So, while studying tonight I came up with a list of things I wanted to think about but didn't really have time to while trying to get through Augustine's major works. And rather than just think, I decided to write. Rather than write, I decided to post. So this whole spiel is really part of my final studying, I just want to hang on to these thoughts so I can come back to them later.
First of all... I had never before understood so deeply why the Incarnation is the celebration of the "Word made flesh"... but Augustine talks about carnal slavery in "On Christian Teaching" and WOW... it makes so much sense. He certainly has a way with words.
Basically, he discusses carnal slavery as the worship of the object rather than what the object represents. My classmates brought up the Eucharist as an example of carnal slavery, but Augustine argues the exact opposite: through Transubstantiation, God FREES us from carnal slavery. He gives us the Tangible so that we can more closely comprehend the Untangible.
After the fall, humanity has to rely on reason in order to worship God -- we must strive to keep our souls and body in proper order by dominating our physical desires with spiritual strength. In the Eucharist, God provides us with a relief from this struggle -- He appeals to our senses to draw us closer to Him.
The Eucharist, then, is an instance of freedom from carnal slavery.
The second part of his argument is truly amazing, though -- Augustine is big on "nothing is Good if it can be better" (On True Religion) ... and he spends a whole lotta pages specifying over and over that words are less True than thoughts because they are limited by language. Our minds are the closest we will come to God, since our bodies were created out of nothingness.
Yet Jesus is Truth because Jesus is God. Therefore.... Christ as the Word made Flesh in the Incarnation is freedom from the limitations placed on us by the fall... the limitations that keep us from personally experiencing God. He truly is the New Adam. He overturns carnal slavery in the Incarnation and yet again in the Eucharist.
Maybe this is just one of those personal Eureka moments that will only really make sense to me. Augustine puts it so much better.
Okay, so another thing that was really cool to me -- the sacramentality of our bodies. Augustine is big on the difference between "use" and "enjoyment"... he claims that we must only enjoy the Eternal (God, Heaven, virtue, etc...) and use the earthly (food, sex, recreation) in order to get to the Eternal. So, for instance, birth control disables a couple from using sex to reach the Eternal -- rather it becomes an act of misdirected enjoyment. If we enjoy the things of earth, we become bound to the things of earth. Lots of examples of that.
Anyways, Augustine claims that we must use each other... not enjoy each other. He doesn't mean "use" in the sense that we use it today... no backtalking or mooching involved. Simply, Augustine believed that we are all tools to bring each other to God. Even spouses are called to use each other and their children to bring each other closer to Eternity. I totally agree.
The cool thing, though, is that a sacrament is an "outward sign" of something unseen ("inward grace," perhaps?) sooooo by allowing ourselves to be used as vehicles towards Eternity, we become sacramental beings in and of ourselves. Add on top of that the fact that we are Tabernacles, carriers of Christ. Talk about the dignity of life... we are outward signs of Him for each other!
I sound like a nutcase. I just find this all so cool!
In fact... I got really nerdy while taking notes and studying, and I actually realized I was adding exclamation marks after things that made me really excited. Subconscioulsy. It was pretty sweet.
Another random thought? Eventually, we will no longer need faith. Faith doesn't exist once we are fully in the presence of God, because it is completely united with our wills. And Augustine claims that the will is part of the trinity of knowledge and understanding. When will/love, knowledge, and understanding are all perfectly balanced, we have an image of the Trinity.
Yet self-knowledge is the greatest image of the Trinity, because it is certain that a mind exists when it knows it exists... by virtue of self-knowledge, it is. Same goes with the Trinity... by virtue of the realtionship between the persons, it is.
Okay, I really need to stop and go to bed so I can make sense tomorrow when I take this final. Clearly, I don't make sense yet :)
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