Augustine and The Mystery of the Church

the mystery that the “ablest and most esteemed of philosophers,” the Neoplatonists, could not accept due to their pride.134 They seek wisdom beyond “corporeal forms”135 at the expense of visible, historical things. Christ, on the other hand, became flesh and “dwelt among us,” an event made visible in time and space.136 By juxtaposing “visible sign” with “invisible reality,”137 the Platonists leave no room for the saving grace of Christ,138 and they see the goal but not the way to the beatific homeland.139 Augustine’s incarnational Christology forms the substance of his critique of the Manicheans and the Platonists.140 Both reject the economy of salvation accomplished by Christ’s assumption of bodily existence in the mystery of the incarnation.141 The sacramentum of the incarnation is a transcendent truth made “lowly” so as to “lift up” the mystery.142 The incarnation is the pattern that unites the visible and invisible, for the invisible Word of God entered history visibly through the sacramentum of his flesh.143 In the mature works, sacramentum means a visible sign of a transcendent mystery, and the sacramentum has effects due to the power of Christ. Sacramentum as Sign In works from the mid-to-late 390s, sacramentum acquires distinctive resonances as a visible sign with invisible effects. In Expositio Epistulae ad Galatas (c. 394/395), Augustine follows Paul by upholding the continuity between the old law and the new law. The sacrifices of the old law, along with other Jewish rituals, are sacramenta that prefigured 134. Conf. 7.21.27; Civ. Dei 9.1; 8.6. See John C. Cavadini, “The Darkest Enigma: Reconsidering the Self in Augustine’s Thought,” Augustinian Studies 38 (2007): 119–32. 135. Conf. 7.20.26. 136. Ibid., 7.9.13–14. Jaroslav Pelikan observes, “[Augustine] had learned from the Neoplatonists about ‘word’ and about ‘sign’ and about ‘reality,’ but not about ‘event’”; The Mystery of Continuity: Time and History, Memory and Eternity in the Thought of Saint Augustine (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1986), 128. 137. Plotinus, Enn. 4.6.3; Pelikan, The Mystery of Continuity, 127–28. 138. Conf. 7.21.27. 139. Ibid., 7.20.26; cf. Jo. ev. tr. 2; Trin. 4.15.20, 16.21; Cavadini, “The Darkest Enigma,” esp. 126–32. 140. A.-M. La Bonnardière observes: “At once, Augustine found in the Pauline Epistles the answer to two questions. Contrary to the Manichean version there was no disagreement between the Old and the New Testaments. Furthermore, the salvation sought by the Platonists was found in the humility of Jesus Christ” (“Augustine’s Biblical Initiation,” 19). 141. On the significance of the paschal mystery, in particular the cross, for Augustine’s developing incarnational Christology, see Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 158–59: “The cross therefore recast Augustine’s way of understanding the relation between the divine and the human, not by juxtaposing them, but by interrelating them.” 142. Conf. 3.5.9. 143. Trin. 4.1.6; 4.2.11; 5.20.27; En. Ps. 77.13. AUGUSTINE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 16 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:57:27 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

the sacramenta Christi. 144 The revealed sacramenta Christi are unique and definitive mysteries that have effects due to the power and work of the one mediator (Gal 3:19–20). Likewise, in De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus (completed c. 395/396), Augustine speaks of the efficacy of the sacramentum of regeneration, namely baptism, which mediates charity.145 The distinctive purification offered by the Christian sacramenta is growth in charity.146 In Div. qu. 57, the incarnation is the sacramentum “enacted in body and in time”147 in order to accomplish God’s saving work. This salvific work is enacted in the church and continues in history by means of the sacramenta Christi, baptism and the Eucharist, which are visible signs that have invisible effects.148 Augustine elaborates on the efficacy of sacramentum as sign in Contra Faustum (c. 397/399).149 In book 19, Augustine speaks of sacramenta as “visible signs” (signaculorum visibilium) that have the effect of binding people together in the name of religion.150 The sacramenta of the Old Testament are prophetic figures of the coming of Christ and include the legal observances, which were “abolished because they were fulfilled” by Christ’s coming in the incarnation.151 For this reason, a Christian does not observe Jewish laws or rituals (Gal 5:2), yet there is continuity between Judaism and Christianity152 insofar as the sacramenta share the same mysterium. The mysterium contained in sacramenta such as circumcision153 is Christ and his saving work through the paschal mystery.154 Since Christ has come in the incarnation, other sacramenta 144. Ex. Gal. 19; Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 160–62. 145. Div. qu. 36.2. This work illustrates the development of Augustine’s incarnational theology. Composed of a series of questions and responses collected during Augustine’s time at Thagaste (c. 388), it was not completed until after Augustine’s ordination to the episcopacy (c. 396). On the significance of Augustine’s episcopal ordination, see Saint Augustine by Serge Lancel, trans. Antonia Nevill (London: SCM, 2002), 235–70. 146. Div. qu. 36.4. 147. Ibid., 57.2; 46. 148. Robert Markus notes, “In the typological exegesis of the Bible by St Hilary and St Ambrose—above all a formative influence on Augustine—signum acquired a whole range of new resonances”; see “Augustine on Signs,” in Signs and Meanings: World and Text in Ancient Christianity (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996), 77. 149. Michael Cameron observes that Contra Faustum marks a turning point in Augustine’s biblical exegesis, and it displays Augustine’s mature theology; Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 251. 150. C. Faust. 19.11; Roland Teske, Answer to Faustus, a Manichean (WSA I/20), 245; CSEL 25.510; cf. Vera rel. 34. 151. C. Faust. 19.13; Teske, Answer to Faustus (WSA I/20), 245. 152. C. Faust. 19.17. For more on the continuity between Judaism and Christianity, see Paula Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews (New York: Doubleday, 2008). 153. C. Faust. 16.29; CSEL 25.475: “hoc est circumcisionis mysterium, quae octavo die fieri jussa est, et octavo die, id est dominica post sabbatum, jam in veritate a domino impleta.” 154. C. Faust. 19.16. THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 17 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:57:27 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

have been instituted that are “greater in power, yet fewer in number” than the Old Testament sacramenta, and these are the “baptism of Christ” (baptismo Christi) 155 and the “Eucharist of Christ” (eucharistia Christi).156 Although the visible sacramenta of the “prophetic religion,” that is, Judaism, are different from the sacramenta of Christians, the “reality (res) is the same,”157 for the res is the mysterium of God’s salvific plan, fulfilled in Christ.158 The paschal mystery is proclaimed and accomplished by the Christian sacramenta. 159 As signs, the sacramenta make present the saving mysterium, and as religious rituals, they have the effect of forming a bond of union among a religious society.160 The sacramenta Christi make present the saving mysterium and carry out the intended effects by the power of Christ.161 Christ instituted these sacramenta so that the paschal mystery might be mediated in history by means of the church’s sacramental life.162 Baptism in particular is the sacrament of regeneration,163 for it incorporates one into the body of Christ and has the effect of “uniting the church in this time” (quo in hoc tempore consociatur ecclesia).164 The sacrament of baptism builds up the one body of Christ165 and binds together the members in faith, hope, and charity.166 In C. Faust. 19.16, Augustine speaks of the words used in the formula of baptism as “bodily sacraments” (corporalia sacramenta), for they are “visible words—sacred yet changeable and temporal.”167 Although the visible actions of sacred signs are temporal, like the “quickly sounded 155. Baptism is a sacramentum of “our future resurrection”; ibid., 19.9. 156. Ibid., 19.14; CSEL 25.511; cf. Doc. Chr. 3.9.13; Ep. 54. 157. C. Faust. 19.16. 158. Ibid., 12.32; cf. 19.17; 22.94; 30.3. 159. Ibid., 19.16. 160. Ibid., 19.11; CSEL 25.510: “in nullum autem nomen religionis, seu verum, seu falsum, coagulari homines possunt, nisi aliquo signaculorum vel sacramentorum visibilium consortio conligentur.” 161. C. Faust. 19.16; cf. Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 158–60, 251–81, esp. 269–73. Cameron points out the sudden proliferation of mysticus/mystice in the late 390s and early 400s, which “point to Augustine’s new sense of the interrelationship between the sacred humantiy of Christ” and “the earthly reality of the church’s sacramental signs” in Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 272. 162. C. Faust. 19.13. Augustine identifies the Eucharist as that sacramentum which contains the “loftiest mystery” (mysterii altitudinem) of the body of the Lord; C. Faust. 19.11; Ep. 54.8; Cons. 3.1.3; 3.25.72. 163. C. Faust. 12.19; CSEL 25.348: “et hoc in sacramento regenerationis nostrae, id est in baptismo, altum profundumque mysterium est.” 164. C. Faust. 12.20; CSEL 25.349: “non adhuc in sacramento spei, quo in hoc tempore consociatur ecclesia, quamdiu bibitur, quod de Christi latere manavit, sed jam in ipsa perfectione salutis aeternae, cum tradetur regnum deo et patri, ut in illa perspicua contemplatione incommutabilis veritatis nullis mysteriis corporalibus egeamus.” 165. C. Faust. 12.14–20; 12.39. 166. Ibid., 12.20; 12.24. 167. Ibid., 19.16; Teske, Answer to Faustus (WSA I/20), 247; CSEL 25.513: “quid enim sunt aliud quaeque corporalia sacramenta nisi quaedam quasi verba visibilia, sacrosancta quidem verum tamen mutabilia et temporalia?” AUGUSTINE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 18 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:57:27 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

and passing syllables spoken when we say ‘God’,” the “power” (virtus) that works through them is “constant” and “eternal,” for it is the power of God.168 The sacramenta Christi are unique signs, for the power at work belongs to the eternal Word,169 Christ.170 The Christian sacramenta communicate mysteria through “bodily means” (corporalia), as part of the dispensation of the mysteries (Eph 3:9).171 These sacramenta mediate grace172 and have effects by the power of Christ.173 By the 400s, Augustine developed a theology of sacramentum as a visible sign that has invisible effects due to the power of God. In his second letter to Januarius (c. 401),174 Augustine defines sacramenta as visible signs of “invisible things” (invisibilia); the sacramenta of Scripture have been chosen by the Holy Spirit because they bear a certain “likeness” with the “divine mysteries” (divina mysteria) they signify.175 Through the dispensation of sacramenta, Scripture176 has a kind of eloquence177 that has the power to “move the affections” from visible things to invisible realities, from corporal to spiritual, from temporal to eternal, for the benefit of salvation.178 168. C. Faust.; Teske, Answer to Faustus (WSA I/20), 247: “the power that works through them remains constant, and the spiritual gift that is signified by them is eternal”; CSEL 25.513: “virtus tamen, quae per ista operatur, jugiter manet et donum spiritale, quod per ista insinuatur, aeternum est.” 169. C. Faust. 19.16; cf. Jo. ev. tr. 80.3 and 15.4, where Augustine makes clear that it is Christ’s “word,” as the Word of God, that has the power to cleanse one from sin, and incorporate one into the church. 170. C. Faust. 12.32; 22.94; 30.3. 171. Ibid., 15.8; 16.29; 19.11; 12.20. 172. On the “mysteries” (mysteria) as “grace” (gratia), see ibid., 22.7; 6.5; 12.20, 32; 16.17; 19.11, 16; 22.51, 58, 92, 94; 30.3; Vera rel. 33; Gn. litt. 9.18; En. Ps. 6.2; Ench. 52; Praed. sanct. 1.35–36; C. Jul. imp. 2.109; 3.72; 3.107; 4.122. 173. C. Faust. 19.16. 174. Ep. 55. 175. Ibid., 55.5.9; CCSL 31.241: “ac per hoc spiritus sanctus de visibilibus ad invisibilia et de corporalibus ad spiritalia sacramenta similitudinem ducens transitum illum de alia vita in aliam vitam”; cf. ibid., 55.6.11; CCSL 31.242: “ex eis aliquando similitudo ad divina mysteria figuranda”; ibid., 55.7.12; CCSL 31.243: “aut quia ex his rebus ad mysteria verbi dei similitudinum signa sumuntur”; ibid., 55.8.14; CCSL 31.245: “in sanctis mysteriis nobilitato fluvio Jordane rerum figurate insinuandarum mysticas similitudines duxit”; ibid., 98; Doc. Chr. 3.9.13. 176. Ep. 55.7.12; CCSL 31.243. 177. Augustine develops this idea further in De doctrina Christiana; see John C. Cavadini, “The Sweetness of the Word: Salvation and Rhetoric in Augustine’s De doctrina Christiana,” in De doctrina Christiana: A Classic of Western Culture, ed. Duane W. H. Arnold and Pamela Bright (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1955), 164–81. 178. Ep. 55.7.13; CCSL 31.245: “si quae autem figurae similitudinum non tantum de caelo etsideribussed etiam de creatura inferiore ducuntur ad dispensationem sacramentorum, eloquentia quaedam est doctrinae salutaris movendo affectui discentium accommodata a visibilibus ad invisibilia, a corporalibus ad spiritalia, a temporalibus ad aeterna.” THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 19 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:57:27 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

For Augustine, God uses visible things in order to effect invisible realities. In Ep. 138 (c. 411), Augustine describes sacramentum as a sign that pertains to a “divine thing” (res divinas).179 A sacramentum is a “divinely instituted sign” (signum divinitus institutum),180 and God has chosen to carry out the salvific work of Christ in history through “visible signs” (signaculorum visibilium).181 The church’s celebration of the sacraments mediates the grace of the invisible mysteria182 by the power of God.183 Thus the visible sacraments have invisible effects according to God’s plan. In Augustine’s mature works, sacramentum most often means the visible revelation of a mystery made present and efficacious in history, while mysterium carries the transcendent and eschatological resonances of the biblical μυστήριον, as in the mysterium of the future resurrection.184 Mysterium may also mean “spiritual things” (mysteriis rerum spiritalium),185 as well as the mysterium of predestination,186 which is God’s plan of salvation.187 God’s plan is fulfilled in Christ, the ultimate mysterium of all the sacramenta found in Scripture.188 Christ is the eternal “mystery of God” (mysterium dei),189 made present in history 179. Ep. 138.7; CCSL 31B.278: “nimis autem longum est convenienter disputare de varietate signorum, quae cum ad res divinas pertinent, sacramenta appellantur.” See N.-M. Feret, “Sacramentum, Res, dans la langue théologique de S. Augustin,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 29 (1940): 218–43. 180. Doc. Chr. 3.9.13; CCSL 32.85. As David Meconi points out, “A sacrament does not simply point us to a deeper, spiritual reality but rather is something corporeally present effecting spiritual fruit (speciem habet corporalem, quod intelligetur, fructum habet spiritalem)”; see The One Christ: St. Augustine’s Theology of Deification (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2013), 216; cf. S. 272; PL 38.1247. 181. C. Faust. 19.11. 182. Ibid., 22.7; 6.5; 12.20, 32; 16.17; 19.11, 16; 22.51, 58, 92, 94; 30.3; Vera rel. 33; Gn. litt. 9.18; En. Ps. 6.2; Ench. 52; Praed. sanct. 1.35–36; C. Jul. imp. 2.109; 3.72; 3.107; 4.122. 183. C. Faust. 19.16. By contrast, Phillip Cary claims that for Augustine, sacraments are “powerless,” for “the visible and invisible are clearly two different orders of causality and therefore of sanctification, one external and the other inward, and Augustine seems deliberately to avoid saying anything about the interaction between them”; Outward Signs: The Powerlessness of External Things in Augustine’s Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 163; cf. 161–64, 193–220. For Augustine, however, the visible does not serve as an obstacle to the invisible, nor is it the case that the visible sacraments possess “power” in and of themselves, forthe power “that worksthrough them remains constant” and “eternal” precisely because it belongs to God; C. Faust. 19.16. 184. C. Faust. 11.3; 11.7; 16.29; Trin. 4.3.6. 185. Gn. litt. 8.4; 4.11; 12.8; 12.19; Cat. rud. 33; Bapt. 5.38; En. Ps. 7.1; 61.7; 77.2; Ep. 196.12–16; 8.17; S. 4.21. 186. Persev. 23; 37; Praed. sanct. 35; Jo. ev. tr. 8.9. On Augustine’s doctrine of predestination, see René Bernard, La prédestination du Christ total selon saint Augustin (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1965); P.- M. Hombert, Gloria gratiae: Se glorifier en Dieu, principe et fin de la théologie Augustinienne de la grâce (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1996). 187. C. Sec. 21. 188. C. Faust. 12.32; 22.94; 30.3. The hidden mysteria are not philosophical, but Christological; ibid., 16.17; 22.51; 22.58; 22.77; 22.92. 189. Ibid., 12.32; Cat. rud. 19.33; Trin. 13.6.24; Civ. Dei 10.8; C. Jul. 2.92; 2.113; 4.49; 4.64; 6.34; Praed. sanct. 40. AUGUSTINE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 20 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:57:27 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

