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

  [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.

• From The City of God

  The life, then, which is either subject to accidents, or environed with evils so considerable and grievous, could never have been called happy, if the men who give it this name had condescended to yield to the truth, and to be conquered by valid arguments, when they inquired after the happy life, as they yield to unhappiness, and are overcome by overwhelming evils, when they put themselves to death, and if they had not fancied that the supreme good was to be found in this mortal life; for the very virtues of this life, which are certainly its best and most useful possessions, are all the more telling proofs of its miseries in proportion as they are helpful against the violence of its dangers, toils, and woes. For if these are true virtues,--and such cannot exist save in those who have true piety,--they do not profess to be able to deliver the men who possess them from all miseries; for true virtues tell no such lies, but they profess that by the hope of the future world this life, which is miserably involved in the many and great evils of this world, is happy as it is also safe. For if not yet safe, how could it be happy? And therefore the Apostle Paul, speaking not of men without prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice, but of those whose lives were regulated by true piety, and whose virtues were therefore true, says, "For we are saved by hope:now hope which 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. " [1268] As, therefore, we are saved, so we are made happy by hope. And as we do not as yet possess a present, but look for a future salvation, so is it with our happiness, and this "with patience;" for we are encompassed with evils, which we ought patiently to endure, until we come to the ineffable enjoyment of unmixed good; for there shall be no longer anything to endure. Salvation, such as it shall be in the world to come, shall itself be our final happiness. And this happiness these philosophers refuse to believe in, because they do not see it, and attempt to fabricate for themselves a happiness in this life, based upon a virtue which is as deceitful as it is proud.

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

  II. The Epistles of Peter represent this riper stage of knowledge. They agree substantially with the teaching of Paul. The leading idea is the same as that presented in his addresses in the Acts: Christ the fulfiller of the Messianic prophecies, and the hope of the Christian. Peter’s christology is free of all speculative elements, and simply derived from the impression of the historical and risen Jesus. He emphasizes in the first Epistle, as in his earlier addresses, the resurrection whereby God "begat us again unto a lively hope, unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven," when "the chief shepherd shall be manifested," and we "shall receive the crown of glory." And in the second Epistle he points forward to "new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness."769 He thus connects the resurrection of Christ with the final consummation of which it is the sure pledge. But, besides the resurrection, he brings out also the atoning efficacy of the death of Christ almost as strongly and clearly as Paul. Christ "suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God;" he himself "bare our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness;" he redeemed us "with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot."770 Christ is to him the only Saviour, the Lord, the Prince of life, the Judge of the world. He assigns him a majestic position far above all other men, and brings him into the closest contact with the eternal Jehovah, though in subordination to him. The doctrine of the pre-existence seems to be intimated and implied, if not expressly stated, when Christ is spoken of as being "foreknown before the foundation of the world" and "manifested at the end of the time," and his Spirit as dwelling in the prophets of old and pointing them to his future sufferings and glory.771 III. Peter extends the preaching, judging, and saving activity of Christ to the realm of the departed spirits in Hades during the mysterious triduum between the crucifixion and the resurrection.772 The descent into Hades is also taught by Paul (Eph. 4:9, 10). IV. With this theory correspond the practical exhortations. Subjective Christianity is represented as faith in the historical Christ and as a lively hope in his, glorious reappearance, which should make the Christians rejoice even amidst trials and persecution, after the example of their Lord and Saviour. § 71. The Gentile Christian Theology. Paul and the Gospel of Faith. (See the Lit. in § 29, pp. 280 sqq.) The Gentile Christian type of the gospel is embodied in the writings of Paul and Luke, and in the anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews.

• From American Religious History (2001)

