Philosophers From Rome

"Augustine saw a noble purpose in rape; while promising women that “savage lust perpetuated against them will be punished,” he also praises rape for keeping women humble, letting them know “whether previously they were arrogant with regard to their virginity or over-fond of praise, or whether they would have become proud had they not suffered violation.”"

"Plainly as the direct or instantaneous Creation of animals and plants appeared to be taught in Genesis, Augustine read this in the light of primary causation and the gradual development from the imperfect to the perfect of Aristotle. This most influential teacher thus handed down to his followers opinions which closely conform to the progressive views of those theologians of the present day who have accepted the Evolution theory."

"If the orthodoxy of Augustine had remained the teaching of the Church, the final establishment of Evolution would have come far earlier than it did, certainly during the eighteenth instead of the nineteenth century, and the bitter controversy over this truth of Nature would never have arisen."

"Augustine thus sought a naturalistic interpretation of the Mosaic record, or potential rather than special creation, and taught that in the institution of Nature we should not look for miracles but for the laws of Nature."

"I would inquire of reasonable persons whether this principle: Matter is naturally wholly incapable of thought, and this other: I think, therefore I am, are in fact the same in the mind of Descartes, and in that of St. Augustine, who said the same thing twelve hundred years before. ...I am far from affirming that Descartes is not the real author of it, even if he may have learned it only in reading this distinguished saint; for I know how much difference there is between writing a word by chance without making a longer and more extended reflection on it, and perceiving in this word an admirable series of conclusions, which prove the distinction between material and spiritual natures, and making of it a firm and sustained principle of a complete metaphysical system, as Descartes has pretended to do. ...it is on this supposition that I say that this expression is as different in his writings from the saying in others who have said it by chance, as in a man full of life and strength, from a corpse."

"Augustine thus condemned three kinds of act: contraception, the killing of the fetus before it is formed or "lives," and the killing of the live fetus. The analysis was a new approach in treating each of these acts as a sin against marriage. Elsewhere Augustine treated abortion as a form of homicide."

"There would be no end to quotations that bring out the unequalled influence of Augustine’s thought and work on the Latin West. « No work by a Christian author in the Latin tongue was to stir such great admiration and inquietude and enjoy such glory » (Dominique de Courcelles, Augustin ou le génie de l’Europe). To the point that the author of this passage, while aware that he is speaking, as he says, « of a Christian Berber », nevertheless gives his book the title Augustine or the Genius of Europe. And the genius was a Numidian of the Roman Empire. What a decanting of wisdom from the south to the north of the Mediterranean!"

"As a Theologian, I learned from my master, St. Augustine, a Berber, that all nations are necessarily a mixture, which it is not impossible for us to disentangle, of the City of Good and the City of Evil."

"He used to say, half in jest, that his great ambition was to complete St. Augustine's Confessions, but that St. Augustine, like a great artist, had worked from multiplicity to unity, while he, like a small one, had to reverse the method and work back from unity to multiplicity."

"There was a Christian redaction of the historical vision of reality, associated especially with the thought of St. Augustine of Hippo."

"The greatest influence during the dark ages was Augustine, who was influenced by Plotinus, who was influenced by Indian mysticism. Long before Aldous Huxley found Yoga a remedy for our Brave New World, Schopenhauer called the Upanishads the consolation of his life."

"Augustine, the North African of Berber descent, is today the spiritual father of multitudes who are remote indeed from him racially, politically, and culturally."

"Augustine distinctly rejected Special Creation in favor of a doctrine which, without any violence to language, we may call a theory of Evolution."

"Ideo, carissimi, veneramini martyres, laudate, amate, praedicate, honorate: Deum martyrum colite."

"Christ’s whole body groans in pain. Until the end of the world, when pain will pass away, this man groans and cries to God. And each one of us has part in the cry of that whole body. Thou didst cry out in thy day, and thy days have passed away; another took thy place and cried out in his day. Thou here, he there, and another there. The body of Christ ceases not to cry out all the day, one member replacing the other whose voice is hushed. Thus there is but one man who reaches unto the end of time, and those that cry are always His members."

"Augustine in his anti-Pelagian work, Marriage and Concupiscence, analyzed abortion with his usual attention to psychology. Using terms that seem to anticipate modern analyses of sadism, he described it as the work of minds characterized by "lustful cruelty" or "cruel lust." Speaking of the married who avoided offspring, he declared, Sometimes [Aliquando] this lustful cruelty or cruel lust comes to this that they even procure poisons of sterility, and if these do not work, they extinguish and destroy the fetus in some way in the womb, preferring that their offspring die before it lives, or if it was already alive in the womb, to kill it before it was born. Assuredly if both husband and wife are like this, they are not married, and if they were like this from the beginning, they come together not joined in matrimony but seduction. If both are not like this, I dare to say that either the wife is in a fashion the harlot of her husband, or he is an adulter with his own wife."

