Augustine

• St. Augustine said that the head and heart are united
• We are made in the image of God. God is infinite Truth and infinite Love.
• “Amor meus, pondus” means my love is my gravity.
• St. Augustine believed in the synthesis of faith and reason
• There are two crises that define present culture:

  1. the most important feature of modern civilization is the unquestionable decline of religion.
  2. the crisis of reason and decline of faith
• The City of God is about choosing one of 2 cities:

  1. the City of God (an invisible community of those who love God as God)
  2. the City of the world (people who love the world and themselves as their God)
• confessions is about man’s search for God and as well as God’s search for man
• On the trinity was Augustine’s response to errors about the central doctrine of Christian theology
• Without God, man is living tragedy. we need to discover our own happiness.
• there are 4 homes

  1. nature below
  2. others around
  3. self
  4. God
• Man is a creature of nature but we are not 100% at home in nature.
• nature does not fully give us the transcendentals.
• Hope comes from a God free of imperfections
• We hope for a perfect God that loves and saves us from ourselves.
• Faith is a response to objective divine revelation.
• we can perfect reason with faith
• faith is knowing, loving, and trusting God
• faith and reason are ways to wisdom
• Augustine Platonized Christianity
• The city of God interprets all of human history as the drama of divine providence and human free choice
• the central plot of human history if the conflict between the two cities in the City of God
• Confessions is the same drama as the City of God but in St. Augustine’s life
• The Trinity is the primary, central doctrine in Christianity
• Summum Bonum is the highest good
• Socrates and Summum Donum

  1. discover your unique individual talents, desires, happiness
  2. discover the universal human situation, laws of human nature, and meaning of life
• St. Augustine and Summum Donum

  1. without God, man is living tragedy
  2. man is a seeker, lower and needs to discover and attain his own happiness
• nature limits man from finding the transcendentals
• the transcendentals are truth, beauty, goodness
• Nature may oppose us but we hav transcended it with(hint: FCALL)…

  1. Family and friends
  2. culture and civilizaiton
  3. art and science
  4. lanuage and literature
  5. law and order
• Nature is necessary but it is not home
• there is a conflict between our high ideals (aspirations for transcendentals) and our ability to attain them, so we betray our own ideals
• if there is any hope, it must come from God
• The ultimate goal is to know and see God