Quote in context
Augustine on rightly ordered love
Augustine of Hippo · Homilies on the First Epistle of John 7.8
“Love, and do what you will.”
Plain English
Augustine is not saying desire excuses anything. He means that if love is truly ordered toward God and neighbor, action will follow the right shape.
Why it matters
It became a compressed Augustinian account of Christian ethics: the root of action matters.
Who said it
Augustine of Hippo
354 – 430 · Born in Thagaste · North Africa
Augustine is the deepest pool in Western thought after Plato. Confessions invented spiritual autobiography — nobody before him wrote like that about an inner life. City of God invented the Christian philosophy of history. His doctrines of original sin, grace, predestination, free will, the church, and the sacraments shaped everything Catholic and Protestant fought about a thousand years later. Calvin is downstream of Augustine. Aquinas is downstream of Augustine. Even modern atheist philosophers writing about selfhood and time keep returning to him.
Book of the day
Confessions
Augustine of HippoA reading pick tied to today's figure, quote, era, or event. The most approachable major Latin Father: autobiography, prayer, memory, sin, grace, and desire.
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