Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Mythic Mind, where we pursue wisdom
Speaker 1: on the past between primary secondary worlds. I'm doctor Andrew Snyder,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad that you're here. Hey there, welcome back. Today.
Speaker 1: We're going to be getting back to our book club
Speaker 1: on Augustin's Confessions, as I'm joined by Chase and Kyle
Speaker 1: to talk about books five and six. But before we
Speaker 1: get there, I want to give you some quick updates.
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Speaker 1: episode every week at least for a little while. All right,
Speaker 1: with all of that said, let's go ahead and get
Speaker 1: into our conversation with Chase and Kyle on Augustine's Confessions
Speaker 1: books five and six. Welcome back after about a month
Speaker 1: of a break there. Welcome to Chase and Kyle, and
Speaker 1: I guess we lost some people along the way. I
Speaker 1: guess I don't know. They were two convicted. They just
Speaker 1: couldn't stand it anymore dealing with these deep studies. But
Speaker 1: we are returning to talk about books five and six
Speaker 1: of Augustin's Confessions. I think we want to start off
Speaker 1: by just reading first. I don't know half of the
Speaker 1: first paragraph or so, to just set the tones that
Speaker 1: set the mood of what we're doing here. Augustin writes,
Speaker 1: receive the sacrifice of my confessions, offered by my tongue,
Speaker 1: which thou didst form, and hast moved to confess unto
Speaker 1: thy name. Heal thou all my be, and they shall say, Lord,
Speaker 1: who is like to thee, A man who makes confession
Speaker 1: to THEE does not thereby give THEE any information as
Speaker 1: to what is happening within him. The closed heart does
Speaker 1: not close out thy eye, nor the heart's hardness resist
Speaker 1: thy hand, for thou dost open it at thy pleasure,
Speaker 1: whether for mercy or for justice. And there is nothing
Speaker 1: that can hide itself from thy heat. So he just
Speaker 1: starts off very similar to how he usually starts off
Speaker 1: these books, well, confessing himself before God, also raising some
Speaker 1: of these questions. He kind of asking the question of well,
Speaker 1: why am I making confessions to God who already knows
Speaker 1: what's going on in my own heart. It's the kind
Speaker 1: of question that we've all probably thought about from time
Speaker 1: to time of what's the point of praying to a
Speaker 1: God who already knows what we have to say?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: There's that kind of intellectual problem there. Even Boethius deals
Speaker 1: with that question, what's the point of praying if God
Speaker 1: already knows what I'm going to pray? He knows what
Speaker 1: I have to say? And of course the point is
Speaker 1: not to give God new information. The part is to
Speaker 1: humble yourself before God. And so he's really orienting himself
Speaker 1: appropriately there as he is going to go on to
Speaker 1: detail how he was humbled, as he's been doing in
Speaker 1: various ways. Now he's going to really get into how
Speaker 1: he has been humbled intellectually as he is pulled by
Speaker 1: grace through this philosophical meandering. So I kinds that's the
Speaker 1: stage for what we're looking at in these in books
Speaker 1: five and six. But love to hear from you, guys,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to say. To kick us off with
Speaker 1: book five, Kyle, you wanna take it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So, my my thoughts, I think sometimes don't relate to
Speaker 4: each other as well as they should. But I thought
Speaker 4: the first paragraph is really dense with a lot of
Speaker 4: different insights. And one of the things that sucks to
Speaker 4: me was, so the closed heart does not close out
Speaker 4: there eye know the heart's hardness, resist thy hand, for
Speaker 4: thou dost open it at thy pleasure, whether for mercy
Speaker 4: or for justice.
Speaker 3: And so for men.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think all the time about all right, that
Speaker 4: my eyes have been enlightened such that I may see
Speaker 4: and delight in the glory of God.
Speaker 3: And that's for mercy.
Speaker 4: And you have to remember, and he's kind of hitting
Speaker 4: on this key. It's like he could have continued in
Speaker 4: his blindness, maybe unto death, but his eyes would be
Speaker 4: opened at that point for justice, such that he would
Speaker 4: receive the wrath of God for eternity. And he kind
Speaker 4: of reflects on that later on when he's speaking about
Speaker 4: his illness in Rome as soon as he arrived, and
Speaker 4: he's praying a thanks to God for saving him from
Speaker 4: his first death as well as the second death, where
Speaker 4: he would have been under that wrath eternally. So that
Speaker 4: was the first thing that I really keep it on
Speaker 4: that that I thought was enlightening.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it's interesting. I think later on it
Speaker 5: kind of goes with this about how I think it's
Speaker 5: the second paragraphed. So they stumbled against the in their
Speaker 5: cojustice and justly suffered since they had withdrawn from My
Speaker 5: mercy and stumbled against Thy justice and falling headlong on
Speaker 5: Thy wrath. And it's the same thing, like there's really
Speaker 5: no es, there's no escaping God, you know, whether like
Speaker 5: if you just think like you're not hey, I'm not
Speaker 5: really about it. I don't want any of his love
Speaker 5: or anything like that, Well, you're still going to be
Speaker 5: confronted against him, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean Augustine definitely throughout his writing, but we've already
Speaker 1: seen some confessions how he really demonstrates the fact that
Speaker 1: God is in charge here, that Augustine wasn't saved through
Speaker 1: any merits of his own. He was saved despite himself.
Speaker 1: Like he's very clear about that that, you know, he's
Speaker 1: thrown himself into all these different lusts within this reading.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's book five or six, but
Speaker 1: you know, he starts to I don't know if He's
Speaker 1: mentioned this before, but that he he has this concubine
Speaker 1: that he's had for years now that he finally lets
Speaker 1: go when he's engaged to get married, he let's go
Speaker 1: of this woman that he's been with, but then he
Speaker 1: couldn't wait any longer, so he got another woman while
Speaker 1: he's still waiting. And so this is someone who's just
Speaker 1: been thrown into less of the flesh. He's been thrown
Speaker 1: into less of the mind, as he's been dragged along
Speaker 1: by these cult leaders, these heretics, these vain philosophers. Yet
Speaker 1: despite all of these things, God has graciously been leading
Speaker 1: him along toward his home in the church. And so
Speaker 1: we just really see this idea that God is in
Speaker 1: charge both in executing justice as well as in issuing
Speaker 1: out mercy, and that God will save those who he
Speaker 1: sets out to save.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think one of the things I saw here
Speaker 5: in the first couple of paragraphs was just how creation,
Speaker 5: you know, serves to qualify the Creator and he at
Speaker 5: the end of this first paragraph he talks about all
Speaker 5: the all the like man, animals, lifeless matter, everything praises
Speaker 5: the Creator, and God doesn't desert anything that he is made.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when he says, the truth is that they've fled
Speaker 1: that they might not see THEE who saw us them.
