Thread by @potamopotos

REPONO – looong thread on Augustine and the prayers to the saints🧵🧵
Two objections brought up by @PatrologyVotary need to be addressed. Firstly, by cult of the saints the original meaning of the word cult must be ascertained. Cult, from cultus, denotes that which is to be

https://twitter.com/PatrologyVotary/status/1505310189817372676

cultivated, honoured and worshipped in a religious manner. Such a cult for the saints in heaven is explicitly rejected by Saint Augustine, who say “Let our religion not consist in the cult of the dead … they are to be honored as examples to imitate, not worshiped as objects of a

religious cult.“
In this context many of the first comments of @PatrologyVotary seem odd, for if he sought to prove nothing more than this we would not disagree - and if he sought to prove more than that he would make Augustine incoherent.

It is thus quite ironic that he laments taking Augustine’s comments out of their context when what is done in return is that quotes of the Saint Augustine are rallied to do battle against other quotations of the great Saint.

But let us see if we can’t find a fitting and intelligible understanding of the doctor and all that he says. Augustine himself sets forth in which manner we are to venerate the saints properly, namely by remembrance and imitation. This is both Scriptural, Lk 1:48, Matt 26:13 etc

., and patristic, Polycarp’s Martyrdom etc. Likewise, their proper burial, celebration of their martyrdom and the caretaking of their artefacts, is good and proper. We take no qualms with this, but much too often this simple and pious veneration is misused as a lever to raise up

countless superstitious novelties into the church. This we must strongly reject.
Luckily Augustine himself puts forth the definition of the proper veneration of the saints, not only in his early works like “on true religion”, but also in his late works like in the City of God8.27

Since we are blessed enough to have the Saint’s own words, we need not speculate what this veneration consisted in as that is plainly given by the great doctor, “whatever honours the religious may pay in the places of the martyrs, they are but honours rendered to their memory

(Quaecumque igitur adhibentur religiosorum obsequia in martyrum locis, ornamenta sunt memoriarum)”

Against this it is claimed that religious worship actually could be given to the saints, angels etc., as long as it consists in a lesser degree of worship than divine worship,

latria, and that the faithful therefore could pray to, invoke, and trust in the saints and the angels. Thus Rome, Aquinas, Damascene etc.

But this superstitious novelty is rejected by Augustine, who already has laid out what is meant by veneration of the saints. We should not readily accept an interpretation of Augustine that makes him senseless.
Notice, also then, how he refutes the false worship of the angels in

“on true religion” chap. 55-66
“Let us believe that this is also what the very best angels wish, as also the most excellent ministerial agents of God, that together with them we should worship the one God (...) And so it is very properly written that a man was told by an angel

to adore not him but the one Lord, under whom he too was his fellow slave."
Augustine here references Rev. 22:8, where the Saint John falls down before an Angel and worships him before being strongly rebuked by the angel who says, “I am a fellow slave …. Worship God!”

Here the old and tired distinction between dulia and latria, so misused to justify the religious worship of creatures that must simply be dismissed. For are we to imagine that in Augustine’s mind, John’s error consisted in giving the Angel the worship of latria, which is due God

alone, rather than dulia, which proposedly could be given to this angel? Did John forget the one God and believe the angel to be worthy of divine worship? Augustine referencing this passage would simply not make sense if he had had the later superstitious terminology of late

church – yet makes perfect sense if he sought to reject religious worship of creatures all together

Now two good counter examples are brought up against this conclusion which need to be addressed. First a passage from Sermon 316 is invoked as providing an example of invocation

Interestingly enough here our interlocuter makes himself guilty of what he charged with, i.e. ribbing passages out of context. So let us read the passage
Saint Augustine is engaging in highly stylized rhetorical device.

He is telling us that “you (videtis, plural) can see Stefan being stoned, you (plu) see Saul …”

Augustine then goes on and begins to address Paul himself in the second person “you (stratus es, singular) were laid low …” Augustine continues and starts asking rhetorical questions to Saul, “Speak (sing, imperative) to us, that we may hear

(Dic, audiamus) … certainly not by your will, O Saul, was it?”
Far from being an example of the intercession of the saints we are here witnessing a hypothetical conversation between Saint Augustine and main charectors of his sermon, a well-known trope in ancient rhetoric.

This same device can also be seen in Cicero’s speeches, whom Augustine admired and was thoroughly acquainted with (see City of God bk 2) This is from Cicero, Philippics I, chap. 13

The second evidence brought forth is from a passage from the City of God, bk 22:8,9, where Augustine gives an account of an old man who had prayed to the saints and had his prayer granted as the prayers of the martyrs made a large fish beach on the shore wherein a gold ring was

found in the belly, or so it is told.
This is of cause a historical witness to the practice of praying to the saints, but one cannot from this assume that Augustine approved of the practice, which indeed would militate against his sentiment as shown above, but also because

Augustine quite often shares the superstitious practices of his time. Earlier in the same work for example, the great doctor bears witness to the practice of lay people bringing food gifts to the graves of the martyrs to have it sanctified, yet, interestingly enough,

Augustine notes that this practice “is not done by the better Christians, and in most places of the world is not done at all (quod quidem a Christianis melioribus non fit, et in plerisque terrarum nulla talis est consuetudo)” City of God bk 8:27.1

More examples could be added. But one last point must be mentioned, which is chief, and which should be sufficient to undercut any interpretation which sought to impart that the cult of the saints and religious worship, as defined above, given to them was something Augustine

Augustine approved of.
In one of his very late works, On the Care for the Dead (De cura pro mortuis) Augustine discussed the dead in general too.
In chap. 16 he says, concerning Josiah, but then applying it to all departed,

It is worth mentioning that he mentions this work in his Retractions, chap. 90 (Augustine’s last work) too, yet retracts nothing from the work. We can therefore justly conclude that this is, also, Augustine’s mature and final view.

Thus far this thread