The Trinity by St. Augustine & John E. Rotelle & Edmund Hill

Author:St. Augustine & John E. Rotelle & Edmund Hill
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Religion, Theology, Classics, Patristics, Christianity
ISBN: 0911782966
Publisher: New City Press
Published: 2011-01-23T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 2

God is the good itself, the unchanging good, the good of all goods, in terms of which we love whatever good things we do love. So if we can see this good in which we love anything else that is good, and in which we live and move and are, we can see God.

3, 4. Once more come, see if you can. You certainly only love what is good, and the earth is good with its lofty mountains and its folded hills and its level plains, and a farm is good when its situation is pleasant and its land fertile, and a house is good with its harmonious symmetry of architecture so spacious and bright, and animals are good with their animated bodies, and the air is good when mild and salubrious, and food is good when tasty and health-giving, and health is good being without pains or weariness, and a man’s face is good when it has fine proportions and a cheerful expression and a fresh complexion, and the heart of a friend is good with its sweet accord and loving trust, and a just man is good, and riches are good because they are easily put to use, and the sky is good with its sun and moon and stars, and angels are good with their holy obedience, and speech is good as it pleasantly instructs and suitably moves14 the hearer, and a song is good with its melodious notes and its noble sentiments. Why go on and on? This is good and that is good. Take away this and that and see good itself if you can. In this way you will see God, not good with some other good, but the good of every good. For surely among all these good things I have listed and whatever others can be observed or thought of, we would not say that one is better than another when we make a true judgment unless we had impressed on us some notion of good itself by which we both approve of a thing, and also prefer one thing to another. That is how we should love God, not this or that good but good itself, and we should seek the good of the soul, not the good it can hover over in judgment but the good it can cleave to in love, and what is this but God? Not good mind or good angel or good heavens, but good good.

Perhaps it will be easier to perceive what I want to say if we put it like this. When I hear it said, for example, “a good soul,”15 just as there are two words used, so do I understand two things from these words, one by which it is a soul, another by which it is good. And of course in order to be a soul it did not do anything itself; it was not already there to do anything16 in order to be. But in order to be a good soul I see that it must deliberately choose to do something.

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