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Augustine of Hippo: source notes

Augustine of Hippo: source notes

Works: Spirit and Letter; Grace and Free Will; Enchiridion. Edition/translation: NPNF¹ vols. 3 and 5, as on New Advent.

Back to justification · reasoning · conventions

S1: Spirit and Letter 26.45

  • Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1502.htm
  • Text: “Now he could not mean to contradict himself in saying, The doers of the law shall be justified, as if their justification came through their works, and not through grace; since he declares that a man is justified freely by His grace without the works of the law, intending by the term freely nothing else than that works do not precede justification. … so that justification does not subsequently accrue to them as doers of the law, but justification precedes them as doers of the law. For what else does the phrase being justified signify than being made righteous — by Him, of course, who justifies the ungodly man, that he may become a godly one instead?”
  • Context: His main gloss on Rom 2:13.
  • Bears on: Q3, Q1, Q2
  • Status: verified (English)

S2: Spirit and Letter 26.45 (alternative reading)

  • Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1502.htm
  • Text: “Or else the term They shall be justified is used in the sense of, They shall be deemed, or reckoned as just, as it is predicated of a certain man in the Gospel, But he, willing to justify himself, Luke 10:29 — meaning that he wished to be thought and accounted just.”
  • Context: He allows a declarative sense as well.
  • Bears on: Q1, Q3
  • Status: verified (English)

S3: Grace and Free Will 12–13 (chs. V–VI)

  • Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1510.htm
  • Text: Quotes Titus 3:4–7 (“being justified by His grace”) under the heading “The Grace of God is Not Given According to Merit, But Itself Makes All Good Desert”; and: “It is His own gifts that God crowns, not your merits, — if, at least, your merits are of your own self, not of Him.”
  • Context: Merit is real but is itself God’s gift. This is the background to Orange canon 18 and Trent’s language of merit.
  • Bears on: Q3, Q2
  • Status: verified (English)

Topic: baptism

See baptism reasoning.

BAP S1: On Merit and Forgiveness of Sins I.34 (ch. 24)

  • Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/15011.htm
  • Text: “the Christians of Carthage have an excellent name for the sacraments, when they say that baptism is nothing else than salvation… from that primitive, as I suppose, and apostolic tradition, by which the Churches of Christ maintain it to be an inherent principle, that without baptism and partaking of the supper of the Lord it is impossible for any man to attain either to the kingdom of God or to salvation”.
  • Context: Anti-Pelagian (412). He appeals to apostolic tradition for the necessity of baptism.
  • Bears on: B4, B1
  • Status: verified (English)

BAP S2: On Merit and Forgiveness of Sins I.21 (ch. 16)

  • Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/15011.htm
  • Text: “such infants as quit the body without being baptized will be involved in the mildest condemnation of all.”
  • Context: The hardest edge of the necessity claim. It depends on his doctrine of original sin.
  • Bears on: B4, B2
  • Status: verified (English)

BAP S3: Letter 98.2, to Boniface

  • Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1102098.htm
  • Text: “so great is the virtue of that sacrament, namely, of baptism, which brings salvation, that so soon as he who owed his first birth to others… has been made partaker of the second birth by others…”
  • Context: Infants are reborn through the faith of others (the Church presenting them).
  • Bears on: B2, B1
  • Status: verified (English)

Topic: salvation

See salvation reasoning.

SAL S1: Predestination of the Saints 3 (ch. II)

  • Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/15121.htm
  • Text: Chapter heading: “Even the Beginning of Faith is of God’s Gift.” And: “I ought first to show that the faith by which we are Christians is the gift of God”.
  • Context: A reply to the monks of Marseilles, who held that faith’s beginning is ours and its increase God’s.
  • Bears on: S1
  • Status: verified (English)

SAL S2: Predestination of the Saints 19 (ch. X)

  • Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/15121.htm
  • Text: “between grace and predestination there is only this difference, that predestination is the preparation for grace, while grace is the donation itself.”
  • Context: Defines predestination in terms of grace.
  • Bears on: S3
  • Status: verified (English)

SAL S3: Rebuke and Grace 18 and 36

  • Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1513.htm
  • Text: Ch. 18: “to some of His own children — whom He has regenerated in Christ — to whom He has given faith, hope, and love, God does not give perseverance also”. Ch. 36: “they who fall and perish have never been in the number of the predestinated.”
  • Context: Augustine holds that some who were truly regenerated fall away. Regeneration is not the same as election.
  • Bears on: S3, S4
  • Status: verified (English)

SAL S4: Gift of Perseverance 1 (ch. I)

  • Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/15122.htm
  • Text: “the perseverance by which we persevere in Christ even to the end is the gift of God … Therefore it is uncertain whether any one has received this gift so long as he is still alive.”
  • Context: Assurance of final perseverance is denied in this life.
  • Bears on: S4
  • Status: verified (English)

Topic: eucharist

See eucharist reasoning.

EUC S1: Tractates on John 26.11

  • Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1701026.htm
  • Text: “For even we at this day receive visible food: but the sacrament is one thing, the virtue of the sacrament another. How many do receive at the altar and die, and die indeed by receiving?”
  • Context: Distinguishes the sign from its saving power, and treats eating spiritually as what matters.
  • Bears on: E1, E3
  • Status: verified (English)

EUC S2: Letter 98.9

  • Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1102098.htm
  • Text: “As, therefore, in a certain manner the sacrament of Christ’s body is Christ’s body, and the sacrament of Christ’s blood is Christ’s blood, in the same manner the sacrament of faith is faith.”
  • Context: Uses the language of sign and likeness (“in a certain manner”). Reformed writers often cite this passage.
  • Bears on: E1, E3
  • Status: verified (English)

Topic: atonement

See atonement reasoning.

