS CHRISTUS AS A PERFORMATIVE REALITY

Augustine's Christo-ecclesial hermeneutic would help him survey the Psalms in order to discover avenues toward performative realities for the Church to take up as the voice of the totus Christus. Since the Church, as the body of Christ, is a part of its head through means of transfiguration, she would become witnesses to and participants in the divine dialogue where Christ prays, sings, and cries to the Father. This concept would lead Augustine to view the Psalms as a mirror that reflected one's own voice who prays, sings, and cries through them; because "we too were there," the voice of the psalms awakens into an audible one.

Mirror imagery would prove useful for Augustine as he believed the Psalms reflected one’s very own voice, enacted in the voice of Christ, back out into reality. The mirroring of the Psalms would lead the totus Christus in initiating a response, subsequently leading to a performative act: “if the psalm is praying, pray yourselves; if it is groaning, you groan too; if it is happy, rejoice; if it is crying out in hope, you hope as

well; if it expresses fear, be afraid.”334 Augustine's insistence that that voice of the totus

Christus belongs also to the body through its transfiguration, encapsulates a peculiar sacramental reality of the body's performance. Since the humanity of Christ serves as a sign that reveals the divine Word to the body, then the body, inseparable from its head, makes Christ a present reality to the world.335 The Psalms would be for Augustine a mirror by which the Church would participate and become the reality that they reflected back out into the world through the voice of the totus Christus. Augustine claims this in a sermon on Psalm 118 where he exhorts the congregation "to be the kind of person who can gaze into God's commandments as into a mirror…to be not only a hearer but a doer of the commandments."336 The totus Christus, then, is the doctrine that Augustine used in not only comprehending the Church’s identity and reading the scriptures, but a way to propel the Church into performative action.

As already examined in Augustine's reading of Psalm 30, the conception of the

Psalms seen as a mirror to its readers entails an “exchange” between the Church and

Christ. This means that those who participate in the body of Christ become like Christ and experience his divine life in a creaturely way.337 According to Augustine, the exchange becomes a therapy to the reader in that the text of the Psalms conforms itself to the reader, while the reader is transfigured into the inspired Word of the text.338 In a sermon on Psalm 36, Augustine stressed the therapy contained in the Scriptures by

334 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 347. 335 McCarthy, The Harp of Prophecy, 238. 336 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 357. 337 Cameron, Enarrationes in Psalmos, 293. 338 Michael Fiedrowicz, “General Introduction,” 40: “Thus Augustine treats the psalms as a medicinal potion administered by the divine physician and presented to the mouth of the sick person’s heart through his hearing.”

pleading with his congregation to "take your medicine. Drink it. The Lord himself…has mixed the dose for you…Let the mouth of your heart be receptive through your ear, and drink what you hear."339 The exchange also entails an existential and anthropological transformation of one’s “inner attitude[s]” and shifts it into an affective life of performance.340 "When you gaze into the Scriptural mirror your own cheerful face looks back at you," Augustine explained in a sermon on Psalm 123, "and you too will sing them."341 Augustine found in the Psalms an external medium that released a gracious healing into the hearts of Christians thereby providing a mirror for the Church and an avenue toward performing them.

The performative posture that the body of Christ has in reading the Psalms ignites in the totus Christus the impetus to perform them visibly and openly, in turn, being heard.

It is precisely this visible dimension in Augustine's ecclesiology that highlights an essential piece to the Saint's overall theology of the church. Rather than being a community having no inherent meaning, Augustine locates the visible aspects of the

Church as an intrinsic, dynamic component as explicated in his doctrine of the totus

Christus. A visible ecclesiology is one that Augustine implicitly emphasizes throughout his Enarrationes, and it is worked out through one of Augustine's favorite images for the

Church: the city of God.

339 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 94. 340 Fiedrowicz, "General Introduction," 37-38. 341 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 45.

