Augustine's beliefs

Here are quotes on some of Augustine's Catholic beliefs: http://www.stillcatholic.com/PROTAugQuotes.htm

more discussion on Augustine's view of the Eucharist:http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2007/02/clarifications-under-fire-of-st.html

more on Eucharist: http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/num30.htm

also a discussion on --Was Augustine Protestant--it gives his views on all types of doctrines here: 

http://www.readability.com/read?url=http%3A//www.willcoxson.net/faith/augprot.htm

see comment section here:http://www.creedcodecult.com/it-is-finished/  it explains what Augustine means by Christ becoming sin  or being made a curse

for example here is just one quote of his:

If, then, you deny that Christ was cursed, you must deny that He died; and then you have to meet, not Moses, but the apostles. Confess that He died, and you may also confess that He, without taking our sin, took its punishment.Now the punishment of sin cannot be blessed, or else it would be a thing to be desired. The curse is pronounced by divine justice, and it will be well for us if we are redeemed from it. Confess then that Christ died, and you may confess that He bore the curse for us; and that when Moses said, “Cursed is every one that hangs on a tree,” he said in fact, To hang on a tree is to be mortal, or actually to die. He might have said, “Cursed is every one that is mortal,” or “Cursed is every one dying;“ but the prophet knew that Christ would suffer on the cross, and that heretics would say that He hung on the tree only in appearance, without really dying. So he exclaims, Cursed; meaning that He really died.

http://www.thesacredpage.com/2013/08/st-augustine-on-role-of-works-at-final.html?spref=fb :

This, Augustine argues, was the teaching of Jesus.

. . . I do not see why the Lord said: If you will enter into life, keep the commandments [Matt 19:17], or why, after He had said this, He listed those which one must keep in order to live a good life [Matt 19:18-19], if one can obtain eternal life without keeping the commandments, by faith alone, which without works is dead [Jas 2:14]. And then, too, how will the Lord be able to say to those whom He will place on His left hand: Go you into the everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels [Matt 25:41]? For it is evident that He rebukes them, not because they did not believe in Him, but because they did not perform good works. [Matt 25:44] (no. 25)

end

I have not checked this one out

"O Blessed Virgin Mary, who can worthily give you the just dues of praise and thanksgiving, you who by the wondrous assent of your will rescued a fallen world?

"Accept, then, such poor thanks as we have to offer here, though they be unequal to your merit; and, receiving our vows, obtain by your prayers the remission of our offenses. Carry our prayers within the sanctuary of the heavenly audience and bring forth the gift of our reconciliation....

"Take our offering, grant us our requests, obtain pardon for what we fear, for you are the sole hope of sinners. Holy Mary, help the miserable, strengthen the fainthearted, comfort the sorrowful, pray for your people, plead for the clergy, intercede for all women consecrated to God." St. Augustine of Hippo, in Thanksgiving and Prayer to Mary.

http://www.celtic-catholic-church.org/library/prayer/Marian_prayers.html

  4  Prayers for the Dead from sermon 172 http://www.americancatholictruthsociety.com/articles/augustinecatholic.htm (also many of his other views_

"But by the prayers of the Holy Church, and by the SALVIFIC SACRIFICE, and by the alms which are given for their spirits, there is no doubt that the dead are aided that the Lord might deal more mercifully with them than their sins would deserve. FOR THE WHOLE CHURCH OBSERVES THIS PRACTICE WHICH WAS HANDED DOWN BY THE FATHERS that it prays for those who have died in the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, when they are commemorated in their own place in the Sacrifice itself [part of the Mass mentions the Saints who have "gone before us"]; and the Sacrifice is OFFERED also in memory of them, on their behalf. If, the works of mercy are celebrated for the sake of those who are being remembered, who would hesitate to recommend them, on whose behalf prayers to God are not offered in vain? It is not at all to be doubted that such prayers are of profit to the dead; but for such of them as lived before their death in a way that makes it possible for these things to be useful to them after death." (St. Augustine, Sermons 172:2)

on Justification from a quote comment 198 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/12/rome-geneva-and-the-incarnations-native-soil/

I looked up the context of the quote from St. Augustine about good works following justification. In his second exposition of Psalm 34, he is explaining the dual errors, one being the belief that one is justified by good works before initial justification and one being the belief that one can sin with impunity after initial justification. Augustine says the following:

