City of God by Augustine - Books XX-XXII

(upbeat music) - Hey everyone, welcome back to the Sea Breeze podcast where we contemplate the Christian classics. That's Shane. - I'm Shane. - I'm Eric. - I have to mix it up. - Yeah, you threw me off. - You're getting too predictable, I know. - I froze up, I started sweating, I didn't know what to do. - I know. - This is our last episode guys of this season, not our last ever, but our last of this season, which is both exciting and sad, because we've had a good run. I think we mentioned the last episode, it's been about a year. We've been working on this project, which is more our fault, the book is actually not that long that it needed a year. - But it is a long book too. - It was a long book, but it's been really fun doing this podcast. I hope you guys have enjoyed it. I've had a great time. - Me too, Shane. - I know, as well. - It's been great. - Yeah, it's been a great book and it's been fun to discuss. But yeah, if this is your first episode, you probably should go back to previous ones, but. - Yeah, you have turned the wrong way. - You have turned the wrong way. This is episode eight, eight of eight for this book for this season. But yeah, we're reading these old books to learn, what do these old people have to say? That can be really helpful for today. What are our blind spots that we're missing? What insights can they bring? And we've seen they have a lot that they can bring. So. - What's up in? - It's the last one, which you just hop in. So the last three books of this work by Augustin and it was just briefly top level. There's gonna be two books on sort of God's judgment and then a book on the joy of Heaven. So basically he's talking about Heaven and Hell at the very end. And now you might think, you know, Augustine, he's been really technical this whole time. Now we'll get to the end and he'll just talk about how great Heaven is. - That's what I thought. - That's what I thought too. - Nope. - No. Even up to like the second to last page, he's like refuting marrow. - Yeah, he's talking about how Plato still has issues with like material bodies and Heaven and. Come on, man. - Maybe the last two paragraphs he doesn't. But maybe the third to last he does. So. - Yeah, probably. - It's kind of sad. But anyways, we'll get to that. We'll get to that. Let's start with maybe a little less fun. But yeah, books 20 and 21, he talks about God's judgment and you know how this is clearly taught in scripture that there is a last judgment. He explains why Jesus is going to be that judge on the last day. So this final judgment is to come. Christ will be the judge. And yeah, that there should be a penalty for what people have done that is wrong. There should be a reward for what people have done is right. And yeah, so that's just what he's talking about here. My book actually skipped a lot of these chapters. I got the-- - I'm not surprised. Yeah. One where they kind of technical. - I was reading it and I was like, Eric's book is probably skipping a lot of these. - He's just kidding for the-- - And then I skipped them. - Okay. - Yeah, it's like a lot of, well, he spends a lot of time going through first the New Testament and then the Old Testament, just showing the multitude of quotes and verses and texts, saying explicitly that there will be a final judgment and it will be God doing it. And so it's, you know, in my case, I read a couple of those and I was like, all right, I'm convinced and then he keep, there's like 20 more. - Okay. - And I'm like, okay, he's just got to make sure that he cover all the bases. - Well, yeah, much like today, he mentions that many people back then deny the truth of an eternal punishment in some sort of progressive Christian circles that's still popular today. But yeah, if you read, Augustine, if you read any of the New Testament, it's really hard to get around that there's gonna be a punishment. And he actually said, some people have a harder time believing there's an endless torment than that there will be an endless bliss for people. - I think, yeah, he just kind of talks about how the word God uses for how eternal heaven is, the same word he uses for how eternal hell is. And so to say that one is not the same length, it's just, it's really difficult to be able to say that. - Yeah, I think there are a lot of ideas that he mentions, which he is trying to refute that, you know, depending on how you lived or like if you were baptized, but then you live unrighteously if you were in the church, like in that community, but you're living unrighteously or you're both, or you know, all these different cases or categories that a person might fall into. There was the idea that, oh, well, this category of person would be punished for this long and then enter into eternal paradise. Others would undergo some kind of purgatoryal experience for some amount of time and then go to heaven to eternal paradise. Others would, like there were other beliefs that everyone would eventually leave hell and like it wouldn't be eternal for anyone. There were even ideas that like the devil and the fallen angels would, it wouldn't be eternal, but they would eventually come and join us and blessed paradise in God's presence, which was weird. It's like, oh, you're the one who was attempting me all this stuff. So he's basically like arguing against all of that, saying no, the one, if one is, if a person is thrown into the like a fire at the final judgment, they will be there forever, no exceptions. And those who enter into eternal paradise will remain there forever, no exceptions. - Right, right, if you want the security and blessings of eternal happiness, you also have to have the, if you will, the finality of eternal judgment. - Yeah. And yeah, he even talks about, he talks about like the goal of escaping hell and going to heaven. That's not actually a bad thing. He's like, that's a very noble pursuit we should all do that. - It's natural to, just as it's natural for humans to want to be happy, it's natural for them to have eternal paradise. - Right. And I even think about with the rich young ruler in the gospels, his question is, how can I go to heaven? - Yeah. - That's a great question. And sadly, I think, and I don't think that's something people