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1. Augustinian Studies: Volume > 46 > Issue: 2
Brian J. Matz Augustine in the Predestination Controversy of the Ninth Century: Part I: The Double Predestinarians Gottschalk of Orbais and Ratramnus of Corbie
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A debate over whether God predestines to make some people reprobate broke out in the ninth century. No one taught this view, but it was presumed by several churchmen at the time to be the position of those who called themselves double predestinarians. In part, this article explains why two double predestinarians, Gottschalk of Orbais and Ratramnus of Corbie, were mistaken for proponents of this view. They had been trying to explain Augustine’s phrase, “those predestined to punishment”, which they found in no fewer than ten of Augustine’s texts. Gottschalk points out Augustine used the phrase interchangeably with the term reprobate. Thus, to Gottschalk, it is not a statement about what God predestines; rather, it is a statement about the effect of predestination (i.e., God predestining to judge sin) on certain people. Likewise, to Ratramnus, the phrase referred to the effect of God’s ordering of both the good and evil acts of persons. That Gottschalk and Ratramnus identified Augustine’s use of the phrase with a belief in double predestination was due to their reading Augustine through the lens of Isidore of Seville’s Sententiae II.6.
2. Augustinian Studies: Volume > 46 > Issue: 2
Andrea Nightingale Augustine on Extending Oneself to God through Intention
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This essay examines Augustine’s notion that a person can transcend temporal “distention” by “extending” his soul to God by way of “intention” (intentio). Augustine conceived of intentio as an activity of the will that functions to connect the soul to beings and objects in the world (thus allowing one to perceive, remember, think). Augustine links his notion of “intention” to the activity of “extending oneself to God” (based on Paul’s Philippians 3:13). How do the soul’s “intention” and “extension” work together to combat temporal “distention”? Augustine suggests that Paul extended himself to God but could not fully overcome distention. In his vision of God in Confessions 9, by contrast, Augustine (briefly) transcends distention. Here, Augustine’s memory and self have been transcended as his soul “extends itself” to God “through intention.” Even in this state of self-transcendence, his intentio directs and connects his soul to God.
3. Augustinian Studies: Volume > 46 > Issue: 2
Erika Kidd Making Sense of Virgil in De magistro
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Toward the beginning of De magistro, Augustine and his son undertake a brief philosophical exercise using a line from Virgil’s Aeneid. That exercise seems to end in failure when father and son jokingly give up on their task. In this essay, I show that neither the selection of the particular line nor the failure of the exercise are accidental. I unpack the context of the Virgilian line, showing its resonance with Augustine’s own life, and I explain how the content of the line stands as a challenge to the very argument Augustine seems to want to use it to make. On the basis of this analysis, I argue the dialogue is best read as a dramatization of a false idealization of words—an idealization Augustine hopes his son (and, presumably, the reader) might be freed from. I conclude with the suggestion that interiority functions in the dialogue as a way of describing an intimate, shared space of meaning.
4. Augustinian Studies: Volume > 46 > Issue: 2
John Sehorn Monica as Synecdoche for the Pilgrim Church in the Confessiones
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Many have observed that Augustine casts Monica, both in the Cassiciacum dialogues and in the Confessiones, as a representative of Catholic piety and/or a figure of the church. But what is the relationship between Monica the type and Monica the individual? This article suggests that the literary trope of synecdoche supplies the most adequate answer to this question. Reading Monica as an individual who, precisely in and through her individuality, represents the church as a whole also illumines Augustine’s ecclesiology, both in its early stages at Cassiciacum and in a more developed state in the Confessiones. In the latter we find Augustine fully embracing an understanding of the pilgrim church as a community that knows itself, not as an aggregation of spiritual adepts, but always and only as “on the way,” i.e., in the process of being redeemed, and for just this reason as the privileged vehicle of transformation by the grace of Christ.
book reviews and books received
5. Augustinian Studies: Volume > 46 > Issue: 2
Joel Elowsky Christianity in Roman Africa: The Development of its Practices and Beliefs
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6. Augustinian Studies: Volume > 46 > Issue: 2
James J. Buckley Aspiring to Fullness in a Secular Age
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7. Augustinian Studies: Volume > 46 > Issue: 2
Mark W. Elliott Cyril of Alexandria’s Trinitarian Theology of Scripture
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8. Augustinian Studies: Volume > 46 > Issue: 2
Nicholas Kahm Ethics as a Work of Charity: Thomas Aquinas and Pagan Virtue
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9. Augustinian Studies: Volume > 46 > Issue: 2
Andrea Sterk Doctrine and Power. Theological Controversy and Christian Leadership in the Later Roman Empire
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10. Augustinian Studies: Volume > 46 > Issue: 2
R. J. Snell A Theology of Higher Education
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11. Augustinian Studies: Volume > 46 > Issue: 2
Joseph Krylow Free to Say No? Free Will and Augustine’s Evolving Doctrines of Grace and Election
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12. Augustinian Studies: Volume > 46 > Issue: 2
Adam Ployd Augustine’s Confessions: Philosophy in Autobiography
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13. Augustinian Studies: Volume > 46 > Issue: 2
Gregory K. Hillis Patristics and Catholic Social Thought: Hermeneutical Models for a Dialogue
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14. Augustinian Studies: Volume > 46 > Issue: 2
Jeffrey S. Lehman St. Augustine’s Interpretation of the Psalms of Ascent
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15. Augustinian Studies: Volume > 46 > Issue: 2
Sean Hannan The Cambridge Companion to Augustine
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16. Augustinian Studies: Volume > 46 > Issue: 2
Frederick Van Fleteren Unterwegs zu einer Sprachontologie. Augustin als Schlüssel für die Interpretation der Sprachreflexionen von Heidegger und Gadamer
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17. Augustinian Studies: Volume > 46 > Issue: 2
Frederick Van Fleteren Augustinus. Genie und Heiliger
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18. Augustinian Studies: Volume > 46 > Issue: 2
Benjamin H. Dunning Language for God in Patristic Tradition: Wrestling with Biblical Anthropomorphism
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19. Augustinian Studies: Volume > 46 > Issue: 2
Gerald W. Schlabach The Story of Original Sin
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20. Augustinian Studies: Volume > 46 > Issue: 2
Robert P. Kennedy A Companion to Augustine
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