Well, now, brothers and sisters, Abraham was justified by faith, but if no good works produces his justification, they certainly followed it.
…
The two apostles [James and Paul] are not contradicting each other. James dwells on an action performed by Abraham that we all know about: he offered his son as a sacrifice. That is a great work, but it proceeded from faith. I have nothing but praise for the superstructure of action, but I see the foundation of faith; I admire the good work as a fruit, but I recognize that it springs from the root of faith. If Abraham had done it without right faith it would have profited him nothing, however noble the work was. On the other hand, if Abraham had been so complacent in his faith that, on hearing God’s command to offer his son as a sacrificial victim, he had said to himself, “No, I won’t. But I believe that God will set me free, even if I ignore His orders,” his faith would have been a dead faith because it did not issue in the right action, and it would have remained a barren, dried-up root that never produced fruit.
…
The apostle [Paul] has an answer for us. “I told you this, stupid, to save you from the mistake of relying on your achievements and thinking that you earned the grace of faith by your works. Put no reliance on works accomplished before faith. You know well that when faith came to you it found you a sinner, and although it is true that once faith was given to you it made you righteous, it was an ungodly person that faith found to transform into a righteous one.”
…
God does not mete out to you the punishment you deserved; he bestows on you the grace you do not deserve. He owed you retribution; he awards you forgiveness. So it is through being forgiven that you begin to live in faith; that faith gathers to itself hope and the decision to love and begins to express itself in good actions; but not even after that may you boast and preen yourself. Remember who planted you on the right road; remember how even with your strong, swift feet you were wandering off it; remember how you were sick and lying half-dead by the wayside you were lifted onto a mount and taken to the inn.
…
You must pay careful attention to what I am saying, my friends, because otherwise you will hurl yourselves into that abyss I mentioned, assuming that you can sin with impunity. It won’t be my fault if you do, any more than it was the apostle’s [Paul's] fault when many people misunderstood him. They misunderstood on purpose, so that they would not need to produce any good work after justification. Do not be like those folk, my brothers and sisters. One of the psalms speaks about them (about all such people, but expressing it in the singular). “He refused to understand that he should act well [Ps. 35:4(36:3)].” Notice that it does not say, “He was unable to understand.” As for you, you must want to understand that you should act well. What you need to understand is perfectly clear, and well within your grasp. And what is this clear truth? That no one must boast of any good actions before faith, and no one must be lazy about performing good works once faith has been given. So then, God grants forgiveness to all the ungodly, justifying them on the basis of faith.

I don’t know how one can take Augustine’s statements as implying that one cannot sin and lose justification after one is initially justified. He says exactly what he means; works before justification are of no profit, but works after justification clearly are. Moreover, justification can be lost by sin, and where it is lost, one must then turn from sin and will to confess it, which perfect contrition can bring forgiveness. Augustine says, “My confession had not yet reached my lips; I had only got as far as saying ‘I will declare against myself,’ yet God heard the voice of my heart. My words were not yet in my mouth, but already God’ ear was in my heart. ‘You have forgiven the impiety of my heart’ because I said, ‘I will declare [my sin against myself].’

This is all thoroughly Catholic. Quotes are from John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., ed., WSA, Part 3, Vol. 15, trans. Maria Boulding, O.S.B., Expositions of the Psalms 1-32, Exposition 2 of Psalm 31, 2-4 (Hyde Park: New City Press, 200

An article from the Coming Home Newsletter  Aug 2014 by  Kenneth J. Howell :

St. Augustine and Sola Scriptura

St. Augustine of Hippo (ad 354-430) ranks not only among the greatest Fathers and Doctors of the Church but also as the preeminent Father whose influence on western history has been unparalleled. It can be said without fear of contradiction that Augustine was and is the most important Church Father in the history of western Christianity. At the time of the Protestant Reformation, all the major theologies in Christendom appealed to his authority: Catholics, Lutherans, and Reformed. John Calvin, for example, appealed to Augustine as a secondary support for his doctrines and interpretations of Scripture as did his greatest Catholic critic, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the theological issues of the Protestant Reformation were as much about the writings of St. Augustine as they were about the Bible. In light of his importance, it is worth asking what St. Augustine thought about the authority of Scripture.

