The Latin Fathers and the Augustine Question

The Latin West of the golden age belongs to the common patristic inheritance of Orthodoxy: Hilary of Poitiers, the “Athanasius of the West”; Ambrose of Milan, bishop and hymnographer; Jerome, the irascible genius of the Vulgate — a Father with a temper, treated honestly; and Augustine of Hippo, whose towering Western authority met a thinner, later, and still-contested Eastern reception. This file surveys the three and summarizes the Augustine question with both intra-Orthodox positions named, deferring all figures with collections.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The West Within the Inheritance

Before the Schism there is no “Western theology” over against the East; there are Latin Fathers of the one Church, and the Orthodox calendar keeps them — Hilary, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Leo, Gregory the Dialogist (see the collections linked below; on the pre-Schism West as Orthodox inheritance, Ware, The Orthodox Church, London: Penguin, 1993, ch. 1; and The Great Schism). The fourth- and fifth-century Latins were consciously junior partners in a Greek-led dogmatics — Hilary and Ambrose imported Nicene and Cappadocian theology westward — while contributing what became the West’s own patrimony: legal precision, moral psychology, hymnody, and the Bible in Latin (Quasten, Patrology, vol. 4: The Golden Age of Latin Patristic Literature, ed. Di Berardino, Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1986, covering all four figures).

Hilary: The Athanasius of the West

Hilary (c. 315–367), bishop of Poitiers, earned his epithet by symmetry: as Athanasius suffered for Nicaea in the East, Hilary was exiled by Constantius II to Phrygia (356–360) for refusing to condemn him — and used the exile to learn Greek theology at the source, returning as the West’s chief anti-Arian teacher (Jerome ranks him among the four Latin doctors; Quasten, Patrology, vol. 4, on the life). His twelve books On the Trinity are the first great Latin dogmatics of the Nicene faith, mediating Eastern categories in a Latin idiom, and his On the Synods patiently explained to suspicious Westerners that many Eastern “Homoiousians” intended the Nicene faith without the Nicene word — an early masterpiece of theological diplomacy across a terminological divide (Hilary, De Trinitate; De Synodis; trans. NPNF II/9). The Orthodox Church commemorates him on 13/14 January. Full treatment: St. Hilary of Poitiers.

Ambrose: The Bishop as Father of the City

Ambrose (c. 339–397) was governor of Aemilia-Liguria, not yet baptized, when the Milanese crowd acclaimed him bishop in 374; within a decade he was the most consequential churchman in the West — facing down the empress Justina over the basilicas (385–386), securing the removal of the Altar of Victory, and imposing public penance on the emperor Theodosius after the massacre of Thessalonica (390): the classic precedent that the emperor is “within the Church, not above it” (Ambrose, Ep. 51 to Theodosius; the basilica conflict in Ep. 75–76 and Sermo contra Auxentium; trans. NPNF II/10; McLynn, Ambrose of Milan, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). As a theologian he transmitted Basil eastward-to-westward (his Hexaemeron reworks Basil’s), taught the sacraments to the newly baptized (De Mysteriis; De Sacramentis), founded Latin hymnody whose meters the West still sings, and baptized Augustine at Pascha 387 (Augustine, Confessions IX.6.14; Quasten, Patrology, vol. 4). His pastoral counsel on local fasting custom — follow the practice of the church where you are, as he told Monica via Augustine: in Milan he did not fast Saturday, in Rome he did — became the proverb “when in Rome” and a standing patristic warrant for legitimate liturgical diversity (Augustine, Ep. 54.2.3 to Januarius, reporting Ambrose’s advice; trans. NPNF I/1). Full treatment: St. Ambrose of Milan.

Jerome: A Father with a Temper

Jerome (c. 347–420) is the honest test of the maxim that holiness of life is a criterion “usually” sealed by sanctity of temperament — for Jerome’s temperament was a public hazard, and the Church canonized him anyway. Born at Stridon, educated in Rome, ascetic in the Syrian desert, secretary to Pope Damasus (who commissioned the revision of the Latin Gospels in 382), he settled from 386 in Bethlehem, where over two decades he translated the Old Testament directly from the Hebrew — against loud protest, including Augustine’s, in defense of the Septuagint’s ecclesiastical authority — producing the version posterity called the Vulgate (Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies, London: Duckworth, 1975; the Augustine–Jerome correspondence: Augustine, Epp. 28, 71, 82, with Jerome’s replies; trans. NPNF I/1). He was the greatest Christian Hebraist before the Reformation, the erudite of the age (De viris illustribus, the first patrology; commentaries across the prophets and Paul; the translation and continuation of Eusebius’ Chronicle) — and a quarreler of legendary virulence: against Jovinian with such excess that friends withdrew the book from circulation, against Vigilantius (“Dormitantius,” he sneered), against John of Jerusalem, and most sadly against his old friend Rufinus, when the Origenist controversy (393 onward) turned the two former fellow-admirers of Origen into enemies pamphleteering across the Adriatic — Jerome repudiating Origen’s doctrine while defending his own continued use of Origen’s scholarship (Kelly, Jerome, 1975, chs. on the controversies; Jerome, Apology against Rufinus; trans. NPNF II/3). His own conscience knew the diagnosis: the famous dream in which the Judge said “You are a Ciceronian, not a Christian” (Ciceronianus es, non Christianus) he reports himself (Jerome, Ep. 22.30 to Eustochium; trans. NPNF II/6).

