Posted in Christian, The Fathers, tagged Assorted Letters of St. Jerome, St. Jerome on June 25, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
This series of assorted letters by St. Jerome continues, as he keeps giving good advice to his young friend St. Eustochium, a patrician Roman teenager and consecrated virgin. Her mother, St. Paula, was all for her daughter’s calling; her other non-Christian and even Christian family members, not so much.
Letter 22, Part 3
24:53.
Posted in Christian, The Fathers, tagged On Christian Doctrine, scriptural interpretation, St. Augustine, St. Augustine of Hippo on June 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
On Christian Doctrine continues. In this installment, we get some short, easy rules about interpreting specific words and expressions which appear more than once in the Bible. We also learn that it’s safer to interpret a work from passages inside it than by reason.
Now, I know this sounds like “Turn off your brain when [...]
Posted in Christian, The Fathers, tagged On Christian Doctrine, scriptural interpretation, St. Augustine, St. Augustine of Hippo on June 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
On Christian Doctrine continues, with more info on scriptural interpretation for Fun and Profit. In this installment, we learn that if you think the Bible is telling you to do evil things, you’re wrong. Also, that just because they jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge (figuratively speaking) in Old Testament times doesn’t mean you have to [...]
Posted in Christian, The Fathers, tagged letters, St. Eustochium, St. Jerome on June 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
My series of various letters by St. Jerome continues, with more advice to a teenage consecrated virgin. In which St. Jerome tells the kid that it’s great to stay up late (”Watch” means staying awake all night in a vigil – vigilia=watch) and to fall asleep reading! Hey, St. Jerome, tell us to do some [...]
Posted in Christian, The Fathers, tagged On Christian Doctrine, scripture interpretation, St. Augustine, St. Augustine of Hippo on June 16, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
On Christian Doctrine continues, with some general rules on how to tell whether a phrase is figurative, and some explanations for passages that seem disturbing.
Book 3, Chapters 10-15.
16:56.
Posted in Christian, The Fathers, tagged On Christian Doctrine, scripture interpretation, St. Augustine, St. Augustine of Hippo on June 16, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
On Christian Doctrine continues, with explanations of the wretched bondage of not understanding figures of speech as compared to the various wretched bondages to insufficient truth of the Jews and Gentiles, before Christ. I would say that this was too strong a comparison, but I’ve been on the Internet too long.
Book 3, Chapters [...]
Posted in Christian, The Fathers, tagged Assorted Letters of St. Jerome, St. Jerome on June 5, 2009 | 1 Comment »
St. Jerome writes a nice long letter to a rich teenage patrician girl named Eustochium (and a wider audience too) about what she should do and not do in her chosen life as a consecrated virgin, especially since she lives at home in a Roman mansion and not somewhere out in the desert. She’s the [...]
Posted in Christian, The Fathers, tagged Bible, On Christian Doctrine, scripture interpretation, St. Augustine, St. Augustine of Hippo on June 4, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
On Christian Doctrine continues. If you’ve never considered it a feature that that today’s Bibles come with capital and lowercase letters, commas, and periods, this part is guaranteed to make you embarrassing grateful for it.
Book 3, Chapters 1-4.
17:03.
Sorry that I haven’t posted much this week. A lot of life has been happening, I was scatterbrained [...]
Posted in Christian, The Fathers, tagged On Christian Doctrine, St. Augustine, St. Augustine of Hippo, The Fathers on May 28, 2009 | 1 Comment »
On Christian Doctrine continues as St. Augustine advances the old “spoils of the Egyptians” argument, and tells us what attitude to use in studying Scripture.
Next week, we’ll start Book 3!
Book 2, Chapters 39-42.
14:35.
UPDATE: Link fixed. Sigh. This is why I don’t do webpages anymore.
Posted in Christian, The Fathers, tagged On Christian Doctrine, St. Augustine, St. Augustine of Hippo, The Fathers on May 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
On Christian Doctrine continues, and so does St. Augustine’s list of useful studies for Bible study or for Christians. Now he spends time justifying logic and rhetoric.
Book 2, Chapters 31-38.
20:12.
Posted in Christian, The Fathers, tagged On Christian Doctrine, St. Augustine, St. Augustine of Hippo, The Fathers on May 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
On Christian Doctrine continues, as St. Augustine divvies up purely human institutions and learning into what he thinks useful for Christians, or for Bible study, and what is not. (Kinda Plato’s Republic-y, when you think about it.)
Seeing as all that Dan Brown stuff is sure that Christianity hates science, it’s rather amusing to point out [...]
Posted in Christian, The Fathers on May 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
My series of Jerome’s letters continues with another nice letter to Paul of Concordia, an old Christian scholar with an enviable library.
Letter 10
6:04.
Posted in Christian, The Fathers, tagged On Christian Doctrine, scripture interpretation, St. Augustine on May 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
On Christian Doctrine continues with a brief aside on why divination is both foolish and wicked, with some thoughts on astrology in particular. This is set up as an example of pagan knowledge that isn’t really useful to study. The interesting bit is that St. Augustine sees the whole thing as a sort of demonic [...]
Posted in Christian, The Fathers, tagged Assorted Letters of St. Jerome, St. Jerome on May 12, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Assorted Letters by St. Jerome continues, with a letter to three close friends who later became bishops. St. Jerome mentions a sister of his, but we don’t know if that’s in a genetic sense or a Christian one.
Letter 7
11:26.
Posted in Christian, The Fathers, tagged Assorted Letters of St. Jerome, St. Jerome, The Fathers on May 12, 2009 | 1 Comment »
This series of Assorted Letters of St. Jerome continues, with a letter to Jerome’s old buddy Rufinus, who’s in the middle of desert monk territory with St. Melania, a rich Spanish lady who is spending all her money helping out the desert monks and nuns. It talks about a lot of stuff going on, including [...]
