Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.01.2013, Page 24

All in all, Augustine held criticism of the saintly patriarchs themselves to
be prohibited, but he took a different tack regarding the women of the
partriarchal stories. According to Gen 18,12, confronted with the promise
that she would bear a son in her advanced age, Sarah laughed and so did
Abraham in Gen 17,17. Augustine argues that Sarah laughed knowing
nothing of the heavenly nature of the visitors, but Abraham, by contrast,
to whom God had introduced himself by name, laughed in the very act
of worshiping God. Nevertheless, Augustine goes on to pass the following
judgment, and his judgment has found support among exegetes well into
the 20th century.
qu. 1,36 (to Gen 18,13)
Quaeritur quare istam redarguat
dominus, cum et Abraham riserit.
nisi quia illius risus admirationis et
laetitiae fuit, Sarrae autem dubita-
tionis, et ab illo hoc diiudicari potuit,
qui corda hominum nouit.
One asks, why the Lord rebuked
her, although Abraham too had
laughed.
The only reason is that his laug-
hter was one of astonishment and
joy, whereas Sarah’s was one of
doubt. He who knows the hearts
of men, was able to make such a
distinction.
I will not go on with further examples of this sort. On the whole, they
demonstrate that Augustine often interpreted texts in an apologetic manner,
especially when he needed to answer the attacks of the Manichaeans or
the pagans. As far as possible, he tries to base his interpretations on exact
examination of the literal text, but when he is caught in a bind, he is not
ashamed to resort to a thoroughly capricious interpretation. Nevertheless,
the mere assumption of a spiritual sense as such should not be viewed as
capriciousness, for according to the then prevailing theory, the spiritual
meaning was written into the biblical text by God himself, even though it
is often not easy to identify. Thus the possibility of resorting to the spiritual
sense, especially a christological or ecclesiological meaning, was always
available to Augustine. Nevertheless, in his later works, like the Quaestiones,
but also in his interpretation of Gn. 1-3 in De genesi ad litteram, he tries
as far as possible to interpret the literal meaning.