conclusion he presumably intended to draw from it, because he goes off on another tack, the inevi¬
SERMON 229H 299
3. In concrete terms, both Jews and pagan philosophers. 4. He is basing himself on Acts 17:31, Paul at the Areopagus in Athens; he will quote the text explicitly (in his differently punctuated version of it) in section 3 below.
5. He goes off on another tack, and never completes this sentence. 6. A very common development of the "Lucifer legend"; first that he, Satan, the devil, Lucifer, star of the morning, was the greatest of the angels; secondly that the human race was created in order to fill the gap left in heaven by the fall of the angels that sinned. The account of creation in Genesis
1 knows nothing whatever of the whole legend; the author, I am convinced, would have disapproved of it vehemently. It probably crept into Israelite folklore and eventually doctrine from Babylonian and Canaanite sources, and is indirectly represented in the Bible in Is 14:3-15 and Ez 28:12-19; both taken up in the book of Revelation—that is to say, the first part of the legend, the fall of Lucifer. As for the second part, humanity created as a replacement for the fallen angels, I can think of no canonical biblical basis for that. It could, perhaps, have developed as a result of speculation about the predestined number of the elect, Rv 6:11.
7. Vidit et invidit, he saw, and he grudged.
8. Augustine has forgotten, I think, that he had introduced the Lord as speaker, and is carrying on in his own person.
9. Of fallen nature, infected by original sin, and subject, as he says, to death. 10. It is almost impossible to fathom what he is trying to say here; I wonder if he could do so himself. All I can think of is that he had two kinds of wish to live in mind. The first is simply to go on living this mortal life, knowing that it is going to end sooner or later. In that respect we are not unduly miserable when we find ourselves dying. The second is the wish to live for ever, and when that is denied us by our being obliged to die, it makes us particularly, inconsolably miserable. Our mistake, of course, is to seek that kind of life in this region of mortality.
11. Here he drops the comparison of living/dying with waking/sleeping, never reaching the conclusion he presumably intended to draw from it, because he goes off on another tack, the inevi¬ tability of death, as distinct from the "value" of death as leading to real, eternal life.
12. See Sermons 38, 5; 299E, 1; 339, 1. 13. Why does he mention the Old Testament here? Nestle's Greek New Testament refers in the margin of Acts 17:31 to Psalms 9:8, 96:13, and 98:9—all statements of the coming judgment, because Paul is telling the Areopagites to repent, since God has appointed a day on which he will judge the world in a man, etc. But the texts make no reference to resurrection. Augustine may have been thinking of passages like Ps 16:8-11, quoted by Peter at Pentecost (Acts 2:25-28), or Hos 6:2. His text's rendering of Acts 17:31 is punctuated to give a different sense from that of the generally received translation.
14. See Sermon 77, 4. 15. By this he usually means morally bad; but in the context here he presumably also means bad because miserable. The moral sense, though, is not excluded, as he shortly goes on to speak of the morally good life.
16. See Sermon 16, 1-2.