Matt Jenson – Augustine on Love's Order [Torrey Honors Lecture Series]

[Music] yeah this is so this is this is partly not totally realized because the stuff I'm going to be quoting from is a lot of it is stuff you haven't read but I'm not going to be including some of the stuff you have just because I ran out of time to incorporate all of it so there you are but Agustin wrote about this much I mean unbelievable he wrote five volumes of expositions on the Psalms that take about mutt space on the bookshelf he wrote like a hundred and twenty sermons on the Gospel of John which take up about this much space you know about City of God with its thousand or so pages tons he wrote three had three stabs at a Genesis commentary never got to the whole thing but a volume of that is about this big just just on and on and on and on so this is some reflection from a few of his work from his expeditions on Psalms from his handbook on faith hope and love some things from the confessions some of its anti Pelagian writings which are some of the later things that's mostly it yeah and I've called this the lovely things kept me far from you it's a line from the confessions lovely things kept me far from you the wayward loves of Augustan so one of the things I need you'll notice as you read the confessions which I'm convinced is the greatest at least Western non biblical book we have convinced every time I read it I'm more struck poetically in the way that you know there's some of these great books that you read that gather up all the other great books I thought about organizing this lecture in terms of all of the other great books that are gusts in is trading on think about Cicero he's riffing on the prodigal son all the way through all these books the books of the platanus which really are probably neoplatonism Platina scindia needs in the City of God he's quoting Roman historians left and right and and wrestling with them for the heritage of Rome he kicks himself because he cried over Dido's death and couldn't cry over his own spiritual death he goes to Carthage which is who lives in Carthage I just gave it to you thank you Dido queen of Carthage it goes to Carthage he says I think it's book this book two or three of the confessions where he says to Carthage I came to Carthage a Boulding cauldron of lust so you had Virgil who recalls the great poet Agustin talking about Carthage and it was a place where his loss rain and then of course much much later TS Eliot who's read Eliot now who says to Carthage then I came burning burning so Agustin catches up and then launches I mean boëthius you wouldn't have the weakest without Agustin so many things that you know that weird bit in an zone where he says well the number of angels has to be made up by the number of the elect do you remember reading that and thinking who cares and that's totally arbitrary you just like numbers it that's exactly something that I guess hadn't already said if Agustin hadn't made so much of an angelic fall we wouldn't have Milton augustins for drowning of pride as the beginning of sin which he himself gets from an apocryphal book becomes standard in the Western tradition I mean you could just go on and on so I thought about organizing a lecture in terms of these other great books that he channels thought about organizing it in terms of some of this favorite biblical passages could pick a bunch of things from the Psalms or Romans five Romans seven prodigal sons story but I ended up going with a number of quotes centered around Agustin's loves and really starting with the problems so you read confessions and this guy he's got probably three conversions he's got a number of times almost baptized as a kid - almost approaches Christianity but pulls back because the scripture seemed impossible we implausible so he just keeps pulling back and every time he seemed to come right to the to the cusp of christiana he just he just can't do it and he says in book 10 of the confessions he says late have I loved you which is the night so again it's beautiful sentiments all the way through but the authenticity of this after you've watched him winding and wending his way through any number of other loves ring so true he says 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 thought 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 I didn't have their existence in you they had no existence at all a lot of what I want to say tonight is going to come right out of that that passage but first I want to ask whose fault it was really so he says the lovely things kept me far from you it almost sounds like he's describing a certain kind of agency or or or pointing blame at the lovely things if they hadn't been so beautiful they hadn't been so sparkly maybe I would have found God sooner maybe I would have stayed with him but they were these they were so I mean it was so pretty they were tasted so good how could I not I don't think he's doing that but one could read it that way but as I got some says and you will have Providence someone said this who was it but he knows it Josh anyways someone said that saying in our in our senior session that the most undoing mental undoing in his time and Tory was agustín's notion that evil is primitive privation that it's parasitic on good and this is this is the vital thing so anything that exists according to Agustin insofar as it exists it's a creature education of God and therefore in that it exists it's good . no exception so he says this is in caribbean is handbook all that exists therefore seeing that the creator of them all is supremely good are themselves good but because they're not like their Creator supremely and unchangeable good their good may be diminished and increased so everything without remainder is good there's there's nothing satan's good hitler's good your little brother's good viruses are good cancer I mean this is sort of scandalous stuff to say there's nothing that exists if it exists it isn't good because all that is is because God made it now that said Agustin is not a sort of a pie in the sky you guys know this he's not a pie in the sky guy who says and everything's good everything's going to work out you know all people are basically good in their heart and everything's lovely in rainbows he's got an equally strong doctor sin but he wants to start out by saying if it exists it's good but because things are transient because we're not unchangeable we can clip and slide all over what he thinks of as a as a chain or a scale of being he says at one point that our sin brings us nearer to nothingness and he means that quite literally that we we are becoming less by becoming more sinful and and that's not a it's not a rhetorical flourish like oh how small of you he actually thinks ontological you're becoming smaller as you sin I'm so all things that exist insofar as they exist but I can exist less and therefore yeah so that's a big good man so he says also he says I inquired what wickedness is and I didn't find a substance this is the privation theory but a perversity of will twist it away from the highest substance you Oh God towards inferior things rejecting its own inner life and swelling with external matter this swelling metaphor actually shows up a lot in the confession so Agustin sees the sinner as as distended imagine a sort of swollen stomach the the soul gets distended and large in a bad way and it's sin but here is he says wickedness it's not a substance but it's a perversity of will twisted away from God towards inferior things so if we go back to the lovely things can be far for you why does the lovely things keep a gusting far from God not because they were bad because they were good because they're created but because of the perversity of agustín's will which twists it away from God towards these inferior things not bad things and this is part of the dialectic he's going to always have it's going to say created things creatures are good creatures are not God and so sometimes it's going to remind have to remind people is going to have to say the manikins these things are good they're creatures God made them they're good but he's also going to have to remind himself in a sin again again but they're not God and therefore because they're not God they are inferior and in fact they're inferior to humanity and if I turn and place my hoax in creatures rather than the Creator I myself