Through the Church Fathers

The narrative goes back without saying so, and a house that clings to God is still not the Self-same. Augustine says the scattering of the nations seems to come before the one language, until the reader marks the recapitulation: the sentence about one speech returns to the time before the tower, and the judgment on the arrogance is what divides the tongues. “In that day” does not mean that the warning about Lot’s wife waits for the revelation. The day of the preaching is already the last time, and the day of judgment closes it. The seventh rule is the devil and his body. As Christ and the Church are spoken under one person, so the devil and the wicked. What is said of Lucifer under the figure of the king of Babylon is said of the head, and the grinding on the earth fits the body, in which the head is present. All the rules but one make a meaning be understood where another is expressed. The student is to learn the forms, and, before all, to pray. The Lord gives wisdom. In the Confessions the house is manifestly another than God, and not the Self-same. Time is not in it. Mutability is. Clinging, it shines like a perpetual noon. He has loved its beauty, and he asks to be brought back, a lost sheep, on the shoulders of the Shepherd. Aquinas asks why the miracles, and why the mount. The works confirmed the doctrine, and they were the works of the divine person through the flesh. They began at Cana. The Transfiguration was a brief showing of the clarity, so that the cross might be read as the cross of the one whose face had shone.
Today’s Readings:
Augustine — On Christian Doctrine, Book 3, Chapters 36–37 (Sections 53–56) Augustine — The Confessions, Book 12, Chapter 15 (Section 21) Thomas Aquinas — Summa Theologica, Part 3, Questions 43–45
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A part may stand for a whole day, and a creature may rest in God without being co-eternal. Augustine says the fifth rule of Tichonius is the rule of times: synecdoche, and the legitimate numbers. Six days and eight days can both be true if the broken day is counted or not counted. The three days and three nights in the heart of the earth are made out in the same way, by joining the part to the whole. Seven, ten, and twelve, and their multiples, are put for the whole of a time, or for the whole of a people, as a hundred and forty-four thousand is put for all the saints. The sixth rule is recapitulation. Genesis seems to plant the garden after the man is put in it. The narrative has gone back, without saying so, to tell what was passed over, and then it repeats the placing of the man. In the Confessions he presses the objectors. They grant that the eternal God does not will now this, now that. Do they deny a sublime creature, clinging to Him with so chaste a love that it does not flow into times? This is the house of God, spiritual, made fast for ever, and not co-eternal, because it was made. A created wisdom was before all things, not the Wisdom that creates, but the intellectual nature that in the contemplation of light is light. Aquinas asks why the baptism, the life, the temptation, and the teaching took the form they took. He was baptized to sanctify the water and to begin the work. He lived among men, in poverty, under the law. He was tempted in the desert after the baptism, and conquered. He taught the Jews first, by the living voice, and openly.
Today’s Readings:
Augustine — On Christian Doctrine, Book 3, Chapters 35–36 (Sections 50–52) Augustine — The Confessions, Book 12, Chapter 15 (Sections 19–20) Thomas Aquinas — Summa Theologica, Part 3, Questions 39–42
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The prophet passes from one Israel to the other without a change of name, and the eternal will does not take up a new act. Augustine says the species is not always overstepped. When Ezekiel has spoken of the house that defiled the land and was scattered, and then promises a new heart and clean water and a gathering out of all countries, the reader is to leave the one nation and take the genus. The spiritual Israel is made of all the nations promised in the seed, which is Christ. The land of the fathers is the Church, or the land of the age to come, given already in the purpose of God, as grace is said to have been given before the world began. In the Confessions he answers those who will not have his reading of the heaven of heavens. The substance of the Creator is not changed by time, and the will is not separate from the substance. He does not will now this, now that. Expectation becomes sight, and sight becomes memory, and that variation is mutable. God has not made any creature by a new will. Aquinas asks why the birth was told to some and not to all, and why the child was circumcised and came to John. The shepherds were told, and the Magi were led. He was shown. He did not show Himself. He received the seal and the rites as one born under the law, not as one who needed them. The baptism of John was a preparation. He received it, and it ceased.
### Today’s Readings:
Augustine — On Christian Doctrine, Book 3, Chapter 34 (Sections 48–49)
Augustine — The Confessions, Book 12, Chapter 15 (Section 18)
Thomas Aquinas — Summa Theologica, Part 3, Questions 36–38
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Faith itself is a gift, and a part is sometimes named when the whole is meant. Augustine says the third rule of Tichonius, the promises and the law, the spirit and the letter, is a great question rather than a key to other questions. Tichonius gave works to God and left faith to us. He had not yet met the Pelagian heresy. Peace and love with faith are from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, and it is given to believe, and given to suffer. The fourth rule is species and genus, a part and the whole. What is said of Jerusalem, or of Tyre, or of Egypt, may overstep the city and the nation. What is said of Solomon reaches beyond Solomon, and is properly read of Christ and the Church, of which he is a part. In the Confessions the opening of Genesis names no day, and he takes it of two things that are not yet in days: the intellectual heaven, where to understand is to know all at once, face to face, and the formless earth, where there is no this and that. The firmament of the second day tells which heaven was meant. The depth of the oracles is awe, and a tremor of love. He would have the enemies of the book slain unto themselves, that they might live unto God. Aquinas asks whether a birth in time can be said of the Son, and whether the Virgin is the Mother of God. Birth is said of the person. The births are two. The son is one. The name Theotokos does not mean that the Godhead began from her. It means that the one she bore is the Son.
Today’s Readings:
Augustine — On Christian Doctrine, Book 3, Chapters 33–34 (Sections 46–47) Augustine — The Confessions, Book 12, Chapters 13–14 (Sections 16–17) Thomas Aquinas — Summa Theologica, Part 3, Question 35
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Seven rules are keys, not the whole lock, and two creatures stand outside the compass of time. Augustine says Tichonius the Donatist wrote a book of rules, and claimed too much for them. They assist. They do not open every obscure place, and the book is to be read with caution, because the author remained a Donatist. The first rule is the Lord and His body. Head and body are sometimes spoken under one person, and the speech passes from Christ to the Church without a change of name. The second rule he called the twofold body. The name will not do. What will not be with Christ in eternity is no part of His body. The rule is about the mixed Church: good and bad in one net for a time, spoken of as one subject, and not forever one. In the Confessions he finds two things made, neither of them co-eternal. One enjoys God without failing and without interval, changeable and not changed. The other was so formless that it could not yet be subject to time. God did not leave it formless. From it came the heaven and the earth in which days take place. Aquinas asks what was true in the first instant of the conception. The body was formed, the soul infused, and the nature assumed, in that instant, not by the slow work of seed. The child was already sanctified, able to will, and able to merit. The stature was still to come. The Person in the nature just assumed was not waiting on it.
Today’s Readings:
Augustine — On Christian Doctrine, Book 3, Chapters 30–32 (Sections 42–45) Augustine — The Confessions, Book 12, Chapter 12 (Section 15) Thomas Aquinas — Summa Theologica, Part 3, Questions 33–34
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