Latest post in my blog on popular science:
They bark, therefore we ride
https://populscience.blogspot.com/2024/03/they-bark-therefore-we-ride.html
Regards,
Very nice, Manuel. It reminds me of all the quotes on the internet allegedly by C.S. Lewis, but not actually by him. A whole book was written about this, called “The Misquotable C.S. Lewis” by William O’Flaherty. He lists 75 such quotes in the first edition (I haven’t seen the second one). Some of them are good thoughts in themselves, such as “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending”, just not by Lewis. And there are others which are actually the opposite of what Lewis says, such as “Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose”. This is actually a quote from St. Augustine, which Lewis strongly disagrees with in his “The Four Loves”.
Many of these false quotes often garner thousands of positive replies on the internet, and, unfortunately, there seems to be no way of stopping it.
Dimitry
“Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. Love will last forever.” (1 Corinthians 13: 4-8
This link points out that Lewis was disagreeing with Augustine and his words are quoted out of context: https://treadingpaper.wordpress.com/2014/07/17/c-s-lewis-out-of-context-and-the-four-loves/comment-page-1/
Augustine’s reaction was mot alone. Another saint (Saint Francis Borgia) had a similar reaction when he had to supervise the transport of the corpse of the queen of Spain and Empress of the Holy Roman Empire, who had been very beautiful. When he had to open the coffin to officially identify the corpse, he found it partially putrid and apparently said these words: “I will not serve again a Master that may die.” And this Duke and Grandee of Spain renounced his titles and became a priest, who later was elected superior general of the Society of Jesus, which had been founded a few years before.
Regards,
Friends,
I don’t disagree with Lewis but I wonder if he was being a bit unfair to Augustine in his effort to make his (Lewis’s) own point? Surely, I doubt that Augustine was arguing for “safety” and self-serving avoidance of grief but was, rather, making a point of the priority of love to God above all other loves? He used grief in human love as one bit of evidence for the inadequacy of merely human loves when compared to Divine Love.
Interesting thread—thank you, Manuel and Dimitry.
Ruby
It is impossible to be either unfair or uncharitable when it comes to Augustine. He was a horrible man with horrible opinions.
Michael
Lord High Heretic
There is literally nobody, past or present, of whom this is true–we can always imagine and say worse than the truth.
You already have the “Lord High Heretic” badge, Mike; you don’t need to earn it all over again. But in some seriousness, my opinion of Augustine is fairly neutral–I understand he’s regarded positively by most Christians of any persuasion who have familiarity with him, but my familiarity is limited to having read the first three books of the Confessions. But to justify such vitriol, his positions must have been truly, and consistently, awful and antithetical to scripture. And I’d be a little surprised if you could demonstrate that.
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Dan, I’m wondering why you have closed discussion on this topic?
Dimitry
| dan Geek the Magic Dragon
March 26 |
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Michael_Nicholson:
It is impossible to be either unfair or uncharitable when it comes to Augustine.
There is literally nobody, past or present, of whom this is true–we can always imagine and say worse than the truth.
He was a horrible man with horrible opinions.
You already have the “Lord High Heretic” badge, Mike; you don’t need to earn it all over again. But in some seriousness, my opinion of Augustine is fairly neutral–I understand he’s regarded positively by most Christians of any persuasion who have familiarity with him, but my familiarity is limited to having read the first three books of the Confessions. But to justify such vitriol, his positions must have been truly, and consistently, awful and antithetical to scripture. And I’d be a little surprised if you could demonstrate that.
Ruby’s and Mike’s posts went to a different topic; I moved them from that one to this (which Manuel started with his post), which remains open for discussion.
Ruby, I will always remember what Lewis wrote immediately prior to indicating his disagreement with St. Augustine:
"There is one method of dissuading us from inordinate love of the fellow-creature which I find myself forced to reject at the very outset. I do so with trembling, for it met me in the pages of a great saint and a great thinker to whom my own glad debts are incalculable."
I think this is somewhat like our occasional disagreements with Lewis himself, but to whom, nevertheless, our own glad debts are incalculable.
Dimitry
Well, Dan, you are correct. My bonafides as the Lord High Heretic need not be re-earned. They stand the test of time.
I also understand that he is regarded positively by most Christians. That is why I am the Lord High Heretic. He is below “neutral.” He is to be loathed by any Christian with discernment and historical understanding.
He almost single-handedly turned the teaching of the early church from one where the “Good News of Christ" pervaded, to one where the “Ugliness of God” was preached.
He acknowledged in his writings that the doctrine of hell that he was promoting was antithetical to the teaching of the majority of the churches in his day, but he felt that the common teaching that the judgements of God where always ultimately of a refining/redeeming nature was not sufficient to “scare the hell out of” non-believers so that they would convert. The message of God’s mercy and love that was being taught in the churches of his day was woefully insufficient, in this monster’s view. The doctrine of God desiring eternal, unrelenting torture of sinners was what was needed. He changed everything. And not for the better. God LOVED eternal torture, because it was what was just and right, because sin was — you know — so BAD!
Let’s face it. Even Lewis could not stomach this perversion of the Divine will. His writing reflect it.
