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To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.magick,alt.thelema,talk.religion.misc From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nagasiva) Subject: Various: St. Augustine the Thelemite Date: 20 Dec 1997 14:32:07 -0800 [technical difficulties enforced delay -- edited for readability] John Tarnowski: On Thu, 25 Sep 1997, Michelle/Tom Catlett-Tetzlaff wrote: > On the other hand, 'love... and do as you will' or its > equivalent doesn't strike me as very Augustinian. More > like 'love... and do as *God* wills.' But I'm no expert. Augustinian philosophy as I have always understood it (and I'm a religious historian, so its not like I'm a rank amateur at this) was that man has no free Will; indeed, that is the general policy of intellectual Christianity in general and (however much someone like Thomas Aquinas would have wished otherwise) it is the only logically possible situation within the Christian world view (that is, an all powerful monotheism with an economy of salvation). =============================================== John Tarnowski : On Fri, 26 Sep 1997 ZAIN11@aol.com wrote: > >#>Geoffrey Ashe mentions the Augustinian usage, and seems familiar >#>with it, but does not give a reference or even say what book it >#>is in. ("Do What You Will: A History of Anti-Morality", p. 20). >#>I have looked through "the City of God" without finding this >#>passage, but I have not read the book through and can't say >#>it's not there. > Once again, Crowley references the similarity between Liber Al's > "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law" in comparison > to St. Augustine's "Love, and do what thou wilt." in "Eight > Lectures on Yoga" Lecture #3 of Yoga for Yellowbellies. > Page 66, item #7 of the Falcon Press edition. But I don't believe Crowley actually bothers to cite the page (or even the book) where this quote of Augustine's can be found (one of Crowley's weaknesses, he wasn't really much of a stickler for genuine scholarship). To me, the place where I can find Crowley mentioning the quote is useless; I need to find the quote in Augustine's works. =========================================================== Ghost@traveller.fido.de (Ghost): ['John':] > Augustinian philosophy as I have always understood it [....] was that > man has no free Will hmm, no. Augustinus equals the ('good') will of man with the will of God ['not my will be done but thine' and he says that 'evil' comes from the freedom of choice]; but man has the option to turn away from God: decisions are free -his proof is a bit weak though: you can remember your decisions as free, so they are free.... from god's POV it looks totally different because he is 'beyond' time and all time is 'known' to him, and with time all decisions made in past or future. Augustinus writes pages to explain this tricky problem because most people equal eternity with a huge span of time.... ============================================================ [HH]: GM/John Tarnowski wrote: >Augustinian philosophy as I have always understood it (and I'm >a religious historian, so its not like I'm a rank amateur at >this) was that man has no free Will.... On the other hand, R. A. Markus in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (ed. A. H. Armstrong, Cambridge: University Press, my edition 1995): According to Augustine, man "is the only creature who is not at the mercy of all the forces acting upon him and within him in their totality. Augustine calls the capactity which sets man apart from beasts in this respect, whereby he is in command over at least some of his actions, his will. To say that man is endowed with free choice is no more than another way of saying the same thing. ... Man alone is thus free, in the sense that, though foreseen by God, some at least of his actions are not subject to 'necessity', or, to use Augustine's alternative terminology, are not determined by 'nature'." (both quotes p. 384) But perhaps, unlike you, Markus is a "rank amateur." The passage may be found in In Ionnis epistulam ad Parthos tractatus VII 8. ============================================================ John Tarnowski : On Sat, 27 Sep 1997, [HH] wrote: [quotes all of above, omitted here] > But perhaps, unlike you, Markus is a "rank amateur." Not exactly, but I think this interpretation overlooks the overwhelming position of Augustine's views on salvation (which, after all, would have been all that really mattered to Augustine when it came to free will). It also fails to cover that while Augustine's beliefs changed back and forth throughout his life, by the end he had become decidedly against the idea of free will (reading the City of God and the Confessions will confirm both my statements; with City of God being particularly relevant to the questions of salvation and predermination, and the Confessions especially so in the matter of the evolution of Augustine's thought, both as a non-christian and later as a christian). =========================================================== catzlaff@95net.com (Michelle/Tom Catlett-Tetzlaff): John sez [from above]: >...by the end he had become decidedly against the idea... >as a non-christian and