“The glorious city of God is my theme in this work… a city surpassingly glorious.
We must also speak of the earthly city, which, though it be mistress of the nations, is itself ruled by its lust of rule. —Augustine, The City of God
Tag: Augustine
The August Theologian: The Beautiful
All things are beautiful because you made them, but you who made everything are inexpressibly more beautiful. —Augustine, Confessions
The August Theologian: The Authentic Happy Life
There is a delight which is given not to the wicked (Isa. 48: 22), but to those who worship you for no reward save the joy that you yourself are to them. That is the authentic happy life, to set one’s joy on you, grounded in you and caused by you. That is the real thing, and there is no other. Those who think that the happy life is found elsewhere, pursue another joy and not the true one. Nevertheless their will remains drawn towards some image of the true joy.” —Augustine, Confessions
The August Theologian: How Heresy Serves the Church
“The rejection of heretics brings into relief what your church holds and what sound doctrine maintains.” —Augustine of Hippo, Confessions
The August Theologian: A Confession about Confessions We Must Confess
“He who is making confession to you is not instructing you of that which is happening within him. The closed heart does not shut out your eye, and your hand is not kept away by the hardness of humanity, but you melt that when you wish, either in mercy or in punishment, and there is ‘none who can hide from your heat’ (Ps. 18: 7).” —Augustine, Confessions
The August Theologian: Growing up by the Scriptures into the Scriptures
“I therefore decided to give attention to the holy scriptures and to find out what they were like. And this is what met me: something neither open to the proud nor laid bare to mere children; a text lowly to the beginner but, on further reading, of mountainous difficulty and enveloped in mysteries. I was not in any state to be able to enter into that, or to bow my head to climb its steps. What I am now saying did not then enter my mind when I gave my attention to the scripture. It seemed to me unworthy in comparison with the dignity of Cicero. My inflated conceit shunned the Bible’s restraint, and my gaze never penetrated to its inwardness. Yet the Bible was composed m such a way that as beginners mature, its meaning grows with them. I disdained to be a little beginner. Puffed up with pride, I considered myself a mature adult.” —Augustine, Confessions
The August Theologian: Pleasing Pleasures
“If physical objects give you pleasure, praise God for them and return love to their Maker lest, in the things that please you, you displease him.” —Augustine, Confessions
The August Theologian: Enticing Education
“This experience sufficiently illustrates the truth that free curiosity has greater power to stimulate learning than rigorous coercion. Nevertheless, the free-ranging flux of curiosity is channeled by discipline under you laws, God.” —Augustine, Confessions
The August Theologian: What We Were Made For
“You stir man to take pleasure in praising you, because you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” —Augustine of Hippo, Confessions
No Other Boast 