Awe

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.

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• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  Parmenides, a native of Elea, who was slightly younger than Heraclitus, experienced his bleak philosophy as a divine revelation. He had traveled to heaven in a fiery chariot, he said, far beyond the Milky Way, where he met a goddess who took him by the hand and gave him this reassurance: “No ill fate has sent you to travel this road—far indeed does it lie from the steps of men—but right and justice. It is proper that you should learn all things.” 81 Parmenides believed that by freeing humanity from delusion, he was performing a valuable spiritual service. Because nothing was as it appeared, human reason must rise above common sense, prejudice, and unverified opinion; only then could it grasp true reality. 82 But many of his contemporaries felt that he made it impossible to think constructively about anything at all. 83 Parmenides argued that the world could not have developed in the way the Milesians had described, because all change was an illusion. Reality consisted of one, simple, complete, and eternal Being. He insisted that we could say nothing sensible about phenomena that did not exist. Thus, because Being was eternal and not subject to alteration, there was no such thing as change. We could, therefore, never say that something was born, because that implied that previously it had not existed, nor, for the same reason, could we say that it died or ceased to be. It appeared that creatures came into being and passed away, but this was an illusion, because reality was beyond time and change. Again, nothing could “move,” in the sense that at a given moment an object shifted from one place to another. We could never say that something had “developed,” that it had been one way once but become something different. So the universe was not in flux, as Heraclitus claimed; nor did it evolve, as the Milesians had argued. The universe was the same at all times and in all places. It was unchanging, uncreated, and immortal. The Milesians had based their philosophy on their observation of such phenomena as water and air. But Parmenides did not trust the evidence of the senses, and relied, with remarkable, ruthless consistency, on a purely reasoned argument. He cultivated the habit of “second-order thinking,” reflection upon the thought processes themselves. Like many of the Axial sages, he had arrived at a new, critical awareness of the limitations of human knowledge. Parmenides had also embarked on the philosophical quest for pure existence. Instead of contemplating individual creatures, he was trying to put his finger on quintessential being. But in the process, he created a world in which it was impossible to live. Why would anybody undertake any course of action, if change and movement were illusory? His disciple Melissus was a naval commander: How was he supposed to guide his moving ship? How should we evaluate the physical changes that we note within ourselves? Were human beings really phantoms?

