Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 48 of 447 · 20 per page

• From The City of God

  Chapter 9. --When the City of Athens Was Founded, and What Reason Varro Assigns for Its Name. Athens certainly derived its name from Minerva, who in Greek is called 'Athene, and Varro points out the following reason why it was so called. When an olive-tree suddenly appeared there, and water burst forth in another place, these prodigies moved the king to send to the Delphic Apollo to inquire what they meant and what he should do. He answered that the olive signified Minerva, the water Neptune, and that the citizens had it in their power to name their city as they chose, after either of these two gods whose signs these were. On receiving this oracle, Cecrops convoked all the citizens of either sex to give their vote, for it was then the custom in those parts for the women also to take part in public deliberations. When the multitude was consulted, the men gave their votes for Neptune, the women for Minerva; and as the women had a majority of one, Minerva conquered. Then Neptune, being enraged, laid waste the lands of the Athenians, by casting up the waves of the sea; for the demons have no difficulty in scattering any waters more widely. The same authority said, that to appease his wrath the women should be visited by the Athenians with the three-fold punishment--that they should no longer have any vote; that none of their children should be named after their mothers; and that no one should call them Athenians. Thus that city, the mother and nurse of liberal doctrines, and of so many and so great philosophers, than whom Greece had nothing more famous and noble, by the mockery of demons about the strife of their gods, a male and female, and from the victory of the female one through the women, received the name of Athens; and, on being damaged by the vanquished god, was compelled to punish the very victory of the victress, fearing the waters of Neptune more than the arms of Minerva. For in the women who were thus punished, Minerva, who had conquered, was conquered too, and could not even help her voters so far that, although the right of voting was henceforth lost, and the mothers could not give their names to the children, they might at least be allowed to be called Athenians, and to merit the name of that goddess whom they had made victorious over a male god by giving her their votes. What and how much could be said about this, if we had not to hasten to other things in our discourse, is obvious.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  νεῖκος, τό, a quarrel, wrangle, strife, Hom., Pind., Hdt., etc., (cf. νεικέω fin.) ; νεῖκος .. ὄρωρεν ἽἝκτορος ἀμφὶ vérw Il. 24. 107; οὐδὲν és v. φέρον Hdt. 6.423 τὸ v. εὖ θέσθαι Soph. O. T. 633. 2. strife of words, railing, abuse, a taunt, reproach, νείκει ἄριστε Il. 13. 483; νείκει ὀνειδίζειν 7.953 ἐς νείκεα ἀπικέσθαι Hdt. 9. 55. 8. astrife at law, dispute before a judge, κρίνων νείκεα πολλὰ δικαζομένων αἰζηῶν Od. 12. 440, cf. Il. 18. 497. 4. also in Hom. not seldom for battle, fight, νεῖκος ὁμοίιον Il. 4. 444, etc.; νεῖκος πολέμοιο 13. 271; ν. ὁμοιίου πολέμοιο Od. 18. 264; ἔριδος μέγα ν. Il. 17. 384; ν. φυλόπιδος 20. 140; πόλεμος καὶ ν. 12. 361; ἔριδες καὶ νείκεα 2. 376; πόνος καὶ ». 12. 348, εἴς. ; νείκεα νεικεῖν 20. 252 :—in Hdt. of dissensions between whole nations, νεῖκος πρὸς Καρχηδονίους 4. 158, cf. 6. 42., 8. 87; ν. κρεισσόνων with the stronger, Pind. O. 10 (11). 47. 5. in the philosophy of Emped. νεῖκος and φιλία were the constructive forces of the κόσμος, Arist. Phys. 8. 1, 15, de An. 1. 2, Io, al., v. Grote Plat. 1. p. 40. IL. cause of strife, matter of quarrel, Soph. O. T. 702 ; whereas Hom. distinguishes between vetos guarrel, and its subject ἔρισμα, Il. 4. 37. Νειλᾶγάθια, τά, a fruit from the banks of the Nile, Cosmas. Ne Aatevs, ὁ, =sq., Anth. P. 9. 353. Νειλαῖος, a, ov, from the Nile, Anth. P. 6. 