Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Mythic Mind, where we prodsue wisdom
Speaker 1: in the past between primary second eight worlds. Andrew Snyder
Speaker 1: and I'm glad that you're here. Hey, Roll, and welcome
Speaker 1: to our next book club conversation on Augustine's Confessions, Book
Speaker 1: three and four. I don't have a lot of front
Speaker 1: matter to provide you with for this episode, but there's
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Speaker 1: around that time. It's an eight week course that has
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Speaker 1: well as Boethius's Constellation of Philosophy. And so if you
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Speaker 1: jump right into our conversation on a Gustin's Confessions book
Speaker 1: three and four. Wells jump right into it here. Talking
Speaker 1: about books three and four, this is I think we
Speaker 1: really start to really get into it as we get
Speaker 1: into Augustine himself. You know, the first couple of books
Speaker 1: are anyways just setting up what we're doing in orienting
Speaker 1: himself toward God. I mean, he goes a little bit
Speaker 1: into you know, some of his past, looking at the
Speaker 1: Pear incident, but even that's mostly to set up sort
Speaker 1: of theologically, like what his sin is, what temptation is,
Speaker 1: what sin is, and that's just kind of example. But
Speaker 1: now we're going a lot more more methodically through his life,
Speaker 1: kind of step by step with the progressions that he takes,
Speaker 1: and so right at the beginning of book three here
Speaker 1: we get this pretty just powerful diagnosis of his condition
Speaker 1: when he says, I came to Carthage, where a cauldron
Speaker 1: of illicit loves left and boiled about me. I was
Speaker 1: not yet in love, but I was in love with love,
Speaker 1: and from the very depth of my need, hated myself
Speaker 1: for not more keenly feeling the need. I saw some
Speaker 1: object to love, since I was thus in love with loving,
Speaker 1: and I hated security and a life with no snares
Speaker 1: from my feet. For within, I was hungry all for
Speaker 1: the want of that spiritual food, which is thyself, my God.
Speaker 1: And so he starts off by saying, like, I loved
Speaker 1: the idea of love, but I didn't yet recognize what
Speaker 1: love was for who love was for, And so he
Speaker 1: loved love while simultaneously hating himself. It kind of reminds
Speaker 1: me of what Tolkien says about Gollum about how he
Speaker 1: loved and hated the Ring as he loved and hated himself.
Speaker 1: It's because he didn't recognize the proper object of love.
Speaker 1: And then so from there on we just we get
Speaker 1: his his traveling and his restless heart, loving various things
Speaker 1: that he ought not loved with the Manicheans and whatnot.
Speaker 1: So I just I love the way he sets us up.
Speaker 1: But I'd love to hear some of your thoughts. And
Speaker 1: I'm going to use the word love apparently as many
Speaker 1: times as they can. Right, Uh, Kyle, you're umueded. Tell
Speaker 1: us something about book three?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Uh, I actually don't know. If there was book three,
Speaker 2: I might have been thinking about book four, just going
Speaker 2: further along that same theme. But it's really interesting, like
Speaker 2: he sees his life so clearly in hindsight, because even
Speaker 2: in even in book three or book four, I think
Speaker 2: it's like, if you love material things, love them and
Speaker 2: that they are in God, rather than love them for themselves.
Speaker 2: And so it's like there is a it's like it's
Speaker 2: not like there's a true dignity and the things in
Speaker 2: themselves they're good in and of themselves. But if you
Speaker 2: stop there, you're it's still vain, it's still empty, you know.
Speaker 2: It's it's like Ecclesiastes, Solomon or the Teacher, and it's
Speaker 2: just like this, there's no there's no value here unless
Speaker 2: you follow these things towards their tell us. And I, oh, gosh,
Speaker 2: I don't remember who it was. I was listening to
Speaker 2: a conversation maybe two months ago, and it was about
Speaker 2: how aros is meant to be a ladder towards one
Speaker 2: of the other forms of love, and that Aros is
Speaker 2: sort of like that that earthly affection we have, but
Speaker 2: it's always just meant to be that compass that points
Speaker 2: us towards that love for God. And he seems to
Speaker 2: like here in the beginning of book three, he's showing
Speaker 2: like he's not he's not looking at the like, he's
Speaker 2: not looking where they're pointing. He's just looking at the
Speaker 2: things themselves. And he sees how clearly in hindsight, how
Speaker 2: why that's what left him empty.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And the way that you phrase about how aroos
Speaker 1: is meant to lead to the higher divine love, I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: I could equally be said by C. S. Lewis or
Speaker 1: Plato himself. In the symposium, the idea was that the
Speaker 1: lesser love of things like Aros are meant to lead
Speaker 1: us to the higher love of the good. That when
Speaker 1: we love the good, well, now we have the proper
Speaker 1: perspective for loving good things, whereas when you love good
Speaker 1: things separate from the good, we lose the good that
Speaker 1: makes good things good. And in so doing, the things
Speaker 1: themselves may still be good, but our desires are evil
Speaker 1: because they're turned away from the good. Right. That's a
Speaker 1: very platonic way of seeing things, and especially in Augustine
Speaker 1: way of seeing things. Who you know, Augustine's going to
Speaker 1: reteem redeem the material world and see that a little
Speaker 1: bit better than playto himself does, because he recognizes like
Speaker 1: anything that exists exists by the will of God. Therefore
Speaker 1: existence itself is good. You know, I'm still wrapping up
Speaker 1: some of the Tolkien materials, so I've got Tolkien still
Speaker 1: running through my mind here. But you know, Tolkien says that,
Speaker 1: you know, he doesn't believe in absolute evil. Yeah, absolute
Speaker 1: evil would be non being.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember Freeman touches on that in Tolkien dogmatics, like,
Speaker 2: there's no such thing as as just the total deprivation
Speaker 2: of good, like all things being God's creation. Just there's
Speaker 2: there's some virtue that's that's given to all things, even
Speaker 2: if it's just in the goodness. What was it?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: I was reading paradise lost yesterday for the course on Wednesday.
Speaker 2: And it's interesting because Satan is saying in Book one,
Speaker 2: he's like, God has given us our mental capacity so
Speaker 2: that we would feel our pains more fully, right, because
Speaker 2: it is a good thing that justice would be done.
Speaker 2: And so even though even though like Satan is an
Speaker 2: object of wrath, there is a total goodness in his
Speaker 2: preserved acuity, his preserved perception and all that, so that
Speaker 2: he can receive wrath more fully. So there's no such
Speaker 2: things as that complete absence.
Speaker 1: Right, which is why you know in the inferno that
Speaker 1: that hell is frozen over because it's as close to
Speaker 1: non being as you can get, but it's still there,
Speaker 1: that there was still a thing that we're talking about.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, so being itself is good, and that
Speaker 1: actually is a I think I believe that is a
Speaker 1: Christian philosophical position that I don't know theologically how you
Speaker 1: get out of that. Recognizing that you know, all things
Speaker 1: are you know, from God, and all things are held
Speaker 1: together by God, existence itself is fundamentally good, which really,
Speaker 1: if we believe that, then we have reason for joy
Speaker 1: at simply being itself, regardless of particular circumstances. This is
Speaker 1: why this idea is going to get a lot of
Speaker 1: play in Boethius a little bit later on in time,
Speaker 1: that Boethius can say that, no matter how much injustice
Speaker 1: I'm facing right now, the fact that I'm here able
Speaker 1: to recognize injustice means that high exist, and existence is
Speaker 1: good existence. The affirmation of existence provides a straight line
Speaker 1: to the beatific vision followed, you know fully, to its
Speaker 1: course or to its source, kind of same thing, beginning
Speaker 1: and end. And so this, this idea that being is
Speaker 1: fundamentally good, it gets a lot of play in medieval
Speaker 1: Christian philosophy. And I think that's one reason why you know,
Speaker 1: as much as as you know, we we talk about
Speaker 1: the dark ages. I think philosophically, these are the bright ages.
Speaker 1: They make so much, give so much priority, just the
Speaker 1: luminosity of existence, and I think that's something that can
Speaker 1: deeply enrich and really re enchant our lives. I often
Speaker 1: quote this, this Thomas Aquinas line when he says that
Speaker 1: all the efforts of the human mind cannot exhaust the
Speaker 1: essence of a single fly like existence is far more
Speaker 1: wondrous than we tend to think. It just it's just
Speaker 1: it's marvelous, all right, reach why you share something with
Speaker 1: us about and thing from from the section of reading
Speaker 1: whatever foot to boot.
