The concept of saeculum in the treatises of St. Augustine Aurelius “On True Religion” and “On the Book of Genesis Literally”

This article offers a contextual study of the concept of saeculum in the treatises of St. Aurelius Augustine «De vera religione» and «De Genesi ad litteram». Based on the analysis of the use of the noun saeculum in the treatises, the author comes to the conclusion that, although all the basic provisions have already been set out in the treatise «De vera religione», in the treatise «De Genesi ad litteram» they receive significant deepening and development, some new ideas related to this concept appear. These new meanings in the theoretical theological and philosophical basis of the treatises of St. Augustine include the fact that the polysemantic term saeculum — “age”, “world”, can have both a purely temporal meaning of a “temporal era”, and can be contrasted with the reality of human existence with the Divine, in sense of the biblical meaning of “this world”.