321, cf. Ath. 312 A (v. 1. -@os): cf. Νειλῷος. Νειλο-γενής, és, Nile-born, Anth. P. 9. 355. Νειλο-θερής, és, burnt by the Nile, i.e. by the sun and air of Egypt, παρειά Aesch. Supp. 70 (Herm. εἱλοθερής). Νειλο-μέτριον, τό, a Nilometer, a rod graduated to shew the rise and fall of the Nile, Strab. 562, Heliod. 9. 22. Νειλόρῦὕτος, ον, (pew) watered by the Nile, Anth, P. 9. 350. Νεῖλος, ὁ, the Nile, first in Hes. Th. 338 ;—in Hom. the river is called Αἴγυπτος, q. Vv. Νειλο-σκοπεῖον, τό, -- Νειλομέτριον, Diod. 1. 36. Νειλωΐς, δος, ἡ, situate on the Nile, πυραμίδες Anth. P. 9. 710. Νειλῷος, a, ov, = Νειλαῖος, Luc. Navig. 15: τὰ Νειλῷα a festival on the overflowing of the Nile, Heliod. 9. 9, cf. Diod. 1. 36. Νειλώτης, ov, 6, ix or on the Nile, Ath. 309 A:+fem., Νειλῶτις χθών the land of Nile, Aesch. Pr. 814. νεῖμεν, νεῖμαν, vetwov, Ion. aor. of νέμω. νειόθεν, lon. for νεύθεν, Adv., (véos) from the bottom, νειόθεν x κραδίης ἀνεστενάχιζε he heaved a sigh from the bottom of his heart, Il. 10. 105 c. gen., Ap. Rh.1. 1197, Arat. 233 :—only in late Prose, v. δρᾶν heartily, Luc. Peregr. 7.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  μαίνομαι: fut. μᾶνοῦμαι Hdt. 1. 109, μᾶνήσομαι Anth. P. 11. 216, Diog. L. 7. 118, but neither occur in good Att.: pf. with pres. sense μέμηνα Alcman 62, and Att.; also in pass. form μεμάνημαι [ἃ] Theocr. 10. 31: aor. pass. ἐμάνην, part. μᾶν εἰς, inf. μᾶνῆναι Hdt. and Att.; also aor. med, éujvao, μήνατο Bion 1. 61, Theocr. 20. 34 (cf. émpatvopar) ; pnvapevos Anth. P. 9. 35:—on the act. forms, y. infr. 11.—Hom. only uses pres. and impf. (From 4/MA, *ydaw.) To rage, be furious, in Il. mostly of martial rage, μαίνεσθαι ἐάσομεν οὖλον ᾿Αρῆα 5. 717, cf. 6. ΤΟΙ, Od. 9. 350, etc.; so, χεῖρες ἄαπτοι μαίνονται 1]. τ6. 245; μαίνεται ἐγχείη 16.75; δόρυ μαίνεται ἐν παλάμῃσιν 8. 111 :—also to rage with anger, πατὴρ .. φρεσὶ μαίνεται οὐκ ἀγαθῇσιν Ib. 360; ἐνὲ φρεσὶ μ. ἦτορ Ib. 4133 φρεσὶ μαινομένῃσιν 24. 114; μαινομένᾳ κραδίᾳ Aesch, Theb, 781, Eur. Med. 432; μανείσᾳ πραπίδι Id. Bacch. 999; ὁ pavels the madman, Soph. Aj. 726; μ. καὶ παραπαίω, Plat. Symp. 173 E, etc.: 10 be mad with wine, Od. 18. 406., 21. 298; μεμηνότες ὑπὸ τοῦ ποτοῦ Luc. D. Deor. 18. 2 :—also of Bacchic frenzy, μαινόμενος Διόνυσος Il. 6. 132; [Θυιάδες] μαινόμεναι Soph. Ant. 1152; μαίνεσθαι Διονύσῳ Paus. 2. 7.5; ἐπὶ τῷ A, Alex. Ταραντ. 5; ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ μ. to be inspired by .. , driven mad by .., Hdt. 4. 79, ubi v. Valck.; cf. μάντις :---τὸ μαίνεσθαι madness, Soph. O.C. 1537; πλεῖν ἢ μαίνομαι, more than madness, Ar. Ran. 103, 751:—often with words of manner, 6 δὲ μαίνεται οὐκέτ᾽ ἀνεκτῶς 1]. 8.355; τάδε μαίνεται 5. 185; c. acc. cogn., μεμηνότ᾽ οὐ σμικρὰν νόσον Aesch. Pr. 977: μ. μανίας Ar. Thesm. 793; μ. μανίαν ἐρρωμένην Luc. Indoct. 22; c. dat., μ. γόοις Aesch. Theb. 966; τόλμῃ Xen. Cyr. 1. 4, 24; πόνοις at or because of .., Aesch. Supp. 562; τοῖς εὑρήμασιν Eur. Cycl. 465; so, ἐπί τινι, Id. Phoen. 535; ἀμφί τινι Simon. lamb. 6. 33; εἴς τι Diod. 14. 109 ; κατά Twos Luc. Abdic. 1; ὑφ᾽ ἡδονῆς Soph. ΕἸ. 1153. 2. of things, to rage, riot, esp. of fire, ὡς ὅτ᾽... ὀλοὸν πῦρ οὔρεσι μαίνεται 1]. 15.606, etc.; of the sea or other elements, Wern. Tryph. 230; μαινόμενος οἶνος a hot, strong wine, Plat. Legg. 733 Ὁ; of feelings, μαινομένη ἐλπίς Orac. ap. Hdt. 8. 77; ἔρις Aesch. Theb. 936; ἄχεα Soph. Aj. 757, cf. Ant. 135; σὺν μ. δόξᾳ Eur. Bacch. 887. 3. ἄμπελος μαινομένη, of a vine that is never done bearing fruit, Arist. Mirab. 161, Theophr. C.P. 1. 18, 4. II. an aor. I act. ἔμηνα, in Causal sense, to madden, drive mad, occurs in Eur. Jon 520, Ar. Thesm. 561; to enrage, Xen. Hell. 3. 4, 8: in Eur. I. A. 581, Hermann restores ὅτε σε κρίσις ἔμανε [better ἔμηνε] θεῶν, for ἔμενε (whereas in Bion 1. 61, Brunck restored the aor. med. éuAvao) in intr. sense :—the pres. μαίνω first in Orph. H. 70, 6; a pf. μεμάνηκα (ἐπι--Ἰ in Cyrill.; and an Ep. part. μεμανηώς, maddened, in Or. Sib. 11 (9). 217.

