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Augustine’s
Theology of Angels
Elizabeth Klein
i
References to the good angels in the works of Augustine are legion, and
angels also play a central role in some of his major works, such as City
of God and the opening of On the Trinity. Despite Augustine’s interest
in angels, however, little scholarly work has appeared on the topic.
In this book, Elizabeth Klein gives the first comprehensive account of
Augustine’s theology of the angels and its importance for his thought
more generally. Offering a close textual analysis of the reference to
angels in Augustine’s corpus, the volume explores Augustine’s angel-
ology in relationship with his understanding of creation, of community,
of salvation history and of spiritual warfare. By examining Augustine’s
angelology, we glimpse his understanding of time and eternity, as well
as the meaning and perfection of created life. Klein’s book is founda-
tional for a proper understanding of Augustine’s angelology and has
far-reaching implications not only for Augustinian studies, but also the
broader history of Christian angelology.
ELIZABETH KLEIN
Augustine Institute, Denver, Colorado
iv
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108424455
DOI: 10.1017/9781108335652
© Cambridge University Press 2018
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2018
Printed in the United States of America by Sheridan Books, Inc.
English translations of many of Augustine’s works are used with the
permission of the Augustinian Heritage Institute.
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-108-42445-5 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy
of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
v
Contents
Introduction 1
1 Angels and Creation 10
2 Angelic Community 57
3 Angels in Salvation History 110
4 Augustine and Spiritual Warfare 148
Conclusion 187
Bibliography 195
General Index 201
Biblical Index 204
v
vi
vii
Acknowledgments
vii
viii
ix
ix
x
newgenprepdf
Introduction
We do not see the angels as present; this is something hidden from our eyes,
something that belongs to the mighty commonwealth of God, our supreme
ruler. But we know from our faith that angels exist, and we read of their
having appeared to many people. We hold this firmly, and it would be wrong
for us to doubt it.1
Augustine here expresses a simple fact of ancient Christian faith: that angels,
invisible rational creatures, exist. The ubiquity of angels in the biblical text
could hardly go unnoticed by such a great and prolific exegete, and indeed
the angels feature in all of Augustine’s major theological works and in his
homilies. The angels are prominent in his discussion of the text of Genesis
and are important for his doctrine of creation. The angels are the founders of
the city of God and so of creaturely communion as Augustine understands
it. The angels also play a pivotal role in salvation history, as well as in the
story of each individual Christian’s struggle against temptation.
Despite the attention that Augustine gives to the angels, there has been
little scholarly interest in the place of the angels in his writings and in
patristic angelology broadly speaking. The only modern monographs
which substantially treat the early Christian understanding of angels
are Jean Daniélou’s Angels and their Mission According to the Fathers
of the Church (1953) and Ellen Muehlberger’s Angels in Late Ancient
Christianity (2013).2 Both Daniélou and Muehlberger begin their books
1
en. Ps. 103.1.15.
2
Jean Daniélou, The Angels and Their Mission According to the Fathers of the Church
(New York: Newman Press, 1957), and Ellen Muehlberger, Angels in Late Ancient
Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Neither of these texts focus on
1
2
2 Introduction
Introduction 3
4
Daniélou, Angels and their Mission, vii. He speaks of these extremes as the unhealthy
interest of spiritism or theosophy on the one hand (what I call mythology), and our ten-
dency to think of angels and demons as merely the personifications of psychological real-
ities on the other (what I call abstraction).
4
4 Introduction
creatures and do not merely stand in for a theological concept. Put other-
wise, Augustine seeks to understand the proper relationship of the angels
with the rest of creation in a way that maintains the personal quality of
their being. Augustine deals with this issue perhaps most significantly in
City of God where he imagines the angels not only as a part of this great
city, but as its primordial members. But in other texts, Augustine also
speaks of the angels as our “neighbours,”5 as our “friends,”6 as “fellow
citizens”7 and reminds us that although God uses angels to communicate
with human beings, he does not thereby always “trumpet out from heaven
through an angel”8 in some kind of imperious fashion. God allows both
angels and human beings to participate in the economy of salvation, each
according to ability and station.9
By avoiding both mythology and abstraction, then, Augustine shows
that he understands the angels as created. On the one hand, they are
good, they are made spiritual, and the good angels persist in perfection,
but on the other hand, they are not so unlike us. Since they are created,
they serve God and worship him, they seek God as their end, and they
are our neighbors and fellow-citizens in the city of God. But since they
are perfected, the angels also serve as a kind of litmus test in Augustine’s
theological thinking. If the good angels embody the blessed state for
which the elect are also destined, by looking at them we might see what
constitutes perfection for Augustine, and what theological categories
he uses even when speaking about the blessed life of heaven. Against
the angels, we can measure the relative importance of many theological
themes in Augustine’s writing; we can ask whether or not a certain way
of speaking about God, about the body or about worship persists in the
angelic life or not. The good angels help to show us the meaning and per-
fection of created life.
