Rombs, Ronnie J. 1972-

PERSONAL:

Born March 4, 1972. Education: University of St. Thomas, B.A.; Fordham University, M.A., Ph.D. Religion: Catholic.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Washington Theological Union, 6896 Laurel St., N.W., Washington, DC 20012. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, educator. St. Joseph Seminary College, St. Benedict, LA, former assistant professor; Washington Theological Union, Washington, DC, assistant professor.

MEMBER:

North American Patristics Society, Catholic Theological Society of America, American Academy of Religion.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Joseph T. Lienhard) Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, InterVarsity Press (Downers Grove, IL), 2001.

Saint Augustine and the Fall of the Soul: Beyond O'Connell and His Critics, Catholic University of America Press (Washington, DC), 2006.

Contributor of articles and chapters to scholarly journals and books.

SIDELIGHTS:

Ronnie J. Rombs is a professor of theology whose primary interests include Augustine and Augustinianism, patristic theology, and fundamental theology. In his 2006 work Saint Augustine and the Fall of the Soul: Beyond O'Connell and His Critics, Rombs attempts, as his title suggests, to provide a new synthesis of Augustine's understanding of the soul and the nature of its fall. The Augustin- ian scholar Robert J. O'Connell, who died in 1999, felt that Augustine had incorporated a doctrine of the soul which owed much to the third-century Greek philosopher Plotinus, one of the founders of Neoplatonism. According to Plotinus, the soul was in existence before the body and before individual humans, and it only became material or bodily because of the folly of choosing to be separate from the World Soul, Plotinus's concept of the oneness of the universe. As Michael H. Barnes noted in the Catholic Books Review, this fall "gave form and beauty to the physical world." Barnes further commented, "The human self was one of these souls caught in a body, needing to return ‘upward’ to contemplate the Good." O'Connell argues that Augustine posited Adam as this original prehuman soul and that Adam fell from grace because he chose human existence. This view runs counter to much of Christian thought, however, which postulates that bodily life is in and of itself corrupted. Thus, O'Connell's theory that St. Augustine—one of the most important theologians after St. Paul—held such a contradictory view was a rather startling assertion in theological circles and caused extended debate, which has continued even after O'Connell's death.

In Saint Augustine and the Fall of the Soul, Rombs "tries to move the world of Augustinian scholarship beyond its present state in which the two sides have become firmly entrenched," explained Roland J. Teske in the Catholic Historical Review. Rombs insists, as Barnes observed, "that what Augustine actually thought can be resolved only by attention to the actual historical texts, not by our logic concerning what Augustine should have thought." To that end, he divides his book into two parts. In the first he analyzes the work of both Plotinus and O'Connell, thus providing a readable summary of the latter theologian's three decades of work. Writing of this first part of the book, Teske felt that Rombs has composed a successful synthesis. Also, by looking closely at the writings of Augustine himself, and comparing them to the work of O'Connell, Rombs concludes that St. Augustine was indeed influenced at an early age by the writings of Plotinus, in particular the Enneads, which led him to subscribe to the theory of a soul fallen into bodily form. Rombs goes on to argue, however, that over time Augustine modified this original thesis, and that by about the year 415, he no longer believed in this theory. While retaining much of the imagery of Plotinus, Augustine now employed it to describe the psychology of sin itself. As Teske noted, Rombs argues "that O'Connell correctly interpreted the early Augustine, but was mistaken in his interpretation of the later Augustine." "Rombs' argument is persuasive," concluded Barnes, and "stands forth on its own merits." For Teske, Rombs's work "clarified … O'Connell's views, persuasively arguing that Augustine "did not return in his later writings to a fall understood in the ontological sense." However, Teske did not feel that Saint Augustine and the Fall of the Soul would end the debate, since Rombs notes points of agreement with O'Connell's early work, a position that will likely prove unsatisfactory to many theologians. Higher praise came from Theological Studies reviewer David Meconi, who concluded, "Any student of Augustine will find this work illuminating for its analysis of O'Connell's legacy and for [Rombs's] own sifting through much of the fourth- and fifth-century questions on the human soul and then showing how Augustine came to understand the nature of the soul, its origin, and its sanctification in Christ."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Augustinian Studies, fall, 2006, Phillip Cary, review of Saint Augustine and the Fall of the Soul: Beyond O'Connell and His Critics, p. 292.

Catholic Historical Review, July, 2007, Roland J. Teske, review of Saint Augustine and the Fall of the Soul, p. 609.

Theological Studies, March, 2007, David Meconi, review of Saint Augustine and the Fall of the Soul, p. 182.

ONLINE

Catholic Books Reviews,http://www.catholicbooksreviews.org/ (March 22, 2008), Michael H. Barnes, review of Saint Augustine and the Fall of the Soul.

Washington Theological Union Web site,http://www.wtu.edu/ (March 22, 2008), "Dr. Ronnie Rombs, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology."