'Where God Happens:' Rowan Williams' Handbook on Christian Mysticism

The Desert Fathers would not have blogged.

Pre-modern technical limitations aside, the blogger ethos of immediate self publishing and self promotion contradicts the anonymity, humility, patience and self-forgetting espoused in the sayings of these ancient Christian monks. That's my conclusion after reading Where God Happens by Rowan Williams.

Since I haven't read Williams' source material, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (which I must now put on my reading list), I can only assume he "got them right." Further, my lack of familiarity with the Fathers (and Mothers too, Williams stresses), turns my attention to Williams himself. In writing about ancient monasticism and the ensuing tradition of Christian meditation, Williams seems to be in his element -- a contemplative contemplating contemplation.

Some of the themes are monastic classics, expected and wise. There is obedience as a pathway to humility and a greater trust in silence than speech. The stark stability of a monk is coupled with his extreme hospitality to the one who travels to him. Asceticism in various forms is how the monk flees from ephemeral carnal pleasures to the reality of God. In one way or another in the sayings, masters training novices to parry devilish attacks of pride.

(For my own walk, I note that ordination is one such source of pride which the Fathers sought to ward off.)

A theme of the book is a philosophical distinction between the personal and the individual. Citing a theologian named Vladimir Lossky, Williams says the person is unique, a product of God's limitless creativity and a source of holy diversity. The individual is a unit, one of many of a perceived kind. From this Williams crafts a prism of Christian spirituality: contemplation of God leads us away from understanding ourselves as an isolated example of some ideal or fantasy and towards knowing ourselves as utterly particular in our being and our relationship with the Father and one another. He says:

There is no general type of Christian holiness. There is an infinite variety of different relationships to Jesus Christ, which also become relationships with each other.

This territory of Christian mysticism which Williams explores is, for me, charged. My own conscious relationship with Christ came via a path that wound through a type of generalized mysticism with an Eastern flavor (what I would now called gnosticism). Much of my thinking after my conversion was along the lines of, What is "Christian" about Christian mysticism? I can't say I came to a conclusion, although I'm sure it has something to do with the fully enfleshed particularity of Jesus of Nazareth. (I can also say the writings of Father Thomas Keating were immensely helpful.)

So, as I read Where Go Happens, I considered again these questions of self knowledge versus self delusion, cataphatic versus apophatic spirituality, commonalities of human experience versus the particularity Christ. (The specifics of Christ's life seem to be mentioned infrequently in the Sayings; how does that matter?) And again no answer has come in a form that fits neatly in a blog post, but I have found a wise guide in Williams. Because of that wisdom I could, in closing, choose any one of the many profound quotations in Where Go Happens. Hmmm, out of my unique personhood in this particular place and time with constraints of my given relationships, I think I'll choose ... this one:

If the heart contains the love of God, one may wonder where is the danger of being guided by it? It is confusing on the surface, but there is something intelligible behind this contradiction. It was Abba Isidore who expressed strong reservations about being guided by the heart. These reservations have to do with listening to what you think are the promptings of your feelings. He wants us to be clear that listening to these promptings is not a guarantee of getting it right. "How can I be wrong if I am so sincere?" is not a Christian principle.

Giving to God in the Gospel of Luke

Our Bible study recently finished studying the Gospel of Luke. Going in to the study I knew Luke’s reputation as the Gospel for the gentiles and the outcasts. And sure enough in our readings I saw how so many of its heroes – in the narrative in Jesus’ parables -- are women, Samaritans, cripples and others on the fringes of Israelite society.

I also had in mind that Luke is the dreaded (for those of us with wealth) “Give Up Your Money Gospel.” It is. Not only does Luke contain the parable of the rich young ruler (“sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor”) and the encounter with Zacchaues (“half my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor”), it also has this blanket mandate: “None of you can become my disciples if you do not give up all your possessions” (14:33).

One twist I discovered in our reading of the Give Up Your Money Gospel was in a parable at its midpoint. Jesus is pulled into an inheritance dispute and responds with what my Bible calls the parable of the rich fool. “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed,” Jesus begins; “for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

Then comes the brief story of a rich man whose harvest produced more crops than he could store. Instead of giving away the excess he built more storehouses only to have God tell him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you.” Next, Jesus delivers the punch line: “So it is with those who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

What does it mean to be “rich toward God?” This is the question we considered for an evening in our study, and it is the one that sticks with me still.