  Scope: The years immediately after World War II witnessed a powerful religious revival. Among evangelicals, Billy Graham, in the tradition of Whitefield and Finney, seized the headlines and converted hundreds at vast open-air rallies. More than any predecessor, Graham took the theology out of Christianity, emphasizing instead an emotional turning to Jesus as friend and helper. Liberal Protestant churches also boomed in these years, though critics said that they were simply playing the role of social clubs in the proliferating new suburbs. American congregations were richer than ever before, and the postwar decades witnessed a renaissance of ambitious (sometimes ostentatious) church building. Some were daring in their modernism, such as the new Catholic Cathedral of San Francisco, the chapel of the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, and the nondenominational Rothko Chapel in Houston. Members of the clergy, meanwhile, found their role changing also. Less of their time was devoted to preaching and more to counseling parishioners. A series of “feel-good” religious bestsellers of the postwar years included The Power of Positive Thinking (1952) by Norman Vincent Peale, while a Catholic priest, Fulton Sheen, became a surprise hit on prime-time television in the mid-1950s with his irenic series “Life Is Worth Living.” Outline I. After World War II, the United States experienced a great religious revival, and church membership grew by millions, to include more than 60 percent of the whole population by the mid-1950s, more than ever before. Explanations for the revival varied. A. According to some observers, it was a response to the rootlessness of America’s highly mobile society. B. Suburbanization was breaking down old ethnic-religious neighborhoods. Churches became the suburbs’ social centers. C. Others suggested that the revival was caused by parents’ eagerness to have the era’s huge cohort of children (the baby boom) brought up in church. ©2001 The Teaching Company. 79

• From American Religious History (2001)

  D. The symbolic significance of religion in the movement intensified, but the media downplayed it. 1. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” mixed biblical and patriotic rhetoric. 2. The religious theme was apparent in the September 1963 bombing attack on a Birmingham, Alabama, church. 3. In Memphis on the night before his death in 1968, King summoned up the image of Moses on the mountaintop. E. White liberal Protestants and Catholics joined in the movement eagerly; their support of desegregation sometimes antagonized their congregations. F. After 1966, harmonious interracial cooperation in the movement began to break down. 1. James Forman demanded reparations from white churches. 2. Evangelicals were angered by such gestures. IV. The Black Muslims offered an alternative approach to racial change. A. Elijah Muhammad encountered Wallace Fard, who described the creation of the white “devil race” by Mr. Yacub. B. Proselytizing in prisons, the Nation of Islam converted Malcolm X, who became their most well known advocate. C. Their way of life and ritual cleanliness was a direct response to inner-city conditions. D. Malcolm X’s rhetoric had the opposite effect from King’s antagonizing and scaring whites and promoting an image of black pride and separatism. E. After making the hajj pilgrimage, Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam and attempted to create a more orthodox form of Islam. V. Later protest movements imitated the civil rights movement, breaking the law under the discipline of prayer and in the conviction of righteousness. A. Members of the sanctuary movement risked arrest by helping Central American refugees in the 1980s. 1. Liberation theology grew out of Latin American conditions. 2. Sanctuary workers, many of them nuns like Darlene Nicgorsky, used the analogy of the Underground Railroad. ©2001 The Teaching Company. 85 B. Religiously motivated anti-abortion activists were subject to repeated arrests. 1. Joan Andrews refused to cooperate with prison authorities and suffered solitary confinement in prison. 2. Randall Terry tried to fill the jails to publicize Operation Rescue. 3. Pro-life activists used the slavery analogy and the Nazi analogy. VI. In one sense, the civil rights movement permanently changed American life, by creating a form of citizen activism that subjects laws to a religious test. But in another way, the movement simply revived the kind of unyielding godly activism undertaken by the abolitionists. It showed, too, that the motivating power of religion had not declined with the modernization of society. Essential Reading: David Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Supplementary Reading: James Baldwin, The First Next Time. W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk. Questions to Consider: 1. What religious factors made the civil rights movement possible in the 1950s and 1960s that had inhibited it earlier? 2. Were later protest movements legitimate heirs of the civil rights movement? ©2001 The Teaching Company. 86 Lecture Twenty-One The Counterculture and Feminism

