Abstract

Although recent interpretations of Augustine of Hippo's teaching on Divine foreknowledge are helpful and sometimes successful on their own terms, they often misunderstand and misrepresent his doctrine. This is because, generally speaking, they lack breadth and a sufficient acknowledgment of the specificities of Augustine's presentation. Either too little of his treatment of praescientia Dei has been studied, or his discussions have been approached without sufficient attention to the discipline of context. ;To redress the aforementioned imbalances and omissions in the secondary literature, my dissertation analyzes Augustine's major and minor presentations of foreknowledge while paying attention to such matters as his audiences, rhetorical interests, choice of terminology, attempts to balance and integrate distinct intellectual traditions, and important transitions in his own philosophical development. To accomplish my larger goal of elucidating Augustine's overall doctrine, I approach his presentations in chronological order and focus a large portion of my energies on analyzing the structure of his concept of praescientia Dei as it develops over the course of his career. ;Augustine's teaching, I conclude, is consistent, though developing, and problematic. Consistency is present because throughout the whole of his corpus: he predicates 'foreknowledge' of God analogously; his concept of foreknowledge is anchored in his root understanding of God and is effected by his larger philosophical interests and concerns; and his major interest in speaking of this concept pertains to elucidating God's relationship with human responsibility. It is also evident that Augustine's notion of praescientia Dei expands over the years. Due to his restructuring of his Christian-Platonism, exploration of trinitarian doctrine, re-thinking of his views on Divine election and predestination, and ever-present apologetic concerns, he comes to identify his concept of Divine foreknowledge more closely with his root concept of God. ;Finally, Augustine's doctrine is problematic because we find that although his developed concept of praescientia Dei relieves specific tensions and unclarities found in some of his earlier presentations, it implies a determinist-like quality which stands at odds with the teaching found in his foreknowledge-responsiblity paradigm