I’m sure the answer is inexhaustible but where I’d begin is with a kind of holy giving. Zachariah and Elizabeth, to their astonishment, are given John. Jesus is given to Mary and Joseph, and “for all the people,” as the angels tell the shepherds. The marks of Jesus’ ministry – healings, exorcisms and miracles – can be considered gifts. His sermon on the plain could be seen as a list of gifts for those who seem not to get many.

More fundamentally, Jesus’ whole life is as a gift given back to his father into whose hands he commends his spirit. Then after his resurrection, Jesus promises the giving of the Spirit.

The economy of love among the Trinity, overflowing to the church, is its own inexhaustible mystery. My touching upon it is only to show a connection I made in reading Luke these past months with brothers and sisters. The “Give Up Your Money” messages found so frequently in Luke – e.g., the widows mite and Lazarus and the rich man, in addition to those mentioned above -- is woven in with the rest of Jesus’ life and ministry. Giving to the poor is not an isolated obligation. It is an essential part of giving one's life to God as Jesus showed to do. It is a way of being rich toward God.

Fatherly Fondness Amidst Hollywood Kitsch

At around page 200 of the novel Everything Matters! I was thinking how I could pan it: "Ron's Currie's book reads like the fourth season of sitcom with all the wit and pathos used up, he resorts to secret agents, a cancer cure and drug culture references."

What moved the book from "pretty stinky" to "OK" was a vignette in its waning pages when the protagonist John Thibadeau Jr. gets a call from his mother that his elderly father is too weak to get up from the toilet. In the book's second-person voice (a key to its conceit), John Jr.'s encounter with his father is described.

You crouch in front of your father and look into his eyes and what you see there very nearly breaks you. "Dad," you say. "I'm going to pick you up, all right?" He drops his gaze and nods. You slide your hands under his arms and try gingerly to find the best purchase, though there is no gentle way to lift a grown man. Your mother's still on her haunches to the left side of the toilet, ready to pull your father's pants up once he's on his feet. She swipes at her eyes with the back of her hand.

John Sr. was moved and so was I. Fatherhood is a theme of this blog and this little moment revealed a little something about it -- the loyalty, the messiness, the heartache and the love.

Outside of that little scene, the book reads something like a screenplay for a stereotypical Hollywood movie. There's a comet coming to destroy the earth. Only one man can save it: the protagonist who from birth is addressed in the second person by an omniscient voice. But, oh no, his foibles lead him into drug addiction and heartbreak; he's lost his way.... But wait, now he's reunited with his old girlfriend and sleeps with her -- there's hope! Then she dies. He's already found a cure for his father's cancer, only to have the father die days later, but the comet is still coming. Cue the special effects ... the multiverse is allowing our hero and his family and second chance!

The whole end-of-the-earth thing is supposed to add a philosophical dimension to the story. What is the purpose of life if it is all going to come to an end some day? John Jr.'s response mostly plays out as addiction and rehab, culminating with the profound conclusion that "Everything Matters!"

Well, OK, that's fine for a sitcom or summer flick, but I'm going to go back to being a dad.

"Resurrectioniness"

It's still spring so it's not too late to make a quip about how (some) mainline Christians mangle Easter.

I begin with Stephen Colbert's word "truthiness." The analogy to us mainliners is via my made up word: "resurrectioniness." Now, I don't hear people using that exact word but I do hear phrases such as "practicing resurrection." Practicing the resurrection sounds so odd to me, like "practicing dying." It's a one-time and final event, so how can you practice it? You can hope for the resurrection of the dead when Jesus returns -- or even prepare for it -- but I don't think you get to rehearse it.

The difference, of course, is in the definite article. "Resurrection" without it, instead of referring to Jesus rising from the dead or the day when God will raise believers, is a churchy way of saying "renewal." Since it's spring it sounds appropriate to speak of renewal and how we should all be cultivating it in our lives. My beef with this way of employing "resurrection" is that it obfuscates Easter by conflating God's definitive and supernatural intervention in the world (the Resurrection of Jesus and promised resurrection of his people) with the natural process of death and new growth (a sort of biological resurrection).

I call this conflation "resurrectioniness" because it parallels Colbert's "truthiness." Colbert meant to say that the Bush administration was not interested strictly in the truth but more in saying things that sounded like the truth. And so we mainliners (sometimes) are more interested in Christian-sounding pronouncements rather than the actual Christian proclamation of the Resurrection.