Speaker 3: I was meant to reread it last night, but I
Speaker 3: took my book to Bible College and I'll just finish off.
Speaker 3: I was reading, like Luther's one of his books, and
Speaker 3: I just kept going on and I don't know.
Speaker 2: So I didn't.
Speaker 1: I got my reading done. Thing you need but fair enough.
Speaker 1: I mean Augustine Confessions, Augustinian Monk. I mean, you know
Speaker 1: it works, They're.
Speaker 3: All write right, But just flicking through I kind of
Speaker 3: I found it quite interesting his fascination with the theater
Speaker 3: and the performances and that sort of really.
Speaker 1: So I've got lots of kids around at the moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just being really like emotionally invested in these theatrical performances.
Speaker 3: Just Luke, can you take your Pokemon somewhere else? Do
Speaker 3: you do courses on Pokemons?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Give it time, give it time.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I just thought like, in a similar way, how
Speaker 3: much we watch TV shows or films and things for entertainment,
Speaker 3: and we we love them but hate them for the
Speaker 3: emotions that they bring out of us. Yeah, I think
Speaker 3: it's I guess it's similar in this, you know, it's
Speaker 3: like fifteen hundred years ago more similar. Similar entertainment can
Speaker 3: bring out a similar response in human kind.
Speaker 1: We're not all that different. No, that's absolutely true that
Speaker 1: human nature has not fundamentally change, and even the ways
Speaker 1: that we engage in entertainment is not fundamentally change. I
Speaker 1: mean it's changed in form, but not so much in substance.
Speaker 1: And I do think he makes some important points there
Speaker 1: regarding the theater, regarding you know, literature that he was
Speaker 1: taught to, you know, to pity, you know that the
Speaker 1: characters in the play, to mourn for these characters, these
Speaker 1: fictional characters. But that's kind of where it ended. The
Speaker 1: idea of Catharsis is that you're supposed to sort of
Speaker 1: let something out in a way that allows you to
Speaker 1: actually better integrate your own psyche together. But what he
Speaker 1: was doing, and what we often tend to do, is,
Speaker 1: I mean, we might sympathize with a you know, some
Speaker 1: situation in a show we're watching, but we don't take
Speaker 1: that step further and actually recognize what this means for us.
Speaker 1: We don't mourn for ourselves in the appropriate way. We
Speaker 1: don't sorrow for ourselves in the appropriate way, And so
Speaker 1: I do think he makes some pretty important points regarding
Speaker 1: the way that we engage with entertainment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I'll keep skin reading.
Speaker 1: Perfect perfect, all right, Chase, what do you have for us?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I like that.
Speaker 5: His kind of use on the plays and break him
Speaker 5: down why I enjoyed it and kind of why people
Speaker 5: he thought people enjoyed it.
Speaker 4: How he just talks.
Speaker 5: About how is it that a man wants to be
Speaker 5: made sad by the side of tragic sufferings that he
Speaker 5: could not bear his own person. I think he definitely
Speaker 5: picks on something good where sometimes we almost want to
Speaker 5: see like a sometimes like a train wreck or something
Speaker 5: go bad in somebody else's life that we can pity them,
Speaker 5: but also kind of realized, like which is something that's
Speaker 5: a bad feeling to have, But you're like, you know, like, oh,
Speaker 5: other people go through suffering too, right, And it's it's
Speaker 5: weird that we feel that way sometimes, And he later
Speaker 5: on says, may it be that whereas no one wants
Speaker 5: to be miserable, there is real pleasure in pitying others,
Speaker 5: and we love their sorrows because without them we should
Speaker 5: have nothing. We should have nothing to pity. Yeah, And
Speaker 5: then he follows it up with some imagery of kind
Speaker 5: of not wanting them to bite too deep the sorrows,
Speaker 5: but just to scratch his heart basically causes information and
Speaker 5: sores and us flowing and just kind of pondering if
Speaker 5: that's even a life to have, you know, the life
Speaker 5: that he was living, was it even a life?
Speaker 2: Cool?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just it's a great commentary on the superficial.
Speaker 1: He talks about how, you know, he used to pity
Speaker 1: characters in a stage play who lost something that made
Speaker 1: them happy, but then he learned that, no, what I
Speaker 1: need to pity is not just when people lose things
Speaker 1: that make them happy. Oftentimes, do I need to do
Speaker 1: is pity people because they're happy, he says, But today
Speaker 1: I have more pity for the sinner getting enjoyment from
Speaker 1: his sin, then when he suffers the torment from the
Speaker 1: loss of pleasure which is ultimately destructive, and the loss
Speaker 1: of happiness, which is only misery. This is clearly the
Speaker 1: truer compassion. But the sorrow I feel him gives me
Speaker 1: no pleasure. And so, you know, he used to feel
Speaker 1: sorry for people when you know they lose the things
Speaker 1: that make them happy. Now he sorrows for people who,
Speaker 1: in their happiness don't recognize their misery, don't recognize their sin,
Speaker 1: because it's exactly where he was, right, he didn't recognize
Speaker 1: what his misery truly was. And so now he has
Speaker 1: a new kind of perspective. You know, it makes me
Speaker 1: think of and you know, it's getting a little bitead
Speaker 1: to the next course that I'll be teaching. But you know,
Speaker 1: to Plato's allegory of the cave that you know, when
Speaker 1: the guy gets out that now he has not pride
Speaker 1: in that judgment of those who are still stuck in
Speaker 1: the cave, but now he has pity for them. He
Speaker 1: has compassion for them, and he's able to willingly now
Speaker 1: to send back into the darkness out of pity for
Speaker 1: those who are where he was. And so you know,
Speaker 1: we see this idea in Plato, but I think even
Speaker 1: more profoundly in Augustine, of pity for those who don't
Speaker 1: recognize their pitiable state. You know, Augustine is an interesting
Speaker 1: kind of figure that on one hand, he's obviously interested
Speaker 1: in dogma, he's obviously interested in philosophy. He's going to
Speaker 1: advocate for, you know, taking out certain sects of heretics,
Speaker 1: and so on one hand he is a very theologically
Speaker 1: driven guy, but also as you read him like, he
Speaker 1: reads as somebody of a contrite and broken spirit remade
Speaker 1: by God. And so you have both strength as well
Speaker 1: as real meekness, which obviously those aren't opposites, rightly understood,
Speaker 1: And you know, Kyle mentioned in the chat here this
Speaker 1: line that's had underlined as well, the very limit of
Speaker 1: human blindness is to glory in being blind. We celebrate
Speaker 1: the very things that are handicapping us and keeping us
Speaker 1: from fulfilling our purpose. Which, again, because Augustine's idea that
Speaker 1: evil is principally in the will, we decide to be blind,
Speaker 1: essentially we glory in it. We don't want to be healed.
Speaker 2: I think he does a good job in sort of
Speaker 2: creating that delineation of what is uh well ordered pity
Speaker 2: and what isn't because like you should never he says,
Speaker 2: only in the impossible event of goodwill beingnevolent malevolent could
Speaker 2: a man who is truly and sincerely failed with pity
Speaker 2: desired that there should be miserable people for him too
Speaker 2: pity And so it's like, I don't know how to
Speaker 2: articulate it. But it's just it's just the point of
Speaker 2: like goodness descends to it. But yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: It kind of seems like an obvious, obvious state. Maybe
Speaker 2: I'm just wowed by his words, but just in terms
Speaker 2: of like how how twisted it is to like, it's
Speaker 2: a twisted thing to almost to desire that people are
Speaker 2: in the situation so that you could serve them like
Speaker 2: the well the well ordered desire is that that they
Speaker 2: they are they're off or they're in right relationship with God,
Speaker 2: and that they're not miserable.
Speaker 1: I suppose, Yeah, I think that's that's an important point,
Speaker 1: and it's it kind of continues the same theme of
Speaker 1: being in love with love but not knowing the proper
Speaker 1: object of appreciating pity, but not knowing that the the
Speaker 1: object of pity is wellness of somebody else. You know,
Speaker 1: I've I've brought in Talkien here now to bring it.
Speaker 1: Lewis mands you until we not till we have faces.
Speaker 1: When Orwall says of Psyche, you know, I wish I
Speaker 1: were or I wish he was my slave so I
Speaker 1: could set her free. It's like this this twisted kind
Speaker 1: of idea where I want to feel like I had
Speaker 1: the moral superiority by expressing pity, but I don't actually
Speaker 1: want them to be well, it's yeah, no, yeah.
