St. Augustine

I tried to get in the mood for the feast of St. Augustine by going over my notes from the great course I took on him last spring. As often happens, the notes I had written to myself in the margins struck me more than the notes themselves. Some were serious and some were silly:

On Augustine’s theological problems:

“Ah, the post-lapsarian paralysis”

“How do you know all this, professor Plotinus?”

“Factus eram ipse mihi magna quaestio”
(My favorite Augustine quote, which I like to translate “I became my own big problem,” Confessions 4.4.9)

On Augustine the man:

“The great poet of Christian failure”

“He only had one thing to say, but it was a big thing”

On Augustinian spirituality:

“Note to self: apply remedy to concupiscence”

“Kill bad thoughts, just don’t shoot anyone”

And some silly ones:

“Thesis idea: Manichean Ontology and the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy”

“Ok, if by ‘not being’ you mean ‘being’”