Lawnmower and Man

No theology here. I am watching my sons play in the backyard. Because it is hot, I filled the plastic kiddie pool for them. After splashing in it for a bit, Levi climbed out and got his mini lawnmower. He pushed it up the side of the kiddie pool and in, which made Samuel laugh. In Levi's brief act -- lawnmower into pool -- I see a kind of performance art about maleness and suburban life. I'll call it "Lawnmower and Man: A Twenty-First Century Performance Art Piece by Levi Todd."

Addendum: Minutes after this post, Levi enacted the encore to "Lawnmower and Man." He peed in the pool and got out.

To Time: Bart Stupak as Christian of the Year

A few weeks ago I heard third hand that Time Magazine was preparing for its 100 Most Influential People issue and was looking for a “most influential Christian”. They weren’t, of course, asking me, but blogs are the great fantasy-indulgers, so I hereby give my unsolicited opinion to Time:

Bart Stupak.

The Democratic congressman from Michigan is my vote for a Christian hero of the year. I know only what I read about him in a couple of newspaper profiles and the numerous reports on the health care drama that mentioned him. As I understand it, he was the leader of the pro-life Democrats in the House who insisted on abortion restrictions in the House version of the bill and then held out for a compromise in the reconciled version of the bill such that he did not get all of those protections for the unborn but ended up with a promise of an executive order that would mandate the bulk of the restrictions. Considering the complexity of health care policy – not to mention all the ambiguity of governing in a representative democracy – that outcome is as about as Christian as I can imagine.

How he came to his vote was just as important. He could of followed his pro-life Republican colleagues and looked for any pro-life imperfection in health care reform as the basis for an excuse to obstruct the process and deny health insurance to those whom the bill would cover (mostly the poor, as I understand it). And of course he could have knuckled under to Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic herself, and invoked realpolitik an excuse. But my impression is that he was acting consciously as a Christian, putting that identity above electability and party loyalty, and, as a Catholic Christian, was submitting to the guidance of his bishop. Oh, that we Christians, would approach all matters that way.

Finally, Stupak probably can't rightly be counted among the most influential people in America, which should probably disqualify him from being on Time's list, but not for Christian. God does not rank people by their power in the world. He calls people out of the world and with them comprises the body of Christ. Each person has a role and a season. God's "heroes," as such, can be unlikely characters who emerge from obscurity and then seemingly fade away -- Ruth, Rahab, Peter. Shoot, Jesus is the prime example. Bart Stupak was not the most eloquent, clever or powerful congressman and yet he tilted the most important domestic legislation of the decade in the favor of mercy. For that, he's my Christian hero of the year -- and should have been one of Time's too.

An R-Rated Review of Swear Words

Upfront notice to both readers of this blog (hi, J.R. and Annmarie): This post is of the confessional/diary type, not the usual commentary/literary type.

I've been swearing a lot recently. Don't worry about the mild mannered James you know, it has been mostly only in my head or under my breath. But, I'm curious about these common curse words -- of the "bs" and "mf" variety -- floating in my mind eager for an audible exit; why have they come suddenly upon me?

For some ten years I've made a practice of avoiding crude words (excepting the instinctive "shit" when I bang a body part against an uncomfortable surface). The catalyst was a scribbled note from a monk. While participating in the Self Knowledge Symposium spiritual community in college and after, I wrote an extended existential email whose contents I can't remember. The thing is it was circulated to an elderly monk at the Mepkin Abbey monastery in South Carolina. A printout of the email was returned with a few encouraging remarks from Father Christian scribbled in the margins about seeking God. He also circled a word (was it "fuck" or "fucking"?) and said something to the effect that such language was unnecessary and distracting. I was persuaded.

Insight followed action (or restraint from action, as it were). I noticed that friends and colleagues used swear words not so much to be vulgar but as to signal seriousness or authenticity. The implicit message was that if you broke out a swear word, you were either expressing a genuine emotion (e.g. "I'm fucking pissed off") or you were so world wearing that you couldn't be bothered with maintaining a facade of politeness (e.g., "his bullshit makes me sick"). The problem is swearing is easy. There is not the cost of actual genuineness nor the requirement of enduring real suffering. And so it is often cheap and sloppy communication, just the opposite of what it means to be -- never mind the deleterious effect on one's vocabulary of adjectives and adverbs.