5
doc. Chr. i.31.
6
adn. Job 20.
7
See en. Ps. 90.2.1 and 136.1, for example.
8
doc. Chr. preface 6–7.
9
For example, Augustine interprets the ascension as the angels carrying Christ up toward
heaven as an act of worship (or service) done by the angels, that is, Christ allows the
angels to worship him but does not have any need to be carried. See en. Ps. 90.2.8.
5
concerned with the good angels (although the demons necessarily make
an appearance) and with the question of how these good angels function
theologically for Augustine, including the angels’ role in his pastoral the-
ology. The material on angels is somewhat disparate, and so dividing it up
thematically, as I do in this work, runs the risk of atomizing Augustine’s
reflections on the angels and interpreting them apart from their original
context. Each chapter, therefore, is centered on a specific text or group
of texts, as well as a specific theme, and each chapter concludes with
a suggestion about how Augustine’s conception of angels is related to
larger questions in Augustinian studies.
In chapter 1, Augustine’s treatment of the creation of the angels as well
as the role of the angels in creation is discussed. Augustine’s Genesis com-
mentaries are considered in chronological order, namely, On Genesis: A
Refutation of the Manichees, The Unfinished Literal Commentary
on Genesis, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, the final books of The
Confessions and book xi of City of God. We will see how Augustine fits
the angels into the creation story, and that his persistent efforts to do so
are founded on his desire to combat a mythological understanding of spir-
itual creatures. For example, Augustine argues, both in Literal Meaning
of Genesis and City of God that the creation of everything (including
angels) is described by the Genesis narrative. He says that he is unable
to believe that the angels are not included in the biblical text, however
obscurely, because in Genesis it is written that God created in the begin-
ning, implying nothing happened beforehand, and that on the seventh
day God rested from all his works, implying nothing could have been
created afterwards.10 The angels do not have an extra-biblical narrative
of their own. Moreover, Augustine insists that his interpretation of let
there be light as the creation of the angels is literal and not metaphorical;
the creation of the angels and their subsequent activity (the night/day
cycle) is truly signified by these biblical words.11 Augustine thereby seeks
to emphasize that the angels are part of the created order. He is insistent,
both in the Genesis commentaries and elsewhere, that the angels do not
create, but that this activity belongs to God alone.12
10
See civ. Dei xi.6, xi.9 and Gn. litt. v.5.
11
Gn. litt. iv.45.
12
This is noted by Goulven Madec in his encyclopedia entry on angels. See Madec,
“Angelus,” 304– 315. Madec also draws from an earlier article by Aimé Solignac;
see Solignac, “Exégèse et Métaphysique, Genèse 1,1- 3 chez saint Augustin” in In
Principio: Interpretations des premiers versets de la Genèse (Paris: Études augustiniennes,
1973), 154–171.
6
6 Introduction
The way in which the angels interact with creation, moreover, has
implications for the goodness of creation and the goodness of the
economy of salvation. Some scholars have argued that the sacraments are
merely external signs for Augustine, with no lasting meaning or ultimate
effectiveness.13 The image of the angelic life in the Genesis commentaries
challenges this notion. Augustine persists in using the language of signifi-
cation and receptivity in the life of heaven which parallels our liturgical
life here (such as the image of angelic reading). Signs and sacraments are
ultimately taken up into Augustine’s vision of the angelic life rather than
simply surpassed in order for us to obtain something even better. For the
angels, the contemplation of what God has created redounds to God’s
glory eternally, not just for a time until the external can be completely
discarded in favor of the internal or spiritual.
City of God books ix–xii are the focal point of chapter 2. In these
books, we find Augustine’s vision of the angelic community, its sac-
ramental life, and our interaction with and imitation of that life.
