A Question of Destiny

An observation by a blogger:

Augustine’s City of God against the Pagans is a massive compilation of twenty-two volumes attempting to shift the Roman empire’s cyclical and pagan interpretation of history and government to a linear interpretation based upon the Christian theology and anthropology. While the tome addresses much more than political science issues, it lays a foundation for centuries of later political thought.

Among the major concepts that form this foundation is Augustine’s formulation of the summum bonum or Supreme Good, a formulation that expands upon previous classical thinkers like Plato and that shapes subsequent political discourse by directing it toward its appropriate end. Eternal life is the Supreme Good, and eternal death the Supreme Evil, and that [in order] to achieve the one and avoid the other, we must live rightly.” (City of God, XIX.4).

In other places he argues that God is that Good by which all things are made good and is that good which we desire for its own sake. Augustine distinguishes between the Good, or God, and the highest and best human good, which is sometimes described as clinging to God, as seeking God, or that life of perfect peace and fellowship with God. He recognizes, as does Plato, that there is a difference between the Good Itself (or Himself) and the highest good of man, which is to commune with, or be in fellowship with, or contemplate the Good. Plato argues that the highest good is to live according to virtue and that the true and highest good is Being and the source of all things. Like Augustine, Plato acknowledged a difference between the Good Itself and the highest good of a man, which is to contemplate the Good.

A question proposed in response:

In light of Romans 8: 29, which reads (as you know) that “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren” do you see an eschatological possibility that the contemplator of the Good will ever merge into the essence of the Good, or is man at best forever destined to contemplate the Good? A supportive parallel to this possibility—if, indeed, it is a possibility— is the Lord’s prayer in John 17:21 that [the disciples may all] be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. Or, are both of these references an express of purpose rather than an ultimate ontological possibility?

To reply click here!