As a preface, let it be noted that the book preview for the Literal Meaning of Genesis specifically excluded pages 43-79 in which, I assume, chapters 9 and 10 were. Sorry. I don't really know what to do about that. It straight jumped from page 42 to 80...?
So, this is what I gathered from Augustine. (And I truly read him because I felt like I needed to redeem myself (again) in class.)
The bit of his biography that was the most relevant to the class was such: " So long, therefore, as his philosophy agrees with his religious doctrines, St. Augustine is frankly neo-Platonist; as soon as a contradiction arises, he never hesitates to subordinate his philosophy to religion, reason to faith."
A red flag if ever I saw one.
With that in mind, I continued on to his writings.
The biggest thing that Augustine asserted and reasserted was the fact that Plato is a lover of God and that all philosophies Platonic were the closest to the church's doctrines and scriptures and therefore was the most trustworthy of all the philosophers, I guess is the word I'm looking for. In this sense, he didn't really ignore philosophers so much as pick and choose which ones were legitimate according to him and thus the church. I mean, I guess he paid attention to the philosophers, or rather philosopher, in this sense. He admits: " If, then, Plato defined the wise man as one who imitates, knows, loves this God, and who is rendered blessed through fellowship with Him in His own blessedness, why discuss with the other philosophers?" At least he admits his bias or preference.
He goes on to discuss the nature of the various heavenly beings-- " In every changeable thing, the form which makes it that which it is, whatever be its mode or nature, can only be through Him who truly is, because He is unchangeable." He synonymizes 'natural' with 'physical' in the Godly sense (a very Plantinga statement, haha) which manages to full circle back to Plato being Godly, etc. ("to philosophize is to love God").
The part that really struck me was his definition of the nature of philosophy:
" He is on his guard, however, with respect to those who philosophize according to the elements of this world, not according to God, by whom the world itself was made; for he is warned by the precept of the apostle, and faithfully hears what has been said, 'Beware that no one deceive you through philosophy and vain deceit, according to the elements of the world.'"
Now, I will grant that he is a God-fearing man, but that just seems to be unreasonable. I guess that's what I get for not being a theist, but it seems awfully silly.
Augustine is relevant in that I feel like he speaks a lot for the church, not necessarily that he is the church's mouthpiece or spokesman but that, simply, he represents what the church at the time probably thought. The real zinger is that Plato is probably the least (well maybe not the least) reliable source of astronomical rules/discoveries given his disposition regarding astronomy in general, which is disdainful. Hence my title. Plato plus Plantinga today really made me distrust the art of philosophy. Plato was this heralded man in the world of science (in general, philosophy, astronomy, you name it, people usually took his word for gospel--no pun intended) but in the realm of astronomy anyway, I just imagine Plato boredly describing these elabourate plans for the universe, waving his hand about in a holier-than-thou manner, not really giving a hang about it. And Augustine trusted it because Plato was similarly a God-fearing man and therefore he was the most reliable?
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, that fifth chapter of Sleepwalkers really helped wrap up the early theories of astronomy quite nicely. The succinct timeline/rundown of astronomers ending with the Ptolemaic [and perfected] model for the universe really ended that first bit well in that there is still a big chunk of the book left dedicated to completely destroying this "perfected" system. I mean, and for the time it was pretty perfected (well, I mean excluding the differences in brightness and size, but everybody at the time was pretty much trying to ignore that). It explained the speed ups, slow downs, retrograde motions, and it included the beloved circles. See my post before last for my Eureka moment.
How 'bout them apples?
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