Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.01.2013, Page 14

First of all, by way of introduction, I want to recall some familiar points
about St. Augustine. More than any of the church fathers, Augustine, who
lived from 354 to 430, put his stamp on the theology and exegesis of
the Western Church. This is all the more impressive because, unlike his
great Latin contemporary and rival, Jerome, who also strongly influenced
western exegesis, Augustine was not a philologist. Since the rise of modern
historical-critical exegesis, the influence of both church fathers has increas-
ingly been on the decline, almost to the point of being ignored completely.
Thus their interpretations survive today for the most part only in the
typical commentary series produced by conservative American Protestant
denominations. This modern disregard for Augustine’s exegesis shows itself
also in patristic studies, where the study of his exegetical works, in contrast
to his other works, is confined within narrow bounds.
Aurelius Augustinus was born in 354, in Thagaste, in the province
Numidia, today’s Algeria. Although his father was a pagan, he was raised
as a Christian by his mother Monica. During his education in rhetoric, he
learned to appreciate classical Latin literature, with the result that when
he attempted, for the first time, to read the Bible, he was so put off by its
primitive literary qualities that he laid it aside with disdain.3 As a young
man, he was, for nine years, an auditor among the Manichaeans, and for
this reason his mother banished him from the family home. In his day,
North African Manichaeism was organized like a church with bishops
and presbyters and claimed to be the true Christian religion, while the
Catholics were dismissed as mere semi-Christians or semi-Jews. From the
Manichaeans, Augustine learned that the Old Testament was the work
of the devil, thus explaining its anthropomorphic notion of God and
the amoral lives of the patriarchs. Later, after the stations of his career
in Carthage and Rome, the still young Augustine became a professor of
rhetoric at the imperial residence in Milan, where, under the influence of
the learned Bishop Ambrose, he then converted to Catholic Christianity
and thus, at the age of 33, he was baptized in 387 AD.
In a sudden outburst of popular will, Ambrose, the former provincial
governor, had been elected bishop and within the next few days was
baptized, ordained, and duly consecrated a bishop. In contrast to Augustine,
Ambrose had an excellent command of Greek, and, in the sermons of
3 Augustine, Confessiones III.5.9. The following details are taken from this work.