have become evil and I've twisted these things to a poor in such that they end up being in some sense at least that bad for me at least so now it's a section called looking for love in all the wrong places you know that song anyone it's pretty good quality I want to describe to you a bit of how Agustin himself it's interesting in city of God in his anti-aging writings he does a lot to explain the causality of sinned to offer explanations in the confessions he does some of that but mostly he he puzzles over his sin and and it's really more fruitful to look at the confessions as a series of descriptions and meditations on him in his sin that are instructive but here's your some of the things he said about himself in his sin he says in book you know this is the expositions on the solemn sorry he says that sinners have become completely fragmented by their desire for temporal things completely fragmented by their desire for temporal things and then the confessions he says you gathered me together from the state of disintegration in which I had been ruthlessly divided I turn from unity in you to be lost in multiplicity and appreciate so much of what a Gustin does is stuff that social psychologists have been saying the last hundred years they've been saying this is new and so much of what a Gustin is doing is you know the fragmentation of the self that just sounds like a hot new book or a new journal article the dissolution of the self the integration this is here's a great psychological word the integration of the self that's our picture of healthy cells as those who are integrated and what Agustin paints the picture of redemption as a reintegration of someone who has been who is moved into a region of multiplicity there's some Platonic themes back here who has been fragmented so notice that it's not just that the self has become complex or multiple but fragmented these are their shards of the self here a lot of times in scripture the language of redemption is a gathering so God gathers his people when he elects them in thin he scatters them at Babylon in the dispersion in the Exile and then he gathers them back up he gathers them to Jerusalem he gathers them to himself and here that that corporate metaphor is placed individually and Agustin sees that though he's been fragmented and scattered that God gathers him back to himself to unity another way he describes this in he says you were there before me but I had departed from myself again you're getting the sense of self divided against itself self versus something I had departed from myself I could not even find myself much less you I was he says living outside myself seeing only with the eye of the flesh and again I had become to myself a vast problem I had become to myself a place of unhappiness in which I could not bear to be but I could not escape for myself so vivid and and and striking and almost beyond the almost beyond the realm of imagination I think it didn't resonate so much so I don't I don't know if you've ever felt like a vast problem to yourself I don't know if you've even if eltz Oh kind of not at home in yourself that you sense that you've departed from yourself in some ways that you might be living outside yourself so for a Gustin there's this profound self alienation that he gives geographical sort of metaphorically geographical sense - it's not just that there's a fight internally but it's that I've I've left my own building he seems to want to say furthermore he says I was seeking for you God outside myself and I failed to find the God of my heart I had come into the depths of the sea I had no confidence and had lost hope the truth could be found so he's looking for God and the place he's looking was one of the wrong places oh it's all the wrong places it's outside himself and that's going to be absolutely axiomatic for him that I will only find God when I return within so he's looking for God outside himself and he can't find him anywhere why because he's the god of my heart and that's a quote from Psalm 72 he says in seeking for you I followed not the intelligence of the mind by which you will die surpass the beasts but the mind of the flesh but you this is lovely - but you were more inward than my most inward part and higher than the highest element within me so I'm seeking you but I'm seeking you through the mind of the flesh to the senses in the exterior world when you would have me seek you in my intelligence from the broader sense internally because you are closer to me than I am to myself as another translation puts it higher than the highest heights in me you are deeper in me than I am in myself but I was looking for you outside myself but I've traveled and this is this is fascinating he says I've traveled away from you into a far country to dissipate my substance on meretricious life but any of that language sounds familiar probably fun absolutely he said I would the prodigal friend in my sin I traveled away from you God the Father traveled away from you into a far country to waste all that you were given to dissipate my substance from meretricious once and then he describes what he's talking about his pride that this continued the prodigal son theme he says from this vice which is the capital of all vices because from it all the others are born spiritual rebellion against God begins as the soul wanders off into darkness and abuses its free will and so other sins follow hence the soul squanders it's substance with harlots and lives wastefully until the one-time companion of angels is reduced to minding pigs and they'll say this again and again you'll talk about when he's teaching rhetoric to students he talks about that as the husks that the pigs ate on and he wasn't even able to eat the husks so this is who he'd become and looking for love in all the wrong places so all of this again we're talking about the loves that Agustin has for things as I was think about this tonight it occurs to me that a person might wonder if love has led one into exile from oneself and from God to fragmentation it seems to me that a perfectly natural thing to think what I should do is stop loving as I should find wherever that fountain of love is within me and clamp it because it has just gotten me in trouble so this is a quick session called better never to have loved at all you know the the better to loved and lost than never to loved at all I think I got some you know fortunate thing well maybe not I mean maybe it's actually better to not at all because this is where my love took me but then he says I love this these are both from his expositions on the Psalms he says love as much as you like but take care what you love love of God and love of your neighbor are called charity but love of the world this passing world is called greed or lust lust must be reined in charity spurned on he's going to say lust a lot sometimes it will have to do with sex sometimes it won't so just keep that in mind and he writes this also from the Psalms he writes that righteousness I love this quote righteousness has its own fair character fair isn't beautiful it catches the eye and sets its lover on fire for love of it the martyrs trod this world underfoot and shed their blood what were they in love with when they renounced everything that's a good question we could say that the rights are the righteous martyrs are exemplary but we may not say that they're loving because they're giving up everything they were truly lovers I tell you am I trying to discourage you from loving now of course not anyone who doesn't love is a cold character frozen stiff let us love beauty but let it be the beauty that appeals to the eye of the hearts let us love beauty but let it be worthwhile praiseworthy loveliness put put a righteous old man on show there's nothing lovable in his bodily appearance yet everyone loves him he is loved for that part of his being that we cannot see or rather he's loved for that part of him where he's seen only by our hearts so let's love as much as you like let us love Beauty but let it be the beauty that appeals to the eye of the heart this isn't I think it's important to say this isn't an anti sensory anti body kind of moved in here it's saying but it is saying that the true beauty is the one that's seen with the eye of the heart that's good to us who are getting old which is all of us right I mean you a there is something about the 