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  40 We know very little about the motivation that lay behind this reform movement. According to one scholar, it sprang from the insoluble conundrum that the sacrificial ritual, which was designed to give life, actually involved death and destruction. The rishis could not eliminate military violence from society, but they could strip it of religious legitimacy. 41 There was also a new concern about cruelty to animals. In one of the later poems of the Rig Veda, a rishi tenderly soothes the horse about to be slaughtered in the ashvameda: Let not thy dear soul burn thee as thou comest, let not the hatchet linger in thy body Let not a greedy, clumsy immolator, missing the joints, mangle thy limbs unduly. No, here thou diest not, thou art not injured: by easy paths unto the Gods thou goest. 42 The Brahmanas described animal sacrifice as cruel, recommending that the beast be spared and given as a gift to an officiating priest. 43 If it had to be killed, the animal should be dispatched as painlessly as possible. In the old days the victim’s decapitation had been the dramatic climax of the sacrifice; now the animal was suffocated in a shed at a distance from the sacrificial area. 44 Some scholars, however, contend that the reform was driven not by a revulsion from violence per se; rather, violence was now experienced as polluting, and anxious to avoid defilement, priests preferred to delegate the task to assistants who killed the victim outside the sacred ground. 45 Whatever their motivation, the reformers were beginning to create a climate of opinion that looked askance at violence. They also directed the patron’s attention toward his inner world. Instead of inflicting death on the hapless animal, he was now instructed to assimilate death, experiencing it internally in a symbolic rite. 46 During the ceremony, his death was enacted ritually and enabled him for a time to enter the world of the immortal gods. A more internal spirituality was beginning to emerge, one closer to what we call “religion”; and it was rooted in a desire to avoid violence. Instead of mindlessly going through the motions of external rituals, participants were required to become aware of the hidden significance of the rites, making themselves conscious of the connections that, in the logic of the perennial philosophy, linked every single action, liturgical utensil, and mantra to a divine reality. Gods were assimilated with humans, humans with animals and plants, the transcendent with the immanent, and the visible with the invisible. 47 This was not simply self-indulgent make-believe but part of the endless human endeavor to endow the smallest details of life with meaning. Ritual, it has been said, creates a controlled environment in which, for a while, we lay aside the inescapable flaws of our mundane existence. Yet by so doing we paradoxically become acutely aware of them.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  It contents itself with settling, in clear outlines, the eternal result of the theanthropic process of incarnation, leaving the study of the process itself to scientific theology. The dogmatic letter of Leo, it is true, takes a step beyond this, towards a theological interpretation of the doctrine; but for this very reason it cannot have the same binding and normative force as the symbol itself. As the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity stands midway between tritheism and Sabellianism, so the Chalcedonian formula strikes the true mean between Nestorianism and Eutychianism. It accepts dyophysitism; and so far it unquestionably favored and satisfied the moderate Antiochian party rather than the Egyptian.1640 But at the same time it teaches with equal distinctness, in opposition to consistent Nestorianism, the inseparable unity of the person of Christ. The following are the leading ideas of this symbol: 1. A true incarnation of the Logos, or of the second person in the Godhead.1641 The motive is the unfathomable love of God; the end, the redemption of the fallen race, and its reconciliation with God. This incarnation is neither a conversion of God into a man, nor a conversion of a man into God; neither a humanizing of the divine, nor a deification or apotheosis of the human; nor on the other hand is it a mere outward, transitory connection of the two factors; but an actual and abiding union of the two in one personal life. It is primarily and pre-eminently a condescension and self-humiliation of the divine Logos to human nature, and at the same time a consequent assumption and exaltation of the human nature to inseparable and eternal communion with the divine person. The Logos assumes the body, soul, and spirit of man, and enters into all the circumstances and infirmities of human life on earth, with the single exception of sin, which indeed is not an essential or necessary element of humanity, but accidental to it. "The Lord of the universe," as Leo puts the matter in his epistle, "took the form of a servant; the impassible God became a suffering man; the Immortal One submitted himself to the dominion of death; Majesty assumed into itself lowliness; Strength, weakness; Eternity, mortality." The same, who is true God, is also true man, without either element being altered or annihilated by the other, or being degraded to a mere accident. This mysterious union came to pass, in an incomprehensible way, through the power of the Holy Ghost, in the virgin womb of Mary. But whether the miraculous conception was only the beginning, or whether it at the same time completed the union, is not decided in the Creed of Chalcedon. According to his human nature at least Christ submitted himself to the laws of gradual development and moral conflict, without which, indeed, he could be no example at all for us. 2. The precise distinction between nature and person.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  83 The phrase “he who knows” beats insistently through the Brahmana texts. The priests could not do all the work. The kshatriya and vaishya sacrificer also had to be proficient in liturgical lore, because knowledge alone could unlock the powers of the rites. The liturgy created by the reformers must have been spiritually satisfying, or the Brahmins never could have persuaded the warriors to give up their war games. It is difficult for us to appreciate the aesthetic, transformative power of these rites, because we have only the flat statements of the Brahmanas . Before the rite, the sacrificer made a retreat that isolated him from the pressing concerns of his ordinary life; the fasting, meditation, and asceticism, the intoxication of the soma drink, and the beauty of the chant would all have given emotional resonance to the dry, abstract instructions of the ritualists. To read the Brahmanas without the experience of the liturgy is like reading the libretto of an opera without hearing the music. The “knowledge” of ritual science was not a notional acceptance of the metaphysical speculations of the Brahmins, but was like the insights derived from art, achieved by the compelling drama of the cult. But the most important effect of the ritual reform was the discovery of the interior world. By placing such emphasis on the sacrificer’s mental state, the ritualists had directed his attention within. In antiquity, religion was usually directed outward, to external reality. The old rites had focused on the gods, and their goal had been the achievement of material goods—cattle, wealth, and status. There was little or no self-conscious introspection. The ritual reformers were pioneers. They redirected sacrifice from its original orientation, and focused instead on the creation of the atman, the self. But what exactly was the atman? The priests who were immersed in the ritual science of the Brahmanas began to speculate on the nature of the self, and gradually the word “atman” came to refer to the essential and eternal core of the human person, which made him or her unique. The atman was not what we in the West would call the soul, because it was not wholly spiritual. In the early stages of this speculation, some of the Brahmins believed that the self was physical: the trunk of the body, as opposed to the limbs. Others began to look deeper.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  Thus knowledge of the self was an experience of pure bliss, an ekstasis. This knowledge lay beyond concepts and did not depend upon logical deduction. It was rather an awareness of an “inner light within the heart,” a direct and immediate intuition, beyond any ordinary joy. This “knowledge” transformed the individual. It could be attained only after a long training in inwardness, which the aspirants could achieve by practicing Yajnavalkya’s dialectical method: systematically dismantling normal habits of thought; cultivating an awareness of their interior world, their dreams, and subconscious states; and by constantly reminding themselves that the knowledge they sought was beyond words and of an entirely different order from their secular thoughts and experiences. Yajnavalkya could not impart this knowledge, as if it were ordinary, factual information. He could only teach the method that enabled his disciples to arrive at this state. Yajnavalkya believed that a person who knows thus—who had realized his or her identity with brahman—would go to brahman at death, taking their “knowledge” with them. In the traditional Vedic ritual, a person constructed the self that would survive in the world of the gods by means of his liturgical action (karma). But for Yajnavalkya, the creation of an immortal self was not achieved by external rites, but by this carefully acquired knowledge. The ritualists had believed that the self was built by accumulating a stock of perfectly executed sacrifices, but Yajnavalkya was convinced that the eternal self was conditioned by all our actions and experiences. “What a man turns out to be depends on how he acts and on how he conducts himself. If his actions are good, he will turn into something good. If his actions are bad, he turns into something bad.” Yajnavalkya was not simply talking about our external deeds. Our mental activities, such as our impulses of desire and feelings of attachment, were also crucial. After his death, a man whose desires were fixed on the things of this world would return to earth, after a brief stay in heaven. His mind and character still clung to the mundane, and so he would be born again to endure a new life here below, “back to this world, back to action.” But a man who sought only his immortal self, and was not attached to this world, belonged to the brahman: “A man who does not desire—who is without desires, who is freed from desires, whose desires are fulfilled, whose only desire is his self—his vital functions do not depart. Brahman he is, and to brahman he goes.”19 He would never again return to this life of pain and mortality.