Quote by J. Phillip Johnson

“Augustine’s acknowledgement toward the genius of the damned presages what only later becomes a hallmark of Catholic theology, the adage that grace perfects nature and does not destroy it. The futility of our natural powers only gains its requisite dignity with the order given to it by God, not by the arbitration of our fallen wills or a lust for death shared with lifeless machines. The bourgeois affinity for parochial labor and the polity’s need for mobilization both resound in the twilight of antiquity, when Augustine reads in Virgil’s Georgics the same poetic condescension and misplaced praise. Labor properly so called belongs to the free man and in fact makes a man free. Salvation, like work, both sets us free and enrolls us in the civic responsibility of a polity. Work, like salvation, enjoys both a metaphysical and an economic status.”

Quote by J. Phillip Johnson