Augustine was a bad, bad Christian…if indeed he was a Christian. I make no judgment as to whether he was a genuine believer. But his fruit was rotten to the core, to all appearances. He blasphemed, by slandering the character of the Father/Creator and his love for his creatures.
Sincerely,
Michael
Lord High Heretic
Ah, right, how could I have forgotten: Augustine invented hell, and was therefore a terrible Christian and a terrible person overall.
Mike, if αἰώνιον doesn’t mean “eternal” punishment in Matthew 25:46, it also doesn’t mean “eternal” life when the very same word is used six words later.
That is precisely the argument Augustine himself uses in City of God, book 21, chapter 23, in the first of his rebuttals to the six or seven different groups that he distinguishes of “our compassionate ones”, those Christians who reject, for various reasons, the idea of everlasting punishment for sinful humans after the last judgment.
I have been working on a topic quite closely related to this for a PhD. I’m a bit rusty, because I have taken quite a lot of time off, owing to family illness, consequent bereavement, and a necessary downsizing house move, though I hope to restart in a few months — and perhaps even go on to complete it.
Oh, and by the way, my e-mail address is likely to need to be changed to johnpgibson63@gmail.com, as I shall lose my fixed IP addresses when I move, and may not bother reconfiguring my home mail server to whatever the new setup will be.
John Gibson
I think Lewis’s treatment of hell in chapter 8 of “The problem of pain,” especially the last but one paragraph, agrees rather more with Augustine than with Mike.
Regards,
Friends,
There is no doubt most of us, including Lewis, find the doctrine of hell loathsome. And Augustine was a fallen man, a statement he would be the first to endorse. So I’m sure if we look for faults in him, we shall find them, as anyone would looking for mine!
It’s important to remember that gnosticism and Aryanism were both prevailing heresies in Augustine’s time and, in different guises, in ours as well. We probably underestimate just how prevailing these were and how a few forceful Trinitarian personalities saved the church from going tragically off course. Athanasius and Augustine come immediately to my mind.
I for one am grateful to these “Fathers of the Church” for standing true to Trinitarian and Biblical theology in times when it would have been easy to flow with the crowd.
Blessings,
Ruby
Ruby, I must disagree with you: Trinitarian personalities (Athanasius, Augustine, Constantine) ruined the church; they did not save it by any means. They did not use persuasion, either, but threats and condemnations and political power to defeat their theological adversaries.
I will deal with the “problem of hell” in a separate post but let me say to Manuel that chapter 8 of “The Problem of Pain” by Lewis does NOT “agree rather more with Augustine” except insofar as Lewis grudgingly (and erroneously) submits to the idea that Augustinian “hell” has “always been taught by the church” so he (Lewis) just has to deal with it, even though (he writes) every fiber of his being rejects it as antithetical to everything else revealed about God’s character in scripture. They key problem, which Lewis identifies just a few paragraphs in, is that what else can god do with someone who will NOT submit? And the answer is too easy: that is why the refining fires can last a long time, and are described as “enduring”; but in the end “every tongue will WILLINGLY confess.” That passage does not mean “grudgingly confess” while they are tortured without hope of redemption. Disgusting. And unscriptural.
With regard to the Trinity, Lewis was very very close to some form of Aryanism in his own belief. What Lewis wrote is that the Father is eternal, and is a person who “eternally begets” the Son, who is therefore a second eternal person. So you have the Father eternally creating the Son, which for some people would (if it wasn’t Lewis saying it) already be causing serious heartburn because the Son is a created being, albeit “eternal.” Then, Lewis goes on to describe how the Father and the Son obviously share an eternal relationship, and that this relationship is essentially a third person, eternally created by their relationship. This is the Holy Spirit. He uses the example of how various school classes or similar fraternities are described as having their own unique personality or “school spirit” because of the nature of the relationships of the many personalities within them.
I myself for many years thought this was a good attempt at understanding God as Father, Son, and Spirit, because it is sensible and can be comprehended. But I came to see that while it is internally consistent, it is not consistent with Scripture. So what does the totality of Scriptures teach. (Forget theology and worthless creeds, just what does it SAY?) Over and over, it says that Jesus IS, not just God, but the Father-creator Himself revealed “as a man”: that is, as a finite creature. As one of us. So that we can better apprehend He who is otherwise Invisible. (No man has seen God at any time, but the Son of Man has revealed Him.) To use language that Francis Schaeffer might use (but this would not be something he would actually say), Jesus is God AS A MAN; He is not GOD QUA GOD.
The early church father Irenaeus of Lyons tried to describe God-as-revealed in Scripture thusly: he said that “the Son and the Spirit are the two arms of the Father-Creator.". No man has seen God the Father; but God pervades the creation in two forms so that we may know Him: as an invisible force and presence acting everywhere as He wills (Spirit), and as a visible, physical being acting when and where he wills in a personal, physical manner (Son). Now exactly how is this teaching, even if it is disagreed with, so destructive to the church that it requires the violence of Trinitarians to come along and save it? How is God diminished by it? How is the church endangered by it?
