Abstract

Augustine’s Sermon 4 on Esau and Jacob is long and consists of a complex division in 37 chapters. This division makes it difficult to identify quickly and easily the rhetorical arrangement which must have been an important factor in making this sermon a success in the context of Augustine’s struggle against Donatism. This same division has been handed down through the centuries. Once the existing, complex division into 37 chapters is relinquished, it is possible, on the basis of linguistic and Scriptural indications, to establish the existence of a new, simple division into 3 parts. A frame exists in these three parts that runs from creation to judgement, in which Augustine discusses the stories of Esau and Jacob in the context of the absence or presence of love. Seen from this perspective, Esau represents the bad people who consciously permit themselves to be separated from the Church through the absence of love, while Jacob stands for the good people, who highlight the unity of the Church by availing themselves of love: by not acting on their own authority and expelling sinners, but by leaving judgement to God and by accepting them lovingly. The new division clearly reveals this message.