Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Mythic Mind, where we produsue wisdom
Speaker 1: in the past between primary secondary worlds. Ador Snyder and
Speaker 1: I'm glad that you're here. We've recently begun our first
Speaker 1: free book study, our first free book club, and based
Speaker 1: off a patron vote, we've been going through Augustine's Confessions.
Speaker 1: Now we've only met this point for our first meeting.
Speaker 1: Our next one is going to be let's see the twelfth,
Speaker 1: May twelfth at nine pm and then every other Monday
Speaker 1: at that point until we finish the Confessions. And so
Speaker 1: if you want to join in moving forward, you're more
Speaker 1: than welcome to do so. On our next meeting on
Speaker 1: the twelfth, we'll be covering books three and four, and
Speaker 1: so if you want to catch up and join us
Speaker 1: for that meeting, you're more than welcome to do so.
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Speaker 1: But for now, on to go ahead and provide you
Speaker 1: with that first conversation that we had, and so let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and get right to it. So, yeah, we
Speaker 1: can go ahead and get started here talking about Augustin's Confessions. Now,
Speaker 1: is anybody here reading it for the first time? Okay, Chase,
Speaker 1: all right, Chase has been on an incredible literary journey
Speaker 1: for the last little while here reading all kinds of
Speaker 1: amazing books. You know, you need to launch off on
Speaker 1: your own podcast or something. I'm sure you've got some
Speaker 1: things to say. Well, you know, I've been reading this
Speaker 1: book for a number of years. I mean since I
Speaker 1: was in seminary doing my master's degree, which was like
Speaker 1: it's crazy to think that I was I don't know
Speaker 1: how many, like over a decade ago. I've been in
Speaker 1: school so long it's hard to keep track of where
Speaker 1: one thing ended and another thing began. But this was
Speaker 1: in many ways like the beginning of my real literary
Speaker 1: journey in my love of reading, that especially when it
Speaker 1: comes to narrative, comes to fiction, Like I didn't read
Speaker 1: a lot of fiction, and this isn't fiction, but it
Speaker 1: is very much narrative base. It is kind of his
Speaker 1: own spiritual auto biography here, and it just resonated with
Speaker 1: me so much, as you know, this philosophically inclined individual
Speaker 1: just wrestling with ideas, wrestling with the flesh and finding
Speaker 1: his way in many ways in well finding that he's
Speaker 1: being brought along his way to Christ. Just so much
Speaker 1: of that resonated with me. That really did begin my
Speaker 1: love of books, my love of reading, my love of
Speaker 1: narratives in general, whether it be fiction or nonfiction. And
Speaker 1: so the special book to me, I did just recently
Speaker 1: for the first time read the Sheet translation, which I
Speaker 1: love this translation. I've been reading the Penguin up until now,
Speaker 1: which I mean that's that's fine as well, although I've
Speaker 1: been informed by the great Books guys that that's not
Speaker 1: so great. But yeah, So in summary, this is something's
Speaker 1: been near and dear to me for a while. But
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear some of your thoughts, all right, Jase,
Speaker 1: I got to start with you just since your reading afresh,
Speaker 1: what are your initial thoughts to kind of wherever you know,
Speaker 1: first impressions.
Speaker 2: Oh, man, this is great so far.
Speaker 3: Very much can tell like kis poll like was influenced
Speaker 3: by this work for sure, and just so much. It's
Speaker 3: just insight and how you can see that how his
Speaker 3: mind was working and wrestling with different sins that he
Speaker 3: had throughout his whole life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's been awesome so far.
Speaker 1: Good. Yeah, I guess it is one of those figures
Speaker 1: that moderns like to diagnose as something wrong with them
Speaker 1: from the way that he obsesses over his sin.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: They do the same thing to Luther, that they tried
Speaker 1: to diagnose him with some kind of psychological condition because
Speaker 1: he was so apparently obsessive over his own sin. You know,
Speaker 1: he treated every small little thing, you know, as this
Speaker 1: you know, incident with the pairs in his youth, like
Speaker 1: he treats that as such a enormous thing. But I
Speaker 1: think what we really see, for if we read honestly,
Speaker 1: we see somebody who just has learned to love holiness,
Speaker 1: and out of his love for holiness, he has a
Speaker 1: just hatred for sin. Beginning with himself. I mean, he
Speaker 1: he talks about He's got a line here where he
Speaker 1: basically says, you know, we are our own worst enemy,
Speaker 1: that it is our displeasure with God that is going
Speaker 1: to do us the greatest harm. And so he treats
Speaker 1: that with utmost seriousness, the same way that we would
Speaker 1: likely treat some of our enemies, recognizing that we're misplacing
Speaker 1: that label in the most primary sense. And so, yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree that he just from from the very beginning.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just this powerful intermingling of philosophy and
Speaker 1: existential concerns, which for him are one of the same. Cool.
Speaker 1: All right, what about let's see. I know some of
Speaker 1: you said you read it for Randall. Have you have
Speaker 1: you read this before?
Speaker 4: I've read parts of it. It's been a long time ago,
Speaker 4: and I just found out about this like two days ago,
Speaker 4: so I have not caught up yet. But what I
Speaker 4: do remember is just like being surprised, maybe this was
Speaker 4: partly translation, but just surprised at like how modern it
Speaker 4: felt like it could have been written five years ago
Speaker 4: or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And just the genre is definitely very unique.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's been approached as like an early form
Speaker 1: of depth psychology, like how Augustine gets so in detail
Speaker 1: with his own internal thoughts, and it's a way that
Speaker 1: really does make it stand out largely from the kinds
Speaker 1: of things you get in the ancient world. In that sense,
Speaker 1: it does read it's a very modern, almost existentialist kind
Speaker 1: of text, like the way that he writes is not
Speaker 1: entirely different from someone like Kirkey Guard. And in fact,
Speaker 1: I almost made my doctoral dissertation on the intersections between
Speaker 1: Kirkyard and Augustine until I unfortunately came across the book
Speaker 1: that already did what I wanted to do to do,
Speaker 1: which is one of the worst things you're doing research
Speaker 1: to find out that someone else has already done what
Speaker 1: you want to do, and then you know, got to
Speaker 1: go find some other niche. But yeah, it so it
Speaker 1: is definitely a modern kind of text in that sense.
Speaker 1: It seems like it is right. Well, I guess I will.
Speaker 1: We'll kind of run this how we've done some of
Speaker 1: our other book studies. I'm just gonna kick us off
Speaker 1: with a thought from early on and then which is
Speaker 1: kind of go around with you know, whatever stood out
Speaker 1: to you. We'll start off with book one, and then
Speaker 1: we'll move on to book two. But for me, one
Speaker 1: of the things I appreciate is just right at the
Speaker 1: very beginning, that we see that first and foremost, this
Speaker 1: book is a conversation with God, or it's an orient
Speaker 1: it's oriented toward God. I mean, what you to expect
Speaker 1: from a book called the Confessions, right, that he is
Speaker 1: confessing his soul. He is confessing his sins. He's really
Speaker 1: confessing all that he is before God. And in kind
Speaker 1: of orienting himself toward God, he's able to better understand himself.
Speaker 1: And in understanding himself, he's able to more authentically engage
Speaker 1: with God. And so this is back in fourth connection.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like Calvin said that you know, all
Speaker 1: knowledge comes to knowledge of self and knowledge of God.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I go reformation. Let me stick to
Speaker 1: the text. Right, So so we start off set showing
Speaker 1: us that this is an orientation toward God first and foremost.
Speaker 1: And also Augustine says, so great art thou, o Lord,
Speaker 1: and greatly to be praised. Great is thy power and
Speaker 1: of thy wisdom. There is no number, and man desires
Speaker 1: to praise thee. He is but a tiny part of
Speaker 1: all that thou hast created, and so there's this emphasis
Speaker 1: on our place within the broader story. And so that's
Speaker 1: a sense it's a very much a not a modern
Speaker 1: text in that this there's a stark contrast between pre
Speaker 1: modern and postmodern philosophy. Where the pre moderns, so they're
Speaker 1: talking about the medieval Christians and Augustine, would be easier
Speaker 1: to category categorized as early made evil, late Christian antiquity.