Muehlberger’s claim, that the angels are “divine drones” with no will of
their own, and whose primary function is to serve as a heavenly place-
holder or guarantor of a blessed afterlife, is contested.14 The angels are
not automatons, as Muehlberger suggests, but are icons of worship, since
they both embody perfect worship of God and also mediate it. They are
not un-free in being aligned with the will of God, but absolutely free in
loving, willing and clinging to God. They are, in a way, guarantors of the
blessed life to come, but they are also aids and exemplars to the church
sojourning below.
Not only is the chapter on angelic worship the hinge chapter of the
City of God (book x) but the understanding of proper worship is critical
to the work as a whole. The City of God as a project, after all, attempts
to envision two communities, the heavenly and the earthly, and these two
cities are defined by the order of their desire, “the one enjoying God, the
13
Phillip Cary is perhaps the most vigorous proponent of this view, writing (for example)
that “in Augustine’s Platonism words and sacraments have their significance and their
use, but they cannot give us the inner good they signify. So it is not by turning to them
that we find the knowledge of God but by turning inward, looking in a different dimen-
sion from all bodily things.” See Phillip Cary, Outward Signs: The Powerlessness of
External Things in Augustine’s Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 4.
14
See, for example, Muehlberger, Angels in Late Ancient Christianity, 5. She argues that
Augustine’s use of angels in City of God is primarily polemical. In short, Augustine
pictures the angels as stable and blessed in order to demonstrate the superiority of the
Christian God and the Christian heaven to the gods and afterlife of Roman religion. In
this regard, Muehlberger follows the general argument of Simonetti.
7
other swelling with pride.”15 Angels have a more significant role to play
in Augustine’s understanding of that city than might be first apparent.
The angels are already citizens of that city and represent our end. And so,
as the first members of the city of God, angels are critical for Augustine’s
conception of the beginning, course and end of the city. They are an
essential part of its composition. How, therefore, are we to understand
the bodies of angels, and our future bodies in relation to them? If the
angels present a perfect image of worship, how does our worship here on
earth (particularly the sacramenta) correspond with heavenly worship?
We again find significant evidence that Augustine has a “sacramental”
understanding of the angelic life, as he uses the imagery of eating as well
as the language of sacrifice to describe the angel’s heavenly activity.
In short, City of God is about two communities, and both of them
have their beginning among the angels. As John Rist writes, “it is human
society as a whole, with its divine and diabolical associates, which is the
subject matter of City of God.”16 But perhaps one of the most striking
things about Augustine’s work is that this statement can, and perhaps
ought to be, reversed: it is angelic society, with its human associates, which
is the subject matter of City of God. The city of God is not anthropo-
centric, and this entails that Augustine work, at times, on a completely
different register.
It becomes clear, in the course of chapter 2, that since angels have a
role to play in embodying perfect worship, they are exemplars for the
church. In chapter 3, however, the human side of the question comes to
the fore; how do angels interact with the human race throughout history
in order to aid in its salvation? The main text for consideration is On the
Trinity, in which Augustine asserts that all Old Testament theophanies are
appearances of angels. In this respect, he departs from earlier traditions
which regard these theophanies as appearances of Christ. In rejecting
this position, he is able to solve the problem of confusing singular and
plural references in some of these theophany texts, as well as to main-
tain what he sees as the uniqueness of the event of the incarnation. But
he also thereby gives to the angels a privileged place in salvation history,
and the implications are many. Again, Augustine works to affirm that the
angels are created and so their role in the economy is one arranged by
15
civ. Dei xi.33.
16
John Rist, “On the Nature and Worth of Christian Philosophy: Evidence from City of God”
in Augustine’s City of God: A Critical Guide, ed. James Wetzel (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2012), 214.
8
8 Introduction
providence for their benefit and ours, but there is no room for an alter-
native myth in which angels work apart from God, nor does God have
any inherent need for the angels to exact his will. Augustine solidifies this
vision of angelic mediation by frequently pairing the work of angels with
the work of prophets. By bringing angels down to the level of human
mediators, so to speak, he also creates a unified vision of how creatures in
general –angelic or otherwise –participate in the economy of salvation.
