Maurist version of Sermon 217. They provide a shorter ending, which we have already seen in
182 SAINT A UGUSTINE - SERMONS
NOTES
1. This sermon is really out of place here. In the Maurist edition it is much shorter, but has an ending which we have already seen in this edition as part of Sermon 211 A; and it is that ending that persuaded the Maurists that Sermon 217 is a Lenten sermon. Without it, there is no reason at all to suppose that. One scholar puts it at the end of paschal time, others put it around Christmas. The most appropriate place for it would be among the sermons on the gospel of John.
2. From about this point the Maurist edition has a different text for the rest of section 1, which in fact provides the last two sentences of our section 4. Then Maurist section 2 becomes our section 5.
3. See Jn 10:30; one thing, unum in the neuter, not unus in the masculine. That is why he says "because of their one substance." He may have felt that to leave it at that would leave God sounding too impersonal, a divine thing or substance; so he goes on to say that it means the same as unus Deus, one God, in the masculine gender. What he cannot say, of course, in making God more personal, is that Father and Son are one person.
4. See Jn 1:3. 5. Arianism.
6. See 2 Cor 6:16; 1 Cor 3:16.
7. Actually built by Herod the Great, as Augustine knew perfectly well—at least I suppose he did. He certainly knew that the temple built by Solomon had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar in 589 BC.
8. In the first text Paul says "your bodies," in the plural; but in the second "your body," in the singular, though he is still addressing the Corinthians in the plural—he says "the body of you all," not "thy body." This must be because he has just started to warn them against fornication; so he is stressing that each of them must remember that his own body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.
9. With these last two sentences the Maurists have joined us again. 10. Well, in the sermon as it is in this text, we haven't. Though in the very first sentence Augustine did tell us how lucky we are that Christ was prepared to pray for us, being himself the one who gives us what he prays for on our behalf. But in this text that opening is now almost immediately sidetracked by the long reflection on Jn 17:3, which is not a prayer of Christ's, but a statement. All this is missing from the Maurist text, which is thus, at least in this respect, the more coherent.
11. Non erit tectum, sed protectio.
12. This is an interpretation based solely on the word "with," apud in the Latin: the Word with God is the fountain of life with the Lord.
13. See Jn 14:2-3. 14. See Lk 14:17. % 15. On the analogy of God from God, light from light. Here we finally part company with the Maurist version of Sermon 217. They provide a shorter ending, which we have already seen in Sermon 211A. See note 1 above.
16. Because it would mean he begot something of a different nature from himself—as if human parents were to produce some non-human offspring.