Augustine and the Bible

Pamela Bright, Pamela Bright

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 1999
• ISBN:
  9780268076290
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Based on the acclaimed French volume Saint Augustin et la Bible, this translation with additional selections honors the beautifully wrought monument to the scholarly research of Anne-Marie la Bonnardière and her colleagues. Editor Pamela Bright offers the first English-language edition of this volume in the highly regarded series Bible de Tous les Temps, published by Beauchesne Editeur in Paris. This volume presents the findings of eminent scholars on the Bible in Augustine's letters, in his preaching, in polemics, in the City of God, and as a source for Christian ethics, following the chronological order of Augustine's works from the mid-380s to just before his death in 430. Part I examines what can be known of the stages of Augustine's encounter with the biblical texts and which texts were formative for him before he assumed his ministry of the Word. Part II is devoted to a very different kind of encounter—Augustine's grappling with the hermeneutical method originating in the province of Africa. Part III describes Augustine's first foray into the field of biblical polemics when he opposes the Manichees, the very group who first introduced him to a study of the "obscurities" of the biblical text. And in Part IV, the reader encounters the most familiar voice of Augustine—that of the tireless preacher of the Word.

Contributors include: Anne-Marie la Bonnardière, Mark Vessey, Michael Cameron, Pamela Bright, Robert A. Kugler, Charles Kannengiesser, Roland J. Teske, S.J., Gerald Bonner, Joseph Wolinski, Michel Albaric, O.P., Constance E. McLeese, and Albert Verwilghen.

PART I

Encountering the Word: Augustine’s Biblical Initiation

1

Augustine, Confessions XI, 3–4

“LET THY SCRIPTURES BE MY CHASTE DELIGHTS”

O Lord my God, hear my prayer, and let Thy mercy regard my longing, since it burns not for myself alone, but because it desires to benefit brotherly charity; and Thou seest my heart, that so it is. I would sacrifice to Thee the service of my thought and tongue; and do Thou give what I may offer unto thee. For “I am poor and needy,” (Ps. 86:1) “Thou rich unto all that call upon thee.” (Rom 10:12), who free from care carest for us. Circumcise from all rashness and from all lying my inward and outward lips. (Ex 6:12) Let Thy Scriptures be my chaste delights. Neither let me be deceived in them, nor deceive out of them. Lord, hear and pity, O Lord my God, light of the blind and strength of the weak; even also light of those who see, and strength of the strong, hearken unto my soul, and hear it crying “out of the depths.” (Ps. 130:1) For unless thine ears be present in the depths also, whither shall we go? whither shall we cry? “The day is Thine, and the night also is Thine.” (Ps. 74:16) At Thy nod the moments flee away. Grant thereof space for our meditations among the hidden things of Thy law, not close it against us who knock. For not in vain hast Thou willed that the obscure secret of so many pages should be written. Not is it that those forests have not their harts, (Ps. 29:9) betaking themselves therein, and ranging, and walking, and feeding, lying down, and ruminating. Behold Thy voice is my joy, Thy voice surpasses the abundance of pleasures. Give that I may love, for I do love; and this Thou has given. Abandon not Thine own gifts, not despise Thy grass that thirsts. Let me confess unto Thee whatever I shall have found in Thy books, and let me hear the voice of praise, and let me imbibe Thee, and reflect on the wonderful things of Thy law; (Ps. 26:7) and from the beginning, wherein Thou madest the heaven and the earth, unto the everlasting kingdom of Thy holy city that is with Thee.

Lord, have mercy on me and hear my desire, for I think that it is not of the earth, nor of gold and silver, and precious stones, nor gorgeous apparel, nor honours and powers, nor the pleasures of the flesh, nor necessaries for the body, and this life of our pilgrimage; all which are added to those who seek Thy kingdom and Thy righteousness. (Mat 6:33) Behold, O Lord my God, whence is my desire. The unrighteous have told me of delights, but not such as Thy law, O Lord. (Ps. 99:85) Behold whence is my desire. Behold, Father, look and see and approve; and let it be pleasing in the sight of Thy mercy, that I may find grace before Thee, that the secret things of Thy Word may be opened unto me when I knock. I beseech by our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, “the Man of Thy right hand, the Son of man, whom Thou made strong for Thyself” (Ps. 80:17) as Thy mediator and ours, through whom Thou hast sought us, although not seeking Thee, but did seek us that we might seek Thee, – Thy Word through whom Thou hast made all things (John 1:3) and amongst them me also, – Thy Only–begotten, through whom Thou hast called to adoption the believing people, and therein me also. I beseech Thee through Him who sitteth at Thy right hand, and “maketh intercession for us,” (Rom 8:34) “in whom is hid all treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” (Col 2:6) Him do I seek in Thy books. Of Him did Moses write; (John 5:4–6) this saith Himself; this saith the Truth.