In chapter 4, the challenge that spiritual warfare does not feature
prominently in Augustine’s theology is addressed.17 The primary texts
considered in this chapter are Augustine’s Expositions of the Psalms. In
these sermons, Augustine does make frequent reference to demonic inter-
ference in the everyday life of the Christian, as well as in the scriptural
narrative. He often interprets the Psalms as pertaining to spiritual war-
fare, and he sees the temptation of the devil and his angels as common-
place in Christian experience. Reading his Expositions of the Psalms in
this light, a basic account of his teaching on spiritual warfare is given. He
considers the devil’s attacks to be real and dangerous, but recommends
reliance on God as the foremost defense against them. He advises that
we cultivate this dependence on God through the liturgy and prayer, as
well as by following the example of holy men and women. The martyrs
sometimes serve as this example, but Augustine prefers the biblical figure
of Job as a model of a successful spiritual combatant.
In this chapter, we come to see that Augustine’s teaching on spiritual
warfare in his sermons is consistent with his angelology articulated else-
where, that is, Augustine affirms angels are created beings involved in the
economy of salvation, but not in the arcane cosmic struggles of myth.
Thus he does not imagine spiritual warfare to be angels fighting demons
over the control of souls, and rarely speaks about demons tormenting
individuals or angels defending them. He insists that any power which
the devil has is power permitted him by God, and that the devil’s mastery
17
Muehlberger distinguishes between genres of literature in which the angels appear. She
designates the writings of Evagrius as “cultivation” literature, concerned with spiritual
development, ascetic practice, etc., whereas Augustine’s City of God is deemed “contest-
ation” literature, concerned with political and theological argumentation. This distinction
leads her to emphasize the polemical nature of Augustine’s angelology. Spiritual warfare
and cultivation are not part of Augustine’s main concern, according to Muehlberger, but
rather in aiming to give “an authoritative account of the world and of world history”
Augustine “imagined angels to be eternally secure, in the happy circumstance of being
assured of their stability with God. As Christians would be in the future … already
aligned with the will of God and working according to that will” (Angels in Late Ancient
Christianity, 57).
9
To discuss creation first is fitting not only because we will thereby begin
in the beginning, but also because Augustine’s understanding of Genesis
is without doubt central to his understanding of angels. Augustine’s keen
interest in the text of Genesis is due in part to his own intellectual and
spiritual journey, as we read in Confessions,1 and defending this text
against the dualism of the Manicheans seems to have been an imperative
task for him after his conversion.2 The Manicheans’ claim that Genesis
does not make any sense in the bare letter of the text and their rejection of
allegorical readings as a viable alternative,3 along with Augustine’s own
profound interest in the creation story, leads him to comment repeatedly
on the book of Genesis. He persists until he is finally able to give, as he
sees it, a literal account of the Genesis narrative.
In his Genesis commentaries, Augustine develops a set of concerns
and a way of reading Genesis which ultimately necessitates that he
1
See, for example, conf. iii.5.9.
2
Augustine considered On Genesis: A Refutation of the Manichees (one of his earliest
works) to be a continuation of an earlier (more erudite, and less accessible) refutation
of the Manicheans (as he mentions in Gn. adv. Man. 1.1). Augustine saw the task of
commenting on Genesis as one of his first and most important tasks as a new cath-
olic, particularly for guarding the uneducated against the Manichean heresy. In his
Reconsiderations, Augustine also indicates that he wanted to set right whatever
wrongheaded interpretations he may have espoused as a Manichean (retr. 1.10). Michael
Fiedrowicz suggests that part of this concern may have come from the role the exposition
of Genesis played in Christian catechesis. See the introduction to Augustine, On Genesis,
trans. Edmund Hill (New York: New City Press, 2002), 28.
3
See Fiedrowicz, Introduction to “Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis,” in
Augustine, On Genesis, 107.
10
11
4
On the similarities and differences between human and angelic sin, see Wiebe, “Demons
in the Theology of Augustine,” 93–104.
5
Joseph Torchia points out that for Augustine, these two doctrines are inseparable. Since
God is the author of all natures (creator of everything ex nihilo) therefore all natures
are good. See N. Joseph Torchia, Creatio ex nihilo and the Theology of Saint Augustine
(New York: Peter Lang. 1999), 147–148.
12
6
Gn. adv. Man. i.2.
7
Hill suggests that Augustine has in mind The Catholic Way of Life and the Manichean
Way of Life, that is, the book which Augustine lists directly before Genesis Against the
Manichees in his Reconsiderations.
8
Gn. adv. Man. i.2. This is how Hill renders facile possit reprehendi.
9
Ibid.
