Augustine’s Choice: The Lord of Light or the Light of the Lord?

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Philosophy Now
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Augustine’s Choice: The Lord of Light or the Light of the Lord?

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Charles Natoli considers whether St Augustine had any better reason to convert to Christianity than remain a Manichean.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/71/Augustines_Choice_The_Lord_of_Light_or_the_Light_of_the_Lord
owl of Minerva
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Re: Augustine’s Choice: The Lord of Light or the Light of the Lord?

Post by owl of Minerva »

"So notwithstanding first appearances, it was by no means an arbitrary, irrational choice Augustine made between Manicheism and Christianity. The former always left his heart with doubts, and the latter conferred a certainty which left his heart nothing more to desire. Let us even suppose that he did not come into possession of pristine and primordial Truth, but rather embraced the worst of illusions – one that will brook no denial. (Luther’s concluding “God help me, amen!” is a prudent last safeguard on the brink of such an epistemological precipice.) Even so, his manner of proceeding was a profoundly reasonable one. For our reason, like the rest of our humanity, is part and parcel not of an ideal world, but of what the French call le monde comme il va – a world whose bedrock is unanswerable brute fact. Augustine pays implicit homage to this when he thinks and acts in accordance with a view that, illusion or no, is bound up in our very selves: that which wholly satisfies the heart is Truth alone."

© Charles Natoli 2009

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This may explain why some things last over time, even if they eventually become flawed, while other things fail. Mani may have elected himself as the Paraclete If self-elected he may have been without doubts. Augustine and Luther, though having doubts, were in attunement with "unanswerable fact." Pascal's view of the heart as profoundly intellective is another way of saying that intuition rather than reason leads to the conviction that what is done corresponds to reality.
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