Hope

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 City of God

  468 Books That Matter: The City of God Here at the end of this massive tome, he gives us what he can of the inner details of that hope—his reasoning about the hope within, the hope that’s supposed to sustain Christians in this life and which serves as a promise of what their true life in the world to come will be. This lecture will address three big topics that Augustine discusses in this book, in the order that he discusses them. First, the resurrection of the body and the significance of history. Second, we’ll look at his account of the vision of God that will occupy the blessed in the life to come. And third and finally, we’ll look at his final reflections on the nature of human agency in heaven, and in particular on the four stages of freedom that humans experience over the course of history and his final idea that freedom in heaven, while offering no options at all, is still the greatest kind of freedom there will be. Now, there’s one important thing to get out of the way first here— people have asked me this time and time again about Augustine. What does Augustine say about how many humans will get into heaven? Augustine is not clear on this, but he says that they will at least equal the number of angels who fell, thus keeping the City of God fully populated. And, Augustine says, God might well accept more, so that that city and this is a quote of Augustine’s, “may perhaps rejoice in a still more abundant population.” Maybe God is still allowing there to be new condos developed in the city of God for the newcomers. But let’s consider, first, the general claim here about the Resurrection. We know this, Augustine says, at the end of time, all will be resurrected into bodies. The bodies will be flesh, but they will be spiritual flesh, the new and spiritual bodies of the saints. Augustine says, these bodies will be subject to spirit, but it will be flesh, just as carnal spirit was subject to flesh, but was spirit, and not flesh. Furthermore, this embodiment will be historical. We are our histories, and we are our bodies, and our eschatological happiness must be related to our past, which is not entirely happy. Thus the details of our

• From The City of God

  Chapter 21. --Why It is That, as Soon as Cain's Son Enoch Has Been Named, the Genealogy is Forthwith Continued as Far as the Deluge, While After the Mention of Enos, Seth's Son, the Narrative Returns Again to the Creation of Man. We must first see why, in the enumeration of Cain's posterity, after Enoch, in whose name the city was built, has been first of all mentioned, the rest are at once enumerated down to that terminus of which I have spoken, and at which that race and the whole line was destroyed in the deluge; while, after Enos the son of Seth, has been mentioned, the rest are not at once named down to the deluge, but a clause is inserted to the following effect:"This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made He him; male and female created He them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created. " [835] This seems to me to be inserted for this purpose, that here again the reckoning of the times may start from Adam himself--a purpose which the writer had not in view in speaking of the earthly city, as if God mentioned it, but did not take account of its duration. But why does he return to this recapitulation after mentioning the son of Seth, the man who hoped to call on the name of the Lord God, unless because it was fit thus to present these two cities, the one beginning with a murderer and ending in a murderer (for Lamech, too, acknowledges to his two wives that he had committed murder), the other built up by him who hoped to call upon the name of the Lord God? For the highest and complete terrestrial duty of the city of God, which is a stranger in this world, is that which was exemplified in the individual who was begotten by him who typified the resurrection of the murdered Abel. That one man is the unity of the whole heavenly city, not yet indeed complete, but to be completed, as this prophetic figure foreshows. The son of Cain, therefore, that is, the son of possession (and of what but an earthly possession? ), may have a name in the earthly city which was built in his name. It is of such the Psalmist says, "They call their lands after their own names. " [836]Wherefore they incur what is written in another psalm:"Thou, O Lord, in Thy city wilt despise their image. " [837]But as for the son of Seth, the son of the resurrection, let him hope to call on the name of the Lord God. For he prefigures that society of men which says, "But I am like a green olive-tree in the house of God:I have trusted in the mercy of God. " [838]But let him not seek the empty honors of a famous name upon earth, for "Blessed is the man that maketh the name of the Lord his trust, and respecteth not vanities nor lying follies. " [839]After having presented the two cities, the one founded in the material good of this world, the other in hope in God, but both starting from a common gate opened in Adam into this mortal state, and both running on and running out to their proper and merited ends, Scripture begins to reckon the times, and in this reckoning includes other generations, making a recapitulation from Adam, out of whose condemned seed, as out of one mass handed over to merited damnation, God made some vessels of wrath to dishonor and others vessels of mercy to honor; in punishment rendering to the former what is due, in grace giving to the latter what is not due:in order that by the very comparison of itself with the vessels of wrath, the heavenly city, which sojourns on earth, may learn not to put confidence in the liberty of its own will, but may hope to call on the name of the Lord God. For will, being a nature which was made good by the good God, but mutable by the immutable, because it was made out of nothing, can both decline from good to do evil, which takes place when it freely chooses, and can also escape the evil and do good, which takes place only by divine assistance.

