In the Shadow of the Incarnation: Essays on Jesus Christ in the Early Church in Honor of Brian E. Daley, S.J.

Christology as Contemplative Practice Understanding the Union of Natures in Augustine’s Letter 137

9 Christology as Contemplative Practice Understanding the Union of Natures in Augustine’s Letter 137 Lewis Ayres For who knows how God assumes flesh and yet remains God, how, remaining true God, he is true man . . . . Faith alone can grasp these things, honoring in silence the Word, to whose nature no logos from the realm of being corresponds.1 It is a delight to be able to honor Fr. Brian Daley, S.J.2 Brian has been to me an exemplary friend, mentor, and priest—all this must be said before his scholarship is even mentioned. As a scholar, Brian has been a beacon for those who believe in the significance of the study of early Christian theology in its own right and as the essential foundation of modern Christian thinking and proclamation. Brian has also modeled 190 Christology as Contemplative Practice 191 a style of careful investigation and charitable engagement that is an ever-important lesson for those of us prone to polemic. Ad multos annos! For some years Brian has been working on a history of patristic Christology that does not treat the first few centuries primarily as “the road to Chalcedon,” that is, a history which avoids focusing on how often inchoate accounts of Christ’s constitution anticipate or deviate from the terminology of that later “definition.” It is far more fruitful, Brian suggests, to consider how different authors talk of Christ as an integral part of describing the nature of God, revelation, salvation, and the church. To do so is to recognize that Christology is (for patristic authors , at least) also soteriology, sacramental theology, and hermeneutics . In this essay I offer a contribution to this project by considering one of the most important texts in which Augustine discusses the personal constitution of Christ. Introduction and Context Augustine’s Letter 137 has received persistent scholarly attention because it marks a new precision in Augustine’s christological terminology .3 Here for the first time Augustine uses persona to name the metaphysical reality of Christ as a unified agent: he speaks of Christ “uniting both natures in the unity of his person.”4 At the heart of the letter Augustine also offers an analogy between the union of two natures in Christ and the union of soul and body in the human being.5 I approach this frequently discussed text via two theses. The first is that throughout the letter Augustine attempts to encourage in his addressees a particular practice of thought and contemplation as the appropriate context for considering the constitution of Christ’s person. This practice is shaped by an account of how the creation exists “within” God’s presence and displays the mystery of God’s ordering and governing power. At the same time, Augustine argues that such attention must exhibit the epistemological humility modeled by the incarnate Christ. My second thesis is that, against this background, Augustine offers the soul/body analogy not in order to make the union of natures more comprehensible, but to allow him to define and reflect on 192 Lewis Ayres the incomprehensibility of the union of natures in Christ. The genius of Augustine’s argument is to offer a conceptual context within which the incomprehensibility of the union may both be seen as plausible and be defined with some precision. In order to understand the style of Augustine’s focus on intellectual practices, it is important to note that Letter 137 is part of an exchange with some of North Africa’s most influential figures. At some point before late 411, Volusianus, the addressee of the letter, was the proconsul of Africa.6 Volusianus had written to Augustine reporting a number of questions about the doctrine of the incarnation that emerged during what appears to have been a regular philosophical discussion among Volusianus and his friends, all of whom appear to be non-Christians. Volusianus addresses Augustine as the all-knowing bishop and exrhetorician who should, for the sake of his own reputation, answer the questions he reports.7 The document preserved as Letter 136 in Augustine ’s corpus is a brief note from Marcellinus, the imperial tribunus et notarius present in Carthage initially to act as judge at the DonatistCatholic conference of 411. Marcellinus adds to Volusianus’s questions and, more importantly, asks Augustine to compose books to confront this intellectual challenge to Christianity. While Augustine’s Letter 137 was...