ATN S1: On the Trinity XIII (book summary)

  • Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/130113.htm
  • Text: NPNF summary of Book XIII: “it was needful that the devil should be conquered by Christ, not by power, but by righteousness.”
  • Context: The editor’s summary. The text of XIII.13–14 is to extract.
  • Bears on: A1
  • Status: verified (editor’s summary only)

Topic: original-sin

See original-sin reasoning.

OSN S1: City of God XIII.14

  • Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120113.htm
  • Text: “man, being of his own will corrupted, and justly condemned, begot corrupted and condemned children. For we all were in that one man, since we all were that one man … the seminal nature was there from which we were to be propagated; and this being vitiated by sin, and bound by the chain of death, and justly condemned, man could not be born of man in any other state.”
  • Context: Seminal presence in Adam. Guilt (“condemned”) and corruption together.
  • Bears on: O2, O4
  • Status: verified (English)

OSN S2: On Merit and Forgiveness of Sins I.10 (ch. 9)

  • Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/15011.htm
  • Text: He rejects the Pelagian reading of Rom 5:12 that Adam is “he in whom all have sinned by imitation”.
  • Context: Augustine’s own reading uses the Latin in quo (“in whom”). The Greek is ἐφ᾽ ᾧ (“because”); see O3.
  • Bears on: O2, O3
  • Status: verified (English)

OSN S3: On Merit and Forgiveness of Sins I.21 (cross-ref)

Topic: relics

See relics reasoning.

REL S1: City of God XXII.8

  • Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120122.htm
  • Text: “When the bishop Projectus was bringing the relics of the most glorious martyr Stephen to the waters of Tibilis … a blind woman … applied them [the flowers] to her eyes, and immediately saw.”
  • Context: Augustine catalogues miracles at Stephen’s relics in North Africa.
  • Bears on: R3
  • Status: verified (English)

Topic: afterlife

See afterlife reasoning.

AFT S1: Enchiridion 109–110

  • Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1302.htm
  • Text: “the soul dwells in a hidden retreat, where it enjoys rest or suffers affliction just in proportion to the merit it has earned … Nor can it be denied that the souls of the dead are benefited by the piety of their living friends, who offer the sacrifice of the Mediator, or give alms in the church on their behalf. But these services are of advantage only to those who during their lives have earned such merit, that services of this kind can help them.”
  • Context: Intermediate state and the benefit of prayers for the dead, with conditions.
  • Bears on: L1, L2
  • Status: verified (English)

AFT S2: City of God XXI.13

  • Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120121.htm
  • Text: “temporary punishments are suffered by some in this life only, by others after death, by others both now and then; but all of them before that last and strictest judgment … to some … what is not remitted in this world is remitted in the next”.
  • Context: Post-mortem temporary purification. Augustine elsewhere voices hesitation about a purgatorial fire (Enchiridion 69, to verify).
  • Bears on: L3
  • Status: verified (English)

AFT S3: City of God XXI.17 and 23

  • Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120121.htm
  • Text: XXI.17: “Origen was even more indulgent; for he believed that even the devil himself and his angels … should be delivered from their torments … But the Church, not without reason, condemned him”. XXI.1, citing Matt 25:46: “These shall go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into life eternal.”
  • Context: Reports both the merciful view and Origen’s universalism, and rejects them.
  • Bears on: L5
  • Status: verified (English)

Topic: scripture-and-tradition

See scripture-and-tradition reasoning.

SCT S1: Christian Doctrine II.8.13

  • Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/12022.htm (NPNF/ANF English translation)
  • Text: “There are other books which seem to follow no regular order, and are connected neither with the order of the preceding books nor with one another, such as Job, and Tobias, and Esther, and Judith, and the two books of Maccabees, and the two of Ezra, which last look more like a sequel to the continuous regular history which terminates with the books of Kings and Chronicles.”
  • Context: Augustine’s canon list includes Tobit, Judith and Maccabees.
  • Bears on: C2
  • Status: verified (English)

Topic: trinity

See trinity reasoning.

TRI S1: On the Trinity XV.17.29

  • Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/130115.htm (NPNF/ANF English translation)
  • Text: “Trinity the Son and none other is called the Word of God, and the Holy Spirit and none other the Gift of God, and God the Father alone is He from whom the Word is born, and from whom the Holy Spirit principally proceeds.”
  • Context: The Father the principal source of the Spirit.
  • Bears on: T2
  • Status: verified (English)

TRI S2: On the Trinity XV.17.29

  • Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/130115.htm (NPNF/ANF English translation)
  • Text: “And therefore I have added the word principally, because we find that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son also.”
  • Context:
  • Bears on: T2
  • Status: verified (English)

Topic: other-sacraments

See other-sacraments reasoning.

OSR S1: On the Good of Marriage 24.32

  • Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1309.htm (public-domain English translation)
  • Text: “For faithfulness, it is observed, that there be no lying with other man or woman, out of the bond of wedlock: for the offspring, that it be lovingly welcomed, kindly nourished, religiously brought up: for the Sacrament, that marriage be not severed, and that man or woman divorced be not joined to another even for the sake of offspring.”
  • Context: Faith, offspring, sacramentum.
  • Bears on: K4
  • Status: verified (English)