So under the three forms of lust I have considered the sicknesses of my sins, and I have invoked your right hand to save me (Ps. 102:3). ... This is why I lost you: you do not condescend to be possessed together with falsehood.

augustine, confessions, x.66

structural hypothesis: three forms of lust, he discusses all three in books 5 and 6 (right?) and there are three "grant what you command and command what you will" statements in book 10, all paired with "and you command continence." focus of the work is augustine's search for sexual purity. he finds that he can be a stand-in husband or warden of Christ's bride. and with such a wave of my hand i dismiss all "sexual tension and frustration" and "psycho-sexual disorder" theories of augustine. by the end of the work, any of this so-called sexual tension is resolved because augustine has found the bride he is responsible for.

My entire hope is exclusively in your very great mercy. Grant what you command, and command what you will.

augustine, confessions, x.40

Ecce autem elapsus Pyrrhi de caede Polites,

unus natorum Priami, per tela, per hostis

porticibus longis fugit, et uacua atria lustrat

saucius: illum ardens infesto volnere Pyrrhus

insequitur, iam iamque manu tenet et premit hasta.

Ut tandem ante oculos evasit et ora parentum,

concidit, ac multo vitam cum sanguine fudit.

Hic Priamus, quamquam in media iam morte tenetur,

non tamen abstinuit, nec voci iraeque pepercit:

'At tibi pro scelere,' exclamat, 'pro talibus ausis,

di, si qua est caelo pietas, quae talia curet,

persolvant grates dignas et praemia reddant

debita, qui nati coram me cernere letum

fecisti et patrios foedasti funere voltus.

At non ille, satum quo te mentiris, Achilles

talis in hoste fuit Priamo; sed iura fidemque

supplicis erubuit, corpusque exsangue sepulchro

reddidit Hectoreum, meque in mea regna remisit.'

Sic fatus senior, telumque imbelle sine ictu

coniecit, rauco quod protinus aere repulsum

e summo clipei nequiquam umbone pependit.

Cui Pyrrhus: 'Referes ergo haec et nuntius ibis

Pelidae genitori; illi mea tristia facta

degeneremque Neoptolemum narrare memento.

Nunc morere.' Hoc dicens altaria ad ipsa trementem

traxit et in multo lapsantem sanguine nati,

implicuitque comam laeua, dextraque coruscum

extulit, ac lateri capulo tenus abdidit ensem.

Haec finis Priami fatorum; hic exitus illum

sorte tulit, Troiam incensam et prolapsa videntem

Pergama, tot quondam populis terrisque superbum

regnatorem Asiae. Iacet ingens litore truncus,

avolsumque umeris caput, et sine nomine corpus.

virgil's aeneid, 2.526-558, the mors priami.

call me blasphemous, but the fact that a human being wrote this is proof that we are made in the image of God.

the suspension of saucius until the fourth line, past even the third, makes eliot himself (the master of suspension) look amateurish.

"nunc morere" may be the first time anyone in literature conveys this idea this succinctly. bruce willis has no clue what he's doing compared to virgil.

550-553 are arguably the crowning glory, with an image mary flannery could only dream of creating: the father slipping in his son's blood as he's dragged to the altar by his hair. capulo, in addition to hilt, also means coffin. the resulting double meaning ought to have made every poet since tear his hear in frustration.

if all of philosophy is a footnote to plato, all western poetry is a footnote to virgil. not that i really grant either, but if you grant the first i'd call you names if you didn't admit to the second.

Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.

augustine, confessions, x.38

this passage is to my soul what bright light is after hours in the pitch black. after 1700 years, augustine's love for God is as fiery in the darkness of the world as it was while rome crumbled into black ruins. this has made me create a new category for the common-blog: "most beautiful things ever written."

The answer must be this: their love for truth takes the form that they love something else and want this object of their love to be the truth; and because they do not wish to be deceived, they do not wish to be persuaded that they are mistaken. And so they hate the truth for the sake of the object which they love instead of the truth. They love truth for the light it sheds, but hate it when it shows them up as being wrong (John 3:20, 5:35).

augustine, confessions, x.34

again, the eastern church comes to mind, or at least the Orthodox i've had contact with. but God help me, that last sentence is true of my heart more than anyone i know.

Therefore, my God, my confession before you is made both in silence and not in silence. It is silent in that it is no audible sound; but in love it cries aloud. If anything I say to men is right, that is what you have first heard from me. Moreover, you hear nothing true from my lips which you have not first told me.

augustine, confessions, x.2

But now the goods I sought were no longer in the external realm, nor did I seek for them with bodily eyes in the light of this sun. In desiring to find their delight in externals, they easily become empty and expend their energies on 'the things which are seen and temporal' (2 Cor. 4:18). With starving minds they can only lick the images of these things (Plotinus 1.6.8.8).

augustine, confessions, ix.10

sadly enough, this picture reminds me as much of the eastern Orthodox church as of the pagans. Blessed are they who have not seen, yet believe!

