Augustine: Later Works, Might More Properly Be Applied to the Writings in Which This System Was Worked out After the Condemnation of Pelagianism in 418
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Augustine General Editors John Baillie (1886-1960) served as President of the World Council of Churches, a member of the British Council of Churches, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and Dean of the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh. John T. McNeill (1885-1975) was Professor of the History of European Christianity at the University of Chicago and then Auburn Professor of Church History at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Henry P. Van Dusen (1897-1975) was an early and influen- tial member of the World Council of Churches and served at Union Theological Seminary in New York as Roosevelt Professor of Systematic Theology and later as President. THE LIBRARY OF CHRISTIAN CLASSICS Augustine Later Works Edited and translated by JOHN BURNABY © 1955 SCM Press Paperback reissued 2006 in the United States of America by Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmit- ted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For infor- mation, address SCM-Canterbury Press Ltd., 9-17 St. Alban's Place, London, Nl ONX, UK. Cover design by designpointinc. com Published by Westminster John Knox Press Louisville, Kentucky This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the American National Standards Institute Z39.48 standard.© PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA United States Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. ISBN-13: 978-0-664-24165-0 ISBN-10: 0-664-24165-4 GENERAL EDITORS' PREFACE The Christian Church possesses in its literature an abundant and incomparable treasure. But it is an inheritance that must be reclaimed* by each generation. THE LIBRARY OF CHRISTIAN CLASSICS is designed to present in the English language, and in twenty-six volumes of convenient size, a selection of the most indispensable Christian treatises written prior to the end of the sixteenth century. The practice of giving circulation to writings selected for superior worth or special interest was adopted at the beginning of Christian history. The canonical Scriptures were themselves a selection from a much wider literature. In the Patristic era there began to appear a class of works of compilation (often designed for ready reference in controversy) of the opinions of well-reputed predecessors, and in the Middle Ages many such works were produced. These medieval anthologies actually preserve some noteworthy materials from works otherwise lost. In modern times, with the increasing inability even of those trained in universities and theological colleges to read Latin and Greek texts with ease and familiarity, the translation of selected portions of earlier Christian literature into modern languages has become more necessary than ever; while the wide range of distinguished books written in vernaculars such as English makes selection there also needful. The efforts that have been made to meet this need are too numerous to be noted here, but none of these collections serves the purpose of the reader who desires a library of representative treatises spanning the Christian centuries as a whole. Most of them embrace only the age of the Church Fathers, and some of them have long been out of print. A fresh translation of a work already 9 10 GENERAL EDITORS' PREFACE translated may shed much new light upon its meaning. This is true even of Bible translations despite the work of many experts through the centuries. In some instances old translations have been adopted in this series, but wherever necessary or desirable, new ones have been made. Notes have been supplied where these were needed to explain the author's meaning. The introductions provided for the several treatises and extracts will, we believe, furnish welcome guidance. JOHN BAILLIE JOHN T. MGNEILL HENRY P. VAN DUSEN CONTENTS PREFACE 13 THE TRINITY Introduction . 17 BOOK vin: The Search for God by the Understanding Argument ....... 37 The Text 38 BOOK ix: The Trinity of Mind, Knowledge, and Love Argument ....... 56 The Text ....... 57 BOOK x: The Realization of Self Knowledge: Memory, Understanding, Will Argument ....... 72 The Text ....... 73 BOOK xi: The Image in the Outward Man Argument . 91 BOOK XII : Knowledge and Wisdom Argument ....... 93 BOOK XIII : The Trinity of Faith Argument 95 BOOK xiv: The Perfection of the Image in the Contempla- tion of God Argument ....... 97 The Text 98 BOOK xv: Review and Re-valuation: Image and Original Argument . .126 The Text 128 12 CONTENTS THE SPIRIT AND THE LETTER Introduction . .182 Argument . 