A VISIBLE ECCLESIOLOGY

In the year 413, around the same period when he was regularly preaching from the psalter, Augustine would begin City of God, taking its title from Psalm 86:3, Psalm

47:2, and Psalm 45:4.342 Augustine established a dualistic scheme between the heavenly city and the earthly city, one oriented toward love and the other oriented toward "love of self."343 The eschaton would be the time when God, "administered by his Son Jesus

Christ," would come to fully separate the city of God from the earthly city.344 Indeed, for

Augustine, this implies a mixed body residing within the visible Church and therefore, cannot be identical to the heavenly city. However, with a careful examination of

Augustine's reading on the Psalms, where he derived his conception of the city of God,345 it can be shown that Augustine's idea of the visible Church is more nuanced than scholars have often presumed.

In a sermon on Psalm 36 delivered in Carthage around the year 403,346 ten years before he started writing City of God, Augustine came across verse eleven, "but the gentle will possess the land as their inheritance," and addressed its meaning for the congregation. The land, according to Augustine, is referring to Jerusalem, "the holy city, which will be freed at last from this pilgrimage" and will subsequently obtain eternal peace with God.347 Likewise, in a sermon on Psalm 26 he identifies the Church with

"Jerusalem, holy church, a part of which is on pilgrimage on earth."348 Years later in 412,

342 Augustine, City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 429. 343 Augustine, City of God, 593-594. 344 Augustine, City of God, 928-930. 345 Fiedrowicz, "General Introduction," 49. 346 Fiedrowicz, Psalmus Vox Totius Christi, 432. 347 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 101. 348 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 286.

right before he took up writing the City of God, Augustine preached on Psalm 49 referring to the Church here on earth as a pilgrim people, compassionate and servant- minded, ready to assist the hungry and poor.349 For Augustine, the visible Church is a pilgrim Church, a pilgrim city of God, that is "toiling on earth" toward its eschatological state in the heavenly city.350 This pilgrimage on earth of the visible Church that

Augustine often spoke of in his sermons referred to a certain longing for the final separation of the two cities in the eschaton, but it also discloses the importance with which Augustine placed on the visible Church.

Augustine's sermon on Psalm 148, before he began his writing on City of God,351 addressed the visible Church's purpose while pilgrimaging to the heavenly city. At the outset of the Psalm, Augustine leads his congregation to consider its inscription, "Of

Haggai and Zechariah," as directing the readers' attention to the future life of praising

God in the heavenly city.352 In the meantime, however, Augustine recognized that "as we walk our pilgrim way and sigh for the great city," the visible Church must earnestly praise the Lord "because what fills our thoughts here will be our whole occupation when we arrive home."353 Augustine completes his explanation of verse one by exhorting his congregation to "join in now, in hope" as the visible Church will one day "arrive in [the heavenly city's] company."354 According to Augustine, then, the visible Church had a

349 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 401. 350 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 323: "The Head is he who is the savior of his body, he who has already ascended into heaven; but the body is the Church, toiling on earth." 351 Fiedrowicz has it listed anywhere between 405-411, see: Fiedrowicz, Psalmus Vox Totius Christi, 438. 352 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 479. 353 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 480. 354 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 480.

duty to fulfill; and as the pilgrim city of God, the work that was to be done "now, in hope," had an essential aspect that would play a role in building up the heavenly city.355

One year before beginning his work on City of God, Augustine would preach a sermon on the city of Jerusalem wherein he would make the argument that the visible

Church's responsibility is to build up the heavenly city. In Psalm 146, he would read verse two, "The Lord is building up Jerusalem, and gathering in the dispersed of Israel."

According to Augustine, this verse signified the visible Church's vocation of building up the heavenly city. For "there is an eternal Jerusalem in heaven" which Augustine viewed as the homeland toward which the pilgrimage Church is not only "racing"356 towards but is additionally "building up Jerusalem" in order to restore "the part which had fallen away" at the Fall.357 Clearly, Augustine sees the visible Church as having an essential role while on its pilgrimage toward the eschaton. He continued the sermon by informing the congregation that Christ serves as the redeemer for those who have been exiled from this heavenly city. Those who have been lost are now to be gathered in as members of the pilgrim city of God: "If he gathered in the dispersed long ago, how zealous should we be now in gathering those who are scattered?"358

Augustine in a sermon on Psalm 61 reminded his congregation that they, too, were once a part of the wicked, earthly city. He noted how each one of them had to make their way into the holy city, by way of the pilgrim city of God first:

No single one of us born from Adam immediately belongs to Jerusalem. We each carry with us the side-shoots of iniquity and the punishment due to sin, and we are liable to death…but if we are to be predestined to belong to the people of God, the

355 Lee, Augustine and the Mystery of the Church, 76. 356 This verbal description of "racing" comes from a different sermon, see: Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 480. 357 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 424. 358 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 424.

old self will be destroyed and the new person will be built…Each of us must therefore make our passage over to Jerusalem…From the beginning of history the wicked city lives on, and the good city is continuously being formed by the conversion of the bad people.

