Latest / Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture / Augustine's Two Cities: Veronica Ogle | Faith & Politics #3

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Augustine's Two Cities: Veronica Ogle | Faith & Politics #3 · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

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  Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that
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  Speaker 1: deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become
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  Speaker 1: as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast.
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  Speaker 1: I'm Dr.
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  Speaker 2: James Spencer.
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  Speaker 1: Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways
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  Speaker 1: God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural,
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  Speaker 1: and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now,
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  Speaker 1: on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey everyone, welcome
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  Speaker 1: to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr. James Spencer
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  Speaker 1: and I'm joined today by Dr. Veronica Roberts-Ogle. And she
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  Speaker 1: is the author of a book called Politics and the
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  Speaker 1: Earthly City in Augustine's City of God. And we're going
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  Speaker 1: to be discussing today that book as well as just
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  Speaker 1: the City of God more generally. I first heard about
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  Speaker 1: this book and about Dr. Ogle on the Civitas podcast,
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  Speaker 1: which I think you, you know, peered on a year
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  Speaker 1: and a half ago now or something like that. But
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  Speaker 1: that was my first introduction. I read the book, love
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  Speaker 1: the book, really helpful framing of Augustine. And so I'm
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  Speaker 1: excited to have Veronica on the podcast.
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  Speaker 2: So welcome.
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  Speaker 3: Thank you. Thank you. It's wonderful to be here. I'm
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  Speaker 3: glad that you got to follow that podcast. They're really
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  Speaker 3: great over there.
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  Speaker 1: They really are. Yeah, I enjoy so much. I think
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  Speaker 1: they give me more reading material than any other podcast
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  Speaker 1: I listen to.
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  Speaker 2: And so really helpful.
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  Speaker 1: So yeah, glad we can make this happen. Why don't
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  Speaker 1: we just start out a little bit by you telling
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  Speaker 1: us a little bit about yourself and what got you
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  Speaker 1: into Augustine?
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  Speaker 3: Sure. So I am Veronica Ogle. I teach at Villanova University.
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  Speaker 3: which happens to be an Augustinian school. So it was
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  Speaker 3: founded by the Order of St. Augustine. And we're all
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  Speaker 3: very excited because we have one of our graduates is
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  Speaker 3: currently the Pope. So I was really excited. Yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 3: So we're all rooting for Pope Leo over here. And yeah,
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  Speaker 3: so I'm really so grateful to be here because Augustine
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  Speaker 3: has really been an important figure in my life, even
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  Speaker 3: from the very beginning. I remember when I was a
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  Speaker 3: freshman in college reading the Confessions and really been taken
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  Speaker 3: with the idea that our heart is restless until it
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  Speaker 3: rests in God. And as an 18-year-old, this sense of
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  Speaker 3: the restlessness of my own heart and kind of drawing
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  Speaker 3: attention to that and giving meaning to that and directing that.
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  Speaker 3: So I feel like Augustine has been part of my
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  Speaker 3: journey for a really long time now. And Yeah, I
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  Speaker 3: ended up in graduate school deciding to write my dissertation
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  Speaker 3: on Augustine's City of God. I ended up studying political
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  Speaker 3: theory over at Notre Dame. But it was really the
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  Speaker 3: same thing. The way in which Augustine reads the human
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  Speaker 3: heart or holds up a mirror to the human heart,
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  Speaker 3: I've always just found so illuminating for the human experience.
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  Speaker 3: I really think he's really wise, and there's a lot–
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  Speaker 3: just existentially that I constantly am returning to and chewing
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  Speaker 3: on from his thoughts. So yeah, it's been a long
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  Speaker 3: journey with Augustine and I'm glad that I get to
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  Speaker 3: teach it to freshmen now because Augustine is very integrated
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  Speaker 3: into our program here at Villanova.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: That's amazing.
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  Speaker 1: I will say I came to Augustine later. I'm an
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  Speaker 1: Old Testament guy, but discovered Augustine doing research on structural evil.