Speaker 1: And so if eyes blinded, they stumbled against THEE. For
Speaker 1: thou dost not desert any of the thing that thou
Speaker 1: hast made. And so it's exactly what you're saying. And
Speaker 1: so that God, God is he is the foundation for
Speaker 1: all of existence, Like there's no where we can flee
Speaker 1: from God. You go to the highest heavens, he's there,
Speaker 1: go to shield, He's there. And so God is always
Speaker 1: present for those who turn to him and ask of
Speaker 1: his mercy. But of course, as Augustine mentioned earlier, it's
Speaker 1: the problem is that in our blindness, we celebrate our
Speaker 1: blindness as if it's a strength. And at that point
Speaker 1: you're not going to ask to see. Therefore sight will
Speaker 1: not be granted to you. And so we very much
Speaker 1: see that sin, that misery, in its various forms, is
Speaker 1: on us. Lewis talks about this, and I think it
Speaker 1: might be the great He has this great line where
Speaker 1: he talks about how basically eternal joy is forever right
Speaker 1: in front of us, you know, if only we would
Speaker 1: reach out for it, and we just we see that
Speaker 1: humbled spirit in august and someone who has been crushed down,
Speaker 1: his pride been crushed down, it's been able to receive
Speaker 1: the mercy that's always being extended out to us.
Speaker 4: It's interesting because, like, as you read Augustine's confessions, you
Speaker 4: kind of see hints of some of the doctrines that
Speaker 4: he's coming up with. I remember, I think it was
Speaker 4: in book four he's like hinting at divine simplicity, and
Speaker 4: here like he what's the line God will not leave
Speaker 4: He's created. I can't quote it. I know it's in
Speaker 4: the first paragraph. I'm not gonna spend too much time
Speaker 4: looking for it. But then later on he's like struggling
Speaker 4: with the incarnation, right that might be book five, book six,
Speaker 4: and he's saying, I can't I can't come to like
Speaker 4: I was foolish in that I imagined evil as a substance,
Speaker 4: and so I can't bow to a god that has
Speaker 4: created this evil substance, right, because then you can't be
Speaker 4: all good. And so he's he's saying that as like
Speaker 4: such that he eventually recognizes that it's wrong. He's hinting
Speaker 4: to the fact that he's recognizing it's a foolish thing
Speaker 4: to think, but even here it's like God, God does
Speaker 4: not abandon his creation, and so far as like for
Speaker 4: something to be creation, it can't be abandoned, right, Like
Speaker 4: it's there, there's no there's no there, There isn't without him.
Speaker 3: And so if you.
Speaker 4: Are going like there, there's no real sense of abandoning God.
Speaker 3: It's just blindness. Yeah, which seems to be what he
Speaker 3: talks about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's just exactly right. It's exactly how he sees it.
Speaker 1: That I mean that that evil for justin that are
Speaker 1: our evil? Sin is it's a it's the problem isn't
Speaker 1: that we value things. The problem is that we value
Speaker 1: lesser things above the greater things, and in so doing
Speaker 1: we move in the direction of non being. And that's
Speaker 1: what sin is, that we're moving in the direction of
Speaker 1: non being. We're trying to go where God isn't But
Speaker 1: of course there is no such place where if we are.
Speaker 1: If we go there, God is there too, because we
Speaker 1: are like, you don't have existence without God. And so
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. And this is something that he struggled with,
Speaker 1: and in fact, there's something that the Romans in general
Speaker 1: tended to struggle with because they didn't have this idea
Speaker 1: of a truly transcendent God. Their God's very much dwelt
Speaker 1: on the same plane of existence as we do. They're
Speaker 1: just like superheroes essentially, Like it's not that different than
Speaker 1: what you get in you know, the Marble version, which
Speaker 1: is you know, dumb down version obviously, but metaphysically speaking,
Speaker 1: it's essentially the same thing. They just operate in a
Speaker 1: different realm of this plane of existence. And so when
Speaker 1: the Christians start talking about like we don't have you know,
Speaker 1: we don't bow down to two idols, because well, our
Speaker 1: God can't be that identify that that well, our God
Speaker 1: is intrinsically that localized like that, they accuse a Christians
Speaker 1: of being atheists because they simply had no way of
Speaker 1: understanding the idea of a purely spiritual, truly transcendent God
Speaker 1: that transcends this material realm. And Augustine seemed to kind
Speaker 1: of imbibe some of some of that difficulty, which is
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why he last on to the Manicheans,
Speaker 1: because they at least had some idea of good and
Speaker 1: evil that made sense to him with his Roman upbringing,
Speaker 1: and of course that their idea of being kind of
Speaker 1: this the yin and Yang idea of sorts that good
Speaker 1: and evil or constantly cons with each other, and that
Speaker 1: that the material is the what the world of sense
Speaker 1: experience is like inherently flawed or you know, drawn down
Speaker 1: to evil, which obviously is not a Christian position, but
Speaker 1: it's it is something that philosophically he had to overcome
Speaker 1: on this journey.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And and keeping all that in mind, you see him
Speaker 4: speak redemptively of creation, even even though it is slashed
Speaker 4: on by sin, because he speaks of we are helped
Speaker 4: upward by the things thou hast made, and passing beyond
Speaker 4: them until the who has to wonderfully made them.
Speaker 3: So you have.
Speaker 4: Our passions are is a ladder to our love for God.
Speaker 4: Right And so things aren't bad in and of themselves,
Speaker 4: but they.
Speaker 3: Are lesser than but.
Speaker 4: Respect and rightfully they are way posts on the way
Speaker 4: to a love for God.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, it is his appreciation of the natural world
Speaker 1: that in part started to cause some doubts towards the Manicheans,
Speaker 1: because the things that he was learning about, like the
Speaker 1: way that the world works on a very natural, what
Speaker 1: we would call scientific level, that it just didn't seem
Speaker 1: to mash up with the things that he was learning
Speaker 1: from the Manichean So there was this contradiction between what
Speaker 1: we would identify as the Book of Nature versus the
Speaker 1: Book of Revelation that he was using. And so we
Speaker 1: start to see there's this disconnect here that the philosophers
Speaker 1: that I esteemed, the philosophers who seem to have a
Speaker 1: decent grasp on the way that the world works on
Speaker 1: a mechanical level, like this isn't matching up with what
Speaker 1: my Manichean teachers are telling me. And so that started
Speaker 1: to instill some doubts that maybe there's maybe there's non
Speaker 1: substance here is as I once thought. And eventually this
Speaker 1: head Manichean guy, this Faustus, he comes and first, you know,
Speaker 1: Gustin's really excited about meeting this this great teacher who
Speaker 1: has inspired so many. But then he finally gets to
Speaker 1: talk with the guy and he recognizes he doesn't really
Speaker 1: know anything, and so they're just it's just empty, it's
Speaker 1: just empty substance. It's empty kind of theological jargon, but
Speaker 1: there's no reality behind it. And so then he starts
Speaker 1: to become more inclined toward the classical philosophers at that point,
Speaker 1: which is kind of part of his movement. Ultimately in
Speaker 1: the direction of the church.
