At 09:23 PM 10/6/99 -0400, you wrote:
>At 12:19 PM 10/6/99 -0400, Michael F. Hynes wrote:
>>All we can do is have faith that at the
>>level of the transcendent our experiences do indeed have meaning. The locus
>>classicus of all this is R.A. Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the
>>Theology of St. Augustine (Cambridge, 1970). Augustine's views won out in
>>large measure because of the power and cogency of his argument.
>
>And perhaps in small measure because historicist apocalypticism no longer
>served an institutionalized church that enjoyed increasing social dominance?
>
>Tom Long
delicatley put. exactly. the result? since, in the long run, augustine was
right (the owls have proved right about the end of the world up till present),
and the politics of the church militated against maintaining an apocalyptic and
millennial opposition to the power structure, augustine and his attitude
dominate the texts. whether they also dominate oral discourse, even within the
church, is an entirely different matter, well worth thinking about.
r
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