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Pitts Theology Library
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thurman.pitts.emory.edu
394-652_A.mp3
[MUSIC - "BE STILL, MY SOUL"]
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
(SINGING) Be still, my soul. The Lord is on thy side. Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain.
Leave to thy God to order and provide. In every change, he faithful will remain. Be still, my
soul. Thy best, thy heavenly friend through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.
If I ascended into heaven, thou art there. If I make mine bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I
take the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand
hold me and thy right hand shall steady me.
If I say, behold, the darkness covers me, even the night shall be light about me. The darkness,
hideth not from thee. But the night shineth as the day. The darkness and the light are both alike
to thee.
For thou hast processed my reigns. Thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. In thy book, all
my members were written which in continuance were fashioned when as yet there was none of
them.
How precious, how precious are thy thoughts unto me, oh God. How great is the sum of them. If
I should count them, they are more in number than the sand. When I awake, I am still with thee.
Search me, oh God, and know my heart. Try me, oh God, and know my thoughts and see if there
be any wicked way in me. And lead me in the way everlasting, everlasting.
[MUSIC - "BE STILL, MY SOUL"]
And this has to be part one of Saint Augustine, architect of a new faith as a continuation of our
series the end of the journey. As a background, may I read these two paragraphs from Augustine.
What do I love when I love thee? Not beauty of the body, not harmony of line nor brilliancy of
light so pleasant to thee's eyes, nor sweet melodies of every kind of song, nor the sweet scent of
flowers and perfumes and spices. Not manna and honey. Not limbs inviting to fleshly embrace.
Not these do I love when I love my God. And yet, I love a kind of light and the melody and
fragrance and food and embrace when I love my God. The light, melody, food, fragrance,
embrace of my inward man.
Where there shineth upon my soul what space containeth not and where resounded what time
stealeth not away. Where in fragrance, which a breath scattereth not, where there is flavor that
eating lessen it not and where there is an embrace that cannot be rendered asunder, this I love
when I love my God.
I asked the earth for God and it answered me, I am not he. I asked the sea and the depths and the
creeping things and they answered, we are not thy God. Seek thou above us.
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I asked the breezy gales and airy universe and all its denizens replied, Anaximenes is mistaken. I
am not God. I asked the heavens, sun, moon, and stars. Neither are we, say they, the God whom
thou seeketh.
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And I said unto all things which stand about the gateways of my flesh, ye have told me of my
God. But ye are not he. Tell me something of him. And they cried with a loud voice, he made us.
He made us. He made us.
The decay of the Roman Empire had been set in motion by some forces that were subtle and
some that were obvious. There were many theories about why it had begun to disintegrate, this
empire which seemed to the human mind to symbolize in time and space the sovereignty of the
eternal, the point of referral that stood above all of the traffic of life, all of the conflicts of life.
And little by little, men saw that this empire itself was beginning to disintegrate. The stirring of
populations swinging back and forth across the frontiers, a movement of populations that has
continued down to the present time. This is one of the mysterious things as I think about human
history.
I know the answers that the sociologists give about why peoples start moving, why they get on
the march. But I'm not sure that this answer is a satisfying one. But be that as it may, the empire
was in flux. It had broken itself in twain.
And this, the tensions between the Orient and the Occident, the tensions between great racial
groups that had been rooted in a certain kind of culture and a certain pattern of life, a tension that
had been held at equilibrium as long as the Roman Empire spread its eagles everywhere. And
held, as if it were in one, vast continuum, all of these subtle conflicts.
Now when this outer rim cracked, all the built-in tensions began to emerge. And finally, it
expressed itself in the formal division of the empire between the East and the West.
Augustine, what about him? What words may I use to talk about him? He was a part of this flux.
He lived in North Africa, a North Africa that we cannot imagine now because when he lived
there, it was a lush land, full of all kinds of wonderful vineyards, green fertility, and the gods of
fertility flourished.
This was North Africa when Augustine was a boy. He had a wonderful mother, devout, pious,
who brooded over him with great tenderness, knowing somewhat within herself that if she could
pray long enough, she was a devout Catholic, if she could pray long enough, if she could hold
out without giving up, the pressure of her love would bring her wandering son into the fold.
His father had no interest in these things. His father was a man without any particular religious
convictions or faith. As a matter of fact, he's defined as being a pagan, a familiar phrase
[INAUDIBLE].
