Augustine and his Critics

Robert Dodaro, George Lawless, Robert Dodaro, George Lawless

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781134636686
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Augustine of Hippo (AD 354-430) is arguably the most controversial Christian thinker in history. His positions on philosophical and theological concerns have been the subjects of intense scrutiny and criticism from his lifetime to the present.
Augustine and his Critics gathers twelve specialists' responses to modern criticisms of his thought, covering: personal and religious freedom; the self and God; sexuality, gender and the body; spirituality; asceticism; cultural studies; and politics.
Stimulating and insightful, the collection offers forceful arguments for neglected historical, philosophical and theological perspectives which are behind some of Augustine's most unpopular convictions.

1
GERALD BONNER
An appreciation

Daniel W.Hardy

Gerald Bonner has humbly and generously served the tradition of British scholarship with great distinction. Like many others formed in a time before there was so much preoccupation with careers and self-advancement as now, he has maintained an admirable modesty. Not only his work, but also the generosity of his dedication to others has contributed importantly to the scholarship upon which others build today. He richly deserves the tribute paid to him by this book of essays published in his honour.

Gerald was born in London in 1926, one of two sons of Frederick John and Constance Emily Bonner. His father died when he was five, from an injury sustained in an accident in India years before while serving there in the army during the First World War. It was a tragedy not least because it left his family with nothing more than sympathy, for there was no social assistance available. As a teacher, Bonner’s mother was poorly paid and had to struggle to support her sons, an achievement that he has never forgotten. She was a member of the Church of England and raised her children as such, and he has always continued in the Church. His schooling from 1936 to 1944 was at the Stationers’ Company’s School in North London, one of the guild schools that have been so important in British education. It was during that time, when he was thirteen, that his interest in Augustine was first aroused by a sermon.

From 1944 to 1948, he served in the British Army, in the First King’s Dragoon Guards (now the Queen’s Dragoon Guards). After the conclusion of the Second World War, he served as a wireless operator in Palestine. He then returned to England for officer training, was commissioned in 1947 and served as a second lieutenant in Tripolitania. While there, he visited the ruins of Leptis Magna, a Roman colony that was the birthplace of Septimius Severus, the emperor who began the absolute despotism of the later Roman Empire and who died in Eboracum (York) while subduing parts of Britain not under Roman rule. While in Tripoli, Bonner bought a 1930 Turin reprint of Augustine’s Confessions adorned by the notes (rather mediocre, as he later thought) of the seventeenth-century German Jesuit, Heinrich Wangnereck.

When he left the army in 1948, he spent a year in civilian employment before going up to Wadham College, Oxford. As one might expect in an ancient university, the School of Modern History made it possible to concentrate on Augustine; there were two final examination papers on him. Gerald Bonner took his finals in 1952. After that came a year’s postgraduate research under the supervision of Thomas Corbishley, SJ, then Master of Campion Hall, the Jesuit hall of studies at Oxford. This was a period in England when it was unusual, even among those intending to be university teachers, to engage in postgraduate study. It was a remarkable time to be engaged in such study at Oxford. Corbishley, T.M.Parker of University College and Maurice Bowra, Warden of Wadham, impressed him deeply; and he remained grateful to them ever after.

For a man already in his late twenties in a country still suffering deeply from the effects of the war, employment was also important. In 1953, a rare opportunity came which brought him to leave Oxford, the possibility of work in the Department of Manuscripts at the British Museum. He was to remain there for eleven years. This was not surprising: the department housed one of the finest collections of Western manuscripts, both ancient and modern, in the world. There were a succession of distinguished keepers during his time there including A.J.Collins, Bertram Schofield and T.C. Skeat; and there were always a number of major scholars among its staff from whom one more junior might benefit. However there was also frustration. During the 1950s, the effects of the Second World War were being felt: acquisition of manuscripts had continued during the war, but cataloguing had come to a stop. As a result, the work of the department was too often a routine ‘catching up’, with less opportunity than before to pursue significant projects. Even such major foundation collections as the Cotton manuscripts needed to be re-catalogued, and still do, but such major tasks could not be attempted. Perhaps Gerald Bonner’s most rewarding activity was the sorting and arrangement of the correspondence of the Copticist Walter Ewing Crum (d. 1941) in connection with the writing of his great Coptic dictionary. It provided a fascinating glimpse of one department of ancient learning in modern scholarship.

