Augustine: Earlier Writings (continued)
l8 AUGUSTINE: EARLIER WRITINGS it should be remembered wherever that expression occurs in my writings.
3. Where I have said of the Father and the Son that "he who begets and he who is begotten is one/' I ought to have said "are one," for the Truth says openly 'T and my Father are one." Nor am I satisfied with the statement that when God is known in this life the soul is already happy, except, of course, by hope. Again the statement: "Not by one way only is wisdom approached," does not sound well; as if there were another way besides Christ, who said: I am the Way. This offence to religious ears should have been avoided. Christ is the Way universally, and these are different ways of which we sing in the psalm: "Show me thy ways, O Lord, and teach me thy paths." In the sentence: "These sensible things are to be utterly avoided," care should have been taken to avoid being thought to hold the opinion of the false philosopher Porphyry who said everything corporeal is to be avoided. Of course, I did not say "all sensible things" but "these sensible things," meaning corruptible things. But it would have been better to have said so. Sensible things which are corruptible will not exist in the new heaven and the new earth of the age to come.
4. Again (in Bk. II, xx, 35) I said that those who are educated in the liberal arts doubtless, in learning them, draw them out from the oblivion which has overwhelmed them, or dig them out, as it were. I do not approve of this. When even untrained persons, suitably questioned, are able to return correct answers about some of the arts, a more credible reason is that they have according to their natural capacity the presence of the light of eternal reason. Hence they catch a glimpse of immutable truth. The reason is not that they once knew it and have forgotten, as Plato and others like him have thought. Against their opinion I have argued in De Trinitate, Bk. XII, as far as the subject of that work gave me occasion. The Soliloquies begin wdth the words: Volventi mihi multa ac varia.