18 to 22 year old who kind of looks as good as 18 to 22 year olds look but that fades pretty quick so whatever beauty you got on the physical level you're on the Cubs downward curve they're right about onstart but he says let us love you but let it be the beauty that appeals to the eye of the heart so Agustin no no don't stop loving but just love the right stuff love the beauty that appeals to the eye of the heart next section is called easier said than done Agustin refers at one point to what he calls the Millstone of habit and often he'll describe his sin in terms of his habit it's top fleshly need and desire it can often refer to him to his pride to his vain glory he was famous and successful in Milan I can refer to he can he can even referred pretty objectifying but he can refer to his what was effectively his common-law wife concubine a woman he lived to for 15 years as his habit I take it that means that this is just someone why did it why did he say oh I don't think I have it in here there's this great line and the best translation of the confessions were see he said she was the only girl for me but after 15 years he cut off the relationship for a society engagement but there all these fleshly entanglements and I'm using that word intentionally ambiguously to refer to the possibility that flesh is sinful and also that it's simply sensory and exterior there's entanglements in the flesh that mean we have what he will often call the Millstone of habit remember what a millstone is the thing that if you caused a little kid to stumble they're supposed to tight around your neck so that the drag do damage to see and the sense of dragging down so often for Augusta that's what the flesh does it drags me down in my soon he says in one of his anti Pelagian writings in reference to romans 7 he said it's like someone who once having been pushed easily continues to fall even though he doesn't want to and hates what's happening you could think of original sin among other ways as that as as Adams sort of corporate way of pushing humanity so that right when I come to this on the scene I'm already doing this is it a surprise that I fall it's not a surprise that I would fall so it's easier said than done to love the right things he says doing the confessions that ingrained evil had more hold over me than unaccustomed good ingrained evil had more hold on me over me than unaccustomed good remember your Aristotle there habituation he just wasn't custom the good thing to truly good things he had whet his appetite in his youth on things of the flesh again many of which were fine and others of which were somewhat sinful and others which will make a little more heinous but he wasn't accustomed to good and it's ingrained evil made good a much more difficult thing he says in my own case as I deliberated about serving my lord God which I have long been disposed to do the self which will deserve was identical with the self which was unwilling the self which will deserve was identical with itself which was unwilling it was I I was neither wholly willing nor wholly unwilling so I was in conflict with myself and was dissociated from my self the dissociation came about against my will yet this wasn't a manifestation of the nature of an alien mind but the punishment suffered in my own mind and so it was not I that brought that brought this about but sin which dwell in me it's Romans 7 sin resulting from the punishment of a more freely chosen sin because I was because I was a son of Adam so it's my willing that puts me in a place where I both will and don't will to do this thing and experience the dissociation the self alienation is sort of internal civil war that comes about this is a hard situation so again we started everything is good every person is good because God made but the weight of sin the deeply ingrained habits of evil here the love of lesser things more than cripples kills agustin so now a section called who will save me from this body of death Paul's plaintive cry in Romans Agustin writes I was astonished to find that already I loved you not a phantom surrogate for you but I was not stable in the enjoyment of my god I was caught up to you by your beauty so he's starting he's starting to love the truly beautiful one and quickly torn away from you by my weight with a groan I crashed into inferior things this weight was my sexual habit but with me there remained a memory of you I was a no kind of doubt to whom I should attach myself but was not yet in a state to be able to do that I sought this is the confessions again I thought a way to obtain strength enough to enjoy you but I didn't find it until I embraced the mediator between God and man the man Jesus Christ to possess my god the humble Jesus I was not yet humble enough I didn't know what his weakness was meant to teach your word eternal truth higher than the superior parts of your creation raises those submissive to him to himself in the inferior parts he dealt for himself a humble house of our clay by this he detaches from themselves those who are willing to be made his subjects and carries them across to himself healing their swelling and nourishing their love they're no longer to place confidence in themselves but rather to become weak they see at their feet divinity become weak by his sharing in our coat of skin in their weariness they fall prostrate before this divine weakness which rises and lists them up so even in this cry of who will save me from this body of death Agustin is is starting to sail closer to the humility which is the proper mode in which we received the humble mediator God God who's given himself he's humbled himself by taking on this coat of skin sharing it with us sharing our shame in Christ it was because of the sin this great scent of pride he writes that the Lord came in humility this great sin this devastating disease and the souls of men and women brought down from heaven the all-powerful doctor humbled him to take the form of a servant loaded him with insults and hung them on a cross and all this so that through the healing properties of such powerful medicine our swelling might be cured again the swelling the dispensing of our sin some key themes in here one is that Christ again and again guy named Brian daily wrote an article on Augustus Christology where he called it the humble mediator it's exactly right so Christ for a Gustin again again is portrayed as the mediator between God and humanity and the one who is humble but if our sin at its heart and at its beginning is pride self exaltation then what we need is the humility of God in Christ and part of what humility I would get in the second but part of what humility does is it is it is the way in which we live in a way that corresponds with grace humility despairs of one's ability to do stuff in one's own strength and grace says that that no God is the one who will do it on our behalf also this sense of the doctor and medicine that Jesus is the humble mediator who is our doctor and that His grace for us is his medicine so there's this asset Erie ology of a sanity a soteriology based in healing also put all the other stuff forgiveness justification all of it's there but again and again you hear about the healing that the humble mediator our good doctor provides now in Section called what do you have that you have not received so Jesus came for us the humble mediator the doctor came with the medicine of his own body and blood he came to offer it in grace but that doesn't mean that all of us are healthy yeah doesn't mean that all of us had been raised to new life so what do we need well we need God to do this extra work by his spirit in us here's a pivotal word from a gust of God writes whom we would not love if he had not first loved us and made us lovers of him for love comes from you do you hear all the scriptural Residences God talked about God whom we would not love if he had not loved us we love because He first loved us and made us lovers of him for love comes from him and everyone who loves is born of God and it was God he the desert love doesn't know God for god is law so get first John just ringing through this the only part in here I think that's not first John is that he made us lovers of him so for our healing with the doctor had to do is made us people is make us people who again loved him rather than loving the lovely things that took us away