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Nov. 7th, 2005 10:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ricardienneNatalie sent me City of God!!! (Yes, a proper thank-you is in the mail, but I have to express myself now!)
I started it this afternoon; it felt really familiar. Augustine's voice is so amazingly clear. And now I really can't wait to read him in the original.
Why do I like Augustine so much? I'm not a Christian, much less a Catholic. The kind of people who espouse Augustine today are the kind that label me a "liberal secular humanist" (which I am) and make me their enemy and the enemy of their faith. But then, I've always been fascinated by religion, and Augustine is one of the msot reasonable religious men I've come across. He doesn't interpret the Bible literally, but allegorically. He isn't really even a proselytizer (from what I've read). Not that he believes in live-and-let-live, but he seems content to denounce the world from his pulpit, and let us all go to Hell.
I've only read the First Book, and I was astounded. Augustine addresses the issue of the sack of Rome. Is the Pagan viewpoint that it can be blamed on Romans turning away from the Gods justified? ('Of course not. Only an idiot would believe that.') In it, Augustine addresses the issue of rape.
I affirm, therefor, that in the case of violent rape and of an unshaken intention not to yield to unchaste consent, the crime is attributable only to the ravisher and not at all to the ravished. --Book I, Ch. 19
Very reasonable, but there's more:
Thus, as long as the will remains unyielding, no crime, beyond the victim's power to prevent it without sin, and which is perpetrated on the body or in the body, lays any guild on the soul. An attack on one's body may inflict not merely physical pain, but may also excite carnal pleasure. If such an act is perpetrated, it does not compromise the virtue of chastity to which the sufferer clings with an iron will; it merely outrages the sense of shame. We must not consider as committed with the will what could not, by the very constitution of nature, occur without some fleshly satisfation.
I was impressed. 'If you don't want it to happen, it isn't your fault. No matter what.' That's more than we can get as a general admission these days, sometimes
I started it this afternoon; it felt really familiar. Augustine's voice is so amazingly clear. And now I really can't wait to read him in the original.
Why do I like Augustine so much? I'm not a Christian, much less a Catholic. The kind of people who espouse Augustine today are the kind that label me a "liberal secular humanist" (which I am) and make me their enemy and the enemy of their faith. But then, I've always been fascinated by religion, and Augustine is one of the msot reasonable religious men I've come across. He doesn't interpret the Bible literally, but allegorically. He isn't really even a proselytizer (from what I've read). Not that he believes in live-and-let-live, but he seems content to denounce the world from his pulpit, and let us all go to Hell.
I've only read the First Book, and I was astounded. Augustine addresses the issue of the sack of Rome. Is the Pagan viewpoint that it can be blamed on Romans turning away from the Gods justified? ('Of course not. Only an idiot would believe that.') In it, Augustine addresses the issue of rape.
I affirm, therefor, that in the case of violent rape and of an unshaken intention not to yield to unchaste consent, the crime is attributable only to the ravisher and not at all to the ravished. --Book I, Ch. 19
Very reasonable, but there's more:
Thus, as long as the will remains unyielding, no crime, beyond the victim's power to prevent it without sin, and which is perpetrated on the body or in the body, lays any guild on the soul. An attack on one's body may inflict not merely physical pain, but may also excite carnal pleasure. If such an act is perpetrated, it does not compromise the virtue of chastity to which the sufferer clings with an iron will; it merely outrages the sense of shame. We must not consider as committed with the will what could not, by the very constitution of nature, occur without some fleshly satisfation.
I was impressed. 'If you don't want it to happen, it isn't your fault. No matter what.' That's more than we can get as a general admission these days, sometimes
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Date: 2005-11-08 04:29 am (UTC)And I am incredibly impressed with Augustine's views on rape. I wonder why we didn't get to read that section for Human Event. Okay, so I guess I can see why. But it's incredibly cool, and now I want to read the rest of Book 1. =)
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Date: 2005-11-09 03:24 am (UTC)(HOWEVER: Augustine takes this kind of opinion on everyhting. Everyone is ALWAYS guilty of something. This is because God is all-powerful and God is always just. So if something bad happens to you, is HAS to be your fault.)
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Date: 2005-11-10 12:57 am (UTC)*This* would be why I'm not an Augustinian Catholic. :P
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Date: 2005-11-10 02:21 am (UTC)And, the part that he repeats in Book 2 (he spends the first three chapters of Book 2 reminding us of what he said in Book 1) he only recaps the bit about rape not being the fault of and not affecting the chastity of the victim.