Vox Patrum, 2022, Vol. 82: The Passions in the Platonic Tradition, Patristics and Late Antiquity
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Browsing Vox Patrum, 2022, Vol. 82: The Passions in the Platonic Tradition, Patristics and Late Antiquity by Subject "Augustine"
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- ItemAugustine on Hope in Times of Suffering(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2022) Drever, MatthewThis article examines the way Augustine draws on the theological virtue of hope to address how people should live in times of suffering. Of the three theological virtues – faith, hope, and love – hope is the least explored theme in contemporary Augustinian scholarship. This article develops a framework for Augustine’s model of hope from his Enchiridion and then applies it to select Sermons and Letters. Through this, we see that for Augustine hope does not represent either an anesthetizing, otherworldly vision that neglects suffering or an extreme ascetic embrace of suffering. Rather, hope seeks the transcendent good that acknowledges the profound depth of suffering while also maintaining a vision of happiness to come. Here, Augustine draws on hope to maintain a tension between temporal and eternal life, between the present reality of suffering and the future hope of happiness. We will also see a close connection between hope and its compatriots of faith and love, a connection Augustine utilizes to explore how hope transforms the moral and spiritual principles that guide our actions in the world.
- ItemGod and Self in Confessiones IV and Beyond: Therapeia, Self-Presence, and Ontological Contingency in Augustine, Seneca, and Heidegger(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2022) Knotts, Matthew WilliamThis article investigates Augustine’s reflection on the death of his friend in Confessiones IV. A critical treatment of this passage discloses the three key themes which will form the main substance of the analysis: self-presence, the contingency of being, and divine absence. Integrating philosophical and theological methodologies with an historical-critical treatment of Augustine’s work, this article relates Augustine’s insights to his foregoing classical context and his reception in posterity, with particular attention to Lucius Annaeus Seneca (ca. 4 BCE-65 CE) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). This investigation shows that these three figures are connected by an appreciation of how self-presence and ontological instability are constant facets of human life, though easily neglected. Each advocates a curriculum of philosophical training, whereby one learns to pacify the mind by an awareness of the true nature of mundane reality. This research contributes to the renewed appreciation of how the therapeutic aspects of classical philosophy influenced early Christian authors; illuminates a key episode in Augustine’s life en route to his conversion to Christianity; and raises questions about the “apophatic” dimensions of Augustine’s theology and anthropology.