"condition") because I think he is using this word to justify his calling the flesh, that is the human
148 SAINT AUGUSTINE - SERMONS
10. Here he recited the creed, which we can reconstruct from this sermon as follows:
I believe in God the Father almighty; and in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord, who was bom of the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary; under Pontius Pilate crucified and buried, on the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven; he is seated at the right hand of the Father, from there to come to judge the living and the dead; and in the Holy Spirit; in the holy Church; in the forgiveness of sins; in the resurrection of the flesh.
11. In a week's time, before going on to have the "Prayer" handed over to them. Giving back the creed, of course, meant reciting it. Did all the catechumens have to do this one by one, or could and did they all recite it together, with the baptized faithful joining in too? If so, that is just possibly the origin of our present practice in the Latin Church of always reciting the creed at Mass on Sundays, at precisely the point where "the Mass of the catechumens" ends, and they are dismissed {lie, missa est), and the "Mass of the faithful" begins with the "prayer of the faithful"; recently restored in the reformed liturgy.
12. This series of "if then's" must not be taken as meant to state logical consequences, which clearly they do not; but as stating the actual content of that word "only" in the faith of the Church; a content set out more expressly in the Symbol of Nicea and Constantinople, which has come to be the one recited at Sunday Mass, and which had originated, it seems, as the baptismal creed of some Eastern Churches, notably the Palestinian.
13. He is skating on rather thin theological ice here, comparing the flesh, or humanity, of Christ to clothes one puts on and takes off. It could be interpreted as Nestorianism, denying the union of Christ's two natures, human and divine, in one person. But at other times he will use language that could be interpreted as the opposite error of Eutychianism, as the Monophysite heresy. And he does go on to say that it was the divine person who was crucified and buried.
14. I translate in habitu literally as "in habit" (though elsewhere I have used some word like "condition") because I think he is using this word to justify his calling the flesh, that is the human nature of Christ, a garment, which "habit" can still mean in certain contexts. Some ladies, possibly, still wear riding habits when they go riding, and monks and nuns wear religious habits.
15. A very condensed piece of theology here. We usually talk of our being bought, or redeemed, by the blood of Christ. But his shedding of his blood means his death, and his death means his dead body in the tomb. But his death would have been ineffective, had he not been raised from the dead.
16. Only, nowadays in Britain as a rule, when talking of the landed aristocracy.
17. Quo statu? I interpret this as referring to Stephen having seen the Son of man standing— though it is a rather odd way of saying it. But it is a question he was bound, by his own turn of mind and technique, to ask, although he decided here not to answer it. The most likely answer is that Christ "sits" at the Father's right hand as judge, and "stands" as advocate. Augustine does indeed go on to talk of him as advocate and judge in the next section.
18. See Wis 2:12.
19. A situation which, I presume, would have been as highly irregular in Roman law then, as it would be, doubtless, in any system of law today!
20. See Rom 8:34; Heb 7:25.
21. The trinitarian structure of the creed, expressing faith in each of the divine persons in turn, goes with its being, basically, the original baptismal formula "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." One was baptized, by triple immersion, while answering in the affir¬ mative the question, "Do you believe in God the Father ... ? And in Jesus Christ. 9 And in the Holy Spirit... ?"
22. On the European shores of the Mediterranean, especially in Italy.