Augustine on Spirit and Letter

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:46 pm by Peter Leithart

Augustine on Spirit and Letter 2017-09-06T22:46:41+06:00 Peter Leithart

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Some notes on Augustine?s Treatise on the Spirit and the Letter .

1) Augustine treats ?letter?Ein 2 Corinthians as a reference to the law itself, which kills. The law kills, however, in the absence of the Spirit: ?the letter of the law, which teaches us not to commit sin, kills, if the life-giving spirit be absent, forasmuch as it causes sin to be known rather than avoided, and therefore to be increased rather than diminished, because to an evil concupiscence there is now added the transgression of the law?E(5.8). Augustine thus recognizes that Rom 7 is about the effect of the law among those who are without the Spirit, and also hints that the ?death?Ethat the letter brings is a matter of increasing sin. Later, Augustine writes that the letter kills ?by increasing concupiscence, and aggravating sinfulness by transgression?E(14.25).

2) Augustine is aware of the Jewish sin of national pride ?Eeven though, to my knowledge, he never interacted directly with James DG Dunn. Paul?s intent in explaining the progress of sin throughout the human race is partly to prevent the Jews from ?extol[ling] themselves at the expense of the other peoples on account of their having received the law.?E The danger comes about because men will perversely use abundance of grace as an occasion for sin, especially the sin of pride. Paul emphasizes that sin abounds where the law comes in order to check Jewish national pride (6.9). Elsewhere he adds that a true Jew would ?boast of God in the way which grace demands?Ebut instead they boasted ?as if they alone had deserved to receive His law?Eand boasted also of their performance of the law: ?they thought they were fulfilling the law of God by their righteousness, when they were rather breakers of it all the while.?E As a result, Israel came under wrath, and sin abounded ?committed as it was by them who knew the law.?EThe Jewish failure to keep the law was, he argues, a matter of motivation: Apart from the Spirit, the Jews obeyed out of servile fear ?not from love of righteousness,?Eand thus ?such doers of the law were held rather guilty of that which God knew they would have preferred to commit, if only it had been possible with impunity?E(8.13).

3) Augustine denies that the law that does not justify is limited to ?precepts, under the figure of ancient sacraments, and among them that circumcision of the flesh itself, which infants were commanded to receive on the eighth day after birth.?E That is, Paul is not simply talking about ?boundary markers.?E Augustine?s evidence is that Paul says that the law brings the knowledge of sin, and therefore Paul has in view the moral law. The fact that Paul explicitly brings up the command against coveting shows explicitly that he has the moral law in view (8.14).

4) Luther rested a great deal on Augustine?s claim that ?righteousness of God?Erefers not to the righteousness ?by which He is Himself righteous?Ebut rather to the righteousness ?with which He endows man when He justifies the ungodly.?E Augustine goes on to describe this gift of righteousness in terms of the help of the Spirit: ?The law, indeed, by issuing commands and threats, and by justifying no man, sufficiently shows that it is by God?s gift, through the help of the Spirit, that a man if justified.?E Again, ?That righteousness of God . . . is without the law, which God by the Spirit of grace bestows on the believer without the help of the law, – that is, when not helped by the law.?E The law shows man his weakness, so that ?by faith he may flee for refuge to His mercy, and be healed?E(9.15). The righteousness that Augustine is speaking about is from God, a gift of sheer grace, but it is not an ?alien?Eor ?imputed?Erighteousness in the sense that the Reformers understood it. This is consistent with Augustine normal usage of ?justify,?Ewhich involves the grace of the Spirit enabling righteous behavior rather than a declaration of righteous standing: He intends ?to demonstrate, so far as we are able, that we are assisted by divine grace towards the achievement of righteousness, – not merely because God has given us a law full of good and holy precepts, but because our very will without which we cannot do any good things, is assisted and elevated by the importation of the Spirit of grace, without which help mere teaching is ?the letter that killeth,?Eforasmuch as it rather holds them guilty of transgression, than justifies the ungodly.?E Or this: ?a man is not justified by the precepts of a holy life, but by faith in Jesus Christ, – in a word, not by the law of works, but by the law of faith; not by the letter, but by the spirit; not by the merits of deeds, but by free grace?E(13.22), which puts ?spirit ?EHoly Spirit?Ein line with the grace and faith of justification.

5) EP Sanders famously claimed that Paul?s complaint about Judaism was that it wasn?t Christianity; the only complaint that Paul had about his ancestral faith was that it had been superceded by the coming of Jesus. Intriguingly, Augustine seems to be dealing with precisely this argument. He sets out to refute the idea that ?the law of works lay in Judaism, and the law of faith in Christianity; forasmuch as circumcision and the other works prescribed by the law are just those which the Christian system no longer retains.?E He claims that this is not how Paul makes the distinction between faith and works, and claims that it is an error he has ?for some time been endeavouring to expose.?E He goes on to present the argument that the command against coveting is included within the ?law of works,?Eand thus the law of works cannot be confined to ?boundary markers.?E The law ?thou shalt not covet?Eis ?also called the law of works.?E He presents this (obscure) concluding argument: ?it by no means follows that, because it [presumably, the church ?EPJL] retains not the ?works?Eof the ancient sacraments, – even circumcision and the other ceremonies, – it therefore has no ?works?Ein its own sacraments, which are adapted to the present age; unless, indeed, the question was about sacramental works, when mention was made of the law, just because by it is the knowledge of sin, and therefore nobody is justified by it, so that it is not by it that boasting is excluded, but by the law of faith, whereby the just man lives?E(13.21). I don?t follow this, but at least it appears to mean that Augustine is not satisfied with a purely ?eschatological?Eexplanation of the failure of the old covenant ?Ethe old covenant and its sacraments, in short, is not faulted simply because it is old. There is some other flaw, namely, that it could not justify even while it lasted. This is clearer in the following paragraph: Paul sometimes uses ?law?Eto refer to ?circumcision and other similar legal observances, which are now rejected as shadows of a future substance,?Ebut when Paul claims that the law does not justify, he has in view something broader: ?the law, by which he says no man is justified, lies not merely in those sacramental institutions which contained promissory figures, but also in those works by which whatsoever has done them live holily.?E The law that was written on tablets of stone, which is Paul?s first reference in the phrase ?letter that kills,?Ewas the Decalogue, which contained nothing about circumcision and other sacraments of the old law. Both in Romans 7 and in 2 Corinthians, Paul clearly has the moral law in view when he says that the law kills. It is not only those rules that Christians no longer observe that kill, but even those rules that Christians do strive to obey (14.23).