 Augustine’s preeminence in the western Church is only matched by his prolific output. While maintaining a busy life as bishop, preacher, reconciler, and disciple, he left us more than any other writer of antiquity, over five million words. Yet in all these words the issue of sola Scriptura never arose. As far as I am aware, Augustine never addressed the issue as it was formulated in the Protestant Reformation. He did, however, reflect on the authority of Scripture, especially the authority of various interpretations of Scripture so that his reflections can be relevant to the issue of sola Scriptura in the modern world.

Did St. Augustine believe in sola Scriptura?

Because Augustine held the Scriptures in high esteem and venerated them as an inerrant authority for the Church, many Protestant theologians and apologists have quoted him as a support for the notion of sola Scriptura. In his famous Letter to Jerome (no. 82 ca. 405) Augustine says:

I have learned to yield this respect and honor only to the canonical books of Scripture: of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error. And if in these writings I am perplexed by anything which appears to me opposed to truth, I do not hesitate to suppose that either the manuscript is faulty, or the translator has not caught the meaning of what was said, or I myself have failed to understand it.

 Augustine goes on to contrast this infallible authority of the canonical Scriptures with other writings about the same subjects:

As to all other writings, in reading them, however great the superiority of the authors to myself in sanctity and learning, I do not accept their teaching as true on the mere ground of the opinion being held by them; but only because they have succeeded in convincing my judgment of its truth either by means of these canonical writings themselves, or by arguments addressed to my reason.

Advocates of sola Scriptura like to point out that Augustine even uses the Protestant phrase in the first sentence (solis eis Scripturarum libris “to the books of Scripture alone”) which supports their contention that the great Bishop of Hippo embraced sola Scriptura.

This is a case where careful reading of documents is of paramount importance. The contexts of Augustine’s comments and those of Reformers in the sixteenth century are quite different, not only in time, but in substance. Protestants contrasted the absolute authority of Scripture and what they considered the unjust authority of tradition or the magisterium of the Church. For them, the Scriptures alone were the proper source from which Christian doctrine and morals should be extracted. To add the authority of the Church was to undermine God’s authority by adding human authority to it. But in Augustine’s arguments with Jerome ten centuries earlier, the issue was not about the authority of the canonical Scriptures taken as a whole — Jerome himself affirmed that — but whether one should allow historical mistakes within Scripture. When Paul writes of Peter in Galatians 2:14 he did not act in accord with “the truth of the gospel,” Jerome had supposed that Paul had made a mistake in his writing. Augustine, in the quotations above, is affirming that the Scriptures are inerrant, not that they are the sole authority. Other writings may err but not the Scriptures.

Still, a Protestant may say that even this lesser affirmation by Augustine means that he believed that Church tradition, writings of the Fathers, and Church councils could err while the Scriptures alone could not. They therefore could be the only source of absolute truth for the Church. So the Protestant Reformers saw themselves as justified in appealing to Augustine. And if one limits himself to a few select quotations from Augustine’s writings, that may seem to be true, a fact which would explain how generations of Protestants could see themselves as faithful to the Bishop of Hippo.

Sola Scriptura as a Problem of Interpretation

Many contemporary apologists, both Catholic and Protestant, have limited their debate about the sole authority of Scripture to affirmations or denials about the Scriptures taken as a whole, prior to any interpretation by an individual or the Church. In this framing of the question, Catholic apologists often cite Church Fathers who affirm the necessity of both Scripture and Tradition. And there is an abundance of such texts to be had. Augustine, however, did not face the problem in that form. Rather, his life and work had more to do with how to interpret the Scriptures in the light of schisms and heresies all around him. Three examples in his lifetime were Manicheanism, Donatism, and what may be called simplistic literalism.

In his disputes with Faustus the Manichean bishop, Augustine insisted on the absolute authority of the canonical Scriptures against Faustus’s claim that there were later writings of equal authority.

The excellence of the canonical authority of the Old and New Testaments is distinct from the books of later writers. This authority was confirmed in the times of the Apostles through the succession of bishops and the propagation of churches, as if it was settled in a heavenly manner in a kind of seat to which every believing and pious mind lives in obedience. (Against Faustus, 11.5)

Attending carefully to the wording of this statement reveals three important truths in Augustine’s thinking. Manichean writings (“books of later writers”) cannot be held as of equal authority with the Bible because they lack the confirmation of the historic Church (“through the succession of bishops and the propagation of churches”). Here Augustine says that the Church is the protector of Scripture’s integrity. When he invokes the imagery of a seat, Augustine means the Church as an authority. It is to this seat that every believing Christian must live in obedience. While the Scriptures rightly command the assent and obedience of every Christian, the same Scriptures can only be known by their derivation from and connection with the historic Church.

