http://www.christreformed.org/realaudio/20070323a.mp3

How much of our thinking and values and philosophical underpinning of our society... our understanding of time... do we owe to St Augustine?

Well... if you believe Paul Davies, atheist Astro Physicist, quite a lot. He claims to have been inspired by Augustines confessions..and his understanding of time.

It is said of Augustine, that he was possibly the most influential philosopher in history,(if I heard correctly) not bad for a master of rhetoric.

Augustine was apparently quite a chic magnet.. he was smart.. a student of rhetoric, and by 17 was shacking up with a chic, in Carthage, and she eventually bore him a son, who died at around 18 yrs.

He became involved with a heretical cult the Manichees and stayed with them for 9 yrs.. Finally leaving them when the leader could not answer his questions.

That he was an intellectual giant is indisputable..and his contribution to Christian theology almost unmatched.. but that modern Philophers such as Bertrand Russell and others pay verbal homage to him, is quite striking.

Bushbred might like to listen to this audio file, where it speaks of Augustine knowing about Platonism.. this is around AD425 before Islam.

In Short, he struggled with sexual desire, but went from sleaze, to saint.. converted to Christ, and is now a huge pillar in the history of the world and Church.
-City of God
-Confessions
-Against Faustus (The Manichee)

are some of his 5 million words of writing.
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/augustine.html

Thank Christ it was Augustine, with this title, I thought you were talking about me. lol. I'll go back to sleep now. I know you are looking for a sensible response. God Bless +++TSt+++

"In Short, he struggled with sexual desire, but went from sleaze, to saint.. converted to Christ, and is now a huge pillar in the history of the world..."

Are you talking about Kevin Rudd, Boazy?

CJ... *points to Fletch's post*

No.. furthest thing from my mind (Rudd).. but not a bad analogy.. lets just hope that if Rudd gets up, he will make at least a fraction of the contribution to the world that Augustine did.

What I'm hoping with this topic....is to open the door slightly that folks might look into that huge philosophical room from which we came..and are.

"Reason" was alive and well in Augustine, longggg before Aquinas.. and he is even accused by certain cynics out there of plagerising Plato.. which clearly shows an awareness of HIS awareness of Plato's ideas. But Augustine uses Plato's ideas in the context of his own intellectual struggle to define various lofty things, not to claim ownership of those ideas.

His life also shows how history can be turned by such apparently 'silly' or unusual things. When he was contemplating his life and future, before committing his heart to the Lord.. he was sitting alone and heard these words "Take up..and read" being sung by some children somewhere..he thought (though he could see no one) this was the turning point for him.....he began going into Scripture, and ended up as a Bishop.

I found his interaction with Jerome quite humerous.. they had a lot of back and forth about ideas.. He addresses Jerome "My dear friend..I know you are the greatest Biblical scholar in the world.....but if I may correct you on this minor point" You can imagine the wry cheeky look on his face while writing this...

We owe much of our 'now' to his 'then'.. so he is most worthy of at least some of our attention in this life.

The most surprising thing to me was to be told that Paul Davies is an atheist.

>>if you believe Paul Davies, atheist Astro Physicist...<<

I was so surprised in fact, I thought at first that Boaz may have picked the wrong Paul Davies.

From everything of his I have read, I have supposed him to be a normal, everyday believer - i.e. not an evangelist, proselytiser or fanatic - who uses his scholarship to muse on the crossover point between science and religion.

"The Goldilocks Enigma", I seem to recall, appeared to advocate acceptance of Intelligent Design, with all its harping on about the massive odds against gravitational forces being "just right" to create our universe. It is an argument so easily dismantled, that I assumed it was only put forward as advertorial for ID.

Nope. I could believe a fifth-columnist whose mission is to discredit atheism "from the inside", as it were, but that's as far as my credulity will stretch.

On that basis I am entirely unsurprised that he was "inspired by Augustines confessions..and his understanding of time."

But Augustine himself as "possibly the most influential philosopher in history"? That's a big call. Apart from the qualifier "possibly", of course, which is always a handy piece of weasel-work.

As a philosophical argument, for example, I find his conclusion that unbaptized babies go to hell significantly lacking in either humanity or logic.

But apart from that - Boaz, where did you get the idea that Augustine was a sex maniac?

As far as I know, he was in a monogamous relationship with the lady who bore his child for some fifteen years - even took her home to meet mum.

Do you have different information, or is this just another Boaz invention, merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative?

Pericles.. regarding Paul Davies .. I did not mean to malign or misrepresent him.. glad you picked up on the sympathy to I.D.

Regarding Augstine.. he expressed considerable struggles in the sex area, which stayed with him for a long time..... it comes out in his 'confessions' I believe.. I've not read them completely and have not come across the particular bit you mentioned about unbaptized babies.. but if you have a reference I'm happy to look it up.

