God does not have mercy on someone because that person has willed and run, but he willed and ran because God has had mercy on him.Contra Julianum opus imperfectrum, bk1, c141.
In answering this question I have tried hard to maintain the free choice of the human will. But the grace of God prevailed. Augustine: earlier writings, Volume 1953, Part 2 (Page 370)
But, during all those years, where was my free will? What was the hidden, secret place from which it was summoned in a moment, so that I might bend my neck to your easy yoke and take your light burden on my shoulders, Christ Jesus, my Helper and my Redeemer? How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose and was now glad to reject! You drove them from me, you who are the true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and took their place, you who are sweeter than all pleasure, though not to flesh and blood, you who outshine all light yet are hidden deeper than any secret in our hearts, you who surpass all honour though not in the eyes of men who see all honour in themselves. At last my mind was free from the gnawing anxieties of ambition and gain, from wallowing in filth and scratching the itching sore of lust. I began to talk to you freely, O Lord my God, my Light, my Wealth, and my Salvation. Confessions Book IX Chapter I
If the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Son, why should we not believe that he proceeds from the Son? Indeed, if he did not proceed from the Son, Christ would not have breathed on his disciples after the resurrection and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit." What else did such breathing mean than that the Holy Spirit also proceeds from the Son?Tractatus in Iohannis Evangelium 99.6
yet they preach that our visible sun spreads its rays over all manner of offal, but keeps them clean and pure. Therefore, if pure things which are visible can be touched by visible things which are unclean and not share their pollution how much more did the unchangeable and invisible Truth, receiving a soul through the spirit and a body through the soul, take on the whole man without contamination to itself and free him from all infirmities?De agone christiano, c18 n20
the sin of the first man harmed not only him, but the whole human race, because from it we received condemnation and fault together.Hypognosticon, bk2 c4 n4
some heretics, who are called Pelagians, said that the sin of the first transgression passed into other men not by propagation, but by imitationDe Peccatorum b1 c9 m9-10
Since God is an incorporeal and unchangeable living nature, remaining in eternal stability in his own self, he is entirely present in all things, and entirely in each of them. But those in whom he dwells receive him according to the diversity of their capacity, some more, some less, whom he builds into a temple most beloved to himself by the grace of his goodness.Epistola 187, c6 n19
This we now say, that, according to this condition of being born and dying, which we know, and in which we have been created, the marriage of male and female is some good; the compact whereof divine Scripture so commends, as that neither is it allowed one put away by her husband to marry, so long as her husband lives: nor is it allowed one put away by his wife to marry another, unless she who have separated from him be dead. Therefore, concerning the good of marriage, which the Lord also confirmed in the Gospel, not only in that He forbade to put away a wife, save because of fornication, but also in that He came by invitation to a marriagehttps://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1309.htm#:~:text=This%20we%20now%20say%2C%20that,long%20as%20her%20husband%20lives%3A
I have been concerned that such accounts should be published because I saw that signs of divine power like those of older days were frequently occuring in modern times too
That men sin, is attributable to themselves: that in sinning they produce this or that result, is owing to the mighty power of God, who divides the darkness as he pleasesDe praedest. sanct.
Peace and stability themselves are the fruit of justice. For this reason, peace is incompatible with a tolerance of evil.War, Peace, and Christianity: Questions and Answers from a Just-War Perspective (Kindle Locations 1057-1058). Crossway. Kindle Edition.
If we believe that if Britain had only been fortunate enough to have produced 30 percent instead of 2 percent of conscientious objectors to military service, Hitler's heart would have been softened and he would not have dared attack Poland, we hold a faith which no historic reality justifies.
Rather, it is an approach to statecraft that views peace as not only possible but morally obligatory as a by-product of justly ordered human relationships. Peace, in this light, is not to be understood merely as the absence of conflict; it is rather the fruit or consequence - the by-product - of a justly ordered society. At its best, the just-war tradition has worked to forge moral and political links between the limited use of armed force and the pursuit of peace, security, justice, and freedom.Charles, J. Daryl. War, Peace, and Christianity: Questions and Answers from a Just-War Perspective (Kindle Locations 878-882). Crossway. Kindle Edition.
just-war thinking is best understood as an approach to comparative justice applied to the considerations of war or intervention.
War, Peace, and Christianity: Questions and Answers from a Just-War Perspective (Kindle Locations 369-370). Crossway. Kindle Edition.
Just war tradition has to do with defining the possible good use of force, not finding exceptional cases when it is possible to use something inherently evil (force) for the purposes of good.The War to Oust Saddam Hussein: Just War and the New Face of Conflict (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 35-36
Wherever the soul of man turns, unless towards God, it cleaves to sorrow, even though the things outside God and outside itself to which it cleaves may be things of beauty.Confessions 4.10.15
[John 15:26] Jesus says this because it accords with his general practice of referring everything he has to the one from whom he has. Compare the place where he says, "My teaching is not mine but his that sent me." If the teaching that he says was his Father's and not his own was actually his as well, how much more does the Holy Spirit proceed from him, just as he proceeds from the Father. The one from whom the Son receives his Godhead is the one from whom he can claim that the Holy Spirit proceeds.Tractatus in Iohannis Evangelium 99.7