He had ambitions for his son. He wanted his son to make a mark in the world. So he put forth all
the effort possible to see to it that his son would get a good education and all the things that went
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along with it. He wanted to protect his son from throwing his life away in riotous living. So very
early, he secured a kind of common law wife for his son.
All the time, his son's mind was growing and expanding, searching, seeking. And his seeking
finally took him away from home.
Pitts Theology Library
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He became a teacher at Carthage first and they did not have much discipline in the university.
Students did not pay their bills. Their bills were not due until the end of the semester. So students
would go to classes up to about two weeks before the semester was over. Then they'd change
teachers.
Well, Augustine couldn't live at this rate. So he left and he went to Europe. And I did not fill in
too many details about him.
But there he met a man finally, Ambrose the Great. He must have been a great preacher, for this
was the thing that first attracted Augustine to him. But through the influence of Ambrose, he
began to work out this matter of entering into the fullness of the new life which he found in Jesus
Christ.
Now, it's cruel to summarize his life in this superficial manner. But this is not to be a biography
of Augustine.
The first and most dramatic influences on his life as far as the things that shaped his mind was
the Manichean philosophy. And let us not be perturbed by the word. But this influenced his life
and at a critical point. And in my judgment, it continued to influence his life and to influence
[INAUDIBLE].
Manichean philosophy recognized some of the realities of human experience, the conflict
between good and evil, between the impulse to do that which seems to be right and the impulse
to do the thing which seems to be evil or which is evil.
And it's projected a metaphysical interpretation of existence that could account for the conflict
that goes on in the human spirit between good and evil. And they said that all of life is divided in
this way, between the powers of darkness and the powers of light.
And these two powers seem to be equally matched in human experience and in the world and in
existence. The human heart is the battleground when the tug of war between these two forces
goes on its way, that they are fundamentally equally matched.
Do you think so, if you were talking about this? Do we get a feel of it in the scripture lesson that
was read? Just the feel of it? There is going on all the time, this tension.
Sometimes, do you feel that the thing that is evil in you is stronger than the thing that is good?
Would you load it a little? What about us? Not what you think you ought to think, but how do
you think about it? What is it?
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Well this was a part of a Augustine. Now there was another influence in his life that was very
crucial, and that was the burying of the philosophy, the influence of [INAUDIBLE], as we
referred to last Sunday, this near-Plutonic influence that the world was created by gods, by the
creative whim.
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But as the world moved farther and farther to the edges of the extent of the mind, the creative
energy, that out of which everything moves, it became more and more material, more and more
contaminated.
And as a matter of fact, there's a hard line between the spirit and matter that the spirit could not
quite ever get into matter. And matter could not ever quite make the move in the other direction.
So that you get a [INAUDIBLE] seed between the things that are material and the things that are
thus spiritual.
And this is a little of the philosophy of the Manichean, that-- and if you somehow are sure that
the material things, your body, your flesh, that if you're sure that these things are set on their
way, that they cannot be influenced. That which is spiritual can't get into it and do anything with
it. And vice-versa.
If this is the case, then in terms of your practical living, you may decide that as far as the
expression of your appetite is concerned, since nothing that is material can have any effect, any
door by which it can reach over into that which is qualitative in life, then it doesn't matter what
you do. It doesn't matter what you do.
Because there is no way, you see, by which any activity of the body, any material functioning
can have any bearing on the other side of the chasm.
And if you tried to live completely on the other side of the chasm, then the less attention that you
give to the demands of your body, the freer you are to give all of yourself to the other side so that
you can either get a libertinism out of this or an asceticism. And these were the things that were
at work in the background of Augustine's mind.
And then, when he became-- however, when he became a Christian, when he felt that the central
thing about man's existence was the fact that there was at work in the material, in the flesh a
creative and redemptive process.
Not merely that God could not be involved in the world, but that God was at work redeeming the
world through the doctrine and the experience of the incarnation through Jesus Christ. And
therefore, Augustine felt that the thing that was most evil in man was not that he was a victim of
this sort of dichotomy that I'm talking about.
But that he had a will that was in rebellion against the will of God, that God was not merely
creator, some impersonal, creative force moving and brooding over the stuff of life and making
the stuff of life yield more and more forms and shapes and manifestations. No, not that. But God
was a sovereign will, holding in the integrity of his whim all existence. And that the only sin of
which man really was capable was the sin of rebellion against this whim.