It appears that Augustine is here refuting a Pelagian argument; the Pelagians apparently said that ?no man is justified by works of Torah?Eas meaning ?no man is justified under the old covenant, but under the new we are capable of doing the works required through our unassisted free will.?E If this is indeed the Pelagian interpretation, then in a strict sense Sanders?Eview of Paul is Pelagian.

6) For Augustine, the law ultimately functions as a law of prayer. It
admonishes us about what to do, but does not grant the power to do it. But by telling us what we ought to do, it teaches us ?what to ask for?E(13.22).

7) Augustine recognizes the link between Sinai and Pentecost: At Sinai, the finger of God, which is the Holy Spirit, wrote on tablets of hearts; at Pentecost, the same Spirit wrote on tablets of human hearts (16.28). Pentecost is for the purpose of justification: At Sinai, ?the law was given outwardly, so that the unrighteous might be terrified,?Ewhile at Pentecost ?it was given inwardly, so that they might be justified?E(17.29). Again, ?the one is written without man, that it may alarm him from without; the other within man himself, that it may justify him from within?E(17.30). Here as elsewhere throughout Augustine, the Spirit is the specific agent of justification: The new covenant is the ministration of the Spirit and the ministration of righteousness because ?through the Spirit we work righteousness, and are delivered from the condemnation due to transgression?E(18.31). The goal and purpose of the new covenant, then, is to produce righteous conduct among the people of God: ?grace was given, in order that the law might be fulfilled?E(19.34), and while the old covenant became old by the ?offence of the old man,?Ethe new is new ?because of the newness of the spirit, which heals the fault of the old?E(20.35).

8) Throughout his discussion of the transition from Old to New, Augustine describes it as a move from external exhortations and commands and warnings to the internal law written on the heart. This is certainly true in important senses, but one wonders (OK, I wonder) if this contrast becomes exaggerated in Augustine, and through him in the Western theological tradition generally, because of the polemical context of the Pelagian controversy. Elsewhere, Augustine seems much happier to say that the transition from Old to New is a transition in sacraments and rites. These two perspectives are not incompatible at all, but a more radical internalizing move seems to arise in the anti-Pelagian treatises.

9) Anticipating recent NT scholarship (Wright, Gathercole), Augustine says that the ?Gentiles who do the law written on their hearts?Ein Romans 2 are believers who are in the new covenant: ?such Gentiles as have the law written in their hearts belong to the gospel, since to them, on their believing, it is the power of God until salvation?E(26.43-44). That the Gentiles do this ?by nature?Eis no refutation of this position, Augustine says, for Paul is talking about nature that has been restored by grace (27.47). I prefer the recent view that the phrase ?by nature?Emodifies Gentiles rather than their activities; that is, ?Gentiles by nature?Ekeep the law because it is written on their hearts by the Spirit.

10) How are the ?doers of the law justified?E(Rom 2)? Augustine explains that ?they are not otherwise doers of the law, unless they be justified, so that justification does not subsequently accrue to them as doers of the law, but justification precedes them as doers of the law?E(26.45). The phrase ?being justified?Esimply means ?being made righteous ?Eby Him, of course, who justifies the ungodly man, that he may become a godly one instead?E(26.45). He does, however, recognize the possibility that ?justified?Ehere is used in a declarative sense: ?They shall be deemed, or reckoned as just, as it is predicated of a certain man in the Gospel, ?But he, willing to justify himself,?E?Emeaning that he wished to be thought and accounted just?E(26.45).

11) Augustine directly connects resurrection and justification: ?As far as he is saved, so far is he righteous. For by this faith we believe that God will raise even us from the dead, – even now in the spirit, that we may in this present world live soberly, righteously, and godly in the renewal of the Spirit, who precedes it by a resurrection which is appropriate to Himself, – that is, by justification?E(29.51).

12) Augustine speaks of justification and love together, but on a particular sense. The Old Law terrified with its threats, and was able to produce a kind of obedience through that process. But the kind of obedience that pleases God is one that arises from a love for God, and this love is a gift that is poured out in our hearts by the Spirit. And the Spirit is ?procured?Eby faith (32.56). Thus, the ordo appears to be: Sinners receive the Spirit by faith (by asking in faith); this Spirit is the love of God and also works God?s righteousness in us; righteousness motivated by the Spirit who is Love is acceptable to God.

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