{"collection":"Christian Texts","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_chr_ecf_108_1080053_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_chr_ecf_108_1080053_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_chr_ecf_108_1080053_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/108/1080053.htm","summary":"This is a patristic sermon or commentary \u2014 specifically an exposition of Psalm 46 in the allegorical tradition of early Christian biblical interpretation, likely by Augustine of Hippo (the style, theological emphases, and Latin textual markers are characteristic of his *Enarrationes in Psalmos*). The work moves verse by verse through the psalm, treating each image \u2014 refuge, mountains cast into the sea, the river's streams, the City of God \u2014 as a layered spiritual and ecclesiological allegory. Its central argument is that God alone constitutes a true refuge (unlike worldly patrons), and that the psalm's turbulent imagery prophetically describes the Gospel's spread from the Jews to the Gentiles, with the \"mountains\" being the Apostles carrying Christ (\"the Mountain\") into the sea of the pagan world.\n\nA distinctive claim is the author's reading of \"mountains carried into the sea\" not as catastrophe but as missionary triumph: the Apostles, through faithful preaching, transplanted Christ himself among the Gentiles. Similarly, the \"streams of the river\" are identified as the Holy Spirit flowing from apostolic preaching at Pentecost, gladding the City of God even as the world's powers rage against it. The commentary also dwells at length on conscience as the deepest form of human tribulation \u2014 worse than bodily suffering or poverty \u2014 and frames divine forgiveness as the only resolution. Readers interested in early Christian allegorical exegesis, Augustinian theology, or the ecclesiology of the Church as \"City of God\" will find this text rich; those seeking historical-critical or literary analysis of the psalm will not.","tags":["Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers","Psalms Commentary","St. Augustine"],"text":null,"title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. VIII: Expositions on...","tradition":"Christian Texts","translated_text":null,"word_count":4953}