really ask today. Right, it's just not thought about or it's not believed, but just like the guy asked, how can I go to heaven? Jesus seemed to be happy with that question. So that's a great question we all should be asking. - I mean, while would Jesus and the rest of the scriptures spend so much time describing how horrible it would be. - Right. - Right. - You're supposed to, that is supposed to be scary. It is supposed to be terrifying. It is supposed to wake us up. From if you're living a life apart from Jesus, then it should wake you up and to ask, like, "Wait, I don't want that that's scary. I need to find out the where salvation." - Right, right. And reading this section I found, it is it's very sobering and it's 10, and rightly so that I think Jesus uses scary language to for a reason. - Yeah, for sure. - And yeah, I think a few things that are really so important with this discussion is, as Christians, we believe we're going to heaven not because we live better than the guy next to us, but because of Jesus's grace. And I think even that's really important. Like Jesus in dying for us and rising from the dead, he did a lot of things. He got us relationship with God, it got us joy, it got us, you know, this future sanctification that we're working towards, we've got us a new family with people, it brought us a lot of things. But we can never forget, it didn't know less than rescue us from hell. - Yeah. - It did a lot of things and that we should probably never forget that because when you do reflect on this, when you do reflect on how rightly we deserve this punishment. - Yeah. - And that Jesus took us out of that, it is very worshipful. - Right. - And so, yeah, we should remember all the things Jesus has done for us, but we really never, never, never should lose sight of this particular blessing that we received from him. And I think a lot of the old hymns that we sing, they capture that more. Oh, there's one I was just thinking about, can't quite the hellbound man, that might be a new, a new modern one. - I don't know, modern one. - And that's something in the song. But it's basically the Jesus rescue, the hellbound man. That's stuff that kind of idea is it came out more in old hymns, or you just don't sing about anymore. - Right. - Which I think, again, we're kind of missing out. - Yeah. - We should not be, and most people agree out of another thing I want to say is, you should think about hell, but really not too much. Because there's been, I know Francis Chan wrote a book about it recently, and I guess he kind of went crazy after for a little while. Even John Piper, who is as tough as they get, has said, you really shouldn't meditate on hell too long. You kind of would go crazy. So there's a right amount to meditate on it. You probably don't want to be thinking about this day and night, or you will probably go crazy. One of the things, just one more thing on this that I have is there's one of the views of hell that he's arguing against here is annihilationism, which there are Orthodox Christians today who believe this. And basically that says that the damned are kind of annihilated. - Right, destroyed by the fire. - Yeah, cease to exist, whatever that means. And there is text that sort of un-credits to this. There's a certain finality to the eternal punishment. - Yeah, so that's kind of like it's taken care of. The evil is taken care of now by being thrown into the fire. - Exactly, and it's destroyed, 'cause what happens, if you go into a fire, you're gonna die. That seems pretty final, right? So there are, again, there's Orthodox Christians. I know John Stott, who's a pretty well known, he was an annihilationist. But Augustine refutes that, I would agree with him. I don't think it holds up to scripture quite as well. - Too many explicit statements from Jesus himself saying that day and night, eternal, never ending, everlasting, too many explicit words that it will be eternal torment. - Right, the one that those, yes, I totally agree. The one that really stuck out to me was when he's talking about Judas, and he says, basically to Judas, it would be better if you'd never been born. Which implied, okay, if annihilation is not true, then the before birth state and after death state should be pretty comparable, right? Before we were born, we didn't exist, and we didn't feel pain or anything. So after we died, we just disappeared. That would be pretty comparable. But Jesus is saying, it would be better if you weren't born, implying where you're going to next is worse than what happened before you born. So again, I don't think this is necessary. The belief that there is a hell is definitely a first tier issue as a Christian, you have to believe that. An annihilationism is probably second tier. I don't think there's that strong evidence for, I have some friends I know who disagree with me. Hopefully, maybe he's listening to podcasts. But there's also the, I mean, I think C.S. Lewis, he may be somewhat of an annihilationist. - Really? - And I would, I think. - There's different flavors of it. - Yeah, and it's more fluid. Like there is a certain ambiguity about hell, and what exactly it's like. Because I think similar to Eternal Paradise, you can't quite imagine it like right now, like not fully. And he does make some interesting points, which I do agree with that. - C.S. Lewis? - Yeah, and I've heard this from Tim McEy as well. I mean, these are the two guys that I listen to most. - What does Tim McEy do? - Yeah, so let me tell you. So I think, so it's more on, yeah. - Tim McEy is the guy who runs the Bible project if we haven't mentioned it. - Yeah, so they, yeah, they're Bible project videos. And I listen to the podcast a lot. I really enjoy, I like his theology a lot on the scriptures and everything. But anyway, so they both make similar points that there are like different images or themes that are given in the Bible about what hell is and what it will be like. So on one hand, you have fire. On another hand, you have like this idea of finality, which I think is why people are sometimes an eyelationist. And then there's the third, which is this idea that it's like an outer darkness. So instead of, you know, in the Augustan talks about this here too, that instead of entering the