Today feels a little bit like summer is coming, the sun is out the birds are chirping and it's warm. That is one thing I have found since we have moved winter has felt a lot longer because its colder down/ up here. I should explain that Tokoroa is higher in altitude compared to Hamilton but it is south so in some senses it is both up and down. I do wonder if summer is going to be hotter though but I definitely expect it to be drier (Hamilton is in a swamp).
I continue to be glad that I split this book into four parts, even so it is continuing to be a mammoth task to get through although it is easier in writing style and content than The Histories, it is actually a larger book.
The Story
Book XI
The main discussion of this book is around fallen angels. Augustine's conclusions are that they were created at the same time as the angels who have keep their focus on God rather than on their themselves. Their pride is the reason they turned away from God and were separated from God and the light and are now synonymous with darkness. He also proposes that the angels were created when light and darkness were created and refutes the idea that the angels were created with the separation of the water as some others have said. He also proposes that when the angels were created that God had foreknowledge of those that would turn away and as such he created both those that would be light and those that in time would be darkness. It is also posited that the "Good" and "Bad" angels are not the same but that although they both have the same knowledge, and eternal existence, that the "Bad" angels because they fell to their pride, they did not have the felicity of the eternal existence being with God who had created them.
Book XII
This book starts with continued discussion of the nature of the angels, both good and bad, and whether they are co-eternal with the father. Augustine counters this with the fact that the bible records them as being created beings even though they are not mentioned directly in the creation account as he discussed in the previous book. He then moves on to man and his place in creation as the greatest of the mortal beings. He wanders away from this point for a while to discuss whether God choose all of a sudden to create the world, or rather whether is had always been a part of his plan and being. Augustine chooses the latter as it is the only way God could be eternally unchanging. From this he launches off into a discussion about the foreknowledge God had about how humanity would fall to sin and that his saving move in the coming, dying and resurrection of Christ was all part of the original plan not a reaction to what happened. He comes back around to angels with a proof that they are not creators of the lesser beings in body, but not in soul, as the Platonist posit but rather that it is God the father who is creator of all including man body and soul.
Book XII
This book starts with continued discussion of the nature of the angels, both good and bad, and whether they are co-eternal with the father. Augustine counters this with the fact that the bible records them as being created beings even though they are not mentioned directly in the creation account as he discussed in the previous book. He then moves on to man and his place in creation as the greatest of the mortal beings. He wanders away from this point for a while to discuss whether God choose all of a sudden to create the world, or rather whether is had always been a part of his plan and being. Augustine chooses the latter as it is the only way God could be eternally unchanging. From this he launches off into a discussion about the foreknowledge God had about how humanity would fall to sin and that his saving move in the coming, dying and resurrection of Christ was all part of the original plan not a reaction to what happened. He comes back around to angels with a proof that they are not creators of the lesser beings in body, but not in soul, as the Platonist posit but rather that it is God the father who is creator of all including man body and soul.
Book XIII
We move on with this book to a discussion on the nature of mans souls and on the breath that God used to breath life into Adam. Augustine discusses both at length and concludes that mans soul is immortal and that the first death, that is the separation of the soul from the body, comes to all men through the fall to sin of Adam. That is to say that Adam before he sinned and walked away from God was immortal in both his body and his soul and that in the process of God punishing him for that sin his physical nature was changed and that all born through him, i.e. all humanity, now come to this first death. The second death he speaks of then is the judgment that is when the soul and the spiritual body are sent to their eternal punishment. That is to say that they are then separated permanently from God.
As part of his discussion the topic the breath given to Adam is much discussed raising ideas such as whether it was the Holy Spirit that was breathed out or whether it was just, as you and I would, a breath of air and whether it was the breathing into man a soul or whether he was already living having been formed by God. He also spends a little time discussing the differences in the method of creation between the animals and the personal focus we see in the creation of man.
Book XIV
This book deals mainly with lust and sex, mainly around the idea of whether there was the possibility of sex without lust before man first sinned. Augustine's position is that there would have still been sex for reproduction but that man would have had no lust towards eve and would have had full control of his reproductive parts rather than them "having a mind of their own" so to speak.