• From The City of God

  [1150] Isa. i. 1. Isaiah's father was Amoz, a different name. [1151] Mic. i. 1. [1152] The chronicles of Eusebius and Jerome. Chapter 28. --Of the Things Pertaining to the Gospel of Christ Which Hosea and Amos Prohesied. The prophet Hosea speaks so very profoundly that it is laborious work to penetrate his meaning. But, according to promise, we must insert something from his book. He says, "And it shall come to pass that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there they shall be called the sons of the living God. " [1153]Even the apostles understood this as a prophetic testimony of the calling of the nations who did not formerly belong to God; and because this same people of the Gentiles is itself spiritually among the children of Abraham, and for that reason is rightly called Israel, therefore he goes on to say, "And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together in one, and shall appoint themselves one headship, and shall ascend from the earth. " [1154]We should but weaken the savor of this prophetic oracle if we set ourselves to expound it. Let the reader but call to mind that cornerstone and those two walls of partition, the one of the Jews, the other of the Gentiles, [1155] and he will recognize them, the one under the term sons of Judah, the other as sons of Israel, supporting themselves by one and the same headship, and ascending from the earth. But that those carnal Israelites who are now unwilling to believe in Christ shall afterward believe, that is, their children shall (for they themselves, of course, shall go to their own place by dying), this same prophet testifies, saying, "For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, without a prince, without a sacrifice, without an altar, without a priesthood, without manifestations. " [1156]Who does not see that the Jews are now thus? But let us hear what he adds:"And afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their king, and shall be amazed at the Lord and at His goodness in the latter days. " [1157] Nothing is clearer than this prophecy, in which by David, as distinguished by the title of king, Christ is to be understood, "who is made," as the apostle says, "of the seed of David according to the flesh. " [1158]This prophet has also foretold the resurrection of Christ on the third day, as it behoved to be foretold, with prophetic loftiness, when he says, "He will heal us after two days, and in the third day we shall rise again. " [1159]In agreement with this the apostle says to us, "If ye be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above. " [1160]Amos also prophesies thus concerning such things:"Prepare thee, that thou mayst invoke thy God, O Israel; for lo, I am binding the thunder, and creating the spirit, and announcing to men their Christ. " [1161]And in another place he says, "In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and build up the breaches thereof:and I will raise up his ruins, and will build them up again as in the days of old:that the residue of men may inquire for me, and all the nations upon whom my name is invoked, saith the Lord that doeth this. " [1162]

• From The City of God

  Chapter 35. --Of the Sons of the Church Who are Hidden Among the Wicked, and of False Christians Within the Church. Let these and similar answers (if any fuller and fitter answers can be found) be given to their enemies by the redeemed family of the Lord Christ, and by the pilgrim city of King Christ. But let this city bear in mind, that among her enemies lie hid those who are destined to be fellow-citizens, that she may not think it a fruitless labor to bear what they inflict as enemies until they become confessors of the faith. So, too, as long as she is a stranger in the world, the city of God has in her communion, and bound to her by the sacraments, some who shall not eternally dwell in the lot of the saints. Of these, some are not now recognized; others declare themselves, and do not hesitate to make common cause with our enemies in murmuring against God, whose sacramental badge they wear. These men you may to-day see thronging the churches with us, to-morrow crowding the theatres with the godless. But we have the less reason to despair of the reclamation even of such persons, if among our most declared enemies there are now some, unknown to themselves, who are destined to become our friends. In truth, these two cities are entangled together in this world, and intermixed until the last judgment effects their separation. I now proceed to speak, as God shall help me, of the rise, progress, and end of these two cities; and what I write, I write for the glory of the city of God, that, being placed in comparison with the other, it may shine with a brighter lustre.