The Donatist controversy was very different. On the surface, the Donatist controversy does not seem to have anything to do with the authority of Scripture. Here the issue was schism from the Catholic Church. By the time Augustine arrived on the scene of history, the Donatist schism in North Africa was over a century old. What is striking is that most of what the Donatists taught was in accord with Catholic teaching; their great sin was separation or schism. Yet, on at least one crucial doctrinal point, they differed from the Catholics. They wanted to remain separated from the Church because they considered its sacraments invalid. Why invalid? The ministers of the Catholic Church were tainted with sin and apostasy. The Donatist insisted that a priest who conferred Baptism but was himself not a good man could not confer the forgiveness of sins. His immoral life invalidated his sacramental ministry. Augustine’s answer was multifaceted but on one point he was crystal clear. The Scriptures teach that Baptism confers forgiveness even if the man baptizing is himself an immoral man.

But I think that we have sufficiently shown, both from the canon of Scripture, and from the letters of Cyprian himself, that bad men, while by not converted to a better mind, were able to, and in fact do confer and receive baptism, of these it is most clear that they do not belong to the holy Church of God, though they seem to be within it. (On Baptism Against the Donatists, 6.3)

This quotation is significant not only because of what it reveals about the meaning of Baptism but also about scriptural authority. The objective validity of Baptism cannot be nullified by a sinful man. As Augustine says, this truth he demonstrated from the Scriptures. Further, while the Donatists were appealing to the teaching of St. Cyprian, Augustine showed that the earlier bishop’s teaching was not really being upheld by the schismatics. In other words, Augustine sought to read the scriptural meaning of Baptism through the prism of the Church prior to his time. Schism from the Church was associated with schism from the Church’s understanding of Scripture.

The third problem St. Augustine faced was not really heresy or schism but the difficulties which “the little ones” had in understanding the Scriptures. In On Christian Doctrine, Augustine’s most theoretical discussion of interpretation, he suggests that interpretation of scriptural passages should attempt to discern the intention of the biblical author had in mind. This meant paying careful attention to the contexts of the text, both immediate and remote, comparing text with text, but it also meant adhering to the rule of faith:

Let the reader consult the rule of faith which he has gathered from the plainer passages of Scripture, and from the authority of the Church, and of which I treated at sufficient length when I was speaking in the first book about things. But if both readings, or all of them (if there are more than two), give a meaning in harmony with the faith, it remains to consult the context, both what goes before and what comes after, to see which interpretation, out of many that offer themselves, it pronounces for and permits to be dovetailed into itself. (On Christian Doctrine, 3.2)

Here Augustine emphasizes that in cases of doubt about the meaning of a scriptural text, one should seek to discern “the rule of faith” from the Scriptures and from “the authority of the Church.” The importance in adhering to the faith handed down (tradition) is emphasized by Augustine elsewhere. In his On Marriage and Concupiscence he discusses original sin and contrasts “the most ancient and firm rule of the catholic faith” with “those who assert new and perverse doctrines.” His appeal is ultimately to the ancient faith transmitted through the Church, “Because all the hearts of the Catholic Church agree in faith which was established and handed down from ancient times and with a clear voice it [the faith] compels us.”

Augustine walked a fine line between too little and too much latitude. In his Literal Commentary on Genesis, he insisted that a Christian should allow differing

interpretations  when the text seemed obscure. To be too narrow was to sin against charity (cf. Confessions, bk 12). On the other hand, too much latitude in interpretation risked putting oneself outside the faith. But how does one know what is too much or too little? Augustine’s answer lies in the rule of faith and the authority of the Church, both of which meant a humble listening to the past wisdom of the Church.

When Luther, Calvin, and other Protestants began to emphasize sola Scriptura, they believed that the Catholic Church had not only gone astray in the behavior of its members — something true in every generation — but also in its doctrines. The source of those doctrinal errors, according to the Reformers, was placing Church tradition above the authority of Scripture. This, they held, was the root cause of the Catholic Church’s departure from the Faith. Had the Protestant Reformers understood St. Augustine better, they would have had more charity toward the Church in their interpretations and more fidelity to the ancient Faith.