• From The City of God

  [341] Seneca, De Clem. ii. 4 and 5. [342] Pro. Lig. c. 12. [343] De Oratore,i. 11, 47. Chapter 6. --Of the Passions Which, According to Apuleius, Agitate the Demons Who Are Supposed by Him to Mediate Between Gods and Men. Deferring for the present the question about the holy angels, let us examine the opinion of the Platonists, that the demons who mediate between gods and men are agitated by passions. For if their mind, though exposed to their incursion, still remained free and superior to them, Apuleius could not have said that their hearts are tossed with passions as the sea by stormy winds. [344]Their mind, then,--that superior part of their soul whereby they are rational beings, and which, if it actually exists in them, should rule and bridle the turbulent passions of the inferior parts of the soul,--this mind of theirs, I say, is, according to the Platonist referred to, tossed with a hurricane of passions. The mind of the demons, therefore, is subject to the emotions of fear, anger, lust, and all similar affections. What part of them, then, is free, and endued with wisdom, so that they are pleasing to the gods, and the fit guides of men into purity of life, since their very highest part, being the slave of passion and subject to vice, only makes them more intent on deceiving and seducing, in proportion to the mental force and energy of desire they possess? [344] De Deo Soc.

• From American Religious History (2001)

  Outline I. Columbus’s discovery of the Americas narrowly preceded the Reformation. Religious hatreds were added to intense national rivalries in the ensuing 200 years, which poisoned relations among the powers that colonized America. Attitudes about the Reformation also affected patterns of migration to the New World. II. The Reformation. A. For several centuries, Protestants looked back to the Reformation as a dawn of truth, while Catholics looked on it as a massive outbreak of heresy. Today, historians seek more to understand than ©2001 The Teaching Company. 8 to condemn, but they have to take seriously the intensity with which rival religious ideals were debated and defended. B. Martin Luther’s criticism of Johann Tetzel, the seller of papal indulgences, led to a broader controversy with the Vatican. 1. The heart of Luther’s teaching was embodied in the three principles sola scriptura (Christianity should be based on scripture alone, rather than scripture and tradition), sola fide (that man is saved by faith alone, not faith and works), and the priesthood of all believers, without the need for priestly intermediaries. 2. He was protected, after his 1521 excommunication, by Prince Frederick of Saxony. 3. Luther’s support for the German princes in suppressing the Peasant Revolt of the 1520s ensured that Lutheranism could become a state religion in much of north Germany and Scandinavia. C. The Swiss Reformation, especially the work of John Calvin in Geneva, created a rigorous Protestant way of life. 1. Calvin emphasized God’s power and man’s sinfulness in the theology of predestination. 2. Calvinism was iconoclastic, seeking to annihilate all Catholic vestiges. 3. Calvin organized a theocratic government for Geneva, which many later Protestants regarded as a model. D. The English Reformation sprang from Henry VIII’s eagerness to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn, in the hope of siring a male heir. 1. Henry had criticized Luther in a 1521 pamphlet and won papal thanks. 2. The pope’s Spanish connections forestalled Henry’s divorce project. 3. He declared himself head of the English church and seized its extensive properties, making himself much richer and more powerful than before. 4. He did not want to adopt Protestantism wholesale inside English Christianity. ©2001 The Teaching Company. 9

• From American Religious History (2001)

  D. Jim Jones’s People’s Temple mixed a progressive racial and social program with dictatorial leadership and ended in catastrophe. 1. Jones believed in racial integration and socialism. 2. His Ukiah commune sought shelter from imminent nuclear war. 3. His involvement in San Francisco politics offered the opportunity of becoming “mainstream.” 4. The move to Jonestown, Guyana, prevented this change. 5. Organized opposition to the group led to a congressional investigation. 6. Over 900 members committed suicide in 1978. E. The Heaven’s Gate mass suicide of 1998 similarly mixed themes from apocalyptic religion and high-tech society. II. The women’s movement, also emerging out of the 1960s but with more durable consequences, raised profound questions for Judaism and Christianity. A. Was the Western religious tradition irredeemably “patriarchal”? 1. Feminist Scripture scholars reinterpreted familiar Bible stories in light of feminist insights. 2. They discovered neglected religious “foremothers,” such as Hildegard of Bingen, and reinterpreted familiar ones, such as Teresa of Avila. B. Women began to take leadership roles, especially in Reform synagogues and liberal Protestant churches. Feminist consciousness raising suddenly made the exclusion of women seem unjust and intolerable. C. Catholics and Orthodox Jews refused to ordain women, using the argument of complementarity and difference. 1. Should “natural law” or “natural rights” prevail? 2. Was the gender of Jesus and his twelve apostles significant? 3. Pope Paul VI and Pope John-Paul II maintained the Catholic prohibition in the face of intense and organized American opposition. D. Some women abandoned Judaism and Christianity altogether and sought alternative forms of religion. 1. Some turned to worship of the ancient goddess. 2. “Starhawk” turned to witchcraft. ©2001 The Teaching Company. 88 3. Mary Daly created a brilliant alternative religious world and language and argued that the annunciation was a rape scene. 4. Traditional religious women opposed women’s ordination and religious feminism. III. Environmentalism, another movement growing out of the 1960s, also developed religious overtones. A. Lynn White, Jr., charged that the Christian frame of mind was responsible for the mess in the first place. B. Paul Ehrlich added that Catholic population policies were criminally irresponsible. C. Religious critics feared that certain features of environmentalism might be idolatrous or pantheistic. D. Most churches accepted a mild, but still anthropocentric, version of environmentalism. E. James Lovelock’s “Gaia” hypothesis, in some interpreters’ hands, made earth itself a living, suffering entity, deserving of a kind of religious veneration. IV. The 1960s expanded individual freedoms in many directions and religion was one of them. The decade’s emphasis on equality, born out of the civil rights movement, had profound effects, especially on women, and was even extended by some observers to non-human parts of the natural world. The 1960s also generated religious conflict between those on one side, who tried to adapt the messages of the era to their faith, and those on the other, who condemned the movements in the name of a more traditional interpretation of their faith.