joy of the Lord and paradise, you're being cast out of the inner circle of things. - Right, it's an exclusion kind of thing, a darkness instead of the light. And so Tim McEy makes a point at some point in some of his content somewhere that, you know, at one point it says there's fire. And at another point it says it's outer darkness. Well, fire emits light. So which is it? And you know, it's like, well, you know, okay, it's not like there could be dark fire. There could be something, I don't know, maybe it's a dim. But the point he makes is that these are, he says these are metaphors. It's not literal fire, perhaps, because literal fire that we know emits light. And maybe it's not literal darkness. Maybe it's a spiritual thing that, like we can't quite imagine. But that doesn't mean that it's gonna be better than those things. That's the important point to remember is that if Jesus is calling it fire, it's as bad as fire. - It's more likely worse. - You're right, right, yeah. - Right. - If he's having to use these metaphors to describe it because we can't imagine the real thing, the real thing is probably more terrifying, more horrible. So the point is that, yeah, like we don't know literally what that experience would be and hopefully we don't, you know, need to. But it's, yeah, it's a horrible place. There is torment. It is eternal. It is dark. It is like in the sense of what dark is, right? Like it's your excluded, your, you know, all these things. - Right. - That's how I tend to think about it, which I think is shaped in particular by Lewis and Matthew. - I think I thought Matthew was an eyelashes. - Mm-hmm. - Oh. - No, they're not. - I think he respects the scriptures too much to. - Okay. - Well, again, there's an eyelashes who would say it's from the scriptures. - Yeah, yeah. - Sure. But I think an interesting point that he talks about, which kind of leads into a different, slight pivot is, there's this idea of, okay, how can, how can this like a body be endlessly tormented and yet not consumed? - Yeah. - I mean, that's a totally fair question. Like that doesn't make sense. How could you be in a like a fire or not? Burn out, basically. - This, this is by the way an example of some of the questions that Augustine gets into, like philosophically, which just never bother me. But it seems like it was like a big obstacle for people. - Well, this is, no, this is something people in eyelashes would bring up. Okay. - How can something, so maybe it might just fire? - I thought this was a little more interesting for this one, but there's a lot that he does bring up that I would agree. - Okay. - That are like, yeah, who thought of that? - Yeah. I mean, I, okay, just like, what might go to the reason I don't struggle with it is because like, I mean, I trust the scriptures for, you know, the multitude of other reasons. And so I trust what God says. And if he says it's possible, I trust there's a way. - Right. - And I don't know. - And Augustine's like going down by the details. - Yeah. - Actually, and this one not so much. So his main point is, there's so many wonders around us that prove God can basically do what he likes. - Yeah. - But what he says is, and this is so true, we see them every day and they kind of lose their awe. - Yeah. - And so this quote he has, which I like, he says, "Familiarity soon saps the stirrings of excitement." You know, the first time you get on an airplane, your mind should be and is blown. This huge hunk of metal is going 500 miles an hour, 30,000 feet in the air. Like, how do those things fly? If you look at a big jet, how does that thing get in the air? It's amazing. And then you fly enough times and then you just get annoyed, the snacks aren't good. Right? That's amazing that an airplane can get in the air. "Familiarity soon saps the stirrings of excitement." A little kid is amazed by it and we all should be. And there's a million examples. He talks about magnets. Magnets are amazing. It's invisible forces are attracting. - Yeah, I understand them and I still think it's awesome. - That's great. That's good. And that's what should happen. The more we learn, the more we should be amazed, but how often is that not the case? - Sure. - And basically his point is, if God can make all these amazing marvels in nature, he can do whatever he wants. He can make a body that's tormented and not constrained. - Right. - And I just really loved Augustine in this section, particularly I just thought it had this amazing awe of nature. This sort of sense of wonder, which we're both scientists to a degree, we're both happy to study science. But a lot of post-enlightenment ideas, a lot of the science ideas, they really kill all sense of wonder. And sure, we might be able to technically describe how something happens, but that doesn't mean it's any less amazing. That doesn't mean we should be in any less of awe. And so, yeah, I just think, just the view he has is awe, this wonder, is something that we all should, that we all should be trying to stir up. - Yeah. That's something, see a sluice talks about also. - All right, like of course. How, like he talks about quantum mechanics in particular. Which is something that, you know, that was like the fresh news. - I was pretty new. - Stuff in his day, right? But like it explains how, you know, like this table, this wooden table that, you know, Eric and I are looking at and sitting at right now. If you understand it, like if you have the full enlightened theory of it, it's mostly empty space. Right? It's huge empty space between nuclei, protons and neutrons with like electrons that, you know, travel between the atoms to bond the atoms together. But it's mostly empty space. And if you go even further, you know, into the quantum mechanical theory of all of it, it boils down to like a bunch of math equations. Like when you're trying to understand, like peel back all the layers of the onion of abstraction to like what is reality of this physical object. You find that, well, really the most true reality of this physical object is a bunch of mathematical equations like representing it. You lose the wonder of the thing. - Right. - So I mentioned that just to kind of agree with your point that yeah, the enlightenment kind of gets in the way of these things are really, right? I still think science is valuable. - Right, but we both do, we both think it's valuable to learn how things work. But there has to be that awe that this is how God designed the world of this creation. And what I think is funny too is people today, you know, it's like, oh, we don't maybe like the idea God can do as he wishes. Maybe we don't like the idea. There's a God, maybe we don't like the idea that there's all this different stuff. And yet people talk about things like, I don't know, the multiverse. (laughing) Like it's a totally reasonable thing. No, no, no, there can't be a creator God. But I think there could be an infinite number of universes that are simultaneously-- - With different rules of physics. