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| | CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Fathers of the Church |
 | | The Old Testament was to him full of errors, lies, and blasphemies, so far as the letter was concerned, and his defence of it against the pagans, the Gnostics, and especially the Marcionites, was to point only to the spiritual meaning. |
 | | Theoretically he distinguished a triple sense, the somatic, the psychic, and the pneumatic, following St. Paul's trichotomy; but in practice he mainly gives the spiritual, as opposed to the corporal or literal. |
 | | St. Augustine sometimes defends the Old Testament against the Manichaeans in the same style, and occasionally in a most unconvincing manner, but with great moderation and restraint. |
| www.newadvent.org /cathen/06001a.htm (17381 words) |
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