Late Have I Loved TheeLate Have I Loved Thee is the first collection of Saint Augustine's varied writings on human and divine love, chosen to reflect his lifelong preoccupation with ordo amorisordo amoris, the principle of rightly directed love. "My weight is my love," he writes in The ConfessionsThe Confessions. He sees our ability to love as disordered by sin, so that we often choose badly what and how to love. Only by recognizing that we are commanded to love God first can any other object of our love be properly ordered, Late Have I Loved TheeLate Have I Loved Thee draws on the riches found in Augustine's sermons, letters, treatises, and Scripture commentaries, as well as passages from The ConfessionsThe Confessions and City of God.City of God.
Augustine (354-430 A.D.) was the most prolific writer of Christian antiquity and the most influential theologian in Church history. In his first encyclical, God Is Love, God Is Love, current Pope Benedict XVI acknowledges his indebtedness to him. When we read Augustine today, we encounter the same direct, eloquent passions his original listeners experienced, infused with his deep sense of human weakness and burning desire for union with God.
Aurelius Augustinus - more commonly "St. Augustine of Hippo," or simply "Augustine" - was a philosopher and theologian, and one of the most important figures in the development of Western Christianity. He framed the concepts of original sin and just war. Augustine was one of the most prolific Latin authors in terms of surviving works, and the list of his works consists of more than a hundred separate titles.
Augustine took the view that the Biblical text should not be interpreted literally if it contradicts what we know from science and our God-given reason. Many Protestants, especially Calvinists, consider him to be one of the theological fathers of Reformation teaching on salvation and divine grace.
... Show more