Texts in Conversation
In the Confessions, Augustine adapts Sirach's image of bodily decay to describe a person's will that rejects its inner life and turns away from God toward lesser things.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Sirach 10:9
Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus
Deuterocanon
7 Pride is hateful before the Lord and men. Arrogance is abhorrent in the judgment of both. 8 Sovereignty is transferred from nation to nation because of injustice, violence, and greed for money. [There is not a more wicked thing than a covetous man, for such a one offers his own soul for sale.] 9 Why are dirt and ashes proud? Because in life, my body decays. 10 A long disease mocks the physician. The king of today will die tomorrow. 11 For when a man is dead, he will inherit maggots, vermin, and worms. 12 It is the beginning of pride when a man departs from the Lord. His heart has departed from him who made him.
Augustine, Confessions 7.16
Early Christian
And I saw and found it no wonder that bread which is distasteful to an unhealthy palate is pleasant to a healthy one; or that the light, which is painful to sore eyes, is a delight to sound ones. Your righteousness displeases the wicked, and they find even more fault with the viper and the little worm, which you have created good, fitting in as they do with the inferior parts of creation. The wicked themselves also fit in here, and proportionately more so as they become unlike you—but they harmonize with the higher creation proportionately as they become like you. And I asked what wickedness was, and I found that it was no substance, but a perversion of the will bent aside from you, God, the supreme substance, toward these lower things, casting away its inmost treasure and becoming bloated with external good.
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Notes and References
“... Manichaean claims about the nature of evil is introduced through
the discussion of Nebridius’ argument (it questions the role of the realm
of darkness in Manichaean cosmology) in 7.2.3 and resolved in 7.11.17–
7.16.22 as the following quotation from 7.16.22 indicates:
Et quaesivi quid esset iniquitas et non inveni substantiam, sed a summa substantia,
te deo, detortae in infima voluntatis perversitatem, proicientis intima sua et tumescentis
foras
[I inquired what wickedness is; and I did not find a substance but a
perversity of will twisted away from the highest substance, you O God,
towards inferior things, rejecting its own inner life (Ecclus 10:10) and
swelling with external matter]. ...”
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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