Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Mythic Mind, where we pursue wisdom
Speaker 1: on the path between primary secondary worlds. I'm doctor Andrew Snyder,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad that you're here. Hey there, welcome back
Speaker 1: as we continue our book study on Augustin's Confessions, this
Speaker 1: time with books seven and eight. Now, this time was
Speaker 1: a little bit different. Instead of recording through zoom as
Speaker 1: we usually do, we actually held this over on X
Speaker 1: through a space and so that's why if the sound
Speaker 1: sounds a little bit different than that's what's going on there.
Speaker 1: And if you're watching on YouTube, that's why there is
Speaker 1: not really going to be active video for most of
Speaker 1: this episode, even though I'm still posting it over there.
Speaker 1: So just know that that's what's going on. And I
Speaker 1: think that we're going to keep doing this for the
Speaker 1: book club, just kind of a way to get a
Speaker 1: little bit more exposure and to get a little bit
Speaker 1: more involved in the community. I mean, after all, our
Speaker 1: book club. At least this book club is free, and
Speaker 1: we'll probably keep doing some free book clubs here and there,
Speaker 1: and so this is the opportunity. If if you see
Speaker 1: this happening live on X, feel free to jump in
Speaker 1: or you know, pay attention to when we're going to
Speaker 1: schedule these. Feel free to jump into these conversations. Whether
Speaker 1: you've actually read the text or you just want to
Speaker 1: join the conversation, either as a listener or an actor participant,
Speaker 1: You're more than welcome to do so. If we're hosting
Speaker 1: over there, and so keep an eye out for that
Speaker 1: I from not already make sure you're following me over
Speaker 1: at andrew In Snyder, although there's a pretty good chance
Speaker 1: you are if you've found this podcast, because again there's
Speaker 1: a pretty good chance of this is how you found
Speaker 1: that podcast, because that'd be my main platform. All right, well,
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and jump right into this conversation, which
Speaker 1: included Kyle and Chase and obviously me on Augustin's Confessions
Speaker 1: book seven and eight. Oh and actually one last thing
Speaker 1: before we jump into that conversation, as a reminder, the
Speaker 1: next course is coming up on plato stoicism until we
Speaker 1: have Faces, and that begins the week of August third.
Speaker 1: So next week, if you fear listening to this shortly
Speaker 1: after it comes out, we're going to be taking a
Speaker 1: look at Plato's fato, which, in my reckoning, is actually
Speaker 1: the most important companion text to go along with Till
Speaker 1: We Have Faces, I would say even more so than
Speaker 1: the myth of Psyche in Cupid, as important as that
Speaker 1: is obviously like that that's what Lewis is really working
Speaker 1: off of, But as far as the philosophical even the
Speaker 1: theological movements that he's using, I think that the Fato
Speaker 1: from Plato is actually probably the most important companion text.
Speaker 1: And then also will be taking a look at some
Speaker 1: Stoic philosophers, Seneca Epictitis and Emperor Marcus Aurelius, given the
Speaker 1: importance of Stoicism in this story, especially through the mouth
Speaker 1: of the Fox. And so whether you've read Till We
Speaker 1: Have Faces before, you've read these other philosophers before, or
Speaker 1: you haven't, I think this will be a very profitable
Speaker 1: study to go further up and further into what Lewis
Speaker 1: is doing in what he believed to be his greatest novel.
Speaker 1: And I tend to agree to that. And so if
Speaker 1: you want to join that course, a few ways of
Speaker 1: doing that either become a Tier three patron monthly or
Speaker 1: annual over on patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind, or
Speaker 1: you can just purchase the course outright through the shop
Speaker 1: at Patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind. All right, now,
Speaker 1: let's get to that conversation. Come to the very first
Speaker 1: Mythic Mind space over on x. It's my first time
Speaker 1: hosting one of these, and so sorry if anything goes wrong,
Speaker 1: but I think we'll be all right here. All right.
Speaker 1: Good to see Kyle and Chase here. They've been the
Speaker 1: regulars throughout this book club. Good to see Reverend David here.
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us, and for anyone else who
Speaker 1: stops by. You know, I am recording this to Cino
Speaker 1: for the Mythic Mind podcast, and anybody is welcome to
Speaker 1: jump into the conversation here, whether you are actively you know,
Speaker 1: reading along with us in the Confessions, you've read it before,
Speaker 1: you don't know anything about Augustin, you just want to
Speaker 1: join the conversation. You're more than welcome to do so
Speaker 1: along the way. But for now, I want to begin
Speaker 1: as we've been doing by reading a passage from this
Speaker 1: section of the Confessions that we've been working on. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna start with a passage from book seven, which, if
Speaker 1: you're reading along with the Sheed translation is over on
Speaker 1: page one one, and this really sets the tone for
Speaker 1: what's going to be happening in book seven, So let
Speaker 1: me read that. It's kind of a long passage, but
Speaker 1: bear with me. I sought for the origin of evil,
Speaker 1: but I sought in an evil manner and failed to
Speaker 1: see the evil that was there. In my manner of inquiry,
Speaker 1: I ranged before the eyes of my mind the whole creation,
Speaker 1: both what we are able to see, earth and sea
Speaker 1: and air, and stars and trees and mortal creatures, and
Speaker 1: what we cannot see, like the firmament of the heaven above,
Speaker 1: and all its angels and spiritual powers. Though even these
Speaker 1: I imagined as if they were bodies, disposed, each in its
Speaker 1: own place. And I made one great mass of God's creation,
Speaker 1: distinguished according to the kinds of bodies in it, whether
Speaker 1: they really were bodies or only such bodies as I
Speaker 1: imagined spirits to be. I made it huge, not as
Speaker 1: huge as it is, which I had no means of knowing,
Speaker 1: but as huge as might be necessary, though in every
Speaker 1: direction finite. And I saw you Lord, in every part,
Speaker 1: containing and penetrating it, yourself excumate, yourself altogether, infinite, as
Speaker 1: if your being were a sea, infinite and immeasurable everywhere,
Speaker 1: although it's still only a sea, and within it there
Speaker 1: were some mighty but not infinite sponge, and that sponge
Speaker 1: filled in every part with the immeasurable sea. Thus I
Speaker 1: conceived your creationist finite and filled utterly by yourself, and
Speaker 1: you were infinite. And I said, here is God, and
Speaker 1: here is what God has created. And God is good,
Speaker 1: mightily and incomparably better than all these. But of his
Speaker 1: goodness he created them good. And see how he contains
Speaker 1: and fills them. So with that passage, Augustine really deals
Speaker 1: with this philosophical problem here of who is God and
Speaker 1: what is God in relation to the world that He's made.
Speaker 1: And at this time, you know he's he's already detailed
Speaker 1: some of his philosophical journey that's very much tied to
Speaker 1: his biographical journey, which I suppose I should briefly review
Speaker 1: at this point. And so Augustine was born to a
Speaker 1: Christian mother, Monica, and a pagan father, and so he
Speaker 1: was raised to know the faith, but he certainly didn't
Speaker 1: embrace it in his youth. And so he's he throws,
Speaker 1: he throws himself off into all kinds different, less of
Speaker 1: the flesh as well as less of the mind as
Speaker 1: he is pulled by various philosophical cults and sets and heresies.