Speaker 4: Augustine is the King of the humble brag or you
Speaker 4: have this world renowned teacher, and Augustina finally meets him,
Speaker 4: he's like, dude, you're actually just not that smart.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, augusta name. This is the guy who
Speaker 1: previously told us that he read Aristotle. You know he
Speaker 1: didn't understand that everyone else had to time with them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 4: Two weeks in a row, just the King of the
Speaker 4: humble brag.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but even more so, I don't.
Speaker 4: He just really hammers home on it, like it seems
Speaker 4: like there's a few things to know about Augustin that
Speaker 4: unlocks all the texts, because at the end of.
Speaker 3: What is it book two? Of what's book five?
Speaker 4: I don't know how the heading, how to read the headings,
Speaker 4: But he says, but where was I when I saw
Speaker 4: after thee that weren't there before me? But I had
Speaker 4: gone away from myself and I could not even find
Speaker 4: myself much lessly.
Speaker 2: So there.
Speaker 4: I'm afraid to butcher him when paraphrasing him, but he
Speaker 4: speaks of it as though he's wandering away from himself.
Speaker 4: Those are the terms he uses not that he's wandering
Speaker 4: away from God, but that he's wandering away from himself.
Speaker 1: Right, because ultimately it's one of the same. I mean,
Speaker 1: if to you know a Turkey guard, he has this
Speaker 1: great line in one of his journals when he says,
Speaker 1: with God's help, I shall become myself. Said to you
Speaker 1: that I'm only truly myself, the ideal version of me,
Speaker 1: which is another way of saying, the true version of
Speaker 1: me when I am standing before God. Let what we
Speaker 1: are made in his image. We're made to reflect who
Speaker 1: God is. And well, we're not doing that. We're living
Speaker 1: as shadow versions of ourselves, which is very platonic language.
Speaker 1: And also, I mean, that's what we get in the
Speaker 1: Great Divorce, the difference between the ghosts and the solid spirits.
Speaker 1: That the ghosts are shadow versions of what a human
Speaker 1: is supposed to be. And so to flee from God
Speaker 1: as an image bearer of God is to flee from
Speaker 1: yourself who you are, who you are designed to be.
Speaker 1: And in so doing you in turn become well, you
Speaker 1: become darkened, you become shadowy, you become less substantial and
Speaker 1: more frivolous. And so he is obviously somebody who's been
Speaker 1: looking for what is substantial. He's starting to have some
Speaker 1: doubts in the Manicheans. He's starting to recognize that there's
Speaker 1: more value to be found in the classical philosophers, which
Speaker 1: you know Cicero, who really launched him on his philosophical quests.
Speaker 1: That when he's studying Cicero for rhetoric, he recognized that
Speaker 1: Cisroo is actually saying some significant things, that there's some
Speaker 1: actual wisdom there beyond how he's saying it. And so
Speaker 1: there's always been the spark in him of like, I
Speaker 1: want to actually get to the root of things. I
Speaker 1: want substance. I don't just want the veneer, which is
Speaker 1: perhaps kind of ironic given that he's I mean, he's
Speaker 1: a master of rhetoric right like he is somebody who
Speaker 1: you would think would be consumed with how Thinter said.
Speaker 1: But all along on his philosophical journey he wants to
Speaker 1: know that the substance behind things. He wants to know
Speaker 1: the capital W word behind words, and so he shifts
Speaker 1: towards the philosophers. But even then he he recognizes that
Speaker 1: they can only go but so far. He says that
Speaker 1: they can calculate and eclipse, but they don't recognize that
Speaker 1: they themselves are eclipsed. They can study the light, but
Speaker 1: they don't understand what actually produces the light. They can't
Speaker 1: get beneath the surface.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of until we have faces, this idea
Speaker 1: that you know you we eventually you reach a level
Speaker 1: where Foxes can no longer dig right, where he's looking
Speaker 1: for something that now even the philosopher, the great philosophers,
Speaker 1: what they are incapable of approaching, and ultimately.
Speaker 2: He's looking for God, whether he knows it or not.
Speaker 2: At this time in his.
Speaker 5: Life, Augustine is an expert, putting down just like how
Speaker 5: everything serves God's purpose and seeing different things that happened
Speaker 5: through his life that pushed him on the way. When
Speaker 5: he says at the end of I Guess Chapter seven,
Speaker 5: book five, is is thus Faustus, who had been a
Speaker 5: snare that brought death to many, did without his knowledge
Speaker 5: or will, begin to unbind the stare that held me.
Speaker 5: And then later he goes on about and the next paragraph,
Speaker 5: but you owe my hope and my portion in the
Speaker 5: land of the living, forced me to change countries for
Speaker 5: my soul's salvation. You pricked me with such goats at
Speaker 5: Carthage as drove me out of it, and you said
Speaker 5: before me certain attractions by which I might be drawn
Speaker 5: to work. It's like using just frustration at one's job
Speaker 5: to like push one towards salvation and in God's purpose.
Speaker 5: It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I love that that line of providence that
Speaker 1: even as he's detailing, you've got the wickedness of Faustus,
Speaker 1: this guy who he says has led so many people
Speaker 1: astray into death, but yet that served as part of
Speaker 1: his journey to get him to where he needs to go.
Speaker 1: Because Faustus is the one who actually dis changed Augustine.
Speaker 1: I allowed him to kind of move away from the Manicheans,
Speaker 1: and then he moved away from Carthage basically because the
Speaker 1: students are really annoying, you know that they bus to
Speaker 1: show up whenever they want to, Like they're just not
Speaker 1: really focused, I mean. And so he wants to go
Speaker 1: somewhere where he feels like he's gonna get some measure
Speaker 1: of respect, that there's going to be an expectation of discipline.
Speaker 2: You know. He wants to move into a better school district.