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Now the sovereign will, this point of referral, this is the step that Augustine takes in his thought
that becomes the-- how shall I say this? That becomes the rallying point for the decaying,
disintegrating empire. Now, let me just pin that down so you can hold it until next Sunday.
Pitts Theology Library
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Now, when a society begins to break up, when there is no point of referral outside of the
individual or outside of the liberal, political, or social arrangement, when there is no basis for
integrated behavior which the centrality, you see, the political centrality of the Roman Empire
provided for the whole civilized world at that time.
Now, when this fountainhead broke up, when it broke up, this left a vacuum so that there was no
point of referral, nothing that would give to people a basis for integrated behavior. They had no
sense of cohesion externally. And therefore, their sense of inner cohesion began to break up.
And into this vacuum Augustine projects the sovereignty of God. And this is very interesting to
me. This becomes the foundation of what to me in essence was a new faith. Jesus Christ, the
founder, the apostle Paul, the first great, creative interpreter and the mind and the will and the
brooding of Augustine, the architect for 1,000 years.
Suppose in 1917 in Russia, when there was no point, when the central point of referral had
broken up, what the Tsar symbolized was no more. So there was no basis for integrated action
for this vast land and vast people.
Why was it impossible for someone somewhere in the Christian movement to do, at that critical
time, what Augustine did for the collapse of the Roman Empire. Why?
And they had to find a point of referral in a very crude kind of persuasive dialectic. And another
great moment in the destiny of man passed.
What had we learned in the more than 1,000 years of dealing with this specific responsibility that
had been set forth back in the 5th century?
After the war, when the great German nation, loaded with guilt, began to do this with no point of
referral that was prestige-bearing, of prestige-bearing significance to provide a basis for the
integrated behavior of the nation. Why into that vacuum there did not move that which moved
into the vacuum created by the collapse, the formal collapse of the Roman Empire.
But instead, some resurrection of an ancient folk idiom clothed in new form and manifestation
moved through the central dominating spot in the minds of a nation and provided a rallying point
of dignity and meaning and significance for them.
And here we are now. Do you believe that there is, in the grounds and the experience of your
religion, that which is so utterly significant in its transcendence and eminence and redemptive
character as demonstrated in your own life that you feel that it can provide a point of referral on
the horizon that will be redemptive for our society? And give even to America a basis for
integrated behavior?
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So that in the light of it, it can experience, it meaning America, can experience the kind of
redemption that will make it whole in which even here the bruised reed will not be crushed nor
the smoking flak quenched.
Pitts Theology Library
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Or is your personal experience of religion too small that you would not run the risk of giving to it
such a far-reaching assignment? This is the question with which Augustine wrestled. And his
answer was yes, that which moved into my life redeemed my life, made my mind not a seeker
after truth, but put into my mind the kind of quality that enabled me to design truth and to follow
it.
This is of such timeless significance as demonstrated in what I have been through that it can save
not the world, but worlds. And because he felt that way and projected it for 800 years, the
Catholic church moved on the track he laid.
Thou has made us for thyself, he said. And our hearts are restless till they find their rest in thee.
You believe that? I do. I do. I do.
Walk beside us, our father, in the way that we take. And leave us not to the weakness of our
strength or to the strength of our weakness this day and forevermore.
[CHOIR SINGING]
[MUSIC - "BE STILL, MY SOUL"]
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Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts
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1960s
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394-652_A
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Thurman, Howard
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St. Augustine, part 1 (7); St. Augustine, part 2 (8), 1961 Dec 3, 10
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<a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a>
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audio
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<a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a>
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Description
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This sermon is the seventh of nine in a series of sermons given in Marsh Chapel that are titled "The Inward Journey." In this sermon, Thurman explores St. Augustine's biography, specifically speaking to the influence of Manichean Philosophy on Augustine prior to his conversion to Christianity. Thurman notes of the dualistic nature of this philosophy, and the ways in which redemption for both the body and the mind are non-existent in this train of thought. Thurman continues by noting the significance of redemption in Augustine's theological imagination, and appropriates Augustine's construction of redemption towards the political landscape of Germany post World War I.
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1961-12-03
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Description by Dustin Mailman
America
asceticism
be still my soul
biography
body
Carthage
creative energy
discernment
dualism
Germany
interconnectivity
libertinism
Manichean Philosophy
mind
North Africa
prayer
redemption
Roman Empire
sovereignty
World War I