7 What the difference is between luminaria infirmamento and lumina in caelo- and between
334 SAINT A UGUSTINE - SERMONS land sprout grass for fodder (Gn 1:11). Let the land bud forth on the very day it has become dry. That dry land could not stay long without fruit. Let us too listen to the word of God, and let our land sprout grass for fodder, that is the good works of mercy, about which Isaiah says, Break your bread to the hungry, and bring into your house the needy person without a roof (Is 58:7), and so on. So the firmament is the scripture of God; the lights in the firmament, the comprehension of the scriptures, while the lights in heaven are understanding in the scriptures.7 Do you want to reach the heavenly light? First let there be land bearing fruit, that is, let works of mercy come first; after the works of mercy, you see, comes the illumination of that light, which you desire.
NOTES
1. This time Lambot ascribes the sermon to Easter Tuesday, while Poque puts it on Easter Monday. Evidently they both consider that the fragments come from a series of sermons Augustine preached one year, during the Easter octave, on the creation narrative of Gn 1, treated allegorically. It must follow that if I am skeptical about the authenticity of the first of them, 229R, I have to be skeptical about this and the next three also.
2. Whatever he had just been talking about; probably the invisible creation of angels and souls. 3. See Gn 1:9.
4. Augustine—or his disciple "Augustinaster, Augustinarius" (Caesarius of Arles?), is careless with his language of predestination; suggesting here that the wicked are "predestined" to damnation. This is a way of talking the Church came to avoid; so that now predestination is a term only to be applied to the saints, or the elect. And this indeed is embedded in the very logic of the word, so to say. To talk about predestining people to be damned amounts to talking about predestining them to miss their destination; like sending a letter with the intention of its never reaching its destination. Those who are damned, or lost, fail to reach their proper destination, their destiny; but they can scarcely be directed to miss their destination.
So, God predestines the elect to reach their destiny, their destination—and therefore they do so. As for those who fail to reach their destiny, their destination, God knows this is going to happen, but he cannot be said directly to destine them to miss their destiny. Whether in fact there are any such, and who they may be, we do not know, and should not speculate.
I am surprised, if Poque is right about the date, to find Augustine talking about predestination in a sermon quite so early, quite so precisely, before the Pelagian controversy arose. If, however, it is not Augustine but Augustinarius, Augustinaster," there is nothing surprising about it—but it was preached (or written) many decades later.
5. Reading quae instead of quia, which would give the doubtful sense: only God knows that the dry land desires.
6. Moses, the writer, as was universally assumed, of Genesis.
7 What the difference is between luminaria infirmamento and lumina in caeloand between intelligentia scripturarum and intellects in scripturis, who can say? Augustine was quite capable as we have sometimes seen, of a thumping tautology; but not, I think, of one so crude and unnecessaW as this. I have no difficulty in opining this fragment to be as inauthentic as the previous one
SERMON 229T
FRAGMENT OF A SERMON PREACHED DURING THE EASTER OCTAVE
Date: 400-4101
The allegorical interpretation of the lights in the firmament
The evangelists are the lights, the scripture of God the firmament. Though it's the gospel, receiving its testimonials from the law and the prophets, that is the lights in the firmament of heaven. Now the little ones in the Church are not yet able to take solid food, but are content with milk, and this is signified by the lesser light and the stars. And that's why the greater light for authority over the day, the lesser light for authority over the night (Gn 1:16; Ps 136:8-9). As long as human beings are flesh-bound, and unable to contemplate that wisdom through which all things were made, they are in the night. But he did not abandon the night; he granted them faith.
After all, God did not abandon the night; he gave it its own lights. The day requires the sun, the sun is enough for it; the moon and the stars have been given to the night, they illuminate it; and when the moon is not shining on the earth, the light in the atmosphere comes from the stars. This makes it possible for us to go outside at night and see the trees; and if we can't distinguish them, at least we can see some sort of starlight. And thus, when there are thick clouds, even the starlight is removed, and so a person is as invisible to himself under the open sky as he is in his own bedroom.
So then the night too has its own sort of light. Let's see what the apostle says among those endowments, those spiritual gifts: To each is given the manifesta¬ tion of the Spirit for a useful purpose. How is it given? To one is given through the Spirit a word of wisdom, to another a word of knowledge (1 Cor 12:7-8). If you can understand the difference between a word of wisdom and a word of knowledge, you can understand the difference between the greater light and the lesser light. Let us listen to a word of wisdom: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; this was in the beginning, and so on (Jn 1:1-2). Those who understand are day, the sun is shining on them; but unless they had started from night, they wouldn't have come to the light;
There was darkness over the deep, and God said, Let there be light (Gn 1:2.3).
Let none of us say that we began from light; we are all justified, you see,