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ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE
(cont) |
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by St Augustine of Hippo |
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Ch 9. All acknowledge the superiority of
unchangeable: wisdom to that which is variable |
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9. Now, no one is so egregiously silly as to ask, "How do you know
that a life of unchangeable
wisdom is preferable to one of change?" For that very truth about
which he asks, how I know it?
is unchangeably fixed in the minds of all men, and presented to
their common contemplation. And
the man who does not see it is like a blind man in the sun, whom
it profits nothing that the
splendour of its light, so clear and so near, is poured into his
very eyeballs. The man, on the other
hand, who sees, but shrinks from this truth, is weak in his mental
vision from dwelling long
among the shadows of the flesh. And thus men are driven back from
their native land by the
contrary blasts of evil habits, and pursue lower and less valuable
objects in preference to that
which they own to be more excellent and more worthy.
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Ch 10. To see God, the soul must be
purified |
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10. Wherefore, since it is our duty fully to enjoy the truth
which lives unchangeably, and truth
for the things which He has made, the soul must be purified that
it may have power to perceive
that light, and to rest in it when it is perceived. And let us
look upon this purification as a kind of
journey or voyage to our native land. For it is not by change of
place that we can come nearer to
Him who is in every place, but by the cultivation of pure desires
and virtuous habits.
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Ch 11. Wisdom becoming incarnate, a
pattern to us of purification |
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11. But of this we should have been wholly incapable, had
not Wisdom condescended to adapt
Himself to our weakness, and to show us a pattern of holy life in
the form of our own humanity.
Yet, since we when we come to Him do wisely, He when He came to us
was considered by proud
men to have done very foolishly. And since we when we come to Him
become strong, He when
He came to us was looked upon as weak. But "the foolishness of God
is wiser than men; and the
weakness of God is stronger than men." And thus, though Wisdom was
Himself our home, He
made Himself also the way by which we should reach our home.
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Ch 12. In what sense the Wisdom of God
came to us |
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And though He is everywhere present to the inner eye when it is
sound and clear, He
condescended to make Himself manifest to the outward eye of those
whose inward sight is weak
and dim. "For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world by
wisdom knew not God, it pleased
God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe."
12. Not then in the sense of traversing space, but because He
appeared to mortal men in the
form of mortal flesh, He is said to have come to us. For He came
to a place where He had always
been, seeing that "He was in the world, and the world was made by
Him." But, because men, who
in their eagerness to enjoy the creature instead of the Creator
had grown into the likeness of this
world, and are therefore most appropriately named "the world," did
not recognize Him, therefore
the evangelist says, "and the world knew Him not." Thus, in the
wisdom of God, the world by
wisdom knew not God. Why then did He come, seeing that He was
already here, except that it
pleased God through the foolishness of preaching to save them that
believe?
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Ch 13. The Word was made flesh |
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In what way did He come but this, "The Word was made flesh, and
dwelt among us"? Just as
when we speak, in order that what we leave in our minds may enter
through the ear into the mind
of the hearer, the word which we have in our hearts becomes an
outward sound and is called
speech; and yet our thought does not lose itself in the sound, but
remains complete in itself, and
takes the form of speech without being modified in its own nature
by the change: so the Divine
Word, though suffering no change of nature, yet became flesh, that
He might dwell among us.
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Ch 14. How the wisdom of God healed man |
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13. Moreover, as the use of remedies is the way to health, so this
remedy took up sinners to heal
and restore them. And just as surgeons, when they bind up wounds,
do it not in a slovenly way,
but carefully, that there may be a certain degree of neatness in
the binding, in addition to its mere
usefulness, so our medicine, Wisdom, was by His assumption of
humanity adapted to our wounds,
curing some of them by their opposites, some of them by their
likes. And just as he who ministers
to a bodily hurt in some cases applies contraries, as cold to hot,
moist to dry, etc., and in other
cases applies likes, as a round cloth to a round wound, or an
oblong cloth to an oblong wound,
and does not fit the same bandage to all limbs, but puts like to
like; in the same way the Wisdom
of God in healing man has applied Himself to his cure, being
Himself healer and medicine both in
one. Seeing, then, that man fell through pride, He restored him
through humility. We were
ensnared by the wisdom of the serpent: we are set free by the
foolishness of God. Moreover, just
as the former was called wisdom, but was in reality the folly of
those who despised God, so the
latter is called foolishness, but is true wisdom in those who
overcome the devil. We used our
immortality so badly as to incur the penalty of death: Christ used
His mortality so well as to
restore us to life. The disease was brought in through a woman's
corrupted soul: the remedy came
through a woman's virgin body. To the same class of opposite
remedies it belongs, that our vices
are cured by the example of His virtues. On the other hand, the
following are, as it were, bandages
made in the same shape as the limbs and wounds to which they are
applied: He was born of a
woman to deliver us who fell through a woman: He came as a man to
save us who are men, as a
mortal to save us who are mortals, by death to save us who were
dead. And those who can
follow out the matter more fully, who are not hurried on by the
necessity of carrying out a set
undertaking, will find many other points of instruction in
considering the remedies, whether
opposites or likes, employed in the medicine of Christianity.
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