Tarmo Toom

This Cambridge Companion serves as an authoritative guide to Augustine's Confessions - a literary classic and one of the most important theological/philosophical works of Late Antiquity. Bringing together new essays by leading scholars, the volume first examines the composition of the text, including its structure, genre, and intended audience. Subsequent essays explore a range of themes and concepts, such as God, creation, sin, grace, happiness, and interiority, among others. The final section of the Companion deals with its historical relevance. It provides sample essays on the reception history of the Confessions. These essays demonstrate how each generation reads the Confessions in light of current questions and circumstances, and how the text continues to remain relevant and raise new questions.

In the original, unfinished De doctrina Christiana , Augustine analyzed the inventio, the so-called "discovery aspect" of scriptural hermeneutics. This dissertation investigates the symbiotic relationship between Augustine's hermeneutical praecepta and Christology. It is argued that Augustine's theory of interpretation in the above-mentioned treatise has a Christological design. Since Augustine's hermeneutical project presumes his Christological epistemology, De doctrina Christiana is approached through Contra Academicos and De magistro . The former defends the possibility of certain knowledge, and the latter explains how this knowledge is gained through the illuminative activity of the Inner Teacher. The first three books of De doctrina Christiana are studied in their given sequence. The only interruption of this sequence is Chapter Three, which studies linguistic signification in ancient philosophy and prepares the ground for understanding Augustine's scientia signorum and the fundamental Christological analogy in doc. Chr. 1.13. ;In the Prologue, the bishop of Hippo corrected certain opponents who had radicalized his doctrine of illumination. Then, in Book One, he identified the Christian preunderstanding, namely the regula fidei and the double commandment of love, which provided the criterion for an adequate interpretation of the scripture. In Books Two and Three of De doctrina Christiana, Augustine introduced his scientia signorum. The bishop of Hippo investigated that which the scripture stated according to the categories of unknown literal and figurative signs, and of ambiguous literal and figurative signs. After focusing on interpreting the ambiguous figurative signs, the last chapter of this dissertation analyzes the fundamental Christological analogy in doc. Chr. 1.13. Christ's incarnation is analogous to our thoughts which employ a material medium in order to be communicated. Augustine's whole scientia signorum is constructed around the fundamental Sign, the humanity of Christ, which in its hypostatic union with the divine nature enables one to know God through Christ the man. Thus, it is proposed that the key to understand the hermeneutical praecepta of De doctrina Christiana is Christology.

Augustine in Context assesses the various contexts - historical, literary, cultural, spiritual - in which Augustine lived and worked. The essays, written by an international team of scholars especially for this volume, provide the background against which Augustine's treatises should be read and interpreted. They are organized according to a rationale which moves from an introduction to the person to the contexts of Augustine's works and ideas, starting from the intellectual setting and extending to the socio-political realm. Collectively the essays highlight the embeddedness of Augustine in the world of late antiquity and the interdependence of his discourse with contemporary forms of social life. They shed new light on one of the most important figures of the western canon and facilitate a more enlightened reading of his writings.

Augustine was a convinced proponent of the multiplicity of meanings. He had both theoretical and theological reasons for affirming the phenomenon of polysemy. This article deduces seven themes from Augustine’s exegetical practice and from his discussions of the principles of his exegesis, and employs these as Augustine’s arguments for the multiplicity of meanings. Augustine acknowledges the legitimacy of the many senses of the Word of God. Because scripture is an ambiguous linguistic reality, it constitutes a system of signs and it reuses earlier texts to convey new meanings. Augustine’s theological reasons for the multiplicity of meanings include the beliefs that human authorial intention is complemented by the primary divine intention, that scripture has to be interpreted Christologically, that scripture’s interpretations have to be spiritually useful, and that the texts of scripture are part of the new theological/literary context of the canon.