So I hurried back to the place where Alypius was sitting. There I had put down the book fo the apostle when I got up. I seized it, opened it and in silence read the first passage on which my eyes lit: 'Not in riots and drunken parties, not in eroticism and indecendies, not in strife and rivalry, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in its lusts' (Rom 13:13-14).

I neither wished nor needed to read further. At once, with the last words of this sentence, it was as if a light of relief from all anxiety flooded into my heart. All the shadows of doubt were dispelled.

augustine, confessions, viii.29

like aeneas, augustine hears the messenger from God. mercury gets his attention (tole et lege) and then gives him the message from God. this done, dido (sexual lust) is no more than another creusa (manicheeanism perhaps?), and "tenuisque recessit in auras" (Aeneid, 2.791)

edit: of course, creusa is actually the woman he leaves in carthage. she bears him a son, but she's taken away by the counsel of monica (aphrodite, who shows augustine what it means to love). at another level, though, creusa could be platonism and dido manicheeanism, the first giving him actual knowledge of God, the second pretending to be the fulfillment of that knowledge and being therefore the worst kind of lie. i like both explanations.

For you evil does not exist at all, and not only for you but for your created universe, because there is nothing outside it which could break in and destroy the order which you have imposed upon it. But in the parts of the universe, there are certain elements which are thought evil because of a conflict of interest.... All these elements which have some mutual conflict of interest are congruous with the inferior part of the universe which we call earth.... Because my soul did not dare to say that my God displeased me, it refused to attribute to you whatever was displeasing. Hence it came to adopt the opinion that there are two substances.

augustine, confessions, vii.19

It pleased you, Lord, to 'remove from Jacob the opprobrium of being junior' (Ps. 118:22), and that the 'elder should serve the younger' (Rom 9:13); and you called the Gentiles into your inheritance. And I had come to you from the Gentiles and fixed my attention of the gold which you willed your people to take from Egypt, since the gold was yours, wherever it was.

augustine, confessions, vii.15

In reading the Platonic books I found expressed in different words, and in a variety of ways, that the Son, 'being in the form of the Father did not think it theft to be equal with God,' because by nature he is that very thing. But that 'he took on himself the form of a servant and emptied himself, was made in the likeness of men and found to behave as a man, and humbled himself being made obedient to death, even the death of the cross so that God exalted him' from the dead 'and gave him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should box, of celestial, terrestrial, and infernal beings, and every tongue should confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father' (Phil.2:6-11) -- that these books do not have.

augustine, confessions, vii.14

[The New Testament] is a Jewish book, telling Jewish-style stories, yet telling them for the world. It is a book of the world, retelling the story of the world as the story of Israel, and the story of Israel as the story of Jesus, in order to subvert the world's stories, and to lay before the world the claim of Jesus to be its sovereign. It is a Christian book, pouring new wine into the old bottles of Judaism, and new Jewish wine into the old bottles of the world, intending that this double exercise should have its inevitable and explosive double effect.

bishop n.t. wright, the new testament and the people of God, p.469

But why did Jews persecute Christians? Were they not both in the same boat -- branded as atheists, regarded as the scum of the earth, scorned when doing badly and resented when doing well? The answer here clearly lies in the ferocity of polemic between different pressure-groups, parties and/or sects within the same parent body. Sibling rivalry is fiercest when the siblings have an inheritance to share, or when one feels that another is ruining the chances of any of them inheriting it at all.

bishop n.t. wright, new testament and the people of God, p.450

interesting. also why i think it likely that islam arose out of arian/jacobite heresy and is not simply a different religion than Christianity.

In particular, it is vital to the whole thrust of John's theology that the logos becomes a human being. Sirach, somewhat loftily, could not envisage a human being ever fully fathoming Wisdom. John sees this Wisdom becoming, fully, a human being. In doing so he is still conscious of writing a new version of Genesis. The climax of the fist chapter of Genesis is the creation of the human being in the image of the creator. The climax of John's prologue is the coming to full humanness of the logos, who, in taking on so many of the characteristics of Wisdom, may be assumed also to be the divine image-bearer. When Pilate declares to the crowds, 'Here is the man,' John intends his readers to hear echoes that have been present since the very beginning. Jesus, as the logos having become flesh, is the truly human being.

bishop n.t. wright, new testament and the people of God, p.416

Mark's whole telling of the story of Jesus is designed to function as an apocalypse. The reader is constantly invited by the gospel as a whole to do what the disciples are invited to do in the parable-chapter, that is, to come closer and discover the inner secret behind the strange outer story.

bishop n.t. wright, the new testament and the people of God, p.395

this is going to be very influential in my upcoming hermeneutic project on Mark for leithart.