• From The City of God

  Chapter 29. --An Exhortation to the Romans to Renounce Paganism. This, rather, is the religion worthy of your desires, O admirable Roman race,--the progeny of your Scaevolas and Scipios, of Regulus, and of Fabricius. This rather covet, this distinguish from that foul vanity and crafty malice of the devils. If there is in your nature any eminent virtue, only by true piety is it purged and perfected, while by impiety it is wrecked and punished. Choose now what you will pursue, that your praise may be not in yourself, but in the true God, in whom is no error. For of popular glory you have had your share; but by the secret providence of God, the true religion was not offered to your choice. Awake, it is now day; as you have already awaked in the persons of some in whose perfect virtue and sufferings for the true faith we glory:for they, contending on all sides with hostile powers, and conquering them all by bravely dying, have purchased for us this country of ours with their blood; to which country we invite you, and exhort you to add yourselves to the number of the citizens of this city, which also has a sanctuary [118] of its own in the true remission of sins. Do not listen to those degenerate sons of thine who slander Christ and Christians, and impute to them these disastrous times, though they desire times in which they may enjoy rather impunity for their wickedness than a peaceful life. Such has never been Rome's ambition even in regard to her earthly country. Lay hold now on the celestial country, which is easily won, and in which you will reign truly and for ever. For there shall thou find no vestal fire, no Capitoline stone, but the one true God. "No date, no goal will here ordain: But grant an endless, boundless reign. " [119]

• From The City of God

  458 Heaven: The Self Redeemed (Book 22) A nd so at last we come to Augustine’s vision of the final fulfilled state of the human, of Creation, and the full realization of God. Augustine manages to demarcate once again what believers can affirm with confidence, what they can hypothesize with more or less probability, and what they must simply admit they do not or cannot know. In a way he exposits the eschaton, in order to show us what the implications of that doctrine are for humans now, and how very little else of determinate doctrinal or metaphysical content we can reliably derive from it today. „The challenge to Augustine is to show exactly how our experience of history has significance, and in what ways the particularities of our lives’ journeys really matter. It will help to recall that Augustine spiritualizes the eschaton. The end of time is definitely real for Augustine, but its value lies in how it affects our behavior, our character, and our loves now in our inhabitation of the present. „The doctrine of the inaugurated eschatology, an eschaton that has begun but has not yet reached its climactic form or realization, cultivates in us an attitude and disposition of knowing something about the determinate shape of our lives, but not enough to speak with much confidence. „It demands that believers have faith and hope in a continuity between now and then. That is why Christians live in sacramental suspension. For Augustine, Christians are at best “happy in hope.” Here Augustine gives us what he can of the inner details of that hope—his reasoning about the hope that sustains Christians Lecture 22

• From The City of God

  Then the apostle subjoins a notable difference between these two men, saying, "The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy, and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. " [620]So he elsewhere says, "As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ;" [621] but in very deed this shall be accomplished when that which is animal in us by our birth shall have become spiritual in our resurrection. For, to use his words again," We are saved by hope. " [622]Now we bear the image of the earthly man by the propagation of sin and death, which pass on us by ordinary generation; but we bear the image of the heavenly by the grace of pardon and life eternal, which regeneration confers upon us through the Mediator of God and men, the Man Christ Jesus. And He is the heavenly Man of Paul's passage, because He came from heaven to be clothed with a body of earthly mortality, that He might clothe it with heavenly immortality. And he calls others heavenly, because by grace they become His members, that, together with them, He may become one Christ, as head and body. In the same epistle he puts this yet more clearly:"Since by man came death, by Man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive," [623] --that is to say, in a spiritual body which shall be made a quickening spirit. Not that all who die in Adam shall be members of Christ,--for the great majority shall be punished in eternal death,--but he uses the word "all" in both clauses, because, as no one dies in an animal body except in Adam, so no one is quickened a spiritual body save in Christ. We are not, then, by any means to suppose that we shall in the resurrection have such a body as the first man had before he sinned, nor that the words, "As is the earthy such are they also that are earthy," are to be understood of that which was brought about by sin; for we are not to think that Adam had a spiritual body before he fell, and that, in punishment of his sin, it was changed into an animal body. If this be thought, small heed has been given to the words of so great a teacher, who says, "There is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body; as it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul. "Was it after sin he was made so? or was not this the primal condition of man from which the blessed apostle selects his testimony to show what the animal body is?