Thus, Augustine sees the same providential pattern that God used with the Israelites in gathering his people together as the same "pilgrim path" the Church is journeying on in gathering up those who are lost and scattered.359

Augustine identified the pilgrim city of God as an integral part in his overall ecclesiology. The visible Church was the pilgrim city that incorporated the scattered into their midst, similar to the way Christ transfigured the body into himself. The visible dimensions of the Church carried with itself a performative reality that was truly on a pilgrimage, building up the heavenly city as she awaits her total transformation and purification. In the meantime, however, Augustine viewed the visible Church as essential in initiating the body to perform the totus Christus in the world; and, as should be expected, Augustine's emphasis on the totus Christus speaking in the Psalms would further impact the way he conceptualized the pilgrim city of God.

THE TOTUS CHRISTUS AS THE PILGRIM CITY OF GOD

In a sermon on Psalm 61 preached in the year 416, three years into his writing of the City of God, Augustine's doctrine of the totus Christus merged with his doctrine of the two cities. In taking up verse four, Augustine read "How long will you pile your loads on man? Kill me, all of you" and noted here that "the entire city is speaking."360 First, he draws out the meaning behind "Kill me, all of you" by identifying the voice crying out as

359 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 424. 360 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 205.

the totus Christus, for "[the Church] is two in one passion" whereby the "sufferings of

Christ are not undergone by Christ alone."361 Here, Augustine is telling his parishioners that they too were participants of Christ's passion insofar as the body is under their head, i.e. Christ. Augustine then goes on to inform his parishioners that with Christ as head over the body, that therefore deems Christ king not only over the heavenly city, but king over the pilgrim city for which he became incarnate in. "He, the Most High who founded her, is the king of that city, and he himself was made in her the humblest of men."362 This leads Augustine into making an all-too familiar move in claiming that "the entire city is speaking…One single city is speaking, one person is saying, "How long will you pile your loads on one man? Kill me, all of you."363 Augustine, therefore, is identifying the one speaking voice of the totus Christus as being spoken through the one whole pilgrim city of God. This reveals the importance with which Augustine placed on the pilgrim city as part of the totus Christus. It is the city where God's people were to be gathered together and speak in the totus Christus, as an entire city speaking with proclamation of the eternal Word who serves as their head and king. Augustine would finish his exegesis of verse four by taunting the adversaries who remain a part of the earthly city: "Let us see if they can banish his name from the earth."364 On Augustine's reckoning, the pilgrim city of God could not be banished from proclaiming the name of Christ in the one voice of the totus Christus.

Augustine delivered a sermon on Psalm 36 where he follows the same line of reasoning that the pilgrim Church speaks in the totus Christus, demonstrating Augustine's

361 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 204. 362 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 205. 363 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 205. 364 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 205.

consistent ecclesiology. He begins the sermon with a commentary on verse twenty-five by exhorting the congregation to take their rightful place in the totus Christus, "because you have your place within the body."365 According to Augustine, the Church is "young at first" but as she continues progressing toward the eschaton she will flourish "in sleek old age."366 For Christ is the "Head of the whole city of Jerusalem" who included the pilgrim Church from the very beginning.367 Augustine then identifies the voice in the whole city of God, speaking "throughout all the nations," as a widespread voice that pierces across the epochs ringing aloud the voice of the psalter, who is the totus

Christus.368 Therefore, the body of Christ who constitutes the visible, pilgrimage city of

God, speaks the same voice of Christ as participants in the totus Christus. The Church, widespread throughout all the nations, is the manifest body of Christ travelling throughout the world and proclaiming the totus Christus. Christ is king over the eternal

Jerusalem, the heavenly city, and he is head over his own body, who constitutes the one speaking voice of the totus Christus.369 Thus, as king over Jerusalem, Christ is leading the Church by way of transformation to their eternal peace in that heavenly city.

