Quotes About Augustine

In reference to Mary, Pelagius is nearer the present Roman Catholic view than Augustine, who exempts her only from actual sin, not from original...in other passages he affirms the conception of Mary in sin. Jerome, with all his reverence for the blessed Virgin, does not even make this exception but says, without qualification, that every creature is under the power of sin and in need of the mercy of God.

What St. Augustine so aptly says of the mutual relation of the Old and New Testament, "Novum Testamentum in Vetere latet, Vetus in Novo patet,

St. Augustine says: "God who created you without yourself, will not sanctify you without yourself." Our consent is needed and likewise our obedience to the precepts. God's help is given us, he says again, not that our will should do nothing, but that it may act in a salutary and meritorious manner. Actual grace is constantly offered to us for the accomplishment of the duty of the present moment, just as air comes constantly into our lungs to permit us to breathe.

Augustine was right: "It is the decided opinion of all who use their brains that all men desire to be happy. . . . The happy life which all men desire cannot be reached by any who does not cleave with a pure and holy love to that one supreme good, the unchangeable God.

The massive sexual dysfunction of the contemporary Catholic Church began with Augustine.

Augustine's dualism saw the male as spirit and the female as flesh, which made male supremacy the foundation stone of existence. Female flesh was properly held in contempt.

Augustine's final verdict on the philosophers of Greece and Rome was that, although they had made various mistakes, "nature itself has not permitted them to wander too far from the path of truth" in their judgments about the supreme good (De Civitate Dei 19.1).

The issue is not possession of riches, according to Saint Augustine, but the desire for them.

What kind of ethical philosophy is it that condemns every child, even before it is born, to inherit the sin of a remote ancestor? Augustine

The sin of Adam and Eve is thought to be have passed down the male line - transmitted in the semen according to Augustine. What kind of ethical philosophy is it that condemns every child, even before it is born, to inherit the sin of a remote ancestor?

Saint Augustine … insisted that scripture taught nothing but charity. Whatever the biblical author may have intended, any passage that seemed to preach hatred and was not conducive to love must be interpreted allegorically and made to speak of charity.

When Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, they probably did not fall into a state of original sin, as Saint Augustine believed, but into an agrarian economy.

We open ourselves to the divine activity which will transform us by a threefold discipline, which Augustine calls the trinity of faith: retineo (holding the truths of the Incarnation in our minds), contemplatio (contemplating them) and dilectio (delighting in them). Gradually, by cultivating a continual sense of God's presence within our minds in this way, the Trinity will be disclosed

Augustine was not a linguist. He knew no Hebrew and could not have encountered Jewish midrash, but he had come to the same conclusion as Hillel and Akiba. Any interpretation of scripture that spread hatred and dissension was illegitimate; all exegesis must be guided by the principle of charity.

If I ever get to heaven, I would first of all seek out Mozart, and only then inquire after Augustine, St. Thomas, Luther, Calvin, and Schleiermacher.

Seek not abroad, for in the inner man dwells the truth.

All the good writers of confessions, from Augustine onwards, are men who are still a little in love with their sins.

This seems to have been St. Augustine's very notion of "memory, " not just nostalgia for some past moment, but connecting past, present, and future in one complete contemplative knowing.

The peace of the celestial city is the perfectly ordered and harmonious enjoyment of God, and of one another in God. (City of God, Book 19)

It is a good gloss Augustine hath upon Esau's tears Heb. 12:16, 17. —Flevet quòd perdidit, non quòd vendidit —he wept that he lost the blessing, not that he sold it.

Why didn't God make the world sooner? In the early fifth century AD, Augustine of Hippo answered that God did not make the universe at a point in time, but "simultaneously with time." That is, he believed God had created space and time together. Modern cosmologists have come to agree that he was right about space and time, and therefore it is meaningless to ask why the big bang didn't happen earlier than it did.

Orosius was a disciple of Saint Augustine. It was the purpose of the seven books to provide a defense of Christianity against the common pagan charge that Christianity accelerated, if it did not cause, the decline of the Roman Empire. Orosius met this dubious challenge by reversing its polarity. If things were in the fifth century bad, he argued, once they were worse.

Since God is the highest good, he would not allow any evil to exist in his works unless his omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil.

God Almighty would in no way permit evil in His works were He not so omnipotent and good that even out of evil He could work good.