Perhaps my long, painful journey through Augustine's City of God will have been worth it for this one astounding insight. In Book 16, verse 43, expounding upon the Exodus, Augustine mentions the "finger of God." That is a very rare Biblical term, in Hebrew etsba Elohim, and first appears as a description of God's power against the magicians of Pharoah. In the N.T., it resurfaces, in Greek of course, dactylo theo, in reference to the Spirit of God. (Cf. Luke 11:20 and Matthew 12:28). The scholar R. Steven Notley
http://www.jerusalemperspective.com/Default.aspx?tabid=27&ArticleID=1450
notes that the Greek text, by construction, appears dependent on a Hebrew original. I.e., is a Semitism. He also notes that on Passover, Jews customarily recite an ancient Rabbinical commentary on the concept of the finger of God empowering the Exodus.
Of course, the Book of Mormon has a well-known, singular, finger of God episode, appearing in Ether. The finger of God touches stones upon a mountain, enabling a group of God's chosen to travel across the sea to their promised Land.
Jaredites weren't Hebrews and the Exodus of Israel was still a future event at the time of this theophany. But it is interesting to contemplate God using the same symbolism here as He would later. Can we really credit farm-boy Joseph with such an insight? I doubt he had been to very many Passover sedars when he translated the Book of Mormon, nor was very familiar with St. Augustine.
Showing posts with label Augustine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Augustine. Show all posts
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Answer me this ...
I have recently finished reading Augustine's "Confessions" and have now begun to enjoy his "City of God."
I have no doubt that he was sincere in his love for God -- who would doubt that? And I picture God, upon Augustine's arrival in heaven, embracing him in His all-loving arms and thus sweeping away in an instant all the Hellenistic philosophical baggage that encumbered this great man in his search for truth.
"Precious Augustine, I do have a face to look upon you, and for you to see, My child. I do have arms to hold you."
"Why, my child, if you understood My Son to be God, as you did, omniscient and all-powerful as I am, with a body of flesh and bone, as He did testify, and that that Son did not die twice, was it so very hard for you to accept that I, His Father, also possess a body, a perfect, omniscient, all-powerful body but a body none-the-less?"
"No matter now. You have always loved Me, and sought to serve me. Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Enter into my rest."
I have no doubt that he was sincere in his love for God -- who would doubt that? And I picture God, upon Augustine's arrival in heaven, embracing him in His all-loving arms and thus sweeping away in an instant all the Hellenistic philosophical baggage that encumbered this great man in his search for truth.
"Precious Augustine, I do have a face to look upon you, and for you to see, My child. I do have arms to hold you."
"Why, my child, if you understood My Son to be God, as you did, omniscient and all-powerful as I am, with a body of flesh and bone, as He did testify, and that that Son did not die twice, was it so very hard for you to accept that I, His Father, also possess a body, a perfect, omniscient, all-powerful body but a body none-the-less?"
"No matter now. You have always loved Me, and sought to serve me. Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Enter into my rest."
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Done with Gnosticism!
I have finished.
I can safely say, that the Nag Hammadi Library was the most difficult canon of literature that I have ever read.
Its often fragmentary nature didn't help.
I found myself saying, over and over again as I tried to comprehend notions of Yaldabaoth and Sophia and Barbelo; of aeons and demiurges and First Thoughts and Second Thoughts -- how could anyone make sense of this stuff? Even the Apostle Paul at his most complex, does not approach these writings in obscurity.
And yet, make sense of it many people apparently did. Gnosticism was enough of a threat to the early Christian Church as to occupy some of its best minds in the battle against it.
Gnosticism approached the problem of evil in the world by deciding that the so-called God of the Old Testament was an inferior, lower being who acted out of ignorance at best, malice at worst. Some strains of Gnosticism continued this line of thought with a blacklist of a number of Biblical personages hailed as heroes by orthodox Christianity, even Jesus Christ; and to call Biblical acts of godly vengeance against evil (the Flood, the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah) attacks of evil against good.
The true Supreme Being remained esconced in an unapproachable, celestial pleroma and was utterly indescribable and beyond comprehension.
My thought on that would be, that this approach doesn't solve the problem of evil, it just pushes the question to another level: So the God we thought we knew is not really deserving of the title and it is to a higher God that we must look for perfection and to whom the question must be posed: Why did You allow evil in the world if You are perfect? But of course, that God, in the Gnostic mindset, wouldn't answer. He is, in their words, a non-being.
It will be interesting to discover, as I continue to read in Christian history, how much of his Gnostic (aka Manichaean) baggage St. Augustine carried with him into the Christian Church of his day.
I can safely say, that the Nag Hammadi Library was the most difficult canon of literature that I have ever read.
Its often fragmentary nature didn't help.
I found myself saying, over and over again as I tried to comprehend notions of Yaldabaoth and Sophia and Barbelo; of aeons and demiurges and First Thoughts and Second Thoughts -- how could anyone make sense of this stuff? Even the Apostle Paul at his most complex, does not approach these writings in obscurity.
And yet, make sense of it many people apparently did. Gnosticism was enough of a threat to the early Christian Church as to occupy some of its best minds in the battle against it.
Gnosticism approached the problem of evil in the world by deciding that the so-called God of the Old Testament was an inferior, lower being who acted out of ignorance at best, malice at worst. Some strains of Gnosticism continued this line of thought with a blacklist of a number of Biblical personages hailed as heroes by orthodox Christianity, even Jesus Christ; and to call Biblical acts of godly vengeance against evil (the Flood, the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah) attacks of evil against good.
The true Supreme Being remained esconced in an unapproachable, celestial pleroma and was utterly indescribable and beyond comprehension.
My thought on that would be, that this approach doesn't solve the problem of evil, it just pushes the question to another level: So the God we thought we knew is not really deserving of the title and it is to a higher God that we must look for perfection and to whom the question must be posed: Why did You allow evil in the world if You are perfect? But of course, that God, in the Gnostic mindset, wouldn't answer. He is, in their words, a non-being.
It will be interesting to discover, as I continue to read in Christian history, how much of his Gnostic (aka Manichaean) baggage St. Augustine carried with him into the Christian Church of his day.
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