• From American Religious History (2001)

  Scope: The Supreme Court was called on ever more frequently in the years after World War II to decide where the line should be drawn between church and state and to decide whether acting to ensure one group’s free exercise did not entail crossing that line with “excessive entanglement.” Among the more inflammatory “Establishment clause” decisions were those of 1962 and 1963, which prohibited reading the Bible and saying public prayers in public schools. Further cases challenged the displaying of Christmas crèches in public places lest they, too, be taken as state endorsements of the Christian religion. Immense protests and noncompliance swirled around these and many related decisions, while every session of Congress since 1963 has seen attempts to amend the Constitution on behalf of public prayer. School prayer, abortion, changing family roles, and Cold War fears fueled Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority in its 1980 campaign for Ronald Reagan, which aimed to narrow the gap between religion and public life. Court defeats, political complications, and the televangelist scandals of 1987 prevented the group from accomplishing these aims. Outline I. Establishments were common at the time of the Revolution and some persisted into the 19th century. A. Connecticut abandoned its established church in 1816, and Massachusetts, not until 1832. B. Horace Mann’s public school experiment assumed that America was a Protestant country. Catholic Archbishop Hughes dissented sharply, especially against use of the King James Bible and Protestant prayers. C. The Fourteenth Amendment (1868) extended the Bill of Rights to the states. D. The anti-polygamy Reynolds decision (1879) affirmed that America was a Christian nation. ©2001 The Teaching Company. 95

• From American Religious History (2001)

  E. Christian conversion was sometimes so powerful that it broke down the usual sharp lines of separation between master and slave. F. Escaped slaves often found racism among the northern churches. G. Samuel Ringgold Ward honored the Quakers and his own Congregationalist parish as notable exceptions. IV. The abolitionist movement was evangelical, inspired by the Second Great Awakening. A. Under William Lloyd Garrison, the movement shifted its aim from gradual to immediate. 1. Garrison called the Constitution, so long as it accepted slavery, “a pact with the devil.” 2. Angelina Grimke, in her Appeal to the Christian Women of the South (1840), argued against slavery in Jesus’s idiom. 3. Frederick Douglass made scorching comparisons between true Christianity and the version he had encountered as a slave. 4. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) was a masterful piece of Christian abolitionist propaganda. B. White southern defenders of slavery also justified their conduct with reference to scripture. The Old and New Testaments both refer often to slavery without condemning it. C. Disagreements over slavery led to schisms among Protestant churches. 1. The Methodists divided into northern (anti-slavery) and southern (pro-slavery) branches in 1844. 2. Baptists divided in the same way in 1845. 3. Presbyterians divided in 1857. V. Intense religious controversy ove r slavery added fuel to the political firestorm that eventually led to the secession of the southern states in 1861 and the onset of Civil War. Essential Reading: Sydney Ahlstrom, Religious History of the American People, vol. II, ch. 39–42. Albert Raboteau, Slave Religion. ©2001 The Teaching Company. 49 Supplementary Reading: Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom. Lewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism. Questions to Consider: 1. What forces shaped the character of African-American Christianity? 2. What were the strengths and weaknesses of the abolitionists’ case? ©2001 The Teaching Company. 50 Lecture Twelve The Civil War

• From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)

  The only logical escape was to conclude that the infants themselves carried the stain of sin. The first pages of the Confessions contain the famous and emotionally freighted passage in which Augustine infers from the behavior of babies he has seen eyeing each other jealously at the breasts of their wet nurses that the deepest human failings are already present in the most innocent-seeming of infants.590 From that experience he leapt to imagine a world in which his Platonic skepticism of the body was ratified and underscored by the Christian call to penance and redemption. When he heard that Pelagius had been preaching what he took to be a hearty “take charge of your own life” Christianity, something clicked and he rebelled. For Augustine, his god was all-powerful and all-determining, the human role in redemption at best a cooperation with the inevitable. (The story he had told of himself in the Confessions, after all, had portrayed his god as the actor and himself as the object of divine management.) Remember the clunky and disjointed title he gave the book he wrote when he first heard of Pelagius’s ideas: What Sin Deserves; or, Infant Baptism (De peccatorum meritis et remissione et de baptismo parvulorum). From that point on, the doctrine and its associated stories were assured a long future. In books 13 and 14 of City of God, a few years later, the story of Adam and Eve would be fully associated with the doctrine. So human beings were all condemned to sin, and responsible for the sins they committed, for original sin offered no release from culpability. Worse punishment than expulsion from paradise waited for all these sinners. When they died, they would languish in eternal misery. For their souls, though immortal, were subject to pain, spiritual pain, and would feel that pain forever as the punishment for sin. Medieval Christian doctrine would add the further layer of possible punishment of purgatory, and though Augustine says things that are more or less compatible with such a doctrine, he does not enunciate it in any recognizable form. All this probably sounds familiar to most moderns, too familiar. We need to think of “Glunchism” again, perhaps, to give these ideas a freshness and angularity they probably too readily lack. They certainly had a dissonant ring in the ear of many of Augustine’s contemporaries encountering Christianity for the first time, and to many Christians as well. Pelagius and Julian were not madmen and not un-Christian in their dissent. Their exhortations to good moral conduct fell flat by comparison to Augustine’s more dramatic portrait of fall, alienation, and redemption that came as a magical and (in the ritual of baptism) visible intervention from outside.