through the sacramentum of his flesh.190 Just as Christ was made visible in the incarnation, so too the church is visible as a social body celebrating the sacraments while remaining a transcendent mystery. The church is the body of Christ, and the members of the church together with the head form the whole Christ.191 The mystery of Christ is, in some sense, incomplete without the church, for Christ is present mysteriously in the members of his body while they are on pilgrimage, a mystery mediated by the sacraments.192 Augustine applies the distinction between mysterium and sacramentum to the church. In works from the late 390s on, mysterium most often indicates the transcendent mystery while sacramentum refers to the visible, historical community celebrating the sacraments, as evident in his exegesis of biblical images. Thus the visible body is intrinsic to the mystery of the whole Christ. The Mystery of the Church In early works, Augustine uses sacramentum exclusively to speak of the mystery of Christ and the church (Eph 5:32),193 perhaps following the vetus Latina. 194 However, in mature works, he uses sacramentum and mysterium to distinguish between the visible and invisible aspects of the church. The mysterium of God’s plan to unite all things in Christ (Eph 1:10)195 is accomplished through the sacramentum of the church as a visible and historical community. The first use of mysterium for the church appears in De doctrina Christiana, 196 in which the number 153,197 the number of fish caught in the apostle’s net in John 21, is a “wonderful sacrament” (sacramentum mirabile) of the “mystery of the church (mysterium ecclesiae) in its most 190. Trin. 4.1.6; 4.2.11; 5.20.27; En. Ps. 77.13; Basil Studer, “‘Sacramentum et exemplum’ chez Saint Augustin,” 570–88. 191. Robert Dodaro observes that in S. 183.10–11, Augustine proclaims, “Christians do not properly understand the incarnation unless they believe that in becoming man, Christ united himself to the church as it exists in history, in such a way that to reject the church in its historical form and mission is to deny what Christ became when he came in the flesh” in “‘Omnes haeretici negant Christum in carne uenisse’ (Aug., Serm. 183.9.13): Augustine on the Incarnation as Criterion for Orthodoxy,” Augustinian Studies 38/1 (2007): 169. 192. En. Ps. 37.6; 142.3. 193. Gn. adv. Man. 2.19; 2.37; C. Adim. 3. 194. Augustine often uses sacramentum when citing Eph 5:32, perhaps following the “old Latin” (vetus Latina) translation, although it is not clear which version of the vetus Latina he used; see A.-M. La Bonnardière, Saint Augustin et la Bible (Paris: Éditions Beauchesne, 1986). 195. Praed. sanct. 35–36; Persev. 15; S. 1.3. 196. This work was begun in 396 and completed c. 427; on the gap in composition,see C. Kannengiesser, “The Interrupted De doctrina christiana,” in De doctrina christiana: A Classic of Western Culture, 4–14. 197. Doc. Chr. 2.16.25; Div. qu. 57.1–3, 81.3; Jo. ev. tr. 122.8–9; S. 248.4–5; 252.7–8; En. Ps. 49.9. THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 21 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:57:27 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

purified state.”198 Mysterium carries eschatological resonances, for the mysterium hidden in and revealed by the scriptural sacramentum is the church in perfect eschatological unity.199 In De catechizandis rudibus (c. 399), Augustine takes up Noah’s ark as a figure of the church,200 which “now floats on the waves of the world, and is saved by the wood of Christ’s cross.”201 The ark, precisely as the historical church, serves as a “sacrament of the future church” (sacramentum futurae ecclesiae).202 In this case, the biblical sacramentum of the ark signifies the pilgrim church on the journey to her eschatological end. The church’s condition in history is intrinsic to the mystery revealed by Scripture and anticipates the final perfection and unity of the “future church” by virtue of the saving “wood of Christ’s cross.”203 While the church’s unity will be perfectly realized only at the eschaton, the invisible unity of the members is not reserved solely for the end time but is accomplished in history by means of the sacraments. The church is united as one body, visible and invisible, by the visible celebration of the sacraments. This theme reappears in the anti-Donatist work De baptismo (c. 400), in which the unity signified by the ark is achieved through the sacrament of baptism.204 The church’s sacramental life has the effect of unifying the church as one body, in anticipation of the final eschatological unity. In similar fashion, Augustine brings together the visible and invisible in De civitate Dei according to his renewed exegesis of Noah’s ark. As in De baptismo, the ark is a figure of the visible church united in anticipation of the end time. “For nations have already filled the church in the same way that the animals filled the ark; and, in just the same way, the clean and the unclean alike are contained within the framework of its unity, until it reaches its certain end.”205 The “clean and unclean” are the good and the wicked in the church, for during this time, the church is a mixed body of good and wicked, wheat and chaff, 198. Doc. Chr. 2.16.25; Edmund Hill, Teaching Christianity (WSA I/11), 143; CCSL 32.51. On the “church” (ecclesia) as mysterium, see Bapt. 5.28–39; Ep. 147.13.23; Civ. Dei 15.26–27. 199. Div. qu. 57.2; Jo. ev. tr. 122.1; Ep. 187.6.21. 200. Cat. rud. 19.32; cf. Bapt. 5.28.39; C. Faust. 12.14–23; Civ. Dei 15.26–27; 16.1–8. 201. Cat. rud. 27.53; Raymond Canning, Instructing Beginners in Faith (Hyde Park, NY: New City, 2006), 168; cf. ibid., 19.32. 202. Ibid.; CCSL 46.175. See also Bapt. 5.28.39, in which Augustine uses mysterium to referto the church’s eschatological perfection. 203. C. Faust. 11.3; 11.7; 16.29; C. Adim. 12; Trin. 4.3.6; Ep. 205.14; Augustine also refers to the mysterium of the kingdom, citing Matt 13:11 and Rev 10:7; Gn. litt. 5.19; Persev. 35; 37; Praed. sanct. 40; on the “mystery” (mysterium) of eternal life, see Civ. Dei 7.32–33. 204. Bapt. 5.28.39. 205. Civ. Dei 15.27; William Babcock, The City of God (WSA I/7), 183. AUGUSTINE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 22 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:57:27 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

elect and reprobate.206 The ark is a figure of “the city of God on pilgrimage in this world”207 as though “in the midst of a flood.”208 The waters allude to the celebration of baptism, whereby the Holy Spirit unites the members of the church in the invisible bond of charity,209 and thus the church’s visible celebration of the sacraments has invisible effects. In book 15 of De civitate Dei, Augustine uses sacramentum to refer to the visible community celebrating the sacraments. In this text, Augustine declares that the church in her historical condition is built up by means of the visible celebration of “the sacraments (sacramenta) by which believers are initiated,” that is, baptism and the Eucharist.210 The sacraments effect the union and formation of the whole Christ, head and members.211 Baptism incorporates new members into the body of Christ, and the Eucharist unites the whole body as one sacrifice.212 In her sacramental life, the church on earth is herself a “sacrament” (sacramentum), a “sacred sign” (sacrum signum) of an “invisible sacrifice” (invisibilis sacrificii),213 the sacrifice of the whole Christ offered at the eucharistic altar. This notion of sacrifice will be explored further in chapter 5. For now, it suffices to show that the church as sacramentum is a visible sign of an invisible, transcendent mystery, the mystery of the whole Christ united by means of the sacraments. In sermons preached after 400, Augustine uses sacramentum and mysterium to indicate the visible and invisible aspects of the church respectively. This is a distinction without separation, for there is only one mystery. In En. Ps. 138,214 Augustine again interprets Gen 2:24 in light of the “mystery” (mysterium) of Christ and the church.215 Mysterium carries the connotation of the transcendent mystery of the whole Christ, 206. Cat. rud. 17.26; 19.31; 25.48; 27.53. 207. Civ. Dei 15.26; Babcock, The City of God (WSA I/7), 178. 208. Civ. Dei 15:26; Babcock, The City of God (WSA I/7), 179. 209. Ibid.; 4.31; 13.7; C. litt. Pet. 3.49.59; Ev. Jo. 12.5; Ep. 187.21, 34; En. Ps. 62.17; S. 268.2; 267.4; 349.2. 210. Civ. Dei 15.26; Babcock, The City of God (WSA I/7), 179; cf. Civ. Dei 22.17. 211. Civ. Dei 10.6; 22.17–18; cf. C. Faust. 12.20; Ep. Jo. 1.2; En. Ps. 44.3. 212. Civ. Dei 10.6; 22.17–18; cf. En. Ps. 54.3. 213. Civ. Dei 10.6; CCSL 47.277: “sacrificium ergo visibile invisibilis sacrificii sacramentum, id estsacrum signum est.” 214. En. Ps. 138 was likely preached sometime between 411 and 415; Fiedrowicz, Psalmus vox totius Christi, 438. 215. En. Ps. 138.2; Maria Boulding, Expositions of the Psalms 121–150 (WSA, III/20), 257; CCSL 40.1990: “hoc autem ad mysterium interpretatur apostolus non frustra esse dictum de illis duobus hominibus, nisi quia in eis jam figurabatur Christus et ecclesia. Nam hoc sic exponit apostolus: ‘erunt duo in carne,’ inquit, ‘una: sacramentum hoc magnum est; ego autem dico, in Christo et ecclesia.’” On Augustine and Eph 5:32, see A.-M. La Bonnardière, “L’interprétation augustinienne du magnum sacramentum de Éphés. 5, 32,” Recherches Augustiniennes 12 (1977): 3–45, esp. 29 n. 84; Cavadini, “The Sacramentality of Marriage in the Fathers,” 451–53. This verse appears at least thirty-five times in Augustine’s works; Stanislaus J. Grabowski, The Church: An Introduction to the Theology of St. Augustine (St. Louis: Herder, 1957), 11–12. THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 23 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:57:27 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

the “total mystery” (totum mysterium) of Scripture. During the church’s historical journey, Christ and the church form a “great mystery” (magnum sacramentum, Eph 5:32)216 as a visible reality, for God’s salvific plan for the formation of the body of Christ is accomplished by means of the visible community celebrating the sacraments.217 Augustine uses the distinction between mysterium and sacramentum in order to bring together the particular aspects of the one church, for there is one mystery, with visible and invisible aspects. Conclusion There are two primary conclusions to be drawn. First, while sacramentum and mysterium have distinct connotations in Augustine’s works, they are not entirely separate, for they indicate particular aspects of one mystery. Augustine employs this distinction in order to bring together the visible and invisible, according to his mature incarnational theology.218 The transcendent mysterium is made visible as a sacramentum, for Christ, the mysterium dei, 219 entered history through the sacramentum220 of his flesh.221 The church as sacramentum is the body of Christ, made visible in history while remaining a transcendent mystery. Thus the church is not reducible to an invisible reality over against the empirical community, for the visible church is intrinsic to the mystery. 216. Augustine is perhaps following the vetus Latina here, yet sacramentum has acquired revelatory resonances by the time of this sermon; see La Bonnardière, “L’interprétation augustinienne du magnum sacramentum de Éphés. 5, 32,” esp. 28–29. 217. En. Ps. 138.2; Boulding, Expositions of the Psalms 121–150 (WSA, III/20), 257; CCSL 40.1991: “si ergo Adam forma futuri, quomodo de latere dormientis Eva facta est, sic ex latere domini dormientis, id est, in passione morientis, et in cruce percusso de lancea, manaverunt sacramenta, quibus formaretur ecclesia.” 218. Pelikan, The Mystery of Continuity, esp. 38–39, 127. 219. Ep. 187.34; C. Faust. 12.32; Cat. rud. 19.33; Trin. 13.6.24; Civ. Dei 10.8; C. Jul. 2.92; 2.113; 4.49; 4.64; 6.34; Praed. sanct. 40. 220. Trin. 4.1.6; 4.2.11; En. Ps. 77.13. As Jaroslav Pelikan asserts, “[Augustine] learned to go beyond Neoplatonism to cherish time and history as the locus of the incarnation of the eternal Son of God within the temporal process. . . . The ‘unbroken continuity’ of creatures having their being in time and therefore coming into existence and passing, while not perfect in the way that the continuity of eternity was, did nevertheless have a reality and a goodness of its own” (The Mystery of Continuity, 38–39). 221. Cary claims, “The flesh of Christ, like the outward sign of the voice, is a means to be used by the soul to arrive at a deeper and purer intellectual vision of the Word within” (Outward Signs, 147). On the contrary, Michael Cameron notes, “Even C. P. Mayer is unwilling to read Augustine on Christ’s humanity this way. . . . Platonism gave Augustine the conceptual frame for conceiving the spiritual world and humanity’s participation in it. But in the end, the countervailing idea of the incarnate Christ kept him from flying off into Platonist dreamscapes” (Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 343n37). AUGUSTINE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 24 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:57:27 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Second, as we have seen, the visible church’s celebration of the sacraments has invisible effects, namely, the union and formation of the whole Christ. This renewed analysis of Augustine’s sacramental theology and ecclesiology provides a counter-narrative to scholarship that interprets Augustine primarily through a Platonic lens, as exemplified in the work of Phillip Cary. According to Cary, the “visible and invisible are clearly two different orders of causality and therefore of sanctification, one external and the other inward.”222 Consequently, a visible sacrament has no invisible effects, for “here again we have a two-track theory: the visible form of the sacrament (which is another way ofsaying simply, the sacrament itself as a visible thing) is precisely what does no good apart from the invisible grace that is given inwardly by God.”223 The sacrament is inefficacious, for grace operates invisibly on a separate track. This argument is based upon Cary’s reading of early works such as De magistro (c. 389) and the “sharp Platonist distinction between bodily things and things of the soul, together with the Platonist axiom of downward causality according to which the former is powerless to affect the latter.”224 Cary fails to account for the development of Augustine’s thought, particularly the incarnational shift in the late 390s, and the result is a separation of the visible sacramentum and the invisible res such that the sacramentum cannot serve as a means of grace.225 By contrast, this chapter has shown how Augustine develops a sacramental theology in which the sacramentum is a visible sign that has invisible effects due to the power of God. Baptism and the Eucharist have effects not merely as the markers of an inward, spiritual reality, but precisely as the means for the mediation of charity among the members of the church. Baptism incorporates new members into the body of Christ and binds the church in charity, while the Eucharist unites the head and members of the whole Christ as one sacrifice. On the basis of Augustine’s mature understanding of sacramentum, we may conclude that the visible church celebrating the sacraments is herself a 222. Cary, Outward Signs, 163. 223. Ibid. 224. Ibid. 225. Ibid., 162. For instance, Cary claims that the res of the sacramentum is not so obviously grace, yet in his reading, the res is irrelevant, for visible and invisible operate according to two different orders of causality. In fact, Cary’s claim is that the visible never does any good, for there is no way in which a visible thing can have an invisible effect. Cary has begged the question regarding the relationship between the visible and invisible, and his Platonic interpretation is based upon a fundamental misunderstanding of sacramentum in Augustine’s mature thought. THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 25 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:57:27 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

kind of sacrament, for she is a visible sign that effects an invisible mystery, namely, the union and formation of the whole Christ.226 226. Dodaro makes a helpful qualification regarding the spiritual effects of the sacraments, distinguishing between visible and invisible without positing an absolute separation: “[Augustine] is careful to observe that the power of sacraments and mysteries to induce an interior, spiritual renewal does not depend solely on theirsymbolic function. He explainsthat the terms‘sacrament’ and ‘mystery’ denote an interaction between language and grace in the spiritual process by which the soul overcomes ignorance and weakness as it pursues a deeper understanding of eternal truths. Augustine pairs the example of Christ’s death and resurrection with the ‘outer man,’ whereas he saysthat the sacrament of Christ’s death and resurrection acts on the ‘inner man.’ One concludes from these pairings that he distinguishes examples and sacraments principally by the fact that the interior, spiritual renewal of the believer can only come about through sacraments, and that examples do not exercise this function on their own” (Christ and the Just Society, 152–53). AUGUSTINE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 26 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:57:27 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