Speaker 1: But whether we're talking about the Medievals, whether we're talking
Speaker 1: about the ancient Pagans, there's this prevailing idea that we
Speaker 1: are born into a story and the path of virtue,
Speaker 1: the path of fulfillment, the path of fulfilling what we
Speaker 1: are meant for is in finding our place within this
Speaker 1: broader story of reality. That's in direct contrast to what
Speaker 1: we get with really the moderns, and especially the postmoderns,
Speaker 1: where we start to get this move to not how
Speaker 1: do I contextualize myself within reality, but how do I
Speaker 1: contextualize reality within myself? You know, I teach like a
Speaker 1: million different places, but on campus, I teach with philosophy
Speaker 1: with a state university, and this is something that I'm
Speaker 1: always dealing with with my students and helping them to
Speaker 1: understand the postmodern climate that they've lived in without even
Speaker 1: really realizing it. The start contrast between how do I
Speaker 1: find my place within capital or reality versus the postmodern
Speaker 1: idea of how do I create reality? How do I
Speaker 1: contextualize you know, everything into myself? And so I appreciate
Speaker 1: that outward orientation because it provides so much more hope
Speaker 1: because now we actually have somewhere to go. We can
Speaker 1: talk about progress in a meaningful sense because we actually
Speaker 1: start somewhere and we can actually move somewhere, which you know,
Speaker 1: again contrasts with what we get in like Lewis's Great Divorce,
Speaker 1: where he conceptualizes you know, hell as this radical isolation,
Speaker 1: which really is his commentary on the postmodern condition. And
Speaker 1: so even as Augustine is going on and on about
Speaker 1: how terrible the sinner he is and how awful he is,
Speaker 1: and you know how he's nothing but for grace like,
Speaker 1: it sounds rather dismal, and to the postmodern perspective it
Speaker 1: sounds almost diagnosable. But at the same time, once you
Speaker 1: actually understand what Augustine's doing, it becomes it opens up
Speaker 1: the possibility of actual purpose, actual freedom, actually getting somewhere.
Speaker 1: It allows us to receive rather than constantly create at
Speaker 1: all times. And so just from the very orientation that
Speaker 1: he's engaging in, it provides a strong corrective to our
Speaker 1: postmodern mindset, which is actually very liberating to me. So
Speaker 1: there's my initial thought, Well, we can kind of just
Speaker 1: go wherever things have to have to move here. Would
Speaker 1: anyone like to volunteer just kind of share some thoughts
Speaker 1: wherever you want to go with this from book one? Yeah, Ian,
Speaker 1: thank you.
Speaker 5: I read this back in high school, and I've always
Speaker 5: really appreciated Augustine because he's so God's centered and confessions
Speaker 5: is I mean, from the opening lines, it's all about
Speaker 5: God and comparing our worthlessness with God's greatness and the
Speaker 5: grace that he lifts us to be with himself. I thought,
Speaker 5: especially when I was reading the second chapter that we're
Speaker 5: reading for today one and two, when he talks about
Speaker 5: loving Virgil and struggling with Homer because of Greece, it
Speaker 5: feels to me like he's really taking that opening hero
Speaker 5: Mus and seeing me a tale, and he's converting that
Speaker 5: to a Christian perspective, And that really struck me this time.
Speaker 5: So I really liked that part of his classical pagan
Speaker 5: education being baptized into the Christian world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good way of putting that. That he
Speaker 1: he one hand, he very much criticizes the way that
Speaker 1: he approached the pagan poets. You know, in his past
Speaker 1: how you know, he learned to mourn, but not for himself.
Speaker 1: You know, he learned to participate in the play, but
Speaker 1: not to recognize kind of his own narrative. And so
Speaker 1: he very much criticizes the poets, and you know, even
Speaker 1: says like you know who was aneas like I didn't
Speaker 1: even know who I was. And so on one hand
Speaker 1: he takes some shots at the classic to at least
Speaker 1: a wrong approach to the classics. But the same time,
Speaker 1: in his confessions, you know, in his own meditations he'll
Speaker 1: sometimes quote Virgil. You can see that if if you
Speaker 1: have a translation, if you have an addition that has
Speaker 1: you know, notes, reference notes, footnotes, you know, sometimes he'll
Speaker 1: be quoting the classics. And so he's not against the classics,
Speaker 1: but he very much is against approaching the classics from
Speaker 1: an unbaptized perspective, as he is with anything that there
Speaker 1: is no good apart from God. And so if we
Speaker 1: are going to approach anything as good apart from God,
Speaker 1: then what we're severing it from the very font of goodness?
Speaker 1: And so it does have something somewhat thing of a
Speaker 1: complex relationship with the classics. But I agree that he
Speaker 1: definitely appreciates their their baptized potential. I did think that
Speaker 1: I don't know, sometimes I felt like he went a
Speaker 1: little bit too hard on fiction for my taste. I'm
Speaker 1: not down with a with all of all of what
Speaker 1: he said at that level. Yeah, Ian good.
Speaker 5: Sorry, I get my mute button mixed up. I think
Speaker 5: that we have to remember what kind of fiction's Augustine
Speaker 5: would have available to him. He didn't have a Lewis
Speaker 5: or a Tolkien, he didn't have a history of Christian
Speaker 5: literature like Jane Austen and Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. He
Speaker 5: was the beginning of the Christian tradition of literature. And
Speaker 5: before him you have stuff like Appalaus' is the Golden Ass,
Speaker 5: which I read in college, and that is fowl. It
Speaker 5: is very disgusting. Depictions of women having sex with acid
Speaker 5: like donkeys is just despicable, and you can see why
Speaker 5: Augustine would be like, Yeah, I think fiction has a
Speaker 5: has a real danger of getting you sucked into these
Speaker 5: perversions and being enamored of the wrong parts of the world.
Speaker 5: So I think that's part of where he comes from
Speaker 5: in the literature. As I mean, I did an English
Speaker 5: major in college. I'm not against literature, but I think
Speaker 5: thinking about the context and what he had available, he
Speaker 5: didn't have those those myths that he could reach to
Speaker 5: that didn't point towards evil in some way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's actually a very fair point. And
Speaker 1: you know, even looking at his context in still moving
Speaker 1: against paganism, like there's still these very pagan influences. You know,
Speaker 1: we tend to view pagan literature as literature rather than
Speaker 1: first and foremost as paganism. And so you know, someone
Speaker 1: like Lewis can look from this kind of late modern
Speaker 1: purity that he lived in, and he can look back
Speaker 1: and recognize some virtues in paganism that modernism has largely lost,
Speaker 1: right he can he can find the good there and
Speaker 1: find that there are things that are worth recovering. Whereas
Speaker 1: Augustin is still very much in the midst of things,
Speaker 1: you know, operating in Carthage, operating in Rome, and so
Speaker 1: it does make sense that he would have a lot
Speaker 1: more hesitancy towards those sorts of things, there are still
Speaker 1: very much life and breathing that that is a very
Speaker 1: good point. Yeah, Chase, I.
Speaker 3: Was just gonna say I agree with the in there
Speaker 3: and you because I think it was even an intro
Speaker 3: was talking about how like promised beauty at that point
Speaker 3: wasn't even seen like as any kind of bad thing
Speaker 3: at all, like compared to like even in his view,
Speaker 3: compared to like everything else, like his friend that was
Speaker 3: the bishop was like cheering on blood sport basically with
Speaker 3: the crowd. And You're like, yeah, I can see if
Speaker 3: basically all the entertainment, which is what I'm sure he
Speaker 3: would see fiction as would have been kind of not
Speaker 3: you know, honoring to God and worthy of anyone's time,
Speaker 3: especially if you found so much like enjoyment in the
Speaker 3: place the lewde place is as a young guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he talks about how in you know, the pagan myths,
Speaker 1: you know, the kinds of things that you know Zeus
Speaker 1: did for example, or you know, he says that you know,
Speaker 1: these are the things that people would look to and
Speaker 1: you know, basically find a way to justify or even
Speaker 1: deify their basist desires and say oh, I'm like the gods,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, who am I to judge, you know,
Speaker 1: jove here and and so he he, he takes Homer
Speaker 1: to bat here, and you know, it says that so
Speaker 1: much of the pagan myth or just an attempt to
Speaker 1: just do that to deify or base desires. And I mean,
Speaker 1: to be fair, I mean, he's got something to say there, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean what else I mean so when someone jump
Speaker 1: in here, I mean, I can kind of scan through
Speaker 1: my notes.