I loved beautiful things of a lower order, and I was going down to the depths.

confessions, iv.20

He who for us is life itself descended here and endured our death and slew it by the abundance of his life. In a thunderous voice he called us to return to him, at that secret place where he came forth to us.

confessions, iv.19

fragmentary thoughts on an aesthetic

"Augustine wants to praise God, but he has to know what God is to praise Him... Augustine must speak, and he can't speak."

dr. mac in traditio lecture on augustine's confessions, 24 jan 2011.

we here, in this world, need tension in our art: pain, suffering, some acknowledgment of evil. unless the artist shows us both the already and the not yet, we feel cheated. tragedies move us but so do comedies, and how does this make since unless we agree that both are in a sense true? the already is comedic, that Christ has already taken the world back, that knees everywhere already bow to Him, that the victory has been won. yet here we are, and the kingdom has not come on earth as it is in heaven. the not yet, the tragic, must be present in our work. more importantly, it must be taken seriously in our art. this can obviously be done either by writing hamlet or a modest proposal. both acknowledge tragedy, only the latter makes it conspicuous by its absence.

unless our beauty is pained, it rings hollow as long as we dwell here in the vale of tears.

and this makes me all the more excited and sure that we shall have an eternity of creativity when there is no more not yet. think of the comedy we can write when there is no more need for sadness. no really. no more deep longing in our souls, no more nameless void left unfilled. Christ seen as He is and all thereby made right. i think shakespeare will have himself a hell of a time.

My desire is for you, justice and innocence, you are lovely and splendid to honest eyes; the satiety of your love is insatiable. ... As an adolescent I went astray from you, my God, far from your unmoved stability. I became to myself a region of destitution.

confessions, ii.18

My infancy is long dead and I am alive. But you, Lord, live and in you nothing dies.

confessions, i.9

[monica is begging bishop ambrose for help with augustine, her prodigal son]

When he had said this to her, she was still unwilling to take No for an answer. She pressed him with more begging and with floods of tears, asking him to see me and debate with me. He was now irritated and a little vexed and said: 'Go away from me: as you live, it cannot be that the son of these tears should perish.' In her conversations with me she often used to recall that she had taken these words as if they had sounded from heaven.

confessions, iii.21

this quotation has haunted my memory since i read it for the first time. must have been close to 7 years ago. anyhow, i finally got it tonight. she is hannah, bereaved of children and shamed before the other women. her husband is dead, just as elkanah is a dead man as far as hannah (and the fruit of her womb) is concerned. ambrose is eli, who, in wanting to get rid of the persistent widow, judges rightly and promises redemption. and augustine will, like samuel, prophesy and lead his people out of the dark days of a dying dynasty. when the rest of the world seems to shatter (when the ark is taken), samuel is the unifying force behind israel, bringing justice beneath the terebinth trees. so as rome crumbles will augustine fight heresy from hippo.

Indeed the social bond which should exist between God and us is violated when the nature of which he is the author is polluted by a perversion of sexual desire.

confessions, iii.15

interesting that st augustine seems to be the first (other than st paul, of course) to boil the root problem of sexual sin down to a crime against community. sexual sin is, then, a more grievous sin because it's more innately destructive to community. right?

Friendship can be a dangerous enemy, a seduction of the mind lying beyond the reach of investigation. ... As soon as the words are spoken, 'Let us go and do it,' one is ashamed not to be shameless.

confessions, ii.17

My faith, Lord, calls upon you. It is your gift to me. You breathed it into me by the humanity of your Son, by the ministry of your preacher.

confessions i.1

That is the outcome when you are abandoned, fount of life, and the one true Creator and Ruler of the entire universe, when from a self-concerned pride a false unity is loved in the part.

confessions iii.16

neoplatonic gold well-looted, i say.

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.

st. augustine, confessions, I.i.1

always at once humbling and encouraging, disturbing and emboldening. "batter my heart," indeed, till it rests in Thee.

Prepare your work outside; get everything ready for yourself in the field, and after that build your house.

prov. 24:27

What is desired in a man is steadfast love, and a poor man is better than a liar.

prov. 19:22

it seems to me that these two passages complement each other well in describing when a man is ready for marriage.

Christians standing guard during a church service in lahore province, pakistan. sobering to think that our brothers and sisters still need guns to protect them. and relieving to realize that these men are only protecting the real warriors, and that the real fight is going on behind them in that compound. and it is a fight that we have already won. even so, come quickly Lord Jesus.

"If in one sense the camera never lies, we can see that in another sense it never does anything else. It excludes far more than it includes."

bishop n.t. wright, new testament and the people of God, p. 83

this is, i think, both the power and the peril of film. it's perilous because, as wright says, film is a lie in a very important sense, an intentional blinding to the rest world in order to create a story. it truly is a moving picture -- a capsule of life no bigger or more encompassing than a normal picture frame can be, yet it allows us to tell a story. and this is the power, because in that snapshot, in the distillation and intentional limiting of our vision, we can inspect much more closely character, plot, motif, theme, metaphor, in short, we can more fully realize who we are in our own grand story by comparing that story to the director's limited one.