![]() It was, therefore, of fundamental importance not only for Augustine's decision of faith it was and is the basis for the faith decision of the Church as a whole.īut is all this true? Is it also demonstrable and tenable still today? From the viewpoint of historical-critical exegesis, it seems - at first glance, in any case - that exactly the opposite is true. Through the transparency of Israel's long, slow historical journey, that reading of Israel's Bible identified Christ, the Word, eternal Wisdom. It revealed instead a Wisdom addressed to all and came from God. What was overcome was not only the exterior obstacle of an unsatisfactory literary form of the Old Latin Bible, but above all the interior obstacle of a book that was no longer just a document of the religious history of a particular people, with all its strayings and mistakes. Augustine was unable to convert to the Christianity of the Catholic Church until he had learned, through Ambrose, an interpretation of the Old Testament that made transparent the relationship of Israel's Bible to Christ and thus revealed that Wisdom for which he searched. The great promise of the Manicheans proved illusory, but the problem remained unresolved for all that. Those people promised him a Christianity of pure and simple reason, a Christianity in which Christ was the great illuminator, leading human beings to true self-knowledge. In the course of his search, he encountered certain people who proclaimed a new spiritual Christianity, one which understood the Old Testament as spiritually deficient and repugnant a Christianity in which Christ had no need of the witness of the Hebrew prophets. So he went from Cicero to the Bible and experienced a terrible disappointment: in the exacting legal prescriptions of the Old Testament, in its complex and, at times, brutal narratives, he failed to find that Wisdom towards which he wanted to travel. For the young African who, as a child, had received the salt that made him a catechumen, it was clear that conversion to God entailed attachment to Christ apart from Christ, he could not truly find God. How ardent I was, O my God, to let go of the earthly and take wing back to you” ( Conf. I began to pick myself up to return to you. Hortensius, since lost - brought about a profound transformation which he himself described later on as follows: “Towards you, O Lord, it directed my prayers. His reading of one of the works of Cicero In 373, the 19 year old Augustine already had his first decisive experience of conversion. That it was far from being a theoretical problem only is evident from dipping, so to speak, into the spiritual journey of one of the greatest teachers of Christendom, Saint Augustine of Hippo. The internal unity of the Church's Bible, which comprises the Old and New Testaments, was a central theme in the theology of the Church Fathers. The Jews in the Pauline Letters and other New Testament Writingsġ. The Gospel according to Luke and the Acts of the ApostlesĬ. Jews in the Gospels and Acts of the Apostlesģ. The first third of the first century A.D. Different viewpoints within post-exilic Judaismġ. The Human Person: Greatness and WretchednessĪ. Contribution of Jewish reading of the BibleĢ. The unity of God's Plan and the Idea of Fulfilmentħ. Re-reading the Old Testament in the light of Christĥ. Affirmation of a reciprocal relationshipĢ. Christian Understanding of the relationships between the Old and New Testamentsġ. Fundamental themes in the Jewish Scriptures and their reception into faith in ChristĪ. Important Allusions to the Old TestamentĮ. Exegesis at Qumran and in the New TestamentĤ. Jewish Exegetical Methods employed in the New TestamentĢ. Relationships between the two perspectivesĭ. Scripture and Tradition in Early Christianityģ. Scripture and Tradition in the Old Testament and JudaismĢ. ![]() Scripture and Oral Tradition in Judaism and Christianityġ. The New Testament attests conformity to the Jewish Scripturesġ. Explicit recourse to the authority of the Jewish Scripturesī. The New Testament recognizes the authority of the Sacred Scripture of the Jewish peopleĢ. The Sacred Scriptures of the Jewish people are a fundamental part of the Christian BibleĪ. The Jewish People and their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible
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