In my 'possibly the greatest...' thing, I was just recollecting a once only listening to a lecture on him.

In this thread, I'm simply seeking to highlight a great man of the Church and of history to whom we all owe a great deal of intellectual debt whether we know it or not.

I am impressed by his use of reason.. and his ability to get out of the Manichee cult.. and his dedication to his office and profuse writing are to be admired.

I guess.. I'm seeking to 'connect' us more with the pillars of our hisorical tradition, and show that they were prone to the same vices we are..but with the recent threads on clergy and sex abuse..its good to find a great man who went the other way...

His greatest contribution is said to be in the area of his discussion of the Trinity.

Historically he was close to the period of the Nicene Creed.. and that creed is very important in understanding how the Church responded to the various heresies in encountered. He and his writing demonstrate a kind of 'what was going on at the coal face' drama which led to such creeds being formalized.

Boaz, please. If you are going to hang a story on a hook - in this case, the fact that Paul Davies is or is not an atheist is actually germane to your point - it would be a good idea to check first, not act surprised afterwards.

And the stuff about Augustine's strict views on hell are everywhere. Here's the Catholic Encyclopaedia, for example:

"..even before the outbreak of the Pelagian controversy St. Augustine had already abandoned the lenient traditional view, and in the course of the controversy he himself condemned, and persuaded the Council of Carthage (418) to condemn, the substantially identical Pelagian teaching affirming the existence of "an intermediate place, or of any place anywhere at all (ullus alicubi locus), in which children who pass out of this life unbaptized live in happiness" (Denzinger 102). This means that St. Augustine and the African Fathers believed that unbaptized infants share in the common positive misery of the damned"

A touch harsh, I think. Almost Sellsian in its dry scholarship and complete absence of humanity. This is "philosophy"? Sounds more like a control freak with Aspergers.

But what surprised me most was your admission that:

>>he expressed considerable struggles in the sex area, which stayed with him for a long time..... it comes out in his 'confessions' I believe.. I've not read them completely<<

In short, you present no evidence to back up your sensationalist headline. Just the off-chance that he might have had "considerable struggles in the sex area..." - a far cry indeed from "sex-maniac".

Yet another example of how you undermine your own credibility with half-remembered half-truths.

Pericles...

Augustines issues with lust are well known...

His views on Hell, and children... are probably better viewed in the bigger context of his overall theological position, regarding predestination, foreknowledge and Grace.

His thinking.. perhaps not every aspect of it, but much nevertheless, has shaped the Western mind, via the historical Church.
I find him valuable as he opposed or rejected some ideas which the Catholic church went into error on later.

His dialogues and teaching over heresies are instructive. Pelagianism also being 'proto Islam' theologically, and Manicheism having a different approach altogether.

MANICHAEISM: The universe is the temporary result of an attack from the realm of darkness on the realm of light, and was created by the Living Spirit, an emanation of the light realm, out of the mixture of light and darkness.

PELAGIANISM: It is the belief that original sin did not taint human nature (which, being created from God, was divine), and that mortal will is still capable of choosing good or evil without Divine aid.

DONATISM: The treatment of those who had recanted their faith during persecution. Also an important chunk of history.

Rather than pick at my knowledge of Augustine or Davies.. its worth while to examine Augustine as one of the major philosophical tributaries to modern thought. "Its not about me" ...

I've focused on one aspect of Augustines life, as a hook which I hope other enquring minds will use to direct their gaze to an important historic figure, and gain a deeper appreciation of the 'then', so as to better understand the 'now'.

His struggle at Carthage.

"There seethed all around me a cauldron of lawless loves. I loved not yet, yet I loved to love, and out of a deep-seated want, I hated myself for wanting not. I sought what I might love, in love with loving, and I hated safety... To love then, and to be beloved, was sweet to me; but more, when I obtained to enjoy the person I loved. I defiled, therefore, the spring of friendship with the filth of concupiscence, and I beclouded its brightness with the hell of lustfulness"

SPECIAL FOR BUSHBRED...

"Augustine remains a central figure, both within Christianity and in the history of Western thought, and is considered by modern historian Thomas Cahill to be the first medieval man and the last classical man.[9] In both his philosophical and theological reasoning, he was greatly influenced by Stoicism, Platonism and Neo-platonism, particularly by the work of Plotinus, author of the Enneads, probably through the mediation of Porphyry and Victorinus (as Pierre Hadot has argued). His generally favorable view of Neoplatonic thought contributed to the "baptism" of Greek thought and its entrance into the Christian and subsequently the European intellectual tradition."

MORE

His early and influential writing on the human will, a central topic in ethics, would become a focus for later philosophers such as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. In addition, Augustine was influenced by the works of Virgil (known for his teaching on language), Cicero (known for his teaching on argument), and Aristotle (particularly his Rhetoric and Poetics).

