Bookreview of, Alberto Romele, L’expérience du verbum in corde , ou l’impuissance de l’herméneutique , 260 pp. Compte rendu de l'ouvrage d'Alberto Romele, , L’expérience du verbum in corde , ou l’impuissance de l’herméneutique , 260 pp.

Theistic evolutionists often suggest that one can reconcile evolutionary theory with biblical teaching. But in fact Christians have accepted Darwinian theory only after reinterpreting the opening chapters of Genesis. Is such a reinterpretation justified? Within Western Christian thought, there exists a hermeneutical tradition that dates back to St Augustine and which offers guidelines regarding apparent conflicts between biblical teaching and natural philosophy (or “science”). These state that the literal meaning of the text may be abandoned only if the natural-philosophical conclusions (...) are established beyond doubt. But no large-scale scientific theory, such as Darwin’s, can claim this degree of certainty. It follows that to justify their reinterpretation of Genesis 1–3, Christians must either argue that the literal sense of the biblical text can be maintained or accept that the Augustinian view of biblical authority is untenable. Three alternative views are discussed: a first that attempts to limit the scope of biblical authority, a second that distinguishes between the Bible and the Word of God, and a third that abandons the idea that religious faith offers certain knowledge. While the third view seems the most defensible, it comes at a cost: the recognition that, as John Locke put it, “reason must be our last judge and guide in everything.”. (shrink)

_A fresh, new translation of Augustine’s inaugural work as a Christian convert_ The first four works written by St. Augustine of Hippo after his conversion to Christianity are dialogues that have influenced prominent thinkers from Boethius to Bernard Lonergan. Usually called the Cassiciacum dialogues, these four works are a “literary triumph,” combining Ciceronian and neo-Platonic philosophy, Roman comedy and Vergilian poetry, and early Christian theology. They are also, arguably, Augustine’s most charming works, exhibiting his whimsical levity and ironic wryness. In (...) this second, brief dialogue, Augustine and his mother, brother, son, and friends celebrate his thirty-second birthday by having a “feast of words” on the nature of happiness that includes a bittersweet metaphorical birthday cake. Using a process of reasoning that is philosophical as well as theological, Augustine and the group conclude that the truly happy life consists of “having God” through faith, hope, and charity. Michael Foley’s clear, precise and playful translations are accompanied by his brief, illuminating commentaries. (shrink)

The first four works written by St. Augustine of Hippo after his conversion to Christianity are the "Cassiciacum dialogues", which have influenced prominent thinkers from Boethius to Bernard Lonergan. In this second, brief dialogue, expertly translated by Michael Foley, Augustine and his mother, brother, son, and friends celebrate his thirty-second birthday by having a "feast of words" on the nature of happiness. They conclude that the truly happy life consists of "having God" through faith, hope, and charity.

In the past two decades scholars such as Robert Dodaro, Kathy Eden, and Michael Cameron have called attention to the influence that Augustine’s rhetorical education had on his scriptural hermeneutic. Recently, M. Cameron has argued that Augustine began to incorporate the rhetorical concept of oeconomia into his scriptural hermeneutic during his time in Milan. This article expands on Cameron’s work by establishing that Augustine had in fact incorporated rhetorical oeconomia into his scriptural hermeneutic by 387 / 8 C.E. through a (...) focused reading of two texts from De moribus ecclesiae. This reading demonstrates that the terminology and logic that Augustine employs to argue for the unity of the Christian scriptures in mor. 1.17.30 and 1.28.56 mirror the terminology and logic of the Latin rhetorical tradition, revealing that Augustine uses the phrases mirifica dispositio and admirabilis ordo to represent the same concept that Quintilian had referred to with the phrase oeconomica dispositio. (shrink)

Review of Pr. Ioan Chirilă, Scara cuvântului. Eseuri omiletice [ The Ladder of the Word. Homiletic Essays ],.

«Palabra de Dios» no se dice sólo con referencia a las Sagradas Escrituras; Jesucristo es la Palabra de Dios por antonomasia frente a la cual las demás expresiones de Palabra de Dios, incluyendo la Biblia, lo serán en sentido análogo y dependiente. Esto significa que tras la hermenéutica bíblica cristiana subyace la fe cristológica, de tal modo que lo que se predica de la naturaleza de la Sagrada Escritura, Palabra de Dios puesta por escrito, sea consecuencia directa de lo que (...) se predica de Jesucristo, Palabra de Dios encarnada. Ello, además de incidir en la vida y la fe del creyente, tiene importantes implicaciones epistemológicas, metodológicas y práxicas para la hermenéutica bíblica hoy. «Word of God» doesn’t onlj refer to the Holj Scaptures; Jesús Christ is the Word of God par excellence against which all other expressions of God’s Word, including the Bible, are anahgous and dependent. This means that behind Christian biblical hermeneutics lies faith in Christ, so that what is preached on the nature of the Holj Scripture, the written Word of God, is directlj dependent on what is preached about Jesús Christ, the Word of God incarnate. This, besides influencing the ufe and faith of the beüever, has important epistemological, methodological and practical consequences for current biblical hermeneutics. (shrink)

The Edge of Words is Rowan Williams' first book since standing down as Archbishop of Canterbury. Invited to give the prestigious 2014 Gifford Lectures, Dr Williams has produced a scholarly but eminently accessible account of the possibilities of speaking about God -- taking as his point of departure the project of natural theology. Dr Williams enters into dialogue with thinkers as diverse as Augustine and Simone Weil and authors such as Joyce, Hardy, Burgess and Hoban in what is a compelling (...) essay about the possibility of language about God. (shrink)

Much of the contemporary discussion of religion seems to do away with the very possibility of revelation. In this article, I use Lacoste’s phenomenology of la parole to rethink a theology of revelation in terms of God’s personal self-giving in experience. After examining Lacoste’s views of the relationship between philosophy and theology, his liturgical reduction and what this means for an understanding of experience and knowledge, and his thought of la parole more broadly, I give critical consideration to how he (...) thinks the possibility of God’s address to humanity. Lacoste maintains that God’s presence in experience may be known through affection, and, indeed, that the word may so move us that we are able to recognise that presence. He uses the notion of self-evidence rather than the usual phenomenological category of evidence to evince the reasonableness of this response. I argue that while Lacoste accords due deference to a traditional understanding of revelation as the repetition or unfolding of a word addressed to us in the past, his thought also allows us to think revelation as a contemporary event, the hermeneutics of which allow us to know God in ways that are new. (shrink)

Throughout his corpus, Augustine grapples with the challenge of how to speak of that which exceeds and resists conceptualization. The one who would speak of God is confronted, it seems, by a double‐bind: either one reduces God's transcendence to the immanence of language and concepts, or one remains silent. Even to call God ‘inexpressible’, he remarks in De doctrina christiana, is to predicate something of God and thus make some claim to comprehension. ‘This battle of words’, he continues, ‘should be (...) avoided by keeping silent’. Augustine thus seems to privilege and apophatic strategy. But this is not his last word on the matter. Indeed upon the heels of this passage he carefully notes: ‘And yet, while nothing really worthy of God can be said about him, he has accepted the homage of human voices, and has wished us to rejoice in praising [laude] him with our words.’ My goal in this essay is to consider Augustine's laudatory strategy of ‘praise’ as a non‐objectifying discourse concerning transcendence which navigates the straits between kataphatic theological positivism and apophatic silence. This will be taken up against the horizon of contemporary discussions of transcendence and phenomenology, particularly in the work of Jacques Derrida and Jean‐Luc Marion. (shrink)