2 The Church as the Body of Christ As we have seen, for Augustine, the church is a mystery revealed by Scripture. Augustine’s biblical exegesis provides the key to his developing thought on the church. The biblical image of the church as the body of Christ is one of the most prominent in his works. In his preaching, Augustine follows Paul by frequently reminding the members of the congregation of their identity as the body of the whole Christ. Now, if he is the head, obviously he must have a body. His body is holy church, and she, to whom the apostle says, You are Christ’s body, and his members (1 Cor 12:27), is also his bride. The whole Christ, head and body together, constitute a perfect man.1 The church is built up asthe body of Christ by means of the sacraments, symbolized by the blood and water that flowed from Christ’s side on the cross.2 The sacraments are essential for the growth and completion of the whole Christ. Although some who share in the sacraments may 1. En. Ps. 138.2; Maria Boulding, Expositions of the Psalms 121–150 (WSA III/20), 257; CCSL 40.1990–91: “et utique si caput est, habet corpus. Corpus autem ejus sancta ecclesia, quae etiam conjux ejus; cui dicit apostolus: ‘vos autem estis corpus Christi et membra’. Totus itaque Christus caput et corpus, tamquam integer vir.” This sermon was delivered sometime between 411 and 415; see Michael Fiedrowicz, Psalmus vox totius Christi: Studien zu Augustins “Enarrationes in Psalmos” (Freiburg: Herder, 1997), 438. 2. En. Ps. 138.2. 27 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

cut themselves off from the effects,3 the sacraments are intrinsic to the building up of the church and the formation of the whole Christ. In early works, the emphasis on the sacraments is notably lacking, due in large part to the influence of Platonism. The aim of the Christian life is the vision of truth in Neoplatonic fashion. However, following the biblical, incarnational shift in his thought in the 390s, Augustine reconfigures the Christian journey such that the mediation of the sacraments is necessary for incorporation into the church as the body of Christ. The end is no longer vision but charity, which is shared among a communal body. This chapter traces Augustine’s use of bodily imagery for the church in order to show the increasing significance of the sacraments and the visible church in his developing ecclesiology. My argument in this chapter has three parts. First, I demonstrate the influence of Platonism upon Augustine’s early thought, which has the effect of mitigating participation in the sacraments. This can be attributed to Augustine’s confidence in philosophy and the liberal arts to purify the mind. In early works, Augustine focuses on the individual ascent of the soul that yields vision. The Platonic aim of vision is prioritized over virtues such as charity. The church is portrayed as a teacher of wisdom, and the “happy life” (beata vita) consists of the soul’s vision of truth by the purification of the mind through philosophy, the liberal arts, or the sacred rites of the church. As a result, the necessity of the sacraments is mitigated, as evident in early writings such as the Cassiciacum dialogues. In mature works from the late 390s on, however, Augustine reconfigures the Christian journey. Vision is subordinated to charity, and the sacraments are necessary for incorporation into the body of Christ. I argue this reconfiguration is due to the development of Augustine’s mature biblical, incarnational theology. Christ assumed flesh in order to forgive sins and to incorporate new members into his body.4 The sacraments of the church offerthe unique purification of the one mediator who has the power to forgive sins. Baptism gives birth to charity in the members, and the church is built up by means of the sacraments. The visible church is a mixed body of the good and the wicked, yet the 3. These include “sinners” and “heretics” (En. Ps. 138.26). 4. Pasquale Borgomeo, L'église de ce temps dans la prédication de saint Augustin (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1972), 191–273; Stanislaus J. Grabowski, The Church: An Introduction to the Theology of St. Augustine (St. Louis: Herder, 1957), 6–92; T. J. van Bavel, “The ‘Christus Totus’ Idea: A Forgotten Aspect of Augustine’s Spirituality,” in Studies in Patristic Christology: Proceedings of the Third Maynooth Patristic Conference 1996, ed. T. Finan and V. Twomey (Dublin: Four Courts, 1998): 84–94; Emile Mersch, The Whole Christ: The Historical Development of the Doctrine of the Mystical Body, trans. John R. Kelly (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1938), 85–86, 350–52. AUGUSTINE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 28 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

church remains one body, with visible and invisible dimensions. The second part of my argument demonstrates the shift from Augustine’s earlier, more Platonic viewsto his mature theology of the church asthe body of Christ. The third part of my argument shows Augustine’s increasing attention to the visible aspects of the church in mature works. Augustine develops a rich ecclesiology of solidarity in which the head shares in the sufferings of the members on journey, and the members share in the glory of the head. The sacraments of the visible church mediate the virtues of faith, hope, and charity from Christ the head to the members of his body on earth. Thus the church is not reducible to a purely spiritual, invisible reality. In this chapter, I show how Augustine’s doctrine of the church as the body of Christ is marked by visible and invisible features. Augustine attaches greater significance to the visible church and the mediation of the sacraments as his thought develops from early writings to later works. In his mature ecclesiology, the church is a communal body united in charity by means of the sacraments in order to form the whole Christ. The Influence of Plotinus Augustine’s early works reveal the heavy influence of Platonism, particularly the philosopher Plotinus.5 Augustine incorporates many of Plotinus’s ideas, including the aim of the vision of truth via the ascent of the soul. For Plotinus, the journey of the soul consists of an “inward” turn away from all material things in order to return to the One.6 All things emanate from the One, and all desire to return to the “fullness of being.”7 This return is initiated by an inward turn,8 which is, at the same time, a turning away from the outer, material world. Plotinus declares in the Enneads, “He that has the strength, let him arise and 5. On the influence of Plotinus, see R. O’Connell, Saint Augustine’s Platonism (Philadephia: Villanova University Press, 1984); J. O’Meara, The Young Augustine (London: Longmans, 1954); J. M. Rist, Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); John Peter Kenney, Contemplation and Classical Christianity: A Study in Augustine (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 106–14. 6. Enn. 1.6.5, 9. For an introduction to Plotinus, see John Peter Kenney, Mystical Monotheism: A Study in Ancient Platonic Theology (Hanover, NH: Brown University Press, 1991), 91–149; Andrew Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 36–51; John Rist, Plotinus: The Road to Reality (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1967), esp. 153–68. 7. Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition, 39. 8. “He that has the strength, let him arise and withdraw into himself, foregoing all that is known by the eyes, turning away for ever from the material beauty that once made his joy.” Enn. 1.6.8, in Stephen MacKenna, trans., Plotinus: The Enneads (New York: Larson, 1992), 71. THE CHURCH AS THE BODY OF CHRIST 29 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

withdraw into himself, foregoing all that is known by the eyes, turning away for ever from the material beauty that once made his joy.”9 The material body must be discarded, for “a Soul becomes ugly—by something foisted upon it, by sinking itself into the alien, by a fall, a descent into body, into Matter. . . . Gold is degraded when it is mixed with earthly particles; if these be worked out, the gold is left and is beautiful, isolated from all that is foreign, gold with gold alone. And so the Soul.”10 The soul undergoes purification in orderto return to a pristine state, for the “loveliness of this world” comes only in “communion in Ideal-Form.”11 The journey of the soul means an escape from bodiliness by turning within. “How are you to see into a virtuous Soul and know its loveliness? Withdraw into yourself and look.”12 In Plotinus’s scheme, the return to the One requires liberation from bodily existence,13 which begins with an unmediated, inward turn. “It is that you find in yourself, or admire in another, loftiness of spirit; righteousness of life; disciplined purity; courage of the majestic face; gravity, modesty that goes fearless and tranquil and passionless; and, shining down upon all, the light of god-like Intellection.”14 The soul must purify itself so as to ascend to the light of truth, for “if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful. . . . Cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast.”15 The purification of the soul leads to an inward unity that yields vision. “When you are selfgathered in the purity of your being, nothing now remaining that can shatter that inner unity . . . when you perceive that you have grown to this, you are now become very vision: now call up all your confidence, strike forward yet a step—you need a guide no longer—strain, and see.”16 For Plotinus, the journey is not “by feet,” but rather by the soul’s ascent to vision.17 9. Ibid. 10. Enn. 1.6.5; MacKenna, The Enneads, 69. 11. Enn. 1.6.2; MacKenna, The Enneads, 65. 12. Enn. 1.6.9; MacKenna, The Enneads, 71. 13. Louth notes, “Everything desires to return to the One . . . and the return is back through the hypostases: embodied soul to Soul free from body, Soul to Nous, Nous to the One” (The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition, 39). 14. Enn. 1.6.5; MacKenna, The Enneads, 68. 15. Enn. 1.6.9; MacKenna, The Enneads, 71–72. 16. Enn. 1.6.9. 17. “The purpose of the way is to achieve simplicity, and the means is purification” (Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition, 44). AUGUSTINE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 30 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

What then is our course, what the manner of our flight? This is not a journey for the feet; the feet bring us only from land to land; nor need you think of coach or ship to carry you away; all this order of things you must set aside and refuse to see: you must close the eyes and call instead upon another vision which is to be waked within you, a vision, the birth-right of all, which few turn to use.18 The end of the journey is the vision of truth as a consequence of the “flight of the alone to the Alone.”19 The journey is a “solitary way” that leads to the One as “sovereign in solitary transcendence.”20 The soul contemplates the true, good, and beautiful in solitude; no companions are necessary.21 True happiness lies in the immaterial,22 and the ascent of the soul is a kind of “awakening from the world of time and becoming, and an identification with the world of eternity and Being and true pleasure.”23 Augustine’s early works show his indebtedness to this kind of Platonism. In De beata vita, Augustine prioritizes the vision of truth over the virtues of faith, hope, and charity.24 The “happy life” (beata vita) consists of knowing the truth by which one is led, in which one rejoices, and through which one is united to the supreme measure.25 The focus is on the union of the individual soul with God. Augustine recognizes the authority of the “mysteries” (mysteria) handed on by the church,26 for the mysteries assist one toward the final goal of vision through contemplation.27 The virtues are framed within this goal, as evident in Soliloquies, 28 enabling the ascent to truth thatresembles Plotinus’s movement of the “alone to the Alone.” In the Cassiciacum dialogues, Augustine displays confidence in the purification of the mind by means of the liberal arts and philosophy.29 18. Enn. 1.6.8; MacKenna, The Enneads, 71. 19. Enn. 6.9.11; Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition, 51. MacKenna’s translation reads, “solitary to solitary” (MacKenna, The Enneads, 709). 20. Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition, 51. 21. Ibid.; Kenney, Mystical Monotheism, 128–49. 22. The “loveliness of this world” means “communion in Ideal-Form” (Enn. 1.6.1) for the only way a “material thing” may become beautiful is “by communicating in the thought that flows from the Divine” (Enn. 1.6.2; MacKenna, The Enneads, 66). See Gerard O’Daly, “The presence of the One in Plotinus,” in Platonism Pagan and Christian (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2001): 159–69. 23. Rist, Plotinus, 152. 24. B. vita 2.28; cf. Sol. 1.6.13; Ord. 2.19.51. 25. B. vita 4.34; CCSL 29.84: “veritas autem ut sit, fit per aliquem summum modum, a quo procedit et in quem se perfecta convertit.” 26. B. vita 1.4. These mysteries are the rites “into which we are now being initiated,” that is, baptism and the Eucharist, which bring one to “that blessed life (beata vita) by strong faith, lively hope, and burning love” (B. vita 4.35; Ludwig Schopp, The Happy Life [FC 5], 84). 27. Kenney, Contemplation and Classical Christianity, esp. 106–14. 28. Sol. 1.6.12–7.14. THE CHURCH AS THE BODY OF CHRIST 31 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

The truths attained by philosophy will not contradict the mysteries of Christian faith,30 but only the educated few will attain to the heights of wisdom apart from the sacred rites. The sacraments offer to the many what is available only to the few, namely, the purification of the soul that enables the ascent to truth. Participation in the sacraments is mitigated, for it is not clear how, if at all, the sacraments of the church offer a unique kind of purification.31 Further, the ascent to truth does not necessitate union or communion with others. In early writings, the ascent that yields vision means a kind of contemplation that renders community incidental. The goal of vision may be achieved by solitary contemplation,32 and thus the necessity of participation in the communal, sacramental life of the church is lost. The Church as Body in Early Works In Augustine’s early works, the biblical theme of the church asthe body of Christ is used sparingly. It is not developed in any distinctive fashion,33 and although Augustine affirms the role of the sacraments in Christian initiation, the final goal is a kind of vision that bears strong resemblance to the Plotinian ascent of the soul. Augustine speaks of the church as body for the first time in De Genesi adversus Manicheos, the first of at least five attempts to explain the beginning chapters of Genesis.34 Adam and Eve are figures of Christ and the church. The church is born from Christ’s side on the cross just as “a real, visible woman was made, historically speaking, from the body of the first man.”35 Augustine affirms the historical reality of Old Testament figures against the Manichean rejection of Scripture as myth.36 He conceives of the church as a visible, historical reality, but he does not yet emphasize the role of the sacraments in the formation of the body. In De utilitatecredendi (c. 391/392), the aim of vision through contem29. Ord. 2.5.16: “philosophia rationem promittit et vix paucissimos liberat, quos tamen non modo non contemnere illa mysteria sed sola intellegere, ut intellegenda sunt, cogit” (CCSL 29.115–16). 30. C. Acad. 3.9.20; Mor. 8.15. 31. Augustine upholds the purifying effects of the “mysteries” (mysteria) of the church for the many who participate in the “sacred rites” (sacris), as in Ord. 2.9.27. 32. Ord. 2.5.16; B. vita 4.35. 33. Gn. adv. Man. 2.19; Grabowski, The Church, 10. 34. Ibid. 35. Gn. adv. Man. 2.17; Edmund Hill, On Genesis (WSA I/13), 83. 36. Gn. adv. Man. 2.19. See Michael Cameron’s discussion of Augustine’s figurative exegesis in Christ Meets Me Everywhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 67. AUGUSTINE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 32 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

plation remains in place.37 Augustine portrays the church as a teacher38 whose authority “is there for those who are incapable of gazing on the truth, so that they may become fit to do so by allowing themselves to be purified.”39 The “soul” (anima) must be purified in order to see truth, and the “mysteries of the Catholic Church” (ecclesiae catholicae mysteria) 40 provide purification for the uneducated since otherwise only a few would come to knowledge.41 As in the Cassiciacum dialogues, Augustine upholds the purifying effects of the sacraments, yet he maintains that some may come to truth by the purification of the mind offered by philosophy and the liberal arts.42 Moreover, the sacraments have as their end the vision of truth, for the rites of the church have the effect of “instilling into the mind” the truth of what Christ said.43 Charity is subordinated to vision,44 and the present aim is “to become wise” and “to cling to the truth.”45 Augustine’s Expositio Epistulae ad Galatas (c. 394/395) also reveals the priority of vision over charity, with a focus on the moral life.46 Augustine identifies the “contemplation of truth” (contemplationem veritatis) as the meaning behind the figures and sacramenta found in Scripture, for “every sacrament (sacramentum), when understood, refers either to the contemplation of the truth or to good morals.”47 The significance of communal life, as it pertains to growth in charity, is conspicuously absent. Augustine’s reading of Galatians will be significant for his developing incarnational Christology,48 but in this early work, the emphasis on vision remains. 37. On Augustine’s view of contemplation in these early works, see Kenney, Contemplation and Classical Christianity, esp. 106–14. Kenney notes a shift in works such as De utilitate credendi from earlier texts that “depicted contemplation as emerging from levels or powers within the soul. Now [Augustine] begins to interpret contemplation as primary as ascent to God grounded in the soul’s ethical advancement” (106). 38. Util. cred. 1.17.35; Quant. 34.77; Mor. 7.11; 10.16; 28.55–56. 39. Util. cred. 1.16.34; Michael Fiedrowicz, On Christian Belief (WSA I/8), 145. 40. Util. cred. 1.14.31; CSEL 25.38. 41. Util. cred. 1.7.16; 11.25; 14.31; 15.33–18.36. 42. Ord. 2.5.16; Util. cred. 1.7.16. 43. Util. cred. 1.14.31. 44. Util. cred. 1.18.36. 45. Util. cred. 1.16.34. 46. See Kenney, Contemplation and Classical Christianity, 106–14. 47. Ex. Gal. 19; Eric Plumer, Augustine’s Commentary on Galatians (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 155. 48. Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 158. THE CHURCH AS THE BODY OF CHRIST 33 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Toward a Mature View The works after 396 demonstrate a shift in Augustine’s thought towards an incarnational theology and the growing significance of the church as a communal body.49 Augustine reconfigures the ascent of the soul such that the end is union with God and with the whole body of Christ in charity. The church is a living body united in charity, not an accumulation of individuals engaged in solitary contemplation. The aim of vision does not disappear entirely, but rather undergoes modification in terms of the end and the means, such that participation in a visible, sacramental community is essential for the shared vision of God. Augustine places priority upon charity over vision in De diversis quaestionibus octaginta tribus (c. 395/396), in which he emphasizes the role of charity in the purification of the “soul” (anima).50 “Charity” (caritas) 51 is the goal of Christian life,52 for charity is the love of God above all things, which leads to the freedom from clinging to temporal things53 and from the slavery of fear.54 This charity is mediated by the “sacrament of regeneration” (regenerationis sacramentis), namely baptism, by which the “old man” is transformed and becomes the “new man” (2 Cor 5:17).55 The twofold commandment to love God and to love one’s neighbor (Matt 22:37–39) is the completion of wisdom,56 and this wisdom can be found in the church alone. The church offers the “first fruits of the spirit” (Rom 8:23) being “seized by the divine fire of charity.”57 The divine charity mediated through the sacraments has the effect of purifying the soul, not for the purpose of achieving a kind of solitary vision, but rather for the end of communion with God and neighbor. The way to God is not a movement of the “alone to the 49. Augustine’s emphasis upon communal life comes after having lived in community in Thagaste, and from his experiences as pastor, priest, and bishop. 50. Div. qu. 36.1; CCSL 44A.54: “deus igitur et animus cum amantur, caritas proprie dicitur, purgatissima et consummate, si nihil aliud amatur; hanc et dilectionem dici placet.” 51. Div. qu. 36.1–4; CCSL 44A.54–58. Augustine uses Latin terms such as caritas, dilectio, and amor for charity. 52. Div. qu. 36.1. 53. Ibid. 54. Div. qu. 36.2. 55. Ibid.; CCSL 44A.56: “tunc jam persuadendum est fidelibus praecedentibus regenerationis sacramentis, quae necesse est plurimum moueant, quid intersit inter duos homines, veterem et novum, exteriorem et interiorem, terrenum et caelestem, id est inter eum qui bona carnalia et temporalia et eum qui spiritalia et aeterna sectatur, monendum que ne peritura beneficia et transeuntia expectentur a deo, quibus et inprobi homines abundare possunt, sed firma et sempiterna, pro quibus accipiendis omnia quae in hoc mundo bona putantur et mala penitus contemnenda sunt.” 56. Div. qu. 36.4. 57. Div. qu. 67.6; Boniface Ramsey, Responses to Miscellaneous Questions (WSA I/12), 114. AUGUSTINE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 34 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Alone,” but a journey to the heavenly homeland as a member of the church.58 In works after 396, the “happy life” (beata vita) means participation in a community of charity rather than the solitary vision of truth. The happy life comes not by way of philosophy, but by participation in an ecclesial community celebrating the sacraments.59 This is evident in De doctrina Christiana, in which Augustine reconfigures the end and the means of the “journey” (iter). In this text, Augustine does not abandon the aim of a certain kind of vision, but the nature of such vision undergoes modification, for the final vision consists of enjoyment of the Triune God60 in union with others. The Plotinian ascent is replaced by participation in a sacramental economy of the visible community that incorporates the members into the one body of Christ.61 The growing importance of community is clear in Augustine’s mature view of education. In De doctrina Christiana, Augustine offers an approach to education that diverges from his earlier works on the liberal arts.62 Augustine focuses above all on the proper interpretation of Scripture. While he recognizes that the Holy Spirit can reveal the meaning of the biblical texts to an individual without the need for human instruction, Augustine holds that education normally happens through community.63 Even those who receive a divine gift of understanding still have to learn how to read and how to write from other human beings.64 The “holy and perfect man Antony, the Egyptian monk,” who knew the “divine scriptures by heart simply through hearing them” nevertheless was raised in a community.65 Likewise, 58. Augustine speaks of the church as body of Christ in Div. qu. 49.10, citing Paul in 1 Cor 12:12: “And when [Paul] was speaking to the Corinthians about charity and was introducing the simile of the members of the body—For just as the body is one, he says, and has many members, although all the members of the body are many, the body is one, and so is Christ (1 Cor 12:12)—he did not say that they belonged to Christ but that they were Christ, indicating that Christ could be referred to in his fullness as the head with the body, which is the church” (Ramsey, Responses to Miscellaneous Questions [WSA I/12], 128). 59. Doc. Chr. 1.38.42–44. 60. Doc. Chr. 1.10.10. 61. Doc. Chr. 1.32.35. In Augustine’s mature works, “The soul’s ecstasy—so important for Plotinus—is replaced, we might almost say . . . by God’s ecstasy in the condescension of the Incarnation and the pouring forth of the Holy Spirit, as love, in the hearts of Christians” (Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition, 158). 62. De doctrina Christiana may represent Augustine’s attempt to complete his earlier works on the liberal arts. This work reveals his mature view of the meaning and purpose of Christian education; see Gerald A. Press, “The Subject and Structure of Augustine’s De doctrina Christiana,” Augustinian Studies 11 (1980): 99–124; “The Content and Argument of Augustine’s De doctrina Christiana,” Augustiniana 31 (1981): 165–82. 63. Doc. Chr. prol. 64. Ibid., prol.4. 65. Ibid. THE CHURCH AS THE BODY OF CHRIST 35 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

