Augustine’s development of the biblical tradition intensifies the typological reading of the OT found in Hebrews and also in Paul. Human longing may have false objects, including that found in the form of nostalgia for the past. However, this longing for the soul’s true home has a true object in the city of God revealed in the Son. But it is not enough to say that this lies completely in the future: two more observations are required.Firstly, the Son ‘Today’ reveals the time of the Father, such that the city of God is now here already present, and the Church in Christ is now already present in it. Though invisible, it is visible to the eyes of faith.
Second, Augustine’s point is that the fact of the longing itself reveals that is something remembered; and thus not only does the city of God lie ahead but it is also the soul’s origin. It is not then the longing for the past itself that is denied but rather any imperfect and merely penultimate objects of this longing.
Which for Augustine, means pears... He says in the Confessions:
'There is an appeal to the eye in beautiful things [like pears!]...This life we live here below has its own attractiveness, grounded in the measure of beauty it has and its harmony with the beauty of all lesser things....Yet in the enjoyment of al such things we commit sin if through immorderate inclination to them - for though they are good, they are of the lowest order of good - things higher and better are forgotten, even You O Lord...' (II.5)
Like Christ, the martyr experiences in the most extreme form the press of time.The witness that the martyr makes is to his renunciation of the nostalgic vision of the past with its ripe pears and her affirmation of homesickness for the kingdom of God.
10 comments:
I knew there was a biblical reason why we shouldn't eat fruit.
Now if we can find a verse saying how bad eating vegetables are...
You mean pears are not going to be in the kingdom?
No.
Had a discussion with Oliver O'Donovan about the future of Barneys last night. He wasn't convinced that it would be part of the new heavens/new earth...
anyway, it's the desire for pears that makes one steal them that is the problem, not pears qua pears.
So pears go to hell when they die.
I also heard that there will not be any surfing in heaven - Revelation 21.1 proves that.
The pears have no imperfections as pears per se. These are great instantiations of the idea of pearness.(Though I hear the price of bananas has soared in Sydney, maybe I should change fruits...)
They are just not ultimate pears...
yours,
Silly Plato
But Christ did not take upon himself the body of a pear - which means that the sins of the pears shall remain unatoned for.
I guess that's why he cursed the fig tree (obviously he wasn't referring to figs specifically but the entire range of fruit generally)
Read Col 1:15-20!!! universal reconciliation! Even the pears!
This is now officially a discussion of 'fruits of the bible'.
Why didn't Oliver think Barneys will be restored? He can't be that cynical about Sydney City Council yet...
Well: it is interesting that in the New Heaven and the New Earth there is no Temple, because the Lord God IS the temple himself. So it would seem odd to have no temple and yet have Barneys. There is something in this: Barneys itself was a collective expression of the communion of the church that met there. But God/the Lamb will be himself what this was ...
Will there be no Sydney Opera House in the NH&NE?
Because Barneys (the old building) was more than simply a meeting place for a congregation of God's people. I'm not saying that aesthetics is the criterion for inclusion, yet human creativity and embodiment means our identity bleeds out into our built (and natural) environment. Bodies are not the limits to our selves (though there is an important limit at the edge of my body - not moving into entire fuzziness here).
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