• From The City of God

  Chapter 2. --Of the Knowledge of God, to Which No Man Can Attain Save Through the Mediator Between God and Men, the Man Christ Jesus. It is a great and very rare thing for a man, after he has contemplated the whole creation, corporeal and incorporeal, and has discerned its mutability, to pass beyond it, and, by the continued soaring of his mind, to attain to the unchangeable substance of God, and, in that height of contemplation, to learn from God Himself that none but He has made all that is not of the divine essence. For God speaks with a man not by means of some audible creature dinning in his ears, so that atmospheric vibrations connect Him that makes with him that hears the sound, nor even by means of a spiritual being with the semblance of a body, such as we see in dreams or similar states; for even in this case He speaks as if to the ears of the body, because it is by means of the semblance of a body He speaks, and with the appearance of a real interval of space,--for visions are exact representations of bodily objects. Not by these, then, does God speak, but by the truth itself, if any one is prepared to hear with the mind rather than with the body. For He speaks to that part of man which is better than all else that is in him, and than which God Himself alone is better. For since man is most properly understood (or, if that cannot be, then, at least, believed) to be made in God's image, no doubt it is that part of him by which he rises above those lower parts he has in common with the beasts, which brings him nearer to the Supreme. But since the mind itself, though naturally capable of reason and intelligence is disabled by besotting and inveterate vices not merely from delighting and abiding in, but even from tolerating His unchangeable light, until it has been gradually healed, and renewed, and made capable of such felicity, it had, in the first place, to be impregnated with faith, and so purified. And that in this faith it might advance the more confidently towards the truth, the truth itself, God, God's Son, assuming humanity without destroying His divinity, [449] established and founded this faith, that there might be a way for man to man's God through a God-man. For this is the Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. For it is as man that He is the Mediator and the Way. Since, if the way lieth between him who goes, and the place whither he goes, there is hope of his reaching it; but if there be no way, or if he know not where it is, what boots it to know whither he should go? Now the only way that is infallibly secured against all mistakes, is when the very same person is at once God and man, God our end, man our way. [450]

• From American Religious History (2001)

  2. They expected to return victorious. C. In Massachusetts and Connecticut, nevertheless, they established the Congregational system of self-governing churches, as outlined in the Cambridge Platform of 1648. D. Church membership was a prerequisite to participation in politics. Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut approached Calvin’s Genevan ideal. E. Blasphemy and misuse of the Sabbath were offenses. F. Puritans emphasized education. 1. They condemned Catholicism, partly because it kept the ordinary people ignorant. 2. Harvard College was founded in 1636 to train ministers. 3. New communities invested in schools and teachers. 4. New England achieved nearly universal literacyprobably the first society in the world to do so. G. Preaching was the heart of worship. 1. Two Sunday sermons based on biblical texts were the norm. 2. These were complemented by special sermons for fast-days, elections, and executions. 3. Services took place in plain meeting houses. 4. Psalms were “lined out” and sung without accompaniment. H. The Puritans were intolerant and repressive of dissent. 1. Radical separatist Roger Williams and Antinomian Anne Hutchinson were expelled. 2. Facial branding with “H” (for “heresy”) and flogging were the punishments for persistent Quakers. Two Quaker men and a woman were hanged in Boston in 1659. 3. Baptists, like Anne Eaton (wife of the governor of New Haven), were censured and excommunicated. II. Puritans hoped for salvation and dreaded damnation and, thus, looked eagerly for reassurance that they were among God’s chosen. A. They believed that the church should consist only of the godly, so far as that was possible, but they also knew that God predestined souls for heaven or hell, without ever making his choices clear. B. Covenant theology, modeled on God’s covenants with Noah and Abraham, represented the Puritans’ attempt to find clues about God’s will toward them. ©2001 The Teaching Company. 18

• From American Religious History (2001)

  II. It is no coincidence that ministers (including Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Jesse Jackson, and Andrew Young) led the civil rights movement. A. King came from a family of ministers, and his father led a relatively prosperous congregation of the black middle class in Atlanta. B. He was highly educated in northern schools and studied for the doctorate at Boston University. C. By accepting the call of the Dexter Road Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, King returned to the heart of the segregated south. D. He led the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955–1956. 1. Mass meetings were held in his and other churches. 2. Preaching and hymns promoted movement unity. 3. Following a death threat, King felt his faith strengthened during a profound religious experience. 4. King believed that God had chosen Montgomery as the starting point of the movement. III. The civil rights movement caused controversy across the American religious landscape. A. King was one of the founders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLS) in 1957. 1. Part of his skill as a leader came from his use of biblical language and idioms, recognized by black and white audiences alike. 2. By refusing to fight back when attacked, civil rights demonstrators kept the moral high ground. 3. The SCLC adapted techniques used by Gandhi and Thoreau. B. Joseph Jackson and other black southern Baptist leaders believed that political activism in the church was inappropriate, which led to a split in the organization. C. Segregationists also believed that they were religiously justified. Lawrence Neff, a white Atlanta Methodist, wrote Jesus: Master- Segregationist. ©2001 The Teaching Company. 84

