St. Augustine, Confessions X.xxiii.34. Lit., They love [the truth] shining, they hate it reproving.
Chadwick: "They love the truth for the light it sheds, but hate it when it shows them up as being wrong (John 3:20; 5:35)."
Outler (LCC): "They love truth when she shines on them; and hate her when she rebukes them."
Pilkington: "They love truth when she shines on them, and hate her when she rebukes them."
Pine-Coffin: "Men love the truth when it bathes them in its light; they hate it when it proves them wrong."
Pusey: "They love truth when she enlightens, they hate her when she reproves."
Sheed:
I was reminded of this by Rémi Brague, Moderately modern, trans. Paul Smeaton (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 2019), 151. "Truth is the light that we shine on the things we desire to know, and which assures us control. But it is also what turns back upon us and indicates to us what we ought and ought not to do, what we ought to be and are not; it even is what brings to light all the dirty little secrets that we would prefer to leave in the shadow [(redarguentem as 'also "to cause to stand out," in the sense when one says that the light, being more lively, accuses the shadows')]; it is what speaks frankly, even brutally, to us. Thus, while we love the first sort of truth, we flee the second. Now, if we truly loved the truth, we should also want it to shed its light on us" (151). "What motivates our animosity against the truth? . . . would it be the fear of seeing it direct its demands toward me? To say 'to each, his truth,' to reject a truth that would be the same for all, isn't that to say: above all, not a truth that could say a truth about me?" (152)
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