One of the most important and powerful passages of the confessions relates the journey of the self toward wholeness. The book addresses a range of issues in contemporary political philosophy and constitutional theory. Coffeys and guntons treatment of augustines mutual love theory. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading divine illumination. Augustine god himself is love, therefore love is not only aspiration.
The language of love is an interpretation of the phaedrus that was meant to follow and complete rosens symposium commentary. People must not be very interested in happiness because happiness lies in the truth and people dont seem to like the truth very much. The scene, which occurs in book viii, occurs in the garden of augustines house in milan, in july 386. Augustine is concerned with how he understands the truth. City of god quotes by augustine of hippo goodreads. Confessions book x memory summary and analysis gradesaver. Augustines goal is to not to prove the doctrine the trinity given his. Augustine confessions book eleven table of contents. But the loves themselves, even when disordered, are legitimate loves.
After having told us of his life and conversion, he now mimics the state of his mind after conversion by showing us as much of his faith as he can. Coffey believes augustine argues from the filioque 14 rather than from scripture and was unable to demonstrate successfully that the holy spirit is divine love from the scriptures. He affirms this specifically against cyclical theories of time such as those of stoicism. He points out that we all make truth judgments and that claim is beyond doubt. It is through this sense that i am assured of my existence. The augustinian theodicy, named for the 4th and 5thcentury theologian and philosopher augustine of hippo, is a type of christian theodicy designed in response to the evidential problem of evil. The argument begins, then, with the assertion that the holy spirit is the spirit of the son as well as of the father. Both the catholic theologian david coffey and the late protestant theologian colin e. Augustine believed that evil was a lack of the good that god intended for the world.
In 391, he was ordained presbyter in the church of hippo regius a small coastal town nearby. Stanley rosen completed the language of love in the early 1970s, but the manuscript was put aside and only rediscovered in 20, the year before his death. As such, it attempts to explain the probability of an omnipotent allpowerful and omnibenevolent allgood god amid evidence of evil in the world. These are seen to be all the more urgent in importance because of the surging aspirations for liberty in the wake of the collapses we see throughout the middle east, africa, and other areas, and the withdrawal from leadership in america and europe. In it the snake convinces the woman to eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Coffeys and guntons treatment of augustines mutuallove. Augustine turns from his memories of the past to the inner mysteries of memory itself. Augustine alfred weber a fter a youth of dissipation, the rhetorician aurelius augustinus of thagaste, africa, 354430, embraced the religion of his mother. The confessions is a work of prayer and repentance as well as praise.
Wasting no time in getting to the philosophical content of his autobiography, augustine s account of his early years leads him to reflect on human origin, will. Extract from augustine s retractions book ii, chapter 66. The work outlines saint augustine s sinful youth and his conversion to christianity. Book 14 the perfection of the image in the contemplation of god augustines concern is not to find the image of god in the introspective structure of the mind itself. Augustine was the first christian to offer a comprehensive philosophy of history, which the russian orthodox writer nicholas berdyaev called nothing short of ingenious.
Augustine s elegant rhetorical style is on display throughout this opening section and throughout the confessions, he will rely on almost musical passages as he attempts to express gods transcendent greatness and unfailing love. Love desire for god is the ordering love desire that perfects and orders all other lovesdesires. Book x is the beginning of the philosophical portion of confessions. Examines the mutual love theory of the trinity of saint augustine. Augustine, it could well be asked if there is not a tendency today to leave married people with the impression that nothing in their mutual physical relationship calls for restraint, that their mutual love is in no way endangered by the element of selfishness operative in sexuality. A short time later his mother, monica, died at ostia on the journey back to africa. Modern english translations of it are sometimes published under the title the confessions of saint augustine in order to distinguish the book. Augustine sets out to fully vindicate his faith and explain as much of the tenets of christianity in the context of philosophy as possible. Holy spirit is the divine love, that he is also the mutual love of the father and the son would still remain to be shown. Confessiones is the name of an autobiographical work, consisting of books, by saint augustine of hippo, written in latin between 397 and 400 ad. This is a heavily neoplatonic sections where the simplicity theory of god that. The theodicy of augustine of hippo augustine of hippo 354430 based his theodicy on his reading of key biblical passages. Viewed this way, book 2 points up two types of sin.
Augustine outlines saint augustines understanding of the person and role of the holy spirit in relation to the other two persons of the most holy trinity. Here is sister marie aquinas resume of ciceros ideas. If someone is to have genuine free will then the must have a real possibility of choice. In any case, without attempting to force the mind and texts of st. Coffey attempts to show the holy spirit is the bond of love through a more systemic theological methodology. Chapters 410 cliffsnotes study guides book summaries.
An introductory guide to his most important works june 4, 20 dr. Augustine realizes that there is a difference between the souls weight, based on its current love, and its true weight, engraved by the design of the creator. Mutually incompatible assertions about selflove jostle one another and. Book one book two book three book four book five book six book seven book eight book nine book ten. This picture of the spirit as the mutual love between the father and son goes back to augustine who wrote.
