In Book X of Confessions<\/i> (chapter 39), Augustine writes about various ways of being proud. One is to think that my goods, including my good characteristics, are, indeed, mine. For example, someone might say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Basically, I am a good person,\u00e2\u20ac? assuming that she has genuine insight into the good, and that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153good\u00e2\u20ac? applies to her and is innate to her existence or has been acquired by her\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe self-made person. Or a person might think that he has some good, but that it was given to him because of his merit\u00e2\u20ac\u201dhe seems to have Pharisaic behavior in mind. Or someone could have a good and rejoice in it as a gift from God, but nevertheless begrudge that same gift to others, perhaps refusing to share it with others, perhaps hoping that others don’t also obtain it. I recognize what Augustine is talking about in this third case, but the only particular instances that come to mind are, unfortunately, personal, and I have too much pride to embarrass myself by making them public. <\/p>\n
What Augustine says strikes a chord with me. All three of these are cases of pride, and as President Benson pointed out, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pride\u00e2\u20ac? is never used positively in scripture. That is enough at least to make us leery of thinking pride to be a virtue. In spite of that, however, I wonder whether Augustine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s thinking about pride is too much influenced by his belief in creation ex nihilo<\/i>, particularly his thinking about the first kind of pride? If I am an eternally existing being\u00e2\u20ac\u201da common LDS understanding of our (non)origin\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthen isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it likely that some goods are innate to each individual\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s existence? <\/p>\n
The problem is figuring out what goods those might be. In spite of the theoretical possibility (probability?) of goods innate to the individual, I can think of none that clearly are. What might they be and is it possible to take pride in them? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Book X of Confessions (chapter 39), Augustine writes about various ways of being proud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy-and-theology"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}