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, how is that any more or less believable? What I'm saying, it's just crazy. - I think like saying the multiverse exists is like saying that like just anything could be-- - Right. But if you, if I said it came into an academic room and said, I think the multiverse is legit. - People look, oh yes, yes, very smart. - If I said, I think a God could raise someone from the dead. - Oh, that's a pretty, that's a little ridiculous. (laughing) - So let's just be consistent. I think that's the goal. So that's mostly what I have from this first part on God's judgment. Again, it's a weighty topic. It needs to be reflected on. It should be a motivation for missions and evangelism. It should be a motivation for praise of what Jesus has done for us. But yeah, it needs to be done in the right way. So I don't know if you had any other-- - Is that your last thought on judgment or like judgment and hell? - Yeah, that's what I had more for mostly. - Both, okay. - I think, yeah, I wanted to mention one of the themes I noticed for the discussion on hell, eternal like torment is, you know, he talks about how paradise is where final peace will be obtained, which is like where things are ordered together properly. It's the lack of conflicting tension. - War, yeah, war, civil war, like you said earlier. And he says that hell is the opposite. It's where everything's in tension and conflicting. So for example, he says, sorry, just pulling up my notes here. - No, you're good, yeah, it's going back to the idea of this peace and this order that if heaven is peace and peace equals order, then hell is obviously not gonna have peace and then there won't be order, which is kind of weird, right? A perpetual state of disorder. That's kind of hard to even think about, but also it makes sense that it would mark the judgment that God has reserved. And rightly reserved for all of us. So yeah, he's definitely tying in these ideas of peace and how peace is ordered and how that's really what we're striving after and that there's a peace in heaven that's unfathomable now, which means think about the disorder that will be in hell as equally unfathomable. You know, I actually couldn't find it in my notes, but I appreciate you stalling anyway. - I was stalling so hard for you, Shane. I thought I was doing a nice job. - I was trying to just find where I noted down like the more explicit, like the verbatim, what he says. But basically, he says, the body is at in conflict at war because it's being subjected to pains. And so it's not at peace. The soul is also not at peace. There's still warring, like the soul hasn't been, I think he says it's at war with virtue maybe or it's not properly subjected to reason. And so the fallen, it's the same case of the fallen man. He's not at peace because his reason or soul is not subjected to virtue and not subjected to obedience to God. And so that's still the case. And so basically it's the supreme evil. It's the extreme case of being at civil war, being at war, like in your body, in your soul or everything. - Right, and yeah, in one of the ways Jesus describes the people in hell is, there's like a gnashing of teeth. And you can kind of just, there's just bitterness and there's just this anger at probably God and others in yourself. That's again, that's the idea of warfare, if you will, in civil war. - Jesus Lewis captures it really well in the great divorce. He's like, he's in this kind of purgatory old place. And it's a fictional work, it's not what he literally believes. But it's like there's a case where he's hearing some other dude who was in purgatory, telling him about how some people found Napoleon at one point, Napoleon Bonaparte. And he was just like in the house, like just wandering, pacing back and forth like for like thousands of years or something, like in their purgatory time or something, just like angry and like gnashing his teeth about how the battle went wrong and like all these things. He's just at war in his soul still. - Yeah. - It's like this idea that he portrays in the book that the gates of hell are shut from the inside. It's like still this just intense rebellion to God, inability to repent and just the soul is at chaos still. - I don't personally agree with the language of shut from the inside, but I get what he's getting at. It's not like these people are like, oh, I really should have repented and I wish I did. - Sure. - There's this, there's no heart still, like yeah, yeah. - National teeth weeping. - Yeah, exactly, yeah. - Right. So yeah, well to pivot to the very last part of the book, it's titled The Eternal Bliss of the City of God. I just wanted to read the first paragraph of this 'cause I thought it really was really beautiful. So this is Augustine says, as I mentioned in the preceding book, the present one is to be the last of the whole work. We made it guys, the last of the whole work. And it's to deal with the eternal blessedness of the city of God. The word eternal as he or used means much more than any period however long of centuries upon centuries, which ultimately must have an end. It means everlasting in the sense of the text which runs of his kingdom there shall be no end. It does not mean the kind of apparent perpetuity produced by successive generations which come and go by births and deaths. Such a perpetuity is merely perennial like the color of an evergreen that seems to continue forever because the new leaves, sprouting while the old ones wither and fall