Speaker 6: But I really like how you mentioned the conversationality of
Speaker 6: the confessions, and actually I was looking for it. I
Speaker 6: can find out. But I wrote a paper on this
Speaker 6: this semester for the actually the on that exact same topic.
Speaker 6: And it's really interesting to see. You know, he's literally
Speaker 6: having a conversation with dot and in this conversation, you know,
Speaker 6: a dustn't is steeped in the Bible itself. Yeah, he's
Speaker 6: quoting the Psalms, a lot of them, a lot of
Speaker 6: other places to you, but he's quoting the Psalms all
Speaker 6: all over the place, right, and other things as well.
Speaker 6: But it's just really interesting and he's not afraid to
Speaker 6: ask God questions. It's almost comical in a sense of
Speaker 6: my and what I've seen, because like you see, it's
Speaker 6: like a little kid asking their father, like the heaven
Speaker 6: and Earth. Then containing like, since do you feel that
Speaker 6: you know what I'm talking about? You know, you guys
Speaker 6: have the same question. It's really interesting. He's not afraid
Speaker 6: to do that, you know, I'm not.
Speaker 2: Afraid at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's very he has a very humble, childlike kind
Speaker 1: of approach. You know, understood in the best possible framing
Speaker 1: of that idea that he is constantly asking God the
Speaker 1: kinds of things that we take for granted. I mean
Speaker 1: like you know, we might pray, you know, God fill
Speaker 1: me or I mean you know people people will talk
Speaker 1: about God like coming into their heart or whatever, like
Speaker 1: what does that even me? God is everywhere that you
Speaker 1: don't have existence without God, and so what does that mean?
Speaker 1: Where's God traveling to? And so Augustine is just kind
Speaker 1: of debating with himself over the relationship that God has
Speaker 1: to space, to physicality, to location. And you know, we're
Speaker 1: going to see that as his intellectual journey continues. This
Speaker 1: is going to be something that he really wrestled with
Speaker 1: of how does how does an immaterial God even make sense.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, this to one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why the Romans called the early Christians atheists, because they
Speaker 1: talked about a transcendent, invisible God, and it's like that
Speaker 1: that wasn't They didn't have a category for that, and
Speaker 1: so this assumed that Christians were actually, in reality, just
Speaker 1: denying all gods, and so they had the charge of atheism.
Speaker 1: So Augustine, you know, very classically trained here, he very
Speaker 1: much struggled with that. And so as he sort of
Speaker 1: works through that, and you know, as he has conversion
Speaker 1: first of intellect and then of spirit, that he just
Speaker 1: continues to marvel in these basic things that you know,
Speaker 1: he once struggled so deeply with. And I think that
Speaker 1: there's something just so healthy about that. You know, if
Speaker 1: you've been a Christian for a while, you know, whether
Speaker 1: you have a formal theological education or not, like you think,
Speaker 1: you understand a lot more than you probably do. And
Speaker 1: I very much have learned this, you know, with my
Speaker 1: my twin three year olds when they ask me questions,
Speaker 1: and you know, I'll give an answer and then ask
Speaker 1: a follow up, and I realize I don't really know
Speaker 1: how to explain this, probably because I don't understand it myself,
Speaker 1: and it's a yeah, Augustin definitely has that spirit about him.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love how later on, you know, he'll
Speaker 1: be going through his his meditations here and just almost
Speaker 1: randomly just say like, but what is time to sort
Speaker 1: of go off, like he thinks very much the way
Speaker 1: that I do, and he just has such a wonder
Speaker 1: about everything because he reconnized is that all things, all
Speaker 1: true things, come from God. Therefore all true things are
Speaker 1: infinitely wondrous. And as as Aquitas would say, you know
Speaker 1: years later after this, that all the efforts of the
Speaker 1: human mind cannot exhaust the essence of a single fly.
Speaker 1: And I think that we see that same wonder very
Speaker 1: much at play with Augustine. Good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just even the very start where he's talking about
Speaker 3: the line for thou hast made us for thyself and
Speaker 3: our hearts are restless until they rest in me, which
Speaker 3: is going through the whole first book, and I guess
Speaker 3: the second book too, is just like you know, I've
Speaker 3: been at Christian my whole life, but you know, until
Speaker 3: I've made it later in my like mid twenties, like
Speaker 3: I didn't really take it as seriously, especially the last
Speaker 3: two years, I've learned so much that I didn't know.
Speaker 3: I'm just like you're saying, you think you know a lot,
Speaker 3: you think you know everything about it that you're like
Speaker 3: realize you know, if like babies have are early sinful,
Speaker 3: like how does a baby send?
Speaker 2: And then he even goes into that, which was awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe we should talk about the babies. So I
Speaker 1: go ahead, what do you say, Jeremiah.
Speaker 6: No, Joe joking, Agustin hates babies. No, that's a common thing,
Speaker 6: I get. I get the comment or frame.
Speaker 1: So so does Augustin hate babies?
Speaker 6: I don't think so.
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 5: Kind of overreacted to his his sexual sin in his
Speaker 5: youth by kind of over embracing the the ideal of
Speaker 5: celibus and virginity. And I think it's to me, it's
Speaker 5: psychologically understandable. But I do think that it was not
Speaker 5: balanced with what you see in the whole Bible. I
Speaker 5: think he maybe pulled on some of the Apostle Paul's
Speaker 5: statements about being single a bit too hard instead of
Speaker 5: focusing on the creation order of Adam and Eve and
Speaker 5: the redemption of that in Jesus.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think that's fair that he Yeah,
Speaker 1: he definitely had a big problem with sexual sin, you know,
Speaker 1: leading up to his his heart conversion. Really, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, we're going to find that, you know, he
Speaker 1: had he had a concubine for quite a while, which
Speaker 1: was just common practice, and so he I mean, he
Speaker 1: just that was that was his chief his chief failing
Speaker 1: really before conversion, chief sin that he struggled with. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's reasonable to say that maybe he argued
Speaker 1: against that, or he reacted to that perhaps a little
Speaker 1: bit too much on a dogmatic level rather than strictly existential. Now,
Speaker 1: as far as the baby thing that, Okay, babies cry
Speaker 1: because they're selfish, essentially, I don't know that I buy that.
Speaker 1: I'm with him theologically that we are born into sin,
Speaker 1: that we have a sin nature that naturally disorders our desires.
Speaker 1: At the same time, babies need stuff and they can't talk.
Speaker 1: I feel like I feel like we could have a
Speaker 1: rather simple, common sense kind of response to some of that.
Speaker 1: I feel like he gets a little bit excessive. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Same one wanted to defend his rebuke of babies, Yeah,
Speaker 1: go ahead.
Speaker 3: Jason, I mean I just thought the line where he
Speaker 3: says thus in the sense of children is in the
Speaker 3: helplessness of their bodies rather than inequality in their minds.
Speaker 3: I seen a baby jealous. It was too young to speak,
Speaker 3: but it was livid with anger as it watched another
Speaker 3: infant at the breast, and like, yeah, it could also
Speaker 3: be hungry.
Speaker 2: But I don't know. I feel like you.
Speaker 3: There are kids that kind of do something when they
Speaker 3: see another kid, and you're like, oh, that's like a
Speaker 3: little spark of just like you're not getting You're not
Speaker 3: liking what you're getting there, you know.
Speaker 2: So I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's difficult. And you know, I'm not somebody
Speaker 1: who thinks that kids are innocent. I have three of
Speaker 1: them now, so I'm not somebody who thinks that kids
Speaker 1: are innocent. That there's definitely that sinful nature there, and
Speaker 1: it's that's just I don't know. I think it's hard
Speaker 1: to delineate what's simple versus like babies need stuff and
Speaker 1: they can't talk, Like I feel like there is a
Speaker 1: very natural and I mean natural in the sense in
Speaker 1: the positive sense of like in line with nature that
Speaker 1: like they need to communicate in the way that they can,
Speaker 1: and I don't know that frustration like not being able
Speaker 1: to articulate what it is that you need. And this
Speaker 1: is for I think a baby or an adult, whether
Speaker 1: you can speak worse or you can't do that yet
Speaker 1: that I don't know. That frustration itself is inherently simple.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, we do have this natural
Speaker 1: event towards end, which I mean, I suppose is the
Speaker 1: most important aspect of what he's getting at here. But
Speaker 1: I don't. I think it's a little bit too hard
Speaker 1: on babies. But maybe some can talk me out of that.
