Ep. 5 Seek the Welfare of the City: Augustine on City Politics

What can we learn from Saint Augustine about 21st-century local politics? Dr. Charles Mathewes brings wisdom, humor, historical insights, and apt pop culture references to a wide-ranging discussion on Augustine's portrayal of the earthly city and the heavenly city. Check out Charles Mathewes' books A Theology of Public Life and The Republic of Grace, as well as his Great Courses series on Augustine's The City of God.

Episode Transcript

(00:06):
Hello and welcome to Love your neighbor. A
podcast
exploring how healthy Christian politics begins in our
congregations and neighborhoods.
Each episode, we discuss how local engagement in
public life can become a spiritual practice
and how we can love our neighbors in
today's complicated world.
I'm your host, Ross Kane.

(00:27):
As churches engage in the politics of their
city or town, it helps to have a
framework for thinking about the church's life in
relation to these governing authorities.
1 of the most enduring frameworks in Christian
tradition comes from Saint Augustine, a North African
bishop in the early fifth century.
Drawing for the prophet, Jeremiah, who told the

(00:48):
Israelites exiled in Babylon that they should seek
the welfare of the city to which God
sent them.
Augustine provided a paradigm for understanding Christian political
life.
Christians live between 2 political entities or cities.
They are citizens of the heavenly city and
of the earthly city.

(01:08):
As we'll hear today though, living between 2
cities, doesn't mean choosing only 1 or the
other.
Faithful Christian political life entails facing the difficulties
and
of earthly cities,
while also acting in ways that make our
earthly cities look a little more like heaven.
So how might Augustine help and guide us

(01:30):
as we seek to build better cities on
earth.
I'm joined today by someone who has studied
quite a bit of Augustine while staying Hip
to political challenges we face today.
Doctor Charles Matthews is Carolyn M Barber, professor
of religious studies at the University of Virginia
when where he teaches religious ethics,

(01:50):
theology, and philosophy of religion. And there he
was my own teacher as well.
He is the author of evil and the
August tradition and a theology of public life,
as well as the republic of grace, August
any thoughts for dark. Times.
He has 2 more books on their way
out soon, 1 called a future for political

(02:12):
theology.
The other called
another city, reading Augustine after the secular.
Chuck, it's great to have you on the
show today. That's wonderful to be here. And
So Augustine 2 cities is so baked into
Western
Christian theology that's it's easy to forget. Its

(02:32):
initial context.
What were the circumstances
and influences that led Augustine to formulate this
notion of 2 cities?
1 of my
favorite historians of this era is a guy
named Jim O'donnell,
and he once said, we have forgotten to
be surprised.
That the disciples of a countryside ro profit,

(02:55):
who spoke almost entirely in terms of farming
parable and metaphors ended up in a couple
centuries running 1 of the largest
enterprises known to humanity, which was fundamentally an
urban empire.
And we have also forgotten to be surprised
about the use of the language of city
in Christian theology.
You you would be surprised to know now

(03:15):
if you think about it. The language of
city actually had a much more vigorously pagan
connotation in this moment. The Latin word we're
talking about here is Chu, City, Si,
and it
actually has a a very strong political evidence,
not just in terms of a an urban
ag collaboration of buildings,
but really a kind of like a po,
like a little republic or a little political

(03:38):
entity.
And it's especially interesting because most of the
time, in earlier christian
formulations, including in the gospel and in the
poly epi and everything. You will see other
used, the kingdom of God, The family of
God, the household of God. You very rarely
see city. Now, of course, there are a
couple big exceptions to this and Augustine makes

(03:59):
hay with them as much as he can
both in the psalms of the figure of
Jerusalem in general, and then, of course, famously
in the book of revelation.
But everybody in Augustine day would have found
the language of city in this way applied
to to the Christian community as just a
little bit odd, not impossible, but just not
exactly the way you would have received the
best images to understand what the Christian society

(04:22):
was going to be.
Why does he choose that term?
Yeah. It's a good question. I think it's
because in his context,
he's speaking to a mixed audience, I would
say. Of, not just people who are already
christian, but people who are, shall we say
Christian interested. People who are maybe interested in
swiping right on Christianity, but not entirely convinced