Book XV
This book starts with a quick out of sequence aside into the time of Abraham and Sarah and contrasts the child of promise, that is Sarah's child Issac with, the natural child of Hagar, Ishmael. This is used as an example of the differences between the City of God and the City of Man.
We then jump back to the sons of Adam and Eve and their sacrifices to God. Cain, the elder, presents a sacrifice that is deemed unworthy and Able, the younger, presents a sacrifice that is worthy. Augustine spends a while discussing how the sacrifice was unworthy and how God had warned Cain not to step into sin. For those who don't know the story he then kills Able and is exiled by God. Adam and Eve have another son, Seth, who becomes the son through which their descendants are named He follows from this into how the sons of Cain became the first city of man and how the sons of Seth became the first City of God on earth.
Augustine continues with exposition around the generations that are listed in Genesis and comes to the conclusion that they are not named for the first son but rather the sons named are the ones that lead in genealogy to Noah much like Matthews genealogy of Christ.
He finishes this book by spending a little time on Noah and the Ark and defending their accuracy as historical fact as well as allegory.
Book XVI
This book covers from Noah to the promised land. Though it covers such a wide time span Augustine spends most of his time on the generations to Egypt with a tighter focus on the generations to Abraham. Augustine extrapolates the City of God in pilgrimage, as he calls the earthly City of God with those who are righteous through faith, to the two sons of Noah who covered his nakedness, that is Shem and Japheth. To these Noah pronounces blessings but to his middle son Ham he prophesy his offspring's conquest by those of his brother. Augustine sees Ham as the father of the city of man in this time period, with a belief that until the return of Christ there will be a city of man on the earth.
Augustine goes on to discuss the sons of Abraham first Ishmael, the son of the slave, then Issac, the son of the promise, and then the unnamed children that Abraham had with his new wife, which Augustine assumes to be younger, after Sarah's death. Again he spends sometime showing how they show the City of God and the city of man, he also spends sometime working through some of the allegory of the sons and how Issac can represent the church, that is Christians, as sons of the promise and of faith and how Ishmael can be seen as the Jews who are Abraham's descendants by blood. He also likens those who are heretics or otherwise mislead to the other children of Abraham in his late age, as they are a shadow of the promise without substance.
Reflections
Book XI
This book explores something I really hadn't thought much about. Did God know that the Devil and some other angels would break communion with him and fall to darkness? Well we know that God is omnipotent so he must have but Augustine hashes out the small details that go along with it. The other thing I had never noticed is that there is no mention of the angels in the Genesis account. We see them through the old testament and some even give their names so they clearly exist. Because of this Augustine spends some time on when they might have been created to show that they may not have been left out and that they could still have not been created before the creation story, and to in turn prove the completeness of the Genesis account.
Also rather surprisingly Augustine doesn't get around to declaring that the fallen angels are the demons of which he speaks of in earlier books though this seems self evident from the way he describes the fallen angels as darkness.
Book XII
This book, once you get past the meandering back and forward through topics, ends with a great discussion on God and his part in creating the world and how he chose to do it. Augustine points out that he created humanity from one man, but when he was creating other "beasts" the text suggests he created enough to fill the world all at once. What he doesn't point out but I think is worthy of note is the parallel between creating humanity through one man who sinned and therefore all die through one man, that Christ as one man defeats sin and death and brings life to all humanity.
Again I feel that having read the Platonists would give me more insight into some of his arguments against both the idea that the world is cyclic in that those who are born will be born again in physical bodies, that is to come back to struggle from felicity. Augustine refutes this with an argument again of how could man have eternal life in felicity if he must again come back to the struggle of life. It just means I have to trust Augustine's interpretations of the Platonist view. There is no remedy for that as I just haven't progressed far enough through the BC list to cover it and this was always the negative side of deciding to start one of my AD lists along side it.