• From American Religious History (2001)

  E. A Mormon polygamist was convict ed of violating the bigamy laws, despite his free exercise claim under the First Amendment. F. The right of religious groups to run their own schools was guaranteed in the Oregon case Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925). II. The Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren made a series of decisions against school prayer and Bible reading in 1962 and 1963. They heightened the “wall of separation” between church and state and created a national uproar. A. Engel v. Vitale (1962) prohibited New York schoolchildren from reciting a nondenominational prayer that the state’s Regents had written. B. The Court prohibited Bible reading and the posting of the Ten Commandments in schools in its 1963 decisions Schempp v. Abington Township and Murray v. Curlett. 1. Liberal Protestant groups, the ACLU, and most Jewish groups praised the decision. 2. Evangelical and Roman Catholic groups deplored it, especially in the context of the Cold War conflict with “godless communism.” C. Draft constitutional amendments, notably the Becker Amendment, aimed to restore prayer to public schools but failed. Some conservatives also supported a movement to impeach Chief Justice Earl Warren. D. Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971) heightened the wall of separation by preventing states from aiding religious schools, even in purely secular matters. The decision also established the three-part “Lemon test.” E. Churches enjoy tax exemption, and some strict separationists have argued that the exemption is itself a policy that advances religion and, therefore, fails the Lemon test. III. The two clauses of the First Amendment appeared to come into conflict when protecting free exercise and seemed, to some observers, to be opening the door to establishment. A. In Braunfeld v. Brown (1961), Orthodox Jewish shopkeepers were denied an exemption from Pennsylvania’s Sunday closing laws. ©2001 The Teaching Company. 96

• From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)

  But there was also the matter of the riot. An old non-Christian festival took place on the first of June in 408, some customary local rite not sufficiently disinfected for Augustine’s taste, whatever mix of Christians and others might participate.353 Things got out of control. A rambunctious crowd was passing by the city’s church when the Christian clergy tried to stop the procession—they and the church were stoned for their trouble. The bishop remonstrated with the town council, to no avail. Eight days later, the church was stoned again. A third stoning ensued, and then a mob tried to set fire to the church. One ecclesiastic was killed, and Bishop Possidius hid in a secret place in the church. He could hear the mob rooting about and complaining that if they didn’t find the bishop, their whole attack was pointless. The raid went on from afternoon into the night before fading away. Augustine visited the city shortly afterward, hearing the story from his Christian friends, then engaging a group of “pagans” in a frank conversation. No good came of it. Nectarius’s reply to Augustine’s indignant and accusing letter is a masterpiece, evoking the spirit of late Roman civic patriotism and showing us the oddity of Christianity in a bright light. To my honored and respected brother Augustine, Nectarius sends his wishes of salvation in the master: When I had received the letter of your excellency, in which you attacked the cult of idols and the rites of the temples, I thought I was hearing the voice of a philosopher, not one from the Lyceum of the old Academy—not the one sitting on the ground in a dark corner, pulling his knees to his head deep plunged in thought, with no ideas of his own and waiting to attack the distinguished ideas of others—but rather it was Cicero himself whom your voice called to my mind—I could almost see him. He had saved the lives of countless citizens and brought the symbols of his victory before us, wearing the laurel crown as all the mobs of Greeks stood amazed. He had put his great resonating voice and tongue, a veritable trumpet against criminals and traitors, into service…and had stripped himself of the toga in favor of the Greek pallium. So when you make a powerful case for worshiping and following the god who is over all, I listened with pleasure. When you persuaded us to gaze upon the heavenly homeland, I was delighted to hear it. For you were not speaking of a city that has a circle of walls around it, nor even a city that the books of the philosophers argue we all belong to in this world, but rather a city that a great god and the souls that have deserved well of him occupy and make their own, the kind that all the laws are seeking to establish by their different paths and ways, which we cannot express in words but perhaps can imagine in thought.

• From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)

  For the Caecilianists, this was a godsend, and they happily interpreted events as foretelling a hoped-for patronage from Rome for their own position. Diplomatic negotiation between the smaller church and the empire quickly found common cause, and the government remained willing to accept the allegiance of the minority and to support its claims against the majority. The years that followed were years of governmental action against nonstandard religion anyway (the anti-“pagan” laws and reprisals of 399 and after were notorious) and the Donatists could expect their share of oppression as well. Laws in 399 and again in 405 were passed and some steps at least were taken to give those laws effect; in the latter case the Donatist church was formally disbanded, leaving its members at large and “unchurched.”425 The Donatists found themselves in a defensive position for the first time in over a generation, and the climate soured badly. In the town of Bagai, for example, which lay high in the Numidian plains, well south of Hippo, a Caecilianist bishop managed to claim the basilica there by law in these years. But he was not well received, as Augustine recounted:426 The bishop of Bagai had gone to law and won a judgment by which he gained control of the basilica there. Because he was catholic, the Donatists swarmed into church, horrible in their onrush and cruel in their rage, and assaulted him as he stood at the altar. They had clubs and sticks and weapons of any old sort, destroying the altar as they cut him down. He was knifed in the belly and would have collapsed lifeless except that their own greater savagery saved his life. For when they were dragging him along the ground, gravely wounded, the wound from which his life was flowing was stanched by the dirt. When they finally let him be, our own people began singing psalms and tried to carry him away. But the Donatists were so enraged that they snatched him away from the hands of those who were carrying him, beating and chasing the catholics (whom they far outnumbered) and terrifying them with their savagery. They took him up onto a tower nearby. Then, thinking he was dead (though he wasn’t), they threw him off the tower. He landed on a certain soft heap.427 Passers-by later that night caught sight of him by lantern light, recognized him, and took him to a devout household nearby, where they showed him great care. Over many days he gradually recovered from his desperate condition, but widespread rumor—even reaching overseas—had it that he had been killed by the Donatists. When he traveled overseas and showed off his scars—fresh, ghastly, and many—everyone saw that it was no irrational rumor that had marked him down as dead. While he was in Italy, showing his scars to the emperor, his enemies burned down his basilica anyway.

