spiritual by nature.
158 SAINT AUGUSTINE - SERMONS
However, one scholar, Verbraken, dates the sermon to a little over 20 years later. Though I do not have access to his argument, I think I can see at least one reason why he does so. In Sermon 213, note 13,1 remarked that Augustine was skating on rather thin theological ice in what he was saying about the humanity of Jesus, comparing it to a tunic. Here on the contrary, in section 7, he is much more theologically sure-footed, more exact. Now I do not think it can be maintained that Augustine's theology grew more careless the older he got. I think we can take it as a kind of rule that a better theological statement from him, at least in christology, is a later theological statement.
Is it then possible to reconcile these two views? I do not know how Verbraken deals with that opening sentence of the sermon; but I think reconciliation is possible, and the clue lies, I suggest, in the paragraph of stage directions, so to say, at the end of section 1. This clearly indicates that Augustine wrote the sermon—or dictated it beforehand—rather than preaching it extempore, which became his usual practice in later life; or at the very least it indicates that he had it written down, for future use, after preaching it. That being so, he may have decided, some time after 412, to revise it and perhaps preach it again, in a way that he hardly ever did with most of his sermons; though when he wrote his Revisions at the end of his life, he clearly hoped he would be able to do so.
2. In the spring of 391 he was a few months over 36.
3. Nearly all those he was addressing would have been catechumens for perhaps two or three years, or more, and would have heard many sermons and scripture readings.
4. In a week's time, at the "giving back" of the creed.
5. He is briefly warning them against the Manichees, who denied that the good God and Father of Jesus Christ created matter. He goes on to say, without explaining, that God did not make sin; but that is because sin, and evil in general, is not "a nature," but just "a lack," a kind of moral black hole.
6. The four elements of ancient physics and chemistry, fire, air, water and earth.
7. The human being is seen as the main, if not the only central link, being both material and spiritual by nature.
8. He will discuss the whole topic of creation out of nothing in his book The Literal Meaning of Genesis.
9. A very questionable statement on the face of it, one he failed to revise, if my theory about the sermon, offered in note 1, is correct. But he goes on to explain himself in section 4, more or less as meaning that the Almighty cannot be anything he does not wish to be, and specifies such things as being unjust. The statement here still remains questionable.
10. That is, their human nature; not "good nature" in the sense in which we call some people good-natured.
11. All sins are against nature; he is not thinking of what is commonly called unnatural vice.
12. This is the right way of putting what he expressed much more dubiously in section 3. See note 9 above.
13. There seems to be a remote allusion here to Is'58:8: Who will declare his generation? in Augustine's version.
14. Sine ullo sexu: I translate ullo by "either," because if I put "without any sex," it would convey the sense of "without any sexual act." But sexus is never used in that sense; it means the male or female sex. In the first, eternal birth of the Son neither sex was involved—God the Father not being of the male sex; in the second birth in time of the Word made flesh, only the female sex.
15. See Jn 14:28.
16. The text continues: "because Son of God, that's why the Word made flesh." But this is quite out of context; he is explaining the words of the creed, and the phrase "the Word made flesh" does not occur in this article of the creed. I reject the sentence as the gloss of an over-enthusiastic and not over-bright owner or reader of a manuscript.
17. See Rom 10:10.
18. See Mk 14:34.
19. See Acts 7:51.
20. See Sermon 213, note 16. To the next example I can think of no equivalent in modem English. The word "reside," of course, comes from the Latin resideo, literally "I sit back."