Page i Saint Augustine Against Julian Page ii The Fathers of the Church A New Translation Volume 35 Editorial Board Hermigild Dressler, O.F.M. Quincy College Editorial Director Robert P. Russell, O.S.A. Villanova University Robert Sider Dickinson College Thomas P. Halton The Catholic University of America Sister M. Josephine Brennan, I.H.M. Marywood College Richard Talaska Editorial Assistant Former Editorial Directors Ludwig Schopp, Roy J. Deferrari, Bernard M. Peebles Page iii Saint Augustine Against Julian Translated by Matthew A. Schumacher, C.S.C. Page iv NIHIL OBSTAT: JOHN A. GOODWINE Censor Librorum IMPRIMATUR: FRANCIS CARDINAL SPELLMAN Archbishop of New York September 17, 1957 Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 77­081347 ISBN 8132­0035­0 Copyright © 1957 by THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA PRESS, INC. All rights reserved Second Printing 977 Third Printing 1981 Page v CONTENTS BOOK 1 3 Augustine proposes to defend the doctrine of original sin set forth in Book 1 of De nuptiis et concupiscentia, against Bishop Julian, who had attacked it in four volumes and who had called its defenders Manichaeans. Such a charge would fall, therefore, upon the most famous of the Fathers, Greek and Latin, as Augustine shows by citing their own testimony, with particular explanation of passages from Basil and John Chrysostom which Julian believes favor his view. Actually, it is certain rash statements of Julian that strongly support the Manichaean heresy. BOOK 2 55 Augustine refutes the five arguments of the Pelagians against original sin from the pronouncements of earlier famous Church authorities: the ten illustrious bishops—Irenaeus, Reticius, Olympius, Hilary, Gregory Nazianzen, Ambrose, Basil, John of Constantinople, Innocent, and Jerome. Page vi BOOK 3 105 Augustine answers Book 1 of Julian so that it becomes clear that, although the true and good God is the Creator of men, and marriage is good and is instituted by God, yet the concupiscence by which the flesh lusts against the spirit is evil. Conjugal modesty uses this evil well, and more holy continence does better by not using it at all. This evil is not in us from another substance which God did not make, as the Manichaeans say, but arose and is transmitted through the disobedience of Adam, and is expiated and healed through the obedience of Christ. Everyone born incurs a deserved punishment in bondage to this evil; the reborn is released from it by a gratuitous grace. He shows from Julian's own words that lust is evil, for Julian acknowledges remedies against it, wants it to be restrained by reason, and says that glorious combats are fought against it by the continent. BOOK 4 167 Augustine considers each argument in this reply to Julian's Book 2, omitting only those statements that have no bearing on the question. He proves two things: that the virtues of unbelievers are not true virtues; and that concupiscence is evil. Through his opponent's very argument he also proves this from the words of the Gentiles. He shows how grace is not given according to merits, yet may not be attributed to fate; and how we are to understand the words of the Apostle that God wishes all men to be saved. Page vii BOOK 5 241 In dealing with Julian's Book 3, Augustine shows first why Christians despise the new heresy which rejects original sin. Concupiscence does not deserve praise merely because man's disobedience is punished through it; it is a fault and, even in those who do not consent to its wicked activities, it is always evil. He shows how we should understand the words of the Apostle: 'That each one may know how to possess his vessel,' and so forth. There is true marriage without union of bodies, as was the marriage of Mary and Joseph. Julian's attempt to argue by Aristotelean Categories against the sin derived from our first parents is without avail. Augustine shows how the flesh of Christ differs from the flesh of other men. Catholics by no means favor the Manichaeans when they acknowledge original sin and the evil of lust; this is true, instead, of the Pelagians when they say: 'Sins do not arise from that which is free from sin.' BOOK 6 307 Augustine answers Book 4 of Julian, as well as his cavilings and calumnies against De nuptiis. That man is born with sin is shown from the baptism of infants, from the rite of exorcism and exsufflation in the baptism of infants, from the words of the Apostle to the Romans and the Corinthians. The aptness of the illustration of the olive and the oleaster shows how from regenerated and just parents are born children who must be regenerated. Original sin was voluntary in the first parents; in Page viii us it is another's sin by the ownership of action, but it is our sin by the contagion