Speaker 1: He finds his way first to Carthage, where he teaches rhetoric,
Speaker 1: but the students didn't really treat him very well there,
Speaker 1: you know, they didn't show up on time, they didn't
Speaker 1: respect him. That just was part of their culture. And
Speaker 1: so he decides to lead Carthage and go to Rome,
Speaker 1: where he thinks he'll be better valued by his students,
Speaker 1: but then they stiff him on the payments, and so
Speaker 1: that doesn't really go very well either. Eventually he finds
Speaker 1: his way over to Milan, where he meets with Ambrose,
Speaker 1: who is going to be pivotal in his conversion to Christianity,
Speaker 1: to Orthodox Christianity. But along the way he he as
Speaker 1: I said, goes through these philosophical stages. For a time.
Speaker 1: He's with the Manicheans, who are kind of like this
Speaker 1: mix of Zoroastrianism and Christian heresy. They believe that good
Speaker 1: and evil kind of have this. I don't I don't
Speaker 1: know any yang's the right way to frame it, but
Speaker 1: they're they're competing substances. It is the best way to
Speaker 1: understand it. And so he had this idea of a
Speaker 1: competing substance between goodness and evil, but that that led
Speaker 1: to some problems like Okay, if God is the creator,
Speaker 1: then like how do we get the substance of evil?
Speaker 1: Like did God create evil? And if so, he doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to be very good. And so he he's struggling
Speaker 1: with with these these issues. At this point, he's largely
Speaker 1: moved beyond that and now he's he's just ruggling to
Speaker 1: understand God outside of that paradigm, and he doesn't know
Speaker 1: how to conceptualize it. And so in that passage, I
Speaker 1: just read like it sounds really, it sounds good if
Speaker 1: you're not really paying attention to what he's saying, right,
Speaker 1: it seems like he's glorifying the magnitude of God. But
Speaker 1: really what he's doing is he's he's essentially identifying God
Speaker 1: with the physical order, with the created order, and so
Speaker 1: he's actually doing something like pantheism in conflating God with creation.
Speaker 1: He still just doesn't understand how to understand like spirit
Speaker 1: apart from space, and so he's he's falling into this
Speaker 1: kind of pantheism that sounds good at first, but then
Speaker 1: he goes on to say like it was evil and
Speaker 1: it's not right. And so that's a long way introducing
Speaker 1: what's going on here in book seven. This is this
Speaker 1: first pair of books that we're looking at. But I've
Speaker 1: monologue probably too long, and so I would love to
Speaker 1: hear from some of you, especially Kyle, Chase and the others,
Speaker 1: if you're you're able to join the conversation regarding just
Speaker 1: what has what stood out to you from this book,
Speaker 1: and we can take the conversation wherever it goes. Kyle,
Speaker 1: you want to pick it up next. I'm sorry, I'm
Speaker 1: not hearing you. Is anybody else hearing him? It is me,
Speaker 1: all right, So see if you can work on that. Jase,
Speaker 1: you wanna take it up next.
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 3: Yeah, It's interesting just to see like his kind of
Speaker 3: playing around with where the origin of evil is and
Speaker 3: working through it since it seems like kind of a
Speaker 3: block of him being able to get further.
Speaker 2: And the.
Speaker 3: I guess section right before the one that you read,
Speaker 3: I like this one where it's he said, It starts
Speaker 3: with I should have looked for you in that truth
Speaker 3: and have learned from it where evil is. That is
Speaker 3: learned the origin of the corruption by which your substance
Speaker 3: cannot be violated, for there is no way in which
Speaker 3: corruption can affect our God, whether by his will or
Speaker 3: by necessity or by accident, For he is God, and
Speaker 3: what he wills is good in himself is goodness, whereas
Speaker 3: to be corrupted is not good. Nor are you against
Speaker 3: your will constraint to anything where your will is not
Speaker 3: greater than your power. Kind of seeing where he is
Speaker 3: not relying on scripture in God to answer these questions,
Speaker 3: he's trying to kind of like figure out himself.
Speaker 2: That just seems like a kind of potential for struggle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, as as mentioned in that passage, I
Speaker 1: read that he recognized he was going about this the
Speaker 1: entirely wrong way, that in his investigation of the nature
Speaker 1: or as he's going to find the lack of nature
Speaker 1: of evil, that he was going about it wrong because
Speaker 1: he was still operating something somewhere in this Manichean framework
Speaker 1: of understanding evil as a substance that is like ontologically
Speaker 1: that is, in its very nature opposed to God. Like,
Speaker 1: that's the way he's framing, and I think, if we're honest,
Speaker 1: that's how a lot of us tend to understand evil.
Speaker 1: It's kind of facebook mean, theology where you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: I'll see these posts come across that's like, you know,
Speaker 1: God is is fighting for your soul, and so is
Speaker 1: the devil, and then you've got the deciding vote. Like
Speaker 1: I've seen that that sort of theology meme go around,
Speaker 1: and it's this idea that like good and evil are
Speaker 1: somewhere on equal on equal footing, like they're they're equal
Speaker 1: in power, and it's like there's a question as to
Speaker 1: who's gonna win out in the end, and that that's
Speaker 1: really a fairly manichy and kind of framework. And Augustine
Speaker 1: recognizes that, no, that that's evil because he is he
Speaker 1: doesn't think highly enough of God, and so he thinks through, okay,
Speaker 1: like what what is goodness? And ultimately goodness the good? Right,
Speaker 1: this is the question that Plato asked, what is the
Speaker 1: good that makes good things good? Augustine himself, being very
Speaker 1: much favorable toward the Platonists of his time, that he
Speaker 1: moves this direct. He wants to know what is the
Speaker 1: good that makes good things good? And of course, for
Speaker 1: the Christian the answer is God. God is the good.
Speaker 1: He is the font of goodness, as Ethanatius says, And
Speaker 1: so if God is good, then well, evil is basically
Speaker 1: whatever's not God like, whatever is not connected to God,
Speaker 1: which is of course nothing, because there is no existence
Speaker 1: apart from God. That all things were made through the Word,
Speaker 1: and nothing was made that wasn't made through Him. As
Speaker 1: Paul tells us, in Christ, all things are held together.
Speaker 1: God is the only independently existing reality. And so what
Speaker 1: that means is that anything that exists is upheld by
Speaker 1: the act of power of God. Existence itself is fundamentally good.
Speaker 1: I'm convinced that this is a necessary Christian philosophical position,
Speaker 1: that existence itself is necessarily good because it is directly
Speaker 1: tied to the nature, the person, the will of God,
Speaker 1: and so evil in this context is not actually a substance.
