The City of God by Augustine - 16 - The Bible Foreshadows the Future
Book Sixteen
Quote
📝 The object of the writer of these sacred books, or rather of the Spirit of God in him, is not only to record the past, but to depict the future, so far as it regards the city of God.
Notes
🔥 Heretics stir up questions, but they create opportunity for instruction and to step up and defend the faith.
🔥 Augustine reads symbolic foreshadowing of Jesus in Noah's sons and the story about when one of them finds him (Noah) drunk. Though he admits that "all will not accept our interpretation." He also says that some things in the Bible aren't significant in and of themselves, but that they help create the framework for what is to come after.
🔥 Noah's sons spread out and become many nations, and some giants are around, too. But then there's the story of the Tower of Babel, which says they all had one language. And then God confused their language. The word Babylon is connected with 'confusion.'
🔥 He returns to some questions about Noah's ark. How is it that animals are found on different islands after the flood? Also some accounts of monstrous, mutant-like men. Were they "sprung from Noah's sons"? Augustine claims he has seen a man with two heads before. And there are hermaphrodites, too.
🔥 He calculates 1072 years between Noah and Abraham. And Hebrew (the language) gets its name from one of Noah's sons, Heber.
🔥 The city of God, where God is revered, is picked up with Abraham. Abraham is like Noah, but in his case the deluge is one of superstition and polytheism. Abraham commits himself to the one true God.
🔥 The Bible's narrative isn't always sequential. Augustine has to do some explaining with the timeline of when Abraham was called by God to leave home. The timeline is confusing. God apparently told him to leave after he had already left? Ah, Augustine says God was talking about his soul, since his mind must psychologically leave the place where he was, too...
🔥 God promises Abraham will be the father of a great nation. Physically and spiritually - the father of the city of God.
🔥 God promises him land, too. And Augustine believes the ritual they perform to solidify this promise gives symbolic hints about the end of the world...?
🔥 Sarah asks Abraham to sleep with Hagar, the servant woman, because Sarah is barren. But God makes it clear Abraham and Sarah will have a son of their own. And they do give birth to a son, Isaac. This birth signals a new covenant, and foreshadows the new covenant with Jesus, too.
🔥 Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed by God. Lot (Abraham's nephew) escapes, but his wife looks back as they're running away and she turns into a pillar of salt. Augustine says we are not to look back at the old life, and offers some other symbolic interpretations as well. Salt is meant to savour something, so maybe there is some irony in that, too.
🔥 God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son. This is more foreshadowing of Jesus.
🔥 Abraham remarries after Sarah dies. But all inheritance goes to Isaac, who is the main heir. Isaac and Rebekah will have twins and God says that the elder will serve the younger. Augustine interprets this to mean that Jews will serve the Christians...
🔥 Isaac's son, the younger twin Jacob, tricks Isaac into giving him (Jacob) the blessing. But some mysterious truth is hidden in Jacob's deception, says Augustine. And the blessing foreshadows Christ's blessing on the world.
🔥 Jacob has four wives, which is okay says Augustine, because he used them all to bear offspring, not out of lust.
🔥 Jacob wrestles with God, which also foreshadows Jesus.
🔥 Augustine moves on through the rest of the Bible story, summarizing events through the lives of Joseph, Moses, and up to King David.
Reflection
💬 Augustine is doing some serious mental gymnastics with his reading of the Bible. Not only is it a legitimate and authoritative book on history, it also contains the story of our future, with its center on Jesus. And all the events before Jesus are like signposts to him.
This position gets him into some pretty awkward spots, having to defend and explain every odd twist and turn the Bible takes. It really seems like he's working backwards from his conclusion, as opposed to analyzing evidence and working forward from that.