Aurelius Augustinus

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Works of St. Augustine of Hippo
EUGÈNE PORTALIÉ
St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430) was one of the most prolific geniuses that humanity has ever known, and is admired not only for the number of his works, but also for the variety of subjects, which traverse the whole realm of thought. The form in which he casts his work exercises a very powerful attraction on the reader.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02089a.htm

Aurelius Augustinus: Bekenntnisse

Übersetzung von Otto F. Lachmann: Die Bekenntnisse des heiligen Augustinus. Leipzig : Reclam, 1888 [u.ö.] (Reclams Universal-Bibliothek ; 2791/94a).

Groß bist du, o Herr, und deines Lobes ist kein Ende; groß ist die Fülle deiner Kraft, und deine Weisheit ist unermeßlich. Und loben will dich der Mensch, ein so geringer Teil deiner Schöpfung; der Mensch, der sich unter der Last der Sterblichkeit beugt, dem Zeugnis seiner Sünde, einem Zeugnis, daß du den Hoffärtigen widerstehest; und doch will dich loben der Mensch, ein so geringer Teil deiner Schöpfung. Du schaffest, daß er mit Freuden dich preise, denn zu deinem Eigentum erschufst du uns, und ruhelos ist unser Herz, bis es ruhet in dir. Kläre mich auf, o Herr, und laß mich erkennen, ob wir dich zuerst anrufen oder dich preisen; ob wir dich eher erfassen als anrufen sollen? Doch wer ruft dich an, solange du ihm unbekannt bist? Könnte dich, der dich nicht erkennt, statt des einen ein anderes Wesen anrufen? Oder wirst du zuvor angerufen, auf daß du erkannt werdest? Wie sollen sie aber anrufen, an den sie nicht glauben? Wie sollen sie aber glauben an den, der ihnen nicht geprediget worden? Loben werden den Herrn, die ihn suchen. So ihn aber suchen, werden ihn finden, und die ihn finden, werden ihn loben. Ich will dich suchen, o Herr, im Gebet, und ich werde dich anrufen im Glauben: denn du bist uns verkündigen worden. Mein Glaube, den du mir gegeben, o Herr, ruft dich an, mein Glaube, den du mir einhauchtest durch die Menschwerdung deines Sohnes durch die Vermittlung deines Predigers. (1. Buch, 1. Kapitel)

Wir sehen daher alle Dinge, die du gemacht hast, weil sie sind; aber weil du sie siehest, sind sie. Und weil sie sind, sehen wir sie äußerlich, und weil sie gut sind, innerlich; du aber sahest sie dort als bereits gemacht, als sie noch nicht waren und gemacht werden sollten. Zu anderer Zeit waren wir geneigt, das Gute zu tun, nachdem es dein Geist in unsern Herzen erzeugt hatte; aber es war eine Zeit, wo wir dich flohen und nur zum Bösen geneigt waren. Du aber, einziger und gütiger Gott, hörtest nie auf, Gutes zu tun. Und wenn einige unserer Werke durch die Gabe deiner Gnade gut sind, sie sind doch nicht ewig; sie lassen uns hoffen, einst in deiner unaussprechlichen Heiligung zu ruhen. Du aber, du Gut, das keines Gutes bedarf, ruhest immer, weil deine Ruhe du selbst bist. Welcher Mensch aber wird dem Geiste des Menschen das Verständnis dieser Wahrheit geben, welcher Engel sie dem Engel offenbaren, welcher Engel dem Menschen? Von dir muß sie erbeten sein, bei dir will gesucht sein, bei dir muß man anklopfen - so, so werden wir empfangen, so werden wir finden, so wird uns aufgetan. Amen. (13. Buch, 38. Kapitel)

http://www.ub.uni-freiburg.de/referate/04/bekennt1.htm

Cicero, Augustinus und Thomas - Ausgewählte Werke im lateinischen Original
Von Augustinus verfügbar sind folgende Werke:

• Confessiones
• De trinitate
• De civitate dei

http://phil.flet.mita.keio.ac.jp/person/nakagawa/texts.html

Augustine, City of God - Introduction
James J. O'Donnell
The composition of ciu. occupied A. for at least a decade, perhaps fifteen years. On 24 August 410 the Visigoths under Alaric entered Rome, remaining to plunder for a few days. The event is of modest importance among the military disasters of the late empire, but it was too obvious a symbol to be viewed by contemporaries with any balanced perspective. A.'s first known reaction to the events came in s. 81, preached at Hippo later in 410. 

Civ. is the longest single work presenting a sustained argument unified around a coherent single theme to survive from Greco-Roman antiquity (apart from histories and compilations, whose bulk is inherent in the matter and whose disposition is far less than artful than that required in a work such as ciu.). Leaving aside collections of sermons (e.g., on the Psalms or the Gospel of John), it is far and away the longest work Augustine ever wrote, far longer than any of the surviving works of Plato or Cicero. It is every inch the product of its times, both in style and in content. It should not therefore be surprising that modern readers have differed widely in the interpretation of its purport.

At the center of the whole work is a single scriptural theme, illuminated and made the basis for an extended meditation on the whole message of revelation itself. The fall of angels and men, itself the result of a derangement of loves, has brought schism into the soul of man. In the natural state, man is now a stranger to himself, incapable of self-knowledge; thinking himself good and virtuous but in reality full of pride and disordered loves. How this can come about is a mystery in some ways (ciu. 12.7), but it is a fact. Left to itself, human society would be nothing but the city of this world, cut off from God, destined to die in body and soul.