"As the dynamics of trade relations began to change during the African Middle Ages, the continent became the source of endless speculation. The visions of monstrous men and anthropophagi that had filled St. Augustine's descriptions of sub-Saharan Africa were not expelled until other Europeans such as Scotsman Mungo Park "penetrated the interior of Africa.""

"Who dismisses his adulterous wife and marries another woman, whereas his first wife still lives, remains perpetually in the state of adultery. Such a man does not any efficacious penance while he refuses to abandon the new wife. If he is a catechumen, he cannot be admitted to baptism, because his will remains rooted in the evil. If he is a (baptized) penitent, he cannot receive the (ecclesiastical) reconciliation as long as he does not break with his bad attitude."

"Quapropter bono christiano, sive mathematici, sive quilibet impie divinantium, maxime dicentes vera, cavendi sunt, ne consortio daemoniorum animam deceptam, pacto quodam societatis irretiant."

"Spiritalis enim virtus Sacramenti ita est ut lux: et ab illuminandis pura excipitur, et si per immundos transeat, non inquinatur."

"If any one will piously and soberly consider the sermon which our Lord Jesus spoke on the mount, as we read it in the Gospel according to Matthew, I think that he will find in it, so far as regards the highest morals, a perfect standard of the Christian life: and this we do not rashly venture to promise, but gather it from the very words of the Lord Himself. For the sermon itself is brought to a close in such a way, that it is clear there are in it all the precepts which go to mould the life. … He has sufficiently indicated, as I think, that these sayings which He uttered on the mount so perfectly guide the life of those who may be willing to live according to them, that they may justly be compared to one building upon a rock."

"Salus extra ecclesiam non est or Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus"

"Ergo noli quaerere intelligere ut credas, sed crede ut intelligas."

"In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it.""

"The mind itself, its love [of itself] and its knowledge [of itself] are a kind of trinity."

"Yes, you see the Trinity if you see charity."

"God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist."

"The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works."

"To such a one my answer is that I have arrived at a nourishing kernel in that I have learnt that a man is not in any difficulty in making a reply according to his faith which he ought to make to those who try to defame our Holy Scripture. When they are able, from reliable evidence, to prove some fact of physical science, we shall show that it is not contrary to our Scripture. But when they produce from any of their books a theory contrary to Scripture, and therefore contrary to the Catholic faith, either we shall have some ability to demonstrate that it is absolutely false, or at least we ourselves will hold it so without any shadow of a doubt. And we will so cling to our Mediator, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,” that we will not be led astray by the glib talk of false philosophy or frightened by the superstition of false religion. When we read the inspired books in the light of this wide variety of true doctrines which are drawn from a few words and founded on the firm basis of Catholic belief, let us choose that one which appears as certainly the meaning intended by the author. But if this is not clear, then at least we should choose an interpretation in keeping with the context of Scripture and in harmony with our faith. But if the meaning cannot be studied and judged by the context of Scripture, at least we should choose only that which our faith demands. For it is one thing to fail to recognize the primary meaning of the writer, and another to depart from the norms of religious belief. If both these difficulties are avoided, the reader gets full profit from his reading.""

"What, then, does He say? "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." We read in Scripture concerning the striving after temporal things, "All is vanity and presumption of spirit"; but presumption of spirit means audacity and pride: usually also the proud are said to have great spirits; and rightly, inasmuch as the wind also is called spirit. And hence it is written, "Fire, hail, snow, ice, spirit of tempest." But, indeed, who does not know that the proud are spoken of as puffed up, as if swelled out with wind? And hence also that expression of the apostle, "Knowledge puffs up, but charity edifies". And the poor in spirit are rightly understood here, as meaning the humble and God-fearing, i.e. those who have not the spirit which puffs up. Nor ought blessedness to begin at any other point whatever, if indeed it is to attain unto the highest wisdom; "but the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom"; for, on the other hand also, "pride" is entitled "the beginning of all sin." Let the proud, therefore, seek after and love the kingdoms of the earth; but "blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.""

"An unjust law is no law at all."

"Even then [at the time of Peter's speech in Acts 2] it was the last days; how much more so now, when there must still be as much time till the end of the world as has passed since the ascension of the Lord! We do not know the end of the world, because it is not for us to know the times or the seasons that the Father has set in his power; but we know that, like the apostles, we live in the last times, in the last days, in the last hour. Those who lived after the apostles and before us were more in what we call the last times, and we ourselves are in them even more than they; those who will come after us will be so much more, till one gets to those who will be, if one may say so, the last of the last, and finally till that day, the very last, of which the Lord means to speak when he said, "And I will raise him up on the last day". How far are we from that day? That is an impenetrable secret."

"Let each look to his own heart: let him not keep hatred against his brother for any hard word; on account of earthly contention let him not become earth."

"Quantum in te crescit amor, tantum crescit pulchritudo; quia ipsa caritas est animae pulchritudo."

