The Next One

The next Jonathan Edwards might be the man driving in front of you with the Darwin Fish bumper decal. The next Charles Wesley might be a misogynistic, profanity-spewing hip-hop artist right now. The next Charles Spurgeon might be managing an abortion clinic right now. The next Mother Teresa might be a heroin-addicted porn star right now. The next Augustine of Hippo might be a sexually promiscuous cult member right now, just like, come to think of it, the first Augustine of Hippo was.

 — Russell Moore (from, Onward: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel)

HT: The Poached Egg

Leave Room For Silence

"Let us leave a little room for reflection in our lives, room too for silence. Let us look within ourselves and see whether there is some delightful hidden place inside where we can be free of noise and argument. Let us hear the Word of God in stillness and perhaps we will then come to understand it."

          - St. Augustine of Hippo

2016: A Good Year to Read "City of God"

Last week I posted Augustine Still Matters quoting from 8 Things We Can Learn From St. Augustine by Gerald Bray, Here's another reason why that is true - Reading Augustine In An Election Year by Russell Moore

Election years tend to drive some Christians crazy. This year promises to be especially tumultuous.

The world seems not more sinful in 2016 but more obviously precarious. Many note that this year feels different, as though what faces us isn’t just the possibility of culture wars but of even existential collapse. The question isn’t just which vision for America is best but rather whether democratic self-government is still possible. Many American Christians foresee an election year in which what confronts us isn’t so much choosing the lesser of two evils as much as facing a political culture in which both sides have chosen evil. That’s why I would argue that this is a good year for American Christians to revisit Augustine’s City of God.

I say this not because I believe the American order is about to go the way of the Roman Empire. That’s certainly possible, of course. Still, despite the disorder and decadence around us, I retain more optimism about the resilience of American democratic institutions than do even many of my friends and allies. I think City of God is especially relevant now because it can remind us who we are, and where we’re going. 

To be sure, the book is not light reading, even in its abridged versions. It takes a panoramic view of all human history from the vantage point of both heaven and earth. That’s no small task. The complexity and ambition of the book could cause us to ignore it. But that would be a mistake.

Different Sort of Reign 

City of God is essentially a defense of Christianity from the prosperity gospel. Rome believed its piety—a cult of devotion to a pantheon of gods—protected its place in the world. Pagans could now say Rome’s fall was the result of Christianity. This strange new religion took the empire away from her traditional gods, and the result was calamity. The second implication, though, is one Christians could be tempted to believe. If Rome—the most powerful empire in world history—could fall, then how can we trust something that seems exponentially more fragile? In other words, what hope is there for the church?

Augustine attacks both pagan and Christian prosperity theologies with eschatology—a vision of the city of God as a pilgrim community formed by a distinct set of affections. Roman paganism didn’t protect the empire; it fueled the forces that ultimately tore it down. At the same time, Christianity couldn’t be responsible for the temporal overthrow of the order because the gospel points us to a different sort of reign. Exchanging pagan gods for a Christian one will not a conversion make, if the goals are the same: to achieve temporal prosperity and security.

How many times have we seen Christianity used in recent years in precisely the same way the polytheists of ancient Rome used their cultic devotion? Who can forget the television evangelists telling us, as the embers of the fallen Twin Towers still smoldered, that the September 11 attacks were God’s judgments on America for specific sins? How often do we hear the promises of God to his people in the Old Testament applied to America, as though Christian “revival” is the key to economic flourishing and military victory for the United States? And how often do we hear of the vanquishing of “judgmental” and “puritanical” religion as the key to getting America on the right side of history?
Augustine would have nothing of these cynical utopianisms, and neither should we.

Trillion-Year Perspective

At the same time, City of God calls the people of Christ toward confidence. We need what Augustine calls the “ordered harmony” of the temporal order. He doesn’t celebrate the rise of the barbarians, nor does he shrug off the instability and terror around him. The city of God, while she sojourns as a pilgrim band in this present age, is concerned with earthly peace and flourishing. But we have a longer view in mind—one that encompasses the entire cosmos in the joining of heaven to earth in the kingdom of Christ.

Election years tend to incite fevered reactions because it seems as though everything is at stake. There’s much at stake, to be sure, but we should put it in a trillion-year perspective that can allow us not to panic. No one and nothing will take our country away from us—if we define correctly what we mean ultimately when we say “country” and what we mean when we say “us.” Our temptation to fear and rage should remind us that we should be seeking to cultivate the sort of love that binds us to our ultimate tribe and calls us to our ultimate home.

This year will be tumultuous, perhaps more than any before in American history. Some will read Rules for Radicals to make sense of it. Others will read The Art of the Deal. As Christians, our library should be richer and wiser. Let’s revisit City of God.

Foundations

“Do you wish to be great?  Then begin by being.

Do you desire to construct a vast and lofty fabric?  

Think first about the foundations of humility.

They higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation.”

      - St. Augustine

HT: SBC Voices

Growing Together

HT: Augustine Facebook Page

In Order That...

"Grace is given not because we have done good works, but in order that we may be able to do them. "

— Augustine

HT: Of First Importance

What Do I Love?

"But what do I love when I love my God? . . .

Not the sweet melody of harmony and song;

not the fragrance of flowers, perfumes, and spices;

not manna or honey;

not limbs such as the body delights to embrace.