of offspring. It is because of this sin that the human race from infancy is afflicted by these great miseries, and that infants who die without the grace of regeneration are excluded from the kingdom of God. Sanctification is now conferred through baptism on both soul and body, yet the corruption of the body, which also presses down the soul itself, is not removed in this life. He shows how concupiscence remains in act, passes in guilt; and he gives the Catholic interpretation of the Apostle Paul which Julian expounded in an incorrect sense. Page ix WRITINGS OF SAINT AUGUSTINE: VOLUME 16 Page xi Introduction St. Augustine wrote this work in the closing years of a life busied with three great controversies—Manichaeism, Donatism, Pelagianism, the last ending with the Contra Julianum and the Opus imperfectum contra Julianum. The year 411, which, for all practical purposes, saw the end of Donatism—a result largely due to Augustine—finds him beginning in earnest the conflict with Pelagianism, which was to occupy his time in sermons and a number of important writings for the rest of his days. The Council of Carthage (411) condemned the teachings of Celestius, the disciple of Pelagius. The councils of Carthage were sleeplessly active against the errors of Pelagianism, for, when the doctrines of Pelagius were accepted by John, Bishop of Jerusalem, and also by the Council of Diospolis as in harmony with the teaching of the Church, a new Council of Carthage (416) reaffirmed the previous condemnation. This action and a similar action by the Council of Milevis (416), at which Augustine was present, urged Pope Innocent I to ratify their decision. When word came from the Pope that on January 27, 417, he had condemned Pelagius and Celestius, Augustine in the course of a sermon proclaimed Page xii thankfully and wistfully: 'Inde etiam rescripta venerunt, causa finita est. Utinam aliquando finiatur error.' The usual form of the statement, 'Roma locuta, causa finita,' is, according to Battifol, 'less rich in tenor than the authentic version.'1 'Utinam aliquando finiatur error' had not been fully realized, for it required another Council of Carthage (418), with its nine canons summarizing the Catholic teaching on the important points of original sin, the need and action of grace, denial of the unlimited power of the human will, and considerable letter­writing, before Pope Zosimus in Epistola Tractatoria, issued in May, 418, approved the council's action and condemned the Pelagian teachings. Eighteen Italian bishops refused to sign the Pope's document, and they were excommunicated and deposed. Julian, Bishop of Eclanum, was the leader of the dissident group. According to Cayré, Julian was 'a fine humanist, keenly interested in all matters of speculation, somewhat pedantic, who exalted the rights of reason to the detriment of faith.'2 St. Augustine characterized Julian: 'in disputatione loquacissimus, in contentione calumniosissimus, in professione fallacissimus.'3 This discussion from 418 to the year of Augustine's death, 430, between two persons who never met during this time, is best set forth in three sources from Augustine's writings: The Preface to the Opus imperfectum contra Julianum, where he states briefly what he had in mind in the Contra Julianum; in the eighty­ eighth heresy described in De haeresibus, in which we have his understanding of the doctrines of Pelagianism; and the Contra Julianum itself, giving Augustine's specific purpose and plan. The Preface follows: 'I wrote a book entitled De nuptiis et concupiscentia to 1 P. Battifol, Le Catholicisme de Saint Augustine (Paris, 1924) 404. 2 F. Cayré, Manual of Patrology and History of Theology I (Belgium, 1936) 632. 3 Sermo 131.10. Page xiii Count Valerius against the Pelagian heretics, who assert that, even if Adam had not sinned, he would have died in body, and that the human race was not vitiated in him—whence it follows that they contend that death, deadly diseases, and all the evils which we see infants also suffer, would have existed in paradise, even if no one had sinned. I wrote this book because I knew the report had reached him that the Pelagians say we condemn marriage. In this book, using my strongest arguments, I distinguished the good of marriage from the evil of carnal concupiscience, which conjugal modesty uses well. When the illustrious Valerius had received this book, he sent me a memorandum containing several statements selected from the work of Julian, a Pelagian heretic who thought to answer in four volumes the one volume which, as I said, I wrote about marriage and concupiscence. These statements were sent to Valerius by some unknown person who had taken it upon himself to select what he chose arbitrarily from Julian's first volume.