Shannon Costello

The first five books argue against those who serve the gods to receive temporal blessing. Augustine now turns his attention to those who seek eternal life.
His main focus in on the theological work of Marcus Varro, who subdivided theology into fabulous, civil, and natural theologies. In this book Augustine concerns himself [...]

Augustine describes Cicero as a man whose logic had forced him into a false dichotomy: either man has free will and foreknowledge does not exist or man does not have free will and foreknowledge does exist.
Augustine assures us of God’s prescience while maintaining free will. For him, a God without foreknowledge is no [...]

I confess:  reading just about anything else is easier than Augustine!
There is a fuzzy line between defending one’s own views and questioning the views of one’s opponents.   I’m not certain when and to what extent the latter is inappropriate, but that is something I’ve wondered straight from Book First.   It is a question whose answer [...]

With what effrontery, then, with what assurance, with what impudence, with what folly, or rather insanity, do they refuse to impute these disasters to their own gods, and impute the present to our Christ! (106)
Augustine had hundreds of years of Roman history in which to locate a myriad of disasters to repeatedly make his point. [...]

For the purposes of this discussion:
“Good things” and “bad things” are non-spiritual- dealing with wealth, position, family, etc.
“Righteous” persons are morally upright. “Wicked” persons are not.
I am interested in four possibilities:
1) Good things happen to righteous people.
2) Good things happen to wicked people.
3) Bad things happen to righteous people.
4) [...]

“And so of the good things of this life: if God did not by a very visible liberality confer these on some of those persons who ask for them, we should say that these good things were not at His disposal; and if He gave them to all who sought them, we should suppose that [...]

This time I struggled with fear before CJ left town. It has helped to spend the late nights reading this book until I am tired enough to fall asleep. Most conveniently, Augustine spends time putting the fear of things like loss of possessions, death, and rape into perspective. Consider the following:
On Loss [...]

When Alaric sacked Rome in 410, it was the first time in 800 years or so that an enemy had been so successful against Rome. An explanation that seemed fitting to some was that Rome fell because many citizens had abandoned their pagan gods and embraced Christianity.
Enter Aurelius Augustinus, better known as Saint Augustine. [...]