A question can be asked so that the answer is already No, and a world can be made only if it is not made out of God. Augustine takes the ambiguities of pronunciation next. The rule of faith will not let “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” be read as if God and Christ were the accusers. Inquiry and interrogative are not the same. A short syllable and a long one can hide bone under mouth, and the Greek, or a barbarism clearer than good Latin, settles it. Case, context, and the original tongue leave very little ambiguity in proper words that cannot be cleared. In the Confessions he says the heaven and the earth came from God, and not out of God. Had they come out of Him, they would have been equal to the Only-begotten. There was nothing else from which they could be made. One is near to Him. The other is near to nothing. Aquinas asks what filled the soul that was assumed. Besides the grace of union there was habitual grace from the first moment, not measured, and not increased. That same grace, overflowing, makes Him Head of the Church.

### Today’s Readings:

Augustine — On Christian Doctrine, Book 3, Chapters 3–4 (Sections 6–8)

Augustine — The Confessions, Book 12, Chapter 7 (Section 7)

Thomas Aquinas — Summa Theologica, Part 3, Questions 7–8 (Articles 1–13 and 1–8)

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