Speaker 2: It's also interesting this sort of slavery theme that runs
Speaker 2: through right because at the end of what is this
Speaker 2: section one of book one, when it's got the Roman numeral,
Speaker 2: I don't know what's secondly called, but the last sentence,
Speaker 2: I wore my chains with bliss, but with torment too,
Speaker 2: before I was scorged with the red hot rods of jealousy,
Speaker 2: with suspicions and fears and times and quarrelds, And I
Speaker 2: don't want to read that out of context. But then
Speaker 2: later on he goes on and he says, I wandered
Speaker 2: from you and my arrogance, going ever further away from you,
Speaker 2: loving my way and not your ways, in love with
Speaker 2: my runaway liberty, which my footnote says is an allusion
Speaker 2: to being a runaway slave. And so it's interesting because
Speaker 2: it's almost it's like these passions for for a disordered pity,
Speaker 2: these passions for disordered friendship. He likens them to like
Speaker 2: the slave masters of him, it seems almost. And but
Speaker 2: it's also interesting because he's he talks he's glorying in
Speaker 2: that in that slavery, because he says he wears his
Speaker 2: chains with bliss and that that he is in love
Speaker 2: with his runaway liberty. And it's like, I know, my
Speaker 2: favorite quote from the Oxford Classics comes in book nine,
Speaker 2: and it's how sweet it became to me to be
Speaker 2: without the sweets of folly. What I want, feared to lose,
Speaker 2: became a delight to dismiss. That's in book nine. That's
Speaker 2: the Oxtra Classics translation. And as you see the progression
Speaker 2: of he he's loving his chains, so that he's loving
Speaker 2: to be without his chains, as as his affections are
Speaker 2: becoming better ordered throughout the confessions.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 5: I thought this portion was that he was like the
Speaker 5: first the first one is basically that he's like chained
Speaker 5: to his loss.
Speaker 4: But then later on when.
Speaker 5: It talks about like the runaway slave, it seemed like
Speaker 5: he was he's moving further away from you, loving my
Speaker 5: way and not your ways, in love with my runaway liberty.
Speaker 2: Just meaning like, yeah, I'm not I'm not claiming that. Sorry,
Speaker 2: I'm not claiming that he's referencing the same thing. I'm
Speaker 2: just making the observation of their There seems to be
Speaker 2: that narrative theme that he seemed to paint the image.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because I think this one's like more of.
Speaker 5: Like a disobedient slave running away enjoying the little bit
Speaker 5: of liberty that you have, rather than like staying with
Speaker 5: the faithful master whatever. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And and the way that you frame that, Cole,
Speaker 1: it reminds me of a quote from the City of
Speaker 1: God where Augustine says, the good man, though a slave,
Speaker 1: is free. The wicked, though he reigns as a slave,
Speaker 1: and not the slave of a single man, what is
Speaker 1: far worse the slave of as many masters as he
Speaker 1: has vices, And so again maintaining that this slave kind
Speaker 1: of language, that the good man may in fact be
Speaker 1: an actual slave, but he's free because he's living in
Speaker 1: accord with the purpose of human nature. He has his
Speaker 1: loves rightly oriented. Whereas the bad man, you know, he
Speaker 1: may be reigning, but he's he's a servant to his lust.
Speaker 1: He's not in control of his own passions, and that's
Speaker 1: not freedom, And that I think speaks pretty directly to
Speaker 1: our modern understandings of freedom. I encounter this all the
Speaker 1: time teaching philosophy, at a public university. You know, I'll
Speaker 1: ask students, you know, what does freedom mean? And with
Speaker 1: various wording, they basically say freedom is being able to
Speaker 1: do whatever you want to. But then, you know, I
Speaker 1: follow up with, Okay, why do you want what you want?
Speaker 1: And if you want the wrong things that are constantly
Speaker 1: leading you to a less free kind of life, you're
Speaker 1: becoming addicted to your own vices. Is that actual freedom?
Speaker 1: I mean, I take a little bit longer to lead
Speaker 1: them to in that direction, but eventually, you know, it
Speaker 1: starts to become obvious that simply doing whatever you want
Speaker 1: is not freedom because very often we want the wrong things.
Speaker 1: You know, Plato says, one of the worst things that
Speaker 1: can happen to you is you want the wrong things
Speaker 1: and you get them.
Speaker 2: Mike Tyson says that too.
Speaker 1: Well, Plato probably got it from Mike Tyson.
Speaker 2: Probably great minds think alike.
Speaker 1: Yes, obviously that that great philosopher. Mike Tyson reminds me
Speaker 1: of video. I don't remember. It was a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago or so, when it's like a kid, it's
Speaker 1: like a six year old kid or something was asking
Speaker 1: interviewing Mike Tyson and asked him like what's the meeting
Speaker 1: of life or something, And he just said to this kid,
Speaker 1: there is none. Just go do stuff.
Speaker 2: I just want to your name, Mike Tyson.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's a good question. So that's kind of
Speaker 1: on on them. I guess, all right back.
Speaker 4: To years with what you were saying.
Speaker 5: I read a preface to Paraise Losses for some and
Speaker 5: it was the Milton and Saint Augustine chapter and it
Speaker 5: was just saying, for us, he shows his benevolence in
Speaker 5: creating good natures, he shows his justice and exploiting evil wills,
Speaker 5: kind of going along with what you were saying of
Speaker 5: he's going to use He's going to allow you to
Speaker 5: like go with what you're doing, kind of to exploit you,
Speaker 5: to break you down and break you back up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then it's moving continuing in his narrative here,
Speaker 1: so he goes from highlighting his superficial engagement with the entertainment,
Speaker 1: with the theater with plays, and then he brings up
Speaker 1: when he first had his philosophical awakening, and it's when
Speaker 1: as a rhetorician, he was studying Cicero, who has principally
Speaker 1: studied for his rhetoric. That's what he was known for.
Speaker 1: But Augustine goes a little bit deeper. You know, while
Speaker 1: his colleagues are reading Cicero so they know how to
Speaker 1: speak better, Augustin's actually reading Cicero to see what he's saying,
Speaker 1: and out of that he he is awakened to a
Speaker 1: desire to study philosophy. He's awakened to the early stages
Speaker 1: of a love for wisdom, which is going to lead
Speaker 1: him in the wrong places along the path. But ultimately this
Speaker 1: is the beginning point of his like intellectual movement toward God,
Speaker 1: even though he doesn't know that's where he's headed yet.
Speaker 1: And it reminds me of In I can't remember for
Speaker 1: his Screwtape letters or Screwtape proposes a toast, but in
Speaker 1: one of them, Screwtape is talking about how the how
Speaker 1: they they've you know, the forces of Hell have say,
Speaker 1: convinced moderns to study the ancient text, the great Text,
Speaker 1: for kind of form for style to learn about like
Speaker 1: you know, historical realities regarding you know the text, or
Speaker 1: you know how people are talking, how people are thinking.
Speaker 1: But what they don't want people to do is actually
Speaker 1: read the text for what they are saying, as if
Speaker 1: they're actually saying things that may be true, that may
Speaker 1: actually come into terms with the way that we understand wisdom,
Speaker 1: the way that we understand the world today. And Augustin
Speaker 1: does exactly that. That. Yeah, all right, well thanks for
Speaker 1: sopping by, rah hope see next time.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes sta fortnit a gone with.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, absolutely all right. So so Augustine he he
Speaker 1: he actually reads his for Cicero, and he actually discovers
Speaker 1: something of wisdom, and now he's going forth to actually,
Speaker 1: I mean pursue that wisdom. And so we get that
Speaker 1: again substance over mere aesthetics, I suppose, which is probably
Speaker 1: rare for rhetoricians.
Speaker 2: There's a part Augustine's hard to read in some ways
Speaker 2: because in the same section he says that book excited
Speaker 2: and inflames me in my ardor the only thing I
Speaker 2: found lacking was that the name of Christ was not
Speaker 2: there with my mother's milk. My infant heart had drunk
Speaker 2: in and still held deep down in it that name
Speaker 2: cordn sheer, mercy, Lord, the name of your son, my favor,
Speaker 2: and whatever lacks that name, no matter how to learn it,
Speaker 2: and excellently written, and shrew could not win me Holy
Speaker 2: and I find that so strange being where this is
Speaker 2: in his life that I almost I almost just don't
Speaker 2: know how to interpret it, as if this is something
Speaker 2: that he's like saying in hindsight retroactively, or if it's
Speaker 2: like this subconscious thing because he's, to my understanding and
Speaker 2: I'm in my reading comprehension is far from the best.