maintain an unchanging density of foliage. On the contrary, in the eternal city of God, each and all of the citizens are personally immortal with an immortality which the holy angel never lost and which even human beings can come to share. This is to be achieved by the supreme omnipotence of the creator, the founder of the city. It is a realization which God who cannot but keep his word has promised. And he has given abundant pledges of its fulfillment in the promises which he has already kept. And then the uncovenant blessings which he has already bestowed. And that's just the setup for this last part. So let's jump right into it. Shane, you've been like chomping at the bit to get back to this. You said in the last episode, there are all these different things you wanted to get back to. So you should have the first word. Yes. Well, it's been some time. And all the specifics escaped me. But I have topics to get into. OK, first one that I just want to mention really briefly. I was so excited to get to this book. And there's even like different sections entitled, of the employment of the saints in heaven. Like, what are you going to do day to day? And then he just doesn't get into it. He just talks about like, still these issues is like-- I had a issue with Vero still. I'm just trying to-- Exactly. It's like, how can a material body exist in a material heaven? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He talks about the mechanics of, how will we see God? Will it be a visible sight or spiritual sight? It will be a spiritual sight. Let me tell you. We'll just know how God is working in all things around us. And oh, man, yeah, I agree. That was kind of frustrating. I was like, oh, we're just going to get the good stuff. And then he just gets a little pedantic. But anyway, it still is really good. There's still a lot of really good stuff from this section. One of the things I liked-- this is, I thought, a really cool example. He says, so he talks about how the sin and misery of this life actually are a proof for how we were made to be good. The example he used are like, it's blindness is bad. And because blindness is bad, it proves its sight is good. That there's all these things that are bad, which if something's bad, that proves that there's something good. And he also talks about, which is a common thing people bring up. It's like, why did God let all this evil happen? And what he argues, which I think makes sense, is that God let evil happen. He saw that his character could shine even brighter with this evil than if it had never happened at all. That we believe that God's main goal and purpose is to glorify himself and that he believe that would be more possible by letting this evil happen that he can shine bright against the backdrop. So yeah, just really cool about how even bad things can sort of prove there's good stuff. Having experienced the consequences of sin will know God's mercy all the more. Well said. He even talks about how it makes sense that there are many more who will suffer in eternal hell than those who will experience eternal paradise because we'll see the just punishment, which we all will do, every one of us deserve to be sent to eternal hell. But what grace that didn't have to happen to us. And this was one of the thoughts from the previous I said. But I often will think about this. And I think it's healthy for us all to do it. To think about what if I never heard the gospel? What if God didn't choose me? What if I never had the opportunity to believe or I remained stubborn and never submitted myself to Jesus? What grace and mercy and joy and good fortune upon me that I get to be one of the saints in paradise? Like it could be otherwise. And yeah, I think we just have to remember that. And that's what leads us to praise God. We shouldn't. We talked about familiarity. What was the phrase? - Familiarity, saps wonder. - Saps wonder. Yes. Let's not become so familiar with the fact that, oh, I'm one of the same, I'm a Christian blah, blah, blah. - It's a blow your mind. - Yeah. Let that not sap the wonder that I have been saved from eternal torment for the sins that I have committed. - We could just enter right there. That's so good. - We could, but we have to get into how the details of what each of our bodies will be like. - My bad, you're right. - How we won't have, we won't lose even a single hair on our head. But those who, he says those, I don't remember the word he uses, like those who are oversized. - Oh yeah. - Or have deformities or so on. Like say you have a tumor or something. Like yeah, the excesses will be removed. But not in a way so as to degrade the whole. But rather to make the body more whole something. - There we go, that's right. Yeah, another thing that's surprising about this section is again, it's titled the Eternal Listen City. We've got, he spends a lot of time talking about the resurrection and all these arguments in favor, the resurrection. One of which being that these unscoulded, unlearned, fishermen proclaim this message actually to great results. And the fact that the apostles were nobodies, this actually further confirms the message. He argues it would be more incredible if the resurrection wasn't true, given how many people believed it. He said there's all these, all these nobodies. I mean, the 12 apostles are the 12 disciples and the 12 apostles, we venerate now, we love them. And we think they're amazing. We forget. Some people think they were 15, 16, just dudes, fishermen, which is like, you know, maybe a mechanic, equivalent. I don't know, just regular blue collar jobs. They were going around showing up the most learned Pharisees of their day, their speech, and they were speaking with power. That's pointing to this resurrection. He says it would be more incredible if they were able to do that in the resurrection wasn't true. He's pointing to all these amazing miracles. And he talks about how every miracle that happens is supposed to point people to Christ's resurrection. And now, you know, this gets into a very hot button topic today in the Christian world with some more of our Pentecostal charismatic friends, or some of the more cessationists, maybe Baptist types. I mean, we can get into long discussion of this. We want, I