Reading Augustine’s Propositions from the Epistle to the Romans, I came across a strange locution that reminded me of our recent discussion of Paul’s notion of the doers of the law:
41. “We know that the Law is spiritual, but I am carnal” (7:14), indicates clearly that the Law cannot be fulfilled except by spiritual men, who are made such by the grace of God. For he who has become spiritual like the Law will easily fulfill what it prescribes; nor will he be under the Law, but with it [nec erit sub illa sed cum illa]….
I am not a Latin scholar, but the locution “with the law” seems to me to be as strange in Latin as it is in English, and a search through the dictionary does not suggest a different preposition for cum that would be “better” in the sense of more intuitive. Augustine continues:
He is one, moreover, whom temporal goods do not seduce nor temporal evils terrify [is est autem, qui iam non capitur temporalibus bonis nec terretur temporalibus malis].
As the translation indicates, autem is to a certain extent disjunctive, so I don’t think we can say that being “with the law” simply and exclusively means being above the seduction/terror of temporal things — rather, the spiritual man will be both “with the law” and one who is not seduced, etc. (It’s strange to me that the translation doesn’t preserve the passive voice of this sentence — it seems to be part of Augustine’s point that the spiritual man no longer stands in a passive relationship to the temporal.)
I invite any thoughts.
An und für sich 