While serving in the British Museum, Bonner continued his study of Augustine, and published essays—the beginning of a long sequence—began to appear in 1960. His first book was published in 1963, St Augustine of Hippo: Life and Controversies; it was later reprinted in a second edition. It was his attendance at the Oxford Patristic Conference in the same year that led to the next phase of his academic life. By chance he met H.E.W.Turner, Van Mildert Professor of Divinity at the University of Durham, who encouraged him to apply for a Lectureship in Church History there in 1964.

Durham is the third oldest university in England (after Oxford and Cambridge), and its Faculty of Theology followed the pattern of scholarship then common in the ancient universities. Although there were also two theological colleges in the university whose staff were sometimes called upon, the faculty itself had nine staff. There was a heavy orientation to biblical studies (six staff), in which Durham had a deservedly high reputation, and much smaller provision for early Christian doctrine and philosophical theology. The addition of Gerald Bonner was a move to consolidate its work in early Church history. What this meant for him was teaching that was both demanding and repetitive, with no opportunity to teach Augustine. Perhaps that was not such a bad thing at the beginning of his university career, since it allowed him a chance to ground his scholarship through serious research.

The faculty was itself an example of the more informal arrangements that prevailed in universities at the time. There was no specific building or offices. Lectures were given in the lecture rooms on Palace Green on the north side of the cathedral, in the area that had been given by Bishop Van Mildert at the university foundation. Tutorials, the weekly personal supervision offered to each student, were in lecturers’ homes, while faculty meetings were held in the study of the canon professors in the college on the other side of the cathedral. Such arrangements were becoming increasingly impractical, however, and eventually some old shops in Sadler Street—the narrow main road on to the peninsula where the cathedral and early university buildings were located—were allocated to a few of the staff, Bonner included. They were in doubtful condition, particularly one (not Bonner’s) over the former dungeon of the prince bishops of Durham, whose floor was ominously close to giving way. Only in 1973 did Abbey House, adjacent to the cathedral, become the home of the faculty.

Another sign of the development of the faculty was the starting of an alternative degree programme, to include biblical study but also a greater concentration on later studies, both historical and theology per se. Still later, a tripartite teaching programme was developed which allowed students to concentrate on the Bible, Church history or theology. Continuing expansion brought staffing into line with this programme. In early Church history, careful attention was given to western and eastern theology. For the West, Gerald Bonner’s contribution was pivotal; he created an option on Augustine in the Honours School of Theology. It continues even now, and flourishes under his successor, Carol Harrison. Many students would attest that, in its degree course, Durham provides a grounding in the history and theology of the Christian tradition without parallel in Britain. In this, the scholarship and unfailing care shown in Gerald Bonner’s teaching was of the greatest significance. Even by the high standards of the direct, week-by-week tutorial teaching of students that is the hallmark of traditional British university education, his concern for students went far beyond the usual.

There was another, more local, interest at Durham. In the great Norman cathedral spanning the peninsula high above the curving River Wear, were the tombs of the two figures most influential in the Christianity of the North of England, the Venerable Bede (in the Galilee Chapel at the west) and St Cuthbert (behind the high altar at the east). Those unfamiliar with the Celtic form of Christianity which had arrived in the north from Scotland and Ireland may find it difficult to imagine the palpable effect of these two, Cuthbert and Bede, on the 1, 000 years of Christian faith and life concentrated in Durham.

