The Church as Dove in Augustine
The dove’s association with the Holy Spirit is obvious from scripture. Augustine identifies the peculiar characteristics of a dove as simplicity goodness and peace.
In Tractate 6, he says that Noah had both the Raven and the dove within the Ark. “Rightly the raven was sent from the Ark and did not return. The dove was sent and did return. Noah sends both birds. Noah had the raven there: he also had the dove. The Ark contained both kinds.”1
“In this way you see, of course, that it is necessary for the Church in this flood of the world to contain each kind, both the raven and the dove. Who are the ravens? Those who seek the things that are their own. Who are the doves? Those who seek the things that are Christ’s.”2
The moaning of the dove
The person who has all he wants in the world, who “revels in the enjoyment of carnal things, and in the abundance of temporal possessions, and in a hollow happiness, has the voice of a raven.” The dove is the person who realizes that he is in exile in this world and that true happiness is found elsewhere. Thus he moans and billows in sadness at his loss of his true home. “And as long as he moans on that account, he moans well; the Spirit has taught him to moan.” 3(Tractate 6, 1,3).
The ravens may moan like doves when they are in misfortune and when the world goes against them. But their true nature comes to the fore when they are released from their sorrow; they rejoice with loud cackling and screeching and reveal themselves to be only ravens. Their sorrow was for themselves alone and they do not moan in the Spirit. The moaning of the dove is the moan that comes from genuine love.
To moan in the Spirit is to moan for the loss of God and heaven and to moan for the sins that drag down our brothers and sisters. This symbolism occurs often in Augustine- that it is a duty of the Christian to moan for the sins of the others in the Church and to shed bitter tears for their conversion. He also uses the Dove as a sign for the Catholica, because she weeps and moans for her sinful children.
The Church is the inn in which the sinner takes refuge while he sorts out his soul, and prepares to make repentance. The Church is the locus for healing and for reconciliation. Then, when we are reconciled, it becomes for us the dwelling place of saints. The Church, in Augustine’s eyes is always the home for both saints and strugglers, a refuge for the lost sheep as well as the fold for the faithful followers of the shepherd.
If you recognize the inn, it's the Church; an inn now, because while we live, we are travelers. But it's going to be house and home, from which we shall never more depart, when we arrive hale and hearty at the kingdom of heaven.
The Church as Bride of Christ
Augustine, Sermon 341, 5
“…..guard your ears, and the virginity of your minds, as betrothed by the friend of the bridegroom to one man, to be presented as a chaste virgin to Christ. Your virginity, you see, is in the mind. Virginity of the body is preserved by a few in the Church; virginity of the mind is something all the faithful ought to have. It is this virginity that the serpent wishes to corrupt, about which the same apostle said, I have betrothed you to one man, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ,' and I am afraid that, just as the serpent took in Eve by his cunning, so also your senses may be corrupted, and fall away from the chastity which is in Christ Jesus (2 Cor 11 :2-3). This, surely, is the more suitable way of understanding it. There are, I mean, also the senses of this body, of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching. It was our minds that the apostle feared might be corrupted, where the virginity of faith is to be found. Go now, soul, preserve your virginity, later on to be made fruitful by the embrace of your bridegroom. So then, hedge your ears about, as it is written, with thorns.”
Sermon 238
The Priscillians and the Manicheans deny the humanity of Christ, preferring instead to see Christ as a spirit assuming the appearance of humanity for a time. In this sermon, Augustine condemns these opinions and counters them by reference to the Gospels and Christ’s own sayings. He challenges his hearers, the Catholics before him to defend the humanity of Christ against these attacks. They must vigorously defend the human nature of Christ since it was in his humanity that Christ suffered, and it was in his suffering that he saved us. Without the Incarnation and the consequent humanity of Christ, we are not saved. “Take away true flesh, there won't be true suffering, there won't be true resurrection. There you have the bridegroom; it was necessary for the Christ to suffer, and so rise again on the third day. (Lk 24:44-46).”4 He reminds them that they are the Bride of Christ and as such they must defend their spouse, who is Christ. “Let’s hear about the bride, because there are some folk or other goodness knows who, again showing favor to adulterers. Who are keen to push away the true bride and substitute a false one.”5 These adulterers are those who seek to preach false doctrine in place of sound teaching. This characterization of false teachers as adulterers is also found in Tractates 7 and 13 on John’s Gospel. When the bridegroom is away, other false teachers seek to seduce his Bride with their words, and she has to rely on the Friend of the Bridegroom to protect her. The Church must learn from Christ himself so that she remains strong and faithful. Augustine admonishes the Catholics; “What about you, Catholic Church? What do you think – you the Bride, not an adulteress? So what do you think, if not what you have learned from him? You could not, after all, find any better witness about him than himself.”6
The Church as the INN of the Good Samaritan
In En. in Psalmos 125, 11, Augustine interprets the Lucan parable as follows. The one who is sinning is descending from Jerusalem towards Jericho. He falls among thieves and is left beaten and dying at the roadside. The Samatitan, who is a figure for Christ does not walk past. He binds up the wounds like a good doctor would and pours in wine and oil. “He raised us upon his beast- his flesh. He led us to the inn- that is the Church.”7 Augustine is unique in interpreting the innkeeper as the apostle Paul. This mention of Paul is difficult to justify, and yet Augustine identifies him clearly as the only apostle who though he, like all the apostles, was entitled to financial support from God’s people, he alone of all the apostles earned his own money so that he would not be a burden to the people. (1 Thess 2: 7-9)
Christ and Church as a fountain
In Tractate 1 on I John Augustine speaks of the author as the one who drank at the Lord’s breast. Even though he had known the Lord so intimately and been so good and just a man, he did not hesitate to include himself among the sinners in the Church. He had learned humility in Christ’s company.