(04:43):
they should do this yet. And it helps
to understand that he was talking especially to
people who had been raised with the civic
education of the late Roman imperial state. By
that, I mean, they were people who were
committed to the idea that the fundamental good,
a citizen, the way that a citizen, especially
in an elite wealthy male citizen.
Flourished and achieved their good was in service

(05:05):
to the political community. In other words, the
aim of these people was to kind of
serve the commonwealth.
And Augusta knew that it would be a
powerful induce if he could explain to them
how that aim could be in fact advanced,
within a Christian context.
And using Christian Idioms to describe that. In
fact, there's some wonderful letters that Augustine exchanges

(05:27):
with, both Marcel, the guy who he actually
dedicate the city of God too, and Vol,
through Marcel he's talking to, who's actually a
Roman pagan, and who has described questions about
whether or not Christianity is acceptable to Roman
virtue.
And so Augustine chooses the metaphor and he
chooses the images and he chooses the examples
and throughout his writings and especially in this

(05:48):
massive book of his the City of God,
very carefully and intentionally,
not simply to answer their questions, but to
show them I think, and this is really
important,
how the very energies that drive their questions
are better formulated within the categories and within
the thought world of the Christian Gospel.
I make a lot of noise about this

(06:09):
that there are some people who are when
they argue, they take on your point of
view and they show you that your point
of view is just completely pointless and you
need to do something entirely different. There's a
kind of, an opposition hate to use the
discourse. And, you know, someone like T tele
was like this. Or maybe closer to our
own day. Someone, possibly someone like Carl is
a little bit like this.

(06:30):
Augustine is not that. Augustine is a rhetoric
therapist or He's going to use the same
words that you use, but he's going to
use them in a way that makes them
slightly different from the way you have used
them up till now.
And if you actually look at his rhetoric,
he's not the kind of person to coin
a lot of new words,
but he takes the words that people have
used. And transforms them, trans configure them in

(06:53):
a certain way into a new...
And from his perspective, true and fresher use.
And I actually think that has something to
do with his his incarnation imagination, actually.
So what is the Christian gospel doing better?
Than this Roman civic education that all these
folks who were receiving.

(07:13):
For Augustine in his book the city, that's
what he's trying to talk about. In that
book, diagnosing
the m that Rome leads to and the
ways that the the sad ends to which
it comes are
better pursued by other means than the ones
that they offer.
Most effectively, he says, the the glory of

(07:33):
rome is in the idea, that humans deserve
to make the world an orderly and stable
place for people to flourish. So he loved
the idea that Rome is in some ways
an empire, almost less of legions than of
laws, less of, less of power than of
justice. Right? So he's always interested in this
idea that the civic energy really is about

(07:54):
creating the possibility of a stable life where
people can flourish and not be molested.
The tragedy is, that the Romans get so
high on their own supply, their own energy
to seek glory and grandeur,
that they confuse justice with power,
and they end up
replacing a desire for order and peace with
desire for a kind of bottomless

(08:16):
demonstrations of their own mag.
And the term that he uses here in
the Latin is the bet Dom,
which is a very interesting
2 word phrase, a lab, which everyone knows
and dom.
It means the lust to dominate, but it
also means the dominating lust,
that is the lust that dominates.

(08:37):
And so what he's sort of saying here
is both a psycho analytic point and a
geopolitical point.
People can get addicted to power. In a
way that in fact, the power itself becomes
the the master over their own,
agency over their own wheels.
People get so attracted to the idea that
they get to decide things, that The possibility

(09:00):
that they may not be fully in charge
of reality
becomes dangerous to their sense of self worth,
their own sense identity.
And they get caught in delusions, they get
caught in the illusion, especially that their power
and their identity, is tied up with always
being the master of a situation.
You know, Ross, I I know that you
and Are a very different ages and you're

(09:21):
much younger and better looking than me, but
I I trust it you've heard of this
band called Rem,
and they have a song called a superman,
and the first line of Superman is fantastic.
It's I am superman, and I know what's
happening.
And in a way, that's the kind of
psychology of Rome.
Don't tell me that I'm misled.
I know what's going.

