2 posts tagged “augustine”
I just purchased this abridgment of Augustine's City of God. I'm excited to own and hopefully read it. I checked out the library copy of the Modern Library edition, and enjoyed reading about 40 pages. The minutiae of the full work was really fascinating, all these small details of church life and the place for Christianity within the larger culture.
That latter question is what is most interesting to me about this work. Augustine reads as a thinker equally versed in the secular and religious literature of his culture, and thinks accordingly. His intent seems to always be in defense of the church, but it is from a position of sympathetic, thorough knowledge of the culture of his age.
Fast forwarding to the present day, we have church ideologies that either, in my opinion, compromise their orthodox theology in order to seek cultural relevancy, or become so strident in defending their own beliefs that they become tone deaf to the community and culture they live within, withdraw and become insular to their own detriment and the loss of the larger society. I am, of course, most familiar with the latter position, stemming from some of the churches I grew up in.
So Augustine seems to stand as a figure who is communicating with culture, living on this middle ground between self-nullifying assimilation and cold social isolation. My hope in owning and reading this is to gain from his perspective, and try to live in that space myself.
Thanks to my sister for the gift card that covered 2/3 of the cost. :)
"It was good for them that I received good from them, though I received it not from them but only through them: since all good things are from You, O god, and 'from God is all my health.' "
Confessions I.vi