although Moses spoke with God “face to face,” he learned from his father-in-law Jethro,66 and Paul, after being struck down and instructed by the divine voice from heaven, “was still sent to a man to receive the sacraments (sacramenta) and be joined to the church.”67 Participation in community is given priority over solitary instruction. God typically works through human teachers rather than by teaching individuals without any kind of mediation,68 for mediation not only curbs pride but also fosters charity,69 which “binds people together with the knot of unity.”70 To be sure, Augustine is clear that education cannot usurp the unique role of the sacraments in the building up of the body of Christ. However, he does indicate that education is directed toward the goal of forming a community bound in love. The key to Augustine’s reconfiguration of the journey is the incarnation. Following his reading of Scripture, particularly the Gospel of John and the letters of Paul, Augustine asserts that Christ, the Wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24), became incarnate in order to heal humanity.71 The Word became flesh (John 1:14)72 in order to forgive sins and to bind the members of the church in charity. The church is the body of Christ, and “while his body consists of many parts, having different functions, [Christ] binds it tightly together with the knot of unity and love, as its proper kind of health.”73 The way to God is by incorporation into the body of Christ as mediated by the sacraments, and by participation in a community of charity on journey toward the heavenly homeland.74 The distinction between uti and frui in De doctrina Christiana illustrates Augustine’s reconfiguration of the church’s journey. In 1.4.4, 66. Ibid., prol.7. 67. Ibid., prol.6; Edmund Hill, Teaching Christianity (WSA I/11), 103; CCSL 32.4: “caveamus tales temptationes superbissimas et periculosissimas magis que cogitemus et ipsum apostolum paulum, licet divina et caelesti voce prostratum et instructum, ad hominem tamen missum esse, ut sacramenta perciperet atque copularetur ecclesiae, et centurionem cornelium quamuis exauditas orationes ejus elemosinas que respectas ei angelus nuntiaverit, petro tamen traditum imbuendum, per quem non solum sacramenta perciperet, sed etiam quid credendum, quid sperandum, quid diligendum esset, audiret.” 68. Matthew Levering, The Theology of Augustine: An Introductory Guide to His Most Important Works (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), 2. 69. Paul R. Kolbet, Augustine and the Cure of Souls: Revisiting a Classical Ideal (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), 140–53. 70. Doc. Chr. prol.6; Hill, Teaching Christianity (WSA I/11), 103; CCSL 32.4: “deinde ipsa caritas, quae sibi homines invicem nodo unitatis adstringit. . . .” 71. Doc. Chr. 1.10.10–14.13; Isabelle Bochet, “Augustin disciple de Paul,” Recherches de science religieuse 94/3 (2006): 357–80. 72. Doc. Chr. 1.12.13; 1.34.38. 73. Ibid.; Hill, Teaching Christianity (WSA I/11), 113; CCSL 32.15: “est enim ecclesia corpus ejus, sicut apostolica doctrina commendat, quae conjux etiam ejus dicitur. Corpus ergo suum multis membris diversa officia gerentibus, nodo unitatis et caritatis tamquam sanitatis adstringit.” 74. Doc. Chr. 1.4.4; CCSL 32.8; cf. 1.9.9. AUGUSTINE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 36 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Augustine speaks of the church on pilgrimage as “exiles in a foreign land,” seeking to reach the homeland of true happiness.75 The “life of bliss” can be found in God alone, and all of the things of this world are “to be used” (uti) in order to bring one to enjoy God as end.76 God alone is “to be enjoyed” (frui),77 for “enjoyment consists in clinging to something lovingly for its own sake,”78 and “a thing is to be loved for its own sake” if it “constitutes the life of bliss” (in eo constituitur beata vita).79 Augustine declares that the enjoyment of God does not occur in isolation, for the “supreme reward is that we should enjoy him and that all of us who enjoy him should also enjoy one another in him.”80 Thus the final end is a shared enjoyment of God, and this enjoyment is made possible by Christ, the one mediator between God and humanity. Christ the Mediator In mature works such as De doctrina Christiana, the obstacle to union with God is not material bodiliness but sin. During the church’s earthly pilgrimage, the members of the church are “beaten back” from the “home country” due to the “contrary winds of crooked habits,” and by clinging to things “that are inferior and secondary” to what is “better and more worthwhile.”81 All of humanity is in a state of exile and sickness due to sin,82 a kind of sickness revealed by the inordinate love of temporal things. Christ, the Word and Wisdom of God, became flesh in order to heal our ills,83 becoming the “way” (via) by “deliberately making himself the pavement under our feet along which we could return home.”84 This journey is “not from place to place, but one traveled by the affections” (affectum), a way that was “being blocked, as by a barricade of thorn bushes, by the malice of our past sins.”85 Augustine evokes the lan75. Doc. Chr. 1.4.4. 76. Ibid. 77. Ibid.; cf. 1.22.20–34.38. 78. Ibid., 1.4.4; Hill, Teaching Christianity (WSA I/11), 107. 79. Doc. Chr. 1.22.20; Hill, Teaching Christianity (WSA I/11), 114; CCSL 32.17. 80. Doc. Chr. 1.32.35; Hill, Teaching Christianity (WSA I/11), 122; CCSL 32.26: “haec autem merces summa est, ut ipso perfruamur et omnes, qui eo fruimur, nobis etiam invicem in ipso perfruamur”; cf. 1.22.21–23.22, 27.28–29.30, 33.37, 39.43. 81. Doc. Chr. 1.9.9; Hill, Teaching Christianity (WSA I/11), 110. 82. Doc. Chr. 1.14.13. 83. Ibid., 1.10.10–14.13. 84. Ibid., 1.17.16; Hill, Teaching Christianity (WSA I/11), 113. 85. Doc. Chr. 1.17.16; CCSL 32.15: “porro quoniam in via sumus nec via ista locorum est sed affectuum, quam intercludebant quasi saepta quaedam spinosa praeteritorum malitia peccatorum, quid liberalius et misericordius facere potuit, qui se ipsum nobis, qua rediremus, substernere voluit, nisi THE CHURCH AS THE BODY OF CHRIST 37 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

guage of Plotinus, but he recasts the journey in terms of the healing of the affections. Christ was crucified “for us to root out the ban blocking our return that had been so firmly fixed in place.”86 Christ is the one mediator who forgives sins and heals the affections.87 The church receives mercy and forgiveness from Christ the head, and the journey is a way of healing for a communal body in a process of purification from sin.88 The remedy for sin is the mercy of God in the incarnation, which cannot be found by an unmediated, inward turn in Plotinian fashion.89 By the time of the composition of his mature works, Augustine has reconfigured the end and the means of the journey according to his incarnational theology, for the return to the heavenly homeland is made possible by the descent of the mediator whose “mercy” and “compassion” (misericordia) 90 heals humanity. The members of the church are taken up into this “mystery” (mysterium) 91 so as to undergo the healing of the affections that enables one to “cling to truth.”92 This truth is not the “sovereign” Alone, the Neoplatonic One, who has no concern for those on the ascent.93 Instead, the truth leads to the Triune God, for “the light of truth reveals God as Trinity (Trinitas), who provides for all the things he has made as author and maker of the universe.”94 The light of truth reveals God as Triune, and the incarnation reveals God as merciful and compassionate. The end of the journey is union with God as a member of a communal body that is both visible and invisible, for the visible church is a “fellowship united in the love of God” (in societate dilectionis dei).95 ut omnia donaret peccata conversis et graviter fixa interdicta reditus nostri pro nobis crucifixus evelleret?” 86. Doc. Chr. 1.17.16; Hill, Teaching Christianity (WSA I/11), 113. 87. Doc. Chr. 1.17.16. 88. Ibid., 1.16.15; CCSL 32.15. 89. Doc. Chr. 1.17.16. 90. On Augustine’s use of misericordia, see John C. Cavadini, “‘The Tree of Silly Fruit’: Images of the Cross in St. Augustine,” in The Cross in Christian Tradition: From Paul to Bonaventure, ed. Elizabeth Dreyer (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 2000): 147–68. 91. Doc. Chr. 4.21.46; CCSL 32.153. 92. Doc. Chr. 1.10.10; Hill, Teaching Christianity (WSA I/11), 110. 93. Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition, 51: “The One has no concern for the soul that seeks him; nor has the soul more than a passing concern for others engaged on the same quest: it has no companions. Solitariness, isolation; the implications of this undermine any possibility of a doctrine of grace.” 94. Doc. Chr. 1.10.10; Hill, Teaching Christianity (WSA I/11), 110; CCSL 32.12. The enjoyment of God does in fact yield vision, not by rejection of material creation, but through a renewed vision of creation from the perspective of the Triune God. In this light, one is able to gaze upon creation and to see all things as good (Gen 1:31); Doc. Chr. 1.31.34. 95. Doc. Chr. 1.29.30; Hill, Teaching Christianity (WSA I/11), 119; CCSL 32.23: “si autem contravenientem invenerit, odit in illo vehementer odium dilecti sui et, quibus modis valet, instat ut auferat quid AUGUSTINE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 38 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Furthermore, in Doc. Chr. 1.30.33, the community of believers is formed in charity by offering works of “mercy” (misericordiae).96 The works of mercy lead all to enjoy God as final end by virtue of the mercy of Christ in the incarnation, for “[Christ] has mercy on us (miseretur), so that we might enjoy him, while we have mercy (miseremur) on each other, again so that we may all enjoy him.”97 The church’s journey as a community of “mercy” (misericordia) is intrinsic to her identity as the body of Christ.98 This journey is marked by incorporation into a visible body offering works of mercy so as to be formed in charity99 until the supreme reward of the enjoyment of God with others in the next life.100 During her earthly pilgrimage, the whole church undergoes purification as the body and bride of Christ in order to cling to him, and to receive the healing of the affections.101 “During this age [Christ] trains and purges [the church] with various kinds of salutary vexation and distress, so that once it has been snatched from this world, he may bind his wife the church to himself for ever, having no stain or wrinkle, or any such thing (Eph 5:27).”102 This purification cannot be found in philosophy or the liberal arts, for it comes from Christ, the merciful mediator, who heals the members of his body on journey. The sacraments are essential to this process of healing. Augustine identifies Christ as the Good Samaritan who administers the sacraments, namely baptism and the Eucharist, to heal wounded humanity.103 Christ brings the wounded to the inn, which is the church. The members are cured in the church precisely by sharing in the twofold love of God and neighbor (signified by the two denarii), a healing that nos in societate dilectionis dei agere convenit, quo perfrui beate vivere est et a quo habent omnes, qui eum diligunt, et quod sunt et quo eum diligunt. . . .” 96. Doc. Chr. 1.30.33; CCSL 32.25. 97. Doc. Chr. 1.30.33; Hill, Teaching Christianity (WSA I/11), 121; CCSL 32.25: “ille enim nobis praebet misericordiam propter suam bonitatem, nos autem nobis invicem propter illius: id est, ille nostri miseretur, ut se perfruamur, nos vero invicem nostri miseremur, ut illo perfruamur.” 98. As we shall see, in De civitate Dei, Augustine speaks of the works of mercy in a liturgical context with his understanding of the church as sacrifice. 99. Charity will continue to grow, when faith and hope fade; Doc. Chr. 1.38.42–39.43. 100. Ibid., 1.32.35; Hill, Teaching Christianity (WSA I/11), 122; CCSL 32.26; cf. 1.22.21–23.22, 27.28–29.30, 33.37, 39.43. 101. Furthermore, the church is built up as one body during its earthly pilgrimage according to the diversity of gifts of the members, which are given through the dispensation of God’s providential care. While the members are united as one body “on the way” to its home country, Christ has given the Holy Spirit to each one, so that “in the Spirit we already possess, amid the adversities of this life . . . the gifts proper to each one of us for the building up of his church”; Doc. Chr. 1.15.14; Hill, Teaching Christianity (WSA I/11), 113. 102. Doc. Chr. 1.16.15; Hill, Teaching Christianity (WSA I/11), 113; CCSL 32.15: “Exercet autem hoc tempore et purgat medicinalibus quibusdam molestiis, ut erutam de hoc saeculo in aeternum sibi copulet conjugem ecclesiam non habentem maculam aut rugam aut aliquid ejusmodi.” 103. Doc. Chr. 1.29.33; S. 179.7. THE CHURCH AS THE BODY OF CHRIST 39 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

takes place in a community of charity.104 Augustine thus leaves behind the Neoplatonic ascent of the individual soul in favor of a communal journey of healing and transformation. In the midst of this communal journey, the sacraments have a distinctive role in the growth of the church as the body of Christ. The Mediation of the Sacraments In mature works, Augustine posits the necessary mediation of the sacraments for the formation of the church. In book 2 of De doctrina Christiana, the church’s union in charity is mediated by baptism, which incorporates new members into the body of Christ. By this “holy bath,” each member is received into Christ’s body and “conceived by the Holy Spirit,” so as to “give birth” to the “twin fruit of charity, that is to love of God and neighbor.”105 The building up of the one body united in charity is accomplished by means of the church’s sacramental life. Likewise, the Eucharist mediates “mercy” (misericordia) in distinctive fashion, as evident in Confessiones. 106 Augustine refers to the Eucharist in his reconfiguration of the Neoplatonic ascent. In book 7, Augustine describes an ascent that appears to follow a Plotinian scheme. “I entered under your guidance the innermost places of my being,” yet this is possible “only because you had become my helper.”107 Then “with the vision of my spirit, such as it was, I saw the incommutable light. . . . Your rays beamed intensely upon me, beating back my feeble gaze.”108 Augustine is “beaten back” as he ascends, declaring, “I knew myself to be far away from you in a region of unlikeness.”109 The only way to God is by receiving mercy, as mediated by a eucharistic economy. “I seemed to hear your voice from on high: ‘I am the food of the mature; grow then, and you will eat me. You will not change me into yourself like bodily food: you will be changed into me.’”110 The way is predicated upon the incarnation of the Word,111 who entered into history in order that humanity might return to God.112 Christ takes on a 104. S. 179.4. 105. Doc. Chr. 2.6.7; Hill, Teaching Christianity (WSA I/11), 131. 106. See John C. Cavadini, “Eucharistic Exegesis in Augustine’s ‘Confessions,’” Augustinian Studies 41/1 (2010): 87–108. 107. Conf. 7.10.16; Maria Boulding, The Confessions (WSA I/1), 172. 108. Conf. 7.10.16; Boulding, The Confessions (WSA I/1), 172–73. 109. Conf. 7.10.16; cf. Enn. 1.6.8. 110. Conf. 7.10.16; Boulding, The Confessions (WSA I/1), 173. 111. In Conf. 7.9.14, Augustine has called to mind the incarnation through his exegesis of John 1 and Philippians 2. 112. Andrew Louth observes, “in Augustine’s treatment of the soul’s ascent to God in the Confessions, AUGUSTINE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 40 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

material body in the incarnation, in contrast to the Plotinian desire to escape bodily existence. The Eucharist mediates the merciful love of God and enables one to cling to God as the unchanging good.113 Christ provides the strength needed in order to enjoy God through the Eucharist as the “food of the mature.”114 The humility of the mediator has healing effects,115 for the Eucharist “heals the swollen pride” of the wicked, and “nourishes their love, that they may not wander even further away through self-confidence, but rather weaken as they see before their feet the Godhead grown weak by sharing our garments of skin.”116 The Platonists reject this economy of mercy, for they cannot accept the weakness of God that assumes a human body, and who “raises up to himself those creatures who bow before him.”117 For this reason, the philosophers “see the goal” from afar, “but not the way to it and the Way (via) to our beatific homeland.”118 In Conf. 7.21.27, Augustine continues his reconfiguration of the Neoplatonic ascent according to the salvific work of Christ, for “it is a matter of grace that the searcher is not only invited to see you, who are ever the same, but healed as well, so that he can possess you.”119 Christ came in order to heal the affections, becoming the way so that “whoever is too far off to see may yet walk in the way that will bring him to the place of seeing and possession.”120 The place of “seeing” is not a place of solitary confinement, but a participation in the “salvation of a people” (populi salutem) and a “city chosen to be your bride” (sponsam civitatem) that is, the church as a communal body.121 These mysteries cannot be found in the books of the Neoplatonists, for “not in those pages are traced the lineaments of such loving kindness (misericordia), we find that, though he owes a very great deal to neo-Platonism, yet, in his fundamental appreciation of the soul’s way, his understanding of the Incarnation is more important” (The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition, 145). 113. Conf. 7.11.17. 114. Ibid., 7.18.24; Boulding, The Confessions (WSA I/1), 178: “Accordingly I looked for a way to gain the strength I needed to enjoy you, but I did not find it until I embraced the mediator . . . nor had I known him as the food which, though I was not yet strong enough to eat it, he had mingled with our flesh; for the Word became flesh so that your Wisdom, through whom you created all things, might become for us the milk adapted to our infancy.” 115. Conf. 7.11.17, 18.24; cf. Agon. 11. 116. Conf. 7.18.24. 117. Ibid. 118. Conf. 7.20.26; Boulding, The Confessions (WSA I/1), 181; cf. 21.27. In Jo. ev. tr. 2.2, Augustine asserts that the only way to the fatherland is to cling to the cross of Christ, which carries one across the sea of this world. 119. Conf. 7.21.27; Boulding, The Confessions (WSA I/1), 181. 120. Conf. 7.21.27. 121. Ibid.; CCSL 27.111. THE CHURCH AS THE BODY OF CHRIST 41 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