Speaker 1: Essentially, which I well, maybe I shouldn't say, Maybe I
Speaker 1: shouldn't coment on that. So he wants to go somewhere
Speaker 1: where you know, he can just focus on teaching, and
Speaker 1: so he goes to Rome. But even that only lasts
Speaker 1: but so long, and he does well enough there, but
Speaker 1: eventually he's inclined to move away from there as well
Speaker 1: because in part his students weren't paying him, so he
Speaker 1: still having a problem with his students, and so then
Speaker 1: he moves off to Milan, where he's going to meet Ambrose,
Speaker 1: which is going to be a fundamental step in his
Speaker 1: conversion story because Ambrose is is really gonna be the
Speaker 1: one who's going to lead him into the faith. And
Speaker 1: so he really just details how between his own sinful
Speaker 1: impulses and frustrations, the fact that he lied to his
Speaker 1: mom when he ran off to Rome, he's he I mean,
Speaker 1: not a lot of commendable stuff going on here, but
Speaker 1: he recognizes that his own sin, as well as just
Speaker 1: the frustrations and sin around him, it's all bringing him
Speaker 1: exactly where it is that he needs to be.
Speaker 5: I love the way he describes like his mom throughout
Speaker 5: these two folks, where he said, you did not do
Speaker 5: what she was at that moment asking that you might
Speaker 5: do the thing she was always asking just meaning like,
Speaker 5: didn't keep him from Rome because he was meant to
Speaker 5: go there. But the thing that she's always been asking for,
Speaker 5: praying for is his salvation.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. I mean, same kind of idea there, but
Speaker 1: just from her perspective that, you know, God didn't give
Speaker 1: her what she was asking for. He didn't give her
Speaker 1: consolation then and there so that she could get the
Speaker 1: ultimate consolation. Just another emphasis on the sovereignty of God
Speaker 1: over our temporal fleeting thoughts and feelings. I should mention
Speaker 1: that in the midst of all these changes in his life,
Speaker 1: for a little bit of time, he after starting to
Speaker 1: part ways with the Manicheans, he starts to team up
Speaker 1: with the academics, which this was a group of philosophers
Speaker 1: that actually descended from Plato's academy, although they have a
Speaker 1: very different orientation than Plato did. So things have well,
Speaker 1: it's the long defeat. Things have fallen apart over time,
Speaker 1: and so now these academics are basically just the skeptics
Speaker 1: of the age when they say you really can't know anything,
Speaker 1: that there's no truth to be known.
Speaker 4: So I didn't know that academics was a term for
Speaker 4: a school of philosophy. So but I read the line
Speaker 4: what I thought to be the manner of the academics,
Speaker 4: that is to say, doubting of all things and wavering
Speaker 4: between one and another, and I just I just thought
Speaker 4: it was funny.
Speaker 1: I think, no, it works for the natural reading in today,
Speaker 1: you know, today's academic climate. I mean, you know, as
Speaker 1: somebody who teaches in the humanities, that this is basically
Speaker 1: it like there is no truth, like we can't really
Speaker 1: know it. Who's to say it's all subjective, that there's
Speaker 1: no reality that we can actually talk about meaningfully. And
Speaker 1: so even if we just treat that as a kind
Speaker 1: of a normal term, it definitely works. But I should
Speaker 1: bring up that Augustine talks a lot more about the
Speaker 1: academics in the City of God in one section, and
Speaker 1: I mentioned this in the Brief History of Ideas of
Speaker 1: course recently. But when you get to Renee Cart who
Speaker 1: is trying to, you know, find some truth that he
Speaker 1: knows the absolute certainty, you know, he says, I'm going
Speaker 1: to doubt everything I could possibly doubt because I want
Speaker 1: to build up my philosophy on some truth I couldn't
Speaker 1: be wrong about. And so he whittles down all the
Speaker 1: things he could be he could doubt, And you know,
Speaker 1: I could doubt whether or not I'm awake or I'm sleeping.
Speaker 1: I don't really know, you know, I could be asleep
Speaker 1: right now, dreaming my sense experience could be deceiving me,
Speaker 1: maybe getting fed some wrong information matrix style, like he
Speaker 1: wants to create the worst possible scenario so that way
Speaker 1: he can find something he's certain about. And what he
Speaker 1: concludes is, I think therefore I am, you know, because
Speaker 1: I'm thinking I know I must ex in some capacity.
Speaker 1: And that's what he knows, a certainty.
Speaker 2: And yeah, he.
Speaker 1: Kind of treats this like it's this novel philosophical innovation
Speaker 1: he came up with, but in reality it comes straight
Speaker 1: from Augustine's argument against the academics and City of God.
Speaker 1: Augustine says that, you know, the academics say you can't
Speaker 1: really know any truth. Well, the problem is if I
Speaker 1: doubt I know that I exist in some capacity. And
Speaker 1: so in Augustine's argument against the academics, I mean, he
Speaker 1: basically lays out what the Kart just copies over and
Speaker 1: doesn't give credit for. So just just another argument against
Speaker 1: modern philosophy and all this worthwhile you can find in
Speaker 1: the pre moderns. But that's kind of a side.
Speaker 3: That sounds a little that sounds a little personal.
Speaker 2: Telling, Yeah, a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I definitely think from the modern period on, from
Speaker 1: from the cart on, things tend to go downhill.
Speaker 2: I did.
Speaker 4: I did, because we're talking about the way that God
Speaker 4: direct the steps of Augustine for his salvation. And so
Speaker 4: at the end of chapter seven of book five, I'll
Speaker 4: just I'll just read it because it's what we're doing.
Speaker 3: It's the last line I really like.
Speaker 4: For thy hand, oh my God, and the secret of
Speaker 4: thy providence, did not desert my soul from the blood
Speaker 4: of my mother's heart. Sacrifice from me was offered the
Speaker 4: day and night by her tears, And Thou didst act
Speaker 4: with me in marvelous ways. For it was thou, my God,
Speaker 4: who didst do it. For with the Lord shall the
Speaker 4: steps of a man be directed, and he shall like
Speaker 4: well his way. How shall we attain salvation unless by
Speaker 4: thy hand thou dost remake what thou didst make? And
Speaker 4: you have you we're talking about like the way to
Speaker 4: know God is through humility. He speaks about that again
Speaker 4: and again. The philosophers can't know God because they won't
Speaker 4: they won't think little of themselves. They need to think
Speaker 4: of themselves highly.
Speaker 3: And in this.
Speaker 4: Autobiography of a gust And he's constantly talking about the
Speaker 4: way God has humbled him and and God is like
Speaker 4: God has God has created, God has made Augustine intellects
Speaker 4: for great things. Yeah, in order for God to remake
Speaker 4: august And he needs to tear it down and he
Speaker 4: needs to he needs to demonstrate like it like you
Speaker 4: are great, but you are only would I make you
Speaker 4: in order for that for that action to be completed.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: In in Over in book six, he really emphasizes just
Speaker 1: how how weak we are with his incident with his
Speaker 1: his buddy Alypius, who who had turned away from the
Speaker 1: games that the the gladiatorial games, you know, recognizing that
Speaker 1: this is just violence as carnage, like there's nothing redemptive
Speaker 1: about this, and so he turns away from it. But
Speaker 1: then his friends say, no, you know, come on over,
Speaker 1: like you know, he says, yea, even if you drag
Speaker 1: me there, like I'm not gonna look. And they said, okay,
Speaker 1: well let's put that to the test. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: his buddies drag him to the arena so that he
Speaker 1: can test his resolve to not participate.