10
He cites this biblical phrase (Matt. 7:7; Luke 11:9) three times with regard to interpreting
the text of Genesis, once in Gn. adv. Man. i.2 and twice in Gn. adv. Man. ii.3.
11
Gn. adv. Man. ii.3. si non reprehendentes et accusantes, sed quaerentes et reuerentes
Manichaei mallent discutere, non essent utique Manichaei, sed daretur petentibus et
quaerentes inuenirent et pulsantibus aperiretur.
12
Ibid.
13
coherence of Genesis and seek to uncover it, rather than panic in the
face of seeming inconsistencies and concede to the Manicheans. His gen-
eral strategy in this commentary is not to provide one definitive “literal”
interpretation of a given passage (though he contends such an interpret-
ation is both possible and laudable, if difficult to find),13 but to consider
the questions prompted by perplexing passages and to give a plethora of
readings, mostly figurative. In this way, he endeavors to invite the reader
to contemplate the text, and, by showing that the text can be read in many
different ways, to deflate the Manichean criticism that there is simply no
way to read Genesis and have it make any sense. Assuming Augustine’s
hermeneutical attitude, one has no need for myth to supplement Genesis,
but rather only to make oneself more open to the mysteries of Genesis
itself. Moreover, the Manichean idea that there are two principles of light
and darkness, which are coeternal and antithetical,14 is not consonant
with the Genesis narrative, nor is it needed to explain creation as it is
described by the text. Although Augustine tends toward figurative inter-
pretation in this commentary, he is laying the groundwork for his future
repeated attempts at a “literal” reading of the entire seven days as one
coherent narrative.
So Augustine is already undercutting interpretations that would attempt
to place certain celestial events behind or before the Genesis narrative. For
example, the Manicheans wonder why it should “suddenly take God’s
fancy”15 to create the heavens and the earth, and ask what God was doing
before he created. Augustine responds that, by claiming God “suddenly”
(subito) resolved to create, the Manicheans are supplying a detail that helps
to levy their critique, namely, that God had spent some length of time idle,
lounging around in nothingness, before he impetuously decided to create
the world. But no time at all could have passed, Augustine argues, since time
itself is created by God.16 Although Augustine does not mention angels, he
is already rejecting the idea that some story could occupy the time prior to
Gen. 1:1, as well as insisting that everything which is not God (including
time itself) must be understood as created. As for why it pleased God to
create, Augustine responds, God created because it was good. Here again,
13
Ibid.
14
For a brief summary of the Manichean cosmogony, with an eye to Augustine’s theological
concerns, see Torchia, Creatio ex nihilo, 65–97. For a reflection on the Manicheanism
Augustine knew and how it shaped his theological interests, see Kevin Coyle, “Saint
Augustine’s Manichean Legacy,” Augustinian Studies 34 (2003): 1–22.
15
Gn. adv. Man. i.4; quid placuit deo subito facere caelum et terram?
16
Ibid., i.3–4.
14
he wants to cut off the possibility of some creation which is evil, or which
exists apart from the single intention of God as expressed in Genesis. He
correspondingly insists that the source of sin in the world can be found
in the text of the fall story, and nowhere else. On the terms of Genesis,
he argues, Eve’s sin cannot be blamed on God, since the story tells us that
God created everything good, nor can it be blamed on the creation or an
act of the devil, because God created him good as well. The sin rests in
Eve’s consent. We ought not to blame God for allowing the devil access to
Eve, but to blame Eve for giving the devil access to herself; she was made
good so that “if she hadn’t wanted to, she wouldn’t have done so.”17 In
fact, in order to be reconciled to God and to reenter the garden one must
repent of the idea that evil can be blamed on some “extraneous nature”18
and not on oneself.
In this commentary, then, Augustine lays the foundations for the rejec-
tion of an alternative creation myth, first by recommending a holistic
reading of Genesis in an attitude of humility, which de facto eliminates
the need for an alternative narrative to help explain seeming problems in
the text. Second, he interprets Genesis so as to exclude potentially mytho-
logical elements, such as rejecting any time previous to the Genesis story
or the existence of some external source of evil. Further groundwork is
laid in this commentary which becomes critical for Augustine’s angelology,
particularly in how he exposits Gen. 1:1–3, since he will later understand
these verses to describe the creation of the angels. For example, in support
of dualism, the Manicheans note that in Genesis God is said to create out
of some preexistent matter rather than ex nihilo. In verse 2, the earth seems
already to have been created, although it is formless and shapeless, and it
is from this shadowy material that God creates everything else. Augustine
argues that Gen. 1:1 “God made heaven and earth” does indeed describe
some initial creation of everything, but it was yet without form or shape,
as explained in verse 2. He thus attempts to read the verses in context
and to show that the story coheres; verse 2 simply clarifies verse 1. In the
six days following the proclamation that God created heaven and earth
(Gen. 1:1), then, God duly arranges everything although creation is still
entirely ex nihilo. Moreover, the light which is made following in Gen. 1:3
does not imply, as the Manicheans think, that God was sitting around in
17
Ibid., ii.42.