Augustine would go on to develop his doctrine of the two cities throughout City of

God. In it, Augustine would stress the visible reality of the Church as having an essential role in the process of transforming newly-baptized believers into the heavenly city.

Augustine conceived of the visible and invisible Church to constitute the making of the heavenly city in his development of the doctrine of the two cities. The split between the

365 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 131. 366 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 131. 367 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 131. 368 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, 131. 369 Lee, Augustine and the Mystery of the Church, 84.

two cities, according to Augustine, can be traced back to the first human split between

Cain and Abel.370 Augustine would then clarify that the city of which Cain founded is opposite of which Abel was the first to be a part of because it was in actuality founded by

Christ.371 All those who have been gathered into this invisible, heavenly city are simultaneously made citizens of the pilgrim city by way of transfiguration in the present, demonstrating the crucial role in which the visible Church plays in the building up of the heavenly city.

He continued this reasoning when he further explained how it is possible for a believer to be a part of the heavenly (invisible) city yet remain in the pilgrim (visible) city. The process of transformation that the pilgrim Church must undergo is fully realized in being "anointed with [Christ's] chrism; and yet it is the whole body, with its head, which is the one Christ."372 Therefore, Augustine calls out to those willing to listen to the whole Church made up of the speaking totus Christus: "Let the church of Christ speak, the 'City of the great king.'373 Clearly, for Augustine, the pilgrim city of God is meant to serve an essential purpose in its building up the invisible, heavenly city of which it will come to complete fruition in the eschaton.

Whereas the visible Church is not identical with the heavenly city, it nevertheless serves a crucial role in gathering those who used to be a part of the earthly city and placing them under their new head, establishing the totus Christus.374 The dynamic relationship between the visible and invisible Church coincides in the formation of the

370 Augustine, City of God, 596: "Now Cain was the first son born to those two parents of [humankind], and he belonged to the city of man; the later son, Abel, belonged to the City of God."; Lee, Mystery of the Church, 91. 371 Augustine, City of God, 717. 372 Augustine, City of God, 724. 373 Augustine, City of God, 717; The verse quoted comes from Psalm 47:2 LXX. 374 Lee, Augustine and the Mystery of the Church, 94.

totus Christus through its participation in the Church's sacramental life. For example, in book fifteen of the City of God, Augustine would emphasize the initiatory role that the sacraments have on a new member into the pilgrimage Church. First, he allegorizes the

Ark of Noah by identifying it with Christ and the Church. Second, he explains that "the door…represents the wound" by which Christ was speared and sees it symbolically as

"the way of entrance for those who come to [Christ]."375 Augustine further elaborates that the wound and subsequent blood that poured out from Christ's side is "the sacraments with which believers are initiated."376 The sacraments contributed to the life of the

Church by its forming into one body those who were once scattered.

This process of initiating new members into the Church was achieved through the means of the Church's sacraments. Augustine was able to perceive that the invisible, heavenly city would be inherently meaningless if the visible, pilgrim Church refrained from building it up. In order for the visible Church to build up the heavenly city,

Augustine argued that sacramental participation would be where the invisible Church springs into the visible Church, constructing an empirical Church that builds up the heavenly city it will one day come to coincide with. According to Augustine, then, this is the totus Christus on pilgrimage, manifesting the head's body on earth; and, Augustine thought if one listens closely enough, they will be able to hear its amplified voice speaking in the Scriptures.

375 Augustine, City of God, 643. 376 Augustine, City of God, 644.

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SUMMARY

This chapter has demonstrated that Augustine articulated an extremely complex, yet robust, ecclesiology through his Enarrationes in Psalmos. Beginning with the Saint's grammatical and rhetorical tools that he used for exegetical purposes, this chapter has shown how Augustine first identified the voice of Christ or the Church speaking in the psalter. This prosopological method aided Augustine in imaging Christ in the Passion psalms which, in turn, caused Augustine to identify the voice of Christ speaking on behalf of the Church. As he developed his prosopological exegesis, Augustine began to merge the speaking voice of Christ with the same voice of the Church, constituting the totus Christus. The totus Christus, then, would serve as Augustine's Christo-ecclesial hermeneutic in reading the Psalms which would lead him to conclude an exchange between Christ and the Church. This exchange consisted in the head transfiguring the body into itself as one whole speaking subject. Thus, Augustine's Christology also implied his ecclesiology which would carry significant implications for Augustine's concept of the visible Church.