Is the holy spirit the love between the father and the son. The first, lust, is an example of misdirected love, a confused attempt to seek satisfaction in transitory things that can never truly satisfy. Augustine was not unique in his negative attitudes toward sexuality. A year later, augustine was back in roman africa living in a monastery at tagaste, his native town. Augustine learns the grief that comes with falling in love with something that is temporary and why it is so important to fall in love with god because he will never leave at this point augustine first realizes that you cannot be happy in the earthly city because the things that you love will leave. St augustine is widely known in church history as a great theologian and scholar whose insight and knowledge of the scriptures remain to this day as dogmas and doctrines of the. In book 10 of the work he argues that as we are one, yet also have a threefold character in us memory, understanding and will so too there are three persons in god, all equal, but not the same. Spirit as love, and i do this with the aid of peter carnleys recent book. To be sure, niebuhrs incorporation of augustines thought. Augustine also makes constant use of language from the christian bible, weaving it into his text even when he is not. The second type of sin, the love of wrongdoing simply for the doing of it, is more difficult to classify. Augustine tells us that true joy is to love god and that everything else is a cheap imitation. The present book is an attempt to think theologically about the meanings of.
One major common point of their treatment is the theory of the holy spirit as the mutual. Apart from this example, augustine is content to argue from the filioque rather than from scripture. Download it once and read it on your kindle device, pc, phones or tablets. Cicero defined friendship as an accord of wills, tastes, and thoughts, as a harmonious agreement in all matters, divine and human, accompanied by mutual goodwill and affection. Although these pages expound a theory of language, describe the christian use of music, arithmetic, history, logic, and the other liberal arts, and although they propose a novel. The holy spirit as the mutual love of the father and the son. It brought to mind some of my own memories about the book and about saint augustine.
I love music of all kinds, but it is addictive, and can be hugely difficult to go without which i reluctantly have to admit means i should go without it more often. If god had created humans who always chose to do good then they would not have real free will. The heroes of augustine s christian contemporaries were spiritual athletes like st. He continues on the importance with which we all naturally treat the truth, but points out the shortcomings of people who deceive that, they love a. Another example of augustines thirst for understanding, but acceptance of the mystery that is. He united in his soul a deep love of christ and an ardent zeal for philosophy, although, after becoming bishop of. It is a polished work, and is likely the reflective compilation of a number of conversations. Augustine was baptized by ambrose at milan during eastertide, a. The first book of the confessions is devoted primarily to an analysis of augustine s life as a child, from his infancy which he cannot recall and must reconstruct up through his days as a schoolboy in thagaste in eastern algeria.
Saint augustine s rebuttal of the judgements about the nature or origins of the arian doctrines in book v. The striking language augustine employs to describe his adolescent lusts make the passage especially illuminating in comparing translation approaches. Augustines quest is more to attain a religious rather than a psychological. Augustine, the trinity, and the filioqueyves congar. Augustines parents were of the respectable class of roman society, free to live on the work of others, but their means were sometimes straitened.
Hershberger and reinhold niebuhr on christian love. Antony, who gave up even the most innocent pleasures to live as a hermit in the desert. Augustine was born in tagaste, a modest roman community in a river valley 40 miles 64 km from the mediterranean coast in africa, near the point where the veneer of roman civilization thinned out in the highlands of numidia. This grace, as they assert, is bestowed according to our own merits. Saint augustine biography, philosophy, major works. Book 9 the mind, selfknowledge, and selflove mens, amor, notitia. Augustine, of course, has more to say about the ravages of sin than most any other church father before or after. During this period, extreme asceticism was a standard to be admired and emulated. Augustine says that he has never forgotten about god since he first learned. Examines the mutuallove theory of the trinity of saint augustine.
Out of the dark concupiscence of the flesh and the effervescence of youth exhalations came forth which obscured and overcast. Augustine and the spirit as love summa philosophiae. And the mutual love between the father and the son is actually a love of love itself, and this love is the holy spirit. Last night, i met a seminarian who had been reading saint augustines confessions and was discussing how much he liked the last section book 10 and on on memory, time, and eternity. Books by augustine of hippo augustine of hippo average rating 3.
This excerpt from yves congars book i believe in the holy spirit vol. Augustine gave classic expression to the psychological analogy of the trinity in which the unity of essence is likened to the rational part of the human soul, composed as it is of the mind, and the knowledge by which it knows itself, and the love by which it loves itself. Augustine came to believe that god created humans good but with free will. The history and future of augustine s theory of knowledge challenges in contemporary theology book 27 kindle edition by schumacher, lydia. That is, a soul may be being pulled down by base loves, and yet, even as it descends, it does not reach the repose that objects attain when they reach their place. According to augustines confessions, on the teacher is based on the type of dialogues in which augustine and adeodatus engaged. Augustine says, this was my plight at the age of twentysix or twentyseven, when i wrote that book, hugging to me my own conceptions of the physical world, which filled my ears with their outer noise while i was trying to hear your inner music, my sweet truth. There are some persons who suppose that the freedom of the will is denied whenever gods grace is maintained, and who on their side defend their liberty of will so peremptorily as to deny the grace of god. The history and future of augustine s theory of knowledge.