When Gerald Bonner came to Durham in 1964, early Northumbrian history was taught only by the indefatigable archaeologist Rosemary Cramp, whose excavations at Wearmouth and Jarrow proved so fruitful. The literary aspect of Northumbrian Christian culture was relatively neglected, however. This led Bonner to try to emulate the tradition of the great Durham scholar, Bertram Colgrave, by examining the spirituality of Cuthbert, Bede and other contemporaries, long before Celtic Christianity had become as popular as it is today. The first evidence of this study was in his 1966 Jarrow Lecture, St Bede in the Tradition of Western Apocalyptic Commentary. This was a theme considered unusual at the time, when historical interest dominated Bedan studies, but which has become commonplace thirty years later. It was followed by other essays on Bede’s conception of the Christian life, on his place in medieval civilisation, on Anglo-Saxon culture and spirituality and on St Cuthbert’s spirituality. He also organised an important conference on Bede in 1973, wrote a catalogue for the 1974 Sunderland Exhibition on Bede, edited a book of commemorative essays for the thirteenth centenary of Bede in 1976, and co-edited a book of essays on St Cuthbert in 1989- Happily today, the Colgrave tradition has now blossomed afresh in Durham through the work of Professor David Rollason.

In 1967, Gerald Bonner married Jane Hodgson, a philologist educated at Bedford College, London. She was a specialist in Early and Middle High German and Gothic Literature, and had been a lecturer at Sheffield University before they married. Throughout their life together, she was content to remain in the background, offering him ungrudging help and encouragement in his work. Her own expertise was often helpful, for example, in comprehending the complicated patterns of speech in theological German, a Sondersprache not always intelligible to a self-taught reader. One of her most appreciated contributions was in administering the Bedan Conference held at Durham in 1973, which proved such a notable success. The Bonners have two children, Jeremy and Damaris, born in 1970 and 1976.

Despite his attention to Bede and Cuthbert, Gerald Bonner’s primary concern was with Augustine. During his twenty-five years in Durham, he published a great many articles on a wide variety of topics associated with Augustine: his view of the fall and original sin, Pelagius and Pelagianism, his biblical understanding, his Christian humanism, his spirituality as such and its influence on western mysticism, his anti-Donatism, his view of history and society, of church and society, of the eucharist and the Church as eucharistic community, of deification, of man in the image of God and as sinner, of the desire for God and the need for grace, of Christ, of Eve, of women and amicitia, of millennarianism, of this world and the hope for the next, etc. These led to a steady stream of requests to write substantial contributions on such topics for various dictionaries, encyclopaedias, and lexicons. In 1987, the first of two collections of Gerald Bonner’s essays appeared: God’s Decree and Man’s Destiny. Studies on the Thought of Augustine of Hippo, followed in 1996 by Church and Faith in the Patristic Tradition. Augustine, Pelagianism, and Early Christian Northumbria.

Gerald Bonner’s writing has special qualities. His deep knowledge of Augustine and the Patristic era, and Cuthbert, Bede and their context allows him to raise probing questions about the easy conclusions reached in current scholarship. Claims tracing modern problems to the heritage of Augustine are rebuffed by close analysis of his thought, and overly simple generalisations about Augustine’s religious views are tested and refined. It becomes clear, for example, that Augustine’s writings were often corrective to problematic views found in his time. Above all, Bonner can identify and pursue the deep tendencies of Augustine’s thought which are so frequently over-looked or misinterpreted, especially his views on the nature of human beings before God. What is particularly significant about Bonner’s scholarship is its sensitivity to the religious depth of Augustine and the northern saints, a quality frequently absent from purely historical accounts. His analysis does not soften the demands of Augustine’s Christianity, those derived from his certainty of God’s absolute power, goodness and justice. Instead, it shows Augustine’s position with stunning clarity. These qualities constitute the enduring value of Bonner’s writings.

It was not long after his arrival in Durham and the opportunities for research that it brought, before Gerald Bonner’s work on Augustine was becoming more widely known. Indeed, the quality of his scholarship was always appreciated more fully among Augustine specialists than at home. In 1970, he was invited to deliver the annual St Augustine Lecture at Villanova University, a prominent university of the Augustinian Order near Philadelphia. He came there through the good offices of Robert P. Russell OSA, whose generosity and friendship he came to value deeply. Russell later introduced to him George Lawless OSA, one of the editors of the present volume, whose research Bonner supervised for a year. Lawless became a life-long friend.