(09:41):
I in fact am the 1 who sets
the terms of reality in some sense. And
Augustine thinks that's a tragedy it. It ends
up damaging them. It ends up leaning down
a false path, and it ends up giving
them nothing that they actually want.
So how does Christianity give them what they
do want.
Christianity replaces this desire for a justice through
dominance and mag

(10:03):
with the idea of a justice that is
about service. So and being open to the
vulnerability of the other and of trying to
be the person who renders other people,
more able to be themselves,
without necessarily claiming the glory of that achievement
for yourself. The most powerful
and some tragic diagnosis

(10:25):
of
not just the Roman mindset perhaps, but the
secular mindset is captured in this little phrase,
L Dom.
Another psychological
insight... Is this idea, what later thinkers called
the splendid devices.
I'm the idea that you could in fact
organize a life through a pursuit of glory
in such a way that you rendered that
life relatively successful of And, you know, I

(10:46):
don't imagine that people coming into the seminary
are equipped like this, but Ross as you
might know, people coming into high end universities
are often.
Very much equipped like this. They come out
of context in which they have been so
successful in so many ways
that they are scripted
to not know what to do with failure,
and they are desi of success in a

(11:06):
certain kind of meta physically basic way.
That's because we've trained them that way. We've
we've taught our children to do that, We've
modeled them after ourselves this kind of gospel
of accomplishment that we all have.
And yet when you look at the people
who we really actually genuinely admire,
Augustine would say, and I think this is
true today.
A lot of them don't seem to say,

(11:28):
yes, I did these things and aren't I
special. They say instead, and even a figure,
again, an antique sports hero like Ka Rip.
They would say,
I was just doing my job. I was
just doing the thing I should have done.
This is not about me. This is about
the team. This is not about me. This
is about the duty of the office that

(11:49):
I was put in, This is not about
me. It is god who gets the glory.
Right? So augusta actually and talking about the
Romans at 1 point sets up a really
nice powerful contrast between Those people who refer
the glory that they achieve to a finite
end like a country or Rome the empire
or themselves. Right? That's part of their own,
magnificent on their resume or their Cv.

(12:11):
And those people who say, Yeah. I guess
I did something well, but let's be honest.
It was because I had forces enabling me
to do this that allowed me to do
it. Now, for academics, we we do this
all the time. If if we're good, it
We do it when write the acknowledgment of
books.
And we recognize all the ways in which
we are the outcomes of forces and powers

(12:32):
and people who are not us. We have
been made ourselves by other people. And and
so far insofar as we can refer the
achievements that we have to those other people
to our teachers to our parents to our
Cub scout leaders, are ministers, are girl scout
leaders.
Those are the things that Augustine wants. He
wants us to remember that in our most

(12:54):
intimate
individual sol
achievements,
even in those we are never alone.
We are never more than, you know, 5
to 10 percent of the achievement.
We always stand on this huge raft of
people who helped us get where we are.
So that's the contrast he thinks.
A story that talks about achievement and accomplishment
as something that a kind of bunch of

(13:16):
badass
individuals do,
whether on their own or in kind of
coordination in terms of political entity, kind of
Jerry B,
theory of human and political,
versus a picture that actually tries to tell
the truth and says, you know,
we are the people we are because, you
know, in then words of the old pulse
simon song my mama love me like a

(13:37):
rock. And I think that's an important point
in Augustine day and it remains an important
point now, because
what do you have that you have not
received? It's a crucial quote.
I augustine is a bishop in a city
that has
the sorts of problems that every city has.
So
what does this mean locally for Augustine? Like,

(13:59):
what does this mean for him as a
bishop for him as a pastor.
How does this kind of framework of the
cities impact
his own life in his own city?
Hip where he was the bishop was a
relatively small city. It was a city, but
it was not like Cart. It was not
the biggest town. Right? So he's like, kind
of augustine of, He's not Augustine New York.