• From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)

  Dig one level deeper and start there. Jesus spoke of salvation for people who were distressed, alienated, dissatisfied. On a given day in Palestine, it could all make great sense. But once Jesus was gone, somebody had to work out, if the Jesus idea was to persist, how to rationalize and mechanize the hope of salvation into a set of behaviors and expectations. The failure of Jesus to return for a third coming (counting the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus as the second) posed one set of difficulties, difficulties that were heroically overcome by Paul and the other followers. (And bear in mind that without Paul, who never met Jesus, the Jesus idea might well have faded very quickly or become something very different.) The power and attraction of the message that those followers retained from Jesus is best measured by the stretches to which they could go in order to reconcile their disappointments with what they remembered him saying in a pattern that could keep hope alive. But more time passed. As long as Christianity was like a bowling league or condominium association—and to envision the quality of governance in early Christian churches, one would probably do well to recall such other earnest and well-meaning and amateurish efforts at human self-organization—it was reasonable to expect adults to come to join the club, pay their dues, and acquire the benefits. Once Paul was read as saying that the Jewish requirement of circumcision no longer applied, the club could be quite attractive and reassuring. Then more time passed. Success happened. An emperor (no less!) bought in to a Christian club. Pretty soon imperially sponsored bowling leagues were springing up everywhere, and huge new 199-lane Bowl-O-Ramas, with marble foyers and gold ceilings, were being built all around the Roman world. Joining was no longer a rare, discretionary choice. There was a stampede to get in. People began taking the rules of the league more seriously, insisting that membership was necessary to happiness and salvation. Necessary for whom? For all? What about babies? Many of them would die before ever they achieved the age of league-joining. What would become of them? The logic of the arguments created long ago in Palestine would begin to weigh on all sides: of course one had to baptize these infants, it made sense. And so the practice, scattered at first and then widespread, becomes increasingly popular. The young Augustine is baffled by it, the bishop Augustine capitulates to it, and the middle-aged Augustine begins to explain it: but he could only explain it by constructing a theological notion, original sin, that defies logic on various points. It has the qualities of a mathematical equation that requires you to fail to notice that it divides by zero on two or three occasions in order to get to its results.

• From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)

  The Gallic monks who took up the debate were serious men and passed their line of monasticism in its essential features to Italy, where it was picked up in the Rule of the Master, the Rule of Benedict, and the Dialogues of Pope Gregory I. Gregory gave the author of the Rule of Benedict, whose name may even have been Benedict, a biography, replete with angels and devils and wonders, and so finally canonized him as the archetypal western ascetic. The ninth century would make that canonization normative and in so doing confirm the irrelevance of Augustine and of the quarrels of his generation.550 But Hadrumetum and Gaul belong to the traditional histories of doctrine about Augustine. We need at this point to address seriously the doctrines that were evolved to explain and justify ascetic practices. WHAT WAS AT STAKE WITH PELAGIUS So here is the puzzle. Pelagius resembles no one so much as the young Augustine: ascetic, outgoing, with an eye for an audience among the well-educated and well-connected. In the first decade of Augustine’s baptized religious opinions, much that he thought, said, and did was far more continuous with who and what he had been before than with what he became later. He still held on to the optimism and idealism of ancient high culture and he was still emphatically Augustine the gentleman, or the would-be gentleman, seeking a role for himself based on what he knew of the traditional culture of his world. In that world, philosophical inclinations were highly acceptable, so long as they did not undermine fundamental social alignments. With those inclinations came an ethical expectation. A gentleman was self-contained, self-sufficient, and autonomous. A gentleman comported himself well and made it look easy to do so. Augustine knew his goal, and the struggle we see in his youth was the struggle to make this personal goal align with the religious phenomena and demands of Christianity. That he made the match should not surprise us. Plenty of polished young men around the Roman Mediterranean were finding such compromises in those days, men like Paulinus of Nola or the African from remote Cyrene, Synesius, whom some scholars can’t quite believe really believed in his Christianity, but who accepted a bishopric nonetheless. What is remarkable about Augustine is what Hippo does to him and what, eventually, Donatism does to him. The Augustine we know is emphatically the Augustine who has been transformed by Africa.