from him and the key point here is again what do you have that you haven't received well there's nothing that you haven't received because God is the one who made you a lover of him and Agustin means this in his bout is full throated full blooded way as he possibly could he writes from whom then does the very beginning of our faith come but from him so here's what he doesn't believe he doesn't believe that Jesus offers you grace and all you have to do is say yes he doesn't believe that because he thinks our very faith it's very initiation and its completion comes from God and this is one of his core points of contention with the Pelagians as he said no no God has not left us in a place where we can choose yay or nay if God doesn't initiate and complete faith in us never going to happen we're never going to become lovers of God for what do you have this is a Gustin again so what do you have that you have not received does not permit any of the faithful to say why have faith which I've not received again we might mean that really small wave enlightening I know God did everything all I have to do is believe and all of me just have to believe in Augustus didn't you read the Bible it says what do you have that you haven't received and if it says that anything you got he got faith you've received it period faith then he writes both in its beginning and it's in its completion is a gift of God he says what should I say when a little one at times expires before it can be helped by the let's see oh no this is the sidebar when it is brain oh yeah okay it's ours a little confused for a second I had at the wrong place part of this he's very consistent and this is one of the I think it's probably the hardest teaching of Augustan and I think it's the one where I just can't follow him all the way to the letter he says the reason you baptize babies is because they have been condemned and Adam like the rest of the world this follows from the translation as he added in Romans 5:12 and it's very consistent so he wants to say look you're in Christ or you're an Adam there's there's not a between place and I do think that's pretty patently the case in Romans five and he says look a little baby straight out of womb this is not yet a Christian this person is not yet in in Christ so they got to be an atom and to be Adam let's face it let's just let's let's face our convictions and just admit to be an atom is to be condemned because one is stained by the original sin of Adam even if one hasn't committed any actual sin and therefore we got to get a baby saved of the babies going to hell and this is just what he believes so he right to this and this is how strongly he believes that what do you have the Evan received what shall I say when a little one at times expires before it can be helped by the ministry of someone baptizing it so I guess some believes in baptism of regeneration not like magic someone could be baptized well then live a lawless life and go to hell in Agustin's mind but still the the grace of God the renewing saving grace of God first at baptism for a Gustin so it says what I save it a little one at times expires before it can be helped by the ministry of someone baptizing it for awesome though the parents are making haste and the ministers are ready to give back to the little one baptism is nonetheless not given so again you can imagine the scenario right so you've got really pious parents you got a priest who's ready to go the baby comes the priest is going to baptize the kids say in three days and all of a sudden the kid dies in the screen horrible situation Agustin says baptism is nonetheless not given because God does not will it who did not keep the little one in this life a little longer in order that it might be given hardest again teaching I think from Agustin it is consistent so I think one thing we gotta knowledge here is that he's saying look if you need grace Andy Grace and he says again and again even with regard to infants Christ didn't come to call the righteous but sinners he didn't come from that for the healthy but the sick and if God is the initiator and the completed all the way through salvation that means he can initiate it to preserve an infant's life long enough to be baptized and if he doesn't that means they haven't received the grace of salvation for getting hard word but I hope you can at least hear something of the consistency of what he's doing there and I also want it sort of here's my quick sidebar I think part of what we see here is a much stronger sense of something like a like a like a corporate or even a federal identity but again you would see in someone like Romans five where Paul wants to say we are in Adam for real like are not just influenced by Adam but somehow there is a there is a mystical organic oneness such that what happens Adam happens to me what Adam does I do similarly when we have faith in Christ we are united a Christ such that somehow there's this mysterious mystical organic one is such that what is true of Christ is truly so Agustin can say on the Adam side all and beings since it's the apostle says all died in Adam from whom the origin the offense against God spread throughout the whole human race all human beings are a kind of single mass of sin owing a debt of punishment to the divine and loftiest justice and whether the punishment that is owed the exact 'add or forgiving there's no jest there's no injustice so everyone because they're part of this mass sometimes we call a massive damnation owes this debt the other side though he's got this notion through and throughout his psalms of what's called the todas Christus the whole christ he sees the whole christ again and again is the subject often the speaker of the Psalms and here's what he writes at one point Christ after all is not in the head and then absent from the body but the whole Christ is found in head and body so what his members are his even though it doesn't necessary follow to what he is his members are so he wants to say look like he's also God and we're not God in any kind of like straightforward manner but nevertheless there's such a unity that that that it can be hard to tell sometimes who's Christ and who's us who's had news members so much has the head United the members to himself so again I find it uncomfortable what he does with infant baptism and the death of young ones but I do hear this strong sense of solidarity and Adam and then later in Christ and here's here's how it works out with Pelagius you guys know that the term Pelagian the word Pelagius you notice it's usually going to be shorthand for some kind of works righteousness Pelagius initially seems to be he was a British monk who was zealous and righteous he wasn't interested in being a false teacher but he was interested in calling people to a life of radical discipleship and not giving people an excuse to be spiritually lazy I think that's the best face to put on what Pelagius is doing and here's a gustin's report he says Pelagius has attributed the ability not to sin so there's just hypothet thing that they're throwing around saying is it possible that someone could never send the gusts and says well Pelagius has attributed the ability not to sin again whether it ever happens the ability not that's into God's grace precisely because God is the author of the nature in which he claims that the ability not to sin is inseparably plant implanted so play Jesus is saying me and it is God's grace that it's possible not to sin because when he made us he gave us a capacity to not sin yes yes yes people usually do sin and uh but that's that's at least that's at least an ability in uh and it's inseparably implanted so we can never be alienated from this ability to not sin even though we may be even all of us do end up sitting and therefore plages gets apoplectic when he hears this slogan a tribute to agustin give what your command and command what you will so god tell me whatever you want as long as you give it to me sure all-out faith give me faith you know sure you know I'll be perfect Jesus if you make me perfect if you perfect me and Pelagius here this anything are you serious like where did so the more rigor go where to the holiness go in apoplectic of this but Agustin writes these people however attribute such power to the will that they remove prayer from a life abiding so custom want to say what do we do in