Ok, so here's the thing, I spent a number of years in graduate school at a mainline Protestant Seminary. I am a Christian, but I do not like this book. One of the early draft ideas for a name for this project was, "Books I Should Have Read by Now," but the name didn't roll off the tongue. Also, I didn't like the way it put the responsibility of the necessity of reading on myself or on the reader to assume, you should have read these books too, so I changed it to random number lit.
One of the main motivations of reading books in this fashion is to thwart the "Netflix effect" of a To Be Read (TBR) pile. There is a pressure of the vastness of time and space to select something constantly for yourself. Broadcast and Radio programming of old solved this problem for you. They picked what they thought you should like. Sometimes you did, sometimes you didn't like the thing they picked for you and you developed preferences in a human led cycle of content generation. When you can select anything for any era of all time, that process can and often seems daunting and you end up picking the candy option more than the salad option.
Let me be clear, content is content. I do not judge a person their preferences. I like to read old, weird books. You may like to read whatever it is that crosses your transom of your Twitter, or blogs like this one, thank you for being here by the way. I like these old books and I read them. For forever but some time ago, the canon of literature was something that was argued over, fought over because people knew that humans only have a finite amount of time on Earth and a limited amount of resources and so a subset of people spent a great deal of energy trying to convince the world that a certain set of books were the most important books and if you are dedicate your eyes to be scanning words on paper anyways, you should be reading these sets of wood and ink.
With this project, I thought set about to read all of the weird, old books. Not for any reason other than to do so. Because I am who I am - it appears apt for me to put these words down to record these efforts. I apologize for being too of my own culture to not overcome this impulse.
Before I return to the original concern of this post, I want to reiterate the reason for the random aspect of this project is that it can be hard to select and so I leave it up to a Random Number Generator to choose a number which represents an entry on a spreadsheet. If you are following along on my Youtube Channel, you can see in the previous video - I do not relish the selection of this text. I am aware of this text. I have tried to read it before but like much of my struggle in seminary may tell you, my mind does not comprehend philosophy and theological writing is just philosophy for a certain type of Christian.
So, the RNG delivered to me Augustine and I am reading it here for this project, what is there to say. I did not like this book. I am not sure if I like Augustine as a person and his Confessions felt like a job for me to complete rather than an enjoyment of which much of the reading for this project has been. There were moments that I enjoyed reading immensely, like the beauty and heartbreak of his writing about his mother's death or the thrill and intrigue of his stealing the pears. He theologizes these moments which I think is unhelpful and I often disagreed with, but they were a pleasure to read.
Here are some of my notes as I read the work:
"I listened to the first 15% of this text and feel like I largely missed that section the book. I have combed back over it for references to ancient writing but will suffice it to think that I was not read to begin reading this work as I was so engrossed in Faulkner at the time that I couldn’t spare the brain space. I will try to revisit in summary what was happening there. I clicked in during book 4 and began in earnest to understand this author. The Christian theology material I am largely familiar with and outside of a time in my life that these ideas concern me. I am still a Christian, but I spent a great deal of time in my life being so deeply concerned with these ideas that once I settled upon what I do believe, the rest of this work feels tiresome to me. I know that I am not approaching the things of God with a contrite and humble heart here, but my path across that Rubicon was difficult and deeply trying and now I have settled in a familiarity with the subject matter I am comfortable with.
The thing that more broadly concerns me here is his situation in the history of literature which at the point I am at in the text seems almost antagonistic towards the collection and validation of the days and works of hands which I think seems sort of disjointed really. He begins his work in the world as a provincial rhetorician which feels oddly familiar to me. Then at someone, at which I have not yet gotten to he makes his break with this path and will later begin the work by which the world knows him for which is some of the most sort of oddly Christian paradoxes that I find truly enjoyable. When he sought to establish himself in the eyes of the world, the work fled from him, but when he chose to remove all of these trappings from himself he is remembered the world over. This is the gospel I am familiar with."
This is a long quote from the text that I laughed out loud while reading:
“Let them no longer maintain that when they perceive two wills to be contending with each other in the same man the contest is between two opposing minds, of two opposing substances, from two opposing principles, the one good and the other bad. Thus, O true God, thou dost reprove and confute and convict them. For both wills may be bad: as when a man tries to decide whether he should kill a man by poison or by the sword; whether he should take possession of this field or that one belonging to someone else, when he cannot get both;whether he should squander his money to buy pleasure or hold onto his money through the motive of covetousness; whether he should go to the circus or to the theater, if both are open on the same day; or, whether he should take a third course, open at the same time, and rob another man’s house; or, a fourth option, whether he should commit adultery, if he has the opportunity—all these things concurring in the same space of time and all being equally longed for, although impossible to do at one time. For the mind is pulled four ways by four antagonistic wills—or even more, in view of the vast range of human desires—but even the Manicheans do not affirm that there are these many different substances. The same principle applies as in the action of good wills. For I ask them, “Is it a good thing to have delight in reading the apostle, or is it a good thing to delight in a sober psalm, or is it a good thing to discourse on the gospel?”To each of these, they will answer, “It is good.” But what, then, if all delight us equally and all at the same time? Do not different wills distract the mind when a man is trying to decide what he should choose? Yet they are all good, and are at variance with each other until one is chosen. When this is done the whole united will may go forward on a single track instead of remaining as it was before, divided in many ways. So also, when eternity attracts us from above, and the pleasure of earthly delight pulls us down from below, the soul does not will either the one or the other with all its force, but still it is the same soul that does not will this or that with a united will, and is therefore pulled apart with grievous perplexities, because for truth’s sake it prefers this, but for custom’s sake it does not lay that aside” (Augustine 174).
Then finally, I end with these notes:
"The final observation of the book is the idea that, after this whole treatise on time, on the nature of God and his uncreatedness, a beautiful defense of the trinity early in the life of the Church, and so many other excellent though boring recitations of his theology, he gets to something truly interesting which is his idea that we are living in the seventh day of creation and that all that is happening now is the 7th day of the life of God’s handiwork in creating all that has been created and that the eschatological life of the world is all headed to a natural rest. This is a fascinating idea that the Lord is still creating and that his work has not yet finished in this life."
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