193 The Text 195 TEN HOMILIES ON THE FIRST EPISTLE GENERAL OF ST. JOHN Introduction . • -251 The Text Prologue ..... • 259 First Homily: I John 1-2:11 > 260 Second Homily: I John 2:12-17 . 270 Third Homily: I John 2:18-27 . • 279 Fourth Homily: I John 2:27-3:8 . 287 Fifth Homily: I John 3:9-18 • 295 Sixth Homily: I John 3:19-4:3 • 303 Seventh Homily: I John 4:4-12 . 312 Eighth Homily: I John 4:12-16 . > < . 320 Ninth Homily: I John 4:17-21 • 329 Tenth Homily: I John 5:1-3 • 339 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 349 INDEXES 353 PREFACE The three works of St. Augustine translated in this volume, in whole or in part, were all published in the years between 410 and 420, when Augustine was in his late fifties or early sixties, still at the height of his powers, and not yet wholly absorbed by the Pelagian controversy, which forced him to imprison his doc- trine of Grace in a system of rigid logic—the "Augustinianism" whose authority has weighed so heavily and so unhappily upon Christian thought, though it has never been accepted by the consensus jidelium. The title, Augustine: Later Works, might more properly be applied to the writings in which this system was worked out after the condemnation of Pelagianism in 418. It has been chosen as the simplest general description of a group of works nearly contemporaneous with one another, and separated by an interval of some twenty-five years from most of those included in the volume of his Earlier Writings in the present series. The De Trinitate, though begun perhaps as early as 400, was not finished before 417. Augustine's own words in the dedi- catory letter to Aurelius, Bishop of Carthage, are "I was young when I began it, an old man when I published it"—which sug- gests an even longer period of composition, though in Roman usage a man of forty was still ajuvenis. We may take the year 410 as an approximate terminus a quo for the writing of the second half of the treatise, which begins with Book VIII, and contains much the most original and interesting part of Augustine's thought on the subject. There has been room for a complete translation only of Books VIII, IX, X, XIV, and XV; but the Introduction attempts to survey the whole work, and sum- maries are given of the argument of Books XI-XIII. 13 14 PREFACE The De Spiritu et Litter a was written in 412, soon after the Pelagian doctrines had gained notoriety in Africa by the con- demnation of Caelestius, but before Augustine had been led to study the writings of Pelagius and embark upon their refutation in detail. Thus it has the advantage of offering a positive state- ment of the writer's understanding of St. Paul, rather than a controversial argument against Pelagianism. It is translated in full. The Tractatus in Epistolam Iohannis were almost certainly delivered at Eastertide in the year 415, when Augustine's most pressing concern was the final elimination of Donatism in his own diocese. Although direct references to the Donatists are not more than occasional, the Homilies can only be appreciated against the background of the schism; and this background is sketched in the Introduction. The Homilies have been consider- ably abbreviated in translation, but it is hoped that this has been done without serious loss. The selection has been made in order to provide examples of the finest works of Augustine, as speculative and mystical theologian, as Doctor Gratiae, and as preacher of Charity. The translator's aim has been to reproduce three acknowledged masterpieces of "the greatest man who ever wrote Latin,"l in an English which will not be intolerably irksome to read. This can only be achieved by a fairly liberal though not unscrupulous use of paraphrase, and (in the Homilies especially) by a fairly severe pruning of the preacher's luxuriance in rhetorical ques- tion and repetition. Reference to previous translations has been deliberately avoided: there is very seldom any difficulty in see- ing what Augustine's Latin means. In the translation of Augustine's Biblical quotations, his own text has been carefully followed. It must be remembered that he used one or other of the Old Latin versions current in Africa when he became Bishop. Jerome's revised version (the Vulgate) became available by the year 400. In the New Testament it was not conspicuously different from the Old Latin, and Augustine regularly used it for the Gospels. But he was most reluctant to substitute Jerome's version of the Old Testament, made direct from the Hebrew, for the Old Latin based on the Septuagint which for Augustine was an inspired text. Thus his Old Testa- ment quotations often differ widely from the versions with which we are familiar. 1 The judgement of Professor Alexander Souter of Aberdeen in J.T.S., Vol. XI, p.