My friend and former student Stephen Long sends along this quotation from Augustine and brief analysis that follows. The excerpt is from Augustine’s Sermon 187, a Christmas sermon. The portion in quotation marks is from Augustine, the paragraph at the end from Stephen.

“When he took human limbs to himself, after all, he did not abandon his divine works; nor did he stop reaching mightily from end to end, and disposing all things sweetly. When he clothed himself with the weakness of the flesh, he was received, not locked up, in the virgin’s womb; thus the food of wisdom was not withdrawn from the angels, while ate the same time we were enabled to taste and see how sweet is the Lord.

“Why should all this surprise us about the Word of God, seeing that this sermon I am addressing to you flows so freely into your senses, that you hearers both receive it, and don’t imprison or corner it? I mean, if you didn’t receive it, you wouldn’t learn anything; if you cornered it, it wouldn’t reach anyone else. And of course this sermon is divided up into words and syllables; and yet for all that, you don’t each take portions and pieces of it, as you would of food for the stomach; but you all hear it all, each of you hears it all. . . . Nor does this happen at successive times, in such a way that the sermon being delivered first comes into you, then has to go out from you if it is to enter someone else; but it comes simultaneously to all of you, and the whole of it to each of you. And if the whole of it could be retained in memory, just as all of you have come to hear the whole of it, so you could each go away with the whole of it.

“How much more, then, could the Word of God, through which all things were made (Jn 1:3), and which while abiding in itself renews all things (Wis 7:27); which is neither confined in places, nor stretched out through times, nor varied by short and long quantities, nor woven together out of different sounds, nor ended by silence; how much more could this Word, of such a kind as that, make a mother’s womb fruitful by assuming a body, while still not departing from the bosom of the Father; come forth from there to be seen by human eyes, from here continue to enlighten angelic minds; go forth from there to all the earth, from here to stretch out the heavens; from there become man, from here make man?

“None of you therefore should believe that the Son of God was converted and changed into a son of man; but rather we must believe that while remaining the Son of God he became the son of man, and that the divine substance was not consumed, while the human substance was perfectly assumed. Just because it says, you see, the Word was God, and the Word became flesh (Jn 1:1,14), it doesn’t mean that the Word became flesh in such a way that it ceased to be God; considering that in that very flesh which the Word became Emmanuel was born, God with us (Mt 1:23)

“Just as the word which we carry in the mind becomes voice when we utter it from the mouth; and yet it isn’t changed into this voice, but remains whole in itself, while the voice is assumed to carry it out to others; and in this way what is to be understood can remain inside, and what is to be heard can sound outside. Yet for all that it’s the same thing that is uttered in a sound as had previously sounded in silence; and thus when word becomes voice, it isn’t changed into voice, but remaining in the light of the mind, it both goes forth to the listener in the voice of flesh it has assumed, and still does not abandon the one who thought it.”

A few comments on that. First, it explicitly and repeatedly echos reflections Augustine articulates at length in De Musica (e.g. the comments “nor varied by short and long quantities” and “ended by silence” — important characteristics for the analysis of metered/musical expression for Augustine) and De Trinitate (e.g. words uttered in silence of the mind [about which I still feel uneasy — but never mind for now]). So those works are directly informing Augustine’s actual preaching: no completely armchair speculating for him ! Second, taking the idea of speech and running with it: Christological talk sometimes feels like it’s about how to cram two substances (God-stuff and man-stuff) into the same tight little space — and then just for good measure mash in two minds and two wills besides. (Clearly Augustine can talk this “substance” talk too.) The contradiction between God and creation gets taken as a logical starting point, from which we then try to understand the unity of the two in Jesus (Pannenberg’s point somewhere). Music and speech — and the perichoresis that they are — are suggestive of another way of conceiving the matter. Creation in general is speech of God (Gen 1), perichoretic; and man in particular, uniquely “suited” for God as the image of God, is speech of God. Flesh and Adam are words God can speak with ease. The Father can speak his co-eternal Word in a flesh-y meter. Jesus is what it pleases the Father to say. And so on.