Should more people read Augustine?

I find that his writing style was incredibly fucking dry, especially when he's writing to other people. This is partly because letters were expected to be seen in the public eye sooner or later. His more introspective pieces and meditations were much better.

He suffers from a shit ton of rambling. He makes logically sound arguments but his style is too much of a pain in the ass for an average layperson to digest. Also, he wrote nearly 2 million words that survive to our time. You can study Augustine all your life and not have a deep understanding of all his tracts.

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nice bait

Yes OP, I think people would do well to study him.

Yes, the City of Man has not changed at all.

>theology

Literally the most useless subject matter, and one that offers no real insight into anything. Fuck no, don't bother with any theologian.

...

>Augustine
>Young earth creationist

You didn't read his homilies on the creation, and even if it was it doesn't matter

answersingenesis.org/days-of-creation/augustine-on-the-days-of-creation/

Those aren't unreasonable assumptions to make with the scientific knowledge available at the time you retard.

What is some essential Augustine? Alan Watts references him all the time, so I kinda want to read him.

Except Augustine's the guy xtians always quote when they try to say that literalism is a modern phenomon.

explain how that is his fault?

What's funny is that the schism was mostly caused by Catholics taking him as infallible. Most differences between the Catholics and the Orthodox can be founded in Augustine, who wasn't translated into Greek until the second millennium,

>answersingenesis.org/days-of-creation/augustine-on-the-days-of-creation/

t ignorant fedora

Here is Genesis ad litteram by Augustine

Augustine thought God created everything simultaneously, and took the genealogies literally. He said not 6000 years have passed since creation.

How is he not a young earth creationist again?

Catholic theology is literally Semi-Pelagianism

All matter and energy was created in a single day
That's a scientific fact called the Big Bang

Then Augustine certainly isn't Catholic

>Should more people read Augustine?
Yes.

>Is he well-suited for the problems of our age?
Sort of.

READ THE FUCKING TEXT, HE WROTE :

NO CHRISTIAN WILL DARE SAY THAT THE NARRATIVE MUST NOT BE TAKEN IN A FIGURATIVE SENSE

MUST NOT BE TAKEN IN A FIGURATIVE SENSE

NOT BE TAKEN IN A FIGURATIVE SENSE

Augustine took what was good and directed it towards Christ. This has been standard Christian behavior from the time of the Church Fathers.

And?

meant to quote

What?

You realize he's talking strictly about the days of creation here, which he interpeted as having happened in a single day. He interpreted everything else in Genesis literally and went to great lengths to defend it. How does this conflict with him being a young earth creationist?

Everything else in Genesis IS literal

His whole theology is basically what Trent said.

Augustine still believed that much of it was metaphorical, he was'nt willing to take it all literally. Some things he took literally that some modern Christians may not take literally, but that does'nt change the fact that he was'nt a literalist.

Trent denied that salvation was God's work alone and emphasised the importance of human cooperation with divine grace. That is Semi-Pelagianism

And so did Augustine

Which is why his version of Grace involves operative which is God alone healing free will and then cooperative grace by which the free will responds to God

If Augustine ignores human cooperation, he is no different from the fatalistic Manichaeans he went against which he made clear that his earlier views on free will hasn't changed much

no its not, youre infusing the word created in there.

Augustine and Aquinas alike should, in my opinion, be taught in classrooms all over Europe. These two, and some others that are less important, can teach modern students a few very important thing through their words. They can teach that:
>The Enlightenment (the only age in history that named itself, by the way) was not when logic was "revived" from the "dark ages", but it had a very long history in the middle ages
>Europe's Christian roots and how it's important not to forget them, even if we don't believe in them
>That there are other possible models of state governance (De Civitas Dei teaches us not to be too optimistic with worldly state models as they will be inherrently flawed, De Summa Theologica includes a section that basically advocates the Ancien Regime as the optimal state model)
>How Medieval man actually viewed the world and not a parody of it (for example, st. Aquinas' view of prostitution is a lot more liberal than what you'd stereotypically expect of the middle ages where every prostitute was burned for being a witch).

Let's also forget that Augustine wasn't literally dictating divine mandate here. If he lived today he'd probably change his mind on some of his thoughts on Genesis. We can infer this because we know he does not take Genesis literally and neither did many of his contemporaries. Literalism (ie. purely grammatical interpretation) wasn't really a thing in Christian theology until the rise of Protestantism. Which is another thing Augustine and Aquinas can teach us: to destroy the myth of protestantism as the reasonable answer to superstitious catholocism.

>Literalism (ie. purely grammatical interpretation) wasn't really a thing in Christian theology until the rise of Protestantism
The historical Church, including Augustine and Aquinas believed in pretty much everything associated with modern literalism and more. I guess you could say holding onto such beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence against them is new though.

City of God and Confessions mostly. His section on just war was pretty logically sound.

Another good read was the mastermind theologian and rhetorician Thomas of Aquinas. Check him out.

But fuck Martin Luther. He was a cuck shill and almost no better than the Catholics he replaced. I actually got mad reading his just war theory.

He actually talks at length about how certain parts of the Bible should not be interpreted literally. I unfortunately do not think this included Genesis and creation, but regardless, the viewpoint was there, that the whole book is not meant to be taken literally.