According to Augustine, the visible Church as the totus Christus was an audible voice that could be heard in the Psalms, whereby the psalter would serve as a mirror reflecting the voice outward. For Augustine, then, this suggested a performative reality where the totus Christus could be heard throughout the world. In mirroring the commands and proclamations of the incarnate Word in the Psalms, the totus Christus was then enabled to make present Christ to the world as the head's body. That is to say, the body, serving the head of whom they were placed under by means of transfiguration, visibly manifests Christ in the world through the avenues of performing the voice

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speaking in the Psalms openly. This aspect in Augustine's ecclesiology places an essential role on the visible Church in his dualistic scheme between the invisible and visible

Church. This becomes particularly evident in his development of images for the visible

Church as a pilgrim Church.

In his Enarrationes, Augustine would develop images of the visible Church from the psalter and use them in City of God. The main image Augustine enjoyed using was that of a pilgrim Church. Augustine understood the pilgrim Church as having the important role of building up the heavenly city, the glorious city that would be fully realized in the eschaton. This would lead Augustine to emphasize the whole city as serving under its king, who serves as the same head over the body. Thus, the heavenly city, according to Augustine, is constituted by both the invisible and visible Church, but it’s the visible Church who undergoes transformation in its pilgrimage to completion in the eschaton. In its building up of the heavenly city, the pilgrim Church would gather in those who had been a part of the earthly city and incorporate them into the body through means of the Church's sacraments. Augustine argued that it is participation in the sacraments that build up the Church, who in turn builds up the heavenly city. Therefore, the visible and invisible Church, while distinct from each other, work in tandem toward its final stage where God separates the earthly city and the heavenly city.

Augustine's ecclesiology emphasized the crucial and essential meaning of the visible Church. Contrary to what many scholars have argued throughout the last two centuries, Augustine's notion of the visible Church was not meaningless nor was it contradictory. During his priesthood, Augustine's Platonism was turned on its head when he encountered the Psalms and the totus Christus therein, subsequently attributing an

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empirical reality to his ecclesiological scheme. Based on his reading of the Psalms and his formulation of the doctrine of the totus Christus, Augustine would construct an ecclesiology that stressed its visible, performative, sacramental, and audible dimensions.

CONCLUSION

The external pressures Augustine faced once he was selected to the presbyterate in 391 would affect his already developing ecclesiology. The Donatist controversy, to recall, placed Augustine in a position where the Catholic Church had to be defended in the context of North African ecclesiology and the heritage received from St. Cyprian.

Augustine's ecclesiology developed in line with his Christological revolution that hinged upon his rejection of the Photinian Christ in 391-392, providing him with a Christo- ecclesial hermeneutic that vastly opened up the Scriptures for the Church to hear the

Word of God speaking. The primacy given to hearing the Word of God speak in his study on the Psalms became, for Augustine, the participation in the divine dialogue with the

Triune God. From hearing this voice, the Church body would be shaped into the image of

Christ and mirror Christ on earth, demonstrating the essential purpose of the visibility of the Church in Augustine's ecclesiology. The one voice of the whole Christ, head and body, sheds new light on Augustine's dualistic ecclesiology and renders coherent the visible Church.

This thesis began by noting that various phrases and maxims of Augustine's have entered the canon of Augustine scholarship, and have captured the studies of his readers for generations. After having examined the many writings of Augustine in relation to his ecclesiology, this study recommends that a new phrase belongs in this canon: una vox

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totus Christus. Whereas some scholars have often interpreted Augustine's ecclesiology in strong Neoplatonic categories based on his early epistemology influenced by Plotinus' intellectual ascent, Augustine later discovered the one voice of the whole Christ speaking in the Psalms, ultimately establishing his Christology with his ecclesiology, and stressing the importance of the visible Church in the here and now.

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