From Law to Grace: Eschatological Readings of History in Augustine and Joachim of Fiore

Matthias Riedl, historien et professeur associé à la Central European University (Vienne) : "From Law to Grace : Eschatological Readings of History in Augustine and Joachim of Fiore"

Organisation : Bruno Godefroy et Alexandre Mimouni

„You are no longer under the law but under grace,“ writes the Apostle Paul to the Christian community in Rome (Rom 6:14). Here, Paul refers primarily to the existential and moral change that comes with the adoption of the Christian faith. However, from early on, Christian theologians read these words in the context of salvation history. The church father Augustine, for instance, divides history into four stages: before the law, under the law, under grace, and in peace. While the first part of my presentation will address the late antique foundations of this historical scheme in Augustine and earlier church fathers, the second part will discuss the progressive re-conceptualization of history in medieval monastic theology, especially Joachim of Fiore (1135-1202). Following early medieval thinkers, such as Abelard, Joachim renames Augustine’s first stage as “under the natural law”, the period of unwritten natural law preceding the written Mosaic law. But a unique innovation in Joachim’s thought is his vision of a future this-worldly age of fuller grace, where the human understanding of divine revelation will attain its plenitude. Despite criticism from scholastic theologians like Thomas Aquinas, Joachim’s ideas significantly influenced later progressive historical conceptions.