Re: The joys of wickedness
Posted by kit on 2025-May-16 08:15:05, FridayIn reply to Re: The joys of wickedness posted by diogenes on 2025-May-16 06:02:42, Friday
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I find it funny that Augustine is so unattractive to you, as he is one of the ancient figures I find most instinctively lovable. (Maybe not quite so much as the Cappadocian Fathers, who combined a deep Christian theological profundity with a much more optimistic view of human nature.) I don't think that Auguistine always thought through his theological positions in the way that his modern interlocutors do (he was mostly uninterested in the questions that have tended to obsess later generations), and many of his terms - like 'salvation' - probably meant something quite different for him than they did for medieval Christians. The one thing I will say for Augustine is that whenever he talks about sin, you always feel (or I always feel) that he really means "my sin." He was obsessively introspective, obsessively worried about his own soul. And yet the impression I am left with after reading the Confessions is that for Augustine, Augustine barely exists. He is little more than a cipher or a catalogue of failures: a momentary gloom cast on the brilliant light of eternity. The hero of the Confessions is God - Augustine's life is just the empty and unpromising field on which God works. I remember this every time a well-meaning psychotherapist tells me I need to work on my self-esteem. If you told Augustine about your fruit-stealing exploits as a boy, you get the feeling he would flog himself and cry "mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!" That's a Christian kind of egotism in my view. |
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