Speaker 1: It's actually just the movement away from God. A little
Speaker 1: bit later in book seven, he's going to push the
Speaker 1: question back a little bit and he's gonna say, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: how do we account not only for the fall of
Speaker 1: Adam and Eve? I mean, okay, maybe we can say that, well,
Speaker 1: the devil is involved in there, the devil is involved
Speaker 1: in tempting Adam and Eve. But what if we back
Speaker 1: up that question and deal with the fall of the
Speaker 1: devil himself, Like, how can a perfect being with no
Speaker 1: external temptation to sin? How can that thing made by
Speaker 1: a good God for good purposes? Like, how can that
Speaker 1: being fall into sin? How can it rebel against God?
Speaker 1: What would even bring up up that idea? And I
Speaker 1: think that Augustine answers this about as well as we can.
Speaker 1: That evil is not actually an external thing, but evil
Speaker 1: is an act of the will in turning away from
Speaker 1: the greater good of that is God, the good that
Speaker 1: makes good things good, and he turned toward lesser goods,
Speaker 1: And in turning toward lesser goods, you're ultimately facing in
Speaker 1: the direction of non existence, as you're facing away from God. Now,
Speaker 1: as long as you're looking at something right, like maybe
Speaker 1: you're sinning through you know, Augustine in his youth, lusting
Speaker 1: after the pairs or the camaraderie, or you know, whatever's
Speaker 1: inciting him to steal those pairs that he's he might
Speaker 1: be looking at a good thing. But what makes that
Speaker 1: a sin, what makes that evil, is that his will
Speaker 1: is turned away from the good towards lesser goods. And
Speaker 1: in elevating lesser goods above the ultimate good kind of
Speaker 1: you lose goodness, which is to say that you're moving
Speaker 1: in the direction of non existence. You're you're becoming nothing.
Speaker 1: Is why in the Great Divorce, you know, the the
Speaker 1: characters that aren't what they're supposed to be are illusory ghosts,
Speaker 1: because in looking toward what is illusory, they themselves become illusory.
Speaker 1: They lost the substance, the foundation of existence. And I
Speaker 1: think that this is I mean, i'm, I'm, I'm very
Speaker 1: influenced by by gust and myself, and but I think
Speaker 1: that this is probably the most consistent way of understanding
Speaker 1: evil that's not actually a thing. It's a privation, it's
Speaker 1: an absence. As he says in the City of God,
Speaker 1: that the original evil is in looking away from that light,
Speaker 1: which would make us a light if we would set
Speaker 1: our eyes upon it. And he kind of approaches that idea,
Speaker 1: or he gets that idea, but I would sayless directly
Speaker 1: in the confessions in this in book seven. So it
Speaker 1: Takeshi a while to get here, but once he gets here,
Speaker 1: he recognizes it's not only a philosophical breakthrough, but that
Speaker 1: it's it's a theological breakthrough, it's an existential breakthrough. In
Speaker 1: recognizing the distinction of God's independence compared to what is
Speaker 1: corruptible in the world that he has created. And so
Speaker 1: there's I think there's a lot of real spiritual value
Speaker 1: in his epiphany that goes beyond mere philosophical value understood.
Speaker 1: If we understand there's that separate things. Cool, Kyle, do
Speaker 1: you want to try again about now? There you are?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 1: There you are? Yep, I hear you.
Speaker 4: All right, perfect, Chase gave me a Chase gave me
Speaker 4: the tip. Okay, yeah, Andrew, I can hear you. I
Speaker 4: can listen to moologue forever. You said that you thought
Speaker 4: you took too long. I didn't think he's so long enough.
Speaker 4: Now I think I think reading Augustine in particular, the
Speaker 4: way he begins to see God, I think through the
Speaker 4: Platonists as sort of this uh imaterial and viable, greatest
Speaker 4: good right, And so he gets as far as he can,
Speaker 4: he gets as close to an understanding of God as
Speaker 4: he can through natural revelation and natural philosophy. He gets
Speaker 4: he gets as far as human reason can take him.
Speaker 4: And that's really the lens his own reason through which
Speaker 4: we've seen his entire journey, his entire biography. Yet he
Speaker 4: also says outright that while philosophy can teach him, that
Speaker 4: philosophy can't teach him about Christ right, Philosophy can't teach
Speaker 4: about the word made flesh that comes specifically through special
Speaker 4: revelation alone. And he's falling into these things like pantheism,
Speaker 4: you know, a man of keyism and all of these
Speaker 4: things because he has not yet come to terms yet
Speaker 4: with with the God Man Jesus himself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. I love that passage when he's talking about
Speaker 1: the value that he saw on the Platonists and what
Speaker 1: he didn't find there looking back as a Christian, what
Speaker 1: found him wanting And you know, I'm just gonna again,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read a fairly long passage here because as
Speaker 1: somebody myself who very much appreciates Plato, he's probably my
Speaker 1: favorite of the pre modern pagan philosophers. I mean, no
Speaker 1: surprise that I have camaraderie with the likes of Lewis
Speaker 1: and Augustine here. But Augustin here does a great job
Speaker 1: of demonstrating that he's not just a Platonist. He is
Speaker 1: a Christian Platonist, which means that he sees the value
Speaker 1: that Plato has to offer. But he's going to he's
Speaker 1: going to sift him. He's not going to take them,
Speaker 1: you know, whole cloth. He's going to take what is valuable,
Speaker 1: and he's going to leave the rest. And so here's
Speaker 1: what he says about what he got from the Platonists.
Speaker 1: And this is book seven, section nine. And first you
Speaker 1: will to show me how you resist the proud and
Speaker 1: give grace to the humble, and how with great mercy
Speaker 1: you have shown men the way of humility in the
Speaker 1: word sorry, in the word that was made flesh and
Speaker 1: dwelt among men. Therefore you brought in my way by
Speaker 1: means of a certain man, an incredible conceited man, some
Speaker 1: books of the Platonists translated from Greek into Latin. In
Speaker 1: them I found, though not in the very words, yet
Speaker 1: the thing itself improved by all sorts of reasons. That
Speaker 1: in the beginning was the Word, and the word was
Speaker 1: with God, and the Word was God. The same was
Speaker 1: in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him,
Speaker 1: and without him was made. Nothing that was made in
Speaker 1: him was life, and the life was the light of men.