Speaker 2: He's he's still living in rebellion. Yeah, for whatever reason,
Speaker 2: Like he says that it lacks the name of Christ,
Speaker 2: I don't know. I got to that, and I just
Speaker 2: it just put questions in my mind and no answer.
Speaker 2: So I was wondering what you guys thought.
Speaker 4: I think what I got was.
Speaker 5: I mean, he's writing all of this reflections from later on, right,
Speaker 5: this is stuff that he's grappled with his over the years,
Speaker 5: and so looking back on this time when he saw like, Okay,
Speaker 5: maybe this is why I didn't like what what did
Speaker 5: I find lacking the sister? Why did I seek out
Speaker 5: scriptures even though they were less majestic, like what would
Speaker 5: be their reason? Name is how I'm interpreting it, and
Speaker 5: him basically saying, like Ray says, for with my mother's milk,
Speaker 5: my infle heart had drunk in and still held deep
Speaker 5: down in the name, according to your mercy.
Speaker 4: So even from like his mother he was.
Speaker 5: Had gotten some, but it wasn't it hadn't taken root,
Speaker 5: you know, like he shouldn't know what it is, but
Speaker 5: he's so blinded by his lust and probably is schooling
Speaker 5: also and just surroundings, that he didn't recognize it at
Speaker 5: the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's true. I think that even though
Speaker 1: he's in a state of rebellion mortally as well as intellectually,
Speaker 1: that he did get something from his mother, and that
Speaker 1: he did have a desire for something of what she
Speaker 1: provided him with. And so even when he falls into
Speaker 1: with the Manicheans, that that's kind of a Christian Zoroasteryan heresy,
Speaker 1: but there is some some Christianity to be found there.
Speaker 1: The Manicheans would certainly claim that. And so it's like,
Speaker 1: even though he's engaging in all these these these I
Speaker 1: don't know, these cults and these heresies and these vain philosophies,
Speaker 1: like there's still something of his mother. There's faith there
Speaker 1: at the very least in name. And so it's like
Speaker 1: he he desires the name of Christ, but he doesn't
Speaker 1: desire Christ. And I think that's yeah, And I think
Speaker 1: that honestly, a lot of people today can probably relate
Speaker 1: to that, and you know the whole like expangelical movement
Speaker 1: or you know, people so deconstruct the faith, but they
Speaker 1: still want to maintain certain labels. They still want to maintain,
Speaker 1: you know, certain wordings that they want to maintain the
Speaker 1: appearance of what they came up with, even if they
Speaker 1: projected the substance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I do I imagine part of it. I
Speaker 2: think he's so he's so insightful. I think there's there's
Speaker 2: a part of him that knows where the fullness is,
Speaker 2: but there are things he doesn't want to give up.
Speaker 2: And I'm remembering, Sorry, it's been less than six months
Speaker 2: since I last read this, so some of this is
Speaker 2: still fresh in my mind. I'm going to jump ahead,
Speaker 2: but I don't. I don't even remember where it is.
Speaker 2: But like during his final conversion, he's talking about how
Speaker 2: he had read a story of an Egyptian saint that
Speaker 2: had inverted immediately. This would be so much more insightful
Speaker 2: if I remembered quotes or what the book was. And
Speaker 2: I remember, I remember he was saying, it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: how that convicted me? How how quickly he turned from
Speaker 2: his sin when I have still been trying to hold
Speaker 2: onto mine. And it's almost it was kind of just
Speaker 2: like this watershed moment where he finally realized that he
Speaker 2: needed to give it all up. So I wonder how
Speaker 2: much of it is that, but it, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's it's interesting. It's interesting how he's he seems to
Speaker 2: have his toes in the water, but he just doesn't
Speaker 2: want to jump. And then he's even like later on
Speaker 2: the next section, he finds another excuse to be repelled
Speaker 2: by Christ again, because he says, because now he's reading
Speaker 2: the scriptures, and he says, I can see it was
Speaker 2: repelled by their simplicity, and I had not the mind
Speaker 2: to penetrate into their depths. They were indeed of a
Speaker 2: nature to grow on your little ones, but I could
Speaker 2: not bear to be a little one. I was only
Speaker 2: swollen with pride. But to myself I seemed a very
Speaker 2: big man. And so he's constantly finding these things to
Speaker 2: excuse himself to walk away. Again. It's really interesting. It's
Speaker 2: a very interesting relationship.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and what a line to say, my conceit was
Speaker 1: repelled by their simplicity and not the mind to penetrate
Speaker 1: into their depths, and so he was too proud to
Speaker 1: see the simplicity, but also too proud to recognize the
Speaker 1: depths of what's there, and so he just he was
Speaker 1: repelling against I think, as you mentioned there, he's repelling
Speaker 1: against what he already knows to be true. He's looking
Speaker 1: for excuses not to believe. And so this is one
Speaker 1: reason why he is attracted to the Manicheans, because they
Speaker 1: maintain certain Christian ideas, the very ly certain Christian vocabulary,
Speaker 1: but it seems a lot more complex and sophisticated than
Speaker 1: playing Christian faith, the Plaine Christian faith that he would
Speaker 1: have most keenly associated with, the Plane Christian faith of
Speaker 1: his mother, who was not a learning theologian. She was
Speaker 1: not a great philosopher. She was just a simple woman
Speaker 1: of faith. And so to him, that's probably what Christianity was,
Speaker 1: and he wanted something more sophisticated, more more learned than that,
Speaker 1: which kept him from recognizing just how deep and profound
Speaker 1: the scriptures are.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that that line.
Speaker 5: Just round me of like when Christians read and they
Speaker 5: don't understand what the parables are, and they they like
Speaker 5: put it out and they're like this doesn't make any sense,
Speaker 5: or this is this is what it's supposed to mean,
Speaker 5: and then everyone else is like, no, that's not what
Speaker 5: it means. You're you're not understanding.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 5: A lot of this section too, just reminds me of
Speaker 5: kind of my journey through our faith of you know,
Speaker 5: not growing up in the I did grow up in
Speaker 5: the church, and then kind of was trying to find
Speaker 5: like a good church my entire adult life and kind
Speaker 5: of like just throwing myself all the way in. And
Speaker 5: it wasn't like it was a theoretical cult or something
Speaker 5: like that.
Speaker 4: It was like a Christian church.
Speaker 5: It was just maybe their emphasis was on stuff that
Speaker 5: wasn't you know, the depth I was looking for, which
Speaker 5: kind of shows down here where it says these names
Speaker 5: are always on their lips, but only the sounds and
Speaker 5: kind of voices for their hearts, for their heart was
Speaker 5: empty of the true meaning.
Speaker 4: And it just makes me.
Speaker 5: Think of either all the people that are like they'll
Speaker 5: use the name of Christ or call out Christians, or
Speaker 5: you know, there's people on social media that will just say,
Speaker 5: you know, like I'm gonna use Christianity to fight Christians
Speaker 5: and stuff like that that it.
Speaker 4: They don't. They don't.
Speaker 5: They aren't actually the truth. They don't believe the things
Speaker 5: where they're twisting it to make it kind of their
Speaker 5: own thing. And you think you're getting taking into the
Speaker 5: depths of wisdom, but you're really just very surface level.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And in the language that Augustin uses, I mean
Speaker 1: he's ultimately he's looking for the fountain of truth and
Speaker 1: not just some true things. I mean, ultimately speaking, that's
Speaker 1: where he's being led, even though he takes some missteps
Speaker 1: along the way. Yeah, Kyle, what are you going to say?
Speaker 2: Well, I was gonna say this seems like Augustine is
Speaker 2: a guy that we can't read in absolutes because he
Speaker 2: starts out talking about how pity is disordered, at least
Speaker 2: in most cases, and then like there is that exception
Speaker 2: that's made for it, right that we already talked about.