It is not these that I love when I love my God.

And yet, when I love him, it is true that I love a light of a certain kind, a voice, a perfume, a food, an embrace;

but they are of the kind that I love in my inner self,

when my soul is bathed in light that is not bound by space;

when it listens to sound that never dies away;

when it breathes fragrance that is not borne away on the wind;

when it tastes food that is never consumed by the eating;

when it clings to an embrace from which it is not severed by fulfillment of desire.

This is what I love when I love my God."

—St. Augustine, Confessions (transl. Pine-Coffin), X, 6.

HT: Justin Taylor

The First and Last Precept

“A saying of Chrysostom’s has always pleased me very much, that the foundation of our philosophy is humility. But that of Augustine pleases me even more: ‘. . . so if you ask me concerning the precepts of the Christian religion, first, second and third, and always I would answer ‘Humility.’”

            - John Calvin, Institutes, 2.2.11.

HT:Ray Ortlund,  Rick Ianniello

Enlarged Capacity

"It might perplex us that God asks us to pray, when he knows what we need before we ask him, if we do not realize that our Lord does not want to know what we want - for he cannot fail to know it - but wants us rather to exercise our desire through our prayers so that we can receive what he is preparing to give us. His gift is very great indeed, but our capacity is too small and limited to receive it. "

                  -St Augustine of Hippo (4th century AD)

Awakening Faith, page 9

More Sighs Than Words

"Excessive talking should be kept out of prayer, but that does not mean that one should not spend much time in prayer, as long as a fervent attitude continues to accompany the prayer. To talk at length in prayer is to perform a necessary action with an excess of words. To spend much time in prayer is to knock with a persistent and holy passion at the door of the one upon whom we call. But in our day-to-day life, the task is often accomplished more through sighs than words, more through weeping than speech. He 'places our tears in his sight, and our sighs are not hidden from him' (Psalm 38:9), for he has established all things through his Word and does not need human words."

                   -St Augustine of Hippo (4th Century AD)

Awakening Faith, page 50

Come, Holy Spirit

Breathe in me, O Holy Spirit,
that my thoughts may all be holy.

Act in me, O Holy Spirit,
that my work, too, may be holy.

Draw my heart, O Holy Spirit,
that I love but what is holy.

Strengthen me, O Holy Spirit,
to defend all that is holy.

Guard me, then, O Holy Spirit,
that I always may be holy. Amen.

- A prayer of St. Augustine, 354-430

Hat Tip: Trevin Wax

Speak That I May Hear

Who will bring me to rest in You?

Who will send You into my heart
so to overwhelm it
that my sins will be blotted out
and I may embrace You, my only good?

What are You to me?
Have mercy that I may speak.

What am I to You
that You should command me to love You,
and if I do not,
are angry and threaten vast misery?

Is it, then, a trifling sorrow not to love You?
It is not so to me.

Tell me, by Your mercy, O Lord, my God,
what You are to me.
“Say to my soul, I am your salvation.”

So speak that I may hear.
Behold, the ears of my heart are before You, O Lord;
open them and “say to my soul, I am your salvation.”

I will hasten after that voice,
and I will lay hold upon You.
Hide not Your face from me.
Even if I die, let me see Your face lest I die.

- Augustine of Hippo

HT:  Kingdom People

Let the Bomb Go Boom!

"The Epistle to the Romans has sat around in the church since the first century like a bomb ticking away the death of religion; and every time it’s been picked up, the ear-splitting freedom in it has gone off with a roar.

The only sad thing is that the church as an institution has spent most of its time playing bomb squad and trying to defuse it. For your comfort, though, it can’t be done. Your freedom remains as close to your life as Jesus and as available to your understanding as the nearest copy. Like Augustine, therefore, tolle lege, take and read: tolle the one, lege the other–and then hold onto your hat. Compared to that explosion, the clap of doom sounds like a cap pistol."

     - Robert Farrar Capon, Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law, and the Outrage of Grace

Hat Tip: Liberate

The Beautific Vision

“Because the face of God is so lovely, my brothers and sisters, so beautiful, once you have seen it, nothing else can give you pleasure. It will give insatiable satisfaction of which we will never tire. We shall always be hungry and always have our fill.” 

              – Augustine

Contemplate This Mystery

He was created of a mother whom He created. He was carried by hands that He formed. He cried in the manger in wordless infancy. He, the Word, without whom all human eloquence is mute.  

            - St. Augustine of Hippo

Let All Christians Rejoice

Let the just rejoice,

for their Justifier is born.

Let the sick and infirm rejoice,

for their Savior is born.

Let the captives rejoice,

for their Redeemer is born.

Let slaves rejoice,

for their Master is born.

Let free people rejoice,

for their Liberator is born.

Let all Christians rejoice,

for Jesus Christ is born.

- Augustine of Hippo (AD 354-440)

 

Hat Tip:  Jason Clark

Man's Maker Made Man

Man’s Maker was made man
that the Bread might be hungry,
the Fountain thirst,
the Light sleep,
the Way be tired from the journey;
that Strength might be made weak,
that Life might die.

—St. Augustine

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”   (John 1:14)

Package Deal

“If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.”

         - At. Augustine of Hippo