don't think either of us care to. I think we both believe that God can and still does do miracles today. Yeah, but maybe not on command or quite like it was in Acts. Yeah. What Augustine says on that, 'cause even in his day, there's the same argument that like, oh well, why don't we see them anymore? In the scriptures, it seemed like they were happening not stop. He mentions the shadow of the apostles falling along the sick that were lined up in the streets so that they would be healed. And like that was happening. So why don't we see it today? And Augustine argues, well, it does. We just, it might not be as widespread announced to everyone or like less people see it. Or, I mean, there's also the really good point that at the time of the New Testament, I mean, the king was coming. Right, he was coming and arriving to his kingdom to restore things and to save humanity and all these things. It makes sense that there would be a very large concentration, the largest concentration of miraculous happenings, healings and casting out demons and all these things. In this period of time. Coronation, yeah. Yeah, like as salvation is being announced, pointing to Jesus as the Messiah, pointing to his resurrection as being authentic. So it makes sense. I agree, I agree. And I think that it's the same thing today. I think there are miracles happening. You can hear lots of stories of, and you know, I think there certainly are some that are not authentic. I've seen stuff like that myself, it's goofy. And it's made me skeptical. Right. Right, I think that's a sad thing. Sure. Is that there's people going too far, and then it makes someone wants to throw out all miracles, but that's a total disservice to who God is. Agreed. I wanted to share, he lists a bunch of these miracles that he either firsthand witnessed or had been tangential to or adjacent to. I just wanted to share one of them because I thought it was just really beautiful and powerful. Well, I say beautiful. I guess some of the details are, but the general story is we have a very mature audience. So they will have no issue. Maybe a parent that can't get plastic. Exactly. So we're going to mute Shane for this section. But Augustin, so he has this friend, and he basically has, I guess it's like a sister something. It's maybe a tumor. It wasn't exactly there. It's like a sister tumor. And the surgeons of the day they go in and they kind of cut them up, and they get most of it healed. And you know, back then, they didn't have general anesthesia, obviously. So it's very painful. Is it a very, very painful area of his body? And they got it part of it. But there's other doctorates that there's no way you're going to get this with one surgery. You're going to need another surgery. The surgeons are like, no, we can do it. So they do the surgery. The guy says it's like basically the worst experience of his life he never wants to. And then fast forward a few days, weeks, I forget. And basically it's not healed. Just like the first doctor said, there's going to need to be another surgery. The surgeons come in and say, yeah, there's something wrong. We're going to need to do a surgery. And they've even bringing the most famous surgeons from the area-- Like travels in. Yeah. And the surgeons were like so funny. He's like, they were so impressed with the first surgeon's job that they had to let them do it again. They had to finish their amazing work. That surgery was an art to them, which was kind of funny. But this guy is just destroyed because like he said, the pain he experienced, the pain that he knew he was going to have to experience on another surgery, he was just crushed. And so the night before his surgery is due, because they have to do another surgery, they get the whole church together. And they just pray like crazy. They said the guy was just on his face, prostrate, just lying there, just yelling to God, basically. To the point where Augustine himself says, I wasn't even able to pray in that time. Yeah. Other than like, God, if you don't hear his prayers, that line I thought was so powerful. He says, God, if you don't hear this prayer, what prayer do you hear? Yeah. And it's like, whoa. First of all, I thought to me, it was like, this is what prayer is. We should be praying like this too. Not that we're doing a twist, God's arm, but this is desperation prayer. But they were up all night praying to God. Augustine says, if you don't answer this, what do you answer? And the next day, the surgeons go in to do the surgery, and he's totally healed. And he said they were joysing the crying. Augustine, I think, says, I won't even write it down. I'll just let you imagine how amazing it was. I think I was like tearing up. It was just so beautiful in this celebration and praising God for healing the man. And yeah, just an amazing testament to God's power to how prayer works. And I just love their desperate prayer and then the joy in giving God all the credit after he gets healed. It was just so powerful. So I just love that story. And again, all these miracles that happen, he wants to point to the resurrection and ascension of Christ. So after this, again, you'd think, oh, he's going to talk about heaven, but not quite yet. Yeah, he kind of talks again more about how bad things are going to prepare us for good things. He talks about how one of the faults of the curse is laziness based on becomes easy diligence, becomes hard work. We need to dispel our ignorance and bridal or untamed desires. So that's kind of one of the goals of these life. He lists all these other terrible things, sickness, natural disasters. And he says that God uses these things to show how bad this life is and make us long for eternity. And then he says, again, this is where he maybe gets most depressing. So even the best things in this life are completely corrupted. He says, take sleep. Beautiful. You get to rest. Fill those nightmares. Even the best things in this life have been corrupted. Why, as Paul says, it is not worth comparing with the eternal weight of glory that is to come. That we should look at the misery around us and just long for how great heaven will be. And let's not forget that Christ saves us from passing from one miserable life to an even more miserable