• From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)

  First, he tried yet again to write a book. As a priest he had concentrated on studying and writing about books of Christian scripture, where the years of unemployment at Tagaste had seen him concentrate more on philosophy and polemic. Genesis, the Psalms, the Sermon on the Mount, and Paul’s letters to the Romans, Ephesians, and Galatians all attracted his attention during the early Hippo years. Those efforts had all variously run out of steam by the time of Augustine’s ordination. We still have the unfinished books. In particular, his engagement with Paul had been frustrating and incomplete, sign of an unresolved struggle with Paul’s rebar-bative ideas. With difficulty and some lapse of time, he managed to finish his Free Choice of the Will (De libero arbitrio voluntatis), a work whose insistence on human liberty, and thus human responsibility for sin, would square only with the greatest difficulty with his later views on grace and predestination. It became an embarrassing monument to the thought of the young Augustine on just the topics where the thought of the mature Augustine changed the most. So the first book he tried to write shortly after his ordination was a manual prescribing how to do the thing that he was doing but finding difficult: scriptural interpretation. Christian Doctrine (De doctrina christiana) was the title he chose for a work he would eventually complete in four books. The title is less revealing than the model Augustine chose to copy. Just as Ambrose had taken Cicero as a model for moral teaching in writing a book called The Duties of Ministers (De officiis ministrorum) with formal and substantial resemblances to Cicero’s Duties (De officiis, written for his son in the last year of Cicero’s life), Augustine picked Cicero’s Orator as his model. The choice embodies rivalry and anxiety, rebellion and dependence. “Magnum opus et arduum,” Cicero had called his book. “A big tough job” we might be inclined to render it, though traditional translation will insist on something more pious, like “a great work and a challenging one.” The first page of Augustine’s imitation turns that phrase with a wry grimace: “Magnum onus et arduum”—“a great burden” now instead of a great work. One part of the burdensome book outlines the ideological program rooted in the core doctrines of the Christian creed, and two more parts suggest interpretive techniques to use in harmonizing developed ideology with received and often resistant scriptural texts to satisfy the taste and curiosity of a sensitive late-antique audience. Before Augustine could finish the work, he broke it off. We don’t know why. The last part of the third section and the whole of the fourth, where he finally came to practical direction for constructing and delivering Christian oratory, he completed only thirty years later.

• From Shunned (2018)

  He was off to join the game. I opened the screen door from Julia’s kitchen and stepped onto the back deck, where Jerry was presiding over the grill. He was wearing an apron that said KISS THE COOK. The tangy smoke from the marinade floated through the yard and whetted my appetite. “It’s hard to say who’ll be the star today,” I said, standing next to Jerry, watching him slather each piece with sauce. “Scott or your famous chicken.” “Your flattery entitles you to an extra piece,” Jerry said, smiling as he closed the lid on the grill. Wandering into the backyard, I found Ross surrounded by an entourage of eager children, waiting their turn for a piggyback ride. Jerry asked everyone to gather around the food tables. A hush came over the crowd as he bowed his head and led us in a prayer. Ross and I were part of the first wave of people through the dinner line. We filled our plates with grilled chicken, potato salad, and corn on the cob, then sat out of the way on a step on the deck, balancing our plates on our knees. “I told Todd about your experience in service,” Ross said, looking straight ahead. “What experience?” My hours in the service were dwindling. I couldn’t think of any recent encounters worth mentioning. “You know—the one from several months ago.” Scanning my memory banks, I wasn’t registering anything. “The one that upset you so much—the one where you met that guy from work.” My face flushed, and I imagined myself a spectacle, as if my whereabouts had just been exposed by a high beam climbing the wall of Cell Block C. “Are you kidding me?” I felt heat rising in my cheeks. “No,” Ross said, and then took a bite of potato salad, his eyes following someone across the yard. “When?” I tried to remember a time when Todd and Ross had been together. Ross said nothing. “When were you with Todd?” I repeated. “This morning, after the meeting. He walked me out to the car. We were trying to schedule a golf time, but he also wanted to know if you were all right.” “All right? What does that mean, all right?” I asked. My back stiffened as I crammed my plastic fork into my food. “I was at the meeting, wasn’t I? I’m here now, aren’t I? How could I not be all right?” I bit my lip as Ross took another bite of chicken. “Ross, I told you that in confidence.” My voice was lower now. “It was between us.” “Calm down,” he said. “Todd was just expressing concern. He’s noticed you’re not the same old enthusiastic Linda.” He flashed a forced smile at one of the passing children.

• From Shunned (2018)

  Todd knew this, and Ross had taken the bait. About an hour later, Ross walked through the front door, pausing when he saw me. I must have been quite a sight, wearing a matted terry bathrobe, face puffy from tears, fixing my second drink. “I’ll have what you’re having.” He walked past the kitchen bar, shoulders slumped. “Fix it yourself,” I said, taking a seat at the dining room table. “Your arms aren’t broken, and we already know your mouth is working fine.” The whiskey had seeped into my anger and liquefied it. “Linda, I don’t understand why you’re so worked up.” “You go running your mouth, and I have to draw pictures for you?” “Calm down,” he said. “I will not calm down.” I slammed my hand on the table. “That is the second time you’ve said that to me today. Don’t you get it? You betrayed my confidence.” “How do you figure?” asked Ross, pouring himself a shot of whiskey. “How about you tell me exactly what you and Todd talked about? And I mean exactly. If you two are going to talk about me, I have a right to know everything that was said.” “Fine.” Ross sat down at the table. “I have nothing to hide.” He took a drink and continued. “It was a very brief, well-meaning conversation.” “Well-meaning—I’ll bet. I want word for word,” I said, wiping my nose with a soggy Kleenex I pulled from my robe pocket. “How did it start?” “Like I said, Todd walked me out to the car so we could arrange a tee time for Tuesday. Then he asked about you.” “And . . . ?” I spun my drink around, rattling the ice. “Todd commented that you had lost some of your lightheartedness, your sparkle. I couldn’t disagree with him. I told him you were just working too hard.” “And then what?” I asked. “He’d also noticed your service hours were slipping and you weren’t commenting as much at the meetings. He asked me if we were regular with our family Bible study.” “That is none of his business.” Telling Todd the truth would only invite scrutiny. “It is his business. Todd cares about us. Besides, Linda, it felt good to be honest, to not pretend everything is fine. Because everything is not fine. Things haven’t been fine for a long time.” “How did you answer?”