• From The City of God

  Chapter 12. --A Comparison of the Blessedness of the Righteous, Who Have Not Yet Received the Divine Reward, with that of Our First Parents in Paradise. And the angels are not the only members of the rational and intellectual creation whom we call blessed. For who will take upon him to deny that those first men in Paradise were blessed previously to sin, although they were uncertain how long their blessedness was to last, and whether it would be eternal (and eternal it would have been had they not sinned),--who, I say, will do so, seeing that even now we not unbecomingly call those blessed whom we see leading a righteous and holy life, in hope of immortality, who have no harrowing remorse of conscience, but obtain readily divine remission of the sins of their present infirmity? These, though they are certain that they shall be rewarded if they persevere, are not certain that they will persevere. For what man can know that he will persevere to the end in the exercise and increase of grace, unless he has been certified by some revelation from Him who, in His just and secret judgment, while He deceives none, informs few regarding this matter? Accordingly, so far as present comfort goes, the first man in Paradise was more blessed than any just man in this insecure state; but as regards the hope of future good, every man who not merely supposes, but certainly knows that he shall eternally enjoy the most high God in the company of angels, and beyond the reach of ill,--this man, no matter what bodily torments afflict him, is more blessed than was he who, even in that great felicity of Paradise, was uncertain of his fate. [473] [473] With this chapter compare the books De Dono Persever, and De Correp. et Gratia.

• From The City of God

  [1667] Virg. AEn. vi. 751. Chapter 27. --Of the Apparently Conflicting Opinions of Plato and Porphyry, Which Would Have Conducted Them Both to the Truth If They Could Have Yielded to One Another. Statements were made by Plato and Porphyry singly, which if they could have seen their way to hold in common, they might possibly have became Christians. Plato said that souls could not exist eternally without bodies; for it was on this account, he said, that the souls even of wise men must some time or other return to their bodies. Porphyry, again, said that the purified soul, when it has returned to the Father, shall never return to the ills of this world. Consequently, if Plato had communicated to Porphyry that which he saw to be true, that souls, though perfectly purified, and belonging to the wise and righteous, must return to human bodies; and if Porphyry, again, had imparted to Plato the truth which he saw, that holy soul, shall never return to the miseries of a corruptible body, so that they should not have each held only his own opinion, but should both have held both truths, I think they would have seen that it follows that the souls return to their bodies, and also that these bodies shall be such as to afford them a blessed and immortal life. For, according to Plato, even holy souls shall return to the body; according to Porphyry, holy souls shall not return to the ills of this world. Let Porphyry then say with Plato, they shall return to the body; let Plato say with Porphyry, they shall not return to their old misery:and they will agree that they return to bodies in which they shall suffer no more. And this is nothing else than what God has promised,--that He will give eternal felicity to souls joined to their own bodies. For this, I presume, both of them would readily concede, that if the souls of the saints are to be reunited to bodies, it shall be to their own bodies, in which they have endured the miseries of this life, and in which, to escape these miseries, they served God with piety and fidelity.

• From The City of God

  [821] Gen. v. 2. [822] Luke xx. 35, 36. [823] Gen. iv. 18-22. Chapter 18. --The Significance of Abel, Seth, and Enos to Christ and His Body the Church. "And to Seth," it is said, "there was born a son, and he called his name Enos:he hoped to call on the name of the Lord God. " [824]Here we have a loud testimony to the truth. Man, then, the son of the resurrection, lives in hope:he lives in hope as long as the city of God, which is begotten by faith in the resurrection, sojourns in this world. For in these two men, Abel, signifying "grief," and his brother Seth, signifying "resurrection," the death of Christ and His life from the dead are prefigured. And by faith in these is begotten in this world the city of God, that is to say, the man who has hoped to call on the name of the Lord. "For by hope," says the apostle, "we are saved:but hope that is seen is not hope:for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it. " [825]Who can avoid referring this to a profound mystery? For did not Abel hope to call upon the name of the Lord God when his sacrifice is mentioned in Scripture as having been accepted by God? Did not Seth himself hope to call on the name of the Lord God, of whom it was said, "For God hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel? "Why then is this which is found to be common to all the godly specially attributed to Enos, unless because it was fit that in him, who is mentioned as the first-born of the father of those generations which were separated to the better part of the heavenly city, there should be a type of the man, or society of men, who live not according to man in contentment with earthly felicity, but according to God in hope of everlasting felicity? And it was not said, "He hoped in the Lord God," nor "He called on the name of the Lord God," but "He hoped to call on the name of the Lord God. "And what does this "hoped to call" mean, unless it is a prophecy that a people should arise who, according to the election of grace, would call on the name of the Lord God? It is this which has been said by another prophet, and which the apostle interprets of the people who belong to the grace of God:"And it shall be that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. " [826]For these two expressions, "And he called his name Enos, which means man," and "He hoped to call on the name of the Lord God," are sufficient proof that man ought not to rest his hopes in himself; as it is elsewhere written, "Cursed is the man that trusteth in man. " [827]Consequently no one ought to trust in himself that he shall become a citizen of that other city which is not dedicated in the name of Cain's son in this present time, that is to say, in the fleeting course of this mortal world, but in the immortality of perpetual blessedness.