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  Paleolithic hunters may have had a similar understanding.18 The cave paintings in northern Spain and southwestern France are among the earliest extant documents of our species. These decorated caves almost certainly had a liturgical function, so from the very beginning art and ritual were inseparable. Our neocortex makes us intensely aware of the tragedy and perplexity of our existence, and in art, as in some forms of religious expression, we find a means of letting go and encouraging the softer, limbic emotions to predominate. The frescoes and engravings in the labyrinth of Lascaux in the Dordogne, the earliest of which are seventeen thousand years old, still evoke awe in visitors. In their numinous depiction of the animals, the artists have captured the hunters’ essential ambivalence. Intent as they were to acquire food, their ferocity was tempered by respectful sympathy for the beasts they were obliged to kill, whose blood and fat they mixed with their paints. Ritual and art helped hunters express their empathy with and reverence (religio) for their fellow creatures—just as Mencius would describe some seventeen millennia later—and helped them live with their need to kill them. In Lascaux there are no pictures of the reindeer that featured so largely in the diet of these hunters.19 But not far away, in Montastruc, a small sculpture has been found, carved from a mammoth tusk in about 11,000 BCE, at about the same time as the later Lascaux paintings. Now lodged in the British Museum, it depicts two swimming reindeer.20 The artist must have watched his prey intently as they swam across lakes and rivers in search of new pastures, making themselves particularly vulnerable to the hunters. He also felt a tenderness toward his victims, conveying the unmistakable poignancy of their facial expressions without a hint of sentimentality. As Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, has noted, the anatomical accuracy of this sculpture shows that it “was clearly made not just with the knowledge of a hunter but also with the insight of a butcher, someone who had not only looked at his animals but had cut them up.” Rowan Williams, the former archbishop of Canterbury, has also reflected insightfully on the “huge and imaginative generosity” of these Paleolithic artists: “In the art of this period, you see human beings trying to enter fully into the flow of life, so that they become part of the whole process of animal life that’s going on all around them … and this is actually a very religious impulse.”21 From the first, then, one of the major preoccupations of both religion and art (the two being inseparable) was to cultivate a sense of community—with nature, the animal world, and our fellow humans.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  II. The founder of the sect is Constantine a Syrian from a Gnostic (Marcionite) congregation in Mananalis near Samosata. Inspired by the epistles of St. Paul and pretending to be his genuine disciple, he propagated under the name of Sylvanus dualistic doctrines in Kibossa in Armenia and in the regions of Pontus and Cappadocia, with great success for twenty-seven years, until the Emperor Constantine Pogonatus (668–685) sent an officer, Symeon, for his arrest and execution. He was stoned to death in 684, and his congregation scattered. But Symeon was struck and converted by the serene courage of Constantine-Sylvanus, revived the congregation, and ruled it under the name of Titus. When Justinian II. heard of it, he condemned him and the other leaders to death by fire (690), according to the laws against the Manichaeans. But in spite of repeated persecution and inner dissensions, the sect spread throughout Asia Minor. When it decayed, a zealous reformer rose in the person of Sergius, called Tychieus, the second founder of the sect (801–835). He had been converted by a woman, visited the old congregations and founded new ones, preached and wrote epistles, opposed the antinomian practices of Baanes, called "the Filthy" (oJ rJuparov"), and introduced strict discipline. His followers were called Sergiotes in distinction from the Baanites. The fate of the sect varied with the policy of the Greek emperors. The iconoclastic Leo the Isaurian did not disturb them, and gave the leader of the sect, Gegnaesius, after a satisfactory examination by the patriarch, a letter of protection against persecution; but the wily heretic had answered the questions in a way that deceived the patriarch. Leo the Armenian (813–820) organized an expedition for their conversion, pardoning the apostates and executing the constant. Theodora, who restored the worship of images, cruelly persecuted them, and under her short reign one hundred thousand Paulicians were put to death by the sword, the gibbet, or the flames (844). Perhaps this large number included many iconoclasts. Provoked by these cruelties, the Paulicians raised the standard of revolt under the lead of Karbeas. He fled with five thousand to the Saracens, built a strong fort, Tephrica,757 on the Arab frontier, and in alliance with the Moslems made successful military invasions into the Byzantine territory. His son-in-law, Chrysocheres, proceeded as far as Ephesus, and turned the cathedral into a stable (867), but was killed by the Greeks in 871, and the sect had to submit to the Emperor Basil the Macedonian. He sent among them the monk Petrus Siculus, who thus became acquainted with their doctrines and collected the materials for his work. After this the sect lost its political significance, and gradually disappeared from history. Many were transferred to Philippopolis in Thrace about 970, as guards of the frontier, and enjoyed toleration. Alexius Comnenus (1081–1118) disputed with their leaders, rewarded the converts, and punished the obstinate. The Crusaders found some remains in 1204, when they captured Constantinople.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  In the West the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius were first noticed about 590 by Pope Gregory I., who probably became acquainted with them while ambassador at Constantinople. Pope Hadrian I. mentions them in a letter to Charlemagne. The Emperor Michael II. the Stammerer, sent a copy to Louis the Pious, 827. Their arrival at St. Denis on the eve of the feast of the saint who reposed there, was followed by no less than nineteen miraculous cures in the neighborhood. They naturally recalled the memory of the patron-saint of France, and were traced to his authorship. The emperor instructed Hilduin, the abbot of St. Denis, to translate them into Latin; but his scholarship was not equal to the task. John Scotus Erigena, the best Greek scholar in the West, at the request of Charles the Bald, prepared a literal translation with comments, about 850, and praised the author as "venerable alike for his antiquity and for the sublimity of the heavenly mysteries" with which he dealt.780 Pope Nicolas I. complained that the work had not been sent to him for approval," according to the custom of the church" (861); but a few years later Anastasius, the papal librarian, highly commended it (c. 865). The Areopagitica stimulated an intuitive and speculative bent of mind, and became an important factor in the development of scholastic and mystic theology. Hugo of St. Victor, Peter the Lombard, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Robert Grosseteste, and Dionysius Carthusianus wrote commentaries on them, and drew from them inspiration for their own writings.781 The Platonists of the Italian renaissance likewise were influenced by them. Dante places Dionysius among the theologians in the heaven of the sun: "Thou seest next the lustre of that taper, Which in the flesh below looked most within The angelic nature and its ministry."782 Luther called him a dreamer, and this was one of his heretical views which the Sorbonne of Paris condemned. The Several Writings. The Dionysian writings, as far as preserved, are four treatises addressed to Timothy, his "fellow-presbyter," namely: 1) On the Celestial Hierarchy (peri; th'" oujraniva" iJerarciva"). 2) On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy (peri; th'" ejkklhsiastikh'" iJerarciva"). 3) On the Divine Names (peri; qeivwn ojnomavtwn). 4) On Mystic Theology (peri; mustikh'" qeologiva"). To these are added ten letters addressed to various persons of the apostolic age.783 The System of Dionysius.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  With Conrad III. the powerful family of the Hohenstaufen ascended the imperial throne and occupied it from 1138 till 1254. They derive the name from the family castle Hohenstaufen, on a hill in the Rough Alp near Göppingen in Swabia.129 They were descended from a knight, Friedrich von Büren, in the eleventh century, and his son Friedrich von Staufen, a faithful adherent of Emperor Henry IV., who made him duke of Swabia (1079), and gave him his daughter Agnes in marriage. They were thus connected by blood with the antagonist of Pope Hildebrand, and identified with the cause of the Ghibellines against the Guelphs in their bloody feuds in Germany and Italy. Henry VI., 1190–1197, acquired by marriage the kingdom of Naples and Sicily. His son, Frederick II., raised his house to the top of its prosperity, but was in his culture and taste more an Italian than German prince, and spent most of his time in Italy. The Hohenstaufen or Swabian emperors maintained the principle of imperialism, that is, the dignity and independence of the monarchy, as a divine institution, against papal sacerdotalism on the one hand, and against popular liberty on the other. They made common cause with the popes, and served their purposes in the crusades: three of them, Conrad III., Frederick I., and Frederick II., undertook crusades against the Saracens; Conrad III. engaged in the second, which was a failure; Frederick I. perished in Syria; Frederick II. captured Jerusalem. The Hohenstaufen made also common cause with the popes against political and doctrinal dissent: Barbarossa sacrificed and punished by death Arnold of Brescia as a dangerous demagogue; and Frederick II., though probably himself an unbeliever, persecuted heretics. But on the question of supremacy of power, the Hohenstaufen were always in secret or open war with the popes, and in the end were defeated. The conflict broke out under Frederick Barbarossa, who after long years of contention died at peace with the Church. It was continued by his grandson Frederick II. who died excommunicated and deposed from his throne by the papacy. The dynasty went out in tragic weakness in Conradin, the last male representative, who was beheaded on the charge of high treason, 1268. This conflict of the imperial house of the Hohenstaufen was more imposing than the conflict waged by Henry IV. with Gregory and his successors because of the higher plane on which it was fought and the greater ability of the secular antagonists engaged. Lasting more than one hundred years, it forms one of the most august spectacles of the Middle Ages, and furnishes some of the most dramatic scenes in which kings have ever figured. The historian Gregorovius has felt justified in saying that "this Titanic war of the Middle Ages filled and connected the centuries and formed the greatest spectacle of all ages."

