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6 Augustine and Aquinas on Original Sin Doctrine, Authority, and Pedagogy Mark Johnson My interest in this topic stems from my graduate school days, when I began studying the Fathers and then the moral teaching of Thomas Aquinas. When it came to assessing the reach and influence of Augustine’s teachings in the thirteenth century, our teachers instructed us always to remember that Augustine’s principal conduit was the Libri sententiarum of Peter Lombard, who had gathered together quotations from many theological figures but most especially from Augustine and had placed them into his “book of opinions ,” arranging them dogmatically, in order to cover the Christian religion.1 The success of Lombard’s text, both inside the schools and in the religious orders —Dominicans of Thomas’s day and before were told to have and to study  1. For more on Lombard see Marcia Colish’s definitive Peter Lombard, 2 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994); or her more accessible “Peter Lombard,” in The Medieval Theologians, ed. G. R. Evans (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001), 168–83. See also Ignatius Brady’s “Prolegomena” to the Quarrachi edition of Lombard’s Sententiae in IV libros distinctae, vol. 1, part 1 (Grottaferrata: Collegium Sanctae Bonaventurae , 1971), 8* –45* 117* –29* . The articles of Michel Barnes and Wayne Hankey in this volume also touch upon how the teaching of Augustine was mediated to Thomas’s age. All references to Lombard ’s Sentences come from the Quarrachi edition, Magistri Petri Lombardi parisiensis episcope sententiae in iv libros distinctae, 3rd ed., vol. 2, ed. Ignatius Brady, O.F.M., et al. (Grottaferrata: Collegium Sanctae Bonaventurae, 1971). their Summa, and that meant Lombard’s Summa sententiarum2 —meant that the teaching of Augustine, if only in abbreviated form, would be on hand for almost any doctrinal topic and would indeed have a prominent place in the establishment or explanation of that topic.3 Now this all is verified in the case of the fall and of original sin in Lombard; his primarily biblical account of the fall and of original sin from book 2, distinctions 20–35, in the Sentences, features Augustine over any other author, and by a wide margin (De genesi ad litteram, De peccatorum meritis, De Trinitate, etc.). Such a strong Augustinian presence in his account of original sin meant in turn that the various scripta on the Sentences from the thirteenth century (including those more loosely based, such as William of Auxerre’s Summa aurea and the Summa fratris Alexandri) would have to make room for, or otherwise deal with, the authority and very phraseology of Augustine. And so they did.4 More than that, Augustine’s teaching and choice quotations make their way into other texts, not immediately associated with Lombard, such as disputed questions, quodlibetal questions, summae, and so on. Given this omnipresence of Augustine as regards the doctrine of original 2. Writing in the 1260s Humbert of Romans, the former master of Thomas’s Dominican Order instructed all the librarians in the order to have a copy of Lombard’s Sententiae in a centralized location in each convent’s library (see Humbertus de Romanis, Opera de vita regulari, vol. 2, ed. J. J. Berthier [Turin: Marietti, 1956], 256). For more on the book practices of the Dominicans, see K. W. Humphreys, The Book Provisions of the Medieval Friars (1215–1400) (Amsterdam: Erasmus Booksellers , 1964), 18–45, esp. 36 and 43; and for Dominican use of Lombard throughout their educational system, and not simply in the university setting, see M. Michele Mulchahey, “First the Bow is Bent in Study . . . ” Dominican Education Before 1350 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1998), 134–38. 3. Sometimes texts masquerading as those of Augustine are brought to bear, as when Lombard explains Christ’s sinlessness by using the spurious De fide ad Petrum in Sentences, lib. II, dist. 31, cap. 7 (Magistri Petri Lombardi, vol. 2, 509). 4. See Albertus Magnus, In II Sent., in Opera Omnia, vol. 27, ed. A. Bourgnet (Paris: Vivès, 1894), d. 20–35, pp. 339–579; Albertus Magnus, Quaestio de peccato originali, in Opera Omnia, vol. 25 (Münster im Westfalen: Aschendorff, 1993), 2.189–203; Summa fratris Alexandri, in Alexandri de hales summa theologica, vol. 3 (Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1930), lib. 2, inq. 2, tract. 3, q. 2, pp. 230–282; Bonaventura, In II Sent., in S. Bonaventurae opera theological selecta, vol. 2 (Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1938), dd. 30–35, pp. 734–870; Guillelmus Altissiodorensis, Summa Aurea...

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