(14:21):
It's kinda like that, You know, some place
in Long Island or something like that. But
what's a fascinating about it is that the...
In some ways, people knew he was an
impressive guy and definitely at home he was
a well known in his city and stuff
in his, he was very well known. Throughout
North Africa, he was considered kind of the
1 man brain trust of the North African
Catholic church.
But there were a lot of people in
his city even who were not Christian who

(14:42):
would have respected him and
expected certain things of him simply because He
was a kind of big man on campus
in that way. He was a big authority
in the city representing a certain fraction of
the city's population. 1 of the things he
was doing was trying to bring back into
the fold of the larger what we would
call Catholic church, what they... What others might

(15:03):
have called the Cecilia church,
those sec Christians
who were called
who had broken away from the larger
Mediterranean church. In the fourth century, Augustine spent
a lot of time kind of trying to
bring them back into the Catholic fold.
But throughout much of his life as far
as we can tell,
It seems to be the case that the

(15:24):
catholic Christians of Hip were a minority of
the Christians. There was another bishop in Hip,
who was a bigger bishop than Augustine, Although
less less well educated, less elite and in
some ways much more of a populist rather
than a kind of global as Augustine was
in in that way. So what Augusta did
a lot of the time was kind of
hang out both

(15:45):
with the people of his dia with the
various people who would go by his, his
monastery stuff. But also with the elite of
the town, some of them Christians, some of
them not, and we have records of these
letters, and the letters are not just direct
correspondence, but sometimes they record,
Conversations Augustine had with other people and stuff
like that. He has a discussions in his
sermon of talking to people, both ordinary folk

(16:07):
in his congregation and very elite, a wealthy,
wealthy roman nobles.
And again, and again, what we see Augustine
trying to do, is
meet people where they are, but then urge
them to just take 1 more step
of since and earnest ness He never actually

(16:27):
makes a kind of galactic demand of anybody.
He's a very cunning kind of guy about
this and his letters and stuff. He never
quite says you cannot do this at all
or you must be entirely this way.
Another thinker almost conte with Augustine
but way off in the east is John
Chris and Chris strategy is quite the opposite.
Chris like, my or the highway, And we

(16:50):
all know people like that and sometimes it
works.
But it didn't work for Criticism. He got
kicked out of constantinople
actually and sent sent back, I think the
antioch. Augustine wasn't that way. He was always
about working the margins, working the angles and
his letters and correspondence with people.
And so that's 1 thing he did. He
kind of would would talk with people as
much as he could, both in directly and

(17:10):
then in letters and stuff like that.
He's connecting with. He elites in the city
he's connecting with ordinary people. He's not just
a public figure. He's also a public servant.
After constantine about a century before Augustine, constantine
us a lot of things, but 1 of
the things he does is there's a a
big shortage basically.
Of the delivery of law and the delivery

(17:31):
of order in the imperial cities, the judiciary
of the empire is too small, to handle
all the kind of minor violations and stuff
like that. So what Constantine does is he
says, basically every bishop have to serve as
a kind of semi judge And bishop all
had to have what was called the epi
audience,
which happened multiple days a week, I think
3 or 4 days a week. And every

(17:51):
morning, basically, they would sit and people would
come to them in a kind of small
claims court. So if you've ever seen the
kind judge w on the people's court or
a judge Judy, all of the bishop were
supposed to do this. Not all of them
did, but Augustine did, and he continually talks
about this in his own writings. So there's
a kind of awareness
not to say cy, but an awareness of

(18:13):
the of the pet of human behavior,
that you get if you watch judge Judaism
or something like that, And, Augustine got it
firsthand. Right? So you can almost hear him
say, like, you know, don't pee on my
leg and tell me it's raining man. And
it's interesting. The records we have of these
cases are really interesting. There's a famous case
where 2 Christians

(18:33):
sue a young Jewish guy
about the property that the Jewish guy lives
on
claiming that it was their mother's property. The
Jewish guy defends himself by saying, no No.
But the mother gave it to me because
he liked me. She liked me better than
she liked you, waste.
And Augustine as the judge looked into it
I got all the data and said, no,
he's right. You guys are... You guys are
crap kids. Get the heck off that. You