Throughout his corpus , Augustine grapples with the challenge of how to speak of that which exceeds and resists conceptualization. The one who would speak of God is confronted, it seems, by a double‐bind: either one reduces God's transcendence to the immanence of language and concepts, or one remains silent. Even to call God ‘inexpressible’, he remarks in De doctrina christiana, is to predicate something of God and thus make some claim to comprehension. ‘This battle of words’, he continues, ‘should (...) be avoided by keeping silent’ . Augustine thus seems to privilege and apophatic strategy. But this is not his last word on the matter. Indeed upon the heels of this passage he carefully notes: ‘And yet, while nothing really worthy of God can be said about him, he has accepted the homage of human voices, and has wished us to rejoice in praising [laude] him with our words.’ My goal in this essay is to consider Augustine's laudatory strategy of ‘praise’ as a non‐objectifying discourse concerning transcendence which navigates the straits between kataphatic theological positivism and apophatic silence. This will be taken up against the horizon of contemporary discussions of transcendence and phenomenology, particularly in the work of Jacques Derrida and Jean‐Luc Marion. (shrink)

This article builds on Gadamer’s rehabilitation of the Augustinian concept of inner word. Unlike most interpretations, the thesis is that the Augustinian inner word does not show the potentialities, but rather the ineffectiveness of ontological hermeneutics. In the first section, it is argued that for the later Augustine, the verbum in corde is the consequence of a Word- and Truth- event. In the second section, the author suggests that Gadamer has properly understood the verbum in corde as (...) a matter of faith. In the third section, it is shown that Gadamer has found in the notion a paradigm for his philosophical and theological insights. Concerning the former, he has always been fascinated by the evenemential character of the ‘second’ Heidegger’s thought. Concerning the latter, Gadamer has explicitly accused Bultmann’s demythologization of being ‘human, all too human’, and he has implicitly praised Barth’s dialectical theology. (shrink)

Late in his life, Hans-Georg Gadamer was asked to explain what the universal aspect of hermeneutics consisted in, and he replied, enigmatically, “in the _verbum interius_.” Gadamer devoted a pivotal section of his magnum opus, _Truth and Method_, to this Augustinian concept, and subsequently pointed to it as a kind of passkey to his thought. It remains, however, both in its origins and its interpretations, a mysterious concept. From out of its layered history, it remains a provocation to thought, expressing (...) something about the relation of language and understanding that has yet to be fully worked out. The scholastic idea of a word that is fully formed in the mind but not articulated served Augustine as an analogy for the procession of the Trinity, and served Thomas Aquinas as an analogy for the procession between divine ideas and human thought. Gadamer turned the analogy on its head by using the verbum interius to explain the obscure relation between language and human understanding. His learned interpretation of the idea of the inner word through Neoplatonism, Lutheranism, idealism, and historicism may seem nearly as complex as the medieval source texts he consulted and construed in his exegesis, but the profoundity of his insights are unquestioned. In unpacking Gadamer's interpretive feat, John Arthos provides an overview of the philosophy of the logos out of which the _verbum interius_ emerged. He summarizes the development of the _verbum _in ancient and medieval doctrine, traces its path through German thought, and explains its relevance to modern hermeneutic theory. His work unfolds in two parts, as an expansive intellectual history and as a close analysis and commentary on source texts on the inner word, from Augustine to Gadamer. As such, this book serves as an indispensable guide and reference for hermeneutics and the intellectual traditions out of which it arose, as well as an original theoretical statement in its own right. “Consummately researched, lucidly written, and persuasively argued throughout, __The Inner Word_ _succeeds brilliantly in bringing to light this neglected but pivotal matter in Gadamer’s work. Arthos is learned in the best ‘humanist’ way, for he succeeds in creating something new of his own that will speak eloquently to all of us.” —_Walter Jost, University of Virginia_ “Gadamer suggests that the Christian idea of incarnation is a key to his hermeneutics, but does not explain his position in a detailed or systematic manner. Arthos brings his considerable knowledge of hermeneutics and rhetoric to bear on Gadamer's insight, recounting the rich intellectual history to which Gadamer gestures, and providing an extended and detailed exegesis of this pivotal point in the third part of _Truth and Method_. Gadamer's account of 'linguisticality,' Arthos explains, can best be understood through his use of a complex metaphor—the ‘inner word.’ Arthos matches his erudition with clear and clean prose, and his account exemplifies, rather than just describes, Gadamer's hermeneutical philosophy. Any scholar interested in Gadamer's philosophy should have this book on his or her shelf.” —_Francis J. Mootz III, William S. Boyd Professor of Law, William S. Boyd School of Law_ “Arthos's strength lies for me in his careful reading of the sources. He effectively commands the literature on the subject. This work shows in a sophisticated way the legacy of trinitarian theology for philosophical hermeneutics. The very complex task of illuminating the phenomenon of the _verbum interius _and indicating its centrality for philosophical hermeneutics is accomplished by John Arthos with great sensitivity to the subject matter.” —_Andrzej Wiercinski, The International Institute for Hermeneutics_. (shrink)

From the beginning, Augustine's "Confessions" presents itself as a dialogue with God. Taking a cue from Ludwig Feuerbach’s "The Essence of Christianity [Das Wesen des Christentums]," this dialogue can easily be dismissed as a projection of the self. This would imply that the divine otherness is nothing more than a mirror of one’s own fears and preferences. “Does this critique,” I asked myself in this piece, “really do justice to a position like that of Augustine?” For a long time, I (...) did not know how to approach what I had — provisionally — called Augustine’s dialogue with God. It appeared to me that Augustine, in an accidental and indirect way, had re-invented the Platonic dialogue and had turned it into a new Christian genre. “It is true,” I told myself, “that the genre of the Confessions shows family resemblances with the hagiography and the autobiography. But most certainly it cannot be reduced to these genres.” The Greek words ‘hagios’ (holy) and ‘autos’ (self) are in flagrant contradiction with the intention of the Confessions. Augustine tries to stay clear of any claim of holiness and only highlights his own ‘self’ to immediately question it. “Is the Platonic dialogue,” I asked myself, “not a far more appropriate predecessor for Augustine’s dialogue with God?” Both types of dialogues can be seen as true dia logoi in which at least two different voices emerge. However, contrary to what one would expect, it is not the dialogue form itself that frames these two voices. Instead the two voices emerge within the discourse of a single speaker, incorporating true otherness within the discourse of the self. Building on these reflections, I explore how Augustine's dialogue with God succeeds in eluding Feuerbach's charge of self-projection. (shrink)

