Tractates on the Gospel of John (continued)
14 ST. AUGUSTINE us the Holy Spirit to strengthen and guide us. He is the historical Jesus who brought us revelation, salvation, spiritual reformation, and love. The Incarnation of the Word is the basis of the genuine Christian life; Word and man, two natures, one person, the head who joins his members to himself and to his Father as adopted children, the bridegroom who through his bride, the Church, provides the sacramental means and the unity whereby he shepherds his flock. He is God omnipotent who through love for us became man, an act of humility presented to us again and again as a model for our imitation as disciples of Jesus. He must ever be the focus of hfe and Augustine never allowed those people of God who are his episcopal responsibility to lose this vision.
Christological and Trinitarian Heresies
(15) But it was not only John's Gospel that demanded this theological attention; Arianism and other Christological heresies, and the now longstanding turmoil which they provoked in the Church, indeed in the Roman world, called Augustine to give deep thought to these questions. His pastoral orientation, probably even more than his theologial interests,^^ caused him, in fact, to be exceedingly anxious about heresies, particularly those to which his congregation was exposed and by which its faith was endangered. Heresy was always a major motivation leading the Fathers to ponder and develop the teachings of the Christian church.^^ These sermons clearly illustrate that process of development and that motivation at work in Augustine's thought.
(16) Manichaeism was not strictly a Christian heresy but another religion; yet its North African variant, showing the typical Manichaean syncretism, especially assimilated certain Christian ideas and can be called the most "Christian"
48. "Augustin polemiste est inseperable d'Augustin pasteur" A. Mandouze, Saint Augustin: L'aventure de la raison et de la grace (Paris, 1968), 333.
49. See M. Wiles, The Making of Christian Doctrine (Cambridge, 1967), 1819, 28-35.