or the tears of confession, or the sacrifice of an anguished spirit offered to you from a contrite and humbled heart, or the salvation of a people, or a city chosen to be your bride, or the pledge of the Holy Spirit, or the cup of our ransom.”122 The “cup of our ransom” (poculum pretii nostri) is the Eucharist, which mediates the mercy of the one mediator who entered history in order to redeem a people and a city.123 The sacrament mediates the mercy of God and forms a communal body united in charity. Augustine’s incarnational Christology provides the theological foundation for his mature understanding of the church as one body with visible and invisible aspects. As the body of Christ, the church is visible and invisible after the pattern of the incarnation,124 as evident in Augustine’s exegetical works on Scripture such as Enarrationes in Psalmos125 and In epistulam Joannis ad Parthos tractatus. By the mystery of the incarnation, the eternal Word assumed human nature with a union “consummated in the Virgin’s womb.”126 “The church is joined to that flesh, and Christ becomes the whole, head and body.”127 The church is drawn from the human nature Christ assumed,128 for the union among head and members is made possible only by virtue of shared humanity. The head remains distinct as the eternal Word and the source of all grace mediated to the body,129 while the members of the church form the body. The incarnation makes possible the church’s identity as the body of the whole Christ. Some of the church’s members are invisible, for the church includes the angels and saints in heaven, but there is only one body, for “head and body form one Christ.”130 This body is extended in history, “like a single human being, young at first, but now at the end of time flourishing in sleek old age, for of the church it is written, widespreading 122. Conf. 7.21.27; Boulding, The Confessions (WSA I/1), 182; CCSL 27.111: “hoc illae litterae non habent. Non habent illae paginae vultum pietatis hujus, lacrimas confessionis, sacrificium tuum, spiritum contribulatum, cor contritum et humiliatum, populi salutem, sponsam civitatem, arram spiritus sancti, poculum pretii nostri.” 123. Conf. 7.21.27; see Cavadini, “Eucharistic Exegesis in Augustine’s ‘Confessions’,” 93–94. 124. The whole Christ includes the visible church on earth in union with the saints and angels; cf. Gn. litt. 5.19; Civ. Dei 10.7; 19.23. 125. Michel Réveillaud, “Le Christ-Homme, tête de l’église: Étude d’ecclésiologie selon les Enarrationes in Psalmos d’Augustin,” Recherches Augustiniennes 5 (1968): 67–84. 126. En. Ps. 44.3; cf. Ep. Jo. 1.2; S. 138.9; S. 147A.2; 372.2; Dolbeau 198.43; 22.40. 127. Ep. Jo. 1.2; Boniface Ramsey, Homilies on the First Epistle of John (WSA I/14), 22; PL 35.1979: “illi carni adjungitur ecclesia, et fit Christus totus, caput et corpus.” 128. En. Ps. 44.3. 129. Jo. ev. tr. 82.3; 13.8; 15.31; 21.8; Ep. Jo. 6.10; 10.3; Cresc. 2.13.16; Agon. 20.22; En. Ps. 29[2].2; 21[2].28; 41.1; 90[2].1; S. 62.3; 341.9. 130. S. 341.11; Edmund Hill, Sermons 341–400 (WSA III/10), 26; C. Faust. 12.31. AUGUSTINE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 42 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

in vigorous old age (Ps 91:15).”131 The church is historical and transcendent, following “the Lord’s coming,”132 and the body of Christ consists of the just from every age. The saving work of Christ has effects for those who preceded the incarnation, such as Abel and the Old Testament prophets. You are the body of Christ and his members (1 Cor 12:27). All of us together are the members of Christ and his body; not only those of us who are in this place, but throughout the whole world; and not only those of us who are alive at this time, but what shall I say? From Abel the just right up to the end of the world, as long as people beget and are begotten, any of the just who make the passage through this life, all that now—that is, not in this place but in this life—all that are going to be born after us, all constitute the one body of Christ; while they are each individually members of Christ.133 The church exists from Abel onward,134 and all of the just from Abel to the end of the world “form the one body of Christ,” for “Christ is our head, and we his body. . . . But is this true of us alone, and not also of those who went before us? All the righteous since the world began have Christ as their head.”135 The whole Christ includes “all the faithful servants who lived in this world even before the Lord’s coming.”136 Some have preceded the incarnation in time, but all are united as one body by virtue of the salvific work of Christ.137 In Decatechizandis rudibus, Jacob is a figure of the church,138 for just as Jacob “put a hand out of the womb, and with it he also held the foot of the brother who was being born before him,”139 so too some of the members of Christ’s 131. En. Ps. 36[3].4; Maria Boulding, Expositions of the Psalms 33–50 (WSA III/16), 131. 132. Cat. rud. 4.7–8. 133. S. 341.11; Hill, Sermons 341–400 (WSA III/10), 36. 134. Yves Congar, “Ecclesia ab Abel: Abhandlungen über Theologie und Kirche,” in Abhandlungen über Theologie und Kirche: Festschrift für K. Adam, ed. Marcel Reding (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1952): 79–108; J. Ratzinger, “Beobachtungen zum Kirchenbegriff des Tyconius im ‘Liber regularum,’” Revue des Études Augustiniennes 2 (1956): 178–79; cf. en. Ps. 64.2; 128.2; Civ. Dei. 15.7. Abel is the first just man, and the church begins with Abel rather than Adam since in Adam, all have fallen and are “of necessity first evil and carnal (carnalis),” but may be “reborn in Christ” and become “good and spiritual (spiritalis)”; Civ. Dei. 15.1. 135. En. Ps. 36[3].4; Boulding, Expositions of the Psalms 33–50 (WSA III/16), 131; cf. En. Ps. 128. 2; S. 341.9, 11; Cat. rud. 17.28; Civ. Dei 7.32; 10.25; 16.2; 18.23, 47; Yves Congar, “Ecclesia ab Abel,” 79–108. 136. Cat. rud. 3.6; Raymond Canning, Instructing Beginners in Faith (Hyde Park, NY: New City, 2006), 65. 137. See C. Faust. 19.16, 20.21, 22.17. 138. Cat. rud. 3.6; Canning, Instructing Beginners in Faith, 65: “Indeed, everything that we read in the holy scriptures that was written before the coming of the Lord was written for the sole purpose of drawing attention to his coming and of prefiguring the future church. That church is the people of God throughout all the nations; it is his body, and also included in its number are all the faithful servants who lived in this world even before the Lord’s coming, believing that he would come even as we believe that he has come.” THE CHURCH AS THE BODY OF CHRIST 43 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

body have preceded the head “in the form of the holy patriarchs and prophets.” Nevertheless, “the head is superior not only to those other members which followed it but also to the hand which took precedence over it at the moment of birth,” for Christ “himself is nonetheless head of the body of the church (Col 1:18).”140 The church is both visible and invisible, just as the eternal Word became flesh while remaining a transcendent mystery. The sacraments have been instituted in order to build up the church as the body of Christ. In Contra Faustum, Augustine again uses Noah’s ark as a figure of the church. “The ark is finished off so that it gathers to a height of one cubit, just as the church, gathered together in unity, raises up and completes the body of Christ.”141 Baptism is necessary for membership in the church, for “no one enters the church except through the sacrament of the forgiveness of sins,” which “flowed from the opened side of Christ.”142 Baptism is the entrance to the church, for it mediates Christ’s salvific work on the cross. While some members of the body have preceded the head, all are joined to the one body by the paschal mystery.143 The one body of Christ is “built up” (aedificatur) by the sacraments144 until the final completion of the whole Christ. For Augustine, the church is one body, yet it consists of many members, good and wicked. The visible church is a “mixed body” (corpus permixtum) 145 while on pilgrimage.146 As we shall see, Augustine affirms the mediation of the sacraments in the midst of the church’s mixed constitution. 139. Cat. rud. 3.6; Canning, Instructing Beginners in Faith, 65. 140. Canning, Instructing Beginners in Faith, 66. 141. C. Faust. 12.16; Roland Teske, Answer to Faustus, a Manichean (WSA I/20), 136; CSEL 25.345: “quod arca conlecta ad unum cubitum desuper consummatur: sicut ecclesia corpus christi in unitatem conlecta sublimat et perficit.” 142. CSEL 25.345: “quod aditus ei fit a latere: nemo quippe intrat in ecclesiam nisi per sacramentum remissionis peccatorum; hoc autem de christi latere aperto manavit”; cf. Jo. ev. tr. 9.10; 15.8; S. 218.14. 143. C. Faust. 19.16. 144. Ibid., 12.14–23; cf. Civ. Dei 22.17; CCSL 48.835–36: “quae sacramenta esse novimus, quibus aedificatur ecclesia.” On the ark as a figure of the church, see Civ. Dei 15.26–27; 16.1–8; Cat. rud. 19.32; Bapt. 5.28.39. 145. Marie-François Berrouard, “L’église d’ici-bas est mêlée de justes et de pécheurs,” in In Iohannis euangelium tractatus CXXIV, Oeuvres de Saint Augustin 71 (Paris: Bibliothèque Augustinienne, 1969): 876–77; “Corpus Christi mixtum,” in In Iohannis euangelium tractatus CXXIV, Oeuvres de Saint Augustin 72 (Paris: Bibliothèque Augustinienne, 1972): 832–33; F.-R. Refoulé, “Situation des pécheurs dans l’Eglise d’après saint Augustin,” Studia Theologica 8 (1954): 86–102; Grabowski, The Church, 476–649; Jaroslav Pelikan, The Mystery of Continuity: Time and History, Memory and Eternity in the Thought of Saint Augustine (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1986), 102–22; Johannes van Oort, Jerusalem and Babylon: A Study into Augustine’s City of God and the Sources of His Doctrine of the Two Cities (New York: Brill, 1991), 93–163. 146. S. 341.11; C. Faust. 12.31. AUGUSTINE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 44 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

The Mixed Body Augustine relies upon the dissident Donatist theologian Tyconius for the notion of the church as a mixed body.147 According to Tyconius, the church is a “body in two parts” (corpus bipertitum), which consists of true and false Christians.148 The figures and prophecies of the Old Testament reveal the church’s mixed constitution. Following Tyconius, Augustine uses biblical figures to illustrate the church’s condition in history. Noah’s ark represents the visible church containing both good and wicked in her midst. “All the kinds of animals are enclosed in the ark, like all the nations. . . . Both clean and unclean animals are present there, just as both good and bad people are found together in the sacraments of the church (in ecclesiae sacramentis).”149 The “clean and unclean” are the good and wicked, wheat and chaff,150 which can be found in the visible church. Some of the wicked will remain sinful to the end, and these are the reprobate,151 while others may return to the one body. Augustine insists that there is a degree of uncertainty as to the identity of the reprobate and the elect, a view derived from his doctrine of original sin and the fall. In Adam, all human beings have fallen, and so all are sinners.152 The wicked may become good by participating in the sacraments, while the good may become wicked by returning to sin. In his Sermones, 153 Augustine uses the Exodus narrative in order to depict this dynamic. As fallen human beings, all people begin “carnally” (carnaliter) as “slaves to temporary pleasures and satisfactions.”154 Baptism provides freedom from the slavery of sin, for just as the Israelites were 147. On the influence of Tyconius on Augustine’s understanding of the mixed body, see William Babcock, “Augustine and Tyconius: A Study in the Latin Appropriation of Paul,” Studia Patristica 17/3 (1982): 1209–15; Tyconius: The Book of Rules (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989). 148. Gerard O’Daly, Augustine’s City of God: A Reader’s Guide (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 57; cf. Robert Dodaro, Christ and the Just Society in the Thought of Augustine (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 153. 149. C. Faust. 12.15; Teske, Answer to Faustus (WSA I/20), 136. 150. Matt 13:24-30; cf. Cat. rud. 17.26; 19.31; 25.48; 27.53; Carole Straw, “Augustine as Pastoral Theologian: The Exegesis of the Parables of the Field and Threshing Floor,” Augustinian Studies 14 (1983): 121–52. 151. C. Faust. 13.12. 152. For this reason, Augustine speaks of the whole human race as a massa damnata; cf. Civ. Dei 15.1–2; C. ep. Pel. 4.7. 153. S. 4. Hill notes that this sermon may have been preached on either the feast of Saint Agnes, or the feast of Saints Fabian and Sebastian, although no allusion to either feast is made in the text. Hill dates the sermon to sometime before 420, but considers the possibility of a reference to Anthony of Fussala, which would place the sermon at 422 or later; Edmund Hill, Sermons 1–19 (WSA III/1), 185, 207n1. On the case of Anthony of Fussala, see Jane Merdinger, Rome and the African Church in the Time of Augustine (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 154–82. 154. S. 4.12; Hill, Sermons 1–19 (WSA III/1), 191; CCSL 41.28–29; cf. S. 4.3–4; Civ. Dei 15.1. THE CHURCH AS THE BODY OF CHRIST 45 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

liberated from slavery to the Egyptians by passing through the Red Sea, so “through baptism Christians are liberated of theirsins.”155 Nevertheless, as “those ones come out afterthe Red Sea and journey through the desert, so too Christians after baptism are not yet in the promised land, but live in hope.”156 During the church’s earthly journey, the members of the church are “wandering exiles” in the desert, longing “for their native land.”157 Although they have been set free from the slavery of sin through baptism,158 the temptation to “return to Egypt,” that is, to return to sin, remains.159 Augustine also employs the figures of Jacob and Esau, for to live “carnally” (carnaliter) means to belong to Esau, the eldest son of Isaac who forfeited his birthright.160 Those “born again” through baptism become “spiritual” (spiritalis) and undergo the transformation from Esau to Jacob.161 However, the baptized can “forfeit their right as firstborn” by “turning back to Egypt,”162 so as to belong to Esau once again.163 The church’s condition as a mixed body is part of God’s design, for it provides the opportunity for the conversion of the wicked, and for the purification of the good members in conformation to the long-suffering patience of God.164 “Christ urges us to imitate this loving patience of God, ‘who makes his sun rise upon the good and the evil and causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust’ (Matt 5:45).”165 In the midst of the church’s condition as a mixed body, God provides the opportunity for the “sorrow and repentance that brings salvation.”166 For God shows forbearance toward such people so as, on the one hand, to use this perverseness to train his own chosen ones in faith and good sense and thus to strengthen them and, on the other hand, because many of the number of the perverse progress beyond their 155. S. 4.9; Hill, Sermons 1–19 (WSA III/1), 189. 156. S. 4.9; CCSL 41.26: “exeunt post mare rubrum et ambulant per heremum; sic et christiani post baptismum nondum sunt in terra promissionis, sed sunt in spe.” 157. S. 4.9. 158. Ibid.; CCSL 41.26: “liberantur christiani in remissionem peccatorum, delentur peccata per baptismum;” cf. C. Faust. 12.30. 159. S. 4.9. 160. Ibid., 4.8, 11–12; cf. Gen 25:29–34. 161. S. 4.11–12, 14. On Augustine’s understanding of homo spiritalis in the context of the church’s sacramental life, see John C. Cavadini, “Eucharistic Exegesis in Augustine’s ‘Confessions,’” Augustinian Studies 41/1 (2010): 106–8. 162. S. 4.12; Hill, Sermons 1–19 (WSA III/1), 192. 163. S. 4.14; Hill, Sermons 1–19 (WSA III/1), 193: “There are people after all who even after baptism are unwilling to give up their sins and want to do the same things as they used to do before. . . . There is Esau for you, born hairy.” 164. Cat. rud. 11.16; 14.22; 19.32; 25.48. 165. C. Faust. 19.28; Teske, Answer to Faustus (WSA I/20), 258. 166. Cat. rud. 25.48; Canning, Instructing Beginners in Faith, 159. AUGUSTINE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 46 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