Speaker 2: And now he's talking about how scripture is simple and
Speaker 2: and just for children. And then he also wrote, I'm
Speaker 2: going to push to the pronunciation day turnichate whatever. It's
Speaker 2: like this big corpus on the trinity, And I don't know,
Speaker 2: I wonder if it's maybe I guess I'm asking your
Speaker 2: advice if we should read him with that nuance or
Speaker 2: should we should we read him more absolutely and just
Speaker 2: sort of taken for his word.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think that it's simultaneously true that
Speaker 1: the Christian faith is simple. I mean in that you know,
Speaker 1: Christ says that you know, my my yoka is easy,
Speaker 1: that you don't have to be learned to understand the faith.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, any statement made in the scriptures,
Speaker 1: if we recognize as divine wisdom, is going to have
Speaker 1: infinite depths that we can plunge. And so you could
Speaker 1: have Augustine truly saying that the scripture is simple. You
Speaker 1: don't need a summary degree to pick up the scripture
Speaker 1: and get the basic meaning, to read the Gospels and
Speaker 1: understand the basics of what Jesus is saying. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, you could study for an eternity and
Speaker 1: not mind the depths of what's revealed there. And so
Speaker 1: I think it's simultaneously true as he says that it's
Speaker 1: simple and that it is complex and infinitely profound. And
Speaker 1: by the way, side note, I definitely endorse his day
Speaker 1: trinitat or is on the Trinity. It's just it's a
Speaker 1: beautiful expression of Trinitarian theology. My first paper publication was
Speaker 1: a chapter showing the Augustinian, specifically his doctrine of the
Speaker 1: Holy Spirit in the Calvin's Institutes, and so I worked
Speaker 1: a good bit with it with that day trinatae is.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful, highly highly recommend it. But that's kind of
Speaker 1: a side note. I guess.
Speaker 2: I got to get through smaller books first, fair.
Speaker 1: Enough, But that's not a bad follow up. So maybe
Speaker 1: maybe it goes Confession on the Trinity and then City
Speaker 1: of God the first.
Speaker 2: This is another tangent. The first audiobook I ever attempted
Speaker 2: was City of God. So I was driving to my
Speaker 2: wedding for four hours listening to the City of God
Speaker 2: on Audible, and I'm gonna be honest, I don't think
Speaker 2: I understood any of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is not an audiobook kind of book.
Speaker 4: Ye.
Speaker 2: Granted, listening is never as good for me as reading.
Speaker 2: Like I listened to Consolation Philosophy recently, and I I
Speaker 2: mean it was simple, like it was a real quick listen,
Speaker 2: But I still listening just doesn't work for me.
Speaker 1: But yeah, for a book like Consolation or City of God,
Speaker 1: that can work once you're already very familiar with the
Speaker 1: paper text. But you know, I would love in the future.
Speaker 1: I mean side note. We'll get back to our study
Speaker 1: in just a second. But I know, I know, I know,
Speaker 1: but I would love to do more with Augustine moving forward.
Speaker 1: One of my best classes I ever took was a
Speaker 1: seminar class on Augustine in which we read pretty much
Speaker 1: all of his major works, the Confessions, on Christian Doctrine,
Speaker 1: on the Trinity, City of God, some of those Antipolagian writings.
Speaker 1: By far, just the best single course I've ever taken.
Speaker 1: So I recommend reading anything.
Speaker 2: Augustin as to have you read the dam.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can use English.
Speaker 2: Give me two seconds. Sure, Sorry, I'm still here. I
Speaker 2: just need to it is Brown, Peter Brown, the biography. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Peter Brown. I have not no, okay, I haven't. I
Speaker 2: haven't gotten to it yet. I've picked it up, but
Speaker 2: I've heard it's very good. Okay, you're looking to have
Speaker 2: something that you're reading Onst. Peter Brown, a best of Hippo. Cool,
Speaker 2: all right, we can go back to it. Sorry, Chase, all.
Speaker 1: Right, I see where where are we now?
Speaker 4: So so.
Speaker 1: He gets in with it. The Manicheans. You know, he
Speaker 1: has these various questions. He's trying to rapple with, you know,
Speaker 1: a big thing for him was the problem of evil,
Speaker 1: dealing with this questions, but where does evil come from?
Speaker 1: What is evil? You know, if you have an all powerful,
Speaker 1: all sovereign God, then how do we account for evil
Speaker 1: as something other than a creation of God? Like, That's
Speaker 1: something that's he's trying to deal with here, as well
Speaker 1: as the question of like what is God? What does
Speaker 1: it mean to have an immaterial being? Because Augustine, you know,
Speaker 1: coming out of Roman culture, like the Romans, didn't have
Speaker 1: a category for a transcendent, purely immaterial God, which is
Speaker 1: why the Romans accused the early Christians of being atheists,
Speaker 1: because they assumed that Christians were just denying deity altogether,
Speaker 1: because they had a very different understanding of what the
Speaker 1: deity actually was. And so these are just some of
Speaker 1: the philosophical issues that he's dealing with that the Manicheans,
Speaker 1: at least for a time, provide him with some answers for,
Speaker 1: but ultimately he just doesn't find them to be satisfactory,
Speaker 1: which is going to move him back in the direction
Speaker 1: of Christian orthodoxy.
Speaker 2: Are the Manicheans a different group where they're the same
Speaker 2: group as the astrologers.
Speaker 1: They they're related. I mean the Manicheans as a sort
Speaker 1: of melding Christianity and Zoroastrianism. Yeah, they would definitely incorporate astrology.
Speaker 1: So I believe that's part of the same arc, same arc.
Speaker 2: I thought I thought it was that was so funny
Speaker 2: from the one bishop. It was just like, looking, if
Speaker 2: he's smart enough, and if he does the reading, I'll
Speaker 2: see that that's.
Speaker 1: Wrong, right, And I mean, I appreciate that patient kind
Speaker 1: of approach, and his his mother is pleading, like you
Speaker 1: got to go talk to this guy. You gotta go
Speaker 1: talk to Augustine. You gotta gotta set him straight, and yeah,
Speaker 1: he just says, like, just give him some time, hook
Speaker 1: him around. It's just finally he basically out of frustration,
Speaker 1: tells Monica Gustin's there, don't worry about He'll come around.
Speaker 1: Stop pestering me. Essentially like there's there's no way that
Speaker 1: a mother could shed this many tears over her son
Speaker 1: and not have them get a response. And so that
Speaker 1: was enough for her, And then of course she receives
Speaker 1: this dream that confirms that idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think watching the sort of the arc of
Speaker 2: Monica and her life over the course of confessions, really
Speaker 2: encouraging and just how you see how her prayer is rewarded. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's kind of tough to read. Sorry I'm saying
Speaker 2: something else, but again, it's kind of tough to read
Speaker 2: because it's like, so, all right, so we're talking about Ciso,
Speaker 2: we're talking about how he's too proud for scripture, talking
Speaker 2: about all of these things, and then and I'm sure
Speaker 2: it's related, then he kind of breaks off and what
Speaker 2: seems like a tangent of divine justice and how it
Speaker 2: doesn't change but it seems to change, or it doesn't
Speaker 2: it doesn't even seem to change, but it's just it
Speaker 2: relates to people differently depending on their time period. And
Speaker 2: then we're at the Manichees and it's kind of it's like,
Speaker 2: how I read that, And it's like, I'm not sure
Speaker 2: how I'm supposed to place this in this narrative because
Speaker 2: it's like where we got We have like your life,
Speaker 2: and then we have a theological tangent, and we're back
Speaker 2: to your life, and then we're back to a theological
Speaker 2: tangent and he's just he's just writing whatever goes into
Speaker 2: his mind. And I'm yeah, I don't know. I digress.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think here he's like basically using all of
Speaker 5: that with like a theological tangent right here of the
Speaker 5: patriarchs and how they're actually they were righteous even though
Speaker 5: they were still human. To counteract with that line of
Speaker 5: one of the questions that Manicheans asked was and are
Speaker 5: those patriarchs being esteemed righteous who had many wives at
Speaker 5: the same time and slew men and offered sacrifices in
Speaker 5: the animals? So kind of just like rebuking ignorant self, I.
Speaker 2: See and miss that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's bringing up these questions that he had that
Speaker 1: he couldn't answer the time, but now he can, and
Speaker 1: so he's answering his former self here, which I mean
Speaker 1: he raises some of the same kind of issues that
Speaker 1: secularists will raise today against Christianity, like oh, did God
Speaker 1: changed his mind between the Old and the New Testament?