Bushy.. did we really need to wait for Peter Abelard to visit Moorish Spain to be connected to the Greek Philosophers ?

You are kidding, right?

>>Augustines issues with lust are well known...<<

But Boaz, these are not the words or thoughts of a "sex maniac".

"There seethed all around me a cauldron of lawless loves. I loved not yet, yet I loved to love, and out of a deep-seated want, I hated myself for wanting not."

Everyone around him was enjoying "lawless loves". Augustine appears to be concerned, not that he was "missing out", but that it didn't matter to him that he was. All his mates were happily bonking away, but he hated the fact that he wasn't motivated to do the same.

"I sought what I might love, in love with loving, and I hated safety... To love then, and to be beloved, was sweet to me; but more, when I obtained to enjoy the person I loved."

So he was a little more selective, "in love with loving" rather than in love with lust, it would appear. But when he did find someone, he enjoyed the physical side of it too.

So far, so normal.

"I defiled, therefore, the spring of friendship with the filth of concupiscence, and I beclouded its brightness with the hell of lustfulness"

Unfortunately, after he had done so he berated himself that by having sex, love automatically turns into lust.

It sounds familiar. The "sex is dirty" attitude is a not unfamiliar one amongst christian evangelists, many of whom seem to regard it as something degrading or degenerate.

But the confessions of a sex maniac? Not in this lifetime.

>>His views on Hell, and children... are probably better viewed in the bigger context of his overall theological position, regarding predestination, foreknowledge and Grace<<

That would be convenient, wouldn't it?

Are you - once again - being just the teensiest bit selective in what you would have us believe about this guy?

He considered the "problem" for many years before pronouncing that yes, little kiddies who hadn't done a single thing wrong in their short lives, would still go to hell.

Such humanity.

Dear dear Pericles :)

THANK GOD I am not one of your children :) I can imagine them coming home from school...and it begins..the 'interrogation'...then..the analysis....then the scrutiny..and the revised analysis :)

Finally.. with heads bowed, spirits dulled.. wills crushed they slink off to bed, totally cowered by the big giant "head" on Daddys shoulders.

Picking at them.. for the slightest fault ..... aah..
well..I'll come back when I have more time.. I need to zip off to Church this morning....and carry out some responsibilities.

Back to you soon mate.
BD

Pericles... back to you.

"Sex maniac"..... is a bit of artistic licence to create a 'tag' easily recognizable and grab some attention... the definition of a SM is quite subjective.

The problem with your "That would be convenient" bit is that I am not putting Augustine forward as the epitomy of pure Christianity. If I was..then by all means picky picky at whatever stranges of doctrinal or behavioral idiosyncracy you like.

I'm putting him forward as a great thinker who has influenced Western thought, in general and the Church in particular, I'm hoping that it will tweak with Bushy that awareness of Greek thought was well and truly a part of 'Christendom' in the 4th century, and showing also, that he was very human in his own struggles.

That's about as deep as this gets.

I did a little mini survey this morning at Church.. hardly anyone knows about the Nicene creed...but one chap who had an Anglican background knew it well "We used to recite it every week" he said.. well done Anglicans! I hereby begin my campaign for the Bretho's to also pay it some serious attention..

OH..if ur in Melbourne next Thursday evening, drop along to hear Alistair McGrath giving a talk.

cheers

So, you made up the bit about Augustine being a "sex maniac"?

>>"Sex maniac"..... is a bit of artistic licence to create a 'tag' easily recognizable and grab some attention<<

Does it not occur to you that it is precisely this "look at me" behaviour that I find objectionable? You may call my responses "playing the man" - I notice that on another thread I am one of those people who apparently makes personal attacks on you:

>>.. even when ceaselessly picked on and abused as I am by Pericles, CJ Morgan, Ginx, Bugsy, West,Alanpoi and a few hundred others :)<<

...but you invite such observation by being so casually mendacious in practically every post you write.

The reason it appears that I am "picking on you" (I don't believe I have been abusive, please correct me here if I am wrong) is that you regularly overstep the mark in comparing your religion with that of Islam, inevitably unfavourably to the latter, and most frequently adorned with the most egregious slurs, all in the name of "education", as you describe it.

As a result, your every utterance becomes a reason for me to draw your attention to their underlying theme, which is fear and hatred of Islam. And when you post inaccuracies and inventions on other topics - this being just one of many examples - I feel morally obligated to point out their flimsy basis in reality.

Once again you did not disappoint, this time by inventing a headline on the grounds of its potential to titillate. Shame.

>>Attacking other posters is never productive<<

So, don't take this as another "attack", Boaz, but as a piece of "education".

>>I'm putting him forward as a great thinker who has influenced Western thought<<

Which is why I pointed out that one of his "influences" was to conclude that innocent children must go to hell.

