Augustine's Christology | Prof. Thomas Clemmons

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4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 23 August 2022

⏱️ 52 minutes

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Summary

This lecture was given on June 15, 2022 at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. as part of The Civitas Dei Summer Fellowship: "The City of God in Modernity: Culture and Ecclesiology." For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Thomas Clemmons, a native of South Florida, is assistant professor of theology in Church History at the Catholic University of America. Dr. Clemmons joined the STRS faculty in 2016 after completing his Ph.D. in the History of Christianity from Notre Dame, where he focused on Latin Patristics, early medieval theology, and Augustine. He also holds an M.A. in Early Christianity from Notre Dame and an M.T.S. from Vanderbilt. Dr. Clemmons’s teaching and research interest focus on Latin Patristics, Augustine, particularly his thought through the Confessions and his anti-Manichaean works, Late Antiquity, especially in North Africa, and the medieval reception of Augustine.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This talk is brought to you by the Tamistic Institute. For more talks like this, visit us at
0:05.7	tamistic institute.org. Augustine's famous conversion recounted in book A to the confessions,
0:15.6	the garden, the hearing of Ptolelege, and the tears and reading of St. Paul is truly a conversion to Christ,
0:21.9	but his book nine shows it is more properly and more fully a conversion to the church.
0:28.6	Augustine had pursued his career and rhetoric to the highest levels. Through his tireless work
0:33.9	and perpetually exhibited competency, he had secured a post as the imperial reitore in Milan.
0:40.0	This means that he gave speeches in the presence of the emperor in Milan. This is, to say
0:45.6	least, a remarkable achievement. He descended the heights of success in Rome, at least for
0:51.5	someone of his status, and would be for us something of a remarkable
0:57.0	achievement of an individual going through perhaps state school all the way up to being some high political position.
1:06.0	The hope that Augustine had, as he makes explicit in his confessions, is that he would be granted a governorship by the emperor,
1:13.1	as it happened with other imperial reitors.
1:15.8	This would permanently secure his status among the elite class.
1:19.4	To this end, he dismissed his common law partner with whom he had a son,
1:23.1	who was a teenager at the time,
1:25.3	and secured a marriage into a wealthy noble family.
1:29.0	Yet when Augustine turns to embrace Christianity, he abandons these hopes entirely,
1:34.8	retiring without having gained any of the security and social advancement that had consumed
1:38.9	his entire youth, indeed his life up to this point.
1:43.2	Augustine, as many in his time, saw baptism as the end of such
1:47.1	ambitions. Augustine's baptism by Ambrose in April 387 was a clear rejection of and departure from
1:54.1	his former career path. Synical readings that Augustine could foresee his future fame are not only
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