present state and, out of compassion for their own souls, turn with intense passion to God so as to be pleasing to him.167 The members of the church must bear with the mingling of the wicked, for otherwise “by a lack of patience in tolerating sinners, the good . . . might be abandoned, and when they are abandoned, Christ is abandoned.”168 To abandon any member of the church creates the possibility of abandoning Christ himself, for no one knows whether God might “make a just person of one who was previously wicked.”169 The people of God must “preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace by clinging to some and tolerating others to the end.”170 Those who bear the wicked in love will find profit for themselves,171 while mediating the merciful forbearance that leads to repentance. God puts the church’s mixed condition to good use for the benefit of the members of the body of Christ who are conformed to the forbearance of God.172 God’s mysterious plan prevents presumption with regard to salvation, for no one can presume to be elect. Just as the church is a mixed body of good and wicked, so each person is capable of good and evil. This isrevealed in the biblical figure of Solomon, for “we see in the person of this Solomon a marvelous excellence and an amazing collapse. That, therefore, at different times there was in him first goodness and then evil is something that is found at a single time in the church that is still in this world.”173 Augustine again uses the figures of wheat and chaff, with the church as a kind of “threshing floor.”174 “For I think that his goodness signifies the good people in the church and his sin the sinful people in the church, as though on the unity of a single threshing floor. In the same way, in that one man the good are found in the grain and the evil in the chaff, just as in the unity of a single field the good are found in the wheat and the evil in the weeds.”175 All must undergo purification while on journey. The sacraments remain the source of purification and hope for the 167. Cat. rud. 25.48; CCSL 46.171: “propterea enim deus patiens est in illos, ut et suorum electorum fidem atque prudentiam per illorum perversitatem exercendo confirmet; et quia de numero eorum multi proficiunt, et ad placendum deo miseranti animas suas magno impetu convertuntur.” 168. C. Faust. 13.16; Teske, Answer to Faustus (WSA I/20), 171. 169. Cat. rud. 17.28; 25.48; Canning, Instructing Beginners in Faith, 122. 170. C. Faust. 22.82; Teske, Answer to Faustus (WSA I/20), 359. 171. Bapt. 4.25.33. 172. cf. Cat. rud. 25.48; CCSL 46.171–72; Civ. Dei 18.49. 173. C. Faust. 22.88; Teske, Answer to Faustus (WSA I/20), 365. 174. Straw, “Augustine as Pastoral Theologian,” 121–52. 175. C. Faust. 22.88; Teske, Answer to Faustus (WSA I/20), 365. THE CHURCH AS THE BODY OF CHRIST 47 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

church on pilgrimage. There is no certainty of salvation for the members of the visible church.176 Yet this does not lead to despair,177 rather it fosters hope in God’s mercy, which is mediated through the sacraments178 “by which the church is united in hope” (quo in hoc tempore consociatur ecclesia).179 The sacraments are efficacious due to the power of God, and God’s plan of salvation is carried out by means of the sacramental economy of the visible church. In Augustine’s view, there is no separate economy of salvation apart from communion in the sacraments.180 It is possible for some to participate in the sacraments and to cut themselves off from the effects.181 These are the wicked, who “seem to be within” the body of Christ, but are without.182 Nevertheless, this does not eliminate the efficacy of the sacraments, which remain necessary for the building up of the body. The presence of the wicked reveals the mystery of freedom, for God permits some to fall away,183 although God does not cause or will evil.184 At the eschaton, God will separate the elect from the reprobate. During the church’s earthly pilgrimage, the sacraments retain their unique mediatory role in the formation of the church as the body of Christ. This becomes increasingly clear in De baptismo, an important work against the Donatists. The error of the Donatists is to limit the church to one community, whose sacraments alone are efficacious due to the purity of the ministers.185 Against this view, Augustine argues that the church is spread throughout the world, calling forth “citizens from all peoples and gathering together a pilgrim society” (societatem).186 The power of the sacraments depends upon God and not 176. Augustine speaks of the heart as a “dark cloud,” such that one cannot see what is hidden within; cf. En. Ps. 88[1].7. The human heart is a mystery, and one cannot presume upon salvation or condemnation. 177. En. Ps. 55.12, 20, where Augustine declares that the church should pray for the wicked and despair of no one; cf. Bapt. 4.22.30. 178. C. Faust. 12.20; Ep. Jo. 1.2; En. Ps. 44.3. 179. C. Faust. 12.20; CSEL 25.349: “non adhuc in sacramento spei, quo in hoc tempore consociatur ecclesia.” 180. Jaroslav Pelikan asserts, “There were not two churches, one historical and the other eternal, but one single church that was both historical and eternal” (The Mystery of Continuity, 102–3). 181. Bapt. 3.19.26; cf. C. Faust. 13.16; Jo. ev. tr. 26.15; Michael Root, “Augustine on the Church,” in T&T Clark Companion to Augustine and Modern Theology, ed. C. C. Pecknold and Tarmo Toom (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013), 68. 182. Bapt. 5.27.38; 4.3.5; En. Ps. 106.14. 183. In Praed. sanct. 4.10.19, Augustine declares God foreknows the good, yet God also foreknows evil, which God does not produce; cf. Civ. Dei 11.4–22. 184. See John C. Cavadini, “Ambrose and Augustine: De bono mortis,” in The Limits of Ancient Christianity, ed. Mark Vessey (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 232–49. 185. Conf. 10.30.41. Babcock makes the observation that Tyconius got beyond such elitism through his appropriation of Paul, which influenced Augustine, but Tyconius did not go as far as Augustine in his doctrine of grace; “Augustine and Tyconius,” 1214. AUGUSTINE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 48 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

upon the ministers, and the sacraments are necessary for incorporation into the one body of Christ.187 Augustine offers a theological argument about the power and efficacy of the sacraments in De baptismo. He acknowledges that the Spirit may work beyond visible bounds, yet this does not obviate the sacraments, for God works through the sacraments but is not limited by them. The salvific work of Christ has effects for all of the just in history. This pertains to the members of the body who preceded the head, as well as for catechumens who died as martyrs before receiving baptism. Those martyrs did notreceive the visible washing of water butreceived a kind of baptism by blood,188 and they will be joined to the same charity mediated by the sacraments.189 The Spirit may work beyond visible limits, but all who are incorporated into the body of Christ are joined to the one church in charity. For Augustine, baptism mediates the charity poured out by the Spirit (Rom 5:5).190 The Holy Spirit is the soul of the body of Christ,191 for just as the soul unites the different members of the body, so the Spirit unites the members of the church.192 The Holy Spirit animates the one body of Christ,193 and at the eschaton, the Spirit will bring all the members of the body into the union of charity. Those outside of the visible church such as the Donatists may possess baptism and the Eucharist by the laying on of hands, that is, by virtue of the ordination of ministers, but they do not have the “reality of him whose sacrament it is,”194 for the Holy Spirit can only be found in the one body of Christ.195 In the 186. Civ. Dei 19.17; CCSL 48.685: “haec ergo caelestis civitas dum peregrinatur in terra, ex omnibus gentibus cives evocat atque in omnibus linguis peregrinam colligit societatem”; cf. Civ. Dei 15.26. Augustine uses terms such as societas and civitas in a similar fashion in order to indicate a communion of members; see Oort, Jerusalem and Babylon, 103. 187. Adam Ployd shows how the Donatists make the gift of the Spirit in baptism a historical matter, such that it is a one-time event, whereas Augustine argues it is Christ who baptizes, and the gift of the Spirit is always happening; Augustine, the Trinity, and the Church: A Reading of the Anti-Donatist Sermons (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 146. 188. Bapt. 4.22.30. The martyrs are joined to the church’s sacramental baptism. 189. Ibid. In addition, Augustine’s view on the necessity of the sacraments, particularly baptism, grows stronger in the anti-Pelagian works, as evident in Pecc. mer. 1.16.21, in which he argues that those “little ones” who die without baptism will undergo the “mildest condemnation.” This discussion takes place in the context of original sin, and it shows an increasing priority given to participation in the visible sacraments of the church. 190. Ep. 185.50; cf. C. Faust. 12.16. 191. S. 267.4; 268.2; see Jacques Verhees, God in beweging. Een onderzoek naar de pneumatologie van Augustinus (Wageningen: H. Veenman, 1968); Basil Studer, “Zur Pneumatologie des Augustinus von Hippo (De Trinitate 15,17,27–27,50),” Augustinianum 35 (1995): 567–83; Robert Louis Wilken, “Spiritus sanctus secundum scripturas sanctas: Exegetical Considerations of Augustine on the Holy Spirit,” Augustinian Studies 31/1 (2000): 1–18. 192. S. 267.4; 268.2. 193. Ibid. 194. Ep. 185.50; Roland Teske, Letters 156–210 (WSA II/3), 206; CSEL 57.43: “sed non quaerant spiritum THE CHURCH AS THE BODY OF CHRIST 49 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

end, all of the elect will come to share in the same charity mediated by the sacraments. In Augustine’s mature thought, the elect constitute the body of Christ, and the eschatological church will consist of the predestined.196 Although some who participate in the sacraments of the visible church may be left out, others may be brought in, and all who are joined to the body will share in charity.197 Augustine distinguishes between the “communion of sacraments” (communio sacramentorum) and the “communion of saints” (communio sanctorum) 198 in order to make room for sinners in the church during her earthly journey. Nevertheless, God’s plan is accomplished by means of the visible church as a mixed body, and the sacraments are intrinsic to the “building up” (aedificare) of the whole Christ.199 In later works against the Pelagians, Augustine maintains a doctrine of predestination in which there is a certain number of the elect.200 The purpose of history is to complete this number, but the precise number remains a hidden part of God’s plan.201 The church’s mixed constitution prevents presumption and fosters hope in God’s mercy.202 One cannot presume to be among an elite communion of the elect; rather, one can only know oneself as a member of the visible church in a process of transformation by participation in the church’s sacramensanctum nisi in christi corpore, cujus habent foris sacramentum, sed rem ipsam non tenent intus, cujus illud est sacramentum.” 195. Ibid. 196. C. Faust. 13.16; En. Ps. 36[1].2; Civ. Dei 18.49. Some have interpreted this distinction to mean that Augustine holds a “double concept” of the church, in which the elect corresponds to the inner “soul” and the visible community corresponds to the outer body that may be discarded. However, as we have seen, the visible church is the one body of Christ, whose soul is the Holy Spirit (Ep. 185.50); see the discussion by Tarsicius van Bavel, “Church,” in Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan Fitzgerald, John Cavadini, Marianne Djuth, et al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 173; Oort, Jerusalem and Babylon, 124. 197. Bapt. 4.3.5. 198. For a list of terminology,see Yves Congar, “Introduction générale,” in Traités anti-Donatistes 1, Oeuvres de Saint Augustin 28 (Paris: Bibliothèque Augustinienne, 1963), 98–104; Fritz Hofmann, Der Kirchenbegriff des hl. Augustinus in seinen Gundlagen und in seiner Entwicklung (Münster: Kaiser, 1933), 242–43. Jaroslav Pelikan points out that communio sanctorum may be translated as a “communion of holy things,” that is, a communion of sacraments, not necessarily the “communion of saints” in terms of a “fixed number of the elect” (The Mystery of Continuity, 120); Conf. 11.27.36. 199. As Root observes, “Augustine is speaking of only one Church, but a Church with interior and exterior aspects; a visible, exterior life in the service of a common union with Christ and the Spirit in charity” (“Augustine on the Church,” 69). 200. Persev. 13.32; Praed. sanct. 15.30; 18.35; cf. Jo. ev. tr. 8.9. 201. Civ. Dei 14.10, 23; En. Ps. 34.2. Augustine suggests that the number of human beings that become citizens will not only restore the number of fallen angels, but might even surpass it; Civ. Dei 22.1; cf. Ench. 29. 202. Pelikan observes, “personal sainthood was dependent on the historical continuity of a church that was holy by virtue of Christ and of the Holy Spirit who dwelt in it through the holiness of the sacraments” (The Mystery of Continuity, 120–21). AUGUSTINE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 50 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

tal life. For Augustine, predestination is a mystery that offers hope for the church on pilgrimage to the heavenly homeland. 203 Predestination is God’s plan of salvation carried out in the visible church in order to bring about the completion of the one body of Christ.204 The elect will be revealed at the eschaton, but God’s plan for the visible church is to remain a mixed body in a process of growth until the final separation at the end time. During the present time, the sacraments mediate the formation of the whole Christ.205 Augustine’s mature theology of grace and predestination does not contradict his understanding of the church, for the church is both visible and invisible, and the invisible grace of God operates by means of the visible church’s sacramental life. Augustine leaves behind his earlier Plotinian views in his mature works, and this is further evident in his doctrine of the resurrection of the body. The end of the church’s journey is not an escape from material creation, but the redemption of the body, for “just as the spirit is refashioned for the better after the repentance which has abolished its old habits of depravity, so too we are to believe and hope that the body, after this death which we all owe to the chains of sin, is going to be changed for the better at the time of the resurrection.”206 The church is on a journey toward the final resurrection wherein “neither the human spirit nor the human body will experience total extinction,” but instead the godless will rise to “punishments,” whereas the godly will rise “to eternal life,”207 and God will restore all things.208 This commitment to bodily resurrection demonstrates the development of Augustine’s thought away from his earlier Platonism.209 The resurrection of the body is an essential component of God’s salvific plan for the church as the body of Christ.210 In De catechizandis rudibus, Augustine declares, “at the time God wishes, he will restore 203. See Civ. Dei 21.18–25; Persev. 13.32; Praed. sanct. 10.19; 15.30. 204. On predestination and the church, see P.-M. Hombert, Gloria gratiae: Se glorifier en Dieu, principe et fin de la théologie Augustinienne de la grâce (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1996); René Bernard, La prédestination du Christ total selon saint Augustin (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1965). 205. Perf. just. 1.15.35; En. Ps. 147.43; Jo. ev. tr. 26.15. 206. Doc. Chr. 1.19.18; Hill, Teaching Christianity (WSA I/11), 113. 207. Doc. Chr. 1.21.19; Hill, Teaching Christianity (WSA I/11), 114; cf. Cat. rud. 24.45–25.46. 208. Cat. rud. 25.46. 209. As Cavadini notes, “The major problem for the Platonists, as Augustine sees it, is really embodiment itself, considered as a constitutive and permanent feature of human life and indeed as a constitutive feature of life on earth”; John C. Cavadini, “Ideology and Solidarity in Augustine’s City of God,” in Augustine’s City of God: A Critical Guide, ed. James Wetzel (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 96. 210. Even in his early works, Augustine affirms the resurrection of the body, but he does not provide a developed doctrine of bodily resurrection. THE CHURCH AS THE BODY OF CHRIST 51 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

all things without any delay or difficulty . . . thus human beings will come to render an account of their deeds in the same bodies in which they performed them, and in these bodies they will receive what they deserve.”211 Resurrected bodies will be in a transfigured state, as evident in De civitate Dei, in which Augustine suggests that the bodies of the martyrs will bear the wounds which “they suffered for Christ’s name,” yet “in their case these will not be marks of deformity but marks of honor.”212 Just as Christ bears the marks of his passion and death in his resurrected body in glorified fashion, so too the members of Christ’s body will bear the marks of their suffering in a glorified manner. The sufferings of each member are unique, and the church’s journey leads to the resurrection of the whole Christ with transfigured, glorified bodies.213 A Plotinian view cannot account for bodily resurrection, for the return to the One is an escape from material existence. For Augustine, the church will undergo the same pattern of resurrection as Christ the head at the eschaton,214 for “there shall be one Christ, loving himself,”215 that is, Christ the head and the members of his body, the church.216 This union is anticipated while the church is on journey precisely by means of the sacraments. Augustine employs the image of the church as body in order to develop a rich ecclesiology of solidarity between the head and the members of the body on journey. An Ecclesiology of Solidarity Michael Fiedrowicz has drawn attention to the “prosopological” exegesis of the Enarrationes in Psalmos, wherein the many voices of Psalms can be spoken by a single “person” (prosopon), Christ the head or the members of his body.217 By virtue of Christ’s assumption of human nature 211. Cat. rud. 25.46; Canning, Instructing Beginners in Faith, 156. 212. Civ. Dei 22.19; William Babcock, The City of God (WSA I/7), 530. 213. In Civ. Dei 22.21, the resurrected body is a “spiritual body, clothed in incorruptibility and immortality,” for it is no longer “carnal” and subject to the struggle of the “flesh.” The resurrected body is a mystery, yet it is a true body “subdued to the spirit,” and the philosophers such as Porphyry deny such a resurrection; Civ. Dei 22.25–28; S. 265E.5. 214. Cat. rud. 25.46. 215. Ep. Jo. 10.3; Ramsey, Homilies on the First Epistle of John (WSA III/14), 148; PL 35.2055: “unus Christus seipsum amans.” 216. The charity shared among the members of the body is made possible by the self-emptying love of Christ, who binds the body together “with the knot of unity and love”; Doc. Chr. 1.16.15. 217. Michael Fiedrowicz, Psalmus vox totius Christi: Studien zu Augustins ‘Enarrationes in Psalmos’ (Freiburg: Herder, 1997), 15, 298–375, relying on the work of Marie-Josephe Rondeau, Lescommentaires patristiques du Psautier (IIIe–Ve siècle), vols. 1–2, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 219–20 (Rome: Pontifical Institute of Oriental Studies, 1982–1985); Hubertus Drobner, Person-Exegese und Christologie bei AUGUSTINE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 52 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

