Garrett Farrell’s Reviews > City of God > Status Update

There’s a passage in this book where Augustine gives due credit to philosophers of the earthly city, saying they find some truth in their argumentation, but that they stop short of finding full truth because they lack the measure and aim which comes with God. Tempted to think Augustine is sketching a proof of God’s existence by objective morality, but not sure.

Five books left, covering 330 pages. I think this is where the book truly becomes a beast.

Content wise, still really interesting. XVII was probably the least philosophical so far, going more into depth on examining the early prophets and davidic books of the bible, but still fascinating. It’s easy to see why he was regarded as the church’s greatest intellect for almost 900 years.

“Unchanging truth either speaks by itself in a way we cannot explain to the minds of rational creatures, or it speaks through a mutable creature.” XVI.8

Really like this passage. There’s an element of a priori knowledge that I, as a mathematician, find very interesting, but there’s also a kind of foretaste of Aquinas’ “agent intellects”. The two definitely seem to be in dialogue epistemologically.

St. Augustine is reading Genesis at a level my high school theology teachers (shoutout Sister Margaret) could hardly dream of, and that is saying something.

In book XIV, Augustine, perhaps Catholicism’s most notoriously recovered lothario, gives a good discussion on why and how actions that were created good can be corrupted. Some Aristotelian virtue theory crept into this chapter, and with the right direction of the will at the center of this book it’s easy to see why. I’m a notorious fan of the big A, so I of course loved to see it.

Halfway done. I believe I just read the first defense of the doctrine of the baptism of desire, but I’m not quite sure if it is the first. If it is, I didn’t know it was another Augustine banger. And even if it isn’t, I didn’t know it was developed as early as Augustine’s time.

Senior year of high school I had to read the handbook of catholic apologetics, and my favorite proof of God was “the music of beethoven, you either get it or you don’t.” Augustine has a similar one:

“We have the evidence of the world itself in all its ordered change and movement… its maker could have been none other than God, the ineffably and invisibly great, the ineffably and invisibly beautiful” -XI.4

Through part 1. Came to my first point of disagreement w/ St. A— he seems to accept the premise that we are embodied souls, which isn’t surprising considering his known Neo-platonic sympathies. I prefer Aristotle’s hylomorphicity in my conception of the relationship of body and soul. Still enjoying the book, but man was book 10 a beast. Looking forward to part 2.