As Augustine put it in a sermon in 404, \u201che took flesh from the lump of our mortality, yes, and he too took to himself the death which was the penalty for sin, but didn\u2019t take the sin; instead with the merciful intention of delivering us from sin, he handed over that flesh of his to death.\u201d God doesn\u2019t abstractly solve a problem; God condescends to inhabit and absorb the mess we\u2019ve made of the world. God \u201chas not abandoned humanity in its mortal condition.\u201d<\/p>\n
This, Augustine encourages his listeners, should serve as a source of hope in the face of fears and sorrows: \u201cSo he handed over this flesh to be slain, so that you wouldn\u2019t be afraid of anything that could happen to your flesh. He showed you, in his resurrection after three days, what you ought to be hoping for at the end of this age. So he is leading you along, because he has become your hope.\u201d<\/p>\n
The appeal here is not to the greater good, the free choice of the will, or the constitutive nothingness of creation that corrodes the good. Augustine the pastor and preacher avoids such abstractions. Instead, he appeals to the mystery at the heart of the Christian faith: a humble God who endured evil in order to overcome it. The point isn\u2019t that God has a plan; the point is that God wins. We shall overcome because of what the Son has undergone in our stead.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t an answer to evil; it is a response. Hope is found not in intellectual mastery but in divine solidarity.<\/p>\n
Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n Saint Augustine, the bishop of Hippo, died aged 76 on August 28, 430 in Hippo, while the Vandals were besieging his Episcopal city. He wrote about 230 books and treatises. More of Saint Augustine’s words survive than those of any other writer of antiquity.https:\/\/t.co\/Yn02yu8tV7<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/pjUHKYdjg5<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Trivia Encyclopedia (@edpearce080759) August 28, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n