> -----Original Message-----
> From: [log in to unmask]
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Richard
> Landes
> Sent: Wednesday, October 06, 1999 10:55 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: RE: history and apocalyptic prophecy - was Book of Revelation
> topics
>
> >Augustine's views won out in
> >large measure because of the power and cogency of his argument.
>
> here's where i differ significantly. augustine won posthumously
> because he was
> right (ie everyone who fell into the temptation to read history
> prophetically
> and announce the End for their own day (what i call apocalyptic
> believers) were
> wrong. those who said the fall of rome signalled the end (the
> phenomenon that
> prompted the book in the first place), were wrong. the issue for the
> historian, hv, is not who was right, but who carried weight at
> any given time.
Again, just as we are in a position to judge the philosophical/theological
soundness of Augustine's argument, so too were contemporaries. What is your
evidence for the rather breathtaking conclusion that Augustine wrote the
City of God to counter "those who said the fall of rome signalled the end
(sic)?" Actually, his eschatological agnosticism occupies a relatively small
space in the City of God, so why do you exaggerate it out of all proportion?
> what seems like a powerful and cogent argument 1600 years later
> may have struck
> many contemporaries as a state of utter denial.
Evidence?
> i suspect that far more people
> followed apocalyptic bishops like hesychius of salonika than the austere
> agnosticism of augustine (see Augustine, Epp.197-199).
>
I'd like to see the evidence.
>
> rlandes
>
Mike
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