Speaker 6: I think it's really interesting. He mentions like baptism, how
Speaker 6: was deferred? And he directly asked God, like, why was
Speaker 6: my baptism deferred? Of course, I know there's a whole
Speaker 6: bunch of ideas on baptism in the church today, and
Speaker 6: but yeah, as anyone, I'm sure some people are aware
Speaker 6: of the practice back then to wait until your deathbed
Speaker 6: and to give baptized.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I ain't going to elaborate on that, okay.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, so they come down if you can see
Speaker 6: me inside. Yeah, yeah, So there is a common thing
Speaker 6: because there's this idea that after your baptism, you know,
Speaker 6: your sindrome washed with right and you know you're you're
Speaker 6: dead with Christ. Now you rise again with Christ as well.
Speaker 6: But you there's this other idea that you would your
Speaker 6: sins are the sins after that you need to basically
Speaker 6: like they only wash the sins you've done, not the
Speaker 6: ones that you do after there's some there's some ideas
Speaker 6: that basically there's more than that, but it is a
Speaker 6: big thing. So people would wait until their deathbed and
Speaker 6: to get baptized. They would wait and be like, I'm
Speaker 6: on my deathbed, I'll get baptized, so I have more
Speaker 6: time to then, you know, have these sins washed away,
Speaker 6: which is a common thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very Yeah, like Constantine exactly that Constantine waited
Speaker 1: until his deathbed and then he requested an Arian priest,
Speaker 1: which is kind of strange.
Speaker 6: But both Augustine, what's interesting is that because of that,
Speaker 6: and you see a little bit of a he says,
Speaker 6: why was my baptism delayed? Augustine will later on rail
Speaker 6: against that idea, and then you'll argue for infant baptism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's it's just good sad. But I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously he recognized this as disordered here when he says that,
Speaker 1: you know, as young I was sick and they were
Speaker 1: going to baptize me because they thought I might die,
Speaker 1: and then it got better, so they decided to push
Speaker 1: it back just right, No, I'm gonna need here. Uh
Speaker 1: you know, we don't want to give give me a bathroom.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get dirty again anyways. Yeah, and then you know,
Speaker 1: even you know, talks about his his mom here, which
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, Monica, his mother is obviously a
Speaker 1: hero of his story here, but the same time he
Speaker 1: recognizes that, you know, she she didn't always have the
Speaker 1: best priorities at heart, like when you know, he was
Speaker 1: young and gallivanting around, and he says that basically she
Speaker 1: should have encouraged me to just get married, but she
Speaker 1: didn't because you know, she was worried about how that
Speaker 1: would have impact my career. And you know, so she
Speaker 1: she was pushing him in a certain direction as well.
Speaker 1: And so she she seems to me like somebody who
Speaker 1: has a very lay kind of theology, even though very
Speaker 1: sincere heart and she was pivotal in his conversion. She
Speaker 1: kind of just embodies this common I don't know, almost
Speaker 1: I would say, pagan kind of theology regarding stuff like
Speaker 1: the sacraments, where it's it's not I don't know that
Speaker 1: they don't. It's about sort of magic rather than what
Speaker 1: you actually get in biblical sacramentalism. Right, let him be wounded,
Speaker 1: worse he has not yet cured. Ye, welcome Rach. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like for popping in. Have you read this before?
Speaker 1: Or is this.
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 7: Yeah, sorry, I'm not sure what time you actually started,
Speaker 7: whether I'm half an hour.
Speaker 1: Or just five minutes in.
Speaker 7: I'm in Australia, so I was like, what times are there?
Speaker 1: I thought it was eleven here.
Speaker 7: But I think it might have been ten thirty. But anyway, Yes,
Speaker 7: I'm the one that commented on X that I sort
Speaker 7: of got about a third of the way through and
Speaker 7: then stopped. So I've read these books at least, although
Speaker 7: it was about three years ago.
Speaker 1: Good.
Speaker 7: And I've got the Sarah Rudin translation.
Speaker 1: Okay, I ever read that one? Yeah? So how's it
Speaker 1: gone so far in this round? Yeah? Good?
Speaker 7: And it's been a crossover because I've just started Bible
Speaker 7: College this year, and so we're doing Christianity in history
Speaker 7: and so we looked at Augustine and sort of summer well,
Speaker 7: we's looked at the account of his conversion, so that
Speaker 7: was sort of interesting to read it in a different
Speaker 7: translator's words. I suppose, yeah, it's good, I enjoy I
Speaker 7: don't know, sort of the insight says to his thinking
Speaker 7: about how he reflects on his childhood, like when I
Speaker 7: look back to I don't know, I can't remember much
Speaker 7: before being maybe two or three years old, but I
Speaker 7: still remember being a I think maybe a four or
Speaker 7: five year old and deliberately hiding a coin so that
Speaker 7: Mom would pay me my pocket money again. And so
Speaker 7: I knew the simpleness of my heart when I was
Speaker 7: that young. So it's just funny too. I mean, I
Speaker 7: don't remember being breastfed, but you know, maybe he has
Speaker 7: a brilliant memory.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, yeah, there's some memories I'm glad to
Speaker 1: have forgotten. The Yeah, so you've got your own Paris incident.
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit younger, but you know, oh good,
Speaker 1: good good, gotta gotta heav you along from across the
Speaker 1: world here, yeap. So another thing that I'd appreciate about
Speaker 1: Augustine is he very much has a kind of platonic
Speaker 1: way of understanding well everything really, I mean, in fact,
Speaker 1: in City of God, he says that you know of
Speaker 1: all the philosophers, the platon has come closer to us
Speaker 1: than anybody else, and so why do we even need
Speaker 1: to read anybody else. So he's very much intentionally trying
Speaker 1: to baptize Platonism here. And you know, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of passages here in his reflections toward God about
Speaker 1: how all goods ultimately come from God and are meant
Speaker 1: to lead us back to God, and sin really comes
Speaker 1: from a disordering of that relationship, where we treat things
Speaker 1: in isolation from God, as if anything could be an
Speaker 1: isolation from God. And so, you know, being itself, like
Speaker 1: existence itself has a very deeply theological existential meaning for Augustine.
Speaker 1: And so you know, again it's the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that some people will read Augustine and they think that
Speaker 1: he's too extreme and making everything so important. But again,
Speaker 1: if you actually believe the things he believes, he believe
Speaker 1: the things that the Bible says that you know, in
Speaker 1: him we live and movement, have our being, that all
Speaker 1: things are made through the log Austin, it's in him
Speaker 1: that all things are held together. Then literally everything has significance.
Speaker 1: As you know, as Calvin was said to have said
Speaker 1: that there's not one color in this world. There's not
Speaker 1: one blade of glass of grass that's not meant to
Speaker 1: make us rejoice. And you see that same impulse very
Speaker 1: much in Augustine that somebody who you know just is
Speaker 1: able to understand the negative, isn't going to recognize that
Speaker 1: even in his framing of the negative, it's so full
Speaker 1: of joy at the goodness and the grace of God.
Speaker 1: And so he really does take this platonic idea that
Speaker 1: all things are naturally oriented towards the good. He baptizes it,
Speaker 1: and I think that we get something just very i
Speaker 1: don't know, very beautiful here in this exit return idea,
Speaker 1: which would is going to become very important for Aquitas
Speaker 1: as well later on this exit return. All things come
Speaker 1: from God, all things return to God. It's a very harmonious,
Speaker 1: very beautiful way of understanding what everything is, the life's
Speaker 1: universe and everything. Far more than forty two. Someone throws
Speaker 1: something else out there. I can blot it on for
Speaker 1: a while, but.
Speaker 8: The question, and I apologize, I have dogs in the background.
Speaker 8: If they get noisy, I'll cut the audio right away.
Speaker 8: I found it very interesting, and this is really kind
Speaker 8: of off the topic, but he did write about it,
Speaker 8: so I'll mention it puts in here at one place
Speaker 8: that he says, if you ask, basically an unlearned person
Speaker 8: if Anas went to Carthage, they would say, oh, I
Speaker 8: don't know. If you asked the scholarly person, he would
Speaker 8: say most certainly not. And as I read that, I
Speaker 8: was trying to figure out, does he think that Anas
Speaker 8: wasn't a historical character or is he talking about some
Speaker 8: high level of intellectual who at the time would say, oh,
Speaker 8: we know Aeneas was real, but he didn't actually go
Speaker 8: to Carthage.