Speaker 2: But then the crowd started going. He kind of falls
Speaker 2: into the crowd.
Speaker 1: He loses his individuality with the group think, which is
Speaker 1: so easy to do, right when everyone's getting right off
Speaker 1: about something, it's easy to just join with the crowd,
Speaker 1: and so he starts to fall into this bloodlust with
Speaker 1: the crowd. And so now he's just fallen right back
Speaker 1: into these carnal passions. But then Augustine talks about how
Speaker 1: Olypius was falsely accused of theft, and he kind of
Speaker 1: goes through this redemptive art redemption arc about how this
Speaker 1: guy he falls, he has this false accusation levied against him,
Speaker 1: but kind of through all of this he's brought up
Speaker 1: and sort of restored, not only politically, but more importantly
Speaker 1: restored spiritually. And so in this side incident, looking at
Speaker 1: his buddy in Milan, that we we see just this again.
Speaker 1: We see the weakness of our carnal nature, but the
Speaker 1: sovereign redemption of God that often takes what we might
Speaker 1: consider unlikely means to accomplish its purposes, much as we
Speaker 1: see in the life of Augusta and just now brought
Speaker 1: down to the microcosm level with this, this case of
Speaker 1: this guy he knew.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Augustine is also intentional to point out that in
Speaker 4: the case of Alypius, the Reformation took time. Right, we
Speaker 4: have we have the gladiatorial incident, and then Alypius is
Speaker 4: inviting his friends there and he's all in, and now
Speaker 4: he's fallen into that lust, and now he's gripped by
Speaker 4: the lust. And Augustine says, he, out of all of this,
Speaker 4: you drew him with strong and mercyful hand, teaching him
Speaker 4: to have confidence in you, not in himself. Him having
Speaker 4: confidence in himself being why he failed. And then Augustin says,
Speaker 4: but this was long after, so it's not it's not
Speaker 4: a quick fix. But with Alypius as well, as we
Speaker 4: see through Augustine's biography, like God, God is taking his
Speaker 4: time to humble the people that he draws to himself,
Speaker 4: because you can't go to God unless unless you are
Speaker 4: unless you have humility, and it can take time to
Speaker 4: cultivate that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that I mean it should give us some hope,
Speaker 1: not only for ourselves and our unfailings, but I think
Speaker 1: even more fundamentally for those that we those that we
Speaker 1: care about, like those that we pray for, and it
Speaker 1: seems like nothing's happening. The reality is we just we
Speaker 1: don't know God's timing, We don't know God's sovereignty. Oh
Speaker 1: we know, hopefully, what we know is God's mercy, and
Speaker 1: that's that's all we can rely on. And I think
Speaker 1: that is another good example of that. Yeah, it's jumping
Speaker 1: I mean kind of all over these sections here in
Speaker 1: his conversations with Ambrose. I think it's worth noting that
Speaker 1: he initially was drawn into this relationship with Ambrose, not
Speaker 1: because of Ambrose's theology or his philosophy, but because, well,
Speaker 1: Augustine's because he was kind. It was just his kindness
Speaker 1: that drew him in initially. And then as they form
Speaker 1: this relationship, he starts to go listen to Ambrose's sermons.
Speaker 1: Now at that point he still isn't drawn into the
Speaker 1: actual theology or substance of the sermons. He's drawn at
Speaker 1: that point by Ambrose's rhetoric that as a teacher, rhetoric
Speaker 1: he recognizes Ambrose speaks very well, and so he's drawn
Speaker 1: into that. And so I mean it's it's like he's
Speaker 1: drawn into all these surface level things, but in so
Speaker 1: doing he ends up finding well, finding substance. I don't
Speaker 1: really know what to make of that. It kind of
Speaker 1: sounds like it just made a case for secret sensitivity,
Speaker 1: which I don't really like that.
Speaker 4: But my thought, my thought was that it's a case
Speaker 4: in point of what we were talking about earlier with
Speaker 4: the passions being a ladder to God, right, because like
Speaker 4: he is, I think you can say he has a
Speaker 4: passion for rhetoric clearly, and so he's constantly seeking out
Speaker 4: these teachers and whether it's Ambrose or whether it's Cicero,
Speaker 4: he encounters things which are true and thus bring him
Speaker 4: higher to teatures.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's that's a good point that you
Speaker 1: know he was in Ambrose speaking well like that is
Speaker 1: a it's a it's a good thing. Beauty is good, right,
Speaker 1: Beauty of words is a good thing. And that that
Speaker 1: is something, a good thing that Augustina was lashing onto.
Speaker 1: Even if it's not the highest thing, it is a
Speaker 1: good thing that, as you said, it's a ladder bringing
Speaker 1: him somewhere significant.
Speaker 2: And so I think it.
Speaker 1: Has more to say with the reality of beauty, the
Speaker 1: reality of goodness than it does with Ambrose.
Speaker 2: So to speak.
Speaker 1: In other words, Ambrose isn't trying to construct a scenario
Speaker 1: to make people feel comfortable. He's engaging in beautiful and
Speaker 1: good things that speak to the souls of those who
Speaker 1: are looking in the direction of something that is good
Speaker 1: and beautiful.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And it's interesting because what is good, is beautiful and
Speaker 4: is true, right, because all of these things are those
Speaker 4: transcendental attributes. And with Augustine, like you also always notice
Speaker 4: like he feels the tension with falsehood. Yeah, whether it's
Speaker 4: it's the falsity of it, whether it's the ugliness of it,
Speaker 4: whether it's the badness of it. He's always saying, like,
Speaker 4: these these things never left me content. He doesn't find
Speaker 4: contentment until he finds truth.
Speaker 1: Right, And at least looking back, he recognizes that that's
Speaker 1: why all these things were empty, because he wasn't finding Christ.
Speaker 1: And in his conversation with Ambrose, he recognizes that the
Speaker 1: Christian faith that he had rejected for so long is
Speaker 1: actually not the Christian faith. He had this caricature of
Speaker 1: what Christianity actually teaches, but as he got into the
Speaker 1: substance of that and it kind of unraveled that a
Speaker 1: little bit. So the scriptures became far deeper than he recognized.