18
Ibid., ii.41; extraneam naturam. Similarly, in Confessions Augustine recalls how
Manicheanism appealed to his pride by providing him an external scapegoat for his sin
(see conf. v.18.10).
15
the darkness beforehand, but rather that God enlightened creation. This
light is not the kind seen “with the eyes of the flesh” (since this is made on
day four).19 Moreover, God is not said to make darkness, since darkness
is only the absence of light.20 Although some of these points of interpret-
ation may seem quite familiar to us from Augustine’s later works, here
he tentatively lays down principles which will be developed to include
an understanding of angelic creation and indeed angelic life: first, that
somehow God created everything in Gen. 1:1 but it unfolds in seven days,
second, that the light created on day one is not visible or corporeal light,
and third that God did not create the darkness.
19
Ibid., i.5.
20
Ibid., i.7.
21
Fiedrowicz in On Genesis, 107. Solignac, however, argues that although the commen-
tary has anti-Manichean concerns, Augustine’s exegesis is still driven by the Genesis text
itself, not by these external critiques. See Solignac, “Exégèse et Métaphysique,” 158.
22
See Fiedrowicz in On Genesis, 105.
23
Gn. litt. imp. i.1. In light of this, Fiedrowicz, among others, claims for Augustine “a
healthy dose of skepticism.” See On Genesis, 110. Solignac likewise notes this “caractère
aporétique” of Augustine’s Genesis commentaries; “Exégèse et Métaphysique,” 158.
24
Fiedrowicz, On Genesis, 106.
25
In this passage, the creed, scripture and its interpretation are tightly knit. Augustine
notices that the creed clarifies the phrase “creator of heaven and earth” (cf. Gen. 1:1) to
16
these things “are not born of God, but made by God out of nothing, and
… there is nothing among them which belong to the Trinity except what
the Trinity created.”26 It is therefore “not lawful to say or believe that
the whole creation is consubstantial or co-eternal with God.”27 In other
words, the creed clearly distinguishes between the created order and the
divine nature. To confuse them is to defy the opening statement of the
creed, and thus the basis of Christian faith. Augustine is also quick to
add that creation is “very good” and that God did not create evil itself
nor anything evil.28 Again, in describing the appropriate approach to the
biblical text, he excludes possible mythological interpretative strategies.
Unlike in his first commentary, Augustine speaks about the angels almost
immediately after he lays down this rule of faith. Perhaps this change is
due to the emphasis he places on the clear distinction between God and
creation, which we have just noted, that is, he must immediately con-
sider how God created everything, “whether intellectual or corporeal.”29
This creation includes celestial creatures, and Edmund Hill suggests that,
although Augustine is relying on Neo-Platonic vocabulary, he would have
understood the idea of “intellectual creation” or “subsistent intelligences”
to refer specifically to angels.30 The question of the creation of the angels
emerges from Augustine’s consideration of the first phrase of Genesis in
the beginning. Augustine posits that in the beginning can mean in Christ,
who is the “very Wisdom of God,”31 and the beginning of all things. Or, in
the beginning could refer to the first thing made, that is, heaven and earth.
But, he asks, could heaven and earth have been the first thing made “if
angels and all the intellectual powers were made first, because we have to
mean creator of “all things visible and invisible” (cf. Col. 1:16). Augustine himself then
further clarifies that “all things visible and invisible” means everything “whether intel-
lectual or corporeal,” but notes that the creed expresses this same idea in a biblical
idiom. So, although Augustine interprets Genesis in light of the rule of faith, he also
demonstrates that the creed is already interpreting scripture. The back and forth between
the creed and the Genesis text is happening at every turn; next he affirms the goodness
of creation, not, of course because it is next in the creed, but because it is next in the text
of Genesis and is a crucial qualifier of the phrase “creator of heaven and earth.”