• From The City of God

  276 Books That Matter: The City of God injects a profound note of ambivalence into Rome’s founding in this work. Perhaps, Vergil seems to be suggesting here, Aeneas plants Rome too thoroughly in the immanent flow of time. He seems driven by revenge, by payback. Is this a true, new re-beginning at all? Or is it not simply another stage in an ongoing blood feud? In contrast, the founder of Augustine’s city was driven by another energy altogether—the energy of love, as manifest in resurrection and forgiveness. This vision allows for the past not to predetermine the present, but for genuinely new beginnings to occur. The human, bearing the image of God, can do something genuinely new, something unprecedented, unprompted, something the past history of the cosmos does not determine—this is the nature of human freedom, of which we are never permitted on Augustine’s account to despair. This stress on re-beginning is reinforced in many ways in this Book 11. The first chapter of the book repeats the first sentence of the City, “Most glorious is the city of God.” Clearly, while Book 11 is a new beginning, an effort to start to undo our enthrallment to the pagan story of the beginning of Rome; it still has work to do to begin this real new beginning. That is why the main point of Book 11s exposition as a whole is, precisely, the original beginning, what we can know about God as Creator and the nature of creation as created. This true story is a new story, and learning it will help us to learn to begin to see the world aright, and hence to begin to live in this world as we ought to do for Augustine. To do all that, the first thing to learn is what it means that we are creatures and that God is Creator. Recall that the Platonists failed rightly to imagine the beginning in Book 10, to see how a perfect God could create our manifestly imperfect world. Since they fail to explain this, Augustine suggested, they continually slip back into a reactionary and

• From The City of God

  349 Lecture 16 Transcript—The Two Cities and the Two Loves (Book 14) about human sexuality. Not with an intent to warp some healthy historical inheritance, but rather to give such matters expression in a new way. Remember, Augustine worked in an environment of profound suspicion of human embodiment and sexuality. We do not appreciate how Augustine’s claims, which sound to us so anti-worldly, were liberating and pro-worldly in their setting. His predecessors and his contemporaries assumed that sexual intercourse was so obviously bad as to not need much analysis. In contrast, Augustine challenged this silence and set a new course by arguing that humans are created with sexual natures. Historically, that is, Augustine did not drive a wedge between sex as passion and sex as reproduction; he brought together, however imperfectly, what previous thinkers had put—or kept—or left—asunder. It’s also worth noting, finally, that the whole point of his exposition of human psychology and human sexuality, was not to yell about sex, but to explore how the logic of the distinction between the two cities should play out in our world today. Recall that the aim here was to distinguish them, in a way that was able to resist the presumption of confident moralist discrimination, without escaping into the stratosphere of pure theological abstraction. Augustine’s approach aims to do just that. The two cities of God and of the world have two loves, of God and self. This is a real distinction, but it is doubly difficult to discern in the present age. First, as I said at the beginning of this lecture, human interiority, and our opacity to ourselves and each other makes it hard to see what is really going on inside—even inside ourselves. Second, this is an eschatological distinction, not finally fixed within history, so that peoples’ locations in one or the other city might change over time. We can never rest in the presumption that our loves are rightly aligned, but too, we should never despair that they are not in the process of being more perfectly converted to the love of God. Hope here begins to be almost obligatory.

• From The City of God

  467 Lecture 22 Transcript—Heaven: The Self Redeemed (Book 22) do the particularities of our concrete lives’ journeys really matter— how, that is, should we understand the particular course of our lives to effect who we ultimately are eschatologically? It will help to recall what I said earlier, namely that Augustine in general, spiritualizes the eschaton. The end of time is definitely a real thing for him, but the import of our belief in it is not primarily, in its value for us as a spectatorial prognostication—a weather report— about some hypothesized predicted future. Instead, its value lies in how it affects our behavior and our character and our loves now, how we are trained to expect the Kingdom of God to arrive today in our inhabitation of the present. It’s not that this belief pushes off the end to some comfortably indeterminate future. Rather, if it is not yet, it is still also already now—today is the day of salvation, after all. Perhaps the apocalypse has already begun, Augustine suggests, just now, just this morning, and there is still time for you, for everyone. And Augustine believes there truly is still time. The doctrine of the inaugurated eschaton then, an eschaton that has begun but has not yet reached its climactic and final form cultivates in us, for Augustine, an attitude, and disposition of knowing something about the determinate shape of our lives now as well as then, but not enough to speak with much confidence. As Augustine says in this lecture, “To tell the truth, I do not know what will be the nature of that activity” when he’s considering the life of the saints in paradise. For a dogmatist, then, he was quite interestingly tentative. This doctrine demands that believers have faith and hope that there is some continuity between now and then. That’s why Christians live in a kind of sacramental suspension, and not just in a blank, negative, empty waiting and what Christians call apophatism, a complete unknowing. As we have repeatedly seen, for Augustine, Christians are at best happy in hope; but even in that condition, there is some proleptic foretaste—an anticipatory foretaste—in that of what is to come.

