Through the Church Fathers

Augustine will not let us enjoy one another as if a human life were the happy ending. In On Christian Doctrine God alone is to be enjoyed; neighbor, self, and even the body are to be loved for His sake, and the soul that lords it over its equals has already begun to hate itself. Then in The Confessions he hunts the past and the future and finds them only as present: childhood is gone, yet its image is here in memory; tomorrow’s deed is not yet, yet the thought of it is now.
### Today’s Readings:
Augustine of Hippo — On Christian Doctrine, Book 1, Chapters 20–23 (Sections 19–23)
Augustine of Hippo — The Confessions, Book 11, Chapter 18 (Section 23)
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The Word did not empty Himself into sound and vanish. Augustine says the thought stays whole while it becomes speech—and so the Divine Word became flesh without change of nature, healer and medicine in one. Pride had wounded us; humility bound the wound. On Christian Doctrine then follows that medicine all the way home: resurrection and judgment, a Church purged by affliction, keys that bind and loose, a body that dies and will rise. The Confessions will not let the past and future be dismissed as nothing: if prophets saw what is not yet, and memory tells what no longer is, those times are somewhere. Aquinas names the disease under the bandage. Pride is the refusal of measure—the will to be uncorrectable.
### Today’s Readings:
Augustine of Hippo — On Christian Doctrine, Book 1, Chapters 13–21 (Sections 13–19)
Augustine of Hippo — The Confessions, Book 11, Chapter 17 (Section 22)
Thomas Aquinas — Summa Theologica, Part 2–2, Question 162 (Pride)
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Men already know, even when they worship the wrong things, that God is that than which nothing greater can be thought—and Augustine will not stop until that God is unchangeable Wisdom, then the Way who came in flesh. On Christian Doctrine takes us from the name “God” to the Incarnation: Wisdom was already our home, and still made Himself the road home. The Confessions then asks how we measure time at all, and answers that we only measure what is passing; the past cannot be measured, because it is not. Aquinas closes the day with humility: not pretending you have no gifts, but refusing to claim a greatness that is not yours.
### Today’s Readings:
Augustine of Hippo — On Christian Doctrine, Book 1, Chapters 7–12 (Sections 7–12)
Augustine of Hippo — The Confessions, Book 11, Chapter 16 (Section 21)
Thomas Aquinas — Summa Theologica, Part 2–2, Question 161 (Humility)
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Explore the Project:
Through the Church Fathers – https://www.throughthechurchfathers.com
Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/cmichaelpatton
Credo Courses – https://www.credocourses.com
Credo Ministries – https://www.credoministries.org
#ThroughTheChurchFathers #ChurchFathers #Augustine #OnChristianDoctrine #Confessions #ThomasAquinas #SummaTheologica #Modesty #Temperance #Theology #EarlyChurch

Augustine opens On Christian Doctrine by splitting the whole work of Christian teaching in two: find what Scripture means, then give that meaning away—and he will not let the Church rest in the world as if the road were home. The same mind then turns inward in The Confessions and takes the present apart until “now” has no space left at all. Aquinas gathers the day with a quieter virtue: modesty, the part of temperance that puts measure not only on fierce desire, but on speech, study, recreation, dress, and the ordinary habit of knowing when enough is enough.
Today’s Readings:
Augustine of Hippo — On Christian Doctrine, Book 1, Chapters 1–6 (Sections 1–6)
Augustine of Hippo — The Confessions, Book 11, Chapter 15 (Section 20)
Thomas Aquinas — Summa Theologica, Part 2–2, Question 160 (Modesty)
Explore the Project:
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