And the solution of the Trinitarians is laughable if it wasn’t so truly harmful to the church (by means of the persecution and political violence unleashed by Trinitarians): essentially, it is a bunch of logically impossible propositions, propositions that either contradict each other or simply cannot be grasped how they can all be true at the same time, but that for some reason simply MUST be “believed” (not understood, since that is impossible because they make no sense, but you know, it’s a divine mystery).
Sincerely,
Michael, LHH
Dear Lord High Heretic,
The first thing I noticed is that “begetting” becomes “creating” in your third paragraph which I find semantically a problem. The next thing I noticed is you last words which say the Trinity is a divine mystery and so He is. There are lots of mysteries including the mystery of ourselves and our own “free will.” I think attempts to explain either Divine or human freedom get folks snarled up in things we probably don’t have language for.
As to violence, there’s plenty of blame to go around for Aryans and Trinitarians alike. My brother, John, who died of lymphoma two years ago, expressed a hatred for all creeds “because people killed over those.” I refused to argue about that but thought people kill for all sorts of reasons. I thought of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao who certainly weren’t killing over the Trinity. Sad history, we have, this planet.
Blessings,
Ruby
Your brother was wise. Begetting/creating/blah/blah. You’re right. It’s all semantics. So then why divide and endlessly argue and condemn and exile and kill over it. Stupid. Wrong. Ungodly. Unchristian.
The mystery of free will and the mystery of the Trinity only really become incomprehensible mysteries when the simple language of scripture is unnecessarily complicated by ultra-complex theologies that depend upon semantics for their very existence.
And if we “don’t have language” for something why insist on the recitation of words for one to be considered a part of the body of Christ. Insane. Wrong. Disgusting.
I choose not to make excuses for the excesses and wrongs of the church and even of “saints” in the past. Better to confront them and judge them rightly and with discernment. So that the future of the church can be less bleak, and less of an embarrassment, and less of barrier to the spreading of and acceptance of the Good News of Christ.
Sincerely,
Michael, LHH
Then that would put me in the minority, which is neither here nor there. I don’t find in the least loathsome that the judge of all the earth will punish those who persistently and unrepentantly rebel against him, particularly when that is the doctrine clearly and repeatedly taught in scripture. I’d further say that if we find it loathsome even though we find it clearly taught in scripture, that illustrates an area where we need greater sanctification. We ought, as Christians, to love the truth.
How common this teaching was is far from certain–extant records of the church in the first three centuries AD are very fragmentary, so it’s nearly impossible to say with any accuracy and intellectual honesty what the prevailing view on any subject may have been. It’s virtually always false to claim that X was the universal position of the “early church.”
But however common this teaching may have been, it’s demonstrably false from scripture–which, unlike Augustine, is authoritative. God’s judgment on Pharaoh was not refining. Neither was his judgment on Sodom. Neither was his judgment in the Flood–just to name three examples. As Lewis writes in chapter 9 of TGD (and illustrates by the dwarves in The Last Battle), there are those to whom God says, in effect, “have it your way.”
…is true, but incomplete–and thus false if taught in isolation. The message of God’s wrath and justice is also true, and also incomplete.
But as to the question of eternal punishment in hell, that question is indistinguishable as far as I can tell from the question of universalism, and we’ve already had that discussion.
Dan supposes that “greater sanctification” will lead more of us to love a God who loves torture-without-end for no discernible purpose but his sense of having been wronged by his victims. It’s not easy to wriggle out of the Augustinian hell doctrine as teaching that God loves to torture. Dan can say all he wants that God does not like doing it but is somehow forced to do so, but who is forcing him? Why not just kill/unmake the miscreants and be done with them? If any worldly government punished lawbreakers in this way it would be roundly condemned by almost everyone; yet the kingdom of heaven has this as policy and practice? And because “the Bible says” (supposedly) that this practice is compatible with a God of mercy and love, we should just shrug and go “oh, okay, that’s fine, then”? No issue here.
The only way the judgments on Pharaoh et. al as having no refining purpose is if we suppose that upon the instant of death, the destiny of all souls is set in stone. I can think of a scripture passage that Dan might cite to make that case, but I don’t think it says what he thinks it says. Jesus hints as much when he say that the future judgment will be less onerous on the inhabitants of Sodom than on some of the religious hypocrites of his time. How can that be, if eternal torture without let-up is the end game? And the Last Battle at least suggests that the dwarves could turn to a different path, regardless of how blind to it they seem to be at the moment.
Sincerely,
Michael, LHH
Slander the God of the Bible if you will; I can’t stop you (though I will, and do, warn you that that’s what you are doing)–but I’ll thank you to stop putting words in my mouth.
I think I was quite clear about “greater sanctification”: If you as a professing Christian find something clearly taught in the Bible, but don’t like it, that’s a problem with you. What’s taught in the Bible is truth, and Christians ought to love the truth. Is it not self-evident that a Christian who does not love what he admits to be truth is in need of further sanctification?
As to the rest, if I believed you capable of having an adult discussion without name-calling and imputing evil motives to anyone who disagrees with you, we could perhaps have a productive discussion–but you’ve repeatedly demonstrated that isn’t the case.