Speaker 1: And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness
Speaker 1: did not comprehend it. And yet in those same writings
Speaker 1: that the soul of man, though it gives testimony to
Speaker 1: the light, yet it is not itself the light, but
Speaker 1: the word, God himself is the true light, which enlightens
Speaker 1: every man that comes into this world, and that he
Speaker 1: was in the world, and the world was made by him,
Speaker 1: and the world knew him not. And so Augustin says,
Speaker 1: like I got all of that basically John's prologue. I
Speaker 1: got all of that in Plato, which it is remarkable,
Speaker 1: and like I get exactly what he's saying. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, when when you read Plato, when when you
Speaker 1: read the the you know Phedro, or you read the Tmayas,
Speaker 1: his creation account, like Augustine says that God, which he
Speaker 1: uses and capital g God, like Augustine Aristotle, that they
Speaker 1: at the very least, I think we can say they
Speaker 1: move in a monotheistic direction. Whether or not we want
Speaker 1: to call the strict monotheist or not, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I want to make that hard claim,
Speaker 1: but they at least move in a monotheistic direction. And
Speaker 1: in his creation account in the Tamayas, Plato says that
Speaker 1: God fashion was formless and void through his word. I
Speaker 1: mean that's very much in line with what we get
Speaker 1: in the Genesis account, is very much what we get
Speaker 1: in John's prologue, which I think is just remarkable. And
Speaker 1: so Gustin is like, I found all of that in Plato,
Speaker 1: But I did not read in those books that he
Speaker 1: came unto his own, and his own received him, not
Speaker 1: but to as many as received him. He gave power
Speaker 1: to be made the sons of God, to them that
Speaker 1: believed in his name. Again, I found in them that
Speaker 1: the Word of God was born, not a flesh, nor
Speaker 1: a blood, nor the will of man, nor the will
Speaker 1: of flesh, but of God. But I did not find
Speaker 1: that the Word became flesh. And then he goes on
Speaker 1: further with this. But that gives you the gist of
Speaker 1: the idea here that as far as a system of thought,
Speaker 1: of understanding where truth, good is, and beauty lay, that
Speaker 1: understanding something about the purpose of the human soul and
Speaker 1: what our teleology is, are our goal where we ought
Speaker 1: to be headed. It's like all of that you can
Speaker 1: find in Plato, but don't find in Plato. Is God
Speaker 1: coming to us? You see a means of the soul
Speaker 1: assenting to God, But we see nothing of God descending
Speaker 1: to the human soul to lift us up to actually
Speaker 1: provide that that redemption, that active movement of God in history.
Speaker 1: That's something you don't find in Plato. And so, and
Speaker 1: this is why a number of the Christians of the
Speaker 1: early Church considered Plato to be preparatory for the Gospel.
Speaker 1: And Plato play an important role in some of the
Speaker 1: early categoral schools. And so that that Plato, he provides
Speaker 1: a system of knowledge, but he does not provide the Gospel.
Speaker 1: He does not provide us with the incarnate word that
Speaker 1: raises us up to where God is. And for that reason,
Speaker 1: I mean it's ultimately the Christianity is not Platonism, even
Speaker 1: though there's a lot in Platonism that is Christian. I
Speaker 1: think the best way to frame that, And you know,
Speaker 1: as somebody who appreciates Plato but is first and foremost
Speaker 1: a Christian, I just I love the way that Augustine
Speaker 1: lays us out in this section, and he goes on
Speaker 1: much further than that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think later on in section seventeen he
Speaker 4: goes on too in further detail about I think where
Speaker 4: that comes to point where that comes short where just
Speaker 4: going through Plato through natural reason has proven weak, because
Speaker 4: he says, thus, in the thrust of a trembling gaze,
Speaker 4: my mind derived of that which is Then indeed I
Speaker 4: saw clearly you are invisible things which are understood by
Speaker 4: the things that I made. But I lacked the strength
Speaker 4: to hold my gaze fixed, and my weakness was beaten
Speaker 4: back again, so that I returned to my old habits,
Speaker 4: bearing nothing in me but a memory of delight and
Speaker 4: a desire for something of which I had caught the fragrance,
Speaker 4: but which I had not yet the strength to eat.
Speaker 4: So his reason has still left him two weak.
Speaker 2: For the natural revelation.
Speaker 4: And that's when chapter seventeen ends, and then immediately chapter
Speaker 4: eighteen picks up. So I set about finding a way
Speaker 4: to gain the strength that was necessary for enjoying you,
Speaker 4: and I could not find it until I embraced the
Speaker 4: mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who
Speaker 4: is over all things God blessed forever, who was calling
Speaker 4: unto me and saying I am the Way, the Truth,
Speaker 4: and the Life, and who brought into union with our
Speaker 4: nature that food which I lacked the strength to take,
Speaker 4: for the word was made flesh that youer wisdom by
Speaker 4: which you created all things might give suck to our
Speaker 4: soul's infancy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so in all of his longings, I mean,
Speaker 1: he thought that he was looking for probably a solution
Speaker 1: to a philosophical problem. But ultimately what he was looking
Speaker 1: for is Christ. He was looking for not words, but
Speaker 1: he was looking for the Word, even though he knew
Speaker 1: it not up to this point. You know, this is
Speaker 1: why he talks about how in all of his philosophical
Speaker 1: wanderings up to this point that even when he saw
Speaker 1: something worthwhile, something that drew him in, something attractional, that
Speaker 1: all of these different systems, whether we're talking about the
Speaker 1: Manicheans or the academics or the various philosophers, that he
Speaker 1: saw value in, even in the good ones, something was missing,
Speaker 1: something didn't satisfy his soul. As he says, Christ wasn't there.
Speaker 1: There may have been something like an echo of Christ
Speaker 1: that was pulling him in, something of value that was
Speaker 1: wedding his appetite. But what he was looking for is
Speaker 1: not to have his appetite wedded. But he was looking
Speaker 1: for is to have his appetite satiated with the incarnate Christ.
Speaker 1: He was looking for the Church. And you know, as
Speaker 1: he gets drawn in by Ambrose, and he at this
Speaker 1: point in the Confessions, he is he's a cate of
Speaker 1: Cuman and so he's counting himself as a Christian. But
Speaker 1: he's not all in yet. But he recognizes there is
Speaker 1: something different here. This is not just another philosophical phase
Speaker 1: that he's going through, but that in the Church, what
Speaker 1: he's finding is genuine substance, although it won't be intel
Speaker 1: book eight when he really really embraces that wholeheartedly. All Right,
Speaker 1: is there anything else, Chase or Kyle or anybody else
Speaker 1: from book seven that you'd like to bring up?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think just like you're saying, you can see
Speaker 3: throughout book, I mean all the books that we've read
Speaker 3: and coming through book seven of just his journey from
Speaker 3: you know, being with the Manicheans the academics, to listening
Speaker 3: more to the Church to dealing with in this book astrology,
Speaker 3: where you know, he started to recognize, hey, it's not real,
Speaker 3: you know, even though sometimes what's described by these astrologists
Speaker 3: comes up, and even using like biblical stories in terms
Speaker 3: of Jacob and Esau to refute astrology, saying like, you know,
Speaker 3: if we had read the same horoscope, they would have
Speaker 3: had the same horoscope, but their lives were so vastly different,
Speaker 3: and I think it shows just that God has different
Speaker 3: journeys for different people.
Speaker 2: You know, if you have somebody that's.