26
Gn. litt. imp. i.2.
27
Ibid.
28
Ibid., i.3.
29
Ibid., i.2.
30
See Hill’s footnote to Gn. litt. imp. i.2.
31
Gn. litt. imp. i.6, referring to 1 Cor. 1:24. Augustine is fond of this interpretation and
repeats it many times; see Gn. adv. Man. i.3, conf. xiii.5.6, Gn. litt. i.2, Gn. litt. i.9 and
civ. Dei xi.32. It is an interpretation also employed by Origen and Ambrose; see Solignac,
“Exégèse and Métaphysique,” 155.
17
believe that the angels too are God’s creation and were made by him?”32
As in his earlier commentary, Augustine is attentive to the problem of
the integrity of the Genesis narrative, and now he expands this concern
to include the precise timing of the creation of angels. He wonders if the
angels were created first, then what of time? Were the angels created before
time, in time or simultaneously with time?33 Augustine had already made
clear in his first commentary that time was created, and here he reiterates
that point.34 The angels are dealt with similarly, and the problem of the
creation of angels, although as obscure as that of time, is merely a matter
to be considered, not a reason to abandon Genesis or deem it deficient. As
is his custom in these commentaries, he goes on to provide many plausible
answers to these questions, again laboring to defang the Manichean claim
that the narrative is sheer nonsense, and so completely uninterpretable. It
is possible, Augustine contends, that the angels were created before time
and then time was made on day four, along with the lights in heaven. Or,
it is possible that the days of creation signify something entirely unrelated
to time as we know it, but the narrative is arranged into days “in this
order to help human frailty.”35 In that case, the timing of angels’ creation
is somewhat a moot question. Another possibility is that time was created
on day one, but not time yet demarcated by days and years, rather some
celestial time in which the angels can move.36
Augustine shortly returns to the question of the angels, in his discus-
sion of verse 3, the creation of light. He must interpret the light of the
first day already looking forward to day four, the creation of “the lamps
in the sky, which are set out after this light here.”37 Knowing that the light
of day four must somehow represent corporeal light or time as we know
it now, Augustine considers it quite plausible to understand the first light
of day one as “an incorporeal light, if we say that in this book it is not
only the visible creation but the entire creation that is being set before
us.”38 Whatever this first light is, he insists, “we are still, surely, obliged to
take it as something made and created,” since God makes it in the same
way he makes everything else.39 Given, then, that the first light is both
32
Gn. litt. imp. i.7.
33
Ibid.
34
See Gn. adv. Man. i.3.
35
Gn. litt. imp. i.9. See also Gn. litt. imp. i.28.
36
Gn. litt. imp. i.8.
37
Ibid., i.20.
38
Ibid., i.21.
39
Ibid., i.20.
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hänellä on hieman kuumetta. Sitten sanoo hän hyvää yötä ja sulkee
raukeat silmänsä sekä on hetkisen kuluttua nukkunut.
Lääkäri oli täällä, eikä sanonut juuri mitään. Täytyy odottaa, arveli
hän. Mutta minä olen levoton. Alan ymmärtää, että tauti voi kääntyä
vaarallisemmaksi. Ehkä muuttuu se tulirokoksi, jota liikkuu
kaupungissa. Hän on ehkä saanut tartunnan kadulla, joltakin
ohikulkevalta henkilöltä. Kaupungissa, tässä hyvän ja huonon
luonnottomassa yhtymäpaikassa on alttiina kaikelle. Kaupunki on
saituri, joka ei laske meitä kynsistään ennen kuin on imenyt meidät
kuiviin ja köyhdyttänyt, kaupunki on ruumiillisten ja henkisten tautien
pesäpaikka, josta ei kukaan pääse ilman poltinmerkkiä. Kaupunki on
antanut meille kuumeen, antanut Signelle kuumeen.
Toukokuun 29 päivä.
Toukokuun 30 päivä.
Lääkäri vaatii, että minun täytyy maata, että minä olen valvonut
neljä päivää ja yötä yhtä mittaa, ja etten minä voi kestää kauvempaa.
Minäkö en voisi kestää! Minä uhmailen sekä lääkäriä että kuolemaa,
minä tiedän, että minä kestän ja että minä elän niin kauvan kuin
lapsenikin elää. Jos Signe kuolee, silloin saatan minäkin kuolla.
Toukokuun 31 päivä.