Speaker 1: You know, it makes me think of you know, the
Speaker 1: the Yeah, I say, the expangelical types who say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I grew up in church, therefore I know
Speaker 1: what they teach, right, I know what they say, I
Speaker 1: know what happens there, when most most of the time
Speaker 1: they have no idea what Christianity is. Right, the people
Speaker 1: who are most vocal in their descent from Christianity, typically speaking,
Speaker 1: they really don't know what Christianity is. They don't know
Speaker 1: what it is that they've rejected. And I think Augustin
Speaker 1: is really coming out and recognizing just that that he
Speaker 1: spent so long with his prejudice toward toward you know,
Speaker 1: orthodox Catholic teaching, that that now he's recognizing he hasn't
Speaker 1: actually rejected Christianity, He's rejected his understanding of what Christianity is,
Speaker 1: which is a very different thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I haven't.
Speaker 4: So I'm gonna well, just I'll be honest.
Speaker 3: I haven't read a lot of Augustin.
Speaker 4: I've heard lots of things about Augustine, and from what
Speaker 4: I've heard about his belief in creation has always been
Speaker 4: really fascinating to me in terms of just like he
Speaker 4: sees the spider eating the fly, and he's like, there
Speaker 4: is an inherent goodness, there is an inherent beauty in
Speaker 4: this thing that's happening, Like the spider was clearly made
Speaker 4: to do this, it's fulfilling its natural purpose. And so
Speaker 4: to then presume that this only occurred later and what's
Speaker 4: his term, post lapsarian world is foolish maybe in.
Speaker 1: A sense, yeah, I mean, Augustine. Augustine's understanding of creation
Speaker 1: is not in line with your typical twenty first century
Speaker 1: fundamentalist that you know, Augustine, And we'll get to this
Speaker 1: at the end of the Confessions. We kind of got
Speaker 1: we start to move away from autobiography to really getting
Speaker 1: into his understanding of the Genesis account of creation, and
Speaker 1: so we'll get into this in more detail. But Augustine
Speaker 1: supposes that, well, maybe God didn't make everything finish, that
Speaker 1: maybe he basically created the seeds of creation that took
Speaker 1: time to develop, and so he definitely would be what
Speaker 1: we would call an Old Earth creationists by today's standards.
Speaker 1: The difference, of course, being that Augustin he's not relating.
Speaker 3: Evangelicals don't like him.
Speaker 1: Yes, that I mean, people will even use Augustin try
Speaker 1: to argue for like theistic evolution. I mean, not that
Speaker 1: he's going to speak in those terms, because he's not
Speaker 1: dealing with modern science. But when he talks about God
Speaker 1: creating seeds of creation, that that progress over time to
Speaker 1: the world that we have today. Like philosophically, that case
Speaker 1: can be made. I'm not saying it has to be made,
Speaker 1: but like the point is that he is not a
Speaker 1: literalist in the way that he approaches the creation account.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's part of what he got from Ambrose
Speaker 1: learning how to interpret the Old Testament allegorically.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I think it's a good example of
Speaker 4: how maybe my phraseology will be bad, but there there
Speaker 4: can be a good kind of deconstruction, right, Like we
Speaker 4: live in that expangelical world where deconstruction is a really
Speaker 4: dirty term, but it is good to think about, like,
Speaker 4: all right, what is the scripture actually staying? Like what
Speaker 4: points is it making? What points is it not making?
Speaker 4: And I'm reading into it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that it's very important that we
Speaker 1: understand scripture in its original context and ask the question
Speaker 1: why was it written? That's gonna be a different question,
Speaker 1: that's going to lead to a different answer than simply
Speaker 1: looking at it from a twenty first century lens and
Speaker 1: asking what does it seem to be saying right now
Speaker 1: to our current context, because obviously all scripture does speak
Speaker 1: to our current context, but we have to filter it through,
Speaker 1: you know, what was the original intention here? And when Augustine,
Speaker 1: kind of led by Ambrose, when he looks at the
Speaker 1: Genesis creation account, his first response is not that he's
Speaker 1: getting a literalistic, scientific, materialistic account of how things came
Speaker 1: to be. What he's recognizes or you know what he
Speaker 1: what he comes understand is that what we're getting is
Speaker 1: a theological message. And so in the way that we
Speaker 1: are interpreting the genetic account, like we need to understand
Speaker 1: not just what's happening on a on a little level,
Speaker 1: but like what does this mean? What is this revealing
Speaker 1: about who God is? And when that takes a primary
Speaker 1: level reading, well, it may lead to some different conclusions
Speaker 1: and then you might get otherwise. I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: going to be pleasing and upsetting a number of people
Speaker 1: right now, It's.
Speaker 3: All right, you're safe with me.
Speaker 5: At the beginning of book six, I do like the
Speaker 5: the story about his mom traveling through the dangerous storm
Speaker 5: and reassuring the sailors kind of like maybe think of
Speaker 5: like Paul was just like it's called going to be all.
Speaker 1: Right, right right when Paul's like, I have to go
Speaker 1: to room, so we're gonna make it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, stay with the ship. That's the only way.
Speaker 2: Yeah. His mom sounds like an extraordinary person.
Speaker 3: Been a fascinating woman. Yeah, And the devotion that has
Speaker 3: to her son is incredible.
Speaker 5: And she even got so much from Ambrose, you know,
Speaker 5: like just doing what she was like the custom that
Speaker 5: she was going to do, and then hearing Ambrose say like, hey,
Speaker 5: that's should be doing that, and then she just like
Speaker 5: flipped on a dime and was like, all right, you're right,
Speaker 5: you know, rather than oh, this is the way that
Speaker 5: I've always done it, it's like, you know, listen to
Speaker 5: somebody that may know better.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: I can't imagine what her anxiety must have been like
Speaker 4: just having this son who is a genius and him
Speaker 4: being an unsaved person and she knows it, and she
Speaker 4: just is constantly waiting to find somebody that can speak
Speaker 4: on the same level as her son, and for thirty
Speaker 4: years she just never gets that until eventually she finds
Speaker 4: Ambrose and Augustina says like, yeah, she had a deep
Speaker 4: love for him, and I just I wonder what that
Speaker 4: must have felt like and.
Speaker 1: For her, yeah, I mean even when he was with
Speaker 1: the Manicheans, right, she's like trying to get people to
Speaker 1: go talk to him, and now she finally found someone
Speaker 1: who's who's able to reach out to him.
Speaker 5: I mean that was kind of I guess, like coming
Speaker 5: from like a public school mindset or like even non
Speaker 5: denominational very like shout out church to a more like
Speaker 5: structured church. It's like, oh, it's kind of the same thing,
Speaker 5: you know, Like I know that my parents had wanted
Speaker 5: me to like meet these people. Know these people talk
Speaker 5: to different like more intellectually about stuff like this, and
Speaker 5: it took a long time, you know, and then you're
Speaker 5: always like you're like, maybe I'm just the one that's wrong,
Speaker 5: and I just need to like cool off a little bit,
Speaker 5: and then you finally find it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and so he does. He finally he finds it,
Speaker 1: He finds the substance that he's looking for, or well,
Speaker 1: kind of he's still keeping himself at arm's length, right,
Speaker 1: He's still he's still keeping himself away a little bit,
Speaker 1: you know, even at the point where he becomes a catechumen,
Speaker 1: and so he starts to recognize that that there's wisdom here,
Speaker 1: like there's something significant, this is something like what I'm
Speaker 1: looking for. However, it's he doesn't really have like a
Speaker 1: moral conversion yet, it's very much an intellectual conversion to
Speaker 1: this point where he recognizes that there's some wisdom here.