later as a christian). A convoluted bit in _City of God_ V.,10 reads: "...we are by no means compelled, either, retaining the prescience of God, to take away the freedom of the will, or, retaining the freedom of the will, to deny that He is prescient of future things, which is impious. But we embrace both. We faithfully and sincerely confess both. The former, that we may believe well; the latter, that we may live well." The whole chapter from which this is taken reads as an elaborate rationalization, as a 'resolving into God' of the conflict between what at this point in his life seems to be his genuine belief in free will, and his belief in his god's omnipotence. Nearly in the same breath Augustine says that if one's will is thwarted, or free will is not exercised, it's because God is the real underlying Will of which all wills are a part. Stretching the thought, didn't Crowley have a similar idea? That all true wills acting together properly operated on a grander plan, conflict occuring when the will is misapplied. Ok, maybe I've stretched the thought till it snapped , but if you called the complexity of that grander plan a composite 'God,' formed of the unity of all of the individual Gods and their orbits, it would seem to fit. ====================================================== ~From: [HH] I wrote: >> But perhaps, unlike you, Markus is a "rank amateur." To which GM/John Tarnowski responded: >Not exactly, but I think this interpretation overlooks the overwhelming >position of Augustine's views on salvation (which, after all, would have >been all that really mattered to Augustine when it came to free will). Markus cites work, book, and section for each of his propositions, and each of his conclusions is based upon one or more such. That is what I call support, the demonstration of knowledge rather than the airing of opinion. It is true that you go on to say that Confessions and The City of God confirm your statement that >while Augustine's beliefs changed back and forth >throughout his life, by the end he had become decidedly against the idea >of free will but citing two very long works in bulk is not what I call support. (One could as easily say "It is clear that Jesus himself gave voice to a doctrine of predestination; see the Gospels.") Can you show me where exactly in both City of God and Confessions Augustine reveals himself as being "decidedly against the idea of free will" and how being against such is in relation to "salvation"? I would in fact be especially impressed if you could produce a Confessions citation that shows these two things. One of the principal themes of Confessions is a human struggle with the temptations of the corporeal world; mastery of these temptations is to be gotten through the deity; human freedom is to be subordinated to divine will: 1. The following indicates that, with Augustine, human will exists and choice as well: X 23: "It may be that all men do desire to be happy, but because the impulses of the spirit are at war with one another, so that they cannot do all that their will approves, they fall back upon what they are able to do and find contentment in this way. For their will to do what they cannot do is not strong enough to enable them to do it." XIII 31: "There are many, in fact, who find your creation pleasing because it is good, but what they find pleasing in it is not you. They choose to look for happiness, not in you, but in what you have created." If not a product of free will, then what is choice? 2. Living with the deity and in his grace is upon the condition that Augustine serve in accordance with that to which divinity has given voice; that he live with the deity and in his grace is a matter of his own wish, and, to me at least, wish implies choice: X 4: "You have named them as the masters whom I am to serve if I wish to live with you and in your grace." 3. A state of grace is a matter of subordinating human freedom to divine will, which entails controlling one's interest in the corporeal world so that attention may be devoted to the incorporeal: 3a. Augustine obeys the deity; his soul has submitted to the deity: X 4: "I do your bidding in word and deed alike. I do it beneath the protection of your wings, for the peril would be too great if it were not that my soul has submitted to you and sought the shelter of your wings and that my weakness is known to you." 3b. The inclination to assert human freedom has been purged from Augustine by the deity; and, to me at least, liberty is closely linked, if not identical to, free will: X 36: "You know how great a change you have worked in me, for first of all you have cured me of the desire to assert my liberty, so that you may also pardon me all my other sins." 3c. Augustine, a human, would act according to command of divine will: X 37: "Give me the grace to do as you command, and command me to do what you will!" X 29: "There can be no hope for me except in your great mercy. Give me the grace to do as you command, and command me to do what you will! You command us to control our bodily desires." XIII 22: When a man "has remade his mind and can see and understand your truth, he has no need of other men to teach him to imitate his kind. You show him and he sees for himself what is your will, the good thing, the desirable thing, the perfect thing." 