Speaker 1: I would.
Speaker 8: My mind went down this rabbit trail because I had
Speaker 8: read the India I guess a year or so ago,
Speaker 8: and so still somewhat fresh.
Speaker 1: In my mind.
Speaker 8: Did he have any belief in the historical accuracy of
Speaker 8: some of these Roman tales he was reading?
Speaker 1: No, I don't really know. Uh, I mean, based off
Speaker 1: the way that's framed, I tend to think that kind
Speaker 1: of much as is the case today that he's taken
Speaker 1: shots at the learned for being so critical in dismissing
Speaker 1: the miss is how I would understand that, which, again,
Speaker 1: this can be read as a very modern text that
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes having you know, being someone who's you know,
Speaker 1: well learned can actually be that can be a liability
Speaker 1: regarding getting to the heart of the matter. It's it's
Speaker 1: the same problem of oh man, I'm just drawn a
Speaker 1: blank here. I don't know the numerous problems of you know,
Speaker 1: falling in love with your own intellect. This is you know,
Speaker 1: Milton's approach to Satan. He fell in love with his
Speaker 1: own intellect essentially, and so yeah, so that's how I
Speaker 1: would understand this as a criticism of the high end
Speaker 1: learned more than anything else.
Speaker 6: Well, it's definitely a modern problem too.
Speaker 1: Yes, it most definitely is. As I said, I teach
Speaker 1: on campus at State University, and I don't have a
Speaker 1: lot in common with my fellow humanity's faculty. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: an interesting question. I'd like to dig into that a
Speaker 1: little bit more, but that's my first response to that.
Speaker 1: I thought his meditations on the relationship between curiosity and
Speaker 1: discipline were significant. You know, he talks about he says
Speaker 1: free curiosity is more value in learning than harsh discipline,
Speaker 1: and so, you know, he talks about how you know,
Speaker 1: he had such harsh discipline that you know, he didn't
Speaker 1: get his Greek writer or whatever, and he gets beaten
Speaker 1: for it, and that people were cool to him, they
Speaker 1: were unjust, they didn't do the right thing. At the
Speaker 1: same time, however, he doesn't allow himself to be treated
Speaker 1: as a victim. He doesn't treat himself as a victim.
Speaker 1: You know. Well, he'll say that, yeah, people are unjust
Speaker 1: toward me in the way that they treated me my
Speaker 1: schoolmaster's no hooever else and ultimately, like, I messed up
Speaker 1: and you know, I wasn't a perfect student. And so
Speaker 1: he's primarily owning up to his own injustices rather than
Speaker 1: that which is committed against him. So that's right there,
Speaker 1: I think is significant in the way that he's framing
Speaker 1: the own injustice that he suffered. That he's focusing in
Speaker 1: on what he was able to cont and not so
Speaker 1: much on the broader misfortune brought against him. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a very you know, premodern. It's it's almost a
Speaker 1: stoic way of approaching your experience that I'm not going
Speaker 1: to identify with the fortune that has dealt to me.
Speaker 1: I'm going to identify with the way that I'm responding
Speaker 1: to fortune. And so that alone, I think it's a
Speaker 1: very ennobling way to view your life and your relationship
Speaker 1: to the world around you. But more specifically to the
Speaker 1: point where I was headed with that is when he
Speaker 1: says that you know, free curiosity is more value in
Speaker 1: learning than harsh discipline. But by your ordinance, Oh God,
Speaker 1: discipline must control the free play of curiosity. For your
Speaker 1: ordinance ranges from the master's cane to the torment suffered
Speaker 1: by the martyrs, and works that mingling a bitter with sweet,
Speaker 1: which brings us back to you from the poison of
Speaker 1: pleasure that first drew us away from you. And so
Speaker 1: he said curiosity is very important in learning, but at
Speaker 1: the same time, that's got to be led by discipline.
Speaker 1: It has to be willing to receive discipline, because free
Speaker 1: curiosity alone can just lead you into wild places of isolation.
Speaker 1: The right kind of curiosity leads us to the truth,
Speaker 1: and ultimately the truth is God. But that requires discipline
Speaker 1: and requires receiving the discipline that's brought against you. So
Speaker 1: that's something I've underligned here and continue to meditate on.
Speaker 5: I think a couple of things really stood out to
Speaker 5: me from reading that and then responding to your analysis there.
Speaker 5: The first is that I think it's so interesting that
Speaker 5: even though a lot of people trace back the development
Speaker 5: of Calvinist or reform theology to Augustine, I think rightfully
Speaker 5: so as a Calvinist myself.
Speaker 2: I.
Speaker 5: Like the fact that he has this approach that doesn't
Speaker 5: focus the locus of control on someone else, Like even
Speaker 5: though he is that God is in control of everything,
Speaker 5: that everything from beatings at school to martyrdom from wicked authorities,
Speaker 5: they're under God's ordinance. He controls them, he is all
Speaker 5: knowing of them. It is still our responsibility to do
Speaker 5: the right thing. It is our responsibility to make our
Speaker 5: life a service to God, to act in a way
Speaker 5: instead of just oh, what happens will happen. We can't
Speaker 5: do anything about it, so we must just accept what
Speaker 5: I come. He does say, we must accept what may come.
Speaker 5: But then he says, and you must pursue the love
Speaker 5: of God. You must do the right thing.
Speaker 2: You must love.
Speaker 5: Truth, beauty and goodness. And the other thing that really
Speaker 5: struck me was this kind of understanding of children's psychology
Speaker 5: and educational psychology that I think does feel quite modern
Speaker 5: in some ways, the idea of you need to have
Speaker 5: a balance of curiosity and discipline. You can't just make
Speaker 5: a student love learning, have to inspire that curiosity, you
Speaker 5: have to guide the curiosity. And I thought that felt
Speaker 5: like a really modern psychological insight to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely that the educational system or the school masters
Speaker 1: or whoever, that you can't you can't force somebody to learn.
Speaker 1: And ultimately, learning is it's it's about conforming yourself to
Speaker 1: the way that things are. And so there's always an
Speaker 1: existential element to that, and and so that that can't
Speaker 1: be simply forced. It has to be accepted. And you know, that,
Speaker 1: on one hand is a fairly modern idea, but also
Speaker 1: it's very Socratic, right when you consider the way that
Speaker 1: Socrates educated people in his philosophy, He engaged them, he
Speaker 1: asked them questions rather than forcing ideas on them. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I think compulsion has its place in certain contacts,
Speaker 1: like to maintain order and whatnot. But as far as
Speaker 1: real education goes education of the person, education of the soul.
Speaker 1: You know, this Socratic model, this Platonic model, is one
Speaker 1: of inquiry that draws people further up and further in. Right,
Speaker 1: to borrow a phrase from Lewis, which is a very
Speaker 1: Platonic phrase, and so Augustine is definitely continuing in that
Speaker 1: idea that we need to help people to recognize their
Speaker 1: natural desires. Natural desires being the desires that are placed
Speaker 1: into us by nature, which Augustine says clearly ultimately is
Speaker 1: the desire for God, which again very platonic idea, that
Speaker 1: all men by nature desire the good. The problem is
Speaker 1: that we tend to value lesser goods over the ultimate good,
Speaker 1: and that that's where we go wrong. But we all
Speaker 1: do have this natural desire for the good, this natural
Speaker 1: desire for God, and real education is going to help
Speaker 1: to uncover different avenues of that natural desire that we
Speaker 1: have by virtue of being made in God's image. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that that is an important point that you know,
Speaker 1: one hand, sounds very much but also in a way
Speaker 1: that is deeply rooted in truth, in a way that
Speaker 1: modernism largely is not.
Speaker 6: Definitely. I remember when I taught sixth grade at a
Speaker 6: classical school one year and I told the sixth graders,
Speaker 6: I said, the world's gonna tell you need to follow
Speaker 6: your passions. I was like, I'm here to tell you
Speaker 6: you're not here. You should have follow your passions, and like,
Speaker 6: what do you mean? Like like that explain to them like, well,
Speaker 6: not all passions are here. Not all passions are there,
Speaker 6: some are, but some can.