(18:54):
don't bother that guy. He's got the he's
got the land fair and square. And so
there's an interesting way in which he's not
just talking to the Civic authorities.
He's not just talking to the people who
seek the welfare of the city, even in
his...
Duty as a as a bishop. He is
a direct civic actor in that way. The
last thing is his sermon are really

(19:15):
interesting
because so much of the writing, the scholar
writing that we would pay attention to is
writing
that kind of culminate in a sense that
you have to return to a kind of
naive position. You have to become like a
child to understand how God works in the
world, how God forgive You have to understand
you have to accept simplicity and humility and

(19:36):
not expect that you'll be able to get
full comprehensive of an adult of all these
things. That's what it does. In most of
what we would consider his high end academic
writing.
Interestingly, in his Sermon, and he's relatively unique
in this as well. He does the opposite.
He says, if you are an illiterate lay
person,
yet it is incumbent upon you to understand
these things. It is incumbent upon you to

(19:57):
understand
God expects you to be just as good
as saint as the most elite bishop around.
God expects you to be a murder. Even
if just on your sick bed, you are
still a marty for god.
That rhetoric dis injunction between telling the elites,
they have to be simple and telling the
simple that they have to be elite and

(20:18):
serious
is 1 of the ways
into what I think is a augustine
deepest project, which is
very much trying to christian the whole population.
And this role as
judge,
he's very much living in this space between
the 2 cities.
He's in this pe court, and

(20:40):
it really gives texture to the sort of
grand imagery of the city of god, and
in which we're always in this mixed. Entity,
you know, between the 2 cities.
He's just
seen it right in the judge's seat. To
me, it's this very concrete
image of all the sort of
intellectual flights that Augustine takes us on. He's
stuck in this imbalance, right, of the human

(21:02):
condition. And, you know, that's what takes me
to questions of today. 1 of the things
that so many of us fine. So
captivating about Augustine is is that this simple
image of the 2 cities.
Can be applied in so many different historical
situations in so many places across the world.
You've done a lot of this in your
own book so, you know, your book of

(21:23):
theology public life, the public of grace, you
take this August city and framing.
As a way of grounding how Christians might
see political life.
Today
and guide our action within it. So what
in Augustine is so compelling for you in
today's
political environments.
I would say that like a lot of

(21:43):
people,
I seek
some
theological account, of why I should care about
the common good,
Why it is that God wants me to
care about the common good
and also,
what God is doing to me in my
caring for the common good? How God is
working through that vocation of hopefully,

(22:06):
to make me a less bad
Christian
in some sense. So it's not just a
1 way street. It's not just that I'm
trying to find an augustine
theological reasons to care about the commonwealth.
It's also that I think I see in
some of Augustine discussions of this say account
of what as aesthetically is happening to me.

(22:29):
What's spiritually and aesthetically as a as a
disciplined structure
is happening to me when I care about
the common good. How my care for the
cities of this world
is supposed to better fit me as to
be a member of the Kingdom of Heaven.
A lot of that work is negative. A
lot of that work is

(22:49):
crushing my presumption again and again that I
know what is about to happen.
Or that I know what will happen if
this policy is enacted as opposed to that
policy. So a lot of it is about
cultivating humility.
Some of it is also about judgment
understanding as a lot of us have. I
mean, I teach at the University of Virginia

(23:10):
that there are a lot of things that
we have not yet really grapple with fully,
and that may take centuries to be properly
addressed maybe
up to the Es to be properly addressed
about the world that we live in in
the way that we thought we were relatively
innocent of certain things in this world.