• From The City of God

  Chapter 9. --What the Scriptures Teach Us to Believe Concerning the Creation of the Angels. At present, since I have undertaken to treat of the origin of the holy city, and first of the holy angels, who constitute a large part of this city, and indeed the more blessed part, since they have never been expatriated, I will give myself to the task of explaining, by God's help, and as far as seems suitable, the Scriptures which relate to this point. Where Scripture speaks of the world's creation, it is not plainly said whether or when the angels were created; but if mention of them is made, it is implicitly under the name of "heaven," when it is said, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," or perhaps rather under the name of "light," of which presently. But that they were wholly omitted, I am unable to believe, because it is written that God on the seventh day rested from all His works which He made; and this very book itself begins, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," so that before heaven and earth God seems to have made nothing. Since, therefore, He began with the heavens and the earth,--and the earth itself, as Scripture adds, was at first invisible and formless, light not being as yet made, and darkness covering the face of the deep (that is to say, covering an undefined chaos of earth and sea, for where light is not, darkness must needs be),--and then when all things, which are recorded to have been completed in six days, were created and arranged, how should the angels be omitted, as if they were not among the works of God, from which on the seventh day He rested? Yet, though the fact that the angels are the work of God is not omitted here, it is indeed not explicitly mentioned; but elsewhere Holy Scripture asserts it in the clearest manner. For in the Hymn of the Three Children in the Furnace it was said, "O all ye works of the Lord bless ye the Lord;" [462] and among these works mentioned afterwards in detail, the angels are named. And in the psalm it is said, "Praise ye the Lord from the heavens, praise Him in the heights. Praise ye Him, all His angels; praise ye Him, all His hosts. Praise ye Him, sun and moon; praise him, all ye stars of light. Praise Him, ye heaven of heavens; and ye waters that be above the heavens. Let them praise the name of the Lord; for He commanded, and they were created. " [463]Here the angels are most expressly and by divine authority said to have been made by God, for of them among the other heavenly things it is said, "He commanded, and they were created. "Who, then, will be bold enough to suggest that the angels were made after the six days' creation?

