¶1Two previously unknown sermons attributed to St. Augustine have been discovered in a medieval manuscript in Poland. And get this, they're about one of the strangest stories in the entire Bible. It's the story of King Saul, the witch of Indor, and a dead prophet who apparently returns with a message from beyond the grave. For centuries, Christians have asked the obvious questions.
¶2Was this really the prophet Samuel? Was it a demon pretending to be Samuel? And if it really was Samuel, how could a forbidden ritual summon one of God's prophets from the dead? St. Augustine had already wrestled with these questions and writings that we knew about, but these newly identified sermons apparently preserve him working through the problem with an actual congregation and then taking the story in a direction the researchers simply did not expect.
¶3Now, this discovery does not like change everything. It's not it doesn't settle any big debates. It's not like we found a lost book of the Bible, but it is a really cool find involving one of the most important Christians who ever lived and one of the most enigmatic stories in all of scripture. So, who exactly was St. Augustine?
¶4Why did Catholics and Protestants both tried to claim him? What on earth happened at Endor in the Bible? And what did Augustine apparently see in the final hours of King Saul that most ancient Christian interpreters did not? Let's get into it. Real quick, if you're new here, I'm Cameron Batusi.
¶5I run Capturing Christianity where we explore the intellectual side of Christian belief. And before we jump in, I want you to consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $5 a month. You can get early adree access to videos across both of our channels, capturing Christianity and capturing Catholicism. All right, before we get to the lost sermons, we need to talk about the man whose name is attached to them. Augustine was born in the year 354 in Theast, a town in Roman North Africa, what is now Algeria.
¶6His mother Monica was a devoted Christian and his father Patriceus Patricus was baptized near the end of his life. But Augustine did not simply like inherit his mother's faith and live happily ever after. As a young man, he was ambitious. He was intellectually restless and very aware of his own appetites. He studied rhetoric, pursued a career as a teacher, lived for years with a woman whose name he never tells us, and even had a son with her named Adotatus.
¶7Addioatis Adiodatus. He also spent roughly nine years as a hearer in Manachianism, a religious movement that promised an elegant explanation for good, evil, and the material world. But it eventually disappointed him. Augustine moved to Milan where he became a professor of rhetoric. Then he encountered Bishop Ambrose, Christian intellectuals influenced by Platonism and a version of Christianity he can no longer dismiss as philosophically crude.
¶8In the summer of 386, after years of resistance, Augustine converted. Ambrose baptized him at Easter in 387. And from there, his life took a very, very dramatic turn. Augustine returned to North Africa, was ordained a priest in Hippo in 391, and became its bishop a few hundred years later. He preached, interpreted scripture, cared for his congregation, and threw himself into the major theological conflicts of his day.
¶9He argued against his former Manachian allies. He confronted the Donatist controversy which had divided the North African church. And he fought the Pelagians over sin, human freedom, and a radical dependence on God's grace. He also just wrote a lot like he wrote a lot of stuff. Roughly 100 books, 100 books, 300 letters, and 600 sermons survive under his name.
¶10His confessions changed the way that Christians wrote about memory, desire, sin, and conversion. The city of God responded to the crisis created by the sack of Rome on the Trinity became one of the great works of Western theology. San Augustine died in 430 while the Vandals were besieging Hippo. But his influence was really only beginning for medieval Western Christianity. Augustine's authority was enormous.
¶11And when the reformation arrived more than a thousand years later, both sides started to appeal to him. We Catholics see a saint, a bishop, and a doctor of the church whose world was deeply sacramental and episcopal. Protestants see a fierce defender of grace against any idea that fallen human beings can save themselves. However, at the same time, Catholics are right to point out that Augustine cannot simply be detached from his understanding of the church, from his understanding of the sacraments and episcopal authority. It would be anacronistic to pretend that Augustine was either a 21st century Roman Catholic or a Protestant.
¶12The later controversies that that arose had not happened yet. But he was indisputably a bishop in the ancient Catholic church and his theology does not fit neatly inside modern denominational boundaries. But that has not stopped Christians from trying to weaponize him. One side quotes Augustine on grace. The other quotes Augustine on the church.
¶13One side reaches for his antiplagian writings. The other reaches for his sacramental theology. And before long, Augustine becomes less of a complicated historical person and more of a very large church fathershaped stick. The funny thing is Augustine himself revised positions. He explored competing interpretations and sometimes admitted that a biblical text was difficult.