prayer to say God help I can't do this you can do it give me strength give me grace and he says employees doesn't need to pray because he's got it and there's something wrong with a Christian whose system ends with them not needing to pray anymore and so the gusting arrives again one pleads God's case the case which this fellow claims to plead in defending nature and think there's such a strong doctrine of creation that human nature can do it when plead God's case better when one acknowledges both the creator and the Saviour then when one destroys the help of the Savior by defending the creature as as if it were healthy and at full strength no terminal illness so we can't appeal to some kind of created capacity we have according to agustín also so faith God gift everything's got gifts and this is a quote the perseverance by which one persevered in Christ up to the end is a gift of God again he writes for when the Saints pray the very prayer which is called the Lord's the Lord's Prayer because the Lord taught it to them they realized that they asked for almost nothing but perseverance almost nothing I was with today and yesterday with seniors talking about Revelation we are noticing how how much is about simply enduring to the end and it seems that those majority in conquer and one sense you think what's the video about enduring but Agustin is saying the only thing that we're to ask of ourselves amounts to in the Lord's Prayer amounts to perseverance because that's the whole thing because it's so stinking hard perseverance Agustin writes itself is also a great gift of God by which the other gifts of God are preserved so God gives faith and God gets perseverance to the end now section on how does God make us lovers of him so God who does it it's all greats what do you have that you haven't received so if we become lovers of God it's only God who's done that well first God makes his lovers of him according to Agustin by trouble he writes it's by any chance painful trials arise from unexpected quarters let us understand that this is arranged for us by the Lord as discipline to rid us of any complacency about temporal things and guide us towards Kingdom by our steady desire the desire is fostered in us by the troubles that batter us on every side to render a spoonful in the Lord's ears like long trumpet Jay if you had this this experience I was I had a few months back in the fall that was just really Pleasant and after a while I started to get that you know like I know I know the shoes gonna drop here I know something's going to happen but I find invariably that I'm really glad when things are pleasant and that I am not as spiritually attuned and acute we just found that to be the case and that trouble does again and again drive me to seek help from the Lord because I'm aware of my neediness I'm aware of my weaknesses feels feels almost trivial to say to you because I think this is ring so obviously true in our lives but that's one of the key things that got someone to claim is that trouble is a way that we run into God but also we this off things so you know you've got this great girlfriend you got this great boyfriend they're the best in the world you love me you love them you love them they dumped you which really sucks I mean it just sucks there's no way around it a Gustin is going to want to weep if he's got some Psalms you can wait through agustin by the way for all of his yeh chasity you know I want to be a monk kind of a thing he had this 15 years of contented loving relationship that he gave up again why he gave it up shitty that's another question but this guy would have gotten that I think one of the things he would say about the awful thing of a breakup is you know what I bet I bet that part of you sort of tempted to love this lovely thing in such a way that you get stalled get stuck it's like walking in hot tar and wet cement and you're just you're getting a little stuck and as awful as the breakup can be this this can be a way in which God cries your greedy little hands off this created good and draws you to himself just a bit more again Gustin doesn't say this glibly lively or dis passionately so another thing that God uses to make us lovers of image yearning here's a few wonderful quotes here you says hope here that you may have a Joyce there hunger and thirst here there you may eat at his table you know the psalm that says who am i inherit heaven at thee and besides the Eddas are nothing on earth my flesh and my heart may fail but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever I don't take it that that is mostly a confession of current heartfelt reality when the psalmist says or when I say I take it that it's aspirational that it's a way of me living into this word that hope here that you may rejoice there so I say umaña in heaven buddy and besides the ideas are nothing on earth not because I don't desire anything in earth but because I know he is the desire that surpasses all even if I don't feel it and so I hope here that I may rejoice there i hunger and thirst here we fast we go without that there we may eat at his table another line from his epistles his homilies on John yearning is weird weird Ray's yearning is the bosom of the heart we shall understand to understand if we extend our yearning as far as we can this is what the divine scriptures do for us what the Assembly of the people does for us what the celebration of the sacraments Holy Baptism hymns and praise of God and my own preaching do for us a you might extend out and say this is what your quiet dad does for you this is what Chapel does for you this is why you did that memorization project this is why you go to the prayer chapel this is why you you know sing along to worship music this is why you confess your sin this is what you asks for someone to pray for you all this yearning is not only sown and grows in us but it also increases to such a capacity that is ready to welcome what I is not seen nor ear heard nor was it entered the heart of man somewhere else I think also in the John homilies he says that that yearning makes the heart deep that the in desiring we are so there's the sinful distension we're just sort of morally obese but then there's the yearning in which we extend we become greater than ourselves we grow to the point of being able to contain more of the one who cannot be contained but who contains all things in himself so this is actually by yearning you'll understand because actually we can get in a craftsman get more of God with us we earn as we desired for him he says but love with me I love that but love with me he who loves God does not have much love for money make use of the world do not take do not be taken in by the world you entered the world you're making a journey you came intending to leave not to stay you are a Wayfarer this life is a wayside in use money in the way a traveler at a wayside in uses the table cups the pitcher the bed intending to leave not to stay I've been in really nice hotels I enjoyed them they're pretty great so you know if you go to a nice hotel you should be like oh oh yeah this is great fluff the pillows and I don't know get in the jacuzzi bath you know and enjoy make the most of what's there in the hotel but none of you are planning to stay there right have a good time can I in the hotel and then move on it would be really weird if you're like all over this hotel I could just day forever and forget the restaurant I just want to be in a hotel it kind of small and the Gusman says that's how you use not just money to all all the good things of this world all of this redirects our loves and there's a little bit here that kind of almost the like the spiritual physics of how love works I got some says bodies are contained in particular places you I mean you know where you are that's where you are where your body is but the minds place is what it loves your body is here I have no idea where your mind is my feeling God might be in your belly on dinner it might be on a loved one a hoped for loved one might be on the future it might be on just a chance to relax on comfort maybe you love comfort I think I tend to love comfort too much the minds place is what it loves and then this the foot of the soul it says okay I'm trying to work with me but the foot of asphalt soul is properly understood as love so take it what that's sort of what this whole stands