The main focus of this article is to clarify the complex phenomenon of allegorical interpretation of the Bible in the Middle Ages. It is not just some medieval peculiarity, but a very refined methodology, which enabled scientists to explore and define their reality. Their view of reality is basically different from our point of view. The medieval student did not understand reality per se, but was interested in reality as far as it could help to grasp the meaning of the (...) supernatural world. All earthly things were seen as codes of the spiritual realm of God, which mankind could decode by means of this very system of allegoresis. The starting point, therefor, is to be taken in biblical hermeneutics. Here, allegoresis was developed into an overall method of interpretation, not only of the words of the Bible, but also into a refined tool of exegesis of nature and Creation, extending so far as to the allegorical explanation of liturgy. Based on a interpretation of II Corinthians 3:6, Bible hermeneutics were developed in Christian tradition which saw the Old Testament as the letter, the New Testament as the Spirit. Dependent upon this, there was a development towards the division of, on the one hand, the words which described the historical events, and on the other hand its full meaning and signification on a higher, that is, spiritual or allegorical level. This higher level of interpretation can be subdivided in three aspects of meaning: a) an allegorical or dogmatical aspect; b) a tropological or ethical aspect, and c) an anagogical or eschatological aspect. These aspects cover all the important issues of Christian faith and life, very similar to the way people read the Bible nowadays. Apart from the words of the Bible, also the things, which are described in it, can be signs of a higher reality. One could say: just like there is a language of words which are signs, there is a language of things meaning other things. It is, in fact, a second language . Having briefly surveyed the history of allegory, the writer continues with a status questionis of modern research. The discussion on the difference between allegory and typology between De Lubac and Daniélou is revivified, but because of the inherent theological axiomata it has to be set aside. Renewal of the discussion can be found in Augustine’s division into allegoria verbi and allegoria facti, which are to be connected with typology. This discussion ends into an overall view of the areas to which allegory can be applied: Gods language of signs, based on words , historical facts and things can be found in the Bible, in Creation and in Liturgy. Typology is not one of the two layers of the bible, nor is it to be attached to one of the four aspects of meaning; it is a point of view on the relationship between the Old and the New Testament. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Commentary on Augustine City of God, Books 1–5 by Gillian ClarkJames J. O'DonnellCommentary on Augustine City of God, Books 1–5. By Gillian Clark. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. xii + 281. ISBN: 978-0-19-887007-4.Pierre Bayard's masterful How to Talk about Books You Haven't Read offers soothing balm for readers in the daunting presence of Augustine's City of God. Weighing in at a third of a million words, Augustine's (...) magnum opus et arduum,1 offers a Moby-Dick and a half of verbiage spread out over twenty-two books. I make the claim, nervously and looking about for intelligent contradiction, that it is the longest work of sustained and coherent argument to survive from Greco-Roman antiquity. Other behemoths are compilations in the main of one kind or another, but this one has a structure and a linear direction and was tightly enough written that a theme opened in the second book with a promise of returning with later treatment is in fact picked up in the nineteenth book written perhaps a dozen years later.Those who really will read, or at least read in, Civ. benefit from all the help they can get. There are good translations (English alone in my lifetime by McCracken et al. in Loeb, Bettenson, Dyson, and Babcock) but none provides more than a minimalist annotation. Francophone readers have been better served since 1960 by the five volume edition with more ample annotation in the Bibliothèque Augustinienne of G. Bardy et al., and it is the standard point of entrance to serious study for scholars. That work has many strengths but the limitations of arising from a devout tradition of scholarship and of coming before the efflorescence in late antique and Augustinian studies through which we have lived.More help is now at hand in the form of the volume under review and its promise of more to come. Gillian Clark is known and admired among Augustinian scholars for many works, not least the earlier exercise in commentary of her Cambridge "green and yellow"2 edition of Confessions 1–4 (1995). The present work began as an ambitious multi-author collaborative project that proved unwieldy (see the present volume, pp. 31–32) and results in this first installment of [End Page 179] a series now in Clark's hands exclusively, drawing on her strengths as a classical historian specializing in late antiquity and patristics. Four additional volumes are anticipated, ideally on two-year intervals. The task requires multiple competences: at least, the history of the fourth and fifth centuries, the history and presence of ancient philosophy, the history of Christian reception and interpretation of scripture, and the reception of classical literature in late antiquity. It is a work that soars with no middle flight.As commentary on a behemoth, the commentary begins with the virtue of concision. At a rough calculation, commentary here runs at about half again the length of the text under review, producing volumes that can be usefully read alongside Augustine without swamping either Augustine or the reader in an ocean of erudition and detail. After an introduction that is as much to the whole work as to books 1–5, the book is organized strictly by lemmata to passages commented. The lemmata are all in Latin to facilitate use by readers of various editions and translations, with references given by book/chapter and page/line to the standard CCSL 1955 reprinting of the edition of Dombart-Kalb (itself originally a Teubner of 1928).3The focus of the annotation is on the work as historical artifact, well situated in both the moment and controversies of writing and in the apparatus of learning that Augustine brought to his work. Inevitably this includes welcome discussion of argument, rhetoric, and strategy (the very short discussion of how Augustine wrote on pp. 9–12 is remarkably insightful), but readers will welcome the lucid guidance offered to how the text made sense in Aug.'s own time, to what he was evidently reading as he wrote, and to the range of historical realia that make up his argument. Commentary on later... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Primacy of Christ: The Patristic Patrimony in Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's Analogy in Theology by Vincent C. AnyamaRoland MillarePrimacy of Christ: The Patristic Patrimony in Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's Analogy in Theology by Vincent C. Anyama (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2021), xii + 263 pp.In the famous dispute between Erich Przywara and Karl Barth, Przywara held the view that the analogy of being is the "formal principle of Catholic thought," whereas (...) Barth maintained the position that the analogy of being is the "invention of the Antichrist." The recent work of Fr. Vincent Anyama presents how the theology of Joseph Ratzinger, with this emphasis on the primacy of Christ, under the influence of the Church Fathers, contributes to the discussion revolving around the role of analogy within theology. Gottlieb Söhngen, one of Ratzinger's mentors and teachers, had appeased Barth with his argument of a Christocentric "analogia entis within an analogia fidei" (2–3). Anyama argues that Ratzinger has taken up the mantle of his mentor in appropriating his Christocentric synthesis of the analogy of faith and reason via his study of Augustine. The unique contribution of Anyama's work is that his study of Ratzinger takes the reader beyond the typical presentation of Ratzinger as an Augustinian and Bonaventurian theologian. Anyama's work engages the patristic influence of Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, Tyconius, Justin Martyr, and Maximus the Confessor in addition to the significance of Augustine in Ratzinger's theology.Anyama's study is concerned with addressing Ratzingerian scholarship in two different areas. First, he wants to address what is an inadequate assessment of the patristic influence upon Ratzinger's theology in the scholarship of Peter Fletcher and Peter Kucer. Second, he intends to address varying questions relating to Ratzinger's use of analogy in the work of Peter McGregor, Justin Kizewski, Peter Kucer, and Gabino Bilbaco (235). Anyama explicitly notes that he relies upon a "hermeneutic of continuity" that is limited to the continuity between the patristic heritage and Ratzinger's theology (13). Anyama limits the scope of his study on Ratzinger's use of analogy by adopting the patristic categories utilized by Justin Kizekski in work God-Talk: (1) faith and reason, (2) image and participation, and (3) God-talk (12). These categories will frame the structure for part two of the book (chapters 3–5), whereas the first part of the book (chapters 1–2) focuses on the general patristic understanding of analogy and the Church Fathers quoted by Ratzinger.Jesus Christ is the Incarnation of the logos of the Father. The Church Fathers use "wisdom" and logos in reference to both philosophy and the Christian faith. In the thought of Origin, Christ is the one unique Logos, [End Page 307] who is both the source and ultimate end of the many words (logoi) of natural reason (26). As the eternal Logos, Jesus Christ is the consummate Image, whereas the human person is an "image of the Image" via the rational soul in the theology of Clement of Alexandria (33–34). This line of patristic thought will become important later on in Anyama's work as he addresses the theme of the primacy of Christ within Ratzinger's thought. Creation in the image of God is distinct from the notion of likeness to God within much of patristic thought. In the thought of Irenaeus and other Fathers, likeness is "understood as assimilation of creatures into God," which is a participation of the creature in the life of God via the gift of grace and the life of the Spirit (46–47). The notions used by the Fathers, which are underscored by Anyama, are the identification of reason as "seeds of wisdom" (Origen) and "Seeds of the Word" (Justin Martyr). The analogy between pre-Christian philosophy and the Christian faith will be a frequent theme in the writings of Ratzinger, who will begin his inaugural lecture at the University of Bonn with an insightful reflection upon the God of philosophy and the God of faith.When Anyama begins the second part of the book, he focuses on the thought of Bonaventure because of the prominent influence he... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:1 & 2 Thessalonians by Douglas FarrowAnna Silvas1 & 2 Thessalonians by Douglas Farrow (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2020), xx + 336 pp.1 and 2 Thessalonians are probably the very first written testimonies of early Christianity. When Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians in AD 50, Our Lord Jesus Christ had "accomplished his exodus in Jerusalem" (see Luke 9:31) not twenty years before. Here we find the paradosis of the (...) Mystery of Christ among the Gentiles, the first articulations of Trinitarian faith (see 1 Thess 1:2-5), expressions of longing for the coming Parousia of Christ, warnings of a strange lawlessness already at work ripening towards a great apostasy and the coming of the "man of lawlessness."Douglas Farrow has pondered 1 and 2 Thessalonians for many years, attested by his numerous expositions and essays over three decades. He brings to his task a ready command of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, and a vast reading of historical commentary and controversy, an intense personal and ecclesial faith, and a sense of historical, prophetic, and pastoral urgency.Throughout the book are excurses on themes opened up by the words and phrases of St Paul's text: Satan (82-86); the sexual body and virtue in sex, divorce, and remarriage (95-114); the remedial pains of purgatory (beginning in this life); the reality of final retribution, the finality of hell; the untenability of so-called "universalism" (131-41,178-84,192-96); the imminency and the delay of the Parousia (199-204); the apostasy / man of lawlessness / Antichrist; the temple in which the Antichrist seats himself (205-42); the mystery of lawlessness at work, especially in undermining the Church (245-61).In studying Paul's eschatological themes, Farrow necessarily ponders other scriptural texts leading in the same direction: Dani 7-12; Jesus's Olivet Discourse in its most extensive form at Matt 24:1-25:46 (though it really begins at 23:23); 2 Pet 2:1-5, 3:3-15; much of the Rev 6:1 through 19:21; [End Page 398] Deut 32:1-43 (Farrow says the Song of Moses encapsulates the whole of human history); Psalms 97 (LXX 96); 110 (LXX 109); Wis 4-5, 10-19; Sirach 50; Joel; Zech 8-14; Mai 3-4; 2 Mace 5-9; Isa 66:5,14-16; and so on. Farrow holds that Paul worked from knowledge of Jesus's apocalyptic teachings in aversion closest to Matthew's (138,142,184, 189, 205).Farrow takes companions in his exegesis: Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom, Augustine, Haimo, Anselm, Aquinas, and others. He knows Luther's hermeneutics and Calvinist disputes about supra- and infra-sessionism and double predestinationism. He consults more recent prophets, quoting at length from Newman's amazingly prescient 1838 discourses on the last times, Solovyovin 1899, and Fulton Sheen in 1948 and 1958. Another exegete is an artist: Luca Signorelli, whose Disputation of the Antichrist in Orvieto Cathedral Farrow refers to several times.Farrow shows his affinity with Irenaeus. That means cleaving to the visible and invisible truths of the Incarnation of God the Word, respecting concrete and embodied realities, keeping in view the transcendent goal ("The glory of God is a living man—and the life of man is in the vision of God"), instinctively flinching at gnosticizing tendencies—sophisticated re-interpretations of Scripture that elide the rule of faith and dissolve truth. It means a ruling sense of the Kingdom of God as an intervention from heaven rather than generating from man or from the earth. It means a spirit of obedience to the commandments, to the paradosis that descends to us from above in Christ, effected by the Spirit in the ecclesia, the company of brethren destined to "gather to Christ" at his coming (1 Thess 2:1), who practice that final gathering to Christ by participating in the Eucharist on the "Eighth Day," the Lord's Day.Farrow deplores the patchy reading of 1 and 2 Thessalonians in the lectionaries: "While 1 Thessalonians fares a little better, barely half of 2 Thessalonians is read in the Churches" (11). Missing is the eschatologically pivotal 2 Thess 2:3-15, where Paul, distinguishing... (shrink)