2

Augustine’s Biblical Initiation

ANNE-MARIE LA BONNARDIÈRE

At the age of nineteen, after reading Cicero’s Hortensius, which at first had filled him with exaltation, Augustine experienced a pang of disappointment. He wrote:

. . . in my ardor, the only thing I found lacking was that the name of Christ was not there. For with my mother’s milk my infant heart had drunk in, and still held that name deep down in it, according to Your mercy, O Lord, the name of Your Son, my Saviour, and whatsoever lacked that name, no matter how learned and excellently written and true, could not win me wholly (Confessions 3.4.8).

When Augustine decided to abandon the Manichean sect a decade later and was tempted for a while by the skepticism of the academics, he described his anguished doubt in these terms:

So in what I thought to be the manner of the Academics — that is to say, doubting of all things and wavering between one and another — I decided that I must leave the Manichees; for in that time of doubt, I did not think I could remain in a sect to which I now preferred certain of the philosophers. Yet I absolutely refused to entrust the care of my sick soul to the philosophers, because they were without the saving name of Christ. I determined, then, to go on as a catechumen in the Catholic Church — the church of my parents — and to remain in that state until some certain light should appear by which I might steer my course (Confessions 5.14.25).

After his revelation caused by a sermon of Ambrose’s concerning the meaning of man created in God’s image in Genesis 1:26, Augustine exclaimed:

So I was first confounded and then enlightened. And I rejoiced, O my God, that Your only church, the Body of Your only Son, in which the name of Christ had been put upon me while I was still an infant, had no taste for such puerile nonsense (Confessions 6.4.5.).

In light of these secrets, he called to mind how on the threshold of his first childhood, Monica had exercised a determining influence by teaching her small children the gestures of prayer and the invocation of Jesus’s name. Despite numerous obstacles, for thirty years the search for Christ’s name became the absolute criteria for truth and the interior light which guided Augustine’s path.

Between the ages of seven and sixteen, at Thagaste and later Madaura, Augustine pursued his elementary and secondary studies under the vigilant supervision of his father. This provided him with the liberal culture foundational for a professional life. His Confessions vehemently underline the imbalance which such an education provided young children, based as it was on false and immoral fables written by pagan authors (albeit illustrious pagans such as Virgil and Homer) and a Christian formation wherein the sacred writings appeared to have little solid foundation. In 409 when Augustine wrote to the pagan Nectarius of Calama (modern Guelma) concerning the grave troubles which existed between the Christians and the pagans, he commented:

Personally I don’t ever remember reading that a life of indigence makes one forever unhappy; I read it neither in our sacred books, to the study of which I admit with regret that I applied myself too late, nor in your books which I had in my hands since my childhood (Confessions 3.4.8).

This letter echoes the earlier testimony of the Confessions wherein Augustine regrets that the rudiments of reading and writing, the obvious base of all higher study, cannot be taught from the Bible. He deplores once having been obligated to compose and deliver a speech, supposedly by Juno, in Virgilian style:

What could all this mean to me, O My true Life, My God? Why was there more applause for the performance I gave than for so many classmates of my own age? Was not the whole business so much smoke and wind? Surely some other matter could have been found to exercise mind and tongue. Thy praises, Lord, might have upheld the fresh young shoot of my heart, so that it might not have been whirled away by empty trifles, defiled, a shameful prey to birds (Confessions 1.17.27).

