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The Council of Constantinople (Augustine of Hippo) (2)
Paul Jang  2009-12-13 16:26:27, hit : 3,255

The Council of Constantinople (Augustine of Hippo) (2)

ÀåºÎ¿µ 2008-11-08 06:24:42, Á¶È¸ : 156





(II) The Modes of Augustine's Thinking

1. Existence and Biblical Interpretation

A. Metaphysics of inner experience

(1) Windelband called this manner of thinking a \"metaphysics of inner experience.\"

(2) Man, cried Augustine, \"is an immense abyss (grande profundum est ipse homo), whose very hairs Thou numberest, O Lord....

B. Interpretation of the Bible:

(1) His philosophizing seeks its truth in a Biblical interpretation grounded in faith.

(2) The fundamental belief that the Bible is the sole source of essential truth, transforms thinking.

2. Reason and Believed Truth

(1) Common Truth

1) The truth is only one.

2) Accordingly, Augustine sets out to seek the common truth, even in the company of his adversaries.

(2) Truth of Faith : Turnabout manner

1) He is certain about the truth of his faith

2) In practice, concludes that force should be used against those of different faith.

3) They worship, in faith, hope, and charity, the con-substantial and immutable triunity of the one supreme God.

4) Therefore Augustine says:

A. Theory of knowledge: Epistemological Understanding

(1) Our fundamental experience of thinking is that a light dawns on us by which we recognize the universal validity.

(2) Though the truth that we know is one, it includes several factors : Knowledge and will.

B. Revelation and Church: Components

(1) The truth has reason and revelation as components. They are one and separate.


(2) God not only illumines the knowledge of the mind, but bestows the truth itself through the revelation of the present Church and the Biblical Church.

C. Superstition: Non-scientific

1. His View of Science

(1) Augustine despised the sciences. (due to superstition?)

(2) He held that concern with them is rewarding(valuable) only in sofar as it promotes understanding of the Bible.

2. His View of the World

(1) For him the world was without interest, except insofar as the creation points to the Creator.

(2) It (the world) is a place of parables, images, traces.

3. Superstition and Science

(1) To his mind superstition supported by the Bible was no superstition.

(2) In his polemics against the Manichaeans he used reasoned arguments.

3. God and Christ

1. Augustine's Christian Intuition of God


(1) God becomes wholly actual, corporeally present in Christ: God became man and is infinitely close to us in the Church, which is the mystical body of Christ.

(2) Augustine's God is inseparable from Christ, the unique revelation of God, to which the Church bears witness.

(3) Augustine's thinking of God moves between the infinitely remote, hidden God, and the God who is manifest and as it were captured by the ecclesiastical intuition of Christ.

(4) The incarnation of God - \"to the Greeks foolishness, to the Jews a stumbling block.\"

A. Philosophical transcending

(1) In philosophical transcending, Augustine, on Neoplatonic ground: Since God is not the object of an immediate perception, knowledge must rise up to Him.

(3) God is everywhere hidden, everywhere manifest. To no one is it given to know that He is, or not to know Him. But atheism, says Augustine, is madness.

(4) Heaven, earth and all things proclaim that they are created. Wherein? In the fact that they change and move.

B. Jesus Christ

(1) In philosophical transcending, Augustine breaks through all the thinkable.

(2) We feel the reality of God by saying nothing. How can God be represented in nothing?


(3) Man desires a bodily presence. God is present in Christ. \"The word became flesh.\" With equal passion Augustine's thinking can do both:

C. The Trinity

(1) The Idea of the Trinity (God-reason, Christ-faith, revelation)

(2) The rise and influence of Trinitarian speculation

(3) We may stress the differences: (Neo-platonism, Christian)

(4) Augustine is ¡°a mine¡± where all the possibilities can be found. The task had been set: (changes, orchestra)

4. Philosophical Ideas in the Clarification of Revealed Faith

(1) The attempt to clarify revealed faith gives rise to philosophical thoughts.

(2) If Augustine draws no distinction between philosophizing and the thinking of revealed faith, the question arises:

Is a separation possible; that is, can thought retain any truth if the faith in Christ is spent?







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