• From The City of God

  9 „This otherness can itself be a lesson for us—a lesson in the scope of human achievement. Sometimes we think of this as a matter of superhuman genius, or divine inspiration. Exceptionally gifted people share all our frailties and yet in some way rise above them to achieve something whose relevance and importance for our world is sometimes directly correlated to the obscurity of the connections linking them to our world „Augustine doesn’t want us thinking he’s some sort of superhuman genius. He is far more human, and far less merciful than that: He knows he is a human, and the differences between him and us are not differences of species. So everything he says can be understood—a terrifying challenge. We’ll begin in the next lecture by gaining some brief acquaintance with the author— Augustine of Hippo. Questions to Consider 1. Augustine’s The City of God involves both critique and affirmation. How do you think critique and affirmation should be related in large projects such as this? 2. What would it mean to write a book for 15 years? How would you sustain cont inuity across so long a time of composition? Lecture 1—Your Passport to The City of God 10 Your Passport to The City of God W hat is a passport? It is a book that lets us travel to another land. The City of God is just such a book. It is the way by which we go to the land of Augustinian Christianity, and it is a strange country. When we travel, we mean to go somewhere different, and then return home. We always fail, to some degree, in this. Typically, when we reach the place we aim to visit, we never see it for what it truly is. Our vision is too clouded by our prejudices, our expectations, ourselves. And when we return, we always return slightly different ourselves, having been infected with the alienness of the place we reached. Sometimes we return very different indeed. Sometimes we don’t even return at all. The metaphor of travel can helpfully illuminate what I think has to happen with a book like The City of God—or De Civitate Dei, as it’s called in Latin. It is definitely a foreign country, no matter what your previous education or your philosophical or theological training has been. And yet it has had a fundamental, if very ancient, impact on each of us—who we are, how we think of ourselves, how we think of time and history and the meaning of life. The scale and structural complexity of The City of God make it unique on their own. He organized the book into 22 books, which are basically longish chapters, and each of those books is subdivided into approximately 20–30 subsections, which we call chapters. It’s huge— it’s over 1,000 pages in Latin, and English translations can easily run much longer, as Latin is actually a much more compact language than is English. Lecture 1 Transcript

• From The City of God

  And so, when I am asked how the saints shall be employed in that spiritual body, I do not say what I see, but I say what I believe, according to that which I read in the psalm, "I believed, therefore have I spoken. " [1674]I say, then, they shall in the body see God; but whether they shall see Him by means of the body, as now we see the sun, moon, stars, sea, earth, and all that is in it, that is a difficult question. For it is hard to say that the saints shall then have such bodies that they shall not be able to shut and open their eyes as they please; while it is harder still to say that every one who shuts his eyes shall lose the vision of God. For if the prophet Elisha, though at a distance, saw his servant Gehazi, who thought that his wickedness would escape his master's observation and accepted gifts from Naaman the Syrian, whom the prophet had cleansed from his foul leprosy, how much more shall the saints in the spiritual body see all things, not only though their eyes be shut, but though they themselves be at a great distance? For then shall be "that which is perfect," of which the apostle says, "We know in part, and we prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. "Then, that he may illustrate as well as possible, by a simile, how superior the future life is to the life now lived, not only by ordinary men, but even by the foremost of the saints, he says, "When I was a child, I understood as a child, I spake as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face:now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. " [1675]If, then, even in this life, in which the prophetic power of remarkable men is no more worthy to be compared to the vision of the future life than childhood is to manhood, Elisha, though distant from his servant, saw him accepting gifts, shall we say that when that which is perfect is come, and the corruptible body no longer oppresses the soul, but is incorruptible and offers no impediment to it, the saints shall need bodily eyes to see, though Elisha had no need of them to see his servant? For, following the Septuagint version, these are the prophet's words:"Did not my heart go with thee, when the man came out of his chariot to meet thee, and thou tookedst his gifts? " [1676]Or, as the presbyter Jerome rendered it from the Hebrew, "Was not my heart present when the man turned from his chariot to meet thee? "The prophet said that he saw this with his heart, miraculously aided by God, as no one can doubt. But how much more abundantly shall the saints enjoy this gift when God shall be all in all? Nevertheless the bodily eyes also shall have their office and their place, and shall be used by the spirit through the spiritual body. For the prophet did not forego the use of his eyes for seeing what was before them, though he did not need them to see his absent servant, and though he could have seen these present objects in spirit, and with his eyes shut, as he saw things far distant in a place where he himself was not. Far be it, then, from us to say that in the life to come the saints shall not see God when their eyes are shut, since they shall always see Him with the spirit.