(23:30):
And it turns out that the course of
politics makes it unusable that we are not
innocent of these things.
So humility
a sense of, an awareness, that god's work
is being
enacted through judgment, a public and sometimes political
judgment,
Also, I think and this might be a
little more controversial,
unlike someone who would be doing a more

(23:52):
say natural law picture of politics where in
some ways, Politics and theology run on 2
separate tracks.
And where
Christians can be motivated for politics, but the
kind of thing they do in politics is
just like anybody else in politics,
and they're not really using anything that's distinctive
christian in it.
I don't think that's true about a augustine

(24:12):
vision of politics, And actually, to be honest,
that's 1 of the ways I think for
me,
being August resonates also
with being a epi opinion, the broader an
tradition
has a sac vision of creation where the
sac mentality of our apprehension of creation, the
way that we see creation is not simply
a bunch of stuff,

(24:33):
but as always speaking to and moving towards
this larger commune with God.
In a way that's integral to the materiality
of creation itself. The sacramento mentality is not
a second layer or of fro on just
kind of stuff on meat or anything like
that. That vision of sacramento mentality.
Makes you epi

(24:53):
makes me epi
impatient with people who say, oh, I'm just
talking about the secular world here.
I was...
At least a semi adult in 19 89.
And I am
aware of how deeply
the experience of watching the Berlin wall come
down,
and watching the end of

(25:15):
Eastern European communism,
and at 1 point anyway we thought maybe
the end of Russian communism, the... Those events
affected me
in a way.
That showed me that sometimes
good things can happen.
Doesn't mean they're durable doesn't mean they're permanent
doesn't mean that the world is moving in
a progressive direction. Those are not August any
things to say.

(25:35):
But those little flicker
of of hope,
where at least for a minute, it seems
like possibly the good guys might win.
And the way that that tan you with
the possibility
of world that is different than the Grim
world that we read about most days in
the news.
That pro taste of the es is also

(25:58):
visible in politics.
It's not just right. That we learn humility.
We hear judgment. We are taught once again
about our comp simplicity in sin. It's also
that we are, in a way that's almost
is equally torturing
We can also be
by the possibility of a better world.
I remember watching Mandela walk out of prison,
On Tv.

(26:19):
These moments are there.
And they are just as real as all
of the nightmare moments in history.
And
Augustine
theology
at least presents me with the possibility
of a breadth of imagination wide enough to
accommodate both.
Right? He's known as a pe, but he's

(26:39):
also got this sac hopeful vision.
And I think the complication is keeping both
alive at the same time. Yeah.
I I love the spiritual wholeness of what
you're describing about how Man mandela walks out
of prison,
very soon after meets, desmond too 2. And
we even get in moments like that. This
this kind of joining of the sacred and

(27:00):
the secular of saying, you know, Though, there
are times when God's kingdom is truly coming
in the world that we have to name
it as such. And so you have the
h in that big sense. Also in your
first point, we have it in a very
micro sense that
my
own disciples ship is dependent,
Upon engagement with the city. It's not that

(27:20):
citi life is some sort of
option add on to my
interiors
spirituality, but that it's in fact, a fundamental
part of it and of August vision gives
us
a way to
articulate that. Now you mentioned just at the
end there
that Augustine scene is a bit of a

(27:40):
pe.
And I always...
Regret that a bit. I get where it
comes from. He says some pretty pessimistic things.
But, know there's all sorts of things he
says about subjects that that would seem very
odd to us today. You know, and it
just seems like from another world sometimes. But
the thing that has always been so compelling
about us. And is that
love is the primary source of just all

(28:02):
that is. And
as much as he's remembered for original sin,
Zen is still just a distortion of love.
And to me, that's 1 of the most
hopeful statements
that
pastors have
And lay leaders have in our reserve. Right?
Is that whenever we're facing something that is
fundamentally
awful, whether it's...

(28:22):
Macro or whether it's just something really quite
ordinary end to someone's
life, and they've come to the seek counsel
in our office.
That
However, sinful it may seem. That that's still
just a distortion of something that is love.
So
tell me a little bit about how you
balance that sort of pessimism in Augustine with
the profound central neutrality of love and his

(28:43):
thought.
I would say that this... In this way,
a Augustine strikes me as honestly,
a paradigm
pastor,
and in some ways, maybe a paradigm counselor
people who deal with people's real problems
are
in my limited experience, right. I mostly get
students complaining to me about grades, and then

