Finding a Friend in the City of God

So I’ve finished City of God. I went in with an eye towards the parallels between the Roman empire of the fifth century and the American empire of the twenty-first – and especially the location of the church then and now. But, I’m coming away with something more intimate: a portrait of a Christian man concerned with the place and character of Jesus’ bride.

Augustine, I can imagine, in America, born in small town Iowa circa 1950. He moves to Chicago in the 70s, encounters Eastern religion and begins his intellectual ascent at the University of Chicago. Soon, he is rhetorical superstar, moves to Washington, D.C. and is immersed in the think-tank world of ideas and influence (his girlfriend and their child are conveniently left behind in Chicago). It is in the swirl of D.C. power that he has his conversion. As his faith unfolds, he retreats from Washington and secular power, returning to Chicago and accruing ecclesial authority. It is in his waning years, as the American empire begins crack under attack by raiding terrorists, that he writes his opus differentiating the church from America, apologizing against Enlightenment Deism, popular consumerism, and the Eastern religions he once embraced.

OK, I admit to already having this sketch of present-day Augustine in my head before reading City of God (having read Confessions a couple of years ago). But, City of God did nothing to disabuse me of it.

Augustine’s mind, as I come to it in City of God, is accessible. He is a pastor who cares to give his people political cover by answering the charge that the Christian faith was responsible for the sack of Rome. He is an intellectual evaluating the marketplace of ideas from Christian ground. He is a scholar determined to understand the truth in scripture through various translations and conflicting hermeneutical traditions. He is a contemplative who hears the words of the psalms echo in the quiet of his soul. He is crazy in the Christian way of believing that angels and demons are at war around us during this time before Jesus’ judgment.

I like this man. My sense at the end of City of God is of personal affection. I acknowledge there’s much to learn and say about Augustine’s wisdom (best done in a forum more demanding of rigor than this), but reflections now are of veneration.