But the fact of divine mercy and mediation (already adumbrated in the first ten books, culminating in the vivid contrast between Christ and the demons in Book 10) has nurtured a fragment of the original excellence of mankind. This spark exists in a portion of the human race, and always has. Abel found favor with God; in all three ages of divine dispensation (ante legem, sub lege, sub gratia), God has seen those who carry the standards of the heavenly city. In the desolation of a sinful world, these figures have held out the hope that the journey home is possible, that men need not resign themselves to citizenship in a corrupt city but may already participate in the citizenship of heaven, with faith and hope in its full restoration.

Human history between Adam and the second coming is thus radically incoherent. There is one, readily visible pattern for the earthly city, marked by disasters and wars, public and private, of every kind; but there is another pattern, dimly visible but obscured by sin, according to which the heavenly city lives. It is the task of revelation to remove the scales from the eyes of those who would look for this pattern; it is the role of exegesis to bring home that message...

A more detailed summary of the contents follows...

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/augustine/civ.html

Augustine - Elements of Christianity
James J. O'Donnell
Augustine's elevation to the bishopric of Hippo in 395 gave him full powers to preach and teach in the church. Conscious of his duty, Augustine soon began a work in four books on scriptural interpretation, which comes to us as his Christian Doctrine. The first two books and part of the third were written c. 395/396, while the remainder was added c. 426/427, perhaps largely from notes and drafts retained from the earlier period.

At any rate, Augustine is clear in stating where he begins: with the trinity. In a few chapters, Augustine then states the essentials of Christian belief in God, with a most important preamble: God is ineffable, that is, we can say nothing truly meaningful about one who transcends the categories of human language. Indeed, it is the wisdom of God that gives reasonableness to all things in human life. This feat is accomplished through the incarnation of the Word of God--and suddenly we have moved to the second person of the trinity. The mystery of incarnation is the nexus between God and man. 

What follows is an assertion that the church is the true body of Christ (1.16.15). What Augustine does not say so explicitly as we would like (but what would be obvious to his audience) is that in his discussion of the church we are meant to see the presence of the third person of the trinity, the Spirit. The foundation of the church at the first Pentecost consisted in the gift of the Spirit to the apostles gathered in the upper room. Viewed in this way, the three persons of the trinity represent God the unapproachable, God the mediator, and God the indwelling spirit. Knowledge, through revelation, moves down from above in this image, while human response moves back up from the church (body of Christ) to Christ (Word of God) to the ineffable godhead itself.

The beginning of all exegesis is love of God and love of neighbor. "Whoever thinks he understands divine scripture or any part of it, but whose interpretation does not build up the twofold love of God and neighbor, has not really understood it. Whoever has drawn from scripture an interpretation that does fortify this love, but who is later proven not to have found the meaning intended by the author of the passage, is deceived to be sure, but not in a harmful way, and he is guilty of no untruth at all."

Hence church doctrine makes it clear that all scripture will contain the praise of this double love (caritas) and the condemnation of all that is contrary to it--and nothing else. Here a special quality of a scriptural text is seen: in addition to whatever the initial writer meant to put into a text, there is also, always and everywhere, this deeper divine message. What is important, then, is that this deeper message be uncovered.

First you must be sure you have read the passage correctly. Have you read it with the correct punctuation and deciphered its syntax correctly? The most important principle is that thing and sign be adequately distinguished from each other. The literal meaning of a text (that is to say, its presentation of things as things plain and simple) should be respected, but the reader should be alert to detect any and all shifts into a more figural mode of speaking (when the things are also signs of something besides themselves). A scriptural text is nothing but a collection of signs; but those signs are used to present things to our mind; but some of the things presented to our mind have further signifying power either in themselves or because the author has willed it so. Hence it makes sense to distinguish, within the signs of a text, between signs to be taken literally and signs to be taken figuratively. If the Bible is the revealed word of God, then every word of the Bible is itself revelation. 

The name of the method is allegory, and its traditional ancient definition is "saying one thing to mean another." In strictest sense, all reading is allegorical (when I read the word "horse" I understand the thing horse), but in fact the term limits itself to the use of language to carry a second meaning beneath the obvious surface. Christianity applies this principle to the whole of scripture, with the adventurous difference that it does not matter whether the author of the particular passage intended an allegorical meaning consciously or not. At bottom, only one story is told anywhere in scripture: the redemption of mankind by Christ.

Pagans had allegorized their own great works of literature when advances in philosophy left them embarrassed with the crudity of the classics. Thus they would claim that the Odyssey, for example, was only the story of the purification of a soul and its return to a heavenly homeland. What distinguished such interpretations form the Christian treatment of scripture was that the pagans ceased altogether to claim historical value for their subject text, admitting it to be mere myth or fiction. Christianity managed, combining opposites, to insist on the literal truth of the Old Testament narrative and on the allegorical significance of the narrative. Book 3 of Christian Doctrine is Augustine's guide to allegory. But here, it is important to note, theory is more important than practice. Augustine is concerned not so much with giving his readers tools to work with as with making sure they have the right motives and principles at the outset. In the practical order, what matters is the effect of exegesis. If an interpretation of scripture builds up caritas or (what amounts to the same thing) attacks its opposite, cupiditas (selfish desire), then it is, absolutely speaking, a good interpretation. After Augustine had outlined these basic principles of interpretation, he put Christian Doctrine aside for what turned out to be thirty years.
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/twayne/aug2.html