Speaker 1: And Augustine's giving us. I think a pray solid answer
Speaker 1: to that that even today, you know, what may be
Speaker 1: lawful in the morning or at a certain time of
Speaker 1: the day might not be lawful another time. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, in my own household, like the children are
Speaker 1: allowed to be awake at certain times and they're allowed
Speaker 1: or they need to be asleep other times, and so
Speaker 1: too with the course of history, that there's no reason
Speaker 1: why the standard transcendent justice of God can't demand certain
Speaker 1: things at some time and other things at other times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but to I mean, really respond to your your question. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it just you seem to be answering his younger self.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, I mean, as you mentioned the astrology bit,
Speaker 1: that he's drawn into these astrologers, and you know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of an interesting topic when you start talking about
Speaker 1: astrology and what's gonna happen with medievalism, you know, especially
Speaker 1: coming out of studying Lewis the discardant image, that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff when you get into medieval cosmology versus astrology.
Speaker 1: And really the dividing line here seems to be that
Speaker 1: pagan astrology is fatalistic, where they say, basically, I'm not
Speaker 1: responsible that, you know, the heavens are responsible for the
Speaker 1: way that I'm living my life, and so it robs
Speaker 1: you of your own agency and your own responsibility, Whereas
Speaker 1: what seems to be the prevailing consensus with the medieval
Speaker 1: theologians regarding the heavens is that the heavens do have
Speaker 1: influences over this life. And even that word like or
Speaker 1: even like influenza has a relation to the influences of
Speaker 1: the heavens. And so the heavens have influences, but they
Speaker 1: aren't ultimately a deciding factor in the way that we
Speaker 1: live our lives. They're simply that influences that then we
Speaker 1: choose to relate ourselves to positively or negatively. And so
Speaker 1: the difference here between pagan astrology and Christian medieval cosmology
Speaker 1: really comes down to where is agency located.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's humbling, I think for me, it's humbling
Speaker 2: to me to see a gust and fall into these
Speaker 2: things because like I guess, I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm raising a different time period obviously, right, but they
Speaker 2: seems obvious. I'm like, all right, you say something so vague,
Speaker 2: eventually it's gonna in some ways it's going to ring true, right,
Speaker 2: Like it's that game of chance that he was speaking
Speaker 2: with that one man about, and you have this great
Speaker 2: saint of the faith falling into these cults that otherwise
Speaker 2: I might make like a rash judgment on a person,
Speaker 2: and if I knew them that were going to fall
Speaker 2: into it. So it's humbling for me to read it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I suppose that this is I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a major temptation of those to us who might have
Speaker 1: more of a romantic kind of impulse. I mean, Augustin
Speaker 1: definitely has a romantic impulse where he is very much
Speaker 1: led by his heart at the same time we all are,
Speaker 1: whether we recognize it or not. We're led by our desires.
Speaker 1: As you know, Pascal says, the heart has its reasons
Speaker 1: of which the mind knows not, and I think that's
Speaker 1: fundamentally true. We just see that in particular display in
Speaker 1: someone's so intellectual but also so passionate as Augustine. I mean,
Speaker 1: even in his attachment to the astrologers, it's not even
Speaker 1: so much that at this time he thinks that they
Speaker 1: have the better argument. It's that they seem to have
Speaker 1: the more powerful argument, the more compelling argument, and that's
Speaker 1: enough for him at this point. And so as much
Speaker 1: as he's an intellectual, he's first and foremost him, he's
Speaker 1: a romantic. He's someone who follows his passions, which can
Speaker 1: be good or dangerous depending on where you're directed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess it's kind of like that idea that
Speaker 2: that beauty is its own apologetic which there's definitely truth
Speaker 2: in that. Right in terms of beauties is a transcendent
Speaker 2: cottributeund on God. So if something's beautiful, it gets that
Speaker 2: from God. But I don't know, what do you perceive
Speaker 2: it as beautiful? I don't know. I'm just talking. I don't.
Speaker 1: Again, it's very Augustinian. It's just say stuff and go
Speaker 1: go over the thoughts take you well. So, after dealing
Speaker 1: with this, or not really dealing with but moving past
Speaker 1: the astrology bit, at this point we go to his
Speaker 1: relationship with his friend back home who was sick. You know,
Speaker 1: they both grew up together with some experience of the
Speaker 1: Christian faith. This guy maintained his faith, whereas Augustine rejected it.
Speaker 1: And you know, in he his friend gets sick to
Speaker 1: the point of near death, and so they baptize him
Speaker 1: while he's unconscious, and then he wakes up and has
Speaker 1: reaffirmed faith and you know, doesn't want any of Augustine's
Speaker 1: mockery or his his scorn. And you know, at that
Speaker 1: point there's this dividing line between them, which you know,
Speaker 1: obviously we're getting into the territory of baptismal regeneration. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know your theology is of baptism here, but
Speaker 1: it's it's clear that Augustine's and he's he's not unusual
Speaker 1: in this in certainly believing that baptism actually does something
Speaker 1: like it's sacramentally, it's not simply a ceremony. He seems
Speaker 1: to believe that baptism actually basically confirmed faith in his friend,
Speaker 1: even though he wasn't conscious for it.
Speaker 4: Don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know what do you guys think of that?
Speaker 2: Well, that's something that I wrestled. So I come from
Speaker 2: an evangelical background and I've slowly been drifting away from
Speaker 2: just that. But yeah, it's interesting as you read this,
Speaker 2: and don't I don't know where I am in the regeneration,
Speaker 2: but it's true, I mean something. I'm not going to
Speaker 2: call him a liar, right, and so if he's saying
Speaker 2: that this happened, then okay, this happened. And then also
Speaker 2: you have the same thing even later on, which is
Speaker 2: like the relic experience where there's that healing episode from
Speaker 2: the bones of the saint, and it's like this isn't
Speaker 2: even like this is Romanist almost. It's like, again, I'm
Speaker 2: not going to call him a liar. But I guess
Speaker 2: how do I grapple with these things? That's a good point.
Speaker 2: I also just think it's funny because, like it's not
Speaker 2: creato baptism because as far as I know the guy's unconscious,
Speaker 2: well it's not ideo baptism. But he's a full grown adult,
Speaker 2: So I don't I'm wondering what baptistic school thought does
Speaker 2: that does this episode belong to. It's a whole new thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, as you mentioned last time, I mean
Speaker 1: it was typical practice at this time to delay baptism
Speaker 1: with this idea that baptism, you know, literally watched the
Speaker 1: way you're staying confirmed faith. You know, they would push
Speaker 1: it back, basically tell you're about to die, because that
Speaker 1: way you would, you know, wash it clean before you die,
Speaker 1: before you stain yourself up again. This is why Constantine
Speaker 1: wasn't baptized until his deathbed experience. And you know, I
Speaker 1: feel comfortable saying that's not the right approach. I do
Speaker 1: have a lot of questions. I don't know where I
Speaker 1: stand really on a number of issues. I've I've come
Speaker 1: to the point of I think my favorite label for
Speaker 1: myself is reformed LOWERCASEE Catholic, whatever that means I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't really know either. I'm comfortable saying don't wait
Speaker 1: until you're dying to get baptized, but beyond that, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm still working through some of this myself
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it's a problem I've especially worked through with
Speaker 2: my daughter that was born, because like we go all right,
Speaker 2: our church is fully I'm definitely and we we can
Speaker 2: move on after my personal but I'm definitely I've becommon
Speaker 2: the paido Baptist camp. Like I think that is seeing.
Speaker 2: I think that is seen as historically normative, and if
Speaker 2: scripture is ambiguous, that's how I'll read it. At the
Speaker 2: same time, though baptism is not Baptism's more than church membership,
Speaker 2: is not less than church membership. And so do I
Speaker 2: feel have I felt a sort of call from God
Speaker 2: to leave church? I haven't. I think church membership is
Speaker 2: significant enough that there should be clarity, right, I don't
Speaker 2: want to treat it vainly as though like that shopping.
Speaker 2: So I don't know. It's something I've thought about a lot,
Speaker 2: and this I remember reading this the first time. I
Speaker 2: was thinking about it a lot. So it's it's interesting,
Speaker 2: it's very outside what is within my frame of experience,
Speaker 2: which is why it's reading historical text is one of
Speaker 2: those wonderful things, because it's like we don't recognize the
Speaker 2: water that we're swimming in until we jump out of
Speaker 2: it and go into a different ocean.
Speaker 5: I think if we start now, we might have just
Speaker 5: enough time to get to the end of the pedo
Speaker 5: baptism great baptism debate.
Speaker 4: We can have it out.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's not enough time and all of
Speaker 2: our lives put together for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as long as we don't start drowning each other
Speaker 1: like the Protestants of old the baptismal debates.