Speaker 1: He likes what he's hearing, that there's more substance here
Speaker 1: than he guess even in the pagan philosophers that he's
Speaker 1: admired of to this point, and so he recognized there's
Speaker 1: something here, but it's still very cerebral, it's very philosophical.
Speaker 1: You know, he still has his you know, his his mistress.
Speaker 1: He hasn't really changed his life at all. It's all
Speaker 1: just intellectual at this point. The heart conversion will come
Speaker 1: in the next reading.
Speaker 4: Yeah, to jump around again, because we're talking about the
Speaker 4: heart conversion getting there. In chapter six of book six,
Speaker 4: we have the story of him passing by the beggar, right,
Speaker 4: and so it's like he has to deliver a speech
Speaker 4: which is a bunch of lies, and he knows their lies,
Speaker 4: and everyone that's gonna listen to it knows that they're lies,
Speaker 4: but they're all going to do this speech anyway, And
Speaker 4: he's dreading the experience to the point where he sees
Speaker 4: the beggar on the side who's just I don't know,
Speaker 4: wine drunk, right, and is having a good time asking
Speaker 4: people for pennies and panhandling, And so he's wondering, just like, what, like,
Speaker 4: what do I have that is greater than what he has? Right,
Speaker 4: this person is experiencing joy, whereas I'm.
Speaker 1: Not right, he says, like this, this drunk beggar on
Speaker 1: the street, he has a greater measure of joy than
Speaker 1: I do, as this great teacher rhetoric who's about to
Speaker 1: give a speech to the Emperor of Rome, Like, he
Speaker 1: doesn't get much more prestigious than that. Yeah, he recognizes
Speaker 1: that he's walking around in despair, like he has all
Speaker 1: the things he's been looking for, but he recognizes he
Speaker 1: doesn't have the things he's been looking for. And now,
Speaker 1: I mean, to be fair, he does state that, like,
Speaker 1: certainly this drunk beggar's joy is not true joy, but
Speaker 1: to at least closer I suppose than what Augustine is experiencing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, kind of a wake up call in yours. The
Speaker 5: beggar with like the the beer in a paper bag.
Speaker 5: Heven better joy than you are, even if it's not real.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it is.
Speaker 4: It's it is the depths of hedonism, right, because he
Speaker 4: starts out that chapter saying, I was hot for honors,
Speaker 4: money and marriage, and you made mock of my hotness.
Speaker 4: You prevented me from taking delight in anything not yourself.
Speaker 4: It's ultimately, like, if you're chasing those empty joys like you're,
Speaker 4: what does make you better than the beggar who's actually happy,
Speaker 4: even if it is just from wine. Right, if you're
Speaker 4: if you're warm, but if you're warm and sad, but
Speaker 4: he's cold and happy, like you're, you're hedonists chasing after joy.
Speaker 3: He has it.
Speaker 1: You don't, right, You're you're just a bad hedonist. And
Speaker 1: and so I mean, ultimately, of course, his despair, the
Speaker 1: fact that he was unable to achieve the hedonistic pleasures
Speaker 1: that he was pursuing, is itself a gift. It is
Speaker 1: the grace of God giving him this despair, right of
Speaker 1: preventing him from achieving happiness in the things he was
Speaker 1: falsely seeking happiness. And and even somewhere in here he
Speaker 1: gives a old job that epicurist who is one of
Speaker 1: the major heatonness of classical era. And you know, basically
Speaker 1: he's basically saying that he was being a bad heatonist,
Speaker 1: that he's pursuing pleasure but not finding it. But ultimately
Speaker 1: him not finding pleasure is because God was calling him
Speaker 1: to himself. His heart was restless until it rests in
Speaker 1: God talks about about this a lot. There's there's a
Speaker 1: lot of connections thematically between Kirkegarden and Augustine, and Kirkgard
Speaker 1: talks about how despair is not something any of us want,
Speaker 1: but often it's exactly what we need, Like we need
Speaker 1: to recognize the emptiness of latching ourselves onto things that
Speaker 1: are here today and gone tomorrow, latching ourselves onto fading circumstance,
Speaker 1: which brings back to Boethius, and that what we need
Speaker 1: to do is to find the eternal good, that the
Speaker 1: good that makes good things good, and so that that
Speaker 1: despair can't actually be a gift anything else. We didn't
Speaker 1: mention that, you feel like it is worth bringing up here.
Speaker 1: I still think it's just really lame how he gets
Speaker 1: set up to get married, but I mean the girl
Speaker 1: he's engaged to is not enough to get married yet,
Speaker 1: so he's got to wait a couple of years, and
Speaker 1: in the in the meantime, he sends away his concubine,
Speaker 1: who is also the mother of his child. Then he
Speaker 1: just can't wait to get married, and so he picks
Speaker 1: up a new mistress. You know, I don't really know
Speaker 1: what's happening with a child at this point. It's it's like,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't have a lot of sympathy for
Speaker 1: him in all of this, and I don't think he
Speaker 1: would for himself either looking back, which I guess is the.
Speaker 2: Point of redemption.
Speaker 3: He was the ladies man he was, which.
Speaker 1: Likely feeds into some of the things he says about
Speaker 1: you know, celibacy and sexual relations even within marriage later on.
Speaker 1: How I feel like a lot of what he ends
Speaker 1: up saying later on, and I'm sure my my Catholic
Speaker 1: French might disagree with me on this, but in you know,
Speaker 1: the things he has to say about celibacy, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of that probably is maybe an overreaction to
Speaker 1: some of his own experience, because that really was his
Speaker 1: his chief chief impatient.