on and what gets the soul around when it's miss shapen it's called concupiscence or lust when it's well-formed it's called love or charity love moves a thing in the direction towards which it tends but the dwelling place of the soul is not in any physical space which the form of the body occupies but in the light where it rejoices to have arrived through love so love is the foot of our soul takes us to what we love and this explains our restlessness here's the famous quote nevertheless to praise you is the desire of man a little piece of your creation 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 that's the beginning of confessions all of the City of God is moving towards rest again and again Agustin says what do we what are we living for but peace why do you fight a war for peace what do we want peace the reason why he's so skeptical of the lovely thing is because they're transient and so the minute they're kind of fun they're gone there's a class T's all over it there's no peace because the minute I get to it it's already left I never can just rest there's another homework assignment you there's another conflict with some of the minute I resolve a conflict now let's figure out a job but I just graduated you know I mean there's always something else there's not rest and for Gustin that is that it he wants rest our heart is restless until it rests in you and then he writes in confessions 13 in a good will is our peace a body by its weight tends to move toward its proper place the weights movement isn't necessarily downwards but to its appropriate position this is where the sense of an ordered cosmos and ordered soul the ordered loves is that we naturally move to our appropriate position fire tends to move upwards a stone downwards things which are not in their intended position are restless so if I have I was going to hook in my phone that would not begin its restless its in movement because it's got weight and its proper place is sitting on something material so it's moving a lot do you feel frenetic and that kind of restless and maybe because you're not in your proper place Agustin thinks that's why we are moving all the time once they're in they're ordered position they are at rest my weight he says is my love wherever I'm carried my love is carrying me buy your gift is talking to God by your gift we are set on fire and carried upwards we grow red-hot and ascend the your gift language is really key here because when I guess I'm talking about the shaping the ordering of our loves week it really easy to get sort of purely Aristotelian applied Aristotelian paradigm to love and say it's it's only about just shaping and in reforming our love's in a sort of practice way and we should do all of that but absolutely central for a Gustin is Romans 5:5 where Paul says God love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us and the Spirit is a couple things for a Gustin he's a gift and he's the bond of love the love father and son and the love that they give to us and that in flames in us as love so that line by your gift the spirit we're set on fire and carried upwards so for him this reorientation reordering our love's is fundamentally about the presence of the Spirit within us it's the spirit then in in by whom we're made lovers for one example referring to Romans 8:26 a bit about the spirit groaning in our weakness a Gustin right he is in the spirit he groans in us because he makes us groan nor is it a small matter that the Holy Spirit teaches us to groan for he is reminding us that we're on pilgrimage and teaching us to sigh for our home country and without longing we groan the yearning that God uses to make us a lot of lovers is something that the spirit does within us and in acts within us he makes us law Agustin better than anyone wants to say to you don't waste your longing lean into your longing we all had cavernous longings at times don't waste it but Lea that is the place the precise place where the spirit wants you to be able to grow in all creation for the revealing of the sons of God another line again from the John homilies this is beautiful let us emigrate let us emigrate with charity move to a new country with charity dwell up above with charity that charity with which we love God let us reflect on nothing else in the wandering of this life but that we will not always be here and that by living good works we shall be preparing a place for ourselves up there from which we shall never move on again not because we're bored and stuck in some small town but because finally what rest we're in the peaceful place where we don't need to move on Piaget's and rites christ was promising eternal life where we had nothing to fear where we're not ever disturbed from where we're not ever deported where we never died where there is no mourning for the one who had before us no hoping for someone to succeed us Justin really quickly in conclusion then let's go to back to the lovely things the lovely things that kept him from God so what about the lovely things Gus and writes in the confessions let these transient things be the ground on which my soul praises you God creator of all but let it not become stuck in them and glued to them with love to the physical senses for these things pass along the path of things that move towards non-existence they ran the sould pestilential desires for the soul loves to be in them and take it takes its repose among the objects of its love but in these things there is no point at rest they lack permanence they flee away and can't be followed with the bodily senses again the good which you love is from you but it's only as it's related to him that it's good and sweet otherwise it will just Leiby come bitter for all that comes from hidden is unjustly loved if he has been abandoned let us always be humble of heart gusting writes and let our joy always be in his presence let us not be puffed up with any prosperity of this world this age but let us realize that our true happiness only comes when these things have passed away right now my brothers and sisters our joy must be in hope no one should rejoice as if in present reality or he may get stuck to the road let all our joy being hope to come all our desire on eternal life with all our sighs let us be panting for Christ may he the one most beautiful be the one we desire he the one who loved the foul and ugly in order to make them beautiful to him alone let us pant as we run and in the end he writes God becomes everything for you because he is for you the fullness of the things that you love I love that at the end so it's there's a vision of God being all in all but he is that precisely because he is the fullness of the things you love it's not quite a trading way the things we love it's not a extinguishing them or dismissing them but it is a recognition that God is the fullness of those very things I'm curious about how that works out in the new heavens and the new earth I suspect that it was what it looks like is all sorts of really cool stuff that is perfectly incline in itself and in our hearts to him so that we're always sort of caught up in a vision and a knowledge and the communion with the most beautiful one such that part of us wants to say why would I look at anything else but him but also insofar as these the fullness of this loves there is a way in which we can return again and again from this vision of him carrying it with us to a love of these lots of things that continually funnels us back to a lot for him this is I mean this is the kind of stuff that pushes against space and time but my hope is that or something like that in an Alexa there and I'll take questions for five or ten minutes shoot yeah way of telling the Incarnation stories start with creation explain is a worry of fathers that created hmm and then based on the goodness of effort when the creation becomes subject to corruption it's for him not write those things just because interruption is like talk about like that a creation would be happening away say especially maybe is more tiled and it would be absurd with all the corruption and headed toward on me or is that well I guess it I guess I mean you know a little bit more about what you or maybe a salacious is getting at with the language of absurdity but I think it fits part of the logic of privation of evil is private I think comes from so I got someone he was a man