Augustine took up this theme at a much later date during a sermon delivered at Utica, in the month of August 417. The bishop of Hippo, received by his colleagues in the Basilica dedicated to the martyrs of Massa Candida, commented that day on Psalm 144 which glorifies God. After his usual fashion, Augustine picked out verses of the psalm and commented upon them one after the other. Verse 4 states: “. . . and they will announce your force.” This can also be translated as “. . . and they will proclaim your power.” Augustine took advantage of the occasion to remind his listeners of a current pedagogical custom practiced by the grammarians. In order to teach children the art of composing adulatory praise they were asked to write hymns to the sun, the sky, the earth, the rose, or the laurel. All these objects of praise are the works of God, insisted Augustine, however while the creations are glorified the Creator is ignored.¹

Deficient as Augustine’s Christian education was during his youth, it was not nonexistent. Aside from the daily example of his mother, Augustine alludes to the influence of men of prayer but remains silent about their names and their positions. Are they members of the clergy from Thagaste? He writes:

Yet, Lord, I observed men praying to You: and I learnt to do likewise, thinking of You (to the best of my understanding) as some great being who, though unseen, could hear and help me. As a boy I fell into the way of calling upon You, my Help and my Refuge; and in those prayers I broke the strings of my tongue — praying to You, small as I was but with no small energy, that I might not be beaten at school (Confessions 1.9.14).

As a young child Augustine had received the first rites of the initiation leading to Baptism. He wrote: “Even as a boy, of course, I had heard of an eternal life promised because the Lord our God had come down in His humility upon our pride. And I was signed with the sign of His Cross and seasoned with His salt as I came new from the womb of my mother, who had great trust in You” (Confessions 1.11.17). This knowledge was enough to persuade the young Augustine to ask for the baptism of Christ when he was gravely ill and close to death. After he was restored to health, the baptism was put off. However in Augustine’s judgment, on the whole, there was an imbalance between what he learned in school and his Christian background. It is not surprising to read Augustine’s comment in the beginning of his anti–Manichean treatise The Two Souls that “there are many things that I should have done to avoid having ripped from my heart so easily and quickly either by the error or trickery, of misguided or deceitful men, the seeds of true religion which had been happily sowed in me from my childhood.”² Augustine reproached the education provided to schoolchildren considering it to inculcate good words rather than good works. The focus was upon knowing how to speak well rather than to live well. Augustine alludes to himself in his interpretation of the prodigal son:

For to be darkened in heart is to be far from Your face. It is not on our feet or by movement in space that we go from You or return to You: The prodigal son did not charter horses or chariots or ships, or fly with wings or journey on his two feet to that far country where he wasted in luxurious living what You as a loving father had given him on his departure — loving when You didst give, more loving still to Your son when he returned, all poor and stripped. To be lustful, that is darkened, in heart, is to be far from Your face (Confessions 1.18.3).

In this adaptation of the parable, Augustine locates the separation from the Father to the end of his second childhood and secondary studies. The Father whom Augustine addresses right from the start of the Confessions remains the self same to whose mercy he celebrates until the very last pages.

Augustine turned sixteen near the end of 369. It was the beginning of his adolescence and he traces its lively evolution in Books 2 to 6 of the Confessions. Two statements, forming an inclusion, are characteristic of Augustine’s harsh judgment upon his life from age sixteen to twenty–nine. Book 3 opens with the declaration: “I came to Carthage, where a cauldron of illicit loves leapt and boiled about me” (Confessions 3.1.1). Augustine introduces Book 7: “Now my evil sinful youth was over and I had come on into young manhood . . .” (Confessions 7.1.1) This period of Augustine’s life has provoked a plethora of literature. We have a single focus: What was Augustine’s biblical initiation between 370 and 385?

Difficulties forced Augustine’s father Patricius, to interrupt his son’s education. Augustine had to return from Madaura to Thagaste and spend his sixteenth year in idleness, the account of which makes up Book 2 of the Confessions. A new inclusion, inspired by the parable of the prodigal son frames the narrative: “I departed further from You and You left me to myself” (Confessions 2.2.2). The section concludes: “I slid away from You and I went astray, O my God, deviating from Your stability in the days of my youth, and I became to myself a land of want et factus sum mihi regio egestatis” (Confessions 2.10.18).

Meanwhile Romanianus, a rich friend of Patricius, aware that Augustine was wasting his intellectual gifts in pursuit of leisure, covered the tuition for Augustine to study at Carthage to follow the studies which would enable him to become a rhetor. The youth studied at Carthage between 370 and 373. Several fateful events occurred in quick succession.

Eagerly plunging into tumultuous city life with its many licentious pleasures, Augustine quickly met the woman who would remain his concubine for fourteen years. “If the dates are precise,” wrote H.–I. Marrou, “it establishes that he is bound to his companion from the age of seventeen, in a state of concubinage, which the morals of the time and the law, if not Christian morality, considered quite normal. For fourteen years he remained faithful to the woman who g...