Through the Church Fathers

Today’s Readings Podcast Description

Scripture left one language so that it could enter every language. Readers hunt the mind of the writers only to find the will of God. Then the dark places arrive. Augustine will not call them accidents. Pride is worn down by toil; the mind that finds too easily grows dull. The plain texts feed hunger. The obscure ones wake appetite. Almost nothing buried in figure is not said elsewhere without figure. Fear of God is the first step toward wisdom; piety the second, so that we do not correct the book we do not yet understand; knowledge the third—and knowledge of a good hope makes a man sorrowful, not proud. Strength follows, hungering after righteousness, turning from what passes to the unchangeable Trinity.

Is time the motion of a body? No body moves except in time. That is not the same as saying motion is time. We measure both movement and standing still. Time is the measure, not the thing measured.

Then Aquinas asks what prophecy is. A physician may forecast an illness. That is not prophecy. Prophecy begins where natural causes run out and God himself lights the mind. It is not only the future. It is not a gift the prophet switches on at will. Angels may carry the message. Only God is its source. Zach could guess from schedules and clues. Kylee told him what had actually happened. Inference is one kind of knowing. Revelation is another.

### Today’s Readings:

Augustine of Hippo — On Christian Doctrine, Book 2, Chapters 5–7 (Sections 6–10)

Augustine of Hippo — The Confessions, Book 11, Chapter 24 (Section 31)

Thomas Aquinas — Summa Theologica, Part 2–2, Questions 171–172

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Smoke means fire whether anyone meant it to. A word means fire only because someone meant to say so. Augustine opens Book 2 of On Christian Doctrine by turning from things to signs: natural and conventional, nod and trumpet, sacrament and speech—and then writing, born because sound dies on the air, divided at Babel because men would not share the chief place. The Confessions will not let the sun own time. Joshua’s sun stood still, and the battle still took time. Time is a certain extension. Whether he sees that, or only seems to, he leaves to the Light. Aquinas asks how anyone knows what reason cannot reach. Prophecy is not a good guess. It is a light given for what would otherwise stay hidden—and the light to judge it.

Today’s Readings:

Augustine of Hippo — On Christian Doctrine, Book 2, Chapters 1–4 (Sections 1–5)

Augustine of Hippo — The Confessions, Book 11, Chapter 23 (Section 30)

Thomas Aquinas — Summa Theologica, Part 2–2, Question 171 (Prophecy)

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If the reading builds up love of God and neighbor, Augustine will not call the mistake a lie—but he still wants the man back on the road. Love of one’s own opinion can turn the reader against Scripture; and if faith totters, love grows cold. Faith and hope will one day give way to sight. Love will not. The Confessions then prays over the ordinary mystery we all speak without understanding: how long, how short, a double syllable, a potter’s wheel if the stars went out. Time is not simply the circuit of heaven. Aquinas brings the same measure to what we put on. Modesty is neither display nor the performance of looking unimpressed.

Today’s Readings:

Augustine of Hippo — On Christian Doctrine, Book 1, Chapters 36–38 (Sections 40–42)

Augustine of Hippo — The Confessions, Book 11, Chapters 22–23 (Sections 28–29)

Thomas Aquinas — Summa Theologica, Part 2–2, Question 169 (Modesty in Outward Apparel)

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God does not use us the way we use a road. He uses us for our good, because He is good—and the holy man, like the holy angel, will not let us make camp in him. On Christian Doctrine sums the whole discussion of things: Scripture ends in love of the Good to be enjoyed, and love of the neighbor who can enjoy that Good with us. Christ is the way; He will not detain us on the way. The Confessions then asks how we measure time at all, if it runs from what is not, through what has no space, into what is not. Aquinas names the vice on the other side of studiousness. Curiosity is not the love of truth. It is the appetite that will not stop at the thing it came to find.

### Today’s Readings:

Augustine of Hippo — On Christian Doctrine, Book 1, Chapters 32–35 (Sections 35–39)

Augustine of Hippo — The Confessions, Book 11, Chapter 21 (Section 27)

Thomas Aquinas — Summa Theologica, Part 2–2, Question 167 (Curiosity)

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Who is my neighbor? Augustine will not let the word shrink. Enemy, stranger, even the holy angels who have shown us mercy—and Christ Himself under the figure of the man who stopped on the road. God does not enjoy us as if He needed our glitter. He uses us for our good, that we may enjoy Him, and one another in Him. The Confessions then corrects our speech about time: there are not past and future standing somewhere out of reach, but a present of memory, a present of sight, and a present of expectation. Aquinas names the virtue that keeps curiosity from running the day. Studiousness seeks truth—but not every tab at once.

Today’s Readings:

Augustine of Hippo — On Christian Doctrine, Book 1, Chapters 30–32 (Sections 31–34)

Augustine of Hippo — The Confessions, Book 11, Chapter 20 (Section 26)

Thomas Aquinas — Summa Theologica, Part 2–2, Question 166 (Studiousness)

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The two great commandments do not forget the self. Augustine says we already love our own life the way the beasts do; what had to be commanded is God above us and the neighbor beside us—and then the whole current of that love, even love of enemies, is to run toward the one Good no one who finds Him will regret. The Confessions leaves the prophets in God’s hand: He to whom nothing is future somehow teaches what is not yet, and Augustine cannot see the way. Aquinas takes us to the first hearing of a better-sounding word. The serpent did not create the possibility of sin. It offered wisdom and greatness on new terms, and the will chose that appearance over the command already given.

### Today’s Readings:

Augustine of Hippo — On Christian Doctrine, Book 1, Chapters 26–29 (Sections 27–30)

Augustine of Hippo — The Confessions, Book 11, Chapter 19 (Section 25)

Thomas Aquinas — Summa Theologica, Part 2–2, Question 165 (The Temptation of Our First Parents)

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No one hates his own flesh—not even the man who starves it. Augustine says the war is not against the body, but against a habit that has grown into it; the spirit wants a better peace, not a missing limb. Then he turns from the body to the morning sky. Dawn is present. Sunrise is not. We do not see future things. We see what already is, and from those signs we speak of what is not yet.

### Today’s Readings:

Augustine of Hippo — On Christian Doctrine, Book 1, Chapters 24–25 (Sections 24–26)

Augustine of Hippo — The Confessions, Book 11, Chapter 18 (Section 24)

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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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