Tag: Augustinian

The Augustinian Person


Free Download The Augustinian Person By Peter Burnell
2005 | 240 Pages | ISBN: 0813214181 | PDF | 1 MB
Augustine’s notions of human nature and of person have not received adequate systematic treatment, despite their centrality to all the important areas of his thought. Although he notoriously changed his mind on many major points, his explorations of human nature and person remained central and to a great extent consistent across his mature and most important works. In this insightful and accessible book, Peter Burnell examines the crucial issues in Augustine’s understanding of these two related subjects, and concentrates on Augustine’s fullest development of that understanding. Through careful analysis of Augustine’s writings, Burnell concludes that Augustine conceives of human nature as a unity at every level―socially, morally, and in basic constitution―despite very common objections that he fails to achieve such a conception. Furthermore, Augustine’s doctrine of the Incarnation is the basis of his notion of person―not only human but divine. Thus the eternal relationships of God’s interior life, though unchanging, have always had an outward bearing, in the sense of being eternally oriented on the Incarnation. Continued interest in Augustine as a historical figure and a resource for contemporary reflection, as well as contemporary theorizing, by both philosophers and theologians, about the human person makes this study significant not only for the understanding of Augustine but for more general questions raised today regarding the human person.

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The Transmission of Sin Augustine and the Pre-Augustinian Sources


Free Download The Transmission of Sin: Augustine and the Pre-Augustinian Sources By Pier Franco Beatrice, Adam Kamesar
2013 | 320 Pages | ISBN: 0199751412 | PDF | 5 MB
Originally published in Italian in 1978, The Transmission of Sin is a study of the origins of the doctrine of original sin, one of the most important teachings of the Catholic Church. While the doctrine has a basis in biblical sources, it found its classic expression in the work of St. Augustine. Yet Augustine did not work out his theory on the basis of the biblical texts alone, rather he sought to understand them in the context of the religious thinking of his own time. Pier Franco Beatrice’s work seeks to illuminate that context, and discover the post-biblical influences on Augustine’s thought.Although he made considerable efforts to defend and elaborate the doctrine of hereditary guilt, says Beatrice, the doctrine already existed before Augustine and was in fact widespread in the Christianity of the time, particularly in the West. He locates its origins in Egypt in the second half of the second century CE, in Jewish-Christian circles that saw sexual congress as the source of the physical and moral corruption that afflicts all humans. In reaction to this extreme view, which rejected marriage and procreation as inherently evil, other theologians developed a more moderate position, recognizing only personal sin, which could not be inherited. Beatrice argues that Augustine’s doctrine exemplified a synthesis of these two trends which would ultimately triumph as the orthodox Catholic position.

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