ABSTRACTAnders Nygren argues that Augustine’s adherence to a Platonist notion of eros undermines both his own and a wider Christian account of agape. On Nygren’s reading, eros, which is self-fulfilling love that originates in the soul’s movement toward God, stands in contradistinction to agape, which is self-denying love that originates in God and condescends to us through the sacrifice of Christ. While it is true that Platonism plays an important role for Augustine, he comes to interpret love through a lens (...) of Christian doctrines on creation, Christ, and the Trinity that leads him to reshape the Greek ideal of love. In particular, Augustine reads human upward love of God as flowing out of God’s triune downward love of creation mediated through the incarnation. Nygren contends that Augustine’s connection here between eros and agape is contradictory, but this presupposes at least a medieval, if not a modern, distinction between natural and supernatural love. Augustine does not draw on eros to the exclusion of agape but rather sees in eros the inclusion of agape. That is, our natural love for God is always enabled by God’s supernatural love for us. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of human and divine agency in Augustine’s later writings through the Trinitarian lens that shapes his understanding of salvation and the human person. It focuses on the way Augustine draws on Christological and pneumatological claims to structure the relation between human and divine agency within his totus christus model. Here I examine how the relation between human and divine agency can be grounded on and understood through the predestination of Christ. This leads into a consideration (...) of how we participate in Christ’s body through the power of the Spirit. In this I think we can discern a nascent eschatological social ontology: the body of Christ is not only an ecclesiological but also an anthropological metaphor signaling a new form of corporate embodiment, not complete until the resurrection, from which to understand the reforming of human agency through divine grace. (shrink)