The Danish author Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855) is one the best-known theologians in the intellectual history of modernity since the nineteenth century. His influence is comprehensive: it is to be detected, amongst others, in theological, philosophical, literary, psychological and aesthetic discourses across the globe in many contexts. As such this publication will provide welcome input in further reflection on Kierkegaard's role in the interpretation of Scripture in modernity. Huls's book is a refreshing addition to Kierkegaardian studies, which will pave the (...) way for further research on one of the great thinkers of our time. It is also a useful contribution to the debate in contemporary hermeneutics about the legacy of the Enlightenment and the nature of biblical interpretation as a hermeneutical enterprise. Scripture aims to bring us back to our being-seen-in-God. By being alone with it, we realize that in it we are looking in the mirror of Him who loves us from our origin. In reading Scripture, we can, consequently, not be allowed to flee in all sorts of human fabrications about Scripture, as if only the knowledge of theologians could expose the true meaning of Scripture. Every person, whether well-schooled or not, whether he has much or little knowledge, knows Scripture, because before all else Scripture lives in us. Scripture merely reminds us of the Word that is spoken in us immediately and that constitutes our subjectivity. As long as the Word has not truly made us fall silent and we ourselves still think we have a say, the Word does not yet have us in its grasp. Only when we truly fall silent, in the realization that our human logic shrinks into insignificance compared to the wisdom of Him who loves us from our origin, can this Word become directive in our existence. Because there is truly only one eternal object of wonder -- that is God -- and only one possible hindrance to wonder -- and that is a person when he himself wants to be something. (shrink)