(There is also the more serious discussion of actual cursing, i.e. damning, and real swearing, i.e. vow-taking. However, I leave that issue for both readers to ponder on their own; here I am referring only to the common use of "swearing" and "cursing" as speaking vulgar, impolite words.)

So am I repudiating my own wisdom by mumbling "motherfucker" as I workout at the gym or react to a minor inconvenience with "oh shit"? I hope not, so I'll propose an alternative. What I think is going on is that in holding my tongue I have also been swallowing my words. I have been not only not swearing but also not airing the kind grievances that swearing gropes at expressing. There's a place for grievances. They can be the first step in confronting an injustice. But there's also a risk. A grievance spoken aloud can be grounds for a legitimate rebuke. (Imagine the grievance that would provoke this rebuke, "You think I need to respect you more but you don't even take the time to greet me in the morning!" Or what about this one, "You want a raise but you're late to half the meetings you attend!") And the trouble is you usually don't know the result you speak the words. Being outraged is necessary, risky business.

So, for now I'll take my impulse to curse as a call to outrage. We'll see how it goes over with friends, family and co-workers....


Addendum: My wife notes that my swearing could equally well be explained by a more simple theory. We have been caring for two young boys for the last two and half years, sleep deprivation and all. That can make you frustrated. When you're frustrated you want to swear.

I Meet Oscar

By one account, it’s not too hard to figure out what’s going on in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao: Junot Diaz is drawing an exaggerated, fantastical version of himself – a sci-fi loving, bookish boy from the Dominican Republic who grows up in New Jersey and comes of age at Rutgers University. By another account, it’s just good storytelling (not so controversial to say about a book that won a Pulitzer Prize).

I’ll leave it to the experts to tease out how Diaz limns his characters and arranges his plot; I can only testify to being a casual reader who could now talk about Oscar de Leon as if he were a kid with whom I went to high school. I have a hunch about the swing of Dominican-American life and language, and have been introduced to the late Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. I also laughed a bunch of times.

I believe the book met its aims with me. I miss Oscar and am glad Trujillo is dead.

Now, the book is crass. It is animated by sex. Its main dramatic tension is that Oscar is an uncouth nerd in perpetual virginity born into a culture that prizes male virility:

Our hero was not one of those Dominican cats everybody’s always going on about—he wasn’t no home-run hitter or fly bachatero, not a playboy with a million hots on his jock

Both aspects, virgin boy and concupiscent culture, are played up … constantly. But here’s what keeps it from the clutches of pornography. First, it’s a coming of age story, and it’s hard to talk about a boy coming of age without acknowledging the huge share of attention and energy that goes towards the imagined paradise of the ladies’ upper legs. Second, if Diaz is right, all the dialog involving pussy, asses, bitches and the like – i.e. fornication – is essential for conveying Oscar’s social climate. Finally, as said above, Diaz is deft. Words that would be crude in another publication are often colorful or clever in Diaz’s.

That said, a couple of the characters were over-the-top “ghetto” for me: the mother’s first boy friend as well as the sister’s main boyfriend. But then again, I’m probably not the best arbiter of what’s authentically ghetto.

Tying up loose ends, it must be mentioned that street Spanglish runs throughout the book in dialog and narration. Without looking up any Spanish, I caught on to a bit and even chuckled when I came across “culocracy” in describing the D.R. under Trujillo – a.k.a. government by pursuit of ass. That’s the one overt political message to an otherwise private tale: Diaz vents a generation’s rage against the brutal Trujillo whom he describes in unflattering terms at nearly every turn in the book. And speaking of looking up words, I had to get out the dictionary to decipher at least a dozen English (and should have done so more often). All that sci-fi reading Diaz did as a kid come through in words such as “pulchritude” (a poetic term for beauty) and “incubus” (a man or god who mysteriously ravishes a woman).

This is the point in a post where I’d normally do a Sunday school move and cleverly relate Jesus to the topic at hand. Alas, I don’t think Trinitarian metaphor in the making for this one. There are references throughout Oscar Wao cosmic curses and blessings, “Fuku” and “Zafa” in Dominican parlance, but in my humble opinion they are pretty stylized and more meant to convey a culture than to press a pagan spirituality. I think I can just let Oscar be Oscar and Jesus be Jesus.