The value that Durham University attached to Gerald Bonner was evident in his promotion to the position of Reader, a rank reserved for those whose scholarship is considered to be of the highest standard. However, he was guileless, and neither proud nor aloof. Those who knew him at first hand also recognized the extraordinary kindness and generosity that marked his relations with students and fellow academics. With undergraduate students, he took infinite trouble over their essays, writing extensive comment to help them improve, With postgraduates, he combined great care with infectious enthusiasm, Those who met him at conferences often found their way to him later, leaving only after hours—even days—of intensive discussion, help with source-material, etc. He has always been incapable of denying those who come to him. His personal and academic generosity is unlimited.

For a man so generous and so dedicated to research and teaching, life in an English university had become much more difficult by the late 1980s. Hitherto, universities had been funded through a university grant system that protected them from political policies. But now, university grants became an instrument of governmental policy, which came to measure the success of universities by the ‘value added’ to students, especially in preparing them to meet the needs of a modern industrial society. Universities existed in a climate of financial stringency and constant pressure to improve ‘efficiency’. A variety of managerial strategies were imposed; increasingly frequent ‘research assessment exercises’ to grade university departments on the quantity of their published research, regular staff appraisal, and so on. Day-to-day pressure increased substantially where departments (for such the Faculty of Theology at Durham had become) were already hard-pressed by research and the teaching responsibilities associated with tutorial supervision. By contrast, Gerald Bonner was a gentle and dedicated man who did not respond well to the tensions this brought. With this increasing pressure, he wisely took early retirement in 1989, especially while there was the prospect of a replacement to continue the study of Augustine at Durham.

It was never his intention to retire into inactivity, however. The pace of his scholarship and publications continued, and through the kindness of an old friend and fellow Augustinian, Robert Markus, he was introduced to Sidney Griffith, Chairman of the Early Christian Studies Programme at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C, This led to an invitation to teach there, and he subsequently spent three years teaching courses on Augustine, Bede and the Desert Fathers. Between 1992 and 1994, he was joined by Jane and their family. Jeremy remained at the university after the others had returned to England, in order to complete a doctoral dissertation on modern American political history.

Those were good years. Bonner found the Catholic University most congenial. His subject was taken seriously. There were good colleagues, good students and a general atmosphere of friendliness. Furthermore, his scholarship was admired. At his departure, the University presented him with an award named for a most distinguished patristic scholar, the Johannes Quasten Prize for excellence and leadership. It was a signal honour, richly deserved by one who throughout his life had selflessly dedicated himself to Augustinian scholarship.

Invitations to write and teach continue. Since his return to England in 1994, however, Bonner’s primary concern has been the study of the Pelagian Controversy. It is work he hopes will be the achievement of his final years.

2
GERALD BONNER
A select bibliography

Daniel W.Hardy

1960

1 ‘St Augustine’s Doctrine of the Holy Spirit’, Sobornost 4:2, pp. 51–66.

1962

2 ‘Libido and Concuspiscentia in St Augustine’, in Studia Patristica, vol. 6, ed. F.L.Cross=Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, vol. 81, Berlin, Akademie-Verlag, pp. 303–14.

1963

3 St Augustine of Hippo. Life and Controversies, London, SCM Press.

1966

4 ‘How Pelagian was Pelagius? An Examination of the Contentions of Torgny Bohlin’, in Studia Patristica, vol. 9, ed. F.L.Cross=Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, vol. 94, Berlin, Akademie-Verlag, pp. 350–8.

1967

5 St Bede in the Tradition of Western Apocalyptic Commentary, Jarrow Lecture for 1966, Newcastle, J. and P.Bealls.

6 ‘Les origines africaines de la doctrine augustinienne sur la chute et le péché originel’, Augustinus 12, pp. 97–116.

1968

7 ‘Augustine on Romans 5:12’, Studia Evangelica, vol. 5=Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, vol. 103, B...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1: Gerald Bonner: An Appreciation
• 2: Gerald Bonner: A Select Bibliography
• 3: Studying Augustine: An Overview of Recent Research
• Part I: If Plato Were Alive Augustine, True Religion 3.3
• Part II: The Order of Love (Augustine, City of God 15.22)
• Part III: We Are the Times (Augustine, Sermon 80.8)