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

  Mapéy, Att. Μάρεια, ἡ, Marea, a town in Lower Egypt, Hdt. 2. 18, 30, Thue. 1. 104. II. a lake near it, Strab. 793 ; more commonly called ἡ Μαρεῶτις (λίμνη), Id. :—also ὁ Μαρεώτης (οἶνος) Id. 799, cf. Virg. G. 2. 91. μάρη [a], ἡ, = χείρ, hand, Pind. Fr. 276; whence must be derived evpapns, εὐμάρεια. Μαριανδῦνοί, οἱ, a people of Bithynia, Hdt. 1. 28, etc.:—hence Ναρι- ανδυνὸς θρηνητήρ, of one who utters a wild, barbarian lament, Aesch. Pers. 937; cf. Κίσσιος. μαριεύς, ews, ὃ, Arist. Mirab. 41 (v.1. μαριθάς) a stone that takes fire when water is poured on it; in Hesych. the order requires μαριεύς for —Oevs. μαρικᾶς, ὁ, a foreign word for κίναιδος, acc. to Hesych.; under this name Eupolis attacked | Hyperbolus, Ar. Nub. 553, cf. Meineke Com. Fr. 1. p. 137. paptAcuris, ov, 6, a charcoal-man, Lat. carbonarius, Soph. Fr. 908: from μαρτλεύω, to burn to charcoal, Poll. 7. 110. μᾶρίλη [ἡ, 7, (perhaps from μαίρω, μαρμαίρωλ) :—the embers of char- coal (ὃ χνοῦς τῶν ἀνθράκων Schol. Ar. Ach. 350), Cratin. “Op. 9; μ. ἀνθράκων Hippon. 62, Ar.l.c.; distinguished from ἄνθρακες (charcoal) and σποδίη (ashes) by Hipp. 648. 55 ; λεπτῆς μ. Arist. Probl. 38. 8 :— hence, ὦ Μᾶρτλάδη O son of Coal-dust! comic name of an Acharnian collier, Ar. Ach. 609. μᾶρϊλο- καύτη, ov, 6, charcoal-burner, Soph. Fr. οοϑ. μᾶρτλο- πότης, ov, ὃ, coal-dust-gulper, of a blacksmith, Anth.Plan.15. μᾶρῖνος, ὃ, ἃ kind of sea- -fish, Arist. H. A. 6.17, 2; cf. 8. 19, 5 (Ὁ. 1.) μάρις, ews, 6, a liquid measure, containing six κοτύλαι, Arist. H. A. 8. 9.1, Poll. 10.184; or ten, Polyaen. 4. 3, 32. μαρίω, Dor. μαιριάω, to be feverish, Hesych. Pappaipw, used only in pres. and impf.; Ion. impf. μαρμαίρεσκον Q. Sm. I. 150. (Strengthd. by redupl. from 4/MAP (cf. μαιμάω, μορμύρω, πορφύρω, παιφάσσω), whence also Hap-Hapos, μαρμαρ- voow, μαρμαρ-υγή, ἀ-μαρ-ὕσσω, ἀ-μαρ-υγή, and prob. ἀ-μαυρ- os, μαυρ- os.) To flash, spar kle, glisten, gleam, of any darting, quivering light, in Hom. (only in Il.); of the gleaming of metal, ἔντεα μαρμαίροντα Il. 12, 195., 16. 664. etc.; τεύχεα μ. 18. 617; Τρῶες... χαλκῷ μαρμαίροντες 12. 801; σὺν évreat μαρμαίροντες 16.279; δ Κα ΤΣ χρύσεα μαρμαίροντα 13.223 ὄμματα μαρμαίροντα the sparkling eyes | of Aphrodité, 3.397: —so in later Poets, αὐγὴ μαρμαίρουσα κεραυνοῦ Hes. Th. 699; μαρ- see δὲ δόμος χαλκῷ Alcae.1; χρυσῷ ἐλέφαντί τε μ. οἶκοι Bacchyl. 7.8; νύκτα .. ἄστροισι μαρμαίρουσαν Aesch.Theb. 401: χρυσῷ χαίταν Rael oe of Apollo, Eur. Ion 888, cf. 1427; ἀστὴρ ἘΠ ΤΣ: Dion. P. 329, cf. Anth. P. 5. 282:—used also in late Prose, Luc. D. Meretr. T3434 Alciphro 3: 67. μαρμᾶράριος, 6, a marble-mason, Ο. 1. 1107, 5922 μαρμάρειος, a, ov,=sq., Hesych. μαρμάρεος [μὰ]. a, ov, (μαρμαίρω) flashing, sparkling, glistening, gleaming, esp. of metals, aiyis, ἄντυξ Il, 17. 594., 18. 480 ; πύλαι Hes, 922

• From The City of God

  12 Books That Matter: The City of God Augustine himself, near the end, admits that it was a work great and arduous. If you have read it all, you know he indulged there in a rare understatement. But it’s not only an impressive relic, it is also a living wellspring of wisdom, insight, and argument, and a powerful set of lenses through which to view our world today, letting us see its contours with a different light and a slightly different focus. Prompted by the sack of Rome in 410, the text’s early books possess an urgency of argument that, as the work cooled into the reflective wisdom of maturity, and then accelerates again in its final books as Augustine begins to look forward to his own death, and perhaps foresees something of the changes that were overtaking his world in his final years. In it, you see a full-considered judgment of ancient Rome, and a full exposition of what would become the foundation for a comprehensive Christian worldview, pertinent in Augustine’s day and even into our own. When I teach this book to students, I actually compare it to a Hollywood blockbuster, the kind that Cecil B. DeMille used to make in the 1950s. It has far more characters, subplots, moving pieces, and epic drama than almost anything else we have from the ancient world. For scope, its only rivals are the great epic poems such as The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid, perhaps the histories of Thucydides and Herodotus. Indeed, at times it seems almost aware of those as its peers. As a book, this work is clearly swinging for the fences. Its uniqueness is unquestioned and its scale is unprecedented. But Augustine had been thinking about many of the central themes for this book for a quarter-century before he began to dictate it. And he probably did dictate it, by the way, to a scribe—you can imagine the writer’s cramp you would receive from this book. Themes, motifs, arguments, and concepts have appeared in many other works of his. He’d even delivered a sermon 10 years before using the exact same phrase, City of God, and expositing its theological meaning. So while the work was unprecedented, it was quite clearly also premeditated.

