Living Letters of the Law. Jeremy Cohen

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СКАЧАТЬ morning,” to specific developments within each historical period. When he reached the primordial Tuesday Augustine wrote:

      It was therefore morning from the time of Abraham, and a third age like adolescence came to pass; and it is aptly compared to the third day, on which the land was separated from the waters…. For through Abraham the people of God was separated from the deception of the nations and the waves of this world…. Worshipping the one God, this people received the holy scriptures and prophets, like a land irrigated so that it might bear useful fruits…. The evening of this age was in the sins of the people, in which they neglected the divine commandments, up to the evil of the terrible king Saul.

      Then in the morning was the kingdom of David…. It is aptly compared to the fourth day, on which the astral bodies were fashioned in the sky. For what more clearly signifies the glory of a kingdom than the excellence of the sun…? The evening of this age, so to speak, was in the sins of the kings, for which that people deserved captivity and slavery.

      In the morning there was the migration to Babylonia…. This age extended to the advent of our lord Jesus Christ; it is the fifth age, that is, the decline from youth to old age…. And so, for the people of the Jews that age was, in fact, one of decline and destruction…. Afterwards those people began to live among the nations, as if in the sea, and, like the birds that fly, to have an uncertain, unstable dwelling…. God blessed those creatures, saying “Be fertile and increase…,” inasmuch as the Jewish people, from the time that it was dispersed among the nations, in fact increased significantly. The evening of this day—that is, of this age—was, so to speak, the multiplication of sins among the people of the Jews, since they were blinded so seriously that they could not even recognize the lord Jesus Christ.¹

      Augustine's review of biblical history from Abraham to Jesus may appear to add little, if anything at all, to standard patristic doctrine concerning the Jews. Yet this early Augustinian text, whose subsequent influence in medieval historiography surpassed its importance even for Augustine himself,² already demonstrates how various other issues of pressing concern led Augustine to dwell upon' the Jews and Judaism. Here the characterization of the Jews somehow exemplifies his approach to biblical exegesis—in this case allegory, and the allegorical interpretation of Genesis in particular. Moreover, inasmuch as the Jews dominate much of the divine plan for human history, they assume significance in the exposition of Augustine's scheme of salvation history, a connection to which Augustine returned soon thereafter in his De vera religione (On the True Religion, 389–391). Here he reviewed the six or seven proverbial ages in the life of a human being as they apply both to the “old,” exterior or earthly man, and to the “new,” inward or heavenly man, a contrast that similarly bears on the totality of human history. Adumbrating his later theory of the two cities, Augustine thus proposed that

      the entire human race, whose life extends from Adam to the end of this world, is—much like the life of a single person—administered under the laws of divine providence, so that it appears divided into two categories. In one of these is the mass of impious people bearing the image of the earthly man from the beginning of the world until the end; in the other is a class of people dedicated to the one God, but which from Adam until John the Baptist led the life of the earthly man while subject to a measure of righteousness [servili quadam iustitia]. Its history is called the Old Testament, which, while appearing to promise an earthly kingdom, is in its entirety nothing other than the image of the new people and the New Testament, promising a heavenly kingdom.³

      Augustine's allegory of the six ages assumes both microcosmic and macrocosmic proportions, reflecting the experience of the individual and that of society at large. The Jews and their religion are again, in pre-Christian times, at center stage; here, in the De vera religione, they also bridge the chasm between the two species of human existence. Their Old Testament pertains to the life of earthly man, proffering the rewards of an earthly kingdom. Yet somehow this covenant of the Jews entails “a measure of righteousness,” complicating the evaluation of its character. If correctly interpreted, it embodies the image of the new man and the New Testament. Such interconnections between exegesis, philosophy of history, and the Jews will prove critical to an appreciation of Augustine's place in our story.

      AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY

      During the final decade of the fourth century, Augustine's ideas and career matured considerably. His polemic against the Manicheans continued to develop, with additional subtlety and with sustained vigor. His vehement opposition to the Donatists enhanced his leadership role in the African church and contributed to his notion of the coercive role of the state in a properly ordered Christian society. And his understanding of human will and divine grace in the process of an individual's salvation changed dramatically—a transformation we shall consider again below. The thirty-three books of the Contra Faustum (Against Faustus, 397–398) testify to much of this development and, not surprisingly, offer insight into the molding of Augustine's perspective on Jews and Judaism.

      The Contra Faustum reiterates both the fundamental importance of the figurative interpretation of Scripture and, by way of example, the correspondence between the days of creation and the ages of world history;⁴ once again, exegesis and philosophy of history emerge as interdependent. Yet the persistent attacks of the dualist Faustus upon the Old Testament demanded that Augustine clarify his evaluation of the old law and of the people of the book with greater precision. He thus affirmed the accuracy and the authority of the books of Hebrew Scripture. He posited a perfect concord between the two testaments, inasmuch as everything in the Old Testament instructs concerning the New. “All that Moses wrote is of Christ—that is, it pertains completely to Christ—whether insofar as it foretells of him in figures of objects, deeds, and speech, or insofar as it extols his grace and glory.”⁵ Such prefiguration by word and event lies at the heart of the biblical typology with which Augustine responded to the Manichean polemic. All of the contents of the Old Testament were historically true (in the case of narrative) and/or valid (in the case of prophecy and precepts), and this accuracy underlay the truth of their prefigurative significance. At great length did Augustine therefore defend the stories and commandments of the Old Testament, seeking to demonstrate both their intrinsic coherence and their corresponding Christological value. To be sure, Augustine hardly deviated from accepted Pauline and patristic doctrine on the relative authority of the two covenants. Teachings of the Old Testament lost their worth as signifiers upon the inauguration of the New. The “true bride of Christ…understands what constitutes the difference between letter and spirit, which two terms are otherwise called law and grace; and, serving God no longer in the antiquity of the letter but in the novelty of the spirit [she] is no longer under the law but under grace.”⁶ Because Jesus fulfilled the law, Christians observe its precepts more thoroughly in their spiritual sense, while the Jews, over the course of time, have in fact neglected their literal observance—and still refuse to believe in Jesus and his church. Nevertheless, even in the wake of the crucifixion the Old Testament has not lost its value and function altogether. It continues to offer testimony to the truth of Christian history and theology.

      What, then, of the Jews, those who continue to accept the Old Testament and persist in rejecting the New? How does their survival comport with the divine plan for human history, now that the symbolic, typological value of Judaism has outlived its necessity? Augustine's reply, bound to assert the triumph of the church over the synagogue and yet to subvert the Manichean rejection of biblical history, included strands of the Augustinian doctrine of Jewish witness so essential to the present inquiry. First, following established Christian tradition, Augustine perceived in Cain a type of the Jews and in Abel a figure of Jesus. Punished with an existence of exile and subjugation for the murder of their brother, the Cain-like Jews consequently bear a God-given mark of shame that ensures their miserable survival:

      Now behold, who cannot see, who cannot recognize how, throughout the world, wherever that people has been scattered, it wails in sorrow for its lost kingdom and trembles in fear of the innumerable Christian peoples…? The nation of impious, carnal Jews will not die a bodily death. СКАЧАТЬ