The Orthodox reception is serene about all this: the East commemorates “Blessed Jerome” on 15 June, values the Hebraist and the ascetic teacher of virgins, and has never needed him to be even-tempered — the criterion of holiness regards repentance and ascesis, not amiability, and Jerome’s late years of penance, poverty, and labor in the cave by the Nativity grotto are the substance of his sanctity (Kelly, Jerome, 1975, final chapters; on the Orthodox commemoration, the Synaxarion for 15 June). He has no collection in this repository; this survey is his fullest treatment here.

The Augustine Question

Augustine of Hippo (354–430) has a full collection (St. Augustine of Hippo), where his life, his theology, and his Orthodox reception are treated at length; here the contested Eastern reception is compressed to its fairest short form.

The facts first. Augustine was barely read in the Byzantine East — little of him was translated into Greek before Maximus Planudes’ version of the De Trinitate (13th c.) — yet his conciliar standing is unambiguous: the Fifth Ecumenical Council names him among the Fathers “whose writings we follow in every way” (Constantinople II 553; Price, The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 553, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009, vol. 1), and the Orthodox calendar commemorates him on 15 June. At the same time, specific Augustinian doctrines — the Filioque as he speculatively framed it, original sin as inherited guilt, double predestination as his late anti-Pelagian logic pressed it, created grace as later Latin theology systematized him — were never received by the Orthodox East, and several were formally rejected in the later confrontation with Rome (on the doctrinal divergences, Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, New York: Fordham University Press, 1974; see the Filioque article).

The intra-Orthodox dispute is over how to hold these facts together, and per the repository’s method both positions are stated without adjudication (METHODOLOGY §4.2). The critical position, associated above all with John Romanides and his school, reads Augustine as the fountainhead of the West’s deviations — a sincere but philosophically captive theologian whose errors on grace, sin, and the Trinity made the Schism intellectually possible; on this reading he is at most a “blessed” writer whose authority is sharply localized (Romanides, The Ancestral Sin, Russian original 1957; trans. Zephyr, 2002; his framing pervades his Franks, Romans, Feudalism, and Doctrine, Brookline: Holy Cross, 1981). The receiving position answers that the Church has in fact numbered Augustine among her Fathers — conciliarly, liturgically, and in the witness of later saints — while never receiving his system entire; that erring on points does not unmake a Father (no more for Augustine than for Gregory of Nyssa); and that treating him as the villain of church history is itself an un-patristic anachronism. This case was made influentially for English-speaking Orthodoxy by Seraphim Rose (The Place of Blessed Augustine in the Orthodox Church, Platina: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1983) and is broadly supported by the modern scholarly reassessment gathered in Orthodox Readings of Augustine (ed. Demacopoulos and Papanikolaou, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2008), which documents both the thinness of the Byzantine acquaintance and the reality of the conciliar and hagiographical reception. Between the poles, most contemporary Orthodox scholarship treats Augustine as a Father whose particular teachings are weighed — like every Father’s — by the consensus he does not constitute alone (Demacopoulos and Papanikolaou, “Augustine and the Orthodox,” introduction to the volume cited). That weighing, and not either caricature, is what this guide’s Section 01 called the criteria working as intended (see The Four Criteria and Their Limits).

See Also

References

  • Quasten, Johannes (ed. Angelo Di Berardino). Patrology. Vol. 4: The Golden Age of Latin Patristic Literature from the Council of Nicea to the Council of Chalcedon. Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1986. (Hilary, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine: lives and works.)
  • Hilary of Poitiers. De Trinitate; De Synodis. Trans. NPNF II/9.
  • McLynn, Neil B. Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. (The basilica conflict; Theodosius’ penance.)
  • Ambrose. Epistles 51, 75–76; Sermo contra Auxentium; De Mysteriis; De Sacramentis. Trans. NPNF II/10.
  • Augustine. Confessions VIII–IX; Epistles 28, 54, 71, 82. Trans. NPNF I/1. (Ambrose and Augustine’s baptism; the fasting counsel; the Jerome correspondence.)
  • Kelly, J. N. D. Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies. London: Duckworth, 1975. (The standard biography: Vulgate, quarrels, Origenist controversy, last years.)
  • Jerome. Epistle 22.30; Apology against Rufinus; De viris illustribus. Trans. NPNF II/3, II/6. (The dream; the Rufinus quarrel; the first patrology.)
  • Price, Richard, trans. The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 553. 2 vols. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009. (Augustine among the enumerated Fathers.)
  • Meyendorff, John. Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes. New York: Fordham University Press, 1974. (The unreceived Augustinian doctrines.)
  • Romanides, John. The Ancestral Sin. Trans. George S. Gabriel. Ridgewood, NJ: Zephyr, 2002 (orig. 1957); Franks, Romans, Feudalism, and Doctrine. Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1981. (The critical position.)
  • Rose, Seraphim. The Place of Blessed Augustine in the Orthodox Church. Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1983. (The receiving position.)
  • Demacopoulos, George E., and Aristotle Papanikolaou, eds. Orthodox Readings of Augustine. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2008. (The scholarly reassessment; Planudes’ translation; the reception history.)
  • Ware, Kallistos (Timothy). The Orthodox Church. New ed. London: Penguin, 1993. (The pre-Schism West in the Orthodox inheritance.)