¶14And that is the Augustine that we appear to meet in these newly uncovered sermons. Not Augustine the quotation machine, but Augustine the pastor thinking through a genuinely genuinely bizarre passage in front of ordinary Christians. So the story of the discovery begins in 2024 when Paul Nabir Nab Nabauer Nabauer found previously unidentified sermon material attributed to Augustine in the diosis library of Pelin Pelpin Poland. The manuscript is cataloged as codeex 114 195. It was copied in the 12th century at Bad Doberin Abbey in what is now Germany.
¶15So just to be clear, the physical manuscript is not 1600 years old. Okay? It is a medieval copy. What may go back to late antiquity though are the sermon texts that are preserved inside of it. Nauer then contacted Christian Tou a professor of classical philology at the University of Worsburg.
¶16Touau and the philologist Clemens Weidman then spent nearly 2 years transcribing and analyzing the texts. Now that caution actually really matters because medieval manuscripts contain plenty of works falsely attributed to famous authors including St. Augustine. But after examining, you know, in a very professional manner, the sermon's language, style, theology, humor, method of biblical interpretation, and even a concluding prayer associated with late antique North Africa. The researchers concluded that these are very probably genuine sermons of St.
¶17Augustine. Other specialists have examined the work, and the University of Warsburg reports that no serious objections to this attribution emerged, which is pretty cool. A full critical edition is still forthcoming though. So the wider scholarly world has not yet been able to inspect every line. For now, however, I think it is reasonable to rely on the experts who have actually studied the Latin.
¶18And these are very probably likely authentic. And their subject is the witch of Endor. The witch of Endor story appears in 1st Samuel chap 28. Turn with me in your Bibles to 1st Samuel chapter 28. I'll wait.
¶19All right, we're there. I heard the pages turning and they stopped. So, all right. I'm guessing a lot of Christians have never heard of this or just maybe read past it and not really thought about how strange it is. But at this point in the biblical story, Saul's life is collapsing.
¶20God had chosen him as Israel's first king. But Saul repeatedly disobeyed God. And the prophet Samuel announced that his kingdom would not endure. David would eventually take his place. Saul became consumed by jealousy.
¶21He hunted David and repeatedly tried to kill him. Then Samuel died. By the time that we reach 1st Samuel 28, the Philistine army is gathering for battle. Saul sees them coming, becomes absolutely terrified and ask God what to do. But God does not answer him.
¶22Not through dreams, not through a vision, not through the Uram, and not through the prophets. So get this. Saul decides to find a medium. Now, this is especially strange and and kind of dark because Saul himself had driven mediums and necromancers out of the land. He knew the practice was forbidden.
¶23But now he disguises himself, takes two men with him, and visits a woman at Endor in the middle of the night. He asks her to bring up someone who has died. Okay. The woman is understandably suspicious. She knows what Saul has done to people like her.
¶24But Saul, still in disguise, swears that she will not be punished. Then she asks this, "Whom shall I bring up for you?" And Saul says, "Bring up Samuel for me." Now, if you don't know this story, uh you might expect a trick. Maybe the woman pretends to see Samuel. Maybe she gives Saul a vague fortune cookie prophecy and collects her money. But that is not how the text reads.
¶25The woman sees Samuel and screams. And somehow she also realizes that the disguised man in front of her is Saul. So she describes an old man coming up wrapped in a robe. Saul concludes that it is Samuel and bows down. And then the biblical narrator says this.
¶26Samuel said to Saul, "Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?" Pretty wild, right? Like as a biblical story. This is this is actually pretty pretty interesting. The figure does not come to comfort Saul. He announces judgment.
¶27He tells Saul that the Lord has turned away from him, that the kingdom has been given to David, and that Israel will be defeated by the Philistines. Then he says this, "Tomorrow you and your sons shall be with me." Saul immediately falls to the ground in terror, and in the ensuing battle, the Israelites are defeated. Three of Saul's sons die, including Jonathan. Saul is badly wounded and ultimately falls on his own sword. So then what exactly happened at Indor?
¶28Was it actually Samuel? Was it a demon in like impersonating Samuel? Was the woman somehow deceiving Saul? The text repeatedly calls the figure Samuel. The prophecy then comes true and the woman herself seems shocked by what she sees.
¶29But if this really was Samuel, we have a different problem. Did a forbidden magical ritual actually give a medium power over the soul of one of God's prophets? This seems completely strange, a little backwards. Scripture condemns necromancy. Okay, Saul's visit to the medium is presented as part of his unfaithfulness, not as a spiritual technique that actually works.
¶30And yet, there is Samuel, or at least someone the biblical narrator keeps calling Samuel. This is the puzzle that St. Augustine was trying to solve in these letters, these two new pastoral letters. Kind of kind of strange stuff, right? This is this is hard stuff.
