Augustine's Comparison Of The Mind To The Holy Spirit Or The Son?

Improved Essays
Furthermore, Augustine barely discusses the Father in his argumentation much less than the Holy Spirit or the Son. Throughout the text, Augustine argues for the three persons’ equality. He seems to find it much more important to prove and argue for the beings of the Son and the Holy Spirit than the Father. He should discuss all three persons equally. Augustine’s comparison of the mind to the Trinity is wrong. The mind, along with everything else, cannot be compared to the Trinity. The Holy Scriptures says that God is like nothing. If the Bible says that he is like no one and anything then Augustine should not compare the Trinity to anything. Augustine, whatever is virtues and failures in theology, should be praised for his attitude towards …show more content…
Seek the Lord, and be strengthened: seek His face evermore. For that which is always being sought seems as though it were never found; and how then will the heart of them that seek rejoice, and not rather be made sad, if they cannot find what For it is not said, The heart shall rejoice of them that find, but of them that seek, the Lord they seek? For it is not said, The heart shall rejoice of them that find, but of them that seek, the Lord. And yet the prophet Isaiah testifies, that the Lord God can be found when He is sought, when he says: Seek the Lord; and as soon as you have found Him, call upon Him: and when He has drawn near to you, let the wicked man forsake his ways, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. If, then, when sought, He can be found, why is it said, Seek ye His face evermore? Is He perhaps to be sought even when found? For things incomprehensible must so be investigated, as that no one may think he has found nothing, when he has been able to find how incomprehensible that is which he was seeking. Why then does he so seek, if he comprehends that which he seeks to be incomprehensible, unless because he may not give over seeking so long as he makes progress in the inquiry itself into things incomprehensible, and becomes ever better and better while

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    In Augustine early life he turns his back on God and has these desires that he struggles with and he also had the needs of flesh. He talks about the darkness he went through at at early age ,which was was similar to Dante’s habits in his dark woods of sin. Augustine talks about his many sins with unlikeness which causes him become lost without purpose or direction. His void which he stated that made him feel hopelessly lost says “ And I perceived myself to be far off from Thee in the region of unlikeness”(134). St Augustine confession represents a more physical journey but both of them agree that a spiritual connection is necessary for the human soul to closeness with God.…

    • 582 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Augustine was born under two influences, however, through his life and experiences, he did not have to play the hand he was dealt. Through his many struggles, he was able to change the lifestyle that he was born under, by weighing the differences between right and wrong, presenting questions, and accepting change. Augustine’s Beginnings Who is Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis…

    • 838 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Looking for the Truth Human beings are inquisitive and toil away to find the answers to questions that they hold dear to them. These questions include reasons for why humans exist or for why there is so much suffering in the world. As humans seek further into divulging the causes, they are simultaneously continuing their search for finding God through theology. There is a bond between theology and humans seeking meaning in their existence; when humans search for a deeper understanding, they are at the same time searching for a deeper understanding of God. In his chapter,” Discerning the Mystery of God”, in Theological Foundations, Brian D. Robinette makes three points relating to the perpetual binding between the two.…

    • 760 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Furthermore, Brunner says that Augustine based this theory on two verses of the Bible. First of all, Psalms 51:5, where David states the words: “Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.” (Ps. 51:5; [NRSV]). Which simply should be translated from the Hebrew “I am a sinful son of a sinful mother. ”11…

    • 673 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    First, Augustine draws a parallel between himself and a passage from the Old Testament in the chapter “Pear Theft”, in which Augustine is persuaded by his friends to steal pears from a local tree. The parallel between Augustine’s retelling and the story of Adam and Eve from the book of Genesis is both evident and purposeful. Adam is persuaded into taking the forbidden apple from Eve, leading to the eventual banishment from the Garden of Eden while Augustine is peer-pressured into stealing pears which signals his metaphorical banishment from enlightenment and acceptance of…

    • 1250 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In Augustine’s “On Free Choice of the Will”, Augustine states, “…Through whom God made all the things that were made from nothing” (4) meaning that God is the creator of all things. This makes evil an issue since if evil is a thing, and God has created all things, then it is safe to assume that God has created evil. This creates problems for those who believe that God is all loving and all powerful because if God is truly all loving, then why would he create malice for his beloved children. If God is truly good however, how could he possibly be capable to make evil exist? Augustine concludes that if God is truly perfect, then it is possible to believe that evil is not a thing at all, but simply just the absence of God’s good.…

    • 1213 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Epicurus Vs Augustine

    • 1590 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Epicurus would have balked at this idea. He would have been especially appalled by Augustine’s belief that God was present everywhere at once, not existing in material form like the atoms that Epicurus described, but instead in a spiritual form distributed throughout the world, involving Himself in everyone’s lives at once. The two philosophers conflicted…

    • 1590 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    Although his writings in defense of the Christians religion would seem contradictory, to this, but he needed to make an example of Rome in his defense of the Christians. Furthermore, Augustine responds to the Pagans, was used as a means to justify his Christian faith, in addition to this, he further used his response as a way of soothing those Christians, who were starting to lose their faith in God. He wanted to show the Pagans that their Gods were indeed the ones that caused the collapse of Rome. Furthermore, he needed to show that the Romans were no saints having caused atrocities against other nations and religions, that it is only natural that they should fall from grace.…

    • 1998 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    For Augustine, the sacred Scripture played a significant role in his conversion and acceptance of God’s grace in his life. After Augustine had been contemplating his poor life choices, he had opened the Bible and read the first passage that he saw, which told him to convert and Augustine immediately did so. After his conversion to Catholicism, he lost all the fears and doubt about God and the differences between good and evil that he had been harboring inside of…

    • 1228 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As a Christian, Augustine has opened up to be a friend to all that believe and accept the same things he does. His fellow Christians are his community that he surrounds himself with. Over the course of Confessions Augustine has grown himself and through his…

    • 1832 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Augustine comes to realize that he was “a slave of wicked lust” and did not realize the source of his longings. By the end of Book VIII, Augustine understands the fruitlessness and discontentment of his earthly desires and surrenders them God through his understandings of Christ’s love as seen in the quote, “it was much better for me to give myself up to thy love than to go on yielding myself to my own lust…thy love satisfied and vanquished me; my lust pleased and fettered me.”…

    • 914 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Throughout his explanation of the warring sides of the free will, Augustine artfully discusses how the world we live in, our sinful nature, and the faithful and just qualities of God interacts with the decisions that we make. His ultimate point is to distinctly…

    • 1320 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    He believes that God created mankind but not the sin in him. Augustine (1.7.12), also, observes that he was never innocent, but guilty of sin as he was conceived in iniquity (meaning that he inherited a sinful nature from his parents).” (Ndhlovu…

    • 1131 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Augustine, known as one of the four founding fathers of the Catholic church, helped to shape and mold the rights and wrongs within the religion. From Augustine’s interpretations of the bible and its scriptures, many people who wished to follow an idealistic Christianity turned to Catholicism. Correspondingly, the two differ when it came to their attitudes towards faith. While Abelard was always an avid Christian throughout his life, Augustine did not become a believer in God or the Holy Spirit until later. Even so, Abelard looked to religion as a backbone of comfort, whereas Augustine looked to it for wisdom.…

    • 1671 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    His vital issue starts with Genesis and the possibility that God made the universe. Genesis states that God made the universe. However, that recommends that there was a period before the making of the universe. That would imply that God existed in time, and was in this way constrained by it. Here, Augustine utilizes the metaphorical, or otherworldly, translation of the Bible that was first instructed to him by Bishop Ambrose.…

    • 2318 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Great Essays