Speaker 3: Can take it right from the beginning, face value and
Speaker 3: just believe it, and then you have other people that
Speaker 3: they need to discover what it is, whether it's from
Speaker 3: coming through like a philosophy background. I mean, he talks
Speaker 3: later about how he would have been a problem if
Speaker 3: he would have found Christ first and then gone into
Speaker 3: all these philosophers. It may have drawn him or made
Speaker 3: him stumble along the way, and that's all part of
Speaker 3: God's plan.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I thought that was an interesting section when he
Speaker 1: says that he's glad that he studied the philosophers before
Speaker 1: before studying scripture seriously because of that reason that maybe
Speaker 1: the philosophers would have drawn him away. But as it stands,
Speaker 1: the philosophers were actually moving him in the right direction.
Speaker 1: They were there were the shadows moving him toward the substance.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's very much in line with
Speaker 1: what we've already been discussing regarding the nature of goodness
Speaker 1: and evil as it relates to the will that you know,
Speaker 1: evil is moving in the wrong directions, looking in the
Speaker 1: wrong direction. Goodness of the will is moving in the
Speaker 1: right direction, and so that this was a movement in
Speaker 1: the right direction that ultimately led him to the truth
Speaker 1: of the word. And yeah, I think that that's a
Speaker 1: fascinating way that he lays that out.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 4: I think I think that's it's a case in point
Speaker 4: of the way that this movement because reading the philosophers
Speaker 4: as pre Christian is a very different experience than as
Speaker 4: a post Christian per se right, because depending on where
Speaker 4: you are, and depending on maybe what you're uh spiritual
Speaker 4: maturity is or mental maturity, it will either bring you
Speaker 4: in a closer direction or a false direction. Because if
Speaker 4: you're already standing apart from it, then yes they are.
Speaker 4: They are waypoints further down the road on the way
Speaker 4: to Calvary. But if you're already standing at Calvary and
Speaker 4: you're going back on the road to look at those
Speaker 4: way points once again. And that's not that's not to
Speaker 4: say Christians can't read Plato, but it is to say
Speaker 4: that without maybe a certain act of sifting, it can
Speaker 4: be dangerous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's fair that if you are not
Speaker 1: well founded, like you don't yet understand the glories of
Speaker 1: Christian teaching. Then yeah, then the the apparent glories of
Speaker 1: the Pagans can certainly seem appealing in an unhealthy way.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what Augustin is saying, right, That's what's
Speaker 1: why he's saying that he's glad that he moved in
Speaker 1: this dijectory versus the other. At the same time, and
Speaker 1: as you provide that a caveat there that I think
Speaker 1: that there, of course is a lot of value if
Speaker 1: you are rightly situated to recognize not that we go
Speaker 1: to Plato for ultimate wisdom, but that we recognize that
Speaker 1: all truth is God's truth wherever it can be found. Right,
Speaker 1: this is why we we don't need to be afraid
Speaker 1: of like finding truth things in the Pagans or or
Speaker 1: as C. S. Lewis said, I just looked at this
Speaker 1: and oh, I can't remember. I'm always reading somewhere in Lewis,
Speaker 1: But he talks about how as that the Christian doesn't
Speaker 1: need to kind of stake a claim in disagreeing with
Speaker 1: every other religion on every single point that obviously on
Speaker 1: the most central issues. Yeah, of course they're there are differences.
Speaker 1: We don't want to gloss over those. But the fact
Speaker 1: is that just because somebody outside of you know, the
Speaker 1: Church says something true, well, according to Augustine, that actually
Speaker 1: belongs to the Church, and so that we we we
Speaker 1: shouldn't have any problem, you know, plundering the Egyptian so
Speaker 1: to speak. Is that's the kind of language he uses
Speaker 1: in on Christian doctrine, recognizing that all truth is God's truth.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, you're exactly right, Kyle, that
Speaker 1: we need to have that mindset of Christ is truth.
Speaker 1: And if we don't have that, if we're looking for
Speaker 1: wisdoms without recognizing where wisdom is found, if we're looking
Speaker 1: for goods without recognizing where the good is found, then
Speaker 1: of course we're going to be led in all the
Speaker 1: wrong directions. Right that, Seramon breaking the white light into
Speaker 1: its various refractions, that we're moving from the unified to
Speaker 1: the disunified. Whereas if you are solid in your faith,
Speaker 1: you're solid in your mind, you are convinced of the
Speaker 1: fact that all truth ultimately comes from He who is truth. Well,
Speaker 1: now we're able to look at the various rays of
Speaker 1: light that move in isolation throughout the various thinkers various
Speaker 1: times various world views, and now we're able to bring
Speaker 1: them into the unity, the white light, which ultimately is
Speaker 1: Christ as we bring things back to the right orientation.
Speaker 1: So again we've got this. It comes down to where
Speaker 1: you're oriented, Like are you oriented toward unity or are
Speaker 1: you moving in the direction of disunity and ultimately disintegration. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so there's there's that anything else from book seven.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just to going on that too. Of it recognizes
Speaker 3: that it puts them in a good position in terms
Speaker 3: of being able to help others through it and discern
Speaker 3: things that are going to come later. You know, it
Speaker 3: makes them a better teacher having gone through all of
Speaker 3: that and helping others that may not stumble across you know,
Speaker 3: the church and learn or may just speed their process
Speaker 3: through going through the philosophers and academics and stuff. It's
Speaker 3: the same as like somebody that may have, you know,
Speaker 3: a convert from a different religion, Like they would have
Speaker 3: knowledge that they could then share with people that were
Speaker 3: their previous religion.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, there's so much value in having those
Speaker 1: those touch points with the people that you're trying to
Speaker 1: speak with. I mean, you know, even Paul Is, you know,
Speaker 1: mean he's quoting Greek poets in Athens, Greek pagan poets.
Speaker 1: He's literally taking poems about Zeus and just changing him
Speaker 1: to the Christian God, you know when he says in
Speaker 1: him we live and move and have our being. And
Speaker 1: so you know, he had no problem doing that and
Speaker 1: engaging with the Greek philosophers at the Areopagus at Mars Hill.
Speaker 1: And you know, not that we have reason to I mean, Paul,
Speaker 1: I mean, he was obviously a sadducy. I mean, he
Speaker 1: was a Jew. He assume is it coming from philosophy,
Speaker 1: so to speak, But he definitely was aware of it.
Speaker 1: And we see in his ministry how that can be
Speaker 1: used as a way of touching the culture around him.
Speaker 1: And so too, I think that when you look at
Speaker 1: someone like Augustine, who is led through philosophy ultimately to
Speaker 1: the substance of wisdom in Christ, that now he is
Speaker 1: uniquely equipped to deal in that kind of language and
Speaker 1: in turn to to recognize the wisdom of Christ in
Speaker 1: a kind of way that you know, you might not
Speaker 1: be able to do if you aren't even if you're
Speaker 1: not prone to ask the kinds of questions that philosophers ask,
Speaker 1: right whereas when you do ask those kinds of questions
Speaker 1: that philosophers ask, maybe even the question that you know
Speaker 1: make some religious teachers a little bit uncomfortable, But like
Speaker 1: you're willing to ask those questions with the conviction that
Speaker 1: there are answers to be found in Christ. Well, now
Speaker 1: you're able to appreciate the wisdom offered in the Word
Speaker 1: all the better. And I think that's exactly what we
Speaker 1: find in Augustine. Anything else related to book seven?
