The SECRET MEANING of AUGUSTINE'S CONFESSIONS & The WOMAN HE LOVED

[@sanjamrse7784]

Misster Paul could you please make a video about Saint Augustine, Cornelius Jansen and jansenism.

[@TruthWillSF]

If on the contrary we presupposed individual lives, namely, ourselves, as the spectators, then that life which is posited outside our own restricted spheres is an infinite life with an infinite variety, infinite oppositions, infinite relations; as a multiplicity, it is an infinite multiplicity of organizations or individuals, and as a unity it is one unique organized whole, divided and unified in itself - Nature. Nature is a positing of life, for reflection has applied to life its concepts of relation and separation, of the self-subsistent particular (something restricted) and the unifying universal (something unrestricted), and by positing these has turned life into nature. Now because life, as an infinity of living beings or as an infinity of figures, is thus, as nature, an infinitely finite, an unrestricted restrictedness, and because this union and this separation of the finite and the infinite are within nature, nature is not itself life but is only a life crystallized by reflection, even though it be treated by reflection in the worthiest manner.[3] Therefore life in thinking and in contemplating nature still senses (or however else one may describe the mode of apprehension involved) this contradiction, this one opposition which still exists between itself and the infinite life; or, in other words, reason still recognizes the one-sidedness of this mode of treating life and of this mode of positing [concepts]. Out of the mortal and perishable figure, out of what is self-opposed and self-antagonistic, this thinking life raises that living being, which would be free from transience; raises a relation between the multiplex elements which is not dead or killing, a relation which is not a [bare] unity, a conceptual abstraction, but is all-living and all-powerful infinite life; and this life it calls God. In this process it is no longer [merely] thinking or contemplating, because its object does not carry in itself anything reflected, anything dead.[4] This self-elevation of man, not from the finite to the infinite (for these terms are only products of mere reflection, and as such their separation is absolute), but from finite life to infinite life, is religion. We may call infinite life a spirit on contrast with the abstract multiplicity, for spirit is the living unity of the manifold if it is contrasted with the manifold as spirit’s configuration and not as a mere dead multiplicity; contrasted with the latter, spirit would be nothing but a bare unity which is called law and is something purely conceptual and not a living being. This spirit is an animating law in union with the manifold which is then itself animated. When man takes this animated manifold as a multiplicity of many individuals, yet as connected with the animating spirit, then these single lives become organs, and the infinite whole becomes an infinite totality of life. When he takes the infinite life as the spirit of the whole and at the same time as a living [being] outside himself (since he himself is restricted), and when he puts himself at the same time outside his restricted self in rising toward the living being and intimately uniting himself with him, then he worships God. Please 😢

[@joshuavanderplaats]

Excellent. It will forever be a problem for westerners, despite its christology, that God can be in something while not being that something. And somehow by God being in it (while not uniting to it in truth in order to be called “it”), it will forever make philosophers philosophize. Perhaps this is why Eastern Christians emphasized theosis, yet are still trapped in never experiencing what that should imply. We see no married saints who are not ascetics. So I can hardly be convinced otherwise.

[@PaulJosephKrause]

This is broadly correct. Eastern Christianity never developed a strong philosophical tradition precisely because it’s about embracing mystery. Western theology has become so rational it tries to rationalize mystery!

[@jairpoppelwell2120]

The problem is not hard in a paradigm in which substance does not mean 'physical mater' God is not 'in' anything but all things are in God, can quote Augustine or whoever if you want confirmation of that point. You can be in a house without being the house. The Wests 'Sanctificafion' is Theosis from a different direction. 'Perfectionism' is a third take on the same central concept. Sanctification focuses on purging existing sins, perfection on releasing desire for sin, and Theosis oneness with God. Theosis is destination focused while the Westen versions are more focused on the route itself. The east has no lack of philosophy now or in the past. The Greeks specifically have a huge chip on their shoulders about Latin and western thought and put on airs or being more mystical and less rational as if that was a badge of honour. But the west is really not any less mystical, and while it does write more that is more due to the west being freer and richer (specifically, not subjugated by outsiders as much). Also the east in general has had issues with uneducated clergy, probably due to allowing simony (which is the main reason for the schism). So of course they have less theological output when a non trivial amount of the church is being used as a financial investment without care for anything Christian. Of course the west struggles with simony in all its forms as well (even televangelists are a kind of modern simonist) but there's a big difference between 'Struggles against' and 'openly tolerates' when it comes to sin. A world of difference.

[@adar7993]

Yeah, he was pretty upset about those pears.