"Nowhere in the Gospel do we read that the Lord said: "I am sending you a Paraclete who will teach you about the course of the sun and moon." For He wanted to make Christians, not mathematicians."

"The superfluities of the rich are the necessaries of the poor. They who possess superfluities, possess the goods of others."

"A man might say, "The things that are in the world are what God has made. ... Why should I not love what God has made?" ...Suppose, my brethren, a man should make for his betrothed a ring, and she should prefer the ring given her to the betrothed who made it for her, would not her heart be convicted of infidelity? ... God has given you all these things: therefore, love him who made them."

"The inclination to seek the truth is safer than the presumption which regards unknown things as known."

"Noli foras ire, in teipsum redi, in interiore homine habitat veritas. Et si tuam naturam mutabilem inveneris, trascende et teipsum."

"Patientia comes est sapientiae"

"In a quarrel for earth, turn not to earth."

"When I, who conduct this inquiry, love something, then three things are found: I, what I love, and the love itself. … There are, therefore three things: the lover, the beloved and the love."

"Plerumque enim accidit ut aliquid de terra, de coelo, de caeteris mundi huius elementis, de motu et conversione vel etiam magnitudine et intervallis siderum, de certis defectibus solis ac lunae, de circuitibus annorum et temporum, de naturis animalium, fruticum, lapidum, atque huiusmodi caeteris, etiam non christianus ita noverit, ut certissima ratione vel experientia teneat. Turpe est autem nimis et perniciosum ac maxime cavendum, ut christianum de his rebus quasi secundum christianas Litteras loquentem, ita delirare audiat, ut, quemadmodum dicitur, toto coelo errare conspiciens, risum tenere vix possit. Et non tam molestum est, quod errans homo deridetur, sed quod auctores nostri ab eis qui foris sunt, talia sensisse creduntur, et cum magno eorum exitio de quorum salute satagimus, tamquam indocti reprehenduntur atque respuuntur. Cum enim quemquam de numero Christianorum in ea re quam optime norunt, errare comprehenderint, et vanam sententiam suam de nostris Libris asserere; quo pacto illis Libris credituri sunt, de resurrectione mortuorum, et de spe vitae aeternae, regnoque coelorum, quando de his rebus quas iam experiri, vel indubitatis numeris percipere potuerunt, fallaciter putaverint esse conscriptos? Quid enim molestiae tristitiaeque ingerant prudentibus fratribus temerarii praesumptores, satis dici non potest, cum si quando de prava et falsa opinatione sua reprehendi, et convinci coeperint ab eis qui nostrorum Librorum auctoritate non tenentur, ad defendendum id quod levissima temeritate et apertissima falsitate dixerunt, eosdem Libros sanctos, unde id probent, proferre conantur, vel etiam memoriter, quae ad testimonium valere arbitrantur, multa inde verba pronuntiant, non intellegentes neque quae loquuntur, neque de quibus affirmant."

"Augustine, Augustine, quid quaeris? Putasne brevi immettere vasculo mare totum?"

"Cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum."

"Shut out the evil love of the world, that you may be filled with the love of God. You are a vessel that was already full: you must pour away what you have, that you may take in what you have not."

"Quaerite, Donatistae, si nescitis, quaerite ab Ierusalem per terrena itinera in circuitu usque in Illyricum quot mansiones sint: si tot Ecclesias computemus, dicite quemadmodum per Africanas contentiones perire potuerunt. Ad Corinthios, ad Ephesios, ad Philippenses, ad Thessalonicenses, ad Colossenses vos solas Apostoli epistulas in lectione, nos autem et epistulas in lectione ac fide et ipsas Ecclesias in communione retinemus. PL 43, 414"

"The Head and the body are Christ wholly and entirely. The Head is the only begotten Son of God, the body is His Church; the bridegroom and the bride, two in one flesh. All who dissent from the Scriptures concerning Christ, although they may be found in all places in which the Church is found, are not in the Church; and again all those who agree with the Scriptures concerning the Head, and do not communicate in the unity of the Church, are not in the Church"

"But if we discard this definition of a people, and, assuming another, say that a people is an assemblage of reasonable beings bound together by a common agreement as to the objects of their love, then, in order to discover the character of any people, we have only to observe what they love. Yet whatever it loves, if only it is an assemblage of reasonable beings and not of beasts, and is bound together by an agreement as to the objects of love, it is reasonably called a people; and it will be a superior people in proportion as it is bound together by higher interests, inferior in proportion as it is bound together by lower."

"We may not assent to the teaching even of the Catholic bishops, if at any time they are deceived into opinions contrary to the canonical Scriptures of God; but if they should so fall into error, and yet maintain the bond of unity and charity, let the apostle's saying avail in their case: 'And if in anything ye are otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you.' Now these divine words have so manifest an application to the whole Church, that none but heretics in their stubborn perverseness and blind fury can bark against them. (Cf. Augustine's Reply to Faustus the Manichaean (Contra Faustum), book 11, 5 )"