in the incarnation, the head enters into solidarity with the members on earthly pilgrimage. The members do not travel this journey alone, for “Christ will not abandon them there, for the column does not withdraw.”218 The column of cloud which accompanied the Israelites in the desert is an image of Christ’s solidarity with the people of God. Christ is the eternal Word who descended in the incarnation in order to raise up humanity to himself.219 Jacob’s ladder is a figure of Christ,220 the mediator, who is in heaven as head, and yet is present on earth in the members of his body, the church. “For in him there was a stairway from earth to heaven. . . . For the Son of Man is above in our head, which is the savior himself, and the Son of Man is below in his body, which is the church.”221 The church is united with Christ the head in a mystery of solidarity, a union made possible by the incarnation. Christ “came to receive insults and give honors, he came to drain the cup of suffering and give salvation, he came to undergo death and give life.”222 There is a wonderful “exchange” (commercium) 223 between the head and members of the one Christ. The head takes on the sufferings of the body “toiling on earth,” while the members are given a share of the glory of the head in heaven by baptism.224 Christ’s solidarity in suffering conforms the members to the head, as signified by the head “crying out on behalf of the members,” for “the head was transfiguring the members into himself.”225 The head cries out in the voice of the church, and the church cries out in the voice of the head. “Christ, you see, is both head and body. The head isin heaven, the body on earth. The Lord is the head, the body is his church. . . . So if they are two in one flesh, they are two in one voice.”226 By the bond of charity, the head and members can speak as one, and Christ is mysAugustinus: zur Herkunft der Formel Una Persona (Leiden: Brill, 1986); Michael Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 171–212. 218. C. Faust. 12.30; Teske, Answer to Faustus (WSA I/20), 144. 219. C. Faust. 12.24. 220. Ibid., 12.23. 221. Ibid., 12.26; Teske, Answer to Faustus (WSA I/20), 142. 222. En. Ps. 30[2].3; Maria Boulding, Expositions of the Psalms 1–32 (WSA III/15), 323. 223. En. Ps. 30[2].3; CCSL 38.192; on the “wonderful exchange” (admirabile commercium), see William Babcock, “The Christ of the Exchange: A Study in the Christology of Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1971); Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 171–212. 224. En. Ps. 30[2].3; 26[2].11; cf. Doc. Chr. 2.6.7; Ench. 13.42–43; 31.117–20. 225. En. Ps. 30[2].3; Boulding, Expositions of the Psalms 1–32 (WSA III/15), 323; cf. Michael Cameron, “Transfiguration: Christology and the Roots of Figurative Exegesis in St. Augustine,” Studia Patristica 33 (1997): 40–47; Michael McCarthy, “An Ecclesiology of Groaning: Augustine, the Psalms and the Making of Church,” Theological Studies 66/1 (2005): 23–48. 226. S. 129.4; Edmund Hill, Sermons 94A–147A (WSA III/4), 304–5. THE CHURCH AS THE BODY OF CHRIST 53 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

teriously present in his members on earth. This is why Christ declares to Saul in Acts 9:4, “Why are you persecuting me?”227 Without him, we are nothing, but in him we too are Christ. Why? Because the whole Christ consists of Head and body. The Head is he who is the savior of his body, he who has already ascended into heaven; but the body is the church, toiling on earth. Were it not for the body’s linkage with its Head through the bond of charity,so close a link that Head and body speak as one, he could not have rebuked a certain persecutor from heaven with the question, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? (Acts 9:4).228 The church is the mysterious presence of Christ on earth.229 The head remains distinct and does not sufferin his human nature in heaven, yet there is a real identity between Christ and the members of his body, such that head and members can speak in “one voice” (una vox).230 In the act of crying out, the members of the body are transfigured in hope. Fear springs from human weakness, hope from the divine promise. Your fear is your own, your hope is God’s gift in you. In your fear you know yourself better, so that once you are set free you may glorify him who made you. Let human weakness be afraid, then, for divine mercy (misericordia) does not desert us in our fear.231 By an act of divine mercy and compassion,232 Christsharesin the suffering of the members of his body, while the members share in the glory of the head in heaven.233 According to the mystery of God’s salvific plan, the members of the body must continue to undergo purification while on pilgrimage so as to be conformed to the merciful love of Christ, who descended in order to transform humanity “into himself” 227. En. Ps. 37.6; 142.3. 228. En. Ps. 30[2].3; Boulding, Expositions of the Psalms 1–32 (WSA III/15), 323; CCSL 38.192: “Nam sine illo, nos nihil; in illo autem, ipse Christus et nos. Quare? Quia totus Christus caput et corpus. Caput ille salvator corporis, qui jam adscendit in caelum; corpus autem ecclesia, quae laborat in terra. Hoc autem corpus nisi connexione caritatis adhaereret capiti suo, ut unus fieret ex capite et corpore, non de caelo quemdam persecutorem corripiens diceret: Saule, Saule, quid me persequeris?” 229. En. Ps. 142.3. In this way, Augustine offers an understanding of the church as ongoing incarnation; cf. Goulven Madec, Le Christ de saint Augustin: la patrie et la voie (Paris: Desclée, 2001), 155. 230. Fiedrowicz, Psalmus vox totius Christi, 298–375. 231. En. Ps. 30[2].3; Boulding, Expositions of the Psalms 1–32 (WSA III/15), 323–24; CCSL 38.192: “paveat humana infirmitas, non in eo pavore deficit divina misericordia.” 232. Cavadini notes that misericordia can be translated equally as mercy or compassion; “‘The Tree of Silly Fruit’: Images of the Cross in St. Augustine,” 147–68. 233. En. Ps. 30[2].3; Boulding, Expositions of the Psalms 1–32 (WSA III/15), 323: “This is the wonderful exchange, the divine business deal, the transaction effected in this world by the heavenly dealer”; CCSL 38.192: “haec enim mira commutatio facta est, et divina sunt peracta commercia, mutatio rerum celebrata in hoc mundo a negotiatore caelesti.” AUGUSTINE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 54 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

(transfigurare nos in se).234 Christ transfigures the members into himself by communicating the virtues of faith, hope, and charity by means of the sacraments. The sacraments provide hope for the church on pilgrimage,235 for as a sacramental community, the church “walks in hope” toward the heavenly Jerusalem.236 In his mature ecclesiology, Augustine never dispenses with the visible church and the sacraments, for they are essential to the union and formation of the whole Christ. Far from discarding the visible, Augustine places greater emphasis upon the visible church and the sacraments in his mature theology of the church as the body of Christ. Conclusion The biblical theme of the church as the body of Christ is one of the most significant in Augustine’s works, and it reflects the trajectory of his developing thought. In his early works, Augustine gives priority to the ascent of the soul that yields vision due to the heavy influence of Platonism upon histhought. Augustine rarely employs the image of the church as the body of Christ, and participation in the sacraments is mitigated due to Augustine’s confidence in philosophy and the liberal arts to purify the mind. As his thought matures, Augustine places greater emphasis upon the necessary mediation of the sacraments for incorporation into the church. By the late 390s, Augustine recasts the Plotinian journey, such that vision is subordinated to charity. The church offers the purification from sin that cannot be found in philosophy and the liberal arts. The visible church’s celebration of the sacraments leads to the formation of the whole Christ as one body, whose soul is the Holy Spirit. The sacraments mediate the church’s union in charity, and Augustine posits the necessary mediation of the sacraments for entrance into the church. The visible church is a mixed body of good and wicked, and this historical condition is intrinsic to the mystery of God’s plan. No one can presume to be elect, for the elect will be revealed only at the eschaton. In the meantime, the church travels in hope by sharing in the sacraments. God’s plan of predestination is carried out by means of the visible church, until the final eschatological judgment. At the eschaton, 234. En. Ps. 30[2].3; cf. 43.2; 60.3; 87.3; 101[1].2. 235. Ibid., 30[2].3; cf. C. Faust. 12.20; 15.9; S. 4.1, 9. 236. S. 4.1; CCSL 41.20: “ambulans in spe.” THE CHURCH AS THE BODY OF CHRIST 55 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

the dead will rise in their bodies, and Augustine’s doctrine of bodily resurrection further reveals the shift away from his earlier Platonism. In his mature works, Augustine’s incarnational Christology provides the foundation for a rich ecclesiology of solidarity. Christ is present in the members of his body on earth, who share in the glory of the head. Baptism mediates the virtues of faith, hope, and charity from the head to the members, while the head shares in the sufferings of the body on earth. Thus the members are never alone on their earthly journey, and Christ the head transfigures the members into himself as they travel toward the heavenly homeland. The church’s transformation takes place precisely by means of the sacraments, and therefore the mediation of the sacramentsis necessary forthe union of the whole Christ. Augustine’s use of bodily imagery for the church reveals the increasing significance of ecclesial life as participation in a community of believers. The church is not simply a collection of wise philosophers undergoing the ascent of the “alone to the Alone.” Instead, the church is a communal body, a living fellowship. Even the desert monk Antony was raised in a community and had to be baptized into the body of Christ. As a social body, the church celebrates the sacraments in order to incorporate new members into the fold. To be in the church means to share in the twofold love of God and neighbor, not to achieve solitary vision. As Augustine proclaims, Christ has mercy on us so that we might have mercy on one another. To be a member of Christ’s body means to be conformed to the mercy of God, and to offer works of mercy as part of an ecclesial community bound in charity. In addition, this chapter shows that Augustine never dispenses with the visible church and hersacraments. Augustine offers a sophisticated approach to the power and efficacy of the sacraments in the controversy with the Donatists. The Holy Spirit may work beyond visible bounds in order to bring some into the body at a future time, but this does not nullify the efficacy of the sacraments. All of the members of the body must be joined to the same charity mediated by the sacraments, including the patriarchs and the martyrs who did not receive the washing of water. The Holy Spirit works through the sacraments but is not limited by them. The salvific work of Christ has effectsforthe body in all ages of history, and Augustine posits the necessary mediation of the sacraments for incorporation into the one body while on journey, in anticipation of the final eschatological union of the whole Christ. AUGUSTINE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 56 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:58:31 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

3 The Church as the Bride of Christ Augustine often speaks of the church as bride and body concurrently in his biblical exegesis. These images are intrinsically related, for bridegroom and bride are united in order to become the one body of the whole Christ. In a sermon on Psalm 34, Augustine declares that Christ and the church form “two in one flesh” (Gen 2:24).1 We hear Christ’s voice in [the Psalm]: the voice, that is, of Christ, Head and body. When you hear Christ mentioned, never divorce Bridegroom from bride but recognize that great sacrament (magnum sacramentum), they will be two in one flesh (Gen 2:24).2 Bridegroom and bride speak in one voice, for all of the words of the Psalms are spoken by Christ the head or by the members of his body, the church.3 In this sermon, Augustine employs bridal imagery in order to refer to the church on pilgrimage in history.4 On other occasions, Augustine identifies the church as the “spotless” bride of Song of Songs,5 that is, the church in eschatological perfection. Bridal imagery 1. En. Ps. 34[2].1; Maria Boulding, Expositions of the Psalms 33–50 (WSA III/16), 60; cf. En. Ps. 138.2; C. Faust. 12.8, 39; 19.29; 22.38. 2. En. Ps. 34[2].1; CCSL 38.311: “intellegimus enim hic vocem christi; vocem scilicet capitis et corporis Christi. Christum cum audis, noli sponsum a sponsa separare, et intellege magnum illud sacramentum: erunt duo in carne una.” 3. En. Ps. 34[2].1; cf. 30[2].3. 4. Ibid., 34[2].1. 57 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 23:00:21 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

carries historical and eschatological connotations, for it is used to indicate the pilgrim church on earth and the elect at the end time. In this chapter, I show how Augustine provides a coherent account of the visible and invisible aspects of the church in his use of bridal imagery. I begin by tracing Augustine’s use of bridal imagery from early writings to later works while focusing on the polemic against the Donatists, in which Augustine upholds the historical and eschatological aspects of the church. As the bride of Christ, the church is a visible community whose sacraments mediate charity during her earthly journey. The Holy Spirit is at work in the visible church, yet the Spirit may work beyond visible bounds. In this context, the church’s eschatological dimension is essential to Augustine’s argument, for it enables him to maintain the mediation of the sacraments while recognizing that the Spirit may bring some into the unity of the one church at some future time. In mature works, Augustine offers a coherent view of the church by holding together the historical and eschatological dimensions of the one bride of Christ. Early Works In early works, Augustine refers to the church as bride infrequently. The first instance comes in De Genesi adversus Manicheos, in which he interprets Genesis 2:24 as a prophecy of Christ and the church.6 The creation of Eve from Adam’s side prefigures the birth of the church.7 Eve is a type of the church insofar as her creation and identity follow from her spousal relation to Adam.8 Just as Adam was put to sleep, so Christ fell asleep “in death, in order that his spouse (conjux) the church might be formed for him. . . . So then the church was formed for him as his spouse from his side, that is, from faith in his death and in baptism, because his side was pierced with a lance and poured out blood and water.”9 The church is born from the side of Christ on the cross as his spouse, a mystery mediated by baptism. Augustine finds this typology in Latin predecessors such as Hilary and Ambrose in order to convey 5. Bapt. 5.27.38. 6. Gn. adv. Man. 2.19. 7. Ibid.; C. Faust. 12.8; Jo. ev. tr. 9.10; 15.8; S. 218.14; Civ. Dei 22.17. Augustine follows the Latin patristic tradition in thisregard; cf. Hilary of Poitiers, Myst. 1.5; Ambrose, In Ps. 36.37;see Bertrand de Margerie, An Introduction to the History of Exegesis, Vol. 2, trans. P. de Fontnouvelle (Petersham, MA: Saint Bede’s, 1993), 71–84. 8. Gn. litt. 1.1.; Nupt. et. conc. 2.54; Jo. ev. tr. 9.10. 9. Gn. adv. Man. 2.24.37; Edmund Hill, On Genesis (WSA I/13), 97. For other instances, see C. Faust. 12.16; 12.20; 12.39; Gn. litt. 9.18; Jo. ev. tr. 9.10; 15.8; 20.2; Civ. Dei 15.26; En. Ps. 56.11; S. 336.5. AUGUSTINE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 58 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 23:00:21 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

the role of the sacraments in the formation of the church,10 but Augustine has not yet developed his mature sacramental theology. In De sermone Domini in monte, Augustine speaks of the church as sponsa on one occasion with regard to the church in eschatological glory, “without spot or wrinkle” (Eph 5:27).11 In this text from the early 390s, the use of bridal imagery indicates the church’s eschatological perfection. Likewise, in De diversis quaestionibus octaginta tribus, Augustine provides an exegesis of the parable of the ten virgins from Matthew 25:1–13 in eschatological terms. The five wise virgins signify the fivefold restraint “in regard to the allurements of the flesh.”12 Christ is the bridegroom who will come at the eschaton, when “the resurrection of the dead occurs.”13 Bridal imagery is used sparingly in early works, and it is applied to the visible community celebrating the sacraments as well as the church in eschatological glory. In mature works, Augustine builds upon these themes in order to show how the bride remains one mystery in two conditions, namely, in a state of journeying and in final eschatological perfection. Mature Works Augustine uses Latin words such as sponsa, conjux, matrona, and uxor to speak of the church as bride in his exegesis of Old Testament passages from Genesis, Isaiah, and Song of Songs.14 This expanded vocabulary attests to Augustine’s growing identification of the church as the bride revealed in both the Old and New Testaments. In De doctrina Christiana, Augustine identifies the church as “bride” (conjux) on a journey 10. Hilary of Poitiers, Myst. 1.5; Ambrose, In Ps. 36.37; see de Margerie, History of Exegesis, Vol. 2, 72, 81–85. 11. S. Dom. mon. 2.66; c. 393/395. Sponsa appears only a handful of times in other earlier works; cf. C. Adim. 17; Ep. Rom. inch. 15; Div. qu. 59.2–4. 12. Div. qu. 59.2–4; Boniface Ramsey, Responses to Miscellaneous Questions (WSA I/12), 81. 13. S. Dom. mon. 2.66. 14. See Pasquale Borgomeo, L’église de ce temps dans la prédication de saint Augustin (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1972), 236; René Desjardins, “Le Christ ‘sponsus’ et l’église ‘sponsa’ chez saint Augustin,” Bulletin de Littérature Ecclésiastique 67 (1966): 241–56; P. Schelkens, “De Ecclesia Sponsa Christi,” 145–64; L. Robitaille, “L’église, épouse du Christ, dans l’interprétation patristique du Psaume 44 (45),” Laval théologique et philosophique 26/3 (1970): 279–306; A.-M. La Bonnardière, “L’interprétation augustinienne du magnum sacramentum de Éphés. 5, 32,” Recherches Augustiniennes 12 (1977): 3–45; Salvador Vergés, La Iglesia esposa de Christo: La incarnación del verbo y la iglesia en san Augustin (Barcelona: Balnes, 1969); David Hunter, “The Virgin, the Bride, and the Church: Reading Psalm 45 in Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine,” Church History 69/2 (2000): 281–303; F. B. A. Asiedu, “The Song of Songs and the Ascent of the Soul: Ambrose, Augustine, and the Language of Mysticism,” Vigiliae Christianae 55/3 (2001): 299–317; Michael Cameron, “Augustine’s Use of the Song of Songs against the Donatists,” in Augustine: Biblical Exegete, ed. Frederick van Fleteren and Joseph C. Schnaubelt, Collectanea Augustiniana 5 (New York: Lang, 2001): 99–127; John C. Cavadini, “The Sacramentality of Marriage in the Fathers,” Pro Ecclesia 17/4 (2008): 451–53. THE CHURCH AS THE BRIDE OF CHRIST 59 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 23:00:21 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