Book XIII
I found the discussion on the breath given to Adam to be quite interesting, I had not put any thought previously into whether the breath of life given to Adam was indeed the Holy Spirit or just the breath of God. Augustine concludes that it is just the breath of God and that is also what I had automatically thought but it has been interesting to consider.
I also found the discussion on whether Adam was immortal in body before the fall interesting and another thing I had not thought about in my reading of the bible text. Augustine's conclusion that he must have been is both easy to accept and yet rather unnecessary to the general understanding of the text. Actually a lot of these later arguments are starting to fall into that category, but I guess without these answers there is many a way to fall into heresy.
Book XIV
Maybe it was just the subject matter but this book seemed to go over the same concept repeatedly without adding much. Augustine is clearly of the opinion that before that before the fall was without lust of the sexual variety but that sex for procreation was still possible even if all we know is that Adam and Eve didn't bear children before they first sinned. I think that sex was clearly designed for pleasure and as such there must still have been a depth of feeling and love involved with it before sin entered the human race. I think Augustine's idea of without lust is correct but I feel he takes it to far into the realm of lack of feeling.
Book XV
Augustine spends a fair bit of his time in this book discussing and then throwing out the idea that the years of the ages in the genealogies, and the heresy of the time, that the years in that ancient time were equal to 10 of our years. One of the problem with this is that it would make the fathers to young to be sexually mature when they are said to have had their son. This is a heresy that I had not previously heard of, but I am unsure whether this is because Augustine disputed it so well and the modern church has not returned to the heresy or rather if it is just because it was a little known heresy to start with.
Dovetailing with this is Augustine's point that the genealogy is of select people so that it comes to Noah rather than first sons. This again is something I had not really put any thought into but it does help to answer why they were so old when they had the listed sons and surely they were sexually mature before 100.
The other thing that came up that I was not aware of was that there were discrepancies between the Septuagint and the Vulgate translations. Augustine discusses the particular discrepancies between the ages when the sons were born between the texts and generally refers to the Vulgate as having come from the Jewish texts and the translated Greek Septuagint that he had previously been working from. I knew about both translations but had not realised that in writing the Vulgate there had been a return of fidelity in the text for the Latin reader.
Book XVI
I feel like I'm saying I hadn't considered an idea before a lot at this point. That being said when Augustine puts together the Allegory of Abraham's sons and the Jews, the Church and the Heretics it made me stop and think, I'm used to seeing prophecies of Christ and foreshadowing of his first(and second) coming through out the Old Testament, but I had never put any thought into the Allegory surrounding the Church as Christ's bride but also as a descendant of the promise through Issac. As it is in the Epistles I had considered that the Church were descendants of Abraham through faith but the idea that you could ascribe as allegory the Jews to Abraham's son Ishmael, his son by natural means, was something I had not considered.
Book XII
This book, once you get past the meandering back and forward through topics, ends with a great discussion on God and his part in creating the world and how he chose to do it. Augustine points out that he created humanity from one man, but when he was creating other "beasts" the text suggests he created enough to fill the world all at once. What he doesn't point out but I think is worthy of note is the parallel between creating humanity through one man who sinned and therefore all die through one man, that Christ as one man defeats sin and death and brings life to all humanity.
Again I feel that having read the Platonists would give me more insight into some of his arguments against both the idea that the world is cyclic in that those who are born will be born again in physical bodies, that is to come back to struggle from felicity. Augustine refutes this with an argument again of how could man have eternal life in felicity if he must again come back to the struggle of life. It just means I have to trust Augustine's interpretations of the Platonist view. There is no remedy for that as I just haven't progressed far enough through the BC list to cover it and this was always the negative side of deciding to start one of my AD lists along side it.
Book XIII
I found the discussion on the breath given to Adam to be quite interesting, I had not put any thought previously into whether the breath of life given to Adam was indeed the Holy Spirit or just the breath of God. Augustine concludes that it is just the breath of God and that is also what I had automatically thought but it has been interesting to consider.