A Father Figure: Michael Lewis' 'Home Game'

In a year, I may not remember much from Home Game . That's not to say Michael Lewis' writing is bad; it isn't. He writes here in just the style I like -- a kind of themed memoir that weaves together anecdotes and life lessons. The theme is, per the subtitle, An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood. Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott is a parallel that quickly comes to mind, and Paris to the Moon too (Adam Gopnik), which contributes to a laugh line in Home Game.

I laughed more than once. Home Game was easily entertaining. I suppose Lewis would have been in trouble if I -- an educated new father with a dry sense of humor and sympathies for themed memoirs -- didn't laugh. I was I believe, part of the book's target audience. He hit his target.

Here's my one knock. Lewis playfully describes how fatherhood is, at least in his experience, for the bourgeois America. He hardly touches on how fatherhood should be. This isn't strictly a criticism as Lewis doesn't claim to cover this ground (can you deride baseball for not having enough tackling?). But fatherhood itself -- the ideal, the archetype, the form -- is what I find moving, compelling. Wisdom along those lines is what would have made the book, more than entertaining, memorable.

Where was God in 1776?

1776 by David McCullough reads like a novel, but is in fact a historical account of that year in the Revolutionary War. Of course, I’m years late in saying so. The book was published in 2005 and McCullough is already well established as an excellent writer and historian (and from what I hear third-hand a very decent man in person).

The book is written in the classic historical style, with military battles as the main drama and generals as the chief characters. This might be a knock against it in a college history department, but I was snowed. I am convinced that George Washington and Nathanael Greene are men of great courage and integrity, and yet still human. Plus, some of my ignorance about the basic events of the war – the siege of Boston, crossing of the Delaware – was remedied. (Germans fought on both sides!)

My one reflection comes from having just read City of God. 1776 narrates an undeniably pivotal moment for the city of earth. 1776, the year, is when the mantle of world’s-most-powerful-empire began to pass from Great Britain to the then-emerging thirteen united colonies in America. My question is, what was going on in the city of God?

The primary answer 1776 gives is that white Christians were killing each other on the continent where they had recently killed off most of the Indians on the east coast. Exceptionally in 1776 , there was the pastor in New York who condemned the torture of a soldier, but most all other references to God and Christians are in the sense of imploring the creator of the principle of liberty to give victory to the colonists (or in the case of the British, that the God who created order would give victory to the king’s army).

So, I guess I’m now making a personal statement: I’m interested in church history. I also hope there's also a universal statement here, something like God is the ultimate arbiter of history.

Facing the Waves: A Portrait from Fatherhood

Recently, my family joined my brother-in-law's family at the beach for a long weekend. I wasn't sure how my older son, almost two, would enjoy it -- the sun, sand, waves and two older cousins. Last year on a similar vacation, Levi was too young to play with his cousins and he recoiled from the surf.

This time, he and I headed out alone for our first walk down to the beach. Upon arriving, Levi did what he often does in new places: He picked a direction and just kept walking. He may have walked 300 yards (a long way for a two-year-old), when I turned him back around. On the way back, I coaxed him to the edge of the waves. At first he was apprehensive but over the following minutes he experimented with the waves -- running from them, planting his feet in them, taking a few more steps towards them.

Soon, he was in the ocean up to his knees and the stronger waves would knock him down. I watched to see if being thrown to the wet sand would end our frolic. It did not. He turned the maneuver into a game. When a bigger wave came, he let it push him down so he could ride it out on his bottom.

The position he eventually took was lying on his stomach facing the sea near where the waves crested on the beach. The effect was the most junior form of body-surfing; the stronger waves reached just high enough to envelop his body. I saw an opportunity for father-son solidarity and lay down next to him. As each wave came in, I turned my head to check if the saltwater had overwhelmed him.

"More," Levi said between waves ("more," being one of his thirty words).

This is the image I'm left with from that weekend: My older son sprawled in the sand, saying, "More," as ocean waves lap at him. I pray this is his posture in life. I pray he doesn't fear life's waves, but makes a game with them -- points his head towards them and says, "more."

Felonious Jazz, A Novel

A colleague’s husband had the gumption to come into the office and hawk his self-published novel. I respect that and so read the book. It’s called Felonious Jazz.

My gut reaction is that it reminds me of The Da Vinci Code in pace and tone. It sticks to the murder mystery genre with the plot being driven by the dark mind of the villain. The mood is conspiratorial. A dashing detective is in pursuit. Can he match the mind of the criminal before another innocent woman is savaged?