Speaker 4: And we may move past this.
Speaker 5: So just one last thing with this book three, when
Speaker 5: he talks about his mother, says, she did not cease
Speaker 5: to pray at every hour, awail me to you, and
Speaker 5: her prayers found entry into your sight. But for all that,
Speaker 5: you allow me still to toss helplessly in that darkness. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it's just cool seeing like how faithful she was and
Speaker 5: reminds me of the men and women in my life
Speaker 5: that has prayed for me or my brother, anybody, just constantly,
Speaker 5: and you're not necessarily seeing the fruit.
Speaker 4: Of it so years later.
Speaker 5: Because you still need time to be polished.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the story of Monica is so encouraging in that
Speaker 1: Augustine in I mean, I guess I don't know if
Speaker 1: I want to say he's a household name. Maybe he's
Speaker 1: not anymore, even in Christian circles. But Augustine is obviously
Speaker 1: a major figure in the history of the Church. But
Speaker 1: you don't have Augustine without Monica. You don't have so
Speaker 1: much of either Catholicism or even I would argue you
Speaker 1: don't have a Protestant Reformation without Augustine. When you look
Speaker 1: at where the Protestant Reformers drew their inspiration from, you know,
Speaker 1: between Luther, between Calvin, you don't have them without Augustine.
Speaker 1: And you don't have Augustin without Monica. And it just
Speaker 1: shows how world shaping the prayers of a Weeping Mother
Speaker 1: can be. And I think that alone is something worth
Speaker 1: pulling out of the confessions.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I heard a brief like clip from Richard Nixon talking
Speaker 5: about his mother, and it was recently this week. It
Speaker 5: was like, they're probably not going to be any books
Speaker 5: written about her, but and just compared to like books
Speaker 5: written about him, good or bad, but just interesting to see,
Speaker 5: like how much I guess this has talked about and
Speaker 5: there was someone that led him being Monica led him there.
Speaker 1: Yes, Augustine is just like Richard Dixon, who we're getting
Speaker 1: out of this Nixon and Mike Tyson.
Speaker 2: That's where we're at.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, so his friend, his friend dies finally
Speaker 1: in the faith, and Augustine celebrates this, celebrates looking back,
Speaker 1: the fact that his friend was spared his consolation, his
Speaker 1: consolation which inevitably would have contributed to his abandonment of
Speaker 1: the faith, his apostesy, and so he sees this as
Speaker 1: a grace that his friend was taken home at the
Speaker 1: time that he was. But then Augustine sort of just
Speaker 1: spirals out into this despair over the death of his
Speaker 1: friend and probably really the double death of his friend
Speaker 1: that at the time he's sparing not only that his
Speaker 1: friend is taken away, but also that his friend recognized
Speaker 1: a good that he did not know, and so there
Speaker 1: was that relational break as well as the physical break
Speaker 1: of a physical death, and and so that leads him
Speaker 1: into despair. But it's the right kind of despair that
Speaker 1: allows him to look beyond himself that you have to
Speaker 1: you have to descend before you can ascend, as he
Speaker 1: says a little bit later on, and so even this
Speaker 1: despair itself was a grace. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I just I mean, praise God, because I couldn't imagine
Speaker 2: the weight of guilt had he not repented of his
Speaker 2: apostasy and then died, that Augustine would then have to
Speaker 2: reconcile with forever. No, it's yeah. I mean he kind
Speaker 2: of shows the full the full range of like an
Speaker 2: emotional experience, and it does a great job cutting through
Speaker 2: all of it, showing like where is this any Where
Speaker 2: is this point? Where is this pointing I'm looking for?
Speaker 2: Where it's okay, you guys can talk.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean even even the feeling like at the time,
Speaker 5: the despair that he began, but you even later on,
Speaker 5: years later, when he's grown in his faith, coming back
Speaker 5: and being like, oh my gosh, like feeling the full
Speaker 5: weight of that.
Speaker 2: Most of the part, I think, I think this is interesting.
Speaker 2: This is what I was looking for. So he's talking
Speaker 2: about how he makes new friends. Time goes on, he
Speaker 2: makes new friends, and its therapeutic. But he says, and
Speaker 2: it was all one huge fable, one long lie, and
Speaker 2: by its adulterous, caressing my soul, which, like itching in
Speaker 2: my ears, was utterly corrupted. For my folly did not
Speaker 2: die whenever one of my friends died. And it's like
Speaker 2: it's he's continuing to go deeper into the foolishness, and
Speaker 2: he's replacing the one friend that I obviously couldn't satisfy
Speaker 2: his soul and perished with more friends that obviously can't
Speaker 2: satisfy his soul and will perish. And so he's tracking
Speaker 2: down that folly further down the road, despite the pain
Speaker 2: and the torment that has already just assailed him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we just see this ongoing working out of this
Speaker 1: restless heart idea that comes from that iconic statement at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the Confessions that his heart is restless,
Speaker 1: that he's looking for peace while scorning the path two piece,
Speaker 1: and so he just continues to throw himself into various things.
Speaker 1: And you know, even when he experiences this despair, he
Speaker 1: doesn't yet recognize the value of despair, the value of
Speaker 1: despairing over his own condition, and so he just does
Speaker 1: whatever he can to hide from that reality. He's simultaneously
Speaker 1: hiding from God and hiding from himself because to recognize
Speaker 1: either one truly is to recognize the other. You know,
Speaker 1: you can't note that. So Calvin says that you know,
Speaker 1: all knowledge comes down to love, or to knowledge of
Speaker 1: God and knowledge of yourself. And so if we in
Speaker 1: our our neglective one, we're ultimately neglecting the other as well.
Speaker 1: And we definitely see that playing out here as he's
Speaker 1: he's afraid to stop and just to be. It's like
Speaker 1: a stone skipping across the water. As soon as it stops,
Speaker 1: that's when it sinks. So he has to do what
Speaker 1: he can to keep moving.
Speaker 2: And it kind of just reminds me of that that
Speaker 2: quote earlier in terms of like our the end of
Speaker 2: our blindness is like the glory of the blindness, Like
Speaker 2: it just leads into itself, and it just gets thicker
Speaker 2: and it gets darker the more that you follow your blindness.
Speaker 1: I did like toward the end of book four when
Speaker 1: he reads the Aristotle and he says he reads the
Speaker 1: ten categories, and he says, basically, everyone else read this,
Speaker 1: they didn't understand it, but I understood right away, and
Speaker 1: it was incredibly simple to me.
Speaker 2: He's the master of the humble brag. But I didn't.
Speaker 2: I didn't even register. This was supposed to be difficult.
Speaker 1: Right, so he just understands it right away, and then
Speaker 1: he tries to put on these categories but it doesn't work. Which,
Speaker 1: you know, all of these experience, he has, these highs
Speaker 1: that he has in his philosophical and his religious pursuits.
Speaker 1: You know, he understands Aristotle more than his colleagues. He
Speaker 1: he sees deeper than even the rags of the Manicheans
Speaker 1: are able to see. And he just is going to
Speaker 1: recognize again and again that any value that these different
Speaker 1: systems had to offer ultimately fall short of what he's pursuing.
Speaker 1: And so he gets frustrated again and again and again,
Speaker 1: which is helping to build the sense of despair of Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe wisdom isn't where I'm seeking it. And so that
Speaker 1: was preparing him for his conversation with Ambrose, which I
Speaker 1: believe is coming up in the next section or the
Speaker 1: next couple of books.
Speaker 2: I thought it was also really neat because he says,
Speaker 2: not only did all this not profit me, it actually
Speaker 2: did my harm. And then I tried to understand you,
Speaker 2: my god marvelous, and your simplicity, and you really and
Speaker 2: that whatsoever had being was to be found within these
Speaker 2: ten categories. So it's like he's recognizing, all right, I
Speaker 2: attempted to fit God within this box with it. I
Speaker 2: attempted to use this Risitilian metaphysic and use that to
Speaker 2: understand God. But God transcends that, and and so it's
Speaker 2: leading me down paths that aren't fruitful. And then it
Speaker 2: seems like right after he invented divine simplicity, where he
Speaker 2: says your greatness of beauty as if they might inhar
Speaker 2: a body. In fact, your greatness in your beauty are yourself.
Speaker 2: I was like, whereas, And yeah, he goes on, which
Speaker 2: I thought was interesting, just as like a little easter egg.