life. That this life is miserable. But as we mentioned, hell, it will be far more miserable. And so praise Jesus that we can pass from a miserable life to a good one. Yeah. He talks about how even children, when they enter in the world, when they're born, they enter with tears. Instead of entering into the creation, if there was no fall, imagine being Adam or Eve and waking up in that moment and paradise, it's like, oh, what wonder at joy? I get to exist. And I experience joy and peace and all these good things. And just marvel at it all. But in this fallen world, every time someone is born, and they come in with tears. And he gives some quote that I did it right down, but about how it's kind of fitting. Because the tears, like, kind of foreshadow what their life is going to look like. Because it's very pessimistic sounding, but it's kind of true. That is true. Compared to the way things were supposed to be. And he talks about how even in the absence of tribulations or particular hardships and so on, we're still constantly be set with temptation. And so even in the greatest deeds, or even the most successful moments of acts of righteousness, there's still this constant weight and pull of temptation that we have to resist. So there's no peace yet. Right. Yeah, look at the good things. They're really not that good. Look at the bad things. They prove how bad it is. Yeah. I wrote this down. I don't remember how he got to this. But he talks about the kind of the miracle of procreation and how it's really this insane thing that's going on that there's a mingling of this material thing, smirmering an egg, and a soul that God is doing supernaturally in a woman's body, that this wife and this husband who are kind of nothing, God's doing all the work. All this is in God's hands, yet they're a part of it. And yeah, it's literally-- I was thinking about this. I was at a wedding recently, probably weekend. We weren't recording. And the pastor, he stopped from me. He's like, guys, don't miss this. In this moment, God is doing something supernatural. This husband and wife, they're not just married in front of the law now. God is literally making them one person. There's a supernatural reality going on right now. And I think it's the same thing. We're not just creating a new person to do whatever. It's like, there is a supernatural reality. God is mingling a material body with a soul. Yeah. He's creating a soul. That is amazing. And yeah, mingling it together into a body. Right. All his days, this child's days, are already laid out. And it's just really beautiful. And it is a miracle. Again, just because there's been 8 billion births recently, doesn't mean that it's any more less amazing. And this kind of leads him into more worship. He goes-- he's talked about how all these negative things which are true. But then he talks about, man has been given this amazing mind, capable of art and invention and creativity. And then he goes on to worship God through the awe of the human body, all the different forms and functions of the body. And the more we learn about this, the more we can bring glory to God. Oh, what does the pancreas do? What does the liver do? And all these things. And he's just totally worshiping God. Yeah, I think just taking a moment to pause and being off of God's creation. Yeah, because he was talking about all this negative, the suffering and the lack of peace. And then he does get into the beauty of the world even now. There is beauty intermingled with grief. And pain and suffering. And it reminds me of-- Jesus talking about the final judgment will separate the wheat and the chaff, the sheep and the goats, the goat and the bad. I think there's a parallel here that the mingling of peace and joy and beauty in this world-- it's intermingled with suffering and pain. Those will eventually be separated into eternal paradise and eternal hell and us humans who are eternal, forever be conscious and will always exist. We enter into one of these two extremes. And this is the time to pick one. Right. Exactly. As if you want to think about how amazing these things are for this miserable life, how much more amazing will they be in the absence of all the negative things? Exactly. And the other case-- The good will be better than it ever was. The battle will be completely gone. But on the other hand, if we don't submit to Jesus, if we don't follow him, if we choose our own path, choose a rebellion, then we get all those bad minus-- to an extreme that we can't imagine, and minus all the good. Right. So we have to remember eternity. We have to keep it in perspective. Yeah. Yeah, amen. And I think just as we're going about our day, we're outside just being an off of what God has done. I forgot if I mentioned this, but there was one time I was just thinking about trees. Just like, you know, that's a simple thing. I do that. Thank you. Sometimes. We think you're trying to make you feel better. Yeah, thank you. If you think about trees, they have so many amazing functions. They provide shade. They provide wood, which we need. They are nature's air purifier, taking out the carbon dioxide, putting in the oxygen. They provide delicious maple syrup and honey. They provide fruit. They provide a place for birds to rest. Trees do all these amazing things. God just thought up trees. Someone came up with it, and sides him, is all these functions. And that's just like, they have beautiful colors right now. It's October. So I think when we just stop and look at, even with creation, it's just there's so much to be an off. There's so much to worship God for. Good point. So let's jump into the very last part, which is when he finally, more or less, talks about heaven. And I'll just start with this quote, because this is hilarious. He says, "To tell the truth, I have no real notion of what eternal life will be like. For the simple reason, that I know of no sensible experience to which it can be related." So he's going to talk about eternity. And at the same time, he has no notion of what it will be like. But one of the big things, seeing God, that will be one of the greatest gifts. Jesus says in the Beatitudes, "Blessed of the pure and high for they shall see God." In the Old Testament, seeing God would have killed you. And