¶31But there's actually a second puzzle hiding in the figure's final words. They said, "Tomorrow you and your sons shall be with me." According to the University of Worsburg, Augustine preached the the first newly identified sermon during a Sunday service. Okay. On Sunday, he introduces the passage, considers different explanations, and does not completely resolve the problem. His congregation had to wait until Wednesday.
¶32So, he basically on Sunday gave a cliffhanger sermon. Then, Augustine returned to the story and weighed the possibilities a little bit more fully in the second sermon. And we already knew that St. Augustine's thinking about this passage developed over time. Okay.
¶33In an earlier work written in response to questions from Simplicanas, Augustine considers two major possibilities. Maybe Samuel genuinely appeared, but only because God permitted it. Or maybe a demonic image merely looked like Samuel. At that stage, Augustine seems to regard the deceptive image explanation as more likely. Later, while answering questions from a man named Delidius, Augustine revisits the issue.
¶34His reading of a book called Sirak, chapter 46, gives him more reason to believe that Samuel actually truly prophesied. after his death. And the newly identified sermons reportedly lean in that same direction. So if Samuel really appeared, Augustine's basic answer is that the medium did not overpower him. Magic did not drag God's prophet out of the afterlife.
¶35The appearance happened because God permitted it. In other words, Saul's attempt to get around God, to avoid God, didn't work. Even in the house of a medium, Saul encountered the judgment of the god he was trying to evade. But then St. Augustine turns to that line, "Tomorrow you and your sons shall be with me." In his previously known answer to Delidius, St.
¶36Augustine says that this could simply refer to death. Samuel is dead. Tomorrow Saul will be dead, too. It does not necessarily mean that Saul and Samuel will share the same blessed condition. But according to Torau to the newly discovered sermons entertain a much more surprising possibility.
¶37St. Augustine apparently considers whether Saul repented after hearing Samuel's prophecy and was ultimately saved. Yes, Saul, the rejected king who disobeyed God, tried to murder David, ordered the killing of the priest at Knob and finally consulted a medium. Now, okay, we need to be precise. All right, the reporting does not establish that St.
¶38Augustine dogmatically declares that Saul was saved. Okay, he's he just basically considers the possibility because the complete sermons have not yet been published. We don't have every step of the argument or a complete translation that we can quote from. But Tounau does describe he describes this as the most remarkable feature of the discovery. He says that this favorable possibility for Saul appears to be unparalleled in Augustine surviving works and in ancient Christianity more generally where Saul is usually he's usually viewed very negatively.
¶39The biblical text if you go read it it never explicitly says that Saul repented. It tells us that Saul was terrified that he ate after initially refusing food and he left the woman's house and that he entered a battle knowing that he would die. How Augustine gets from that narrative to the possibility of repentance is one of the things we'll need the published edition to really fully understand. Turno has suggested that Augustine may have developed the idea uh independently on his own or he may have actually consulted Jewish interpretations that treated Saul more favorably, but at this point we just don't know. But the theological instinct on display here is actually recognizably Augustininian.
¶40The theologian famous for insisting on the power and priority of grace looks at one of scriptur's most tragic failures and refuses to assume that grace could not have reached him at the very end. That doesn't excuse Saul's sins. It doesn't justify necromancy and it does not prove that Saul was actually saved. Okay, it means Augustine apparently left the door open. But honestly, this is a like a fascinating glimpse into the mind of St.
¶41Augustine. Not just, you know, obviously the the the controversies between Catholics and Protestants, how they quote Augustine to each other, but this was a pastor searching like a difficult text for the outlier limits of God's grace and mercy. That's pretty cool. So, here's where things ultimately stand. Okay.
¶42A 12th century manuscript in Poland preserves two previously unidentified sermons that the researchers believe are very likely authentic works of St. Augustine. The sermons don't redraw the map of Christianity. They don't settle later debates about justification, the papacy, or the sacraments. What they give us is a smaller, in my opinion, much more interesting story.
¶43We may be hearing Augustine preach through one of the Bible's strangest stories, asking whether the dead prophet Samuel truly appeared, insisting that magic could never overpower God's prophet, and considering whether even Saul's catastrophic story might have ended with repentance. It's a really cool discovery about a a very difficult passage in the Bible, an enormously important Christian thinker, and a possibility that most ancient Christians apparently never even really entertained. When the complete critical edition of these two sermons is published, we should be able to say a whole lot more about this and I definitely want to come back to it. But until then, I want to know what you think. Let me know in the comments.
¶44Was the figure at Endor really Samuel? And do you think that Saul could have repented actually before he died? Let me know in the comments. And remember, as always, Christianity is