(29:04):
my colleague is complaining about my other colleagues
to me. So I'm not you ross. I'm
not someone who has an actual responsibility for
anyone's emotional well being. Great But I think
what I know of this is that people
who do the kind of work of encountering
people.
Other than themselves,
where they are with their deepest challenges, and
by the time you come to a pastor
or a counselor,

(29:25):
you are there because It's a hard call
because you can't just do it with yourself
or your friends whatever.
The counselors in my experience and the pastor.
Are simultaneously
sober by the kinds of depths of suffering
and injury people have.
And maybe a little sometimes inspired by the
capacity of people to bring that injury in

(29:47):
an intelligent way before other people and say,
how can I do better? How can I
help this?
And again, it's that you know,
big academic or dialect. It's that dialect
of both the depths of the problem.
And the g of the problem.
And also,
the way that being able to app the
problem as a problem and say this is

(30:08):
wrong I wanna do something about it, help
me out of this.
That's very inspiring too.
And so it's that that torque that being
caught in between those 2 and not wanting
to deny either
that I think is so
pastor and very August.
And again, it's that denial

(30:28):
that things can be met merely with earthly
satisfaction
and that that will solve our problems.
In a way,
we need a solution that has to involve
for Augustine anyway. Something
beyond our agency and and beyond the help
of immediate to others,
maybe it comes through them, but we need

(30:49):
grace.
And so Augustine pessimism
is often understood
As more pessimistic,
the more you assume
that human agency has to solve our problems.
So I think Augustine is sometimes accused to
pessimism by people who simply
don't wanna believe that humans aren't gonna solve

(31:09):
the problems. So and I can get that.
Sometimes pe can be, you know, they can
be paralyzing.
But I think Augustine pessimism is,
more of a sense of we have met
the enemy and he is us.
If you don't understand that, you haven't yet
gotten to the depths of the problem we
face.
To listen to you

(31:30):
talk about Augustine.
It's very
striking how much
affection you have for him. It's an infection
that
Share as well. At the same time, for
many people, Augustine is a is a tainted
legacy to use Karen
Term
toward the end of his ministry best Supported
imperial force when suppressing heretics,

(31:52):
master slave imagery runs throughout his work. And
as much as he might abandon assumptions within
that relationship? In many ways he doesn't really
challenge it?
How do you respond to concerns like these
about Augustine tainted
legacy.
I think that the first thing to do
is always to as best as possible legacy

(32:13):
get into view the complexities of Augustine as
a human.
And so even to even to step back
from that for a second just to say
that
you can sort of divide theologian
historically into those people who are
kind of more obviously personalities who you can
get a sense of through their reading. And
those people who are in some ways, not
because they weren't personalities, but just because of

(32:34):
the the genres in which they wrote or
whatever the way that they were communicating they
were less about themselves. Right? Like, Augustine would
probably be almost ins inseparable in a meeting,
but as a as a theologian. Right? It's
hard not to see him as a person.
It's like Luther, maybe like Bart, But there
are other thinkers out there who are fantastic.
I mean, a or or Calvin,

(32:56):
or a sc who maybe are not quite
as much
personalities through their texts. It's it's very telling
that Augustine has a book called confessions, and
that's the 1 that everyone. Reads at least
a part of, you know, I'm not sure
they read it well, but nonetheless, we won't
worry about that.
When you say about somebody in our in
our line of work, Ross. Oh, you know,

(33:17):
she's a thom or, oh, he's a calvin
or whatever. You actually aren't saying a lot.
About their personalities.
But if you say about somebody, open, they're
an August, you're actually revealing something more about
the personality of the person, I think you...
Then then otherwise.
That's 1 thing that Augustine presents to us
as a human.

