Roman Law and Christian Theology (Unpublished Ratzinger)

The present investigation thinks it can make a double clarification:

1. That the Roman spirit [Geistigkeit], with its State-Juridical determination, has its own proper rank vis-a-vis the metaphysical spirit of the Greeks; and

2. That the genuine Roman spirit, in the Latin territory of the West, entered into contact with Christian theology and here became an internal factor of Christian theology, especially through Tertullian and also precisely through Saint Augustine, the significance of which has not yet been taken into consideration.

Joseph Ratzinger, Thesis on Augustine [1951] in Collected Works I, German edition (2011), 263; Spanish edition (2014), 213.
Plinthos translation.