now, this great joy that we'll get. To see Him. We get to see Jesus as He truly is and be made like Him. Exactly. With perfect bodies. Yep. Yeah, all of our bodies will be perfect. They'll be perfect relationship between people. Another thing he hits on a lot is how we'll know it's eternal and how we'll know we can't lose it. So Adam and Eve and the original angels, they had a paradise to a sense. But somehow they had to have known that they could have lost it because they did. We in heaven will have no chance of losing basically amazing paradise. And we'll be aware of that. And that will cause us to have even more joy as well as this. Yeah. Yeah, we'll be truly free. And yet we'll have no chance nor desire to sin. I think that was cool. That was interesting. There's this deep, this freedom will mean the inability to sin. Yeah. And he said, whereas before in the beginning, it was there is freedom to choose whether to obey God or to choose our own way to seek the knowledge of good and evil apart from him. But now there's freedom to not sin because there's no more temptation to sin. There's freedom to do good and trust God and obey Him and seek Him and marvel at Him and contemplate Him for eternity. Right. Right. So yeah, he just goes into how great it'll be, how marvelous it'll be, how we will remember the miseries from Earth. But he says it'll be merely intellectual. It will cause us no physical pain. It's like a doctor who understands this person has a disease. But they don't feel that disease. It'll be the same. We'll remember all the trials and hardships. It'll be so remote and distant. The memory of it, the experience of it that we had in this life will be distant as if it never happened. Right. Right. So yeah, I thought it was very encouraging, very encouraging section. And yeah, as we wrap up this book in this podcast, I just thought it'd be fun to read the very last little bit that Augustine writes. So this is the very last wrap of the whole book. He says, I am done. With God's help, I have kept my promise. This I think is all that I promise to do when I begin this huge work. It's very self-aware. From all who think that I've said either too little or too much, I beg pardon. And those who are satisfied, I ask not to thank me, but to join me in rejoicing and in thanking God. Amen. I forgive you. I guess, don't for the too many words too many. Too little. I joke too many. He's said for who said he does have other books too little or too much too many in this case too many. All right, Shane will. No, it's good. It's good. I did. I finished the book and I jokingly I thought to myself like, okay, I'm tempted to say one of these categories. You fell into it and I forgive you. But I do praise God for this work and all the things that Augustine taught us over the past year. Yeah, any kind of big summary points you'd want to remember. When you think about five years from now on this book, what do you think? Yeah, I think, man, the, I think this book has helped me a lot to kind of see the, you know, he talks about this idea of ultimate, like, like the purpose of life and like, you know, and he, he kind of shows how the, yeah, the ultimate purpose is, you know, the good life that he talks about. And yeah, that's, that's good. It's, it reminded me and even most recently, like I'm talking about doing good to like, your, your family, like as a husband, loving and serving your wife and caring for her, your, your children, your family, those in the church, those outside the church, doing good to them, keeping God's commandments. This is the whole duty of man. This is kind of the good life. This is where the joy is at. This idea of Christian hedonism, like you said, I think he did believe that though recognizing that, you know, it's, it's still, it's hard to enjoy God fully in this life when we're set with temptation, our minds, like we still are corrupted. We still have sin that entangles and, and clings on, and that we have to pray every day to forgive our debts. But yeah, just remembering what the good life is and that if, if I live that way, it's not a wasted life. And I'm preparing for eternity, which is where things will really begin. Yeah. Dang. It might be pretty similar, just this idea that he has that, yeah, there is this ultimate good and, and we're going to reach it and happen. I think taking our eyes off this life and thinking in the short 70, 80 years, maybe we get in on to the eternal life that is to come and the joy that will be. I think that was probably my big takeaway. He just hit on that so much. Yeah. That idea. So yeah, it's kind of sad to think about, we're all done. It's been, it's been really fun to read. Yeah. And I'm saying that every time you read it, you basically want to take a note on every paragraph. Yeah, everything you need to read, everything he writes is just so amazing and profound. It was really, it was truly special to read and I'm really glad we did. Yeah. Agreed. Yeah, so just a brief update for the fans that are hopefully still listening. So we finished this book. Shane and I are going to take some time apart, I guess. That sounds really dramatic, but yeah, we just got busy things coming up. So yeah, the next thing that we'll do, I'm going to host by myself a special one episode on Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. So that was in the 1940s, a very different time period and extremely practical. So this book was obviously beautiful, but it was obviously a little high level. So Life Together by Bonhoeffer is extremely practical. I think it'll be a lot of fun. I'm almost done reading it. So I'm excited to talk on that. And then after that, the next book that I'll be covering is Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton, which I'm excited to read. That was also written in the early 1900s. So Shane might make a guest appearance here or there, but for now we will be a solo podcast. So that'll be sad. I'll be listening. That's good. You can boost our stats. So it's great. Yeah, we just thank you guys for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this season. Yeah, be on the lookout for the new episodes. There's next books coming up. And yeah, as Augustine said, if you enjoyed this podcast, be sure to join us. [Music]