August 28, 2006

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’”

3 comments:

Chris Dickson, F.L.A. said...

As long as we're interjecting humor, I thought I would tell you about my father: When he came home after the war (WWII) he got a job in the coal mines in Southeastern Ohio. Many times he would take a grill to work and grill some chickens for his crew. That made him a "Miner Frier" also, didn't it?

Meg said...

Oh! I'm still laughing over the "kill bad thoughts, just don't shoot anyone"; and the previous comment is also funny. Just browsing blogspot, I can't even recall how exactly I found your page. Hopefully I'll find it again without any troubles.

Jeff said...

Fast Food Nation! That was a good choice. That was one I should have listed that changed my life. I haven't wanted to eat at a McDonald's since.

Another Holden Caulfield fan,
Jeff