• From House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (2011)

  It is made of asswood.” She washed it off and dried it with a towel and handed it to him. The sculpture was indeed in the shape of a woman, with a wide face, made of dark polished wood. “It’s beautiful, I stand corrected,” said Wade. “I will give it to you. I have others for sale in the HOHMA gift shop. Now I will go. I enjoyed our dream. Good-bye.” She nodded to him. “Good-bye,” said Wade. “Thank you very much for the sculpture.” Henriette Chooses the Cheekpum p S ince she’d surfed the lake, Henriette had received two invitations to the Masturboats and visited the Hall of the Penises, but she still hadn’t met a man who really attracted her. Lila suggested that she take a walk down the Man Line. Henriette thought that was a good idea. The Man Line was a line of about a hundred single men who stood fully clothed in wedding suits, with numbers pinned to their lapels. She walked down the line, nodding at the men. Then she saw the one. He was smiling, trying to stare straight ahead. He was tall, with wide, even teeth and an easy, careless way of standing. His bow tie dangled. His number was 53. She didn’t say anything to him, but back at the office she told Lila that Number 53 was the one. Lila promptly called up a video of Number 53’s entrance interview. “Do you want to see it?” “Of course,” said Henriette . On the screen, Number 53, slouching in a chair, was asked what type of woman he was interested in. “Honestly?” he said. “Honestly,” said the entrance interviewer, Mischa. “Well, right now,” Number 53 said, “I’m wanting a woman with a humongous oversized ass—not a fat ass but a big round wobbly huge ass that’s busting out of her pants.” Lila turned off the video and Henriette sighed. “That’s just not me,” she said. “My ass is not humongous and oversized.” “It could be you if you wanted it to be,” said Lila. “How so?” Lila called Mischa in. “The cheekpump,” she said. She held Henriette for a moment. “If you let Mischa work on you with the cheekpump, you’ll get a day with the biggest ass you could possibly want.” “Just one day, and then it goes back to normal?” “Sometimes the ass lasts two days, if the fixative is properly applied. Here is a pair of jeans that will fit you after the procedure.” She handed Henriette a pair of strangely roomy pants. Mischa took her to a small, dimly lit round chamber with a low couch against one wall. He pulled down from the ceiling two enormous clear-plastic suction cups that looked rather like cymbals or dinner plates. “You have to strip down so I can put these on,” he said.

• From The City of God

  [301] Rom. i. 19, 20. Chapter 7. --How Much the Platonists are to Be Held as Excelling Other Philosophers in Logic, i. e. Rational Philosophy. Then, again, as far as regards the doctrine which treats of that which they call logic, that is, rational philosophy, far be it from us to compare them with those who attributed to the bodily senses the faculty of discriminating truth, and thought, that all we learn is to be measured by their untrustworthy and fallacious rules. Such were the Epicureans, and all of the same school. Such also were the Stoics, who ascribed to the bodily senses that expertness in disputation which they so ardently love, called by them dialectic, asserting that from the senses the mind conceives the notions (ennoiai) of those things which they explicate by definition. And hence is developed the whole plan and connection of their learning and teaching. I often wonder, with respect to this, how they can say that none are beautiful but the wise; for by what bodily sense have they perceived that beauty, by what eyes of the flesh have they seen wisdom's comeliness of form? Those, however, whom we justly rank before all others, have distinguished those things which are conceived by the mind from those which are perceived by the senses, neither taking away from the senses anything to which they are competent, nor attributing to them anything beyond their competency. And the light of our understandings, by which all things are learned by us, they have affirmed to be that selfsame God by whom all things were made.