3d. Divinity could aid Augustine in overcoming corporeal temptation: X 31: "Every day I try my hardest to resist these temptations. I call for your helping hand and tell you of my difficulties." X 36: "Can anything restore me to hope except your mercy? That you are merciful I know, for you have begun to change me." X 43: "Rightly do I place in him [the Son] my firm hope that you will cure all my ills through him who sits at your right hand and pleads for us: otherwise I should despair." 3e. Divinity can aid via teaching Augustine, a human, and teaching in the context of action, to me at least, has as its aim the modification of behavior, which is a result of incorporeal motivation: X 40: "You have walked everywhere at my side, O Truth, teaching me what to seek and what to avoid, whenever I laid before you the things that I was able to see in this world below and asked you to counsel me. ... I heard you teaching me and I heard the commands you gave." 3f. It is in fact through deity both that Augustine "wins the mastery" and that he is rid of his human temptations in favor of divine purpose: XI 29: "I see now that my life has been wasted in distractions, but your right hand has supported me in the person of Christ my Lord, the Son of man, who is the Mediator between you, who are one, and men, who are many. He has upheld me in many ways and through many trials, in order that through him I may win the mastery, as he has won the mastery over me; in order that I may be rid of my old temptations and devote myself only to God's single purpose, forgetting what I have left behind." 4. Highlighting the distinction between action as a result of human nature and action as a result of deity operating through a human: X 4: "The good I do is done by you in me and by your grace: the evil is my fault; it is the punishment you send me." In Confessions, "salvation," as you call it, by which I understand you to mean "a state of grace," is not linked with the absence of free will, nor is the existence of free will denied; a state of grace is a matter of losing one's individual freedom in favor of divine will; it is a matter of mastering one's love of the corporeal in favor of that of the incorporeal; it is a matter of obedience to the deity, receiving and heeding the command of its will. These are all activities that occur within the sphere of human time; that a state of grace is dependent upon them, and through them in turn upon the deity, makes a state of grace dependent upon action both in the sphere of human time and in the sphere of eternity. Free will, or liberty, is not stated as being absent in man; rather, he is to become rid of it or at least subordinate it to divine will during his human life in order to attain a state of grace. Again I ask whether you can show me where in Confessions Augustine reveals himself as being "against the idea of free will," and again I ask whether you can show me how in Confessions his allegedly being against such is in relation to "salvation." Furthermore, I challenge you to reconcile with rigorous reason whatever such citations you might produce with those given above. I do not know how Confessions can confirm the temporal aspect of your statement that "by the end he had become decidedly against the idea of free will," as Confessions was written some 30 years before Augustine's death. Also, what is an "overwhelming position"? Incidentally, you are welcome for my giving you the location of the citation for which you sought, namely "Love, and do what you will," which, again, is at In Ionnis epistulam ad Parthos tractatus VII 8. ================================================================== EOF -- (emailed replies may be posted); http://www.hollyfeld.org/~tyagi; 408/2-666-SLUG join the esoteric syncretism in alt.magick.tyagi; http://www.abyss.com/tokus Path: Supernews70!Supernews60!supernews.com!news-stk-3.sprintlink.net!news-west.sprintlink.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!baron.netcom.net.uk!netcom.net.uk!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!sandymac.demon.co.uk!not-for-mail From: sandymac@sandymac.demon.co.uk (Alexander Maclennan) Newsgroups: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.magick,alt.thelema,talk.religion.misc Subject: Re: Various: St. Augustine the Thelemite Date: Sun, 21 Dec 1997 04:21:33 GMT Organization: disorganised Message-ID: References: <67hh17$bg0$1@shell.accesscom.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: sandymac.demon.co.uk X-NNTP-Posting-Host: sandymac.demon.co.uk [158.152.14.157] X-Newsreader: Offlite 0.09 / Termite Internet for Acorn RISC OS Lines: 13 Xref: Supernews70 alt.magick.tyagi:14527 alt.magick:120905 talk.religion.misc:335961 tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nagasiva) wrote: > The passage may be found in In Ionnis epistulam ad Parthos tractatus > VII 8. I gather the popular version Ama et fac quod vis is a misquotation and that the actual phrase is Dilige et quod vis fac. from Oxford Dictionary of Quotations 1942. -- Alexander MacLennan sandymac@sandymac.demon.co.uk
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