I also found the discussion on whether Adam was immortal in body before the fall interesting and another thing I had not thought about in my reading of the bible text. Augustine's conclusion that he must have been is both easy to accept and yet rather unnecessary to the general understanding of the text. Actually a lot of these later arguments are starting to fall into that category, but I guess without these answers there is many a way to fall into heresy.
Book XIV
Maybe it was just the subject matter but this book seemed to go over the same concept repeatedly without adding much. Augustine is clearly of the opinion that before that before the fall was without lust of the sexual variety but that sex for procreation was still possible even if all we know is that Adam and Eve didn't bear children before they first sinned. I think that sex was clearly designed for pleasure and as such there must still have been a depth of feeling and love involved with it before sin entered the human race. I think Augustine's idea of without lust is correct but I feel he takes it to far into the realm of lack of feeling.
Book XV
Augustine spends a fair bit of his time in this book discussing and then throwing out the idea that the years of the ages in the genealogies, and the heresy of the time, that the years in that ancient time were equal to 10 of our years. One of the problem with this is that it would make the fathers to young to be sexually mature when they are said to have had their son. This is a heresy that I had not previously heard of, but I am unsure whether this is because Augustine disputed it so well and the modern church has not returned to the heresy or rather if it is just because it was a little known heresy to start with.
Dovetailing with this is Augustine's point that the genealogy is of select people so that it comes to Noah rather than first sons. This again is something I had not really put any thought into but it does help to answer why they were so old when they had the listed sons and surely they were sexually mature before 100.
The other thing that came up that I was not aware of was that there were discrepancies between the Septuagint and the Vulgate translations. Augustine discusses the particular discrepancies between the ages when the sons were born between the texts and generally refers to the Vulgate as having come from the Jewish texts and the translated Greek Septuagint that he had previously been working from. I knew about both translations but had not realised that in writing the Vulgate there had been a return of fidelity in the text for the Latin reader.
Book XVI
I feel like I'm saying I hadn't considered an idea before a lot at this point. That being said when Augustine puts together the Allegory of Abraham's sons and the Jews, the Church and the Heretics it made me stop and think, I'm used to seeing prophecies of Christ and foreshadowing of his first(and second) coming through out the Old Testament, but I had never put any thought into the Allegory surrounding the Church as Christ's bride but also as a descendant of the promise through Issac. As it is in the Epistles I had considered that the Church were descendants of Abraham through faith but the idea that you could ascribe as allegory the Jews to Abraham's son Ishmael, his son by natural means, was something I had not considered.
The fact that Augustine put so much into Noah's sons and their reaction to his nakedness really surprised me I had not spent much time considering the implications or even just seeing it as just this odd piece of the text. Augustine takes the sons reactions and points out that the one who is cursed is the one who's reaction was to go and tell the others, that is to point out the nakedness rather than the two who are blessed who show their father the proper respect and cover him without looking. Though I wonder how they could have done so if they had not been told about it by their brother. Some more pondering needed on this one.
Comparisons
As I have said before there is not much external I can compare this to at this point, so instead I will compare it to itself. This section of City of God moves away from external threats and deals more with heresy within the church, it does this so far by stepping through the text of the bible itself, though it still tries to only concern itself with the two cities.
It has been refreshing to move onto text that is based on something (or things) that I have read in detail, though this does not stop Augustine referencing a philosopher or two in the process.
Augustine continues to show a snapshot into the heresies (and apologetics) of the past, both those we still have some people falling for today, and some I have never heard of before.
As I have said before there is not much external I can compare this to at this point, so instead I will compare it to itself. This section of City of God moves away from external threats and deals more with heresy within the church, it does this so far by stepping through the text of the bible itself, though it still tries to only concern itself with the two cities.
It has been refreshing to move onto text that is based on something (or things) that I have read in detail, though this does not stop Augustine referencing a philosopher or two in the process.
Augustine continues to show a snapshot into the heresies (and apologetics) of the past, both those we still have some people falling for today, and some I have never heard of before.
Have you read The City of God? If so what did you think of it?
Want to read The City of God but haven't? Hopefully this inspires you to take the time to do so.
Get a copy of The City of God.
Get a copy of The City of God.
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