Speaker 2: It's my understanding is that he actually did invent that doctrine,
Speaker 2: so I thought it was neat to see it there
Speaker 2: in play. But yeah, and I mean, I've I've never
Speaker 2: read Aquinas. I know nothing of Aquinas except what I've
Speaker 2: heard other people say of him. But my understanding is
Speaker 2: that he loves Aristotle, Augustine loves Plato, and I guess
Speaker 2: it would be interesting for them to like to dialogue
Speaker 2: on this passage of where is Aristotle appropriate? Where is
Speaker 2: he not appropriate? Maybe in heaven with the virtuous pagans,
Speaker 2: if they get there.
Speaker 5: The it's interesting because it's kind of bring you bring
Speaker 5: up the point that we talked about in other classes
Speaker 5: and stuff. People can be, you know, too intelligent for
Speaker 5: their own good of finding the faith, you know, whether
Speaker 5: it's like somebody like Jordan Peterson, it's like almost there,
Speaker 5: but you know they're they're like trying to dissect everything.
Speaker 5: They're trying to Like even with the man Kens, he's
Speaker 5: like asking all these questions that like really aren't important
Speaker 5: questions even though they seem like they're deep and they're
Speaker 5: that type of stuff, and it just kind of like slowed.
Speaker 4: Slowed.
Speaker 5: Even though he eventually got there, it slowed how fast
Speaker 5: he was to find the real truth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like people getting a big fuss about dinosaurs. Yeah,
Speaker 2: where were they in the Bible? Not in this narrative.
Speaker 2: It's like that's really not the point. That's really not
Speaker 2: the point of the writings at all, and you're trying
Speaker 2: to read it in a way that is not to
Speaker 2: be read.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait, are you telling me there aren't dinosaurs
Speaker 1: and job.
Speaker 2: Maybe not that I know, I'm doubtful. Yeah, maybe dragons though, I.
Speaker 1: Mean that's more compelling to me personally. There's a good
Speaker 1: reason for that. So yeah, and so he he reads Aristo,
Speaker 1: he sees some value in that the other books of
Speaker 1: the liberal arts, he says. But he says that I
Speaker 1: enjoyed the books while not knowing him from whom came
Speaker 1: whatever was true or certain in them, For I had
Speaker 1: my back to the light and my face to the
Speaker 1: things upon which the light falls. So he was looking
Speaker 1: at true things, but he was looking away from the truth.
Speaker 2: Is that a direct allusion to the k allegory? Is
Speaker 2: that what he's doing there.
Speaker 1: It's very platonic language, probably, so he's looking at the
Speaker 1: shadow rather than the substance.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I didn't think about it reading it, but you
Speaker 2: mentioned it earlier, and now that jumps out like that
Speaker 2: must be what he was doing. But yeah, no, it's
Speaker 2: wonderful and I and it's nice because again me coming
Speaker 2: from like my evangelical background, sometimes there's this really naive
Speaker 2: idea of like things have to be explicitly missional or
Speaker 2: like explicitly theological to be good. And it's like, no
Speaker 2: things are good in and of themselves, right, like light
Speaker 2: is casting on these things, Light is casting on these images,
Speaker 2: and that's true light, and that's good light, and that's
Speaker 2: beautiful light. It's just and you can be satisfied in
Speaker 2: that light, but it's just that you won't be fully
Speaker 2: satisfied until you find the source of light itself. And
Speaker 2: I love I love the the the way it dignifies,
Speaker 2: just like the surrounding things as well, that imagery.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Augustine makes this point in his book on
Speaker 1: Christian Doctrine that some people, even Ema then, would criticize
Speaker 1: Christian use of pagan things, of pagan text, pagan ideas.
Speaker 1: You know, what has Jerusalem to do with that? Or
Speaker 1: what has Athens to do with Jerusalem? That kind of idea,
Speaker 1: And Augustine says, well, wait a minute. We in order
Speaker 1: to even read scripture, you have to learn language. There's
Speaker 1: something inherently Christian about Greek language, and so you have
Speaker 1: to learn things in order to even approach scripture that
Speaker 1: aren't themselves explicitly scriptural. And so too, you know, why not,
Speaker 1: you know, why can't we recognize the value that comes
Speaker 1: from pagan sources, recognizing all true value ultimately comes from
Speaker 1: God anyways, And so he compares it to the Israelites
Speaker 1: plundering the Egyptians saying basically, we're putting things back into
Speaker 1: the proper context that we actually have a right to
Speaker 1: the truth. And so it's this idea that all truth
Speaker 1: is God's truth wherever it can be found. Very very
Speaker 1: august in me, any.
Speaker 2: Idea, Yeah, it I did a I studied math in
Speaker 2: college and I remember having just thinking it's like, if
Speaker 2: God has a native language, it probably sounds a lot
Speaker 2: more like mathematics than like Hebrew. And it's just like
Speaker 2: things are ordered everywhere, right, It's like you you look
Speaker 2: at the way the trees blowing the wind, and that
Speaker 2: teaches you something about God, right, like if nothing else,
Speaker 2: it teaches you the order and the meticulousness and sort
Speaker 2: of like the particularity which with which He makes things.
Speaker 2: And I'm gonna I'm gonna quote John Piper here, which
Speaker 2: you guys might really rise at. And that's okay, I
Speaker 2: roll my eyes. But he he has, he does have
Speaker 2: this really nice imagery of like the fact that God
Speaker 2: paints the same sunset every day and every day and
Speaker 2: every day, and it's like He continuously delights to do
Speaker 2: these things for eternity because the sun is always rising
Speaker 2: somewhere and it's like we look at that and we
Speaker 2: are filled with awe, and God again says again and
Speaker 2: again and again, and he paints the thing brush again
Speaker 2: and again and again, and it's just like his glories everywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm I'm just I'm rehashing the same thing I said.
Speaker 2: But I just I love it. I love to I
Speaker 2: love to see that reflected.
Speaker 5: I am in trouble if we have to do any
Speaker 5: type of proofs in Heaven to understand anything.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that approach to mathematics being the divine language
Speaker 1: is very Pythagorean.
Speaker 2: Well, hey, all truth of Scott's truth fair enough?
Speaker 1: Cool? Well, I mean we've been going on for a
Speaker 1: little while. Is there anything else that from either of
Speaker 1: these books, book three or book four that you want to mention?
Speaker 2: I think we got through everything I would have wanted
Speaker 2: to talk about.
Speaker 1: All right, So next time we'll cover five and six.
Speaker 1: But I'll end by reading just this concluding paragraph here
Speaker 1: from book four. O Lord, our God, let us hope
Speaker 1: in the protecting shadow of thy wings, guard us and
Speaker 1: bear us up. Bear us up, Thou wilt as tiny infants,
Speaker 1: and onto our gray hairs. For when thou art our strength,
Speaker 1: it is strength. Indeed, but when our strength is our own,
Speaker 1: it is only weakness. With THEE, our good ever lives,
Speaker 1: and when we are averted from THEE, we are perverted.
Speaker 1: Let us now return to THEE, O Lord, that we
Speaker 1: may not be overturned, for with THEE lives without any
Speaker 1: defect our good, which is thyself. We have no fear
Speaker 1: that there should be sorry. We have no fear that
Speaker 1: there should be no place of return, merely because by
Speaker 1: our own act we fell from it. Our absence does
Speaker 1: not cause our home to fall, which is thy eternity.
Speaker 1: I think it's a good place to wrap. Next time,
Speaker 1: we'll get the next couple of books.
Speaker 2: Right, is the History of Ideas? This week? Is that
Speaker 2: next week?
Speaker 1: That begins next week? So yeah, so this week we've
Speaker 1: got Latin and Paradise Loss starting, and then next week
Speaker 1: we've got History of Ideas.
Speaker 2: I do not have the capacity for Latin, but I
Speaker 2: will try and be at I'll be at Paradise Loss.
Speaker 2: I'll try and be ideas cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm trying to keep up with both of those.
Speaker 1: We'll see what happens. I really want to. If nothing else,
Speaker 1: I'll I'll backtrack at some point. But I'm going to
Speaker 1: try to keep up with those courses as well as
Speaker 1: we move forward. All right, cool, well, I will see
Speaker 1: you guys around.
Speaker 2: Thanks see ye.
Speaker 1: All right, thanks for following with us for that conversation.
Speaker 1: Our next CAN Sessions conversation will be on the twenty sixth, Monday,
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