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Instead he told them that he awaited martyrdom and saw his death as a sign: “Since it is God’s good pleasure that I should depart hence with an authentic knowledge of the divine name, and in recompense for certain abuses which the people embraced, not understanding me properly—for they sought only their own interests and the divine truth was defeated as a result—I, too, am heartily content that God has ordained things in this way….Do not allow my death, therefore, to be a stumbling block to you, for it has come to pass for the benefit of the good and the uncomprehending.” 15 Luther refused to believe that Müntzer had recanted—he grumpily insisted that his interrogators had asked him the wrong questions. His confession, Luther said, was “nothing other than a devilish, hardened obstinacy in his undertaking.” 16 — C ROWS and ravens were reported to have flown over the roofs of the Mansfeld castles, attacking one another and screaming. Many fell dead to the ground—a portent, it was later believed, of the coming Peasants’ War. 17 Fear that the miners would rebel and down their tools drove the counts of Mansfeld to call on Luther for help. They were right to be worried. The miners of Heldrungen and Stolberg, where Müntzer had first preached, proved some of his most fervent supporters and in 1524 seem to have responded to the energy and violence of his apocalyptic language, though they did not join the peasants at Frankenhausen. So in mid-April and early May 1525, Luther undertook short preaching tours, at the invitation of Count Albrecht of Mansfeld. He and Melanchthon went to Eisleben via Bitterfeld and Seeburg, and Luther preached at Stolberg, Nordhausen, and Wallhausen near Allstedt. 18 It was a courageous itinerary, with peasants and miners rebelling throughout the region, although it carefully avoided Mühlhausen. Luther had written his first tract on the Peasants’ War, the Admonition to Peace, published on April 19, 1525, in the idyllic surroundings of the garden of the Mansfeld chancellor Johann Dürr at Eisleben. 19 Now he encountered real hostility everywhere and was traveling, as he put it, “in danger of life and limb.” 20 He wrote an account of what he had seen in a letter to Johann Rühel, which formed the basis of what would become one of his most infamous tracts, Against the Robbing Murdering Thieving Hordes of Peasants . 21 In this highly intemperate work, which appeared in May, Luther likened the peasants to “mad dogs” who did nothing but “pure devil’s work” and were all driven by “that archdevil [ ertzteuffel ] who rules at Mühlhausen, and did nothing except stir up robbery, murder and bloodshed.” Because they had engaged in rebellion, every person was both their “judge and executioner”; and Luther urged them to let “everyone who can, smite, slay.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  15 Journey of the Magi Who is there? I. Who is I? Thou. And that is the awakening—the Thou and the I. —Paul Valéry W omen in my bloodline don’t pop out babies like pieces of toast. We’re narrow-hipped. Birthing tends to drag on—long days of false labor followed by a good twenty hours of exorcism-quality dismay. We’re less known for patience than drive, and being flat on our back is anathema. Lecia’s own son took so long to find daylight that his father—during a grisly period called transition that involves much howling—excused himself, sending Mother into the room as backup. Lecia had been cursing him and God and most of the nurses. Mother stood bedside a few minutes, then—as Lecia huffed for air—held up her handbag, saying, Look at this cute little purse I bought. At which, my sister screamed, Get her the fuck out of here! Mother, later outraged at Lecia’s overreaction, said, I was just trying to take her mind off it. In my case, delivery takes a full twenty-two hours—forty-four if you count the false labor that kept me manically rocking in a chair all night like some bulbous figure in a horror movie. At the hospital, they inject various mickeys into my IV, telling me I’ll be asleep in a minute, but that’s only one of many lies—like banning the word pain in favor of discomfort , conveniently reducing the hospital’s need to deal with it while treating the mother like a piece of furniture. In natural childbirth classes, with women sprawled around the room on wrestling mats, the men had seemed mystified by the process. One night in the car going home, Warren said, When are we supposed to learn the stuff that stops the pain? We already have, I said. That’s what the breathing exercises are. My God, he said, that won’t accomplish anything. Almost two days into my own marathon, I enter the half-drugged, hallucinogenic state that causes the room I lie in to bulge like a fishbowl around me. Staring at the calico curtains hung against the vomit-green walls to make the birthing room look homey , I keep echoing Oscar Wilde’s last words: Either this wallpaper goes, or I do . The big disappointment? The needle painfully jabbed into my spine to block pain quote-unquote didn’t take . This is the breezy parlance of the anesthesia dude. He stands in the door with clip-on sunglasses flipped up from his specs. He’s clearly on his way out. Whaddayou mean , I roar at him, whaddayou MEAN it didn’t take! I’m incapable of speaking without exclamation points and italics and any available typographical inflation. In between cogent sentences, the nurse with the tiny white head and gargantuan blue eyes—real crocodile-sized peepers—leans over me, saying, Breathe … Warren’s head appears alongside hers, his face bulging forward like a drop of water squeezed from a turkey baster. Breathe … I holler, DO IT AGAIN! The nurse is telling me it’s too late.