And just out of interest, I can still recite the Nicene creed after all these years. Some things just stick, don't they.

Pericleeeees.....

I did not 'invent' the 'sex maniac' thing.. when you know more about Augustine you will see where it comes from.

The term is not inaccurate... when examination of his own confessions is made. The pointttttt is... (follow that finger) I used that way of describing a man who 'had a great struggle with lust and sex'... which is.. not an 'invention'... unless you wish to define 'sex maniac' in some very narrow way.

Artistic licence.. Journalistic licence.. HEADLINE.. 'connect'... 'confront'.... its how journalism works.. once you have peoples attention you can then discuss issues better.

as I said.. I'm glad I'm not one of your kids.. I can imagine you interrogating them "Now.. did the teacher REALLY say that or are you 'adding' to his words" ? etc...

How in the WORLD did we get back on the 'Islam bashing' theme HERE ?

Perhaps you are the one with the 'obsession' :)

Does it occur to you that I may be juxtaposing the 'Priest abuses children' of 'now' with an example of a life which went the other way ? (though Augustine did not abuse children)

Some people will find an Islam basher in a garden gnome.. like you just did.

Another classic piece of "I didn't really mean it that way" sidestepping, Boaz. There's no doubt you improve each time, with no limits yet in sight.

>>The term is not inaccurate... when examination of his own confessions is made. The pointttttt is... (follow that finger) I used that way of describing a man who 'had a great struggle with lust and sex'... which is.. not an 'invention'... unless you wish to define 'sex maniac' in some very narrow way.<<

Right. So, your definition of a sex maniac includes anyone who has "a great struggle with lust and sex". My definition is, in contrast, "very narrow".

Phew! I will grant you that your definition cannot be accused of being narrow. The world, it may surprise you to know, is chock-a-block with people who struggle with lust and sex, but very few of them would welcome being called sex maniacs. In common parlance, the term is usually linked with behaviours such as promiscuity, perversion, deviancy, immoral profligacy or other visible excesses. It is desperately unfair to categorize someone's inner struggles with the nature of their sexuality as a mania.

>>Artistic licence.. Journalistic licence.. HEADLINE.. 'connect'... 'confront'.... its how journalism works.. once you have peoples attention you can then discuss issues better.<<

Or alternatively, you can ensure that they do not believe a word of what you are saying, thanks to the mendacity that so obviously forms a pivotal role in your approach to the topic.

>>as I said.. I'm glad I'm not one of your kids.. <<

That makes two of us, Boaz. I'd hate to think that I had brought up a child with such scant regard for the truth.

But then again, I have never visited physical violence on any of my kids, so you would at least be free of the shadow of that particular perversion.

>>How in the WORLD did we get back on the 'Islam bashing' theme HERE?<<

Easy. You post on a religious topic. I spot the fibs and the stretched logic. I then point out how this is the common theme in all your posts.

And while I'm on the subject...

>>Does it occur to you that I may be juxtaposing the 'Priest abuses children' of 'now' with an example of a life which went the other way ? (though Augustine did not abuse children)<<

Yes, that did occur to me. Which is another reason why it was important to wring out of you the logical path you took... if he wasn't a sex maniac to start with, then the "journey" you describe for him is patently meaningless, and therefore is not an example of "a life which went the other way". This is what I mean when I say "spot the fibs and the stretched logic". You do it all the time, probably without even realizing it.

As for Augustine "not abusing children", I can certainly buy that in a physical sense, he didn't take advantage of them as child-abusing priests have done in the more recent past. But he clearly didn't hold them in great regard, since he happily consigned the unbaptized ones to the fiery pits of hell, despite the fact that they were entirely innocent of anything remotely sinful.

Does this last fact not connect with anything, Boaz? Am I the only one who considers this attitude, this approach, this concept of innocents burning for all eternity, to be hovering on the edge of evil?

Even if it is only in his imagination.

Pericles: "Or alternatively, you can ensure that they do not believe a word of what you are saying, thanks to the mendacity that so obviously forms a pivotal role in your approach to the topic."

I've now reached the point that I assume that everything that Boazy posts is bulldust, unless he provides verifiable evidence from a reliable source - which is almost never the case.

Boazy thinks that some of us pick on him, but his pattern of mendacity has been pointed out to him far too often for it to be innocent carelessness. His dishonesty is quite deliberate, which is why he deserves for it to be brought to the forum's attention.

Interesting, I googled nicene creed and discovered that anglicans DO know it. Despite not being a regular church-goer these days (having developed a healthy mistrust of all institutions, including the religious), I can still rattle it off, as with most of the chants and verses.

Boazy, your heading got its bite, and surely you must have had some idea of the effect that you were going to generate. Stop complaining about being "attacked" by the likes of Pericles and Cj Morgan, given that they are mostly the only people that are willing to engage you in discussion, I'd have thought you a little grateful for it...