Speaker 4: You gave me more things I want to talk about
Speaker 4: just then, but if we're short on time, we can
Speaker 4: move on.
Speaker 1: Hey, I'm not in a rush.
Speaker 4: Well, I just want to You talked about how Paul changed,
Speaker 4: Paul appropriated what was a poem about Zeus to super Christ.
Speaker 4: And I think we often can separate mythology from philosophy,
Speaker 4: and I'm not certain Augustine living in a world that did.
Speaker 4: And so it's interesting how we can see philosophy, pre
Speaker 4: Christian philosophy say so much that's true, and in the
Speaker 4: same way we can also often see pre Christian mythology
Speaker 4: say so much that's true. Yet it's just that the
Speaker 4: natural revelation can't get quite far enough. But even you know,
Speaker 4: we read the poetic gota. Recently, I wasn't there with
Speaker 4: you guys, but in the introduction, Learning is talking about
Speaker 4: how Odin is sacrificing himself to himself by hanging on
Speaker 4: the world tree, that is zeked yourself. And it seems
Speaker 4: like it seems something like typology. Who I read it,
Speaker 4: and maybe that's me reading into it, but it seems
Speaker 4: like a typology. And it's like we all, we all
Speaker 4: have that that Christ shaped hole that's in us, and well,
Speaker 4: we can't fill it with Christ until we meet him.
Speaker 4: It's almost like we can sort of feel out, feel
Speaker 4: out the empty spaces, and and our philosophy and our
Speaker 4: storytelling and our armathology is is mapped according to that
Speaker 4: empty space, and so it almost takes on that Christ form.
Speaker 4: That was me going on a tangent. I don't know
Speaker 4: if it's strictly Augustinian, but no thinking about that recently.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's always a changent I think worth going on.
Speaker 1: And you know, we'll bring it back to the confessions
Speaker 1: in a moment, but I can't help but to engage
Speaker 1: with that that. Yeah, it is so interesting, you know,
Speaker 1: reading the ethic literature and seeing this idea of Odin
Speaker 1: sacrificing himself to himself on the tree. Like, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: obviously not exactly what happened with Christ, but it's very
Speaker 1: close as far as echoing a very distinctly Christian theme
Speaker 1: in in the in paganism, in Norse paganism, or I mean,
Speaker 1: same thing in the North Tail North Tales, you have
Speaker 1: a balder who's dying as a as a sign of
Speaker 1: basically the end times, of moving towards Ragnarok, and then
Speaker 1: afterwards he's going to be resurrected to bring about restoration.
Speaker 1: You see, even in I can't remem wach one off,
Speaker 1: one of the edic texts, Odin is told that like
Speaker 1: someone far greater than he is going to come and
Speaker 1: basically put an end to the Norse pantheon. And you know,
Speaker 1: they're all these what seemed to be echoes of Christianity
Speaker 1: in the mythology. And you know, Lewis approaches this saying
Speaker 1: that you know, some people might look at this and say, okay, well,
Speaker 1: then what that means is the Christian message is just
Speaker 1: a regurgitation of these old pagan ideas of dying and
Speaker 1: rising gods and whatnot. But Lewis says that no, Actually,
Speaker 1: if the death and resurrection of Christ is indeed the
Speaker 1: center of cosmic history, that is the narrative, then you
Speaker 1: would expect that echoes of that would be seen again
Speaker 1: and again and again in the human mind and the
Speaker 1: human soul and human desires. That this is the true story,
Speaker 1: the myth that became in fact, that this myth just
Speaker 1: is integral to what it means to be human, and
Speaker 1: so we should expect that it's going to rise up
Speaker 1: again and again in different forms at different times. And
Speaker 1: you know, we can say that the same can be
Speaker 1: true of philosophy, and that brings us directly back into
Speaker 1: the Augustinian angle here that just as in the great myths,
Speaker 1: we very often see even in the pre Christian pagan myths,
Speaker 1: we see echoes framing time in a certain way, because
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously usually echo happens after a thing, but
Speaker 1: a kind of looking at the eternal perspective. Here we
Speaker 1: see echoes of what we're going to get in the
Speaker 1: Christian Gospel. So too in philosophy, especially in the likes
Speaker 1: of Plato, and even in Aristotle and of course others,
Speaker 1: you know, even Confucius and some people made that argument,
Speaker 1: although unless equipped to speak on that that we see
Speaker 1: these premonitions of clear Christian teaching coming out in often
Speaker 1: twisted and corrupted ways, but nonetheless in remarkably similar ways
Speaker 1: to what we get in Christianity. And I think that
Speaker 1: ties into what Paul does with the Greeks. I think
Speaker 1: it very much ties into what Augustine does with the Platonists,
Speaker 1: that there's something very true, there is something very Christian
Speaker 1: there as Plato, to the extent that he's able without
Speaker 1: clear Christian revelation, you know, operating in a pre pagan
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, pre Christian paganism, disconnected from as far as
Speaker 1: we can tell, you know, even Old Testament prophetic teaching,
Speaker 1: that he just through reason, being in tune with the
Speaker 1: logofs that enlightens all men, he's able to get remarkably
Speaker 1: close to the truth. Then you know, he even says
Speaker 1: things like, you know, if there ever were a perfect man,
Speaker 1: then you know, surely we would would kill him. I
Speaker 1: mean some translations even say crucify him. Like as far
Speaker 1: as just broad abstract ideas as well as I mean
Speaker 1: some rather specific ideas, we get these premonitions of Christianity
Speaker 1: in philosophy, very much as we get it in the mythology,
Speaker 1: and that's because what we get in Christianity like it.
Speaker 1: It is true, Christ is the truth. All things were
Speaker 1: made through the Word that became flesh in time, and
Speaker 1: so we can expect that people who are using revelation
Speaker 1: to the extent that they're able to use it, are
Speaker 1: going to move in the direction of that which is
Speaker 1: principally revealed, which is the eternal logoss the Word. And
Speaker 1: so I think that that very much gives Augustine credibility
Speaker 1: in his use of the Platonists. You know, I when
Speaker 1: when I first started telling people that I was going
Speaker 1: to study philosophy, a lot of people were very concerned
Speaker 1: about that, like like I was, you know, going to
Speaker 1: be going off the deep end, which I mean to
Speaker 1: be fair, like that happens. But you know, I came
Speaker 1: to find that even studying philosophy in a public university,
Speaker 1: which I mean something like atheist seminary is kind of
Speaker 1: what it feels like that I just became more and
Speaker 1: more and more convinced that all riches of wisdom dwell
Speaker 1: in Christ. Like there's so much substance there. Things make
Speaker 1: sense in a way that they don't make sense outside
Speaker 1: of that, that context, that the context of Christ. And
Speaker 1: so I'm very convinced that a true study of philosophy,
Speaker 1: not just ideologies, but a true understanding of like philosophy
Speaker 1: being the love of wisdom, a true love of wisdom
Speaker 1: and earnest pursuit of the truth is going to lead
Speaker 1: in the direction of the truth. Now, we do need
Speaker 1: that special revelation of Scripture of the New Testament. We
Speaker 1: need that special redeeming grace to open our eyes, like
Speaker 1: we need God to act, which is what Augustin talks
Speaker 1: bout hearing a difference with the Platonists. But I think
Speaker 1: that just using the revelation that's available to us at
Speaker 1: all times is going to move us in the direction
Speaker 1: of the truth. And in the best of Paganism, we
Speaker 1: see that worked out pretty pretty directly. Now, did you
Speaker 1: have anything else to say about that, or you know,
Speaker 1: wherever else you wanted to go?
