Augustine - On Christian Doctrine - Themes

Love
Use/ Enjoy
1. 2. What a thing is, and what a sign
  1. - Things are learnt by means of signs
  2. Thing = that which is never employed as a sign of anything else
  3. Signs = things used to indicate something else.
  4. Every sign is also a thing. Every thing is not also a sign.
2. 3. Some things are for use, some for enjoyment
  1. Those for enjoyment make us happy, those for use assist our efforts for happiness.
  2. Danger of enjoying things that should be used, leading to love of lower gratifications.
3. 4. Difference of use and enjoyment
  1. To enjoy a thing is to rest with satisfaction in it for its own sake. - To use is to employ whatever means at one’s disposal to attain desires, if a proper object of desire - else abuse. EG return to homeland by use of conveyance.
4. 5. The Trinity the true object of enjoyment
  1. in the father is unity, the son equality, the hs harmony of the unity and equality.
Reading Scripture
1. 1. The interpretation of Scripture Depends on the discovery and enunciation of the meaning, and is to be undertaken in dependence on God’s aid.
God as ineffable
1. 6. In what sense is God ineffable?
  1. God is unspeakable to the point that even to say that is too much
  2. God has condescended to accept worship of men’s mouths, even desire it
  3. Deus - Latin - leads to thoughts of the supreme
2. 7. What all men understand by the term God
  1. All strive to exalt, all believe God as that which excels all other beings in dignity.
3. 8. God to be esteemed above all else, he is unchangeable wisdom.
Purification
1. 10. To see God, the soul must be purified
  1. Purification - journey to native land. Not by change of place but by cultivation of pure desires and virtuous habits.
2. 11. Wisdom becoming incarnate, a pattern to us of purification
  1. Wisdom made this possible to us by showing pattern of holy life in our own humanity. Wehn we come to him it is wise but when he to us it is foolish. 1 Cor 1.25
Wisdom
1. 9. All acknowledge the superiority of unchangeable wisdom to that which is variable.
2. 12. In what sense the wisdom of God came to us
  1. He is everywhere in the inner eye, but condescended himself and became manifest to the outer eye for those whose inner eye was weak or dim.
  2. 13. Word became flesh - just as we speak yet our thought does not loose itself in the sound, so divine word, suffering no change of nature, became flesh.
3. LIkes and opposites
  1. 14. How wisdom of God healed - Like a surgeon with neatness, so wisdom, by his assumption of humanity, adapted to our wounds, curing some by opposites, some by likes.
  2. 15. Faith is buttressed by the resurrection and ascension of Christ, and stimulated by his coming to judgement.
  3. 16. Christ purges his church by medicinal afflictions Church - body, even spouse. He holds it together in bond of unity and love, true health. He purges it so that when it is brought to eternity he can take it as his bride without spot or wrinkle.

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Augustine - On Christian Doctrine - Themes

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