Speaker 4: I think I think it's I only have one last comment,
Speaker 4: but I think that Alypius acts in a way as
Speaker 4: a mirror to Augustine, because there there are two people
Speaker 4: that are really just going through the same struggle, but
Speaker 4: here Augustine is able to observe it externally rather than internally,
Speaker 4: and so far as Alypius is a talented young person
Speaker 4: that is struggling with these worldly desires, and they're they're
Speaker 4: keeping him away from the truth, even though there is
Speaker 4: a real zeal for the truth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that they're good. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: good companion story to the broader story that we're getting
Speaker 1: of Augustine himself. Well, I think I'm gonna we'll go
Speaker 1: ahead and wrap it out. I'm gonna end with the
Speaker 1: last bit of book six. Here, woe to my soul,
Speaker 1: with its rash hope of finding something better. If it
Speaker 1: forsook the my soul turned and turned again on back,
Speaker 1: insides and belly, and the bed was always hard for
Speaker 1: thou alone art her rest, and behold thou art close
Speaker 1: at hand, to deliver us from the wretchedness of error,
Speaker 1: and establish us in thy way, and console us with
Speaker 1: thy word run. I shall bear you up and bring
Speaker 1: you and carry you to the end. Just a good
Speaker 1: summary of the things that we've been discussing. That there
Speaker 1: is rest, you know, going back to his opening of
Speaker 1: book one, that there is rest only in God, and
Speaker 1: that our only hope of finding that rest is to
Speaker 1: run right, run from our temptation to sin, the lust
Speaker 1: of the flesh, the delights of the eyes, and run
Speaker 1: to the one place where we can find eternal rest.
Speaker 1: And that is where God will carry us unto the end. Well,
Speaker 1: we will wrap there. Next time. We will cover books
Speaker 1: seven and eight as he deals with some more philosophical problems.
Speaker 1: We get a conclusion to his relationship with astrology, and
Speaker 1: we actually get to his heart conversion to the Christian faith.
Speaker 2: But Hellen, godspeed, all right.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening. As a reminder, currently running a
Speaker 1: deal of our Patreon annual discounts are bumped up to
Speaker 1: twenty five percent for a short time. I originally said
Speaker 1: I was gonna go to the end of June, but
Speaker 1: since I'm just announcing this in the podcast, you know,
Speaker 1: I'll give it another week, and so through the end
Speaker 1: of the first week in July, I'll keep that deal going.
Speaker 1: Become an annual patron today. And by the way, the
Speaker 1: good news is that when you become an annual patron
Speaker 1: at a discount, you actually get to keep that discount
Speaker 1: when you renew next year, and so it's a good
Speaker 1: deal beyond just this term. And again, become a patron
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Speaker 1: Mythic Mind, Mythic Mind movies and shows, and Mythic Mind games.
Speaker 1: This is an exciting time in Mythic Mind. And I
Speaker 1: want to thank all my patrons because it really means
Speaker 1: a lot to me that we've been able to go
Speaker 1: this far and then we have even more goals on
Speaker 1: the horizon, and so many thanks to all patrons. And
Speaker 1: I want to think by name all Tier three patrons
Speaker 1: and higher and so that is Mark, Amanda, Chase, Chaz,
Speaker 1: Christopher Clinton, David Don, Aaron Evy, Adam Jack, Jamie, Justin, Justin, Kyle, Paul, Roger,
Speaker 1: Ross Tyler and William. So thank you so much to
Speaker 1: all Tier three patrons. Thank you to all patrons. This
Speaker 1: is a growing community overall. We have over sixty members
Speaker 1: now and so we continue to grow, and I hope
Speaker 1: that you will consider becoming part of this community. But
Speaker 1: that's it for now. If you're listening to this on
Speaker 1: the public feed, the next thing to be released is
Speaker 1: see Return of the Jedi on Wednesday over on the
Speaker 1: Mythic Mind Movies and Jokes podcast, So check us out
Speaker 1: there until next time, godspeed. I have always, at least
Speaker 1: ever since I can remember, had a kind of longing
Speaker 1: for death. It was when I was happiest that I
Speaker 1: longed most. It was on happy days when we were
Speaker 1: up in the hills, the three of us, with the
Speaker 1: wind and the sunshine, where you couldn't see Gloam or
Speaker 1: the palace. Do you remember the color and the smell,
Speaker 1: and looking across at the gray mountain in the distance,
Speaker 1: And because it was so beautiful, it set me longing,
Speaker 1: always longing somewhere else, there must be more of it.
Speaker 1: Everything seemed to be saying, Psyche, come, but I couldn't come,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know where I was to come to.
Speaker 2: It almost hurt me.
Speaker 1: I felt like a bird in a cage when the
Speaker 1: other birds of its kind are flying home. And now
Speaker 1: I will make answer to you. Oh, my judges, and
Speaker 1: show that he who has lived as a true philosopher
Speaker 1: has reason to be of good cheer when he is
Speaker 1: about to die, that after death he may hope to
Speaker 1: receive the greatest good in the other world. For I
Speaker 1: deem that the true disciple of philosophy is likely to
Speaker 1: be misunderstood by other men. They do not perceive that
Speaker 1: he is ever pursuing death and dying. And if this
Speaker 1: is true, why, having had the desire of death all
Speaker 1: his life long, should he regret the arrival of that
Speaker 1: which he has always been pursuing and desiring. The longing
Speaker 1: of Plato and the control of the Stoics pervades Lewis's
Speaker 1: retelling of the Cupid and psyche Myth until we have
Speaker 1: faces with this incredible novel, which he believed to be
Speaker 1: his best. Lewis demonstrates the tensions and ancient thought, and
Speaker 1: even more significantly, the limits of rational philosophy, which can
Speaker 1: only go as deep as the foxes can dig. Beyond that,
Speaker 1: Under that and providing the life of that thought, we
Speaker 1: find the dark and holy places that blind our faculties
Speaker 1: of reason. What then shall we do? This is a
Speaker 1: topic that we will explore after first surveying some important
Speaker 1: philosophical contributions in the ancient world that have had some
Speaker 1: significant bearing on Lewis's great novel. To this end, we
Speaker 1: will begin with Plato's Phato, which discusses the immortality of
Speaker 1: the soul and what those who love wisdom might expect
Speaker 1: in the life to come. And then we'll spend four
Speaker 1: weeks with some of the great stoics, including Epictetus, Emperor,
Speaker 1: Marcus Aurelius, and Seneca. Finally, we will turn our attention
Speaker 1: to till we have faces for the final two weeks
Speaker 1: with original content, and so this will not be the
Speaker 1: same as what you may have seen in the fiction
Speaker 1: and philosophy of CS. Lewis course. Each week of this
Speaker 1: eight week study will include readings from primary sources that
Speaker 1: will be provided as PDFs, although these are all texts
Speaker 1: that belong in your personal library. You'll be provided with
Speaker 1: recommendations for secondary readings. You'll have recorded presentations for you
Speaker 1: to watch at your leisure, ongoing discord chats, and weekly
Speaker 1: life meetings to discuss the readings enrolled today by going
Speaker 1: to patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind and checking out
Speaker 1: the job, or you can gain access to all courses, past,
Speaker 1: president and future this year by purchasing a Tier three
Speaker 1: annual subscription.
Speaker 2: I hope to see you there