Just as Augustine set the stage for the next 1000 years of hermeneutics, working through Augustine's On Christian Teaching, puts the main issues of medieval hermeneutics on the table. The text is divided into four sections. The first offers the figurative meaning of words. In the second and third sections, Augustine turns to language, conventional signs as opposed to natural signs. The final section addresses the question of how we communicate the teachings of scripture. In the background of Augustine's hermeneutics (...) is the church father widely considered to be the first major Christian exegete, Origen. Origen's allegorical interpretations hold sway against those who dismiss the Bible as historically inaccurate. The model for the split between exegesis and theology is St. Thomas Aquinas. The differences between Aquinas's hermeneutics and Augustine's are not that great; most of the relevant views and debates were settled by the fall of the Roman Empire. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Some Aspects of Christian Mystical Rhetoric, Philosophy, and PoetryRyan J. StarkThis is an article about poets and poetic philosophers who make spirited arguments. My purpose in particular is to clarify the nature of mystical rhetoric, which needs to be distinguished from secular rhetoric (i.e., “secular” as nonspiritual). As ways of existing in language, they are ontologically incommensurable, and we should treat them as such. Mystical rhetoric is that into (...) which Spirit enters, conveying to both writer and reader some aspect of providential kairos that cannot otherwise be attained. That is, God completes mystical inferences. God participates, illuminating the hearts of those who open themselves to grace through faith. Or, in other words, writers and readers who want to enter into numinous arguments must shelve the hermeneutics of suspicion. An overly critical stance actually diminishes the possibility of insight, even if it is well intended, much like nervous backseat driving, which—though aimed at producing safety—inevitably works against it. I am not suggesting, however, that skeptics are at a complete loss when approaching mystical rhetorical situations. Rather, they simply do not grasp the metaphysical, enchanted, or occult dimensions of the discourses at work, because they have closed themselves off to Spirit or—more commonly—have attempted to transmogrify Spirit into secular concepts, which distorts spirited language and leads to mischaracterizations of religious experience.1 In contrast, I provide a Christian approach to [End Page 260] mystical rhetoric, one that neither discounts nor sidesteps the real presence of the supernatural.Inspired Rhetoric and HermeneuticsFuror poeticus is a key element of mystical persuasion. The phrase literally means “poetical fury,” and the idea behind it in a Christian framework is that the Holy Spirit aids writers in creating imaginative texts (e.g., sonnets, sermons, essays, novels, blogs, etc.) or, in pernicious instances, demons aid writers.2 In either case, a mysterious force helps the author to compose. Moreover, furor touches readers or listeners, a point seldom emphasized but nonetheless central to this sublime practice of composition. Inspired writing requires inspired reading: furor poeticus needs furor lectoris.3 The Spirit aids readers in understanding mystical rhetoric, as long as those readers participate earnestly in the discourse. John Milton (1674, 7.31), for example, famously envisions such a “fit audience” in the third invocation to the Muse in Paradise Lost (i.e., the “great Argument”), where he calls on the reader for hermeneutical verve, a spirited reading to complement his enthusiastic writing. Søren Kierkegaard also writes to an audience capable of spiritually minded hermeneutics, allowing him to perform various edifying dissimulations through pseudonyms: the despairing aesthete, the unscrupulous seducer, the rigid moralist, and so forth. These inspired writers expect believing readers to contribute to their works, to complete their disputations, in fact, through spirited exegesis. Their methods of composition demand it, which is to say that writers touched by furor leave little room in their arguments for the sustainable disposition of the uninspired reader.Cicero explains spirited rhetoric and hermeneutics in De divinatione, where Quintus talks about how inspired readers experience the same type of furor as inspired writers, seers, and prophets: “Men capable of correctly interpreting all these signs of the future seem to approach very near the divine spirit of the gods whose will they interpret, just as scholars do when they interpret the poets” (1938, 226). Scholarship, in other words, is capable of tapping into mystical energy, making the scholars as prophetic as the vates on which they write. In the second book of On Christian Doctrine (1958, 75–78), Augustine also explains the importance of mystical exegesis as a form of prophecy, where sincere readers undergo the same type of inspiration as mystical writers. For Augustine, spirited reading begins with prayer and ends with revelation. In both accounts of furor, Cicero’s and Augustine’s, [End Page 261] the inspired audience and the inspired writer together experience rapture, a divine vision or illumination, which is precisely the type of communion that occurs during mystical discourses.4Still, the idea of seeking communion with God is potentially unsettling. The notion produces anxieties of psychosis, possession, and self-erasure. Plato famously expresses such concerns in Ion, for example... (shrink)

In Genesis 27 Jacob is depicted as lying to Isaac. Jacob, however, was held in Christian tradition to be both a moral exemplar and to be speaking prophetically in this episode with his father. This raises the question of how Doctors of the Church such as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas were able reconcile these interpretive commitments with their stance on the intrinsically disordered nature of lying. In examining their resolution of this tension, we discover an important exegetical distinction (...) for interpreting troubling words as nevertheless being divinely inspired. Yet, it is only in light of another interpretive distinction, recently highlighted by Nicholas Lombardo OP, that we can both hold to the inspired nature of Jacob's words and also a natural reading of the account in Genesis 27. The detailed examination of Genesis 27 by both Augustine and Aquinas is an important case study for understanding how we can interpret troubling language as still being the word of God. This undertaking, spanning centuries between Augustine and Aquinas, is now taken one step further thanks to the exegetical proposal of Fr. Lombardo. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Politics and the Earthly City in Augustine's City of God by Veronica Roberts OgleAaron C. EbertPolitics and the Earthly City in Augustine's City of God by Veronica Roberts Ogle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), x + 201 pp.Politics is not a word in Augustine's lexicon—at least, it's not something he speaks of, in the abstract, in his great work of political theology, the City of God. This (...) curious omission from Augustine's late magnum opus et arduum has given rise to many a divergent reading of his political thought. Lacking an express account of the very term in question, his politics can seem to admit of a wide range of interpretations. On one side of the spectrum, it has been described as anticipating the religious neutrality of modern liberalism. On the other side, it has been interpreted as consolidating politics into religion by transposing political philosophy into the key of ecclesiology and making the Church the new realm of politics.1 In her elegantly written and insightful new book, which builds on the work of her 2014 dissertation at the University of Notre Dame and on a few published articles, Veronica Roberts Ogle charts a new interpretive path for reading Augustine on politics. She does this by means of two principal interventions.The first is by elucidating City of God's rhetorical purpose, what Ogle calls its "psychagogic character" (6). Psychagogy, "the art of leading [agô] souls [psychai] to a state of health," was the rhetorical aim and genre of much ancient philosophy (3). It took its cue from the philosopher's perception that his readers were sick with the disease of unhealthy attachment to the things of the world. Philosophers were physicians of the soul: they applied "the medicinal art of contraries" to their sick patients. This meant that their literary curatives often met patients/readers with the bitter taste of a poison (4). But—and this is the crucial point for Ogle—the poison was given for the purpose of health. What this means for Augustine's City of God, Ogle argues, is that we ought not take the work's biting and at-times-venomous rhetoric as evidence that Augustine is trying to poison his reader's vision of politics. Rather, he is trying to cure them of their attachment to the myths and delusions of politics-according-to-Rome and, instead, "to help us see the world, even the political world, anew: as part of a created order that is good, but that points beyond itself all the same" (4). Augustine's descriptions of Rome—indeed his frequent equations of Rome with the civitas [End Page 1426] terrena—are indeed meant to shock. But, so Ogle argues, they are meant to shock us out of destructive attachments so that we can learn to make the right attachments, first to Christ, and then, through Christ, to our earthly communities as pilgrims. City of God's pessimistic rhetoric is not Augustine simply denouncing the natural project of politics. It is a bitter medicine for a people deathly ill with an addiction to earthly glory.The second intervention of Ogle's book lies in its attention to what she calls City of God's "sacramental ethos" (5). This, I would argue, is the book's most important contribution. It is also the insight on which the heart of the book's argument depends. Sacraments, for Augustine, are signs that point us to God. Understood in this broad sense, the whole created order—that is, everything that is not God—has the quality of a sacrament by virtue of its very existence. This is connected closely to Augustine's understanding of evil as privatio boni: all that exists, to the extent that it exists, is good; and all that exists is, by nature, a sign (signum) pointing beyond itself to the Lord.These are not new insights into Augustine's doctrine of creation, but Ogle's application of them to the question of politics and the earthly city is suggestive. For what emerges is a new account of the relationship between politics and the earthly city. The whole created order... (shrink)

This article investigates the place of De magistro within Augustine’s developing theology of words and the Word through a reverse chronological reading. This is necessary because, despite its emphasis on words, De magistro never refers to Christ as the “Word.” It would be easy, therefore, to see it as unrelated to the theological emphasis on that title in later works such as De trinitate. A reverse chronological reading, however, establishes Augustine’s developing understanding of the relationship between words and (...) the Word in a way that moves us from a full-throated theology of divine and human speech backward into more exploratory engagements with nascent ideas. When this reverse trail is traced, we can begin to see De magistro as one key starting point for it by providing warrant for seeing the inner Christ as necessarily the Word of God, even if not explicitly named as such. Such a reading adds deeper theological significance to a text often read only in terms of its contribution to semiotics and epistemology. In this reading, De magistro is an essential text for understanding Augustine’s fuller theology of language not only because of its early sign theory but because it sets the soteriological stage for our growth into the likeness of Christ the Word. (shrink)