icky that was his first sort of religious commitment and it's fairly long about eight years part of that cane because he didn't he couldn't conceive of a spiritual substance we thought everything was material and he also had a problem with the origin of evil so the plaintiffs were really helpful to him because they were the ones who gave him the beginnings of the sense that that evil is privation and I think I think part of the logic of privation for him is that it's I mean it is this sort of negating that doesn't have a logic it doesn't have a logic of its own there's nothing that belongs to evil it's all parasitic so even when he talks about great it coins the phrase when he's talking about the first sin the fall he's doing in city guys like what's the cause I mean what's the source of you how did it happen you know God doesn't make evil so I had to start somehow so what is it and he says he says we can't say that there's an efficient cause you know air stalls got his fourfold causes where he talks about the efficient cause the cause that sort of makes the thing happen get it gets it done he says because nothing is getting done things are just breaking down there's nothing new there's nothing real coming into existence it's just the things are falling apart sooner Enschede wrote so I think because of that this thing is surd in its lack of logic it's a moral surd it's a non necessary thing there never had to be sin anytime someone said to you you don't know good unless you have you know evil to put next to it that's not precise enough that maybe that's true post-fall certainly not during the way God made the world so I mean that's a that's something of it okay especially from a psychological perspective is there a sense in which like not only is it the case of you're reckless but there's a kind of uneasiness about that it doesn't it doesn't make well another way to look at it makes perfect sense that were restless because we're out of place so it there was nothing but irony in sin so so sin was perfectly ironic because the serpent says you're going to be like God and Augusta has great great lawn riches in fact they would have been more likely they would have been more able to be like God if they had simply adhered to the one who was sufficient to make them like God himself so the Satan's promise in one sense would have been fulfilled but as long as God would have been the one to do it so there's also tyranny they they exalt themselves and become humiliated in it so there's irony but there's also a it also makes perfect sense that we would be uncomfortable out of place awkward not fitting now yeah questions yes no you referenced hope you also referenced your name as I was thinking about kind of a different asking pretty similar on the same yeah then kind of talk about difference yeah that's helpful I think I think in a Gustin so one way to look at is faithful the love of the three theological virtues and when he writes his handbook on the Christian faith it's a handbook on faith hope and love so he's always thinking in terms of these pauline categories of the big three and yearning doesn't isn't one of those but I think you're right I think that they are nearly if not entirely identical more broadly in the Christian edition hope conjures up images of God's promises and its future or in yearnings also future-oriented yearning isn't as closely tied to promises being kept at a later date but look yearnings also just not use as much in the tradition I love it because I think I think we can think of hope is this sort of either wishing and it's sort of fairly secular like we hope it happens I don't know you never know or we can think of it as a fairly kind of antiseptic sort of theological virtue like well I hope in the resurrection of the didn't so I think he sort of he grounded in human flesh in a certain way when he talked about it as you're anything like there's this there's his earnest desire that hope is a straining forward towards new creation and toward towards God himself so yeah I've got a little more edge to it I think you're ending days and yeah yeah yeah yeah no that's really that's a great question I'm glad yes i Richard Wilbur has this poem called love calls us to the things of this world and and the the content of the poem itself doesn't fit enough what I wanted to do but the line was ringing in my ear and I was thinking do what I guess it could have guessed and say that I I don't want to be overly generous because I'm I'm liable to read him in the better part on this one I will say that I don't believe that he's going to be substantially different from Bonaventure Dante yeah or Plato yeah and and even his exceeded his description of his experience his two mystical experiences and confessions seven and eight I think second one with his mom right before she dies both of them could be taken from Bonaventure's Journal of God so it's and you'll notice that created things have have their place but they're always the lowest rungs on the ladder up and so you know if part of this is just the way people thought the world worked that spirits are higher than bodies that you know intelligible goods are better than physical goods I still go back and forth I think I used to be very suspicious you think that was just pretty wrong I'm less sure I think now yeah I think about when I read something like when he's talking about love that which is beautiful like beautiful in the heart the old man the virtuous old man so you know there's there's a way where I guess I'm saying love him not for his body but for his whole or something like that and I think he's right there I think like if we choose like what's just what the higher beauty beauty of body are so like soul quite patently not because beauty of body is bad but I mean I think he talked to anyone the world they say you know would you rather be in close relationship with you know someone of deeper virtue or someone who's good to look at and if they've got any sense and if they're talking about a relationship longer than a week you know bigger so so I think there's more there than I used to think but I would like I also think that a Gustin was felt the need to offer the cautionary tale so I don't think he's profoundly I don't think it's a profound overemphasis but you do need someone sort of along with him to occasionally say good stuff right but that's the hard thing is he's got such a robust place for the goodness of all the creation and he says that about as well as anyone maybe you needed someone to linger that's part of what I think Aquinas so Aquinas sin Agustin have so much in common and Aquinas also thought that God had to give us the first in the last race if we're ever going to be saved Calvin thought Aquinas thought gasps synthetic but Aquinas just lingers over his doctrine of creation a lot longer so that's a nice counterpart just someone who just wants something about creation longer yeah my questions I know some of you guys got to go so can you leave just take off and I'm happy to take more questions Aliyah shoot yeah it might summer lights what I was saying the Hannah I mean it would relate something about a thing to Hannah [Music] he's not as bad on sex as people think that's not the only thing to say about the body but it's a big one but he's not as because you should be I you know for him what the biggest problem with sex itself sexual intercourse is that it it's just a platonic tripartite soul moment he thinks that the body takes over the soul in sexual intercourse so there's a spontaneity to the body in which the region is no longer directing not I just don't think you need to have an anthropology that works like that or maybe you could say that generally the reason rules the body but these great moments where actually the body tends to kind of kick in childbirth or you know you know high athletic so there's lots of times when we want to exalt the body's predominance but because of that he thinks that it 9 to impossible to engage in sexual intercourse even for a married couple without sin instead of some sort could chipa senses health or normally talk about that so that's that's a thing for sure he other things to say I mean I think I think I would imagine that one of his main thoughts about the body is that it it's a gateway of distraction but you could do some really interesting kind of making it more problematic