See John himself keeping his humility. Certainly he was a just and great man who drank the secrets of mysteries from the Lord's breast, he who, from drinking from the Lord's breast his divinity, uttered: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God., Such a man as that did not say, "You have an Advocate with the Father," but, "If anyone sin," he says, "we have an Advocate." He did not say, "you have," nor did he say, "you have me," nor did he say, "you have Christ himself." But he both put Christ, not himself, and he said, "we have," not "you have." He preferred to put himself among the number of sinners so as to have Christ as an Advocate, rather than put himself as an advocate in place of Christ and be found among the proud worthy of damnation.10
In Sermon 133, Augustine describes Christ as the fountain of Truth. John the Evangelist is the rivulet that flows out of the fountain. “Who is the fountain? Christ. Let John be the rivulet.”11 Later on he speaks of this John leaning on the breast of the Lord at the Last Supper. He dinks the Truth out of the fountain. Late on, this same truth is spewed forth onto the pages of the Gospel.
Read it, as plain as could be, in the gospel: John was reclining on the Lord's breast (Jn 13:23.25); what I think is that he was drinking truth there. What did he drink? What else but the same as he belched forth: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; this was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was made nothing. What was made in him is life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not grasp it’.12
It may well be that Augustine borrowed this image from his mentor Ambrose. Among the works ascribed to Ambrose are a set of couplets which were believed to have been originally written beneath artistic depictions of Biblical scenes on the walls of the Basilica in Milan. One of them reads:
See John reclining upon the breast of Jesus
Whence out of love he learned to profess God the Word.
In Tractate 16 on the Gospel of John, dealing with the last passage of Chapter 4 of John’s Gospel (Jesus goes to Gallilee after he meets the Samaritan Woman), Augustine speaks of John the Evangelist thus:
But if I am not mistaken - no, rather, because it is true and I am not mistaken, for the Evangelist said what he was saying better than I - he who drank it from the breast of the Lord13 saw the truth better than I. For he is John the Evangelist who among all the disciples was reclining on the breast of the Lord and whom the Lord, although owing love to all, nevertheless loved him above the others. Therefore would he be mistaken and I perceive the right? No, rather, if I am devout and sensible, I shall listen obediently to what he said that I might deserve to perceive what he perceived.14
Church as the milk feeder, the breast from which the Gospel flows
Augustine’s sermons are replete with references to the Gospel as milk for children. He accuses the Donatists of giving people poisoned milk when they seek the real Gospel of Christ. People who are hungry for the Word of God are instead poisoned by their vindictiveness and lack of forgiveness “disturbing little children with pointless and over-ingenious questions and refusing to allow them to be nourished by the milk of faith”.15
1 Tractate 6, 1, 3
2 Tractate 6, 1, 4
3 Tractate 6, 1, 3
4 Sermon 238, 3
5 Sermon 238, 3
6 Sermon 238, 2
7 En. in psalmos 125
8 Epis. in Joh. ad Parthos I, 3, 6, 2
9 Epis. in Joh. ad Parthos I, 3, 6, 2
10 Epis. in Joh. ad Parthos 1, 8
11 Augustine 133, 6.
12 Augustine, Sermon 133,6
13 cf. Jn 13.23 and 25. 21.20
14 Augustine, In Evang. .Joh. Tract. 16,1,2
15 En. in Ps. 10, 6