(33:38):
He's not just a set of arguments.
And that means I think in good ways
that he presents to us as a a
person to be in some ways treated as
a human.
Which means not treated as an encyclopedia or
as a God.
Augustine actually has this incredible line where he
says. Those of us who are

(33:59):
teaching and preaching to you here and elsewhere,
our human just like you. We live in
time, we think in time, we work in
time, and we change our minds as we
go. And I would much rather this is
a Augustine. I would much rather someone disagree
with me even when I am right,
then
accept what I say,

(34:19):
simply because I say it. It... Because the
point is that I am just like you.
So I actually think that
Augustine was properly human, and he would be
someone
in his better moments.
Which, you know, we have what 10 percent
of the time or whatever, who at least
admit that he didn't get everything right that

(34:40):
he wasn't able to say everything. Maybe even
that he wanted to say, He could be
in temperate.
He made bad judgments and things like that.
So I think actually,
there is a... I wouldn't say a a
rising tide, but there's a a set of
suspicions about Augustine.
Some of them of long standing, some of
them more recently.
And I think they are good to hear

(35:00):
of,
and to be
defensive
about them,
while, that would be maybe profoundly human for
those of us who are idol of Augustine.
Would also be... Actually, I think profoundly against
the... Principles of a what I guess is
trying to do.
Remember, the the Pe controversy see this big
controversy about Grace and free will,

(35:20):
It gets going
because Pe is hearing as a... He's a
kind of elite spiritual trainer to the stars
in Rome Pe. He's kind of like a
a Jean claude Van of the Elite Roman
aesthetic class.
And he goes to a party where they're
reading of the confessions. Ancient books would not
be kind of normally read by a person
alone in a room, they would be read

(35:41):
out loud by somebody and everyone be sitting
around listening. And so night after night, you
13 chapters in the infections So you'd have
a 13 night kind of extra of reading
Augustine confessions. Right? Like I set of podcasts
actually. They just get to the point that
he's in the least the tense book of
the confessions where Augustine says, oh, Lord, you
see what a wreck I am, grant what
you command and command what you will.

(36:03):
Like, in other words, I'm useless. All I
can do is be your servant, Tell me
what to do and I'll do it.
And Pe finds this so outrageous.
And so ef facing, but of human agency
and human responsibility
that he simply stands up and walks out,
and some people start the beginning of the
p in controversy to that moment He's like.
For a bishop and an elite Roman male

(36:25):
to present himself as so weak and so
riddled with sin, even after his conversion,
was in that moment profoundly un unseen.
So
I'm kind of okay with people taking on
augustine and complaining about things. I think that's
a human
virtue that we need to continue to do
this. When we say we're August, that's a

(36:46):
claim about opinions. It is not a claim
about orthodox.
And that seems to me tradition at best.
It's this continuing
conversation.
Across difference of figuring out what what it
is that constitutes who we are as a
as a body. And that seems to me
a pretty August take on tradition always sort

(37:07):
of looked back at him, in this very
revered sense or some of us too.
But it's it's really... And to imagine him,
you know, having, like, no expectation that he
would be this un question
resource in Christian tradition. Bridge Yeah. There's a
great letter. He writes to a Greek bishop
in the east. I think it's the bishop.
Near the end of his life. And we

(37:28):
don't have the Greek bishop letter to him,
but we have his letter back and he
says, no. I'm not dead. I'm still here.
Hi. I'm over here. The elite Greek, theologian,
the cap oceans and the people who are,
you know, over there on the coast. As
it were, whereas Augustine is out there in
the fly states. If you asked people in
that day, people may be in Hip would
have said, oh, yes, Augustine is a great
person. If you had asked anyone in Constantinople,

(37:50):
they'd be, like, who?
Right?
And that's, I think something Augustine
probably
we'd be very happy about.
Well, Chuck, This has been terrific. Thank you
so much for being the show. I'm just
really captivated by this.
Vision of Augustine engagement with the city as
a spiritual practice.

(38:11):
And the way that Augustine has this whole
vision. You know, we didn't actually have a
lot of time to break down the 2
cities more thoroughly. But for those who want
to
hear more from Chuck Matthews about that. Big
I encourage you to
check out his books, their public of Grace.
And if you want a deeper dive, check
out his book. Theology of public life and

(38:31):
also be on the lookout for Doctor Matthews
forthcoming books. Finally, for podcast podcasts styled listening
He has lecture series on the city of
God with the company the great courses, so
check that out.
Thank you for listening.
We invite your comments and ideas on what
you would like to hear in future episodes.
So be in touch.

(38:52):
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