• From The City of God

  As for the prophet Nahum, through him God says, "I will exterminate the graven and the molten things:I will make thy burial. For lo, the feet of Him that bringeth good tidings and announceth peace are swift upon the mountains! O Judah, celebrate thy festival days, and perform thy vows; for now they shall not go on any more so as to become antiquated. It is completed, it is consumed, it is taken away. He ascendeth who breathes in thy face, delivering thee out of tribulation. " [1171]Let him that remembers the gospel call to mind who hath ascended from hell and breathed the Holy Spirit in the face of Judah, that is, of the Jewish disciples; for they belong to the New Testament, whose festival days are so spiritually renewed that they cannot become antiquated. Moreover, we already see the graven and molten things, that is, the idols of the false gods, exterminated through the gospel, and given up to oblivion as of the grave, and we know that this prophecy is fulfilled in this very thing. Of what else than the advent of Christ, who was to come, is Habakkuk understood to say, "And the Lord answered me, and said, Write the vision openly on a tablet of boxwood, that he that readeth these things may understand. For the vision is yet for a time appointed, and it will arise in the end, and will not become void:if it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, and will not be delayed? " [1172] [1168] Obad. 17. [1169] Obad. 21. [1170] Col. i. 13. [1171] Nah. i. 14; ii. 1. [1172] Hab. ii. 2, 3.

• From The City of God

  When, therefore, we read in the prophetical books that God is to come to do judgment at the last, from the mere mention of the judgment, and although there is nothing else to determine the meaning, we must gather that Christ is meant; for though the Father will judge, He will judge by the coming of the Son. For He Himself, by His own manifested presence, "judges no man, but has committed all judgment to the Son;" [1488] for as the Son was judged as a man, He shall also judge in human form. For it is none but He of whom God speaks by Isaiah under the name of Jacob and Israel, of whose seed Christ took a body, as it is written, "Jacob is my servant, I will uphold Him; Israel is mine elect, my Spirit has assumed Him:I have put my Spirit upon Him; He shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor cease, neither shall His voice be heard without. A bruised reed shall He not break, and the smoking flax shall He not quench:but in truth shall He bring forth judgment. He shall shine and shall not be broken, until He sets judgment in the earth:and the nations shall hope in His name. " [1489]The Hebrew has not "Jacob" and "Israel;" but the Septuagint translators, wishing to show the significance of the expression "my servant," and that it refers to the form of a servant in which the Most High humbled Himself, inserted the name of that man from whose stock He took the form of a servant. The Holy Spirit was given to Him, and was manifested, as the evangelist testifies, in the form of a dove. [1490]He brought forth judgment to the Gentiles, because He predicted what was hidden from them. In His meekness He did not cry, nor did He cease to proclaim the truth. But His voice was not heard, nor is it heard, without, because He is not obeyed by those who are outside of His body. And the Jews themselves, who persecuted Him, He did not break, though as a bruised reed they had lost their integrity, and as smoking flax their light was quenched; for He spared them, having come to be judged and not yet to judge. He brought forth judgment in truth, declaring that they should be punished did they persist in their wickedness. His face shone on the Mount, [1491] His fame in the world. He is not broken nor overcome, because neither in Himself nor in His Church has persecution prevailed to annihilate Him. And therefore that has not, and shall not, be brought about which His enemies said or say, "When shall He die, and His name perish? " [1492] "until He set judgment in the earth. "Behold, the hidden thing which we were seeking is discovered. For this is the last judgment, which He will set in the earth when He comes from heaven. And it is in Him, too, we already see the concluding expression of the prophecy fulfilled:"In His name shall the nations hope. "And by this fulfillment, which no one can deny, men are encouraged to believe in that which is most impudently denied. For who could have hoped for that which even those who do not yet believe in Christ now see fulfilled among us, and which is so undeniable that they can but gnash their teeth and pine away? Who, I say, could have hoped that the nations would hope in the name of Christ, when He was arrested, bound, scourged, mocked, crucified, when even the disciples themselves had lost the hope which they had begun to have in Him? The hope which was then entertained scarcely by the one thief on the cross, is now cherished by nations everywhere on the earth, who are marked with the sign of the cross on which He died that they may not die eternally.

