A word does not keep one meaning wherever it appears, and a house that clings to God is not stretched into times. Augustine says the sins of great men are written so that no one who thinks he stands may despise another. God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. The first question about any expression is whether it is literal or figurative. Leaven is the Pharisees, and leaven is the kingdom. A lion is Christ, and a lion is the devil. Water is the peoples, and water is the Spirit. The sense is taken from the place, and the obscure place is read by the clearer one. A shield is the favor of God, and a shield is faith, and faith is also a breastplate. In the Confessions the soul that thirsts, and whose tears are bread, may understand how far beyond all times God is eternal. His house has not wandered. It is not co-eternal, and by clinging it suffers no vicissitude. Formlessness cannot exhibit the changes of times, because without the change of motions times are not. Aquinas asks why the mother of Christ was espoused, and why an angel spoke before the conception. The betrothal guarded the virginity. The marriage with Joseph was true by consent. The announcement came first, so that she might know and consent, and then the Word was conceived.

Today’s Readings:

Augustine — On Christian Doctrine, Book 3, Chapters 23–26 (Sections 33–37) Augustine — The Confessions, Book 12, Chapter 11 (Sections 13–14) Thomas Aquinas — Summa Theologica, Part 3, Questions 29–30

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Lust cannot imagine temperance, and a creature can cling to God so as not to be extended into times. Augustine says the man who exceeds with one wife does not believe that the fathers used many wives with temperance, looking only to the duty of those times. Such men measure the saints by themselves, as if praise must puff up and insult must cast down. The apostles were neither puffed up nor cast down. David bore the injury of Absalom and mourned his death for the son’s sin, not for his own loss. The ewe-lamb accused the adultery, and the desire is called a guest, not a king. In Solomon it reigned. What was done then as a duty is not to be transferred now into a habit of life. In the Confessions the heaven of heavens is the creature whose will God is, not co-eternal, drawing its support from Him, varied by no change. He calls it the house of God, a pure mind, the city of holy spirits above the heavens that are seen. Aquinas asks how the mother of Christ was prepared. She was sanctified in the womb after the soul was infused, not before. Original sin was remitted. The spark was bound, and she did not sin. She was a virgin in conceiving, in bearing, and after the birth.

### Today’s Readings:

Augustine — On Christian Doctrine, Book 3, Chapters 19–22 (Sections 28–32)

Augustine — The Confessions, Book 12, Chapter 11 (Section 12)

Thomas Aquinas — Summa Theologica, Part 3, Questions 27–28

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Charity is the rule that decides when a command is a figure, and eternity is a will that does not change. Augustine says a figurative expression is to be turned until it establishes the reign of love, and if the literal sense already does that, it is not a figure. A command that seems to enjoin a crime, or to forbid a kindness, is figurative. Eating the flesh is a share in the sufferings. Coals of fire are the groans of penitence. Commands given to a lower state are not canceled by a higher one. What was allowed in the Old Testament for those times is not a habit for these, and one man may use many wives with chastity while another uses one with lust. In the Confessions he has been told, in the inner ear, that God alone is immortal, and that every nature which is not God is still from God. Only what is not, is not from Him. Sin is the motion of the will toward what is less, and no sin hurts God or disturbs His rule. Aquinas asks how the one who is equal can still be subject. He is subject, and He prays, and He mediates, as man. He is priest forever, offering once, the virtue of the offering remaining. He is Son by nature, not by adoption. The humanity is adored because it is the humanity of the Son, not because flesh is divine.

Today’s Readings:

Augustine — On Christian Doctrine, Book 3, Chapters 15–18 (Sections 23–27) Augustine — The Confessions, Book 12, Chapter 11 (Section 11) Thomas Aquinas — Summa Theologica, Part 3, Questions 20–26

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What looks like a sin in a holy man may be a sign, and a custom is not yet a law. Augustine says the deeds ascribed to God and the saints, which seem wicked to the inexperienced, are figurative, and the kernel is charity. It is not the use of a thing that is blamed, but the lust of the user. The ointment on the Lord’s feet is not the ointment of a banquet. Hosea’s keeping company with a harlot is not abandoned manners. The plurality of wives among the fathers was blameless then, for the sake of offspring, and could not be done now except through lust. Men who know only their own customs conclude that there is no absolute right. The precept stands against them: whatever you would that men should do to you, do you even so to them. In the Confessions he begs the Truth, not his own darkness, to speak. He went astray and remembered. He returns burning to the fountain, and the words of the books are very deep. Aquinas asks what may be said of the one who is both. God is man and man is God, because the Person is one and the natures are not mixed. There is one being, two wills without contrariety, and two operations concurring in the one work. The human action merited, for Himself and for the members.

