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Abstract
This thesis investigates the impact of the Pelagian Controversy on Augustine's understanding of the Old Testament book and character, Job. The focus lies in a comparison of the pre-Pelagian Controversy Adnotationes in Iob ("Notes on Job), written c.399, with his later references to Job, c.412-30. It is argued that Augustine's history with Job indicates greater consistency than might be supposed. Augustine's thought is set against the appropriate exegetical and controversial background. The former considers the treatment of Job by prior and contemporaneous Patristic writers. It is discovered that Augustine's assertion that he is following the tradition of the Church in his view of grace against the Pelagians is not baseless in the case of Job. Various Fathers looked to the Book of Job as proving that sin is a universal phenomenon. The controversial background pertains not only to his dispute with the Pelagians, against whom he had to defend the primacy of grace in the good life and the ubiquity of sin in human life, but also to his dispute with the Manichaeans, which found him defending the holiness of the Old Testament saints. These two tasks, it is argued, did not involve Augustine in self-contradiction. This study considers Augustine's doctrine of Scriptural interpretation (especially as seen in his 'On Christian Doctrine'), his own view of his intellectual development (as seen especially in 'Retractations'), and several of the principal themes that he considers in his 399 study of Job to arrive at the conclusion that his interpretation of Job did not alter radically over the years this study considers. This is an argument for continuity in Augustine's thought.