Augustine's philosophy of being, the subject of my lecture, might be approached in two ways. In traditional terms, we might consider the question quid est esse, or alternatively the question quaenam sunt. This latter question is easily explained; it means, roughly speaking, what does the real universe contain or comprise, in a large and general sense. Material objects, of course, we can all accept; but what should be said about minds and spirits and the things with which they are concerned? (...) The other question is more difficult to explain in simple terms. Suppose we translate it ‘What is being?’, we may seem to be asking a question about the word ‘being’; what is the sense which Augustine gives to this word? But in fact we shall discover a whole spectrum of senses. ‘Being’, for Augustine, sometimes appears to express the purely minimal notion of mere existence; but he also uses it as a powerful symbol to formulate his deepest reflections on the spiritual life and the nature of God. (shrink)

Augustine's philosophy of being, the subject of my lecture, might be approached in two ways. In traditional terms, we might consider the question quid est esse, or alternatively the question quaenam sunt. This latter question is easily explained; it means, roughly speaking, what does the real universe contain or comprise, in a large and general sense. Material objects, of course, we can all accept; but what should be said about minds and spirits and the things with which they are concerned? (...) The other question is more difficult to explain in simple terms. Suppose we translate it ‘What is being?’, we may seem to be asking a question about the word ‘being’; what is the sense which Augustine gives to this word? But in fact we shall discover a whole spectrum of senses. ‘Being’, for Augustine, sometimes appears to express the purely minimal notion of mere existence; but he also uses it as a powerful symbol to formulate his deepest reflections on the spiritual life and the nature of God. (shrink)

Augustine’s doctrine of Jewish witness maintains that, although Christianity has superseded Judaism as the one true religion, it is God’s will that the Jews continue to exist because they preserve and authenticate the Old Testament, divinely-inspired texts which foretold the coming of Jesus. Thus, Christian rulers are obligated to protect the religious liberties of the Jewish people, and the church should focus its missionary efforts on pagans rather than Jews. Current scholarly consensus holds that Augustine adhered consistently to this doctrine (...) from its first iteration in Contra Faustum in 398 until his death in 430. However, this essay argues that, when Augustine spoke his last words on the subject in the Tractatus Aduersus Iudaeos, the doctrine was no longer his primary guide in thinking about how Christians should interact with Jews. In marked contrast to his earlier views, here, Augustine passionately urges Jews to accept Christ and encourages his congregation to try to convert them. This reading of the Tractatus Aduersus Iudaeos calls for a re-examination of the development of Augustine’s teaching, particularly in the context of dramatic changes in imperial policy toward Jews in the 420s. (shrink)

Augustine was a convinced proponent of the multiplicity of meanings. He had both theoretical and theological reasons for affirming the phenomenon of polysemy. This article deduces seven themes from Augustine’s exegetical practice and from his discussions of the principles of his exegesis, and employs these as Augustine’s arguments for the multiplicity of meanings. Augustine acknowledges the legitimacy of the many senses of the Word of God. Because scripture is an ambiguous linguistic reality, it constitutes a system of signs and (...) it reuses earlier texts to convey new meanings. Augustine’s theological reasons for the multiplicity of meanings include the beliefs that human authorial intention is complemented by the primary divine intention, that scripture has to be interpreted Christologically, that scripture’s interpretations have to be spiritually useful, and that the texts of scripture are part of the new theological/literary context of the canon. (shrink)

Augustine is considered one of the originators of the metaphor of the book of nature, but what did he say about it? This article examines all the metaphors with which Augustine seems to refer to the visible world as a divine book. It is found that four of the often-cited passages have a different meaning, but two of them refer to sensible nature as a book. The article further explores how the idea of God’s two books – nature and Scripture (...) – influences Augustine’s literal interpretation of Genesis and his trinitarian theology. Finally, it argues that the ultimate foundation for the Augustinian book of nature should be sought in his theology of the Word. (shrink)

The word έρμηνϵία (ermeneia) means expression and interpretation of a thought, from which the word “hermeneutics” comes. Some authors maintain that the name of the Greek god Hermes subsequently came from the same root. Hermes was the brother of Apollo and Athene and the son of Zeus and Maia, from which it could be deduced that he is paired by family lineage with images of light on the one hand and darkness and opacity on the other. Both metaphors (...) remind us that the expression and interpretation of thoughts may follow either a rational or an irrational order. The fact that most authors agree that it was after the expansion of Greek culture that the problem of interpretation acquired such marked prominence gives us an idea of the connection between hermeneutics and otherness. (shrink)

This is the conclusion of the hermeneutical problems related to Biblical exegesis. This brief survey concludes with the problematics posed by Object-Oriented Ontology. The limitations of OOO is illustrated with examples from the Kashmiri Trika. Further, we interrogate the Biblical Fall and the story of Yama and Yami. This is part of an ongoing project of Biblical exegesis and this is just the third part of this project.

The thirteen essays collected in this volume investigate the possibility that the word "God" can be understood now, at the end of the twentieth century, in a meaningful way. Nine of the essays appear in English translation for the first time. Among Levinas's writings, this volume distinguishes itself, both for students of his thought and for a wider audience, by the range of issues it addresses. Levinas not only rehearses the ethical themes that have led him to be regarded (...) as one of the most original thinkers working out of the phenomenological tradition, but he also takes up philosophical questions concerning politics, language, and religion. The volume situates his thought in a broader intellectual context than have his previous works. In these essays, alongside the detailed investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, Rosenzweig, and Buber that characterize all his writings, Levinas also addresses the thought of Kierkegaard, Marx, Bloch, and Derrida. Some essays provide lucid expositions not available elsewhere to key areas of Levinas's thought. "God and Philosophy" is perhaps the single most important text for understanding Levinas and is in many respects the best introduction to his works. "From Consciousness to Wakefulness" illuminates Levinas's relation to Husserl and thus to phenomenology, which is always his starting point, even if he never abides by the limits it imposes. In "The Thinking of Being and the Question of the Other," Levinas not only addresses Derrida's Speech and Phenomenon but also develops an answer to the later Heidegger's account of the history of Being by suggesting another way of reading that history. Among the other topics examined in the essays are the Marxist concept of ideology, death, hermeneutics, the concept of evil, the philosophy of dialogue, the relation of language to the Other, and the acts of communication and mutual understanding. (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas is one of the most original philosophers in the twentieth century. In this book, continuing his thought on obligation, he investigates the possibility that the word God can be understood now, at the end of the twentieth century, in a meaningful way. The thirteen essays collected in this volume offer an introduction to the wide range of Levinas's thought, addresses philosophical questions concerning politics, language and religion and the philosophies of, amongst others, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Marx and Derrida. (...) The essays also touch on the Marxist concept of ideology, death, hermeneutics, the concept of evil, the philosophy of dialogue, the relation of language to the Other, and the acts of communication and mutual understanding. Nine of the essays appear in English for the first time. (shrink)