writing because I mean so much of the confessions he's engaging there's a long tradition of the spiritual senses which are you know just kind of ways of applying the physical senses to the spiritual life and it's conditions are full of spiritual sensory language so I don't even think yet to say look at Gustin you couldn't help yourself I think he could just say hey it's more complex because I guess and himself is full of sensory imagery for God and for describing the spiritual like he's clearly a deeply embodied man who has a rich inner life a rich psychological life a rich embodied life yeah yeah it would be interesting to see if he had stayed with this woman he was with for 15 years you know or if he had had you know that wasn't possible I mean he wasn't yet a bishop at that point but that wouldn't have been as possible yeah I didn't even not and and even just sort of a elongated experience you know just what would have been like for his reflections on on sin to go that long and I think his sense of the ubiquity of original sin also is a part of it he's gentle with infants even for as hard as the thing he ends up saying about non-baptized infants suffering damnation he also thinks that they haven't committed actual sins and they'll get the lightest punishment so even when Dante's got a limbo to the unbaptized baby that's I mean that's straight coming from Agustin I don't know if he ever talks about a limbo but the principle there that well they weren't baptized they can't go to paradise but they've got to have it the easiest time of anyone who's not going to paradise I think that's kind of dante's a you know attempt to like how gentle can't we be here no pain but lots of longing okay yeah yeah she talked about lovely things you said there's only things relationships Agathe is worth loving and goddess the fullness of the b-and-b kind of one thing you said was that the only way that we can kind of have that longing increases yes yeah so would you say that the only way that we can get there like let's say just very applicable in my life how do I longed for that one yeah yeah and I do think I guess that the answer will always be by the grace of His Holy Spirit which is really good news for us and I think it I think otherwise it becomes a kind of program and it could be exhausting really really quickly and honestly I think he would say a lot of the things that we do you long for God more by repenting of sin and by reading Scripture and by going to church and by hearing preaching and by singing to Jesus and I think I would imagine he would very happily expand that out certainly the court core two sacraments and he would be happy to expand that out to evangelism and works of mercy and all sorts of forms of loving neighbor and so in one sense I want to say all of the pedestrian things like that I think there's a there's a kind to in like a more specific kind of training yourself in prayer to to turn your longing towards God it doesn't mean ignoring other longings but it just it means sort of somehow carrying those with wanting to know God more you know so I mean maybe I brought up kind of the breakup situation earlier I mean maybe someone gets done and they and they just choose to pray in the aftermath on there I broke up with a girl in college my one college girlfriend and it was really sad and I was crying and it was walk on was raining and I happened to been memorizing Hosea 6 I'll shoot it and so on but and it says something like he has torn us but he will heal us he has wounded us but he will bandages and then it says something like he will he will come to us like the spring ring like a spring rain watering the earth and there was a spring rain watering suburban Chicago and so part of it was like you know I was weeping not because I love Jesus but because I broken up with my girl girlfriend but I was also reciting this passage of it just had been in my memory anyways and I was trying to do them together you know weeping because I felt like even though this is my decision I still felt like I was being torn by God and wounded by God but also holding on to this promise that says he will heal us he will bandage us he will come to us like the spring rain being grateful for the rain and remembering this price so that I mean a lot of is I think normal stuff but then it's also taking the stuff we most want and and just just kind of putting it putting it side-by-side with a god word and orientation and not getting rid of the stuff you think sometimes people think orienting your desires to God means something like well I don't really want this I want you God I just guess BS you know doesn't doesn't work that way so I don't think it's that I want to get smothering that but it's relativizing it and bringing into proximity yeah yeah yeah he definitely gets close to that yeah right yeah like if you were to follow that yeah that's good that's a good question so to that I got two dots one is that I do think we are and by we I mean like we are ridiculously over interested in the in our current tasting and seeing that the Lord is good like we want to feel happy about Jesus right now if we don't think that something wrong we got to fix it so one day I think all this teaching from guests they might do is help us just chill out about that and not make that the index of spiritual vitality this kind of immediately felt experience the other way to put it as Paul uses this metaphor for the Holy Spirit he says the Spirit is the are bone or the the down payment or the first installment I love that it's perfect because it's it's saying I've got I don't know so first installment of a payment might be let's say that the payment is twenty thousand bucks in the first installment is five hundred bucks so let's say I've got like five hundred bucks of God's eschatological future in my pocket and I never can expect that I'm going to have twenty thousand bucks before Jesus comes back but until he comes back I'm going to have five hundred bucks which you can do something with and it's pretty cool and so I mean I think there's something like that that that because the spirit who dwells within us is the down payment on the Lord's future there's a sense of this is this is kind of the appetizer the hors d'oeuvres we are tasting and seeing that the Lord is good in the spirits power but we also know that the rest of the inheritance is outstanding and is in the future and it's vastly more than our down payment but allows us to enjoy something and even to enjoy it for its size too so you know if if the spirits down payment means that once in a while I feel really close to Jesus I can say that it's great isn't it going to be awesome when I get the whole inheritance oh my goodness and this is really nice and it's kind of what I should expect yeah I mean and I don't want that to mean I also think I don't know how that down payments going to look it's still the spirit hooray of him who raised Jesus from the dead spirit of Christ himself and so this downpayment spirit could raise someone from the dead tomorrow you know so it's not a weak spirit it's just the sort of first installment is not the fullness of opponents yeah the confessions you got to go to Henry Chadwick he's the man Chadwick Chad wick yeah he's the man he's absolutely fantastic most of the gas and volumes iron ore in the new city press translations some of them are the best some of them are just good but they've got really good intros good notes they're a relatively affordable because a lot of them are in paperback so the stuff I read on the home voice of John is known to be perhaps the Psalms ones yeah well partly they're just translating as much as they can in English and affordable paperbacks with scholars who know what they're talking about so you can give some good notes the confessions one Henry Chadwick is just he's is a sort of mid 20th century British scholar and there there's this period of time when those guys had the most elegant prose you can imagine and he's just he's just awesome yeah it's really good it's a really is a work of art in the translation we do hmm yeah it's all we have yeah oh yeah it's the best hands down yeah Biola University prepares Christians to think biblically about everything from to business to education and they are learn more at biola.edu you [Music]

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Published: Thu Jul 13 2017