/lit/ - Literature

>>19283421
>this kills the church father

You want something that won't be too long and too ponderous, you want something that is well-considered, and you want something that tells the truth, at least as its author sees it.

I'd recommend Augustine's Confessions. This is not to try and convert you to Christianity, but merely because once upon a time Augustine was at a crossroads in his life like you, and it might interest you to see how he dealt with it.

>It's an Augustine properly defines Christianity but everyone else is too much of a pussy to follow him episode

I'm sorry you all seem to be in such low spirits. However, don't give up hope. The world out there, and the world within you, are both better than they seem right now.

I know it won't mean much to most of you, but I'll pray for you tonight.

You should read at least one of the great Christian philosophers. My pick is Augustine. He casts a very, very long shadow over the West, and to this day even atheists are compelled to respond to him, though they may not realize it's him they're responding to.

This thread needs to recognize its inherent sinfulness.

You. Yes YOU. You, reading this post.

Augustine is right about you. Yes, YOU. Read him, for your own sake.

First, you sweep away all of the pagan God's by making a theological distinction between the omnipotent, self-moving, self-sufficient Creator who made the world out of nothing, and mere entities of power that were created by Him or merely "emanated" from a pantheistic "All" or "Void". A lot of the pagan gods were simply men of power and influence who came to be worshipped and specified after their deaths.

Then, once you have this theological distinction down, you are left with either the Pantheistic God of the Hindus, Brahmins, Gnostics, Neoplatonists, and so on, from which all things "emanate" by a natural process (God has no say in the matter, he can't help but emanate lesser beings) and the Creator God who created the world ex nihilo (out of nothing) and everything in it ex nihilo, as a free act of benevolence (he had a say in the matter, he didn't need to create other beings).

The pantheists distribute divinity across many beings, for they truly believe that many beings are actually of the same substance as the All, God, Brahman. This is why Hinduism has (literally) millions of named God's, billions of you take into account that they think of humans and animals as being gods. Indeed in this kind of Pantheism, there is no ESSENTIAL difference between you and a bit of fabric or a brick wall, because it all emanated from the same source. The Gnostics have a peculiar version of this where everything emanates from the divine source EXCEPT matter, which was made by some idiot of a divinity called the Demiurge. But they still regard Margery human being as emanating from the All (every human spirit that is, the body they consider evil and a prison for the spirit) and as such as belonging to the divine essence.
In the Creator God, NOTHING is divine except God Himself. None of his creation shares in his divinity, as it shares a separate substance that he created. So the point of worshipping the Creator God is to enter into communion with Him where your spirit is satisfied in every way through love of Him, but you and He retain your own unique identities, you are two separate beings loving one and other. Whereas the point of devoting oneself to the Pantheist God is to be subsumed into it, becoming one with its essence, so that you are indistinguishable from it. In other words, the Creator God cleanses, heals, sanctified, and loves you, clothing your individual personality in grace, whereas the Pantheist God absorbs and dissolves you.

Modern society is pantheistic, btw. It's belief in progress and evolution are pantheistic. I remember having that awful realisation one day that the world had been taken over by pantheists. It doesn't bother me though.The world has always been pantheistic, because men unable to wash away their sin and overcome the evil in the world choose instead to abolish themselves entirely by disappearing into a vague oneness with everything which allows them to forget themselves.

Doesn't Augustine demonstrate that slave morality can be incredibly powerful, perhaps even moreso than master morality? It all depends on who, or what, enslaves you.

Maybe it's not a "child vs adult" thing, but I was assigned Augustine's Confessions twice in college- once when I was 18 and once when I was 20. I couldn't stand it enough to get through it either time.

Now, as a 28 year old, I actually did read it, and it is one of my favorite written works ever.

The Confessions of St. Augustine. Maybe it's because I had a particularly good translation, but it was one of the most profound and moving things I've ever read. I was nearly in tears when Augustine was eulogizing his mother. I was also fascinated and made to think by his conception of time.

What was it about picrelated that made him so appealing to the leaders of the Reformation?

What if we had as many Augustine threads as we have Nietzsche threads?

Read Augustine, whom Wittgenstein greatly admired.

In what ways was St. Augustine an early Egalitarian?

>>6106205
>Hume

Don't make me vomit.

Moby-Dick

Othello

Augustine's Confessions

Well, since Truth is very much a real thing, of course it's bullshit.

>>5862106
Technically charity- that is, caritas- is a form of love.

>>5746037
Because I'm an Augustinian.

>>5718498
I, myself, concede neither proposition. God does in fact intervene in our lives. Maybe you just need to pray more.

God predates knowledge of God, because all ideas existed in God's being before the beginning of time.

I would rather expand the definition of what it means to be human, personally. I'm willing to allow anything with self-awareness and sapience to call itself human. I very much want to preserve the notion that humans are uniquely defined by their ability to reason.

Damn humanists. You realize we eventually got to have both Life AND Knowledge, right? Best of both worlds, thanks to Jesus.