• From The City of God

  46 Books That Matter: The City of God his vision of what is asked by faith still retains some of North Africa’s hardness; some of its vehemence as well, as we will see. While for those who are not Christian, Augustine’s was the last generation before the 20 th century to genuinely grapple with a truly religiously pluralistic society; and in living in that condition, he has lessons for us all. There’s a third reason to read Augustine: to help us inhabit our present. Recall what I said earlier: when we read historical figures, we must not forget that they were real humans. Don’t imagine that they thought the same way that you do, of course. But then again, they are intellectually in some kind of relation with our thought-world, and you do them a disservice if you don’t let yourself feel the grip of their way of imagining and inhabiting the world. You should see them as offering rival potential ways of living, and you should feel attracted to them, threatened by them. So don’t be surprised to find Augustine sometimes disquietingly contemporary to you, aware of a question you had in the back of your mind before you had fully formulated it yourself. He knew what it was to be an unbeliever, after all, as well as a believer; and before he was a Christian, he had been an ironically-minded academic skeptic, the kind you’d meet at a dinner party today. Maybe the real lesson we have to learn from him, after answering the question as to his differences from us, is to realize a final, disquieting thought: he was less different from you than you think.

• From The City of God

  19 is this book also the country to which we go? Is our aim to explore The City of God in itself, and, finally, as an artifact, almost as one might appreciate a painting or a sculpture? That is certainly not Augustine’s aim. He wants the book to point beyond itself, to a larger thing, to our moral and spiritual salvation. And that’s why the author at times, so to speak, steps out of the book, to look at it from the side, so to speak, and asks questions about whether we are admiring the book, or confronting the demands he wants the book to make on us. It is a strange thought, but he knew that people far distant from him in space and time would be struggling to understand his work, and he would have the chance to speak to them as directly as anyone ever could. In some way, he knew you would be reading this book. And if you consider it, that’s a terrifying thought. Augustine is watching you. So we will repeatedly confront the tension between a temptation merely to admire the work, and the author’s conversionist intent. But we’ll also try to take the book as a book, on its own terms, and understand what it is trying to argue, and how it makes its case. That’s harder in our day than it was in Augustine’s, and so from time to time I’ll give you a bit of context on why he is so agitated about some issue, or who his real interlocutors are, or what exactly it is that they are arguing so vehemently about. How will we do this? Effectively, by going on a guided tour of The City. We’ll travel together through the whole book, from beginning to end, with a focus on the large themes that each of its 22 books brings up, and discover—by happy not so much coincidence—that Augustine treats of these themes pretty much in the order that we discuss them in these lectures. I will do this since I take it that your aim is not to have your hand held down each and every one of the many labyrinthine alleys of The City of God, but to have a guide who shows you the major sites—all the grand squares, major avenues, prominent buildings and crucial Lecture 1 Transcript—Your Passport to The City of God

• From The City of God

  22 Books That Matter: The City of God not to confuse his words with those of Scripture, not to turn his name into an idol. And yet Augustine is, in important ways, not like us. His particular gifts of symphonic vision, deep insight, and argumentative mastery will likely leave you, as they do me, in awe the more you are able to see their scope. This is a hard thing to get into focus today. Today we believe that all humans are created equals. In many ways that’s very importantly true. But it can also obscure a very deep truth, as well: namely, that we are all also very, very different, and have very diverse gifts from one another. Those gifts make our world a kaleidoscope of geniuses. Johann Sebastian Bach and Thelonious Monk had gifts for music that the rest of us will never possess. George Eliot and Albert Einstein and Srinivasa Ramanujan are not on some sort of continuity with the rest of us, so that we could have written Middlemarch or worked out the general theory of relativity or the Ramanujan conjecture on the size of the tau-function if only we’d tried a teensy-weensy, little bit harder. This is even true in sports and in other competitions. Michael Jordan; Cal Ripken Jr.; Bobby Fischer; Misty Copeland, the dancer—they have capacities of embodied attunement, spatial awareness, and understandings of movement that, while they were cultivated and trained into them, were also importantly gifts for them. Indeed, some of us would call those God-given talents. This otherness about us all, this otherness that we all curiously share, this can itself be a lesson for us—a lesson in the scope of human achievement. Sometimes we think of this as a matter of superhuman genius, divine inspiration, and surely there’s something to that vision, more than we maybe want to admit. But the really terrifying thing about all these people is, in some basic way, they are just like us: flesh and blood, eating food, needing to pee, feeling sleepy, getting antsy, distractible, ill-tempered. They share all our frailties, and yet in some way rise above them to achieve something whose relevance