Today’s Readings:

Augustine — On Christian Doctrine, Book 3, Chapters 12–14 (Sections 18–22) Augustine — The Confessions, Book 12, Chapter 10 (Section 10) Thomas Aquinas — Summa Theologica, Part 3, Questions 16–19

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A man can be free while he is still under a sign, and a creature can share eternity without being eternal. Augustine says bondage to a sign is the use of it without knowing what it signifies. The patriarchs were spiritual and free even while the signs were still imposed, because they honored what the signs referred to. After the resurrection a few rites remain, baptism and the body and blood of the Lord, easy to perform and plain in what they mean. A phrase is figurative when, taken literally, it cannot be referred to purity of life or soundness of doctrine. Scripture enjoins nothing but charity and condemns nothing but lust. Severity ascribed to God, when the sense is plain, is not to be allegorized away. It pulls down the dominion of lust. In the Confessions the Spirit is silent about days when He says that in the Beginning God created heaven and earth. The heaven of heavens is an intellectual creature, not co-eternal, yet clinging to God so as to surpass the rolling change of times. The formless earth is not numbered among the days, because where there is no shape, nothing comes or goes. Aquinas asks what power and what weakness were in the Christ who came. The soul was not omnipotent. It worked as the instrument of the Word. Hunger, pain, and death were assumed, not owed. Sin and ignorance were not. Sorrow was real, and the will that bore it was not captive to it.

### Today’s Readings:

Augustine — On Christian Doctrine, Book 3, Chapters 9–11 (Sections 13–17)

Augustine — The Confessions, Book 12, Chapter 9 (Section 9)

Thomas Aquinas — Summa Theologica, Part 3, Questions 13–15

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To take a sign for the thing it signifies is a kind of slavery, and a world can be shaped only out of what is almost nothing. Augustine warns that the letter kills when a figurative word is read as if it were proper. Sabbath and sacrifice then stay on the day and the victim, and the mind never lifts. The bondage of Israel was not the bondage of the nations. Their signs, however misunderstood, still held the one God before them, and those who believed were near enough to spiritual things to become the first church. The Gentiles, even when they called an idol only a sign of the sea, were still worshipping the creature. Christ freed the one by interpreting the signs, and the other by clearing the useless signs away. In the Confessions the heaven of heavens is already for God. The earth given to the sons of men was invisible and without form, a deep almost nothing, yet able to be formed. Times are numbered only where shapes change. Aquinas asks how the soul of Christ knew. It saw the divine essence and did not comprehend it, knew by infused species from the first moment, and advanced only in what experience drew from the senses.

Today’s Readings:

Augustine — On Christian Doctrine, Book 3, Chapters 5–8 (Sections 9–12) Augustine — The Confessions, Book 12, Chapter 8 (Section 8) Thomas Aquinas — Summa Theologica, Part 3, Questions 9–12

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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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A mark in the wrong place can make the Word something other than God, and a mind full of pictures can fail to think what has no picture. Augustine opens the third book of On Christian Doctrine by sending the prepared reader to the ambiguities of Scripture. Where the words themselves are unclear, punctuation and pronunciation are tested first by the rule of faith, then by the context, and, if both are silent, left to the reader’s discretion. The heretical pointing that stops before “the Word was God” is refused. Paul’s strait between two is settled by the word that follows. In the Confessions he confesses that he once called matter formless while still filling it with foul and horrible forms. He could sooner think that the formless was nothing than conceive what lay between form and nothing. What he reached was mutability, able to receive shapes, and already something. Aquinas asks what the Son assumed, and in what order. A true earthly body, and a true human mind. What was not assumed would not have been healed. Soul and flesh were taken at one instant, the soul the medium of congruity, not a step that came earlier in time.

Today’s Readings:

Augustine — On Christian Doctrine, Book 3, Chapters 1–2 (Sections 1–5) Augustine — The Confessions, Book 12, Chapter 6 (Section 6) Thomas Aquinas — Summa Theologica, Part 3, Questions 5–6 (Articles 1–4 and 1–4)

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