St Augustine

Biblical Interpretation

Do Christians Need To Go To Church? Which Type of Church Should You Attend?

08/19/2022 Bruce Strom 1

St Augustine’s memorable reflection on our question appear in his Confessions, which is really one of the first testimonials. St Augustine tells us the story of Victorinus, a philosopher who studies the Gospels and the Church Fathers but declines to attend services, asking “Do the walls of the Church make you a Christian?” Victorinus was a learned man, an erudite pagan Platonic philosopher, the Word of the Lord spoke directly to him from the page, perhaps he felt intellectually superior to many simple Christians he knew.

In the words of St Augustine, in his studies Victorinus became “resolute, he was seized by the fear that Christ might deny him before the holy angels if he was too faint-hearted to acknowledge Christ before men, and he felt himself guilty of a great crime in being ashamed of the sacraments instituted by the Word of God in his lowly state.” […]

Philosophy

Xenophon and Plato, Socratic Dialogue, Symposium, Divine and Noble Love, Part 2

08/05/2022 Bruce Strom 0

Both of these commandments are the Divine Love that Plato describes in the Symposium. Like the country song suggests, If you don’t love your neighbor, you don’t Love God. As we learned from St John of the Cross, if our love for our neighbor or our love does not increase in us our Love of God, then it is not love at all. Which means that you cannot talk about two types of love, one mortal, one divine, as do the speakers like Agathon in the Symposium, though you could talk about love and lust, love being unselfish, and lust being selfish, caring only about yourself, not caring about the well-being of your partner or friend. […]

Civil Rights

Comparing Martin Luther King’s Letter From the Birmingham Jail with Hannah Arendt’s The Banality of Evil

04/13/2022 Bruce Strom 9

Many Americans are either unaware or do not want to make the connection between the Jim Crow system of racial segregation and the Nazi ideology of the master race. In fact, the Jim Crow statutes enforcing segregation was used as precedents by the Nazi lawyers drafting the Nuremberg Jewish Race Laws soon after the Adolph Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933. […]

Command 9&10 Do Not Envy

St Augustine on Catechizing the Uninstructed, Blog 2

05/07/2021 Bruce Strom 1

If you seek to become a Christian for social or temporal reasons you may backslide from the faith when you see “wicked and impious men” who are more prosperous than you are.  You may ask yourself, How is this faith helping me?  This is the wrong question, for the true Christian seeks “everlasting blessedness and the perpetual rest of the saints so he may not pass into eternal fire with the devil but rather enter into the Eternal Kingdom together with Christ.  He will be on his guard in every temptation, so we will neither be corrupted by prosperity nor be utterly broken in spirit by adversity, but remain modest and temperate during good times, and be brave and patient during times of tribulation.”  Then this Christian will “Love God more than he fears hell,” and he will recoil from evil thoughts and temptations. […]

Command 9&10 Do Not Envy

St Augustine on Catechizing the Uninstructed, Blog 1

05/04/2021 Bruce Strom 2

In all his writings St Augustine reminds us that the core of our faith is the commands to Love God with all of our heart and with all of our soul and with all of our mind and with all of our strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.  In this work on catechesis St Augustine teaches that the vice that ruins love, the vice that is the enemy of love is envy, and that the mother of envy is pride.  This section is referenced in the Catholic Catechism teaching on the Commandment, Do Not Covet. […]

Biblical Interpretation

St Augustine: On Christian Teaching, How To Read Scripture

04/29/2021 Bruce Strom 12

St Augustine teaches, “Whoever thinks he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but interprets them in a way that does not build up this two-fold Love of God and love of neighbor, does not truly understand the Scriptures. If, on the other hand, a man draws a meaning from Scriptures that builds up the two-fold Love of God and love of his neighbor, although he does not precisely understand the exact meaning of the author, his error is not pernicious, and he is wholly clear from the charge of deception.” […]

Command 9&10 Do Not Envy

St Augustine’s Treatise on the Faith and the Creed

04/28/2021 Bruce Strom 1

This discourse on the Apostle’s Creed was delivered by St Augustine to a local church council in North Africa.  In this treatise he repeats his classical explanation of the Trinity:
The Father is truly God, the Son is truly God, and the Holy Spirit is truly God.
The Father is not sometimes the Son, and the Father is not sometimes the Holy Spirit, and God is One.  We have God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, but “there are not three Gods in that Trinity, but One God and one substance.” […]

Morality

Yves Congar, Meaning of Tradition, Blog 2

01/07/2020 Bruce Strom 3

By abandoning diatribes, by abandoning the proclaiming of anathemas against those who disagree with Catholic doctrine, the post-Vatican II Catholic Church now explicitly believes that both Catholics and Protestants can both attain Salvation through the grace of God and His Son Jesus Christ.  By opening a dialogue, the Church teaches we can learn from both Catholic and Protestant theologies, and this also infers that this encourages study, effort, and dedication.  In the spirit of Vatican II, we should strive to view these as differences of emphasis rather than as differences that divide. […]

Morality

Yves Congar, Meaning of Tradition, Blog 1

12/31/2019 Bruce Strom 4

The cleric whose writings most influenced the decrees of Vatican II was Yves Congar, including his work on the Meaning of Tradition. He examined what the Church Fathers taught us about tradition throughout Church History, and as expected, since it was not hotly debated until the Reformation, there was a great many teachings on what tradition meant. […]