I am surprised to find out how many people have quoted St. Augustine as saying: “What was God doing before He created the World”, “He was creating Hell for people who ask questions like that”.\u00a0 I was doing some research tonight, and I was surprised to find so many people quoting Augustine as saying this (both in theology books and secular writings alike).\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
Being a good student (and learning my lesson the hard way of quoting things without checking the source), I pulled out my Confessions to find this quote and read it for myself, before I quoted it. However, as I pulled out my confessions I found that Augustine did not actually say what everyone is quoting him as saying (I’ve also checked the Penguin Classics translation against my Oxford World’s Classics to verify that I wasn’t reading a translation error).\n<\/p>\n
In fact, Augustine said that he would never choose to answer such a question with such a response.\u00a0 Here is the exact quote from my translation (Penguin was a bit different but said essentially the same):\n<\/p>\n
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is my reply to anyone who asks: ‘What was God doing before he made heaven and earth?’\u00a0 My reply is not that which someone is said to have given as a joke to evade the force of the question.\u00a0 He said: ‘He was preparing hells for people who inquire into profundities.’\u00a0 It is one thing to laugh, another to see the point at issue, and this reply I reject.\u00a0 I would have preferred him to answer ‘I am ignorant of what I do not know’ rather than reply so as to ridicule someone who has asked a deep question and to win approval for an answer which is a mistake.\u00a0 \u2013 The Confessions, Book 11, Section 14, Oxford World’s Classics \u2013 translated by Henry Chadwick.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I think this quote can still be used for a humorous ice breaker for either side of the discussion, to get people’s attention – making sure of course, to word the introduction to the quote in such a way as to not attribute to Augustine himself.\n<\/p>\n
I was just surprised that so many intellectuals have misquoted him, that I just thought I would pass this along!\n<\/p>\n
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I am surprised to find out how many people have quoted St. Augustine as saying: “What was God doing before He created the World”, “He was creating Hell for people who ask questions like that”.\u00a0 I was doing some research tonight, and I was surprised to find so many people quoting Augustine as saying this … Continue reading “Have you misquoted St. Augustine today?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,22,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy","category-religion","category-school"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/darthjedi.logiodice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/darthjedi.logiodice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/darthjedi.logiodice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darthjedi.logiodice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darthjedi.logiodice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/darthjedi.logiodice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/darthjedi.logiodice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darthjedi.logiodice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darthjedi.logiodice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}