Speaker 4: Kyle, I feel it goes for book eight, all right.
Speaker 1: Moving on to book eight. Now, I admit that I
Speaker 1: didn't spend as much time in this one, although it
Speaker 1: is very significant, especially towards the end. And so I'll
Speaker 1: initially defer to Kyle or Chase, where do you want
Speaker 1: to go with book.
Speaker 4: Eight, I would say so. You know, for me, book
Speaker 4: eight has been the culmination, the culmination of a team.
Speaker 4: I see a lot, which is essentially how Augustine's erotic
Speaker 4: passions right, the loves of passion act as a ladder
Speaker 4: towards towards what is the love of God. He's continually
Speaker 4: in search for beauty, He's really in search for goodness,
Speaker 4: and his search he discerns what is good and what
Speaker 4: is evil, and we covered that in chapter seven. And
Speaker 4: he gets to a point where he confesses that he
Speaker 4: no longer has has reason not to be fully in.
Speaker 4: He no longer has reason not to be fully in,
Speaker 4: but he is still at the point where he doesn't
Speaker 4: have the strength to do so, because while his loves
Speaker 4: of passion have acted as a latter to a love
Speaker 4: of God, at the same time they are not rightly
Speaker 4: ordered because he is in sin, and so his passions
Speaker 4: are now acting as an iron chain ement against him,
Speaker 4: and they are weakening as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And so he recognizes where his passions have
Speaker 1: been leading him, and he recognizes and both as they've
Speaker 1: been leading him to destruction as well as where they've
Speaker 1: been leading him in the fulfillment of passion, you know,
Speaker 1: going back to the very beginning of the Confessions, this
Speaker 1: Augustinian idea that the heart is restless, and tell it
Speaker 1: rests in God. That he's been throwing himself away into
Speaker 1: all these lusts of the flesh, not recognizing that his
Speaker 1: restlessness isn't meant to be satisfied by temporal things, but
Speaker 1: his restlessness is meant to be satisfied by the eternal.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It very much reminds me, and I've probably referenced this
Speaker 1: in one of the previous talks on this, or at
Speaker 1: least somewhere else. It very much reminds me of the
Speaker 1: message of Ecclesiastes. I think that pairs very well with
Speaker 1: Augustine's life, where in Ecclesiastes of Solomon chasing all these
Speaker 1: different things under the sun, these different ventures, you know,
Speaker 1: food and wine and women and building projects and establishing
Speaker 1: a legacy and all these different things that he's pursuing,
Speaker 1: he comes to recognize that it's a vanity. Everything is
Speaker 1: vanity under the sun, Everything is chasing after wind under
Speaker 1: the sun. And really what he concludes is that what
Speaker 1: we need to do is get above the sun, so
Speaker 1: to speak, recognizing the Sun as our chief point of
Speaker 1: temporal reference, like the sun symbolizing time. In this world
Speaker 1: of time, of things that are falling away, things that
Speaker 1: are fading away, we try to latch on as if
Speaker 1: they're going to provide security, but they're not going to
Speaker 1: because this world and desires are passing away. With something
Speaker 1: you find in Scripture, something you find in the Greeks,
Speaker 1: and going all the way back to Heraclitis who said
Speaker 1: that everything is like a river, and you can't step
Speaker 1: into the same river twice because well, the water is
Speaker 1: always moving. And so in this world of finite goods
Speaker 1: around us, things are always moving and passing away despite
Speaker 1: our temptation to latch ourselves onto them. But what we
Speaker 1: recognize in Ecclesiastes is that what we need to do
Speaker 1: to gain real significance is to get above the sun,
Speaker 1: so to speak, and to anchor ourselves in the eternal
Speaker 1: reality of God. And when we do so, now even
Speaker 1: our temporal pursuits gain eternal significance. They gained substance. We
Speaker 1: gained substance because we're rightly related to the eternal And
Speaker 1: I think that I agree with you that in book
Speaker 1: eight that that idea is really starting to come into
Speaker 1: fuller blossom in his in his reflections.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 3: You know, he does the right thing in terms of
Speaker 3: going for a like you know, an older Christian, somebody
Speaker 3: that has had experience seeking kind of help through all
Speaker 3: these issues.
Speaker 2: And I enjoy that. Basically the story that.
Speaker 3: Some platiists I don't know however you pronounce his name,
Speaker 3: but where he talks about Victorious who was like basically
Speaker 3: not for so long, was not willing to walk into
Speaker 3: the church because he was worried about what it would
Speaker 3: do or his public life in a social life. And
Speaker 3: then you know, he comes up, uh, comes up to
Speaker 3: his friend and says, let us go to the church.
Speaker 3: I wish he'd made a Christian and some polishness is
Speaker 3: basically unable to control his joy. You know, he went
Speaker 3: with them, and everybody that's there has basically been waiting
Speaker 3: on this moment of him coming.
Speaker 2: And then he.
Speaker 3: Basically is just once he has the confidence to speak
Speaker 3: his true faith and everyone's just you know, failed with joy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just it is a pretty profound conversion story
Speaker 1: of the faith really coming alive in his heart. I mean,
Speaker 1: this isn't just like a you know quietly, you know,
Speaker 1: everyone closed your eyes and you know, raise your hand
Speaker 1: if you feel something. It's it's not like this is
Speaker 1: a bold, a public move that has some public ramifications
Speaker 1: for him, but it's I mean he's just met with
Speaker 1: of course celebration, because I mean, this is it's redemption,
Speaker 1: like what else matters when you recognize what it is
Speaker 1: that matters.
Speaker 4: And it's such an interesting contrast with Augustine, right, because
Speaker 4: what else matters? When nothing else matters? But Augustine, Augustine
Speaker 4: comes through realization that that God, like that God is
Speaker 4: real at Christ is real. Uh he he, He's caught.
Speaker 4: He's relented mentally to the truth of all of it.