• From The City of God

  This, then, is the universal way of the soul's deliverance, the way that is granted by the divine compassion to the nations universally. And no nation to which the knowledge of it has already come, or may hereafter come, ought to demand, Why so soon? or, Why so late? --for the design of Him who sends it is impenetrable by human capacity. This was felt by Porphyry when he confined himself to saying that this gift of God was not yet received, and had not yet come to his knowledge. For though this was so, he did not on that account pronounce that the way it self had no existence. This, I say, is the universal way for the deliverance of believers, concerning which the faithful Abraham received the divine assurance, "In thy seed shall all nations be blessed. " [439]He, indeed, was by birth a Chaldaean; but, that he might receive these great promises, and that there might be propagated from him a seed "disposed by angels in the hand of a Mediator," [440] in whom this universal way, thrown open to all nations for the deliverance of the soul, might be found, he was ordered to leave his country, and kindred, and father's house. Then was he himself, first of all, delivered from the Chaldaean superstitions, and by his obedience worshipped the one true God, whose promises he faithfully trusted. This is the universal way, of which it is said in holy prophecy, "God be merciful unto us, and bless us, and cause His face to shine upon us; that Thy way may be known upon earth, Thy saving health among all nations. " [441]And hence, when our Saviour, so long after, had taken flesh of the seed of Abraham, He says of Himself, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. " [442]This is the universal way, of which so long before it had been predicted, "And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths:for out of Sion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. " [443]This way, therefore, is not the property of one, but of all nations. The law and the word of the Lord did not remain in Zion and Jerusalem, but issued thence to be universally diffused.

• From The City of God

  We see that this sentence concerning this division of the people of Israel, divinely uttered in these words, has been altogether irremediable and quite perpetual. For whoever have turned, or are turning, or shall turn thence to Christ, it has been according to the foreknowledge of God, not according to the one and the same nature of the human race. Certainly none of the Israelites, who, cleaving to Christ, have continued in Him, shall ever be among those Israelites who persist in being His enemies even to the end of this life, but shall for ever remain in the separation which is here foretold. For the Old Testament, from the Mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, [1039] profiteth nothing, unless because it bears witness to the New Testament. Otherwise, however long Moses is read, the veil is put over their heart; but when any one shall turn thence to Christ, the veil shall be taken away. [1040]For the very desire of those who turn is changed from the old to the new, so that each no longer desires to obtain carnal but spiritual felicity. Wherefore that great prophet Samuel himself, before he had anointed Saul, when he had cried to the Lord for Israel, and He had heard him, and when he had offered a whole burnt-offering, as the aliens were coming to battle against the people of God, and the Lord thundered above them and they were confused, and fell before Israel and were overcome; [then] he took one stone and set it up between the old and new Massephat [Mizpeh], and called its name Ebenezer, which means "the stone of the helper," and said, "Hitherto hath the Lord helped us. " [1041]Massephat is interpreted "desire. " That stone of the helper is the mediation of the Saviour, by which we go from the old Massephat to the new,--that is, from the desire with which carnal happiness was expected in the carnal kingdom to the desire with which the truest spiritual happiness is expected in the kingdom of heaven; and since nothing is better than that, the Lord helpeth us hitherto. [1033] 1 Sam. xv. 23. [1034] 1 Sam. xv. 26-29. [1035] Rom. i. 3. [1036] 1 Tim. ii. 5. [1037] Ps. cx. 1. [1038] Gen. xxi. 10. [1039] Gal. iv. 25. [1040] 2 Cor. iii. 15, 16. [1041] 1 Sam. vii. 9-12.

• From The City of God

  [1293] Ch. 6. [1294] 1 Tim. iii. 1. [1295] Augustin's words are:eti, quippe, super; skopos, vero, intentio est:ergo episkopein, si velimus, latine superintendere possumus dicere. Chapter 20. --That the Saints are in This Life Blessed in Hope. Since, then, the supreme good of the city of God is perfect and eternal peace, not such as mortals pass into and out of by birth and death, but the peace of freedom from all evil, in which the immortals ever abide; who can deny that that future life is most blessed, or that, in comparison with it, this life which now we live is most wretched, be it filled with all blessings of body and soul and external things? And yet, if any man uses this life with a reference to that other which he ardently loves and confidently hopes for, he may well be called even now blessed, though not in reality so much as in hope. But the actual possession of the happiness of this life, without the hope of what is beyond, is but a false happiness and profound misery. For the true blessings of the soul are not now enjoyed; for that is no true wisdom which does not direct all its prudent observations, manly actions, virtuous self-restraint, and just arrangements, to that end in which God shall be all and all in a secure eternity and perfect peace.