‘Vocans temporales, faciens aeternos’: St. Augustine on Liberation from Time
In several texts Augustine speaks of the Word of God as becoming man in order to make men eternal or to free men from time. Though this theme may well be a relatively minor one in Augustine's treatment of the purpose of the Incarnation, it is one that is interesting both in itself and also, I b...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
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| Published: |
Cambridge University Press
1985
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| In: |
Traditio
Year: 1985, Volume: 41, Pages: 29-47 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | In several texts Augustine speaks of the Word of God as becoming man in order to make men eternal or to free men from time. Though this theme may well be a relatively minor one in Augustine's treatment of the purpose of the Incarnation, it is one that is interesting both in itself and also, I believe, in terms of what it reveals about Augustine's Plotinian understanding of the Christian faith. In this paper I shall first set forth the texts that I have found in which Augustine deals with this liberation of men from time by the Word. Then, after pointing out some problems with this theme, I shall try to show how it is intimately tied to several other themes in Augustine's thought that bear a decidedly Plotinian stamp, especially those of the fall of the soul, the ‘heaven of heavens,’ and the definition of time. Finally I shall argue that though Augustine's claim that the Word came as man to free man from time can be understood in a quite orthodox sense, some of the oddities surrounding this idea are quite likely due to the Plotinian conceptual framework within which the theme is articulated. |
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| ISSN: | 2166-5508 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Traditio
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S036215290000684X |