In Heidegger's thinking, a language is neither words nor expressions. The discussion of a language brings not the language itself but rather us into its essence, and makes us gather unto "the genesis of the very language itself." With snows and vesper bells, Heidegger summoned both heaven and earth and gods and men, making them merge into a single world. Likewise, Zhuangzi used the words of Qixie to summon the fleeting clouds in an endless sky and a dusky earth populated (...) by living beings and dust. /// 在海德格尔看来，语言既不是词语，也不是表达。探讨语言不是把语言而是 把我们带到语言本质的处所，让我们聚集到 "成其自身" 之中。海德格尔通过雪花 和晚祷的钟声把天地神人召唤来，使其融契为一体的世界。在庄子 "齐谐" 词语的 召唤下，游气、尘埃、生物、苍茫之天以及昏黄的大地得以显现。. (shrink)

In the years shortly before and after the publication of his classic _Truth and Method_ (1960), the eminent German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer returned often to questions surrounding religion and ethics. In this selection of writings from _Gesammelte Werke_ that are here translated into English for the first time, Gadamer probes deeply into the hermeneutic significance of these subjects. Gadamer raises issues of importance to ethicists and theologians as well as students of language and literature. In such outstanding essays as "Kant (...) and the Question of God," "Thinking as Redemption: Plotinus between Plato and Augustine," and "Friendship and Self-Knowledge: Reflections on the Role of Friendship in Greek Ethics," Gadamer discusses the nature of moral behavior, ethics as a form of knowing, and the hermeneutic task of mediating ethos and philosophical ethics with one another. (shrink)

In the years shortly before and after the publication of his classic _Truth and Method_, the eminent German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer returned often to questions surrounding religion and ethics. In this selection of writings from _Gesammelte Werke_ that are here translated into English for the first time, Gadamer probes deeply into the hermeneutic significance of these subjects. Gadamer raises issues of importance to ethicists and theologians as well as students of language and literature. In such outstanding essays as "Kant and (...) the Question of God," "Thinking as Redemption: Plotinus between Plato and Augustine," and "Friendship and Self-Knowledge: Reflections on the Role of Friendship in Greek Ethics," Gadamer discusses the nature of moral behavior, ethics as a form of knowing, and the hermeneutic task of mediating ethos and philosophical ethics with one another. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ST. AUGUSTINE'S NOVELISTIC CONVERSION Tyler Graham Syracuse University In his famous biography of St. Augustine, Peter Brown attempts to explainwhat set the Confessions "apart from the intellectual tradition to which Augustine belonged" (Augustine ofHippo 169). While he concedes that "the Confessions are a masterpiece ofstrictly intellectual autobiography" (167), he concludes that it is more important to realize that they "are, quite succinctly, the story of Augustine's 'heart,' or of (...) his 'feelings'—his affectus"(169). He continues to explain that "in the Confessions, however, the evocation of Augustine's feelings forms part of the wider study of the evolution ofhis will" (172). Thus, Brown suggests that Augustine's central anthropological concern is to determine the origin and/or causes ofhuman desire (i.e. the "evolution of will"). Augustine's "exhaustive analysis ofhis motives" (as Brown describes it) is linked to his lifetime struggle to explain the complex interaction between his free will and a divine will (grace) to transform his "sinful" desires and create a "new heart" within him. In Brown's view, the Confessions reflect Augustine's struggle to discover whether desire originates in God or man. We can agree with Brown that this theological agenda is important to Augustine, for it will resurface in all of his theological struggles stretching from his pre-Christian engagement with the Manichees to his final battle with Pelagius. Nevertheless, I will argue in this paper that the Confessions reflect another important dimension to Augustine's morphology ofdesire. Regardless 136Tyler Graham of its divine or human source, Augustine's desires often begin with the imitation of another person. In portraying examples of his life up to and including his famous conversion in the year 386 (Book VIII), Augustine consistently shows that his desires have been copies or imitations ofvarious models whom he has chosen to follow. Writers such as Brown have considered the importance ofdesire (or the will) in the Confessions, and critics like Geoffrey Harpham (whom we will address later) have examined Augustine's interest in mimesis during various scenes in the book. Yet, with the exception ofAvitol Wohlman, no one (to my knowledge) has adequately considered the combination of the two: mimetic desire. In the first book ofthe Confessions, Augustine recounts his childhood, and, by the eighth chapter, he has already introduced a theme which will haunt the entire work: the link between desire and language. My desires were internal; adults were external to me and had no means ofentering into my soul. So I threw my limbs about and uttered sounds, signs resembling my wishes. (1:8) Language is born as a result ofthe need to express desire. For Augustine, words, gestures, and all utterances connect the "internal" wants to the "external" object ofcommunication (in this case, adults). In fact, ifAugustine links desire with the soul (external adults could not "enter his soul"), then language becomes the bridge between souls: it communicates desire from soul to soul. When Augustine reaches boyhood, and he begins to learn the accepted modes of articulation, the link between language and desire remains: "By groans and various sounds and various movements of parts of my body I would endeavor to express the intentions ofmy heart to persuade people to bow to my will" (1:13). Language communicates desire, but it also seeks to transform and generate desire. Beyond simply explaining his wishes, Augustine's language is persuasive, seeking to get others to "bow to my will." Whereas some people would like to remember their childhood as a time of innocence, joy, and peace, Augustine depicts his early life as "sinful," unhappy, and fraught with tears and conflicting interests. For an infant ofthat age, could itbe reckoned good to use tears in trying to obtain what it would have been harmful to get?.. The feebleness of infant limbs is innocent, not the infant's mind. (1:11) St. Augustine 's Novelistic Conversion137 Although he does notrememberbis own infancy, Augustine extrapolates from his analysis ofother children. I have personally watched and studied a jealous baby. He could not yet speak and, pale with jealousy and bitterness, glared at his brother sharing his mother's milk. Who is unaware ofthis fact ofexperience? Envy among infants is universal... (shrink)

This is the first work to combine an introduction to Augustine's _Confessions_ with a larger outline of his mature theology. Mallard provides guidance for reading the narrative _Confessions_ and at the same time, by certain extensions and comments, reveals the three major topical divisions within Augustine's thought: creation, salvation, and the City of God. Mallard is able to do this because Augustine's affirmation of the good of Creation, his view of the human will and God's grace, his sense of a (...) religious people's identity and their hope, and his view of faith and reason were all essentially in place at the time of the _Confessions_. Mallard argues that Augustine was not "in search of himself" in a modern sense but in search of a language of prayer, praise, and truth that would locate him within God's grace. That language turned out to be the language of Incarnation, which remains compelling and inviting today. As a classic work, the _Confessions_ is a monument to its own time, but it has striking resonances for our own. Mallard's interpretation will challenge readers to begin working out their own. The _Confessions_ endures because it is a story that illumines the stories of many, even to the present day. To analyze how it is like, and unlike, modern experiences is to exercise both mind and heart. In that respect, _Language and Love_ is a kind of theological meditation on the Confessions testing out a horizon of belief. Mallard views Augustine as a master of the spoken word in an age of broken and abused language and the _Confessions_ as a historic masterpiece of rhetoric. He contends that Augustine is the ancestor of many today who offer social and political hope through fresh rhetorical vitality. (shrink)