• From The City of God

  How can I tell of the rest of creation, with all its beauty and utility, which the divine goodness has given to man to please his eye and serve his purposes, condemned though he is, and hurled into these labors and miseries? Shall I speak of the manifold and various loveliness of sky, and earth, and sea; of the plentiful supply and wonderful qualities of the light; of sun, moon, and stars; of the shade of trees; of the colors and perfume of flowers; of the multitude of birds, all differing in plumage and in song; of the variety of animals, of which the smallest in size are often the most wonderful,--the works of ants and bees astonishing us more than the huge bodies of whales? Shall I speak of the sea, which itself is so grand a spectacle, when it arrays itself as it were in vestures of various colors, now running through every shade of green, and again becoming purple or blue? Is it not delightful to look at it in storm, and experience the soothing complacency which it inspires, by suggesting that we ourselves are not tossed and shipwrecked? [1664]What shall I say of the numberless kinds of food to alleviate hunger, and the variety of seasonings to stimulate appetite which are scattered everywhere by nature, and for which we are not indebted to the art of cookery? How many natural appliances are there for preserving and restoring health! How grateful is the alternation of day and night! how pleasant the breezes that cool the air! how abundant the supply of clothing furnished us by trees and animals! Who can enumerate all the blessings we enjoy? If I were to attempt to detail and unfold only these few which I have indicated in the mass, such an enumeration would fill a volume. And all these are but the solace of the wretched and condemned, not the rewards of the blessed. What then shall these rewards be, if such be the blessings of a condemned state? What will He give to those whom He has predestined to life, who has given such things even to those whom He has predestined to death? What blessings will He in the blessed life shower upon those for whom, even in this state of misery, He has been willing that His only-begotten Son should endure such sufferings even to death? Thus the apostle reasons concerning those who are predestined to that kingdom:"He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also give us all things? " [1665]When this promise is fulfilled, what shall we be? What blessings shall we receive in that kingdom, since already we have received as the pledge of them Christ's dying? In what condition shall the spirit of man be, when it has no longer any vice at all; when it neither yields to any, nor is in bondage to any, nor has to make war against any, but is perfected, and enjoys undisturbed peace with itself? Shall it not then know all things with certainty, and without any labor or error, when unhindered and joyfully it drinks the wisdom of God at the fountain-head? What shall the body be, when it is in every respect subject to the spirit, from which it shall draw a life so sufficient, as to stand in need of no other nutriment? For it shall no longer be animal, but spiritual, having indeed the substance of flesh, but without any fleshly corruption.

• From The City of God

  282 Books That Matter: The City of God sinful resistance to God in the creation that we find today seem all the more impossible to understand. After all, if creation is so sovereignly and effortlessly and straightforwardly brought into being by a wholly good and omnipotent Creator, then what are we to say about the presence of evil? Augustine offers two answers to this, meant to make the presence of evil barely tolerable in God’s Creation—barely, but no more. First, he offers what is called an aesthetic argument for evil’s amplifying the beauty and glory of Creation; the beauty and magnificence of the universe are amplified and magnified by contrarieties. Thus, even in falling, the Fallen angels give glory to God, in several senses in spite of themselves. This is an aesthetic defense of evil—all evil is a counterpoint to good, setting off the glory of the Lord. This is still used by us today in talking about gripping works of art; Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment would make no sense without the malice that Raskolnikov talks himself into early in the book, and Star Wars would be a very empty story indeed without Darth Vader. Much of what we judge to be noble in our world—much of what we admire—is recognizable as noble because it struggles against evil. So perhaps evil is the necessary force that enables us to see the good, and for its true goodness to be revealed. Now this defense might make us ask two questions. First, doesn’t this justify evil, even make too much sense of it? It seems reasonable to say that God would never create one whose wickedness God foreknew unless God could put them, in their wickedness, to good use. That seems OK, doesn’t it? But then, doesn’t it involve God in directly, positively needing evil for God’s purposes? That’s troubling. Second, doesn’t this aesthetic counterpointing suggest a latent dualism in Augustine’s thinking about good and evil? Is there some essential character to evil that lets it oppose goodness? I’m not going to worry about either of these worries right now, except to say that they should trouble Augustine, and, to judge by the vehemence of his response to such critics in their debates they clearly did.

• From The City of God

  Chapter 13. --Of the Invisible God, Who Has Often Made Himself Visible, Not as He Really Is, But as the Beholders Could Bear the Sight. Neither need we be surprised that God, invisible as He is, should often have appeared visibly to the patriarchs. For as the sound which communicates the thought conceived in the silence of the mind is not the thought itself, so the form by which God, invisible in His own nature, became visible, was not God Himself. Nevertheless it is He Himself who was seen under that form, as that thought itself is heard in the sound of the voice; and the patriarchs recognized that, though the bodily form was not God, they saw the invisible God. For, though Moses conversed with God, yet he said, "If I have found grace in Thy sight, show me Thyself, that I may see and know Thee. " [406]And as it was fit that the law, which was given, not to one man or a few enlightened men, but to the whole of a populous nation, should be accompanied by awe-inspiring signs, great marvels were wrought, by the ministry of angels, before the people on the mount where the law was being given to them through one man, while the multitude beheld the awful appearances. For the people of Israel believed Moses, not as the Lacedaemonians believed their Lycurgus, because he had received from Jupiter or Apollo the laws he gave them. For when the law which enjoined the worship of one God was given to the people, marvellous signs and earthquakes, such as the divine wisdom judged sufficient, were brought about in the sight of all, that they might know that it was the Creator who could thus use creation to promulgate His law. [406] Ex. xxxiii. 13.