"Armahda!"
Kesäkuun 2 päivänä.
Minuutin taiteilijana.
Se oli hauska ilta. Emäntä oli oikein toden perään pitänyt silmällä
keittäjää — tarjottiin oivallista kalaa, mainioita liharuokia ja
legymeriä, vino rosso vecchiota, marsalaa, kahvia ja certosaa ja
ilman täytti neilikkain, ruusujen ja narsissien lemu, ja mielissä vallitsi
iloinen tunnelma, että kevään aika oli tullut haaveiluineen, uhkuvine
ajatuksineen tulevaisuuden urotöistä ja aavistus siitä, että salaisuus,
jota kaikki odottivat, nyt julkaistaisiin loistavassa valossa —
kaikkihan tahtoivat onnitella Prima veraa ja kaikki tahtoivat kantaa
häntä käsillään.
Kun seurue vähän sen jälkeen käveli Viale dei Colli'a pitkin, sen
tuoksuavien pensaitten, vakavien sypressien ja kukkivien
kastanjoitten ja akasiain keskellä, missä satakielet lauloivat
viidakoissa, Valkosien, kuunvalaisemien huvilain ympärillä, ja jossa
tulikärpäset kimaltelivat kuin kipunat, silloin oli kevät kaikkialla,
kevään elämänhalu ja kevään surumielinen tunnelma, ei paljon
sanoja, mutta paljon ajatuksia ja tunteita — eikä kukaan ajatellut
pilkallista ajatusta viinuriraukasta, josta oli tullut taiteilija yhdeksi
minuutiksi, vaikka konservatooriossa oli väitetty, että hän oli aivan
mahdoton.
Girolamo.
1.
Niin kurjaa oli siis elämä tässä maailmassa, jossa kuitenkin on niin
paljon kaunista. Taivashan hymyili kirkkaana ja sinisenä tuolla
ylhäällä, meri loisti ihmeellisillä väreillä, aurinko kultasi seudun,
paistoi vainion vihreyteen, ruusut tuoksuivat pitkin puutarhan
käytäviä. Mutta kurjaa oli elämä, joka esiintyi kaikessa tässä
komeudessa, ylpeys ja petollisuus oli vallannut ihmisten sydämmet.
Ja hän, joka oli Saronin liljan ja Damaskon ruusun kaltainen, siellä,
missä hän tavallisesti istuu puutarhan suihkulähteen luona, hänkin
oli yhtynyt tähän, hänet oli saatu vedetyksi tähän elämään, elämään,
jossa ei huolittu huomispäivästä eikä sen koston hedelmistä. Hän,
joka oli kasvanut Danten ja kukkien kaupungissa, hän, jonka perhe
oli sortunut Mediciläisten juonien uhriksi ja karkoitettu
kotikaupungistaan, hän otti osaa näihin turhuuden ja nautinnonhimon
vallattomuuksiin? Hänetkin oli houkuteltu viekkaudella ja
petollisuudella, hänen kuuluisan nimensä tulisi loistaa siellä muiden
muassa — nimen Strozzi.
2.
Girolamo ei tietänyt oliko tie loppunut tai oliko hän poikennut siltä
syrjään, mutta hän kompastui kiviin ja turpeisiin ja luonto raivosi
kauheana hänen ympärillään. Hän huomasi sen yhtäkkiä ja ajatus
palasi takasin kotia kohti, jossa isä ja äiti kenties olivat levottomia.
Pilvet peittivät taivaan, salamat leimuivat, niin että hän näki vesien
kimaltelevan kaukana lakeudella ja ukkonen jyrisi. Girolamo tunsi,
kuinka hän lyyhistyi kokoon. Jännitys, joka niin kauan oli ylläpitänyt
hänen voimiaan herposi. Rajuilman raivon huumaamana, märkänä ja
voimattomana, tahtoi hän etsiä suojaa. Hän ei tietänyt, mihin hänen
tulisi kääntyä, tässä tuntemattomassa erämaassa, ei mitään polkua
näkynyt, eikä ihmisasuntoa ja väsyneenä ja voimattomana horjui hän
eteenpäin puiden alla. Silloin vilahti äkkiä salaman valossa puiden
lomasta rakennus. Tultuaan lähemmäksi, löysi hän luostarin ja
luostarin kirkosta loisti valo. Vaivoin löysi hän oven, aukasi sen ja
astui sisään.