• From Jesus and the Disinherited (1949)

  That it became, through the intervening years, a religion of the powerful and the dominant, used sometimes as an instrument of oppression, must not tempt us into believing that it was thus in the mind and life of Jesus. “In him was life; and the life was the light of men.” Wherever his spirit appears, the oppressed gather fresh courage; for he announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them. I belong to a generation that finds very little that is meaningful or intelligent in the teachings of the Church concerning Jesus Christ. It is a generation largely in revolt because of the general impression that Christianity is essentially an other-worldly religion, having as its motto: “Take all the world, but give me Jesus.” The desperate opposition to Christianity rests in the fact that it seems, in the last analysis, to be a betrayal of the Negro into the hands of his enemies by focusing his attention upon heaven, forgiveness, love, and the like. It is true that this emphasis is germane to the religion of Jesus, but it has to be put into a context that will show its strength and vitality rather than its weakness and failure. For years it has been a part of my own quest so to understand the religion of Jesus that interest in his way of life could be developed and sustained by intelligent men and women who were at the same time deeply victimized by the Christian Church’s betrayal of his faith. During much of my boyhood I was cared for by my grandmother, who was born a slave and lived until the Civil War on a plantation near Madison, Florida. My regular chore was to do all of the reading for my grandmother—she could neither read nor write. Two or three times a week I read the Bible aloud to her. I was deeply impressed by the fact that she was most particular about the choice of Scripture. For instance, I might read many of the more devotional Psalms, some of Isaiah, the Gospels again and again. But the Pauline epistles, never—except, at long intervals, the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. My curiosity knew no bounds, but we did not question her about anything. When I was older and was half through college, I chanced to be spending a few days at home near the end of summer vacation. With a feeling of great temerity I asked her one day why it was that she would not let me read any of the Pauline letters. What she told me I shall never forget. “During the days of slavery,” she said, “the master’s minister would occasionally hold services for the slaves. Old man McGhee was so mean that he would not let a Negro minister preach to his slaves. Always the white minister used as his text something from Paul.

• From Jesus and the Disinherited (1949)

  All kinds of first aid may be rendered to the weak; they may be protected so long as there is the abject acknowledgment of their utter dependence upon the strong. When the Southern white person says, “I understand the Negro,” what he really means is that he has a knowledge of the Negro within the limitations of the boundaries which the white man has set up. The kind of Negro he understands has no existence except in his own mind. In the third place, an unsympathetic understanding tends to express itself in the active functioning of ill will. A few years ago I was going from Chicago to Memphis, Tennessee. I found a seat across from an elderly lady, who took immediate cognizance of my presence. When the conductor came along for the tickets, she said to him, pointing in my direction, “What is that doing in this car?” The conductor answered, with a touch of creative humor, “That has a ticket.” For the next fifty miles this lady talked for five or ten or fifteen minutes with each person who was seated alone in that coach, setting forth her philosophy of human relationships and the basis of her objection to my presence in the car. I was able to see the atmosphere in the entire car shift from common indifference to active recognition of and, to some extent, positive resentment of my presence; an ill will spreading its virus by contagion. In the fourth place, ill will, when dramatized in a human being, becomes hatred walking on the earth. The outline is now complete and simple—contacts without fellowship developing hatred and expressing themselves in unsympathetic understanding; an unsympathetic understanding tending to express itself in the exercise of ill will; and ill will, dramatized in a man or woman, becoming hatred walking on the earth. In many analyses of hatred it is customary to apply it only to the attitude of the strong towards the weak. The general impression is that many white people hate Negroes and that Negroes are merely the victims. Such an assumption is quite ridiculous. I was once seated in a Jim Crow car which extended across the highway at a railway station in Texas. Two Negro girls of about fourteen or fifteen sat behind me. One of them looked out of the window and said, “Look at those kids.” She referred to two little white girls, who were skating towards the train. “Wouldn’t it be funny if they fell and spattered their brains all over the pavement!” I looked at them. Through what torture chambers had they come—torture chambers that had so attacked the grounds of humaneness in them that there was nothing capable of calling forth any appreciation or understanding of white persons? There was something that made me shiver.

• From Shunned (2018)

  Jerry sat down within earshot, and more people came to occupy the open seats around us. Ross gave me a look that said, We can talk about this later. I gave him a look back that said, You better believe we will. Todd was standing in the far corner of the yard, leaning against the fence, laughing as he talked to another brother. He was one of the first people I had passed as I’d entered the house. We had exchanged pleasantries as he’d walked out to join the basketball game. I struggled to manage my breathing and keep up appearances while simultaneously sending invisible daggers at my husband. How many people in this group were also wondering if I was “all right”? Were they talking about me behind my back? A knot in my stomach replaced my appetite. The jovial environment was wearing thin and wasn’t conducive to either a screaming match or a river of tears. I stood up, thinking I would go to the restroom and pull myself together. Then something visceral happened and I sat back down. I leaned toward Ross, tilted my head, and whispered, “I’m so angry, I can’t even see straight. I’m going to leave.” I refused to look him in the eye, but I knew he’d stopped chewing, frozen in place. “I’m sure you won’t have any trouble getting a ride home,” I continued. “Don’t worry. I’m going quietly. When people notice I’m gone, you can tell them whatever you please. Don’t forget to bring our cheesecake platter home.” Without waiting for an answer, I slipped through the back screen door, past the living room, and out the front door. I’d never done anything like that before. I felt exhilarated, enlivened by actions true to my emotions. As soon as I reached my car, the tears began, quick and clean, a mix of righteous indignation and relief. I cried all the way home. Chapter 5 And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. —Anaïs Nin My first stop inside our front door was the liquor cabinet, where I looked for a way to dull my senses. Weeping over the barware, I mixed myself a tall Seagram’s and 7UP. I tried to imagine the conversation Todd and Ross had had about me earlier that day. I pictured them standing in the Kingdom Hall parking lot, Ross’s forthcoming, naive mind not seeing that this was more than idle chitchat, unaware of Todd’s agenda. How would the questioning have started? Linda sure is spending a lot of time in LA. Or Linda seems distracted. Is everything okay on the home front? At whom was I most angry: Ross or Todd? I resented Todd’s prying. Ross was an easy target, always saying just a little too much. I, on the other hand, was consistently the picture of discretion, careful and deliberate about what I revealed.