Speaker 1: Be that you know, correct, And you know, real education
Speaker 1: as a matter of learning how to separate the good
Speaker 1: from the bad, learning how to you know, to kind
Speaker 1: of discourage superficial passions to find what it is that
Speaker 1: you ultimately desire as a human and that discovery really
Speaker 1: does work best at discovery. I mean I can in
Speaker 1: my own campus classes again at a state university philosophy,
Speaker 1: all of my students, almost all of them, ninety percent
Speaker 1: of them, would tell me on day one that pretty
Speaker 1: much everything is just made up, you know, truth, goodness, beauty,
Speaker 1: It's all just artificial constructs, you know, just sort of
Speaker 1: put out there in the world. But then you know,
Speaker 1: I'll ask him questions. Primarily this is when I get
Speaker 1: to Plato, when I start going through the Youthifro dialogue,
Speaker 1: where Socrates is asking the question, you know, basically, what
Speaker 1: makes good things good? You know what is real piety?
Speaker 1: And you know in that dialogue, you know Euthafro socrates
Speaker 1: conversation partner says, you know that you know, okay, the
Speaker 1: good is you know what I'm doing right? Now and
Speaker 1: pursuing justice, and Socrates says, okay, what are some other
Speaker 1: good things? Youth throws through some stuff out there, and
Speaker 1: then eventually he comes to the realization that Socrates ask
Speaker 1: him the question what is the good that makes good
Speaker 1: things good? And now when I bring that to my students,
Speaker 1: and I asked them, okay, tell me some good things,
Speaker 1: and they'll throw out things like, you know, justice is good,
Speaker 1: being nice to people is good. I mean, whatever is
Speaker 1: you know, popular virtues of the day, Charity is good.
Speaker 1: I say, yep, okay, all those things are great. Now
Speaker 1: what do you mean when you call all these things good?
Speaker 1: And at that point they just get quiet and look
Speaker 1: at me like confused and kind of upset and kind
Speaker 1: of nervous. At that point they're starting to recognize the
Speaker 1: problem here that, you know, a little bit earlier in
Speaker 1: the lesson they told me there is no such thing
Speaker 1: as goodness. Now they just told me all these good things,
Speaker 1: and and so, you know, by kind of stoking that conversation,
Speaker 1: you know, it helps them to recognize that I actually
Speaker 1: want goodness, but my current philosophy can't account for what
Speaker 1: that is. And I think that very Socratic model in
Speaker 1: this case literally is Socratic model, using one of have
Speaker 1: played his dialogues. It's a way to help to sort
Speaker 1: of just push aside all this overgrowth that lays on
Speaker 1: top of the natural desire that we all have to
Speaker 1: you know, to to love God and to to serve him,
Speaker 1: to to know him, to worship him, to glory in him.
Speaker 1: And so you know, that's something that we naturally want,
Speaker 1: but we also fight against, you know, as you know,
Speaker 1: as Land says, yeah, oh, Adam's Sun's you know, how
Speaker 1: how oh how hard you know, you fight against everything
Speaker 1: that brings you joy something like that, And I think
Speaker 1: that's that's absolutely the case, and I find that very
Speaker 1: practical terms in my own education experience.
Speaker 8: If I can pick up on something that Ian was
Speaker 8: saying earlier, I am. I liked the comment that when
Speaker 8: you read well Gustine's writing here that there really is
Speaker 8: no room for blaming anyone else for his own condition.
Speaker 8: He's pointing the finger righted himself. And that's interesting when
Speaker 8: you think about it in terms of him being proto
Speaker 8: Calvinistic or whatever term we want to use, you know,
Speaker 8: in some ways he's almost very obliquely rebuking the Hypercalvinists
Speaker 8: who wouldn't really show up on the scene for another
Speaker 8: twelve hundred years or so. But you know, he saying, look,
Speaker 8: it's all me. It's not God's decree that makes me
Speaker 8: evil in any sense that I can blame God is good.
Speaker 8: I'm the evil one. If I'm outside of his will,
Speaker 8: outside of his favor, that's all me. Don't look anywhere else,
Speaker 8: don't try to blame him, his ways, anything, And that
Speaker 8: humility is really what you know, I think we all
Speaker 8: could aspire to that in terms of just coming before
Speaker 8: God and saying, you know, we have nothing to bring.
Speaker 8: And in addition, we're not only just zero, we're at
Speaker 8: net negative here, so we need you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly like nobody can read Augustine's confessions or Augustin
Speaker 1: at large and say that he's somebody who rejected his
Speaker 1: own agency by any means right, he is very much
Speaker 1: interested in his own agency and it's misuse as well
Speaker 1: as its positive use carried by Grace. And in fact,
Speaker 1: you know, we mentioned Calvin a few times, which it's
Speaker 1: hard for us to read Augustin not mention Calvin because
Speaker 1: of some obvious connections. But I mean it's worth noting
Speaker 1: that Calvin himself. You know, if you read the Institute's
Speaker 1: he sounds very existentialist at times, very well Augustitinian. That
Speaker 1: a lot of times he is treated, even by those
Speaker 1: who claim to be Calvinists, who have never actually read Calvin,
Speaker 1: that he's treated as sort of this cold hearted stoic,
Speaker 1: which he absolutely is not. And in fact, you know, outside
Speaker 1: of scripture, Augustine's number one place for pro quotations is Augustine,
Speaker 1: and so he is. In fact, I would go as
Speaker 1: far as to say that if you don't have Augustine,
Speaker 1: not only would Catholicism be very different, but I don't
Speaker 1: know that you would have a pros Reformation in the
Speaker 1: way that is established. I mean, Luther himself is an
Speaker 1: Augustinian monk. Calvin is constantly referencing Augustine, and so in
Speaker 1: you know, again, you can't read Luther and say that,
Speaker 1: you know, he's somebody who who ignored his own agency.
Speaker 1: You know, he very much obsessed over a sin as
Speaker 1: Augustine did. You can't really read Calvin and say that
Speaker 1: he denies his own agency. He absolutely embraces it. But
Speaker 1: it's the kind of agency that recognizes every good thing
Speaker 1: comes from God, that doesn't leave my autonomy in a
Speaker 1: very good position, but does leave my base existence in
Speaker 1: a very good position, because that means if I exist,
Speaker 1: that I am sustained by goodness, if I am going,
Speaker 1: if only I am willing to embrace it. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just love how powerful he phrases things like looking
Speaker 1: towards the beginning of a book too here where now
Speaker 1: he's really getting into his his confession proper right, And
Speaker 1: this is when he's really getting into his specific sins
Speaker 1: here and as kind of leading up to that, at
Speaker 1: the beginning of section one here of book two, he says,
Speaker 1: arrive now at adolescence. I burned for all the satisfactions
Speaker 1: of hell, and I sank to the animal in a
Speaker 1: succession of dark luss. My beauty consumed away, and I
Speaker 1: stink in thine eyes, yet was pleasing in my own
Speaker 1: and anxious to please the eyes of men. And so
Speaker 1: he talks about how I burn for all the satisfactions
Speaker 1: of hell, and so he recognizes the that he naturally
Speaker 1: he actually desired his misery ultimately speaking, and that's what
Speaker 1: sin is. It's it's a desiring of our own misery.
Speaker 1: And he talks about how he sank to the animal,
Speaker 1: which is very much a drawing on of classical philosophy.
Speaker 1: You know, Plato will talk about this, Aristotle will talk
Speaker 1: about this. How we have you know, we have something
Speaker 1: in common with the beast, our base desires for food,
Speaker 1: for pleasure, for you know, pack dominance, you know, per sex, whatever.
Speaker 1: We have these things in common with the animals. But
Speaker 1: which makes us different is that we have, you know,
Speaker 1: as Aristotle would say, a rational soul, we have this
Speaker 1: ability to aspire to be something more than that. And
Speaker 1: what matters first and foremost is not even so much
Speaker 1: where you're located, but where it is that you're headed,
Speaker 1: what it is that you're directed toward, and that sort
Speaker 1: of feeds back into well also what's pulling you. And
Speaker 1: so you know, in his rejection of his true nature
Speaker 1: in relationship to God, it says, I sink down into
Speaker 1: the animal. He's just sending down. As Boethius is going
Speaker 1: to tell us a little bit later that you know,
Speaker 1: basically the higher you are, I mean, the deeper you
Speaker 1: can fall. And so you know, he's actually worse than
Speaker 1: the animal. He's downright something demonic at this point, which
Speaker 1: is why Augustin connects himself with the desires of hell,
Speaker 1: and so it's just I don't really have a whole
Speaker 1: lot to say beyond what Augustine is saying, But I
Speaker 1: just think he does a great job of demonstrating this
Speaker 1: stakes that are at play, that nothing in the understood
Speaker 1: within the cosmic order should be taken lightly.
