The Anti Pelagian Christology Of Augustine Of Hippo 396 430

Evading established accounts of the development of doctrine in the Patristic era, Augustine's Christology has yet to receive the critical scholarly attention it deserves. This study focuses on Augustine's understanding of the humanity of Christ, as it emerged in dialogue with his anti-Pelagian conception of human freedom and Original Sin. By reinterpreting the Pelagian controversy as a Western continuation of the Origenist controversy before it, Dominic Keech argues that Augustine's reading of Origen lay at the heart of his Christological response to Pelagianism. Augustine is therefore situated within the network of fourth and fifth century Western theologians concerned to defend Origen against accusations of Platonic error and dangerous heresy. Opening with a survey of scholarship on Augustine's Christology and anti-Pelagian theology, Keech proceeds by redrawing the narrative of Augustine's engagement with the issues and personalities involved in the Origenist and Pelagian controversies. He highlights the predominant motif of Augustine's anti-Pelagian Christology: the humanity of Christ, 'in the likeness of sinful flesh' (Rom. 8.3), and argues that this is elaborated through a series of receptions from the work of Ambrose and Origen. The theological problems raised by this Christology - in a Christ who is exempt from sin in a way which unbalances his human nature - are explored by examining Augustine's understanding of Apollinarianism, and his equivocal statements on the origin of the human soul. This forms the backdrop for the book's speculative conclusion, that the inconsistencies in Augustine's Christology can be explained by placing it in an Origenian framework, in which the soul of Christ remains sinless in the Incarnation because of its relationship to the eternal Word, after the fall of souls to embodiment.

Revision of the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--Universit of Oxford, 2010.

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This is the extended and annotated edition including * an extensive biographical annotation about the author and his life This edition contains the following writings: Contents: On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants On the Spirit and the Letter On Nature and Grace, Against Pelagius Concerning Man's Perfection in Righteousness On the Proceedings of Pelagius, A Treatise on the Grace of Christ, and on Original Sin On Marriage and Concupiscence. On the Soul and Its Origin A Treatise Against Two Letters of the Pelagians A Treatise on Grace and Free Will. Treatise on Rebuke and Grace A Treatise on the Predestination of the Saints, A Treatise on the Gift of Perseverance, Being the Second Book

Both by nature and by grace, Augustin was formed to be the champion of truth in this controversy. Of a naturally philosophical temperament, he saw into the springs of life with a vividness of mental perception to which most men are strangers; and his own experiences in his long life of resistance to, and then of yielding to, the drawings of God’s grace, gave him a clear apprehension of the great evangelic principle that God seeks men, not men God, such as no sophistry could cloud. However much his philosophy or theology might undergo change in other particulars, there was one conviction too deeply imprinted upon his heart ever to fade or alter,—the conviction of the ineffableness of God’s grace. This book comprises St. Augustine’s writings and thoughts regarding the Anti-Pelagian dispute.

In An Augustinian Christology: Completing Christ, Joseph Walker-Lenow advances a striking christological thesis: Jesus Christ, true God and true human, only becomes who he is through his relations to the world around him. To understand both his person and work, it is necessary to see him as receptive to and determined by the people he meets, the environments he inhabits, even those people who come to worship him. Christ and the redemption he brings cannot be understood apart from these factors, for it is through the existence and agency of the created world that he redeems. To pursue these claims, Walker-Lenow draws on an underappreciated resource in the history of Christian thought: St. Augustine of Hippo's theology of the 'whole Christ.' Presenting Augustine's christology across the full range of his writings, Joseph Walker-Lenow recovers a christocentric Augustine with the potential to transform our understandings of the Church and its mission in our world.

Six major treatises presented in this volume include Miscellany of Questions in Response to Simplician I, The Punishment and Forgiveness of Sins and the Baptism of Little Ones, The Spirit and the Letter, Nature and Grace, The Predestination of the Saints, and The Gift of Perseverance.