A superficial comparison of Felonious Jazz and Da Vinci Code would put the two worlds apart – the suburban culture of north Raleigh, N.C. and the ecclesial intrigues of Europe. But, besides the tone, the quick, page-turning scenes seem similar to me. I am reminded of the advice of radio producer Ira Glass to close out a scene every 30-45 seconds with a flourish that will carry a listener forward. Bryan does that, well, in Felonious Jazz. With my brother-in-law visiting, I snuck off to find out if Jeff Swain would catch up to Leonard Noblac before baby Jacob was harmed….

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.

Augustine the Liberal, Evangelical Contemplative

It’s an obvious game to play: If Augustine were around today – Twenty First Century America – in whose church camp would he be? Of course the answer is that he doesn’t fit easily into anybody’s, but the question provides an accessible frame for reflecting on his treatment of scripture.

He is one part liberal in his highly allegorical reading of Genesis. For example, he says the six days of creation should not be understood as 24 hour periods of time:

Of course, what we mean by the ‘days’ we know in experience are those that have a morning because the sun rises and an evening because the sun sets. But the first three ‘days’ of creation passed without the benefit of sun, since, according to Scripture, the sun was made on the fourth day. Of course, there is mention in the beginning that ‘light’ was made by the Word of God, and that God separated it from darkness, calling the light day and the darkness night. But no experience of our senses can tell us just what kind of ‘light’ it was and by what kind of alternating movement it caused ‘morning’ and ‘evening.’ Not even our intellects can comprehend what is meant, yet we can have no hesitation in believing the fact.

With this basis for an allegorical reading, Augustine is off and running to find figures for the cities of man and God throughout Genesis. Interestingly, he is sometimes quite concerned with textual criticism. In playing out the allegory of the two cities in the descendants from Adam to Noah, Augustine has a lot riding on the actual ages of the named men and women. Are these people truly of another age, living many hundreds of years? Or, should these years be understood by a measure other than the 365-day solar year? Augustine takes up point and counter, discrepancies in various translations, and the possible motivations of redactors. It all sounds very nineteenth-century-Germany (only the conclusion is different!).

Augustine is also an evangelical. When apologizing to pagans and philosophers, he leans heavily on Paul’s letter to the Romans, especially Paul’s contention that the splendor of creation is its own sufficient argument – to all – for the existence of one truth God. He has no problem calling competing gods “unclean spirits”. There’s no political correct impulse to call non-Christian religions and philosophies different-but-equal.

He is, though, at heart – according to my contention –, a contemplative so steeped in prayer that he slips into speaking with fragments of Psalms. It seems that as he writes he has ideas that are either inspired by pieces of psalms or confirmed by them. And so snippets of psalms appear in a pious mode – because they resonate with truth and elegance – without regard to literary criticism or even apologetic logic.

Augustine Attacks

So I’m up to book XI of City of God and here’s what I appreciate about it: Augustine is on the offensive. In a way, the whole book is a defensive reaction to the charge that Christianity caused the sacking of Rome; however, instead of wringing his hands over this charge for 600 pages, Augustine assails the failings of other religions and philosophies. No one escapes – Roman syncretists (popular and erudite), astrologers, Stoics, Epicureans and even Neoplatonists. It’s not that conflict is always good, but what I see in Augustine’s rhetorical pugilism is a refusal to give up the ground that matters most. He’s willing to give up the Christian claim on the Roman Empire but not its authority on what actually is – the truth.

Incidentally, Augustine is a great guide through Antique thought. He names his opponents and summarizes their views before delivering his blow, so the books thus far have been almost equally devoted to describing classical religion and thought as giving a Christian apology. That Augustine stands so squarely at the center of Christian tradition makes his judgments especially insightful and trustworthy. Here’s a nugget that must be useful in present-day discourse: “None of the other philosophers has come so close to us [Christians] as the Platonists have, and, therefore, we may neglect the others.”

Or, what about this one:

Natural theology cannot be discussed with men in the street but only with philosophers, that is, as the name implies, with lovers of wisdom [my note: that is "philo-sophia"]. Since divine truth and scripture clearly teach us that God, the Creator of all things, is Wisdom, a true philosopher will be a lover of God.

Ooooo ... Kapow!