Speaker 3: This kind of goes a little bit with what you're saying.
Speaker 3: This is just a footnote at the end of book one.
Speaker 3: We're just talking about the passage outlining Augustine's theology of desire.
Speaker 3: The appetite for physical pleasure. Pleasure is ultimately a groaning
Speaker 3: for happiness in God unless the attempt to satisfy it
Speaker 3: with created goods, and so the Creator ends and sorrow
Speaker 3: rather than joy. Just the way that he had set
Speaker 3: it up in the passage just makes it clear to
Speaker 3: me for sure.
Speaker 1: Andrew Mude, Sorry, let me, I was looking at a
Speaker 1: different screen, all right. Yeah. It reminds me of this
Speaker 1: line from Lewis's Perilandra, where he says, and though there
Speaker 1: seemed to be, indeed were a thousand roads by which
Speaker 1: a man could wan through the world, there was not
Speaker 1: a single one which did not lead sooner or later
Speaker 1: to the beatific or miserific vision, that every step we
Speaker 1: take is headed toward a direction and ultimately, you know,
Speaker 1: moved towards the end. It's going to be one opposing
Speaker 1: direction versus the other. That all things are naturally moving
Speaker 1: back toward their their source in the goodness of God,
Speaker 1: or then moving away from that source, which is a
Speaker 1: way of approaching nothingness. It's it's why in for the
Speaker 1: medieval cosmological order, like you get in in you know Dante,
Speaker 1: why you know Hell is frozen over because on one hand,
Speaker 1: it obviously exists, but it's sort of approaching nothingness and
Speaker 1: it's movement away from God. And so for that reason,
Speaker 1: it's it's stagnant as sort of an imitation of the
Speaker 1: eternality of God. But ultimately all things are moving either
Speaker 1: toward rest in God or this artificial rest of stagnation
Speaker 1: in Hell. And I think that that's a good way
Speaker 1: of framing reality and where all passed ultimately lead. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think that that philosophy of desire is definitely significant.
Speaker 6: I love how he ends book two. I don't know
Speaker 6: if we're there yet, but I don't know if I
Speaker 6: can be there or not. But but he ends up
Speaker 6: saying whoso enters into the I don't know what translation,
Speaker 6: this is just the one I found a coopla. But
Speaker 6: whoso enters into the enters into the joy of his Lord,
Speaker 6: shall not fear, and shall do excellently in the all excellent,
Speaker 6: very good, and just acknowledging his own sin and the
Speaker 6: sin of his youth, which you know he calls, you
Speaker 6: know lost basically, yeah, acknowledging it. But then going to
Speaker 6: guys like I find rest in you. I might be senterful,
Speaker 6: but you are.
Speaker 1: Right that he was led astray by various desires, but
Speaker 1: in God he finds his ultimate desire. He finds true
Speaker 1: satisfaction as opposed to the vain satisfactions that he sought elsewhere.
Speaker 1: And it just really shows us, in Augustine, that the
Speaker 1: pathway of spiritual discipline, the pathway of God, obviously requires sacrifice.
Speaker 1: It requires turning away things that you might very much enjoy,
Speaker 1: but it's a turning away of ultimately lesser joys for
Speaker 1: the ultimate beatific joy. It's a sacrifice of the lesser
Speaker 1: for the greater. And I don't think that's an exchange
Speaker 1: that anyone would truly regret. Now looking back a little
Speaker 1: bit before that section, you know, he's referring back to
Speaker 1: his signposts along the way, and so leading up to
Speaker 1: the Para situation, he says that you know, already he
Speaker 1: at sixteen when he comes, you know, back home, that
Speaker 1: he's engaged in all these you know, these indulgent activities,
Speaker 1: and his mom is cautioning him about some of us, saying, look, hey,
Speaker 1: don't don't sleep around, especially with another man's wife. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: his essentially pagan father is just saying, all right, you know,
Speaker 1: be a man and go do whatever you want to.
Speaker 1: And kind of kind of a weird I don't know
Speaker 1: if this is normal, but kind of weird section where
Speaker 1: you know, he says, like I was at the Roman
Speaker 1: baths with my dad. He said, I see that you're
Speaker 1: becoming a man. Now go forth and do stuff with that.
Speaker 1: And he says that, you know, his mom was like
Speaker 1: cautioning about that. He says, all that to me sounded
Speaker 1: like well minish advice, and so he just totally dismissed her.
Speaker 1: But you know, now looking back, he recognizes that this
Speaker 1: was the voice of God. That he thought that God
Speaker 1: was silent during all this time as he's indulging in
Speaker 1: his various fleshly desires, but God was very much speaking.
Speaker 1: He was just ignoring her. He was ignoring, you know,
Speaker 1: God speaking through his mother. You know, it's in my
Speaker 1: own campus class, teaching a course called Life, Death and Meaning,
Speaker 1: and I made the students read Till We Have Faces
Speaker 1: by C. S. Lewis, And you know, towards the end,
Speaker 1: one of the students is talking about how, you know,
Speaker 1: if God really existed, you know, there'd be signs everywhere
Speaker 1: and et cetera, et cetera, and you know, why would
Speaker 1: he hide himself? And my response to that is that
Speaker 1: a sign is of no help to the blind, and
Speaker 1: you know, in this case they willfully blind, or at
Speaker 1: least someone who has their eyes shut. Maybe it'd be
Speaker 1: a better way of framing that to demonstrate the agency here.
Speaker 1: And so he recognizes, like there were signs everywhere, he
Speaker 1: just didn't want to see them. And so again it
Speaker 1: comes down to the will rather than anything else. It
Speaker 1: wasn't God mistreating him by not giving him wisdom here,
Speaker 1: he just didn't want it. And so again agency is
Speaker 1: entirely on his part here.
Speaker 6: You know, we have a collect in the Anglican tradition
Speaker 6: of which I'm part of, that, and it actually comes
Speaker 6: from Augustine. And we say, Oh, God, who are at
Speaker 6: the officer of peace and lover of concord and knowledge?
Speaker 6: I who can stand it our eternal life? Whose service
Speaker 6: is perfect freedom? Really telling their service being perfect freedom,
Speaker 6: for in freedom and service a service to the ultimate
Speaker 6: good that is God.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, I mean, let's see a little bit later
Speaker 1: here in book two. You know, he talks about trying
Speaker 1: to really get the nature of sin. He talks about
Speaker 1: disordered loves, that we love the lesser over the greater,
Speaker 1: and he says that you know, these lower things, whatever
Speaker 1: it is that we might love other than God like,
Speaker 1: these things might be good. They have their delights, but
Speaker 1: not such as God has, for He made them all,
Speaker 1: and in him doth righteousness delight, and He is the
Speaker 1: joy of the upright heart. And so it's not even
Speaker 1: so much that we have to sacrifice the lesser delights
Speaker 1: for the greater. But when you recognize the greater delight,
Speaker 1: the lessers actually become greater as they are understood in
Speaker 1: context of the greater. And so, you know, you look
Speaker 1: for earth and you lose heaven. Look for heaven and
Speaker 1: you gain earth in the process. And so there's so
Speaker 1: much delight to be had, there's so much desire to
Speaker 1: be had, But it really comes down to maintaining the
Speaker 1: proper order. You love the greater over the lesser, and
Speaker 1: in so doing you actually love the lesser even more.
