Augustine
Confessions[1]
Noverim te, noverim me: "I would know you [God], I would know myself." Augustine wrote these words in one of his earliest works, but they retained their force throughout his lifetime.[2] The irrefutable solipsism of self confronted with the absolute reality of God, the wholly other: all of Augustine's thought moves between those two poles.
But those poles were not far distant from one another, with vast uncharted territory between. Rather, they were elements of an intimate personal relationship destined for permanent and indissoluble union. To treat God and self as two different things is to introduce the fatal distinction that the serpent taught to Eve. The relation between creator and creature is totally different from that which obtains between any two created things in the material world. Each created object participates in a complex world of material objects from which God seems far away. But the creator is equidistant from all......
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Approximate Word Count: 17384
Approximate Pages: 67 (260 words per double-spaced page) |