Divers ouvrages sur saint Augustin conduisent à reposer la question du temps et celle du sujet qui ont alors été réunies pour la première fois comme un unique problème : memoria, conscience et conscience de soi, sont pensées selon le temps comme un sentir primordial. Celui-ci suppose un lieu, le ciel des ciels, qui est le lieu temporel de l’homme auprès de Dieu. L’intériorité augustinienne a des antécédents dans la pensée antique ; elle a influencé la philosophie récente ; Heidegger (...) interprète l’ego de Descartes d’une façon augustinienne dans son herméneutique de la facticité. Les questions suscitées par ces ouvrages viennent du manque actuel d’une histoire spéculative de l’ego, en même temps que d’une résurgence évidente de celui-ci dans le champ de la philosophie contemporaine.Several books about Augustine lead to question once more the topic of time and of the subject which then were united for the first time as a single problem : memoria, conscionsness and self conscionsness are thought according to time as a prime feeling. The latter supposes a place, heaven in heaven, which is the temporal seat of man next to God. Augustinian interiority has its antecedents within classical thought. It influenced recent philosophy. Heidegger interprets Descartes’ ego in an Augustinian way within his hermeneutics of facticity. The topics at stake from these books surge from the present lack of a speculative history of the ego, together with an obvious resurgence of the latter within the field of contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

This essay promotes affective engagement with the texts we read, arguing that we should attend both to recognizing emotion within the texts and to allowing ourselves to feel emotion as we read. The essay thus aligns itself with contemporary theories of non-hermeneutic or surface reading. The argument is illustrated specifically by the relationship of Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE) to the emotion of anger. The transcripts of the Council of Carthage, held in 411, show an eruption of anger on Augustine’s (...) part. The essay then traces his thinking on anger through various texts, notably the City of God, the Augustinian Rule, and the personal letters to Nebridius. Using the reflections on anger of the contemporary philosopher Agnes Callard, I argue that Augustine saw anger as a unique type of moral problem, something that, once experienced, was ineradicable and distorted a sense of justice and order. It is only through an emotionally engaged reading that such a position is perceptible. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Incomprehensible Certainty: Metaphysics and Hermeneutics of the Image by Thomas PfauThomas ZingelmannPFAU, Thomas. Incomprehensible Certainty: Metaphysics and Hermeneutics of the Image. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2022. xxiii + 785 pp. Cloth, $80.00Thomas Pfau reconstructs one of the most traditional and possibly most decisive philosophical debates, [End Page 559] namely, the one about the form and function of appearance (Schein). This debate is taken up (...) on the basis of the concept of image. This means that Pfau concentrates historically as well as systematically on a specific topic within this debate. The book is divided into two major sections.In the first section, Pfau examines how the history of the metaphysics and theology of the image develops, starting with Plato in the first chapter. The basic idea in this section is that the image has a crucial epistemic role in the metaphysical and theological systems of the authors addressed. Here Pfau shows that Plato, at the latest in the Sophist, develops a theory of images that revalues appearance contrary to the assumptions in the Republic. Chapter 1 is about the mediation of unity and multiplicity, as it is also shown in Plotinus. Chapter 2 attempts to show how the Byzantine icon embodies the conviction that the invisible truth of the visual world can be revealed only through images. Pfau's demonstration of various epistemic dimensions of the image then begins with chapter 3: the eschatological vision from Augustine to Bonaventure to Julian of Norwich. Chapter 4, the last of the first section, reconstructs Nicholas of Cusa's position, which attempts to understand mystical visions mediated by images of Christ.The second section examines how the metaphysics of the image—in the sense of an epistemology, which tries to establish ultimate justifications—nevertheless persists and even evolves despite two crucial switches in philosophy. On the one hand, this concerns philosophy that subordinates the visual to the abstract (for example, Hegel) and, on the other, the supposedly nonmetaphysical status of the image in the developing natural sciences. Chapter 5 then attempts to show, through Goethe's botanical investigations and reflections, how, despite the establishment of the natural sciences, Goethe attempts to defend intuition as a scientific method and appearance as a scientific object of investigation. This position is then pursued historically in chapter 6, through the work of Lyell, Darwin, and Ruskin, where the visible is understood as the connecting point of the sciences in general. Gerard Manley Hopkins is then identified in chapter 7 as representing a position that combines theological with proto-phenomenological arguments to highlight the epistemic value of images. The last chapter then deals with decisive developments at the beginning of the twentieth century. In phenomenology (Husserl), painting (Cézanne), and poetry (Rilke), a conception develops that epistemically valorizes sensual and intuitive experience.Generally speaking, Pfau attempts to trace historically what arguments and positions have been developed on the relationship between image and knowledge. His work is based on the conviction that the image is the basis for human orientation in the world and is therefore of great epistemological value. Of outstanding importance for his question is that the epistemological value of images is not to be located in the properties of images, that is, an ontology of the image; rather, Pfau is interested in those positions that reflect on the relationship between knowledge and [End Page 560] experience of images. While clarifying the ontological status of images remains important, the epistemological status of images—what role the experience and usage of images has for humans—is in the foreground. Pfau reconstructs positions that hold that the pictorial is a medium of knowledge. He puts forward the thesis that there is a tradition that is of the opinion that in and through the medium of the image—and this closes the arc to the Schein-debate—being can be experienced by man. In other words, the invisible is to become recognizable through the visible. Of particular importance is his reading of the late Platonic dialogues: While appearance and being are still thought of as distinct in these dialogues, they are not opposed, in the sense of an epistemic opposition. Plato's... (shrink)

This paper looks at the phenomenon of theopoetic art. The word theopoetic dates back to the Patristic authors—referring to the making divine of the human and the making human of the divine—and has been radically revived as part of the recent religious turn in continental phenomenology and hermeneutics. Looking at an example of religious art, Andrei Rublev’s Trinity, the author traces the development of the idea of “God making” from Jewish and Christian literature to contemporary debates on the relationship (...) between the secular and the sacred. (shrink)

Hans-Georg Gadamer’s appropriation of Augustine’s analogy of the inner word, the verbum interius, is by now a well-known theme in philosophical hermeneutics. But what has received scarcely any attention is the Thomist side of Gadamer’s appropriation. Two thirds of Gadamer’s analysis of the verbum interius in his magnum opus, Truth and Method, is devoted to Aquinas, who employs Augustine’s verbum in developing a theory of the mind. In particular, Gadamer gives great emphasis to the Thomist insistence on the “non-reflective” (...) character of the inner word. Both Gadamer and Aquinas in their different historical contexts needed to combat subjectivism, which is what Aquinas is doing by insisting on the non-reflective character of the inner word. In this paper I examine this point ofconvergence to understand why their anti-subjectivism created such a deep common accord, and how this relates their projects to each other. How is the Scholastic involvement of the mind in the world analogous to the circular relation between language and understanding in hermeneutics, and where is the diff erence? (shrink)

Gianni Vattimo refers his weak interpretation of metaphysics to its Christian provenance. He argues that his nihilist secularization theory divulges the full and ultimate meaning of Christianity. This model understands Christianity as God who ‘returns,’ not as an eternal substance but as one who in his return reveals himself as becoming the current nihilist hermeneutic flux that is reality. Vattimo takes kenosis as the model of the destiny of ontology. God takes a distance from the eternal origin and lets go (...) of his transcendent divinity. From this, Vattimo learns that truth becomes a purely ‘wordly’ matter without any external, c.q. metaphysical or sacred reference. The Good message is: there are only messages, no facts. God’s return has to be understood epistmo-theologically. Revelation is now completely accomplished in a nihilist, endless way: Christianity means keeping thought away from petrifying into truth, fact, and reality. This is pure Christian caritas in that it does away with the violence of metaphysics and the sacred and thereby discourages all human attempts toward violence. Redeeming though this may sound, perhaps Vattimo is too naïve and too theologically shallow. (shrink)