Speaker 1: And you know, this this idea, that this very platonic
Speaker 1: idea that everyone by nature serves the good. We find
Speaker 1: that in his analysis of the pair incident, you know,
Speaker 1: when he's talking about how, you know, the parents weren't
Speaker 1: even that great. We didn't even really eat them, you know,
Speaker 1: we just fed them to the pigs. And so he's
Speaker 1: trying to figure out, why did I even do this thing,
Speaker 1: And you know, he says, Okay, well, maybe it's because
Speaker 1: I just love companionship. So maybe it was a love
Speaker 1: of friendship, which I mean, that's a good thing. Or
Speaker 1: but he really just comes down on I loved it
Speaker 1: because he was wrong. It's really his leading idea that
Speaker 1: I just wanted to do what was wrong. But even
Speaker 1: that is a perverted kind of way of wanting to
Speaker 1: do what is right, because he recognized some good that
Speaker 1: he was serving right. And the problem there is, well,
Speaker 1: it was totally inverted. As he said at the beginning,
Speaker 1: of this book, he was pursuing the satisfaction of hell
Speaker 1: rather than of heaven, and so it was totally inverted,
Speaker 1: hence his need for conversion. Thanks a lot, Sorry no.
Speaker 3: For me.
Speaker 6: It takes a lot to actually admit that though I
Speaker 6: think you know that you Confessions is such a deeply
Speaker 6: personal text, He's like, I loved it because it was wrong, right,
Speaker 6: Like how many people would probably try to find, you know,
Speaker 6: another excuse, but he actually like, you know, like I
Speaker 6: wasn't even hungry, but I just did it because it
Speaker 6: was wrong, really interesting.
Speaker 1: Right, And so he really places sin in the well,
Speaker 1: in the will, in the desire, which is tied to
Speaker 1: the will. It's what matters first and foremost is where
Speaker 1: we're being directed. And this is one area where some
Speaker 1: people think that he's you know, a little bit you know,
Speaker 1: too extreme, because you know, he's not first and foremost
Speaker 1: concerned with his actions. He's first and foremost concerned with
Speaker 1: the desires that produce the actions. And this brings us
Speaker 1: to the the deaf psychology angle that he's very much
Speaker 1: concerned with what is motivating him, but then even deeper
Speaker 1: than that, what he is allowing to motivate him. You
Speaker 1: know where he is directing himself, where he is moving
Speaker 1: his will, And I think that that's actually it's very helpful,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, how many times have you done
Speaker 1: something that you know is wrong? Whatever it may be.
Speaker 1: You know, we all do stuff that we know is wrong.
Speaker 1: You do something you know is wrong, and you might think,
Speaker 1: you might feel guilty about that, and you might think, Okay,
Speaker 1: why did I do that? Why would I do that?
Speaker 1: How could I do such a thing. But you're so
Speaker 1: much focused on the action that you don't stop and
Speaker 1: think what did I actually want here? And why did
Speaker 1: I want it? Because the until you recognize how corrupted
Speaker 1: your desires are, then that root issue is never actually
Speaker 1: going to change because you won't know exactly what it
Speaker 1: is that you need to repent of. And what we
Speaker 1: see in Augustine is somebody who recognizes what I don't
Speaker 1: need first and foremost is to modify my behavior. Well,
Speaker 1: I need first and foremost is a new will. I
Speaker 1: need to be sanctified. And so you know, his his
Speaker 1: reliance on grace kind of simultaneously allows him to not
Speaker 1: work so hard, but also he has to work so
Speaker 1: hard because he recognizes, you know, how much is wrong
Speaker 1: in him, how much has to be overcome, But at
Speaker 1: the same time he's able to just receive. And so
Speaker 1: it's to kind of grace that spurs activity. But again
Speaker 1: it comes down to recognizing how kind of unfruitful his
Speaker 1: autonomous will is. And I think that if we're honest,
Speaker 1: a lot of times we're not willing to get down
Speaker 1: to that level. We're willing to repent of actions, not
Speaker 1: so much willing to repent of our own being.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's one thing to resist an action that he
Speaker 6: knows that. That's another thing to try to change the
Speaker 6: whole make up like the I don't know how to
Speaker 6: put it. I mean, like just to the desire to
Speaker 6: do that, right, Yeah, it's like that that very thing itself.
Speaker 6: That's one other things you can resist that, but the
Speaker 6: fact that that's even.
Speaker 1: There, right yeah, exactly, that we can't by ourselves just
Speaker 1: replace our desires.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And I guess and we'll say, like you won't,
Speaker 6: he can't either. It's through God's grace.
Speaker 1: M hm. Exactly. Anything else anyone want to bring up
Speaker 1: for these first two books, I mean, there are these
Speaker 1: first two books, and there's definitely some some philosophy here,
Speaker 1: but I mean we're largely setting up the orientation of
Speaker 1: what we're doing here moving forward, as he recounts his
Speaker 1: own philosophical and spiritual journey, I think that we'll have
Speaker 1: more I mean more well theology and philosophy to to
Speaker 1: work through here, but definitely a powerful introduction that helps
Speaker 1: us to recognize that this is not first and foremost
Speaker 1: at academic philosophy text. This is first and foremost somebody
Speaker 1: wrestling with his relationship with God, and somebody who has
Speaker 1: been through great sin, but somebody who has experienced great grace.
Speaker 1: And so I think that is something that resonates hopefully
Speaker 1: with all of us, and you know, I trust it
Speaker 1: as we move further along with Augustine's own journey here
Speaker 1: through his life, that you know, will experience some of
Speaker 1: that ourselves, hopefully on a deeper level than we have
Speaker 1: so far. So, unless there's anything else and wants to
Speaker 1: bring up, I think I'll just end with the final
Speaker 1: section here from book two. Who can unravel that complex,
Speaker 1: twisted knottedness. It is unclean. I hate to think of
Speaker 1: it or look at it. I long for thee Oh,
Speaker 1: justice and innocence, joy and beauty of the clear of sight.
Speaker 1: I long for thee with unquenchable longing. There is sure
Speaker 1: repose in THEE and life untroubled. He that enters into
Speaker 1: the enters into the Joy of Lord, and shall not fear,
Speaker 1: and shall be well in Him who is the best.
Speaker 1: I went away from Thee, my God, in my youth.
Speaker 1: I strayed too far from Thy sustaining power, and I
Speaker 1: became to myself a barren land. And so great celebration
Speaker 1: in the goodness, the joy and the beauty of the Lord,
Speaker 1: but also a solemn recognition of the barrenness of rejecting
Speaker 1: that joy that's ever before us. I think it gives
Speaker 1: us a good place to wrap up our introduction here,
Speaker 1: and I hope that you all and I think maybe
Speaker 1: a few others will come in next time as we
Speaker 1: cover books three and four. So I hope to see
Speaker 1: you in a couple of weeks. So we're meeting every
Speaker 1: other week, and so hopefully i'll see again on the
Speaker 1: twelfth at the same time. All right, until then, God speed,
Speaker 1: all right, thank you for listening, and as we move forward,
Speaker 1: please make sure that you enroll some of our coming courses.
Speaker 1: I have a brief history of ideas coming up that
Speaker 1: starts the week of the eighteenth. Hannah Gilmore's intro to
Speaker 1: Latin course or her Introductory Latin course, begins the week
Speaker 1: of the eleventh, as does Josh Trailer's Paradise Lost, And
Speaker 1: so you can find links in the notes here the
Speaker 1: show notes whether you're watching on YouTube or listening on
Speaker 1: the podcast, and so click those links. Go ahead and roll.
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Speaker 1: up to. Also, we have just started our Star Wars
Speaker 1: series and so you can probably already find on YouTube
Speaker 1: the livestream conversation that we had. Find a link to
Speaker 1: my YouTube channel in the show notes and then that'll
Speaker 1: also be coming through the podcast feed next time. But
Speaker 1: that's it for now and until next time, godspeed. When
Speaker 1: you go to the roots of the word philosophy, you
Speaker 1: find the love of wisdom, which unfortunately is not what
Speaker 1: you find at the roots of all who call themselves philosophers. Now,
Speaker 1: how do we get here? What are the ideas that
Speaker 1: shape our world? And what can the old world tell
Speaker 1: us in response to the perennial questions of what it
Speaker 1: means to be human, what is our purpose? And what,
Speaker 1: if anything, ought we aspire to? In a brief history
Speaker 1: of ideas, we will navigate major epics of thought and
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Speaker 1: and carec. Guard and of course we will consider even
Speaker 1: more names. But these are the thinkers that will supply
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Speaker 1: will be provided as PDFs. Although these are all texts
Speaker 1: that do belong in your personal library, You will be
Speaker 1: recommended some secondary texts. You will be provided with some
Speaker 1: recorded presentations for you to watch at your leisure, ongoing
Speaker 1: discord chats, and weekly life meetings to discuss their readings.
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