of growth and transformation in history so as to be purified from sin.15 Only in this way can she become the bride of Christ without stain or wrinkle. “During this age [Christ] trains and purges [the church] with various kinds of salutary vexation and distress, so that once it has been snatched from this world, he may bind his bride (conjugem) the church to himself for ever, having no stain or wrinkle, or any such thing (Eph 5:27).”16 The church’s transformation during her earthly pilgrimage is necessary in order to reach her eschatological perfection. The church is both bride and mother, giving birth to charity in her members by means of the sacraments. Augustine develops the notion of the church as “mother” (mater) by invoking the woman of Song of Songs. The church is a mother because of her sacraments, which give birth to the twofold love of God and neighbor.17 She is praised as the woman whose “teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes coming up from the washing” (Song 4:2).18 The “shorn ewes” are the baptized, who are born into the “two commandments of love,” such that “none of them is barren and lacking holy fertility.”19 Charity is the sum of what Scripture teaches, and this charity is mediated by baptism, the sacrament of regeneration.20 By receiving baptism, the members are incorporated into the one body and bride of Christ, bound in charity.21 The image of the church as bride and mother follows from Augustine’s incarnational Christology. In Conf. 4.12.19, Christ is the bridegroom, “running forth from his nuptial chamber,” that is, from the womb of Mary.22 Augustine interprets Psalm 18:6-7 in terms of the eternal Word who assumed human nature in the womb of the virgin. In Conf. 11.8.10, Christ is the bridegroom who calls out to his creatures23 in order to form his bride, the church.24 The Word enters history in 15. Doc. Chr. 1.16.15; CCSL 32.15: “est enim ecclesia corpus ejus, sicut apostolica doctrina commendat, quae conjux etiam ejus dicitur.” 16. Ibid. Edmund Hill, Teaching Christianity (WSA I/11), 113. 17. On the church as mother (mater ecclesia), cf. Bapt. 6.2.3; Ep. 48.2; 98.5; 185.11; 243.4, 8; Ep. Jo. 3.1; S. 22.10; 98.2; 111.2; 176.2; 216.8; 293.10; 304.2; 323.4; 352.9; Denis 25.8; Dolbeau 7.4; 27.6. See Rafael Palmero Ramos,“Ecclesia Mater” en san Augustin: teología de la imagen en los escritos antidonatistas (Madrid: Ediciones Cristianidad, 1970); Monique Vincent, Saint Augustin, Maître de Prière d’après les Enarrationes in Psalmos (Paris: Beauchesne, 1990). 18. Doc. Chr. 2.6.7; Hill, Teaching Christianity (WSA I/11), 131. 19. Doc. Chr. 2.6.7; cf. S. 313B.3. The “teeth” of Babylon are the secular authorities, that is, the “teachers of unlawful rites,” whereas the members of the church participate in the holy rite of baptism. 20. Doc. Chr. 1.35.39–40.44. 21. Ibid., 1.16.15. 22. Conf. 4.12.19; Maria Boulding, Confessions (WSA I/1), 104. 23. Conf. 11.8.10. 24. Ibid., 4.15.27; 7.21.27; 13.13.14. AUGUSTINE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 60 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 23:00:21 UTC 2:34:56 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

order to invite humanity into a spousal relationship made possible by a shared human nature. The spousal love of Christ in the incarnation makes possible the union between bridegroom and bride. In his work In epistulam Johannis ad Parthos tractatus, Augustine speaks of the womb of Mary as the marriage bed, “because in that virginal womb two things were joined, a bridegroom and a bride, the bridegroom being the Word and the bride being flesh. For it is written, ‘And they shall be two in one flesh’ (Gen 2:24), and the Lord saysin the gospel, ‘Therefore they are no longertwo but one flesh’ (Matt 19:6).”25 In this instance, the bride is the humanity assumed by the Word.26 This interpretation is also found in In Johannis evangelium tractatus, 27 in which Augustine interprets Genesis 2:24 in terms of the union of two natures, human and divine, in the one person of Christ.28 The church “gathered from all peoples”29 is united to Christ by virtue of his humanity so asto become one body.30 The church becomes the bride because the bridegroom has become human. Let us rejoice at his marriage, and so be among those of whom the marriage is made, who are invited to the wedding: these invited guests are themselves the bride, for the church is the bride, and Christ the Bridegroom........The church was drawn from the human race, so that flesh united to the Word might be the Head of the church, and all the rest of us believers might be the limbs that belong to that Head.31 Due to the union of the eternal Word with human nature “consummated in the Virgin’s womb,”32 “the church is joined to that flesh, and Christ becomes the whole, head and body.”33 The spousal love of the incarnate Word is the source of the union and formation of the whole Christ. This love is mediated by the church’s sacramental life,34 for baptism and the Eucharist are the sacraments that build up the church.35 The church’s conformation to the eternal Word, who descended36 in 25. Ep. Jo. 1.2; Boniface Ramsey, Homilies on the First Epistle of John (WSA I/14), 22; cf. S. 138.9; 372.2; Dolbeau 198.43; 22.40. 26. Ep. Jo. 1.2; cf. Jo. ev. tr. 9.10; S. 138.9; S. 147A.2. 27. Along with In epistulam Johannis ad Parthos tractatus (c. 406/407), these homilies reveal the influence of Johannine theology on Augustine’s thought. 28. Jo. ev. tr. 9.10. 29. Jo. ev. tr. 9.10; 15.10; cf. En. Ps. 44.12. 30. Jo. ev. tr. 9.10; 10.11; cf. Conf. 4.12.19; En. Ps. 26.33; Ep. Jo. 1.2. 31. En. Ps. 44.3; Boulding, Expositions of the Psalms 33–50 (WSA III/16), 282. 32. En. Ps. 44.3; cf. Ep. Jo. 1.2; S. 138.9; 147A.2; 372.2. 33. Ep. Jo. 1.2; Ramsey, Homilies on the First Epistle of John (WSA III/14), 22. 34. S. 45.5. 35. Jo. ev. tr. 6.19–23; Ep. Jo. 1.5; 2.2. 36. S. 362.16; C. Faust. 12.23. THE CHURCH AS THE BRIDE OF CHRIST 61 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 23:00:21 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

order to lift up his bride to himself, takes place in the midst of a communal body visibly celebrating the sacraments. The visible church’s sacramental life extends the effects of the incarnation, for the eternal Word continues to add members to his body by means of the sacraments. Augustine describes the effects of the incarnation in works such as Contra Faustum. In book 12, Augustine asserts that the union of the whole Christ is predicated upon the self-emptying love of the Word of God, following Paul in Philippians 2:6–7, for “through his flesh he became a partaker of our nature so that we might be the body of that head.”37 The whole body of Christ is formed by means of the sacramental economy, until the full completion of the “ark.”38 In this text, the visible church is the true spouse whose sacraments mediate the love of Christ that forgives sins.39 Baptism is the entrance to the church since it mediates the mystery of Christ’s love offered on the cross.40 In addition, the Eucharist is the “marriage supper” of the Lamb (Rev 19:9) that anticipates the heavenly, eschatological wedding feast between Christ and the bride depicted in Revelation.41 The Eucharist is a participation in the wedding supper, and thus the union between bridegroom and bride is not reserved solely for the eschaton. The church rejoices in hope during her earthly pilgrimage42 by celebrating the sacraments, which mediate the virtues of faith, hope, and charity in anticipation of the final eschatological feast.43 As we have seen, Augustine declares that Christ’s spousal love transfigures the church into his body through a union that enables the head and members, bridegroom and bride,44 to speak in one voice.45 “He calls himself bridegroom and he calls himself bride: how can he say he is both bridegroom and bride, except because they will be two in one flesh? And if two in one flesh, why not two in one voice?”46 This mystery of solidarity is accomplished in the church as bride, prefigured 37. C. Faust. 12.8; Roland Teske, Answer to Faustus, a Manichean (WSA I/20), 130. 38. C. Faust. 12.16. 39. Ibid., 15.8–9. 40. Ibid., 12.16; 12.19. 41. Ibid., 15.11; Teske, Answer to Faustus (WSA I/20), 197; Augustine incorporates the parable of the virgins into this passage (Matt 25:1–13). 42. C. Faust. 15.9. 43. Ibid., 20.23; Teske, Answer to Faustus (WSA I/20), 281. Baptism is the “sacrament of hope” by which the church is united “in the present time”; C. Faust. 12.20; Teske, Answer to Faustus (WSA I/20), 138. 44. En. Ps. 74.4; Maria Boulding, Exposition of the Psalms 73–98 (WSA III/18), 42: “The head is the bridegroom, the body is the bride; and they speak as one. . . . This is a great mystery, but I am referring it to Christ and the church (Eph 5:32).” 45. En. Ps. 37.6; cf. S. 129.4; Ep. Jo. 1.2. 46. En. Ps. 30[2].4; Maria Boulding, Exposition of the Psalms 1–32 (WSA III/15), 324. AUGUSTINE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 62 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 23:00:21 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

in prophetic texts such as Isaiah.47 “Isaiah also notes very well that these two are themselves one, for he speaks in the person of Christ and says, ‘He set a wreath upon me like a bridegroom, and like a bride he adorned me with an ornament’ (Isa 61:10).”48 For Augustine, bridegroom and bride form one body by means of the sacraments such that Christ is present in the church,49 for “in the members of Christ, there is Christ.”50 The church receives the love of God as bride in order to become the body of Christ,51 as the apostle Paul “confirmsthe fact. We are members of his body, he states(Eph 5:30).”52 Christ is present in the church, and the church is the ongoing presence of Christ on earth as his bride and body.53 The church is filled with hope as the bride on journey. “And what is his body? His wife, that is, the church. . . . So he wished God, Christ and church to be one person. The head is there, the members here. He did not wish to rise again with his members, but before his members, so that the members might have something to hope for.”54 Hope is a special virtue of the pilgrim church. Christ is both head and body, and we must not think ourselves alien to Christ, since we are his members. Nor must we think of ourselves as separate from him, because they will be two in one flesh. This is a great mystery, says the apostle, but I am referring it to Christ and the church (Eph 5:31–32). . . . Through hope we are with him in heaven, and through charity he is with us on earth.55 While on pilgrimage, the church receivesthe spousal love of Christ that purifies and transfigures her members. Without this love, the members are helpless,56 but with it, the bride is made beautiful.57 Christ 47. En. Ps. 101[1].2; Maria Boulding, Exposition of the Psalms 99–120 (WSA III/19), 47: “And because this same poor man is Christ, he calls himself both bridegroom and bride in a prophetic text: ‘He has adorned me like a bridegroom with his wreath and decked me like a bride with her jewels (Isa 61:10).’ He calls himself bridegroom and he calls himself bride. How can both be true, unless he means bridegroom in his capacity as head and bride with respect to his body? One voice only, then, because only one flesh.” 48. Ep. Jo. 1.2; Ramsey, Homilies on the First Epistle of John (WSA III/14), 22. 49. Goulven Madec, Le Christ de saint Augustin: la patrie et la voie (Paris: Desclée, 2001), 155. 50. En. Ps. 30[2].4. 51. S. 47.19; S. 341.12; Edmund Hill, Sermons 341–400 (WSA III/10), 27: “And just as bridegroom and bride, so also head and body, because ‘the head of the woman is the man’ (1 Cor 11:3). So whether I say head or body, or whether I say bridegroom and bride, you must understand the same thing.” 52. En. Ps. 74.4. 53. Ibid., 37.6. 54. S. 45.5; Edmund Hill, Sermons 20–50 (WSA III/2), 254. 55. En. Ps. 54.3; Maria Boulding, Exposition of the Psalms 51–72 (WSA III/17), 54; cf. 55.3. 56. En. Ps. 30[2].4; Boulding, Exposition of the Psalms 1–32 (WSA III/15), 324: “So out of two people one single person comes to be, the single person that is Head and body, Bridegroom and bride. . . . All of us together with our Head are Christ, and without our Head we are helpless. Why? Because THE CHURCH AS THE BRIDE OF CHRIST 63 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 23:00:21 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

transforms58 and purifies his bride, the whole church,59 in the midst of the “salutary vexation and distress” of herjourney,60 and thusthe bride is transfigured into her bridegroom so as to become one body. The sacraments mediate the love between Christ and his bride, the church. Augustine identifies the visible church as the “true spouse of Christ” (vera sponsa Christi),61 born from Christ’s spousal love on the cross. The typology between Eve and the church indicates the church’s formation from the spousal love of Christ on the cross.62 Christ’s sacrifice forgives sins and leads to new life,63 and the church is defined by the love of Christ the bridegroom.64 This love is mediated precisely through the sacraments that “flowed forth” from Christ’s side,65 that is, baptism and the Eucharist,66 the sacraments that form the church in history.67 The biblical figures of the Old Testament reveal how the mystery of Christ’s spousal love is intended for mediation through the sacraments instituted by Christ. Christians no longer observe the rituals of the old law,68 but instead participate in the union between the bridegroom and bride69 through the church’s visible, sacramental economy. The sacraments have effects in history precisely as mysteries of Christ’s spousal love. According to Augustine, the spousal love of Christ is mediated to the whole church as bride, not simply to the individual soul.70 Although he does not diminish the union of the soul and the Word, the individual united with our Head we are the vine, but if cut off from our Head (God forbid!) we are only loppings, of no use to the vine-tenders and fit only for the bonfire.” 57. En. Ps. 44.3; Boulding, Exposition of the Psalms 33–50 (WSA III/16), 282–83. 58. En. Ps. 9.6; 30[2].6. 59. Ibid., 44.22; Boulding, Exposition of the Psalms 33–50 (WSA III/16), 299: “From your garments drift the perfumes of myrrh, spices and cassia. Your clothing diffuses sweet scents. His garments are his saints, his elect, the whole church which he makes fit for himself, free from spot or wrinkle; for he washed away its every spot in his blood, and smoothed out every wrinkle as he stretched it on the cross.” Cf. S. 273.5. 60. Doc. Chr. 2.6.7. 61. C. Faust. 15.8–9. 62. Ibid., 15.3. 63. Ibid., 12.8. 64. Ibid., 15.3; cf. En. Ps. 138.2. 65. C. Faust. 12.8, 39; cf. Jo. ev. tr. 9.10; 15.8; S. 218.14; En. Ps. 56.11; 138.2. 66. C. Faust. 12.8; Teske, Answer to Faustus (WSA I/20), 130: “A wife is made from the side of the sleeping man; the church is made for the dying Christ from the sacrament of the blood that flowed from his side when he was dead.” 67. C. Faust. 12.39; cf. En. Ps. 138.2; CCSL 40.1991: “manaverunt sacramenta, quibus formaretur ecclesia.” 68. C. Faust. 15.3, 8. 69. Ibid. 70. Augustine diverges from predecessors like Ambrose, who tends to focus on the relationship between the Word of God and the soul in the exegesis of scriptural texts, especially Song of Songs; cf. Ambrose, Myst. 7.39–40; Is. 3.8–9; 6.50, 53; Asiedu, “The Song of Songs and the Ascent of the Soul,” 301–6; Joannes Josephus Marcelić, Ecclesia sponsa apud S. Ambrosium (Rome: Pontifical LatAUGUSTINE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH 64 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 23:00:21 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

is best understood in the context of the community, for salvation is always a communal mystery.71 Furthermore, the sacraments mediate charity not only from Christ to the soul, but also between the members of the church, who are united in the “bond of peace.”72 As a community formed in charity, the church makes present the spousal love of Christ in history.73 The sacraments have an irreplaceable role in forming a community bound in charity. Augustine also declares that the sacraments mediate the Holy Spirit among the members of the bride. In Contra Faustum, Augustine asserts that the whole church is made into a “spiritual community” by the love of God “poured out in our hearts by the Spirit” (Rom 5:5).74 The Holy Spirit, sent by Christ for his spouse, forges the unity among the members in charity, “for on the fiftieth day after the resurrection Christ sent the Holy Spirit to stretch out the hearts of the faithful.”75 The church can bear any kind of scandal among its members and maintain its unity due to the presence and work of the Holy Spirit,76 who gathers together a “diversity of peoples,” with a “heavenly unity from above.”77 The Holy Spirit is the glue that binds the church in Augustine’s extended exegesis of Noah’s ark.78 The timbers of the ark are glued together with pitch on the inside and on the outside in order to signify the tolerance of love in the framework of unity, so that fraternal unity does not yield to the scandals that try the church, whetherfrom those who are inside orfrom those who are outside, and so that the bond of peace is not destroyed. For pitch is a very hot and eran University, 1967); de Margerie, A History of Exegesis, Vol. 2, 81–84; Cavadini, “The Sacramentality of Marriage in the Fathers,” 452. 71. In C. Faust. 22.38, Augustine considers the relationship between Christ and the church in terms of the union of the Word and the soul, yet in this passage, Augustine places the soul’s relationship to the Word in an ecclesial context whereby all the saints may be considered “brothers by divine grace”; see C. Faust. 22.39–40. 72. Bapt. 5.27.38. 73. “In this union founded in and configured to the charity of Christ, we know ourselves as beloved by Christ as by a spouse” (Cavadini, “The Sacramentality of Marriage in the Fathers,” 452). 74. C. Faust. 12.14; Teske, Answer to Faustus (WSA I/20), 135. 75. C. Faust. 12.14. Robert Dodaro points out that the mediation of charity in Augustine’s thought is linked both to Christ and the Holy Spirit, such that there cannot be a strict separation with regard to mediation; see “Augustine on the Roles of Christ and the Holy Spirit in the Mediation of the Virtues,” Augustinian Studies 41/1 (2010): 145–63. 76. C. Faust. 12.15. 77. Ibid., 12.16; Teske, Answer to Faustus (WSA I/20), 136. 78. C. Faust. 12.14; En. Ps. 62.17; see Joseph Lienhard, “‘The glue itself is charity’: Ps. 62:9 in Augustine’s Thought,” in Augustine: Presbyter Factus Sum, ed. Joseph Lienhard et al. (New York: Lang, 1993): 375–84. In De Trinitate, Augustine identifies the Holy Spirit as the charity that “binds us to God” (et nobis haerere deo); Trin. 6.5.7; CCSL 50.235; cf. Trin. 7.3.6; 10.8.11; Oliver O’Donovan, The Problem of Self-Love in St. Augustine (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 135. THE CHURCH AS THE BRIDE OF CHRIST 65 This content downloaded from 132.174.252.140 on Wed, 12 Apr 2023 23:00:21 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms