Catholic Thought discussion

Summary

Subchapters
- The Divisions in Human Society
- Assyria as the “First Rome” and Rome as the “Second Babylon”
- The Earthly Kingdoms and Their Gods from Abraham to the Exodus
- The Earthly Kingdoms and Their Gods at the Time of Moses
- The Naming of Athens From the Exodus to the Death of Joshua
- The Earthly Kingdoms and Their Gods in the Period of the Judges
- The Fall of Troy and Tales of Human Beings Transformed into Animals
- The Earthly Kingdoms in the Period of the Israelite Kings
- The End of Assyria and the Founding of Rome
- Sibyline Prophecies of Christ
- The Rulers of Rome: from Romulus to the Babylonian Captivity of the Jews
- The Hebrew Prophets: Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, Micah, Jonah, and Joel
- The Hebrew Prophets: Obadiah, Nahum, and Habakkuk
- The Hebrew Prophets: Jeremiah and Zephaniah
- The Hebrew Prophets: Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, and Esdras
- The Antiquity of Prophetic Wisdom
- The Superiority of Divine Wisdom over Human Philosophy
- The Translation of Hebrew Scripture into Greek: the Septuagint Jewish History after the End of Prophecy
- The Coming of Christ in Fulfillment of Prophecy
- The Spreading of the Church: Persecutions and Consolations
- The Persecutions of the Church
- Peter’s Supposed Act of Sorcery

Book XVIII might be the most important section of City of God. It’s a microcosm of the entire opus. Augustine intertwines the City of Man of the Romans with the projected City of God of the Hebrews, contrasting and comparing the two. I don’t know if this is the correct way to read Augustine’s interpretation of Hebrew history, but I read it also as a City of Man with the exception that within it is the prophesy of the City of God which Christ will establish. Working through the writings of Marcus Terentius Varro, Augustine even finds the Roman prophesy of Christ’s coming. Slowly but surely Augustine takes us through the various Old Testament prophesies of Christ and then to the fulfillment with Christ Himself and the establishment of the Church.

This was the longest chapter in the entire work, and like I said above, perhaps the most important. I loved this chapter. I'm finally getting back into the rhythm of Augustine's writing. I'll have more to say on it.

St. Augustine tracks the major kingdoms of human history, Assyria, Babylon, Greece, Rome. along with that of Israel. As one kingdom vanishes another appears. Israel (”the promised land”) is in existence seven centuries already when Rome is founded. St. Augustine reads the coming of Jesus Christ in the prophecies of one of the ancient Greek Sibyls. He then references Jewish prophesies that mention Christ’s coming. Prophet Isaiah “prophesied much more than the others did concerning Christ and the Church.” The story of Jonah, the whale, foretold the story of Christ. Judaism was replaced by Christianity. St. Augustine believes citing St. Paul that they will some day be converted to Christianity. Yet we Christians must suffer more persecutions on our pilgrimage to the city of God and practice charity and forgiveness. The Antichrist will come at the end but Jesus will extinguish him.

Yes, that's a nice summary too Galicius. I did find it a little strange that Augustine considers Rome and her empire the heir to Babylon. The space in time between the two was considerable. I would have thought he would have picked the Greek empire of Alexander the Great and his generals to be Rome's successor. That's the historical reality.

There are a lot of things in Book XVIII I could highlight, but one thing that really caught my attention was Augustine's view of the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament. To put this in context, the Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Old Testament completed in the second century BC, which was before Christ. It is what the Catholic Church considers the authoritative version of the OT, disputed by both Jews and Protestants. How this came about is a long story, but it is the Septuagint that contains the books that Martin Luther took out as to what makes up the Protestant OT. When the New Testament quotes from the Old, something like 90% of the quotes come from the Septuagint. It is probably the version Christ and the Apostles knew. Martin Luther excluded the seven deutocanonical books because they substantiated praying for the dead and indulgences and therefore purgatory. So Luther purposely ignored the 1500 year history and Church Councils of the Catholic Church's cannon to go with the Jewish version. But it so happens that Protestants revere St. Augustine, mainly because he does seem Catholic to them. But they are so wrong about that. St. Augustine is most definitely Catholic. His reverence for the Septuagint is a most notable fact that I bet would shock them. Here's a particular quote from Book XVIII:

It is reported, in fact, that there was such wondrous, amazing, and obviously divine agreement in their translations that, even though each worked in a separate place (for it pleased Ptolemy to test their reliability in this way), they did not differ from one another in a single word, not even in the choice of a synonym with the same meaning. They did not even diverge in the order of the words. Rather, their translations were so perfectly at one that it was as if only one translator had been involved, for, in very truth, there was one Spirit present in them all. And the reason why they received such a wondrous gift from God was precisely so that the authority of those Scriptures might be presented not simply as that of human but rather as that of divine writings—which, in fact, they are—when the time came for them to benefit the gentiles who were going to believe (which, as we see, has already taken place).

The Septuagint is to Augustine what it is to the Catholic Church, a divinely inspired translation.