Speaker 4: And yet even though he recognizes its eternal importance, it's
Speaker 4: supremacy to all of the truths, he still finds himself
Speaker 4: unable to commit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that there are I'm all throughout it Augustine's life,
Speaker 1: there are these reminders that he's he's not who he's
Speaker 1: supposed to be. That and this very much goes into
Speaker 1: it to Augustinian theology philosophy that it's it's the will
Speaker 1: that determines your direction, and that evil is found in
Speaker 1: the will, and so despite the fact that his intellect
Speaker 1: was in the right place, like he intellectually assented to
Speaker 1: the truth of Christianity, that his will was still keeping
Speaker 1: him from fully embracing it, not for any reason other
Speaker 1: than the fact that he still loved his sin. He
Speaker 1: still loved the things that he knew were wrong. And
Speaker 1: of course that's something that we can all relate to,
Speaker 1: Like we all recognize that we're drawn to things that
Speaker 1: are not good for us, they're not in line with
Speaker 1: what we know to be true. You know, it's very
Speaker 1: easy to like sign a confession of faith saying yeah,
Speaker 1: I mentally assent to all these things. It's very different
Speaker 1: to live a life of daily holiness, of rejection of
Speaker 1: the things that were that were wrong and true, embrace
Speaker 1: of the things that are good and right and true
Speaker 1: and beautiful. And so in his will he is still
Speaker 1: holding back. And so, yeah, I think you're right that
Speaker 1: that's a good contract to the story that he gives us,
Speaker 1: but also of course a good lead up to his
Speaker 1: his heart conversion, the real conversion of his soul. And
Speaker 1: so he toward the end of book eight, we actually
Speaker 1: get his full fledged conversion here when he's just thinking
Speaker 1: about his own sin. It says, he was scrutinizing, he
Speaker 1: was thinking about all of his violeness from the secret
Speaker 1: depths of his soul, and heaped into his heart's sight.
Speaker 1: A mighty storm arose within him, bringing a mighty reign
Speaker 1: of tears. And so he's at this point, he's just
Speaker 1: kind of broken down all sudden. He's thinking about his sin.
Speaker 1: He's thinking about this disconnect between what he knows to
Speaker 1: be true and the way he's actually living, and that's
Speaker 1: giving rise to this deep lamentation, a storm of tears,
Speaker 1: he says. And you know, as he's thinking about these things,
Speaker 1: he hears this voice. He says, it's a child's voice,
Speaker 1: maybe a boy, maybe a girls, he doesn't really know.
Speaker 1: And he hears this repeated frame, take up and read,
Speaker 1: take up and read, and he says it sounds kind
Speaker 1: of like a sing song y like child's game. But
Speaker 1: he says, I can't think of any child's game that
Speaker 1: would include saying this phrase again and again. And so
Speaker 1: he takes it as a divine sign, as a special revelation,
Speaker 1: to like a command to him. And so he picks
Speaker 1: up and he reads the scripture. He opens up to
Speaker 1: Paul saying not in writing and drunkenness, not in chambering
Speaker 1: in impurities, not in contention and envy. But put ye
Speaker 1: on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for
Speaker 1: the flesh in his concup. I always struggle with the word,
Speaker 1: and it's uh, it's lust. I'll translate that I And
Speaker 1: he says that he didn't need to read any further
Speaker 1: because he recognized, like, that's exactly what it is that
Speaker 1: he needed to hear to give up your sin, turn away.
Speaker 1: He didn't need at this point a philosophical exposition. He
Speaker 1: didn't need an answer to some some question that he had.
Speaker 1: What he needed was conversion. What he needed was to
Speaker 1: in his will turn away from his sin and turn
Speaker 1: to Christ. And this is what he finally does. Of course,
Speaker 1: not that he's gonna be perfect by any means, and
Speaker 1: he wouldn't suggest that he is. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: like this is when he takes the base seriously. And
Speaker 1: then he tells his friend about this, who then reads
Speaker 1: a little bit further and you know, takes the scripture
Speaker 1: as a command to him to kind of take Augustine
Speaker 1: under his wing and to lead him into the heartfelt
Speaker 1: faith that he's now discovered. And it's just like if
Speaker 1: you've been invested in Augustine's story up to this point,
Speaker 1: and you know you've been rooting for him, like this
Speaker 1: is a it's an exciting moment, right, this is when
Speaker 1: he finally gets it, or or rather when it when
Speaker 1: the Gospel finally gets Augustine and inst doing. I mean
Speaker 1: this experience that he recounts in these few pages, which
Speaker 1: obviously connected to everything came before it, but like this
Speaker 1: changed world history, that so much of Christian history and
Speaker 1: by extent, the history of the world, was impacted by
Speaker 1: Augustine picking up scripture, reading these words, turning from miss
Speaker 1: sin and turning to a genuine Christian faith. Which can't
Speaker 1: overestimate the or can't Yeah, we can't overestimate the impact
Speaker 1: that this has had on the world history, but even
Speaker 1: more importantly, the impact that genuine conversion had on Augustine
Speaker 1: as an individual. Yeah, anything else to say about his
Speaker 1: conversion or anything else from book eight?
Speaker 4: I feel good?
Speaker 1: All right, cool, all right, Well, thank you for this
Speaker 1: and thank you for those of you who joined us.
Speaker 1: I like this model. I think it kind of had
Speaker 1: a good idea of doing this over on X. I
Speaker 1: think I want to keep doing this, but I do
Speaker 1: want to end with I want to end with the
Speaker 1: first paragraph here from book eight. I think it's a
Speaker 1: good place to summarize some of where we've been and
Speaker 1: to just set us in the right place as we
Speaker 1: leave today. Let me, oh, my God, remember with thanks
Speaker 1: to THEE and confess thy mercies upon me. Let my
Speaker 1: bones be pierced through with thy love, and let them say,
Speaker 1: who is like unto THEE? O, Lord, thou hast broken
Speaker 1: my bonds. I will sacrifice to THEE the sacrifice of praise.
Speaker 1: How thou hast broken them? I shall tell all who
Speaker 1: adore THEE, will say, as they listen, Blessed be the
Speaker 1: Lord in heaven and earth. Great and wonderful is his name.
Speaker 1: All right, that's where we will leave off for now.
Speaker 1: We will pick it again with the next couple books
Speaker 1: in a couple of weeks, and for everybody else, I
Speaker 1: think we're going to continue with some of these other
Speaker 1: conversations we're having right here on X and so stay
Speaker 1: alert for those messages if you'd like to join us live.
Speaker 1: But until next time, god speed. All right, Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening, and I hope that you'll continue with us
Speaker 1: make sure that you subscribe to all of the Mythic
Speaker 1: Mind podcasts. That is Mythic Mind, this one that you
Speaker 1: listen to right now, Mythic Mind Movies and Shows, where
Speaker 1: we take a Christian humanities perspective to movies and shows.
Speaker 1: Right now we're doing a Star Wars series. We've done
Speaker 1: the original trilogy and now we're moving into the prequels
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Speaker 1: come out from Mythic Mind will be on Wednesday over
Speaker 1: on Mythic Mind Movies and Shows. You'll be getting the
Speaker 1: episode on the Phantom Menace as we begin the prequels.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, that's it for now until next time,
Speaker 1: god speed,