Recherche – Detailansicht
Ausgabe: | März/2023 |
Spalte: | 194–196 |
Kategorie: | Kirchengeschichte: Alte Kirche, Christliche Archäologie |
Autor/Hrsg.: | Hunter, David G., and Jonathan P. Yates [Eds.] |
Titel/Untertitel: | Augustine and Tradition. Influences, Contexts, Legacy. |
Verlag: | Grand Rapids u. a.: Wm. B. Eerdmans 2021. 501 S. Geb. US$ 80,00. ISBN 9780802876997. |
Rezensent: | Matthias Gassman |
This volume presents fifteen studies in honor of the eminent American Patrologist J. Patout Burns. Five chapters treat »Augus-tine and the North African Tradition,« four »Augustine and the Philosophical and Literary Tradition,« two »Augustine and the Greek Patristic Tradition,« and four »Augustine and His Latin Contemporaries/Successors.« Despite the broad titles of these parts and of most of the chapters, the volume is something much more dy- namic than just a »handbook« of Augustine’s relationship to Classical and ancient Christian tradition. Some chapters, it is worth noting, do display the comprehensiveness and concision at which the best reference works arrive. Ch. 2, Andrew McGowan’s »Augus-tine and the North African Liturgical Reading Tradition,« can be consulted with profit by anyone who wants to understand what we know about in-church scriptural reading from Augustine. Likewise, ch. 9, Dennis Trout’s »Augustine and the Classical Latin Liter-ary Tradition,« offers an acute and lucid survey of a much-studied aspect of Augustine’s corpus, centering especially on Cicero and Vergil. (The otherwise-comparable ch. 4, William Tabernee’s »Augus-tine and the North African Martyriological Tradition,« leaves one less confident: the description of Ep. 16–17 [77] is not entirely ac- curate, while the third-century Vita et passio Cypriani, known to Jerome, De viris illustribus 68, is placed »well after Augustine’s time« [84]. Tabernee gathers much useful material nonetheless.)
The studies collected here do not attempt, however, to sketch every aspect of Augustine’s debt to authors such as Cicero, Tertullian, and Ambrose. Adopting a plurality of approaches, some illustrate particular points of theological overlap or controversy, others broader intellectual parallels, and still others a more comprehensive reception. As an ensemble, therefore, the collection allows one to see a few of the many ways in which Augustine engaged with his predecessors, as well as the plurality of possible scholarly approaches to that engagement.
The diversity of approaches to Latin Christian authors is especially vigorous. In part I, a tightly focused assessment of Augustine’s late heresiological judgment on a major Latin predecessor (Geof-frey D. Dunn, ch. 3, »Augustine and Tertullian«) stands alongside a survey of Augustine’s more extensive and generous reception of a recent Latin authority (Alden Bass, ch. 5, »Augustine and Optatus of Milevis« − another chapter that could serve as a reference). In part IV, we have a study, framed by Augustine’s quotations from the hymn Deus Creator Omnium, that shows how his views on creation were indebted to Ambrose (John C. Cavadini, ch. 13, »Augustine and Ambrose«); a careful elucidation of possible debts to one biblical commentator (Stephen A. Cooper, ch. 12, »Augustine and Marius Victorinus«); and an analysis first of aspects of the thought of an- other commentator and then of Augustine’s own views, which concur only in part (Theodore de Bruyn, ch. 14, »Augustine and Ambrosiaster«). Inevitably, important influences (such as Tyconius and Cyprian) and contemporaries (above all, Jerome) are present only insofar as they impinge on the topics at hand. A study of Cyprian would have been especially fitting, because of Burns’ contribution to his study; the volume will, at least, model methods of analysis.
The Greek Fathers are naturally represented in lesser number than the Latin, but with the same productive heterogeneity of result and method. An ambitiously broad assessment of Augustine’s possible debts to an author he rarely cites (Joseph W. Trigg, ch. 10, »Augustine’s Reception of Origen«) concludes by calling for deeper theological attention to Origen and by describing what a full study of Augustine’s reception of the Origenist tradition would require. It contrasts neatly with a circumspect analysis of the few citations from the Cappadocians (Mark DelCogliano, ch. 11, »Augustine’s Anti-Pelagian Reception of Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Na-zianzus« − like De Bruyn on Ambrosiaster, explicit that Augustine owed little to either).
Equally pluriform, Part II examines Augustine’s rethinking of the Classical tradition. It begins with Neoplatonism. John Peter Kenney, ch. 6, »Augustine and the Platonists,« offers a sweeping assessment, with light annotation from a vast literature, of Augustine’s »qualified rejection« (150) of Platonism in Confessiones and De ciuitate dei. It is balanced by a study of Augustine’s encounter with a Platonist authority. In ch. 7, »Augustine and Porphyry,« Thomas Clemmons focuses on explicit citations, which begin ca. 400, rather than on Porphyry’s possible influence on the early Augustine. That choice was probably wise, in the space available, but the resulting narrative is not entirely secure. Sermones 240–242, put in 411 (and so before De ciuitate dei 8–10), may in fact belong in 418 (simultaneous with De ciuitate dei 13), as Isabelle Bochet has suggested, while only limited elements of De consensu euangelis-tarum 1 and Ep. 102 are likely to reply to Porphyry, or so Ariane Magny and Matthias Becker have argued. Clemmons is entirely right, however, to draw attention to the thematic continuities between the little-studied De consensu and Ep. 102. Ch. 8, James R. Wetzel’s »Augustine and the End of Classical Ethics,« is a dense comparison of Augustine’s and Cicero’s ethical visions, as reflected in their reactions to their children’s deaths. Wetzel’s interpretations will have to be assessed by philosophers and moral theologians, but the chapter neatly balances Trout’s literary survey of Augustine’s Classicism, which finishes part II.
The first and last studies of the collection are outliers. Each has a narrower title than the rest (Michael Cameron, ch. 1, »Augustine’s Rhetorical Reading of Genesis in Confessiones 11–12«; Brian Matz, ch. 15, »Augustine’s Enchiridion 26.100 and the Ninth-Century Predestination Debate«). Though it heads the first part, Cameron’s chapter has little to do with specifically North African tradition. An exploration of Augustine’s »hermeneutical rhetoric« (9), it compares his handling of Genesis with Abraham Lincoln’s reception of the Declaration of Independence. The intertexts suit an American honorand, and the literary approach complements the vol- ume, though it may leave biblical theologians wishing for a closer assessment of Augustine’s exegetical techniques or ideas about scripture (could Cyprian, a very different reader of scripture, have fit here? But the volume is lengthy as it is.) Matz’s article is a soli-tary study of reception of, rather than by, Augustine. Though it traces sixth- and seventh-century precedents (385–387), it might have done more to introduce the volume’s Patrologist readers to the Carolingian theological world. The names (Rabanus Maurus, Gottschalk, Hincmar, Eriugena) are famous; their lives, likely to be less familiar to scholars most familiar with Cicero, Origen, or Ambrose. A page surveying specialist work (382–383) could perhaps have gone, instead, to sketching the historical context.
The book is beautifully produced, despite the occasional typographic error. Indices of modern authors, subjects, and scriptural and other loci, impressively full for such a collection, enable effi-cient consultation.