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  Speaker 1: And some of the way that he talks about, you know,
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  Speaker 1: these offices that pull glory away from God and that
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  Speaker 1: almost require it to. surfaced as I was doing some
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  Speaker 1: of that research and really amazing. They got reintroduced to him,
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  Speaker 1: I suppose, when we went to Germany and were in
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  Speaker 1: Erfurt and went to the Augustinian monastery where Luther studied. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So really fantastic character. And I've always been fascinated with
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  Speaker 1: his thought introduced through the confessions, very much like you
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  Speaker 1: were and then sort of moved into the city of God,
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  Speaker 1: which is more where we'll focus today and, but tell
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  Speaker 1: people a little bit about what is the city of God?
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  Speaker 1: Like why would Augustine write it? How is it situated
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  Speaker 1: within his sort of life and context and thought?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah. Um, well, it's a really interesting story. So, uh,
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  Speaker 3: people sort of say that Augustine lived at the very
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  Speaker 3: end of the Roman empire in the West, right? So
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  Speaker 3: he dies as Carthage is being overtaken by the Visigoths. Um,
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  Speaker 3: So this sort of penetration of the borders of the
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  Speaker 3: Roman Empire, the sort of contraction of it, the moving
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  Speaker 3: towards Constantinople as its center base, all of this is
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  Speaker 3: really happening during Augustine's life. So the big marker, the
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  Speaker 3: big impetus for the city of God itself was back
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  Speaker 3: in 410 when Rome was sacked by the Visigoths, so
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  Speaker 3: Alaric and his troops, had um penetrated the gates of
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  Speaker 3: the city and this just was a psychologically crushing moment
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  Speaker 3: for the romans it had been i think 800 years
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  Speaker 3: since any invading force had actually penetrated the walls of
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  Speaker 3: the city so think about like 9 11 and just
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  Speaker 3: take it to the next level you know um so Jerome, St.
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  Speaker 3: Jerome is, is just going out of his mind here. And,
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  Speaker 3: and people are sort of trying to figure out, well,
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  Speaker 3: what does this mean? Why did this happen? So it's,
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  Speaker 3: it's a cultural moment of, we thought we were invincible.
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  Speaker 3: You know, we are the great Roman empire. What do
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  Speaker 3: we do now? What is the cause of this? And so,
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  Speaker 3: you know, if you think about it, Constantine had, you know,
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  Speaker 3: half a century earlier, converted, made the religion of the
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  Speaker 3: empire Christianity. And so part of the thinking amongst a certain,
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  Speaker 3: probably the Senate class of the Romans is, well, that's
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  Speaker 3: the cause. You know, that Christianity is not capable of
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  Speaker 3: maintaining the kinds of civic virtues that Roman religion had cultivated.
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  Speaker 3: So there's that argument going around kind of amongst the population.
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  Speaker 3: There's people that say, well, we offended the gods. They
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  Speaker 3: abandoned us. And that is why the gates of the
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  Speaker 3: city were penetrated. And the Christian god doesn't protect like
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  Speaker 3: the Roman gods did. And so all of this, the
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  Speaker 3: Christians at this time, you know, they're kind of getting scapegoated.
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  Speaker 3: And they're also trying to make sense of things because
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  Speaker 3: if you think about it with Constantine, there was for
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  Speaker 3: a moment kind of this high, right? Like we're in
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  Speaker 3: Christian times now and God has providentially converted the Roman emperor.
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  Speaker 3: And this means that he's going to use the Roman
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  Speaker 3: empire to, you know, convert the world. And he's going
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  Speaker 3: to protect us, of course. So, what do we do now?
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  Speaker 3: You know, there were a lot of atrocities, people pouring
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  Speaker 3: out of the city of Rome with these horror stories,
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  Speaker 3: you know, of, you know, family members being killed, being raped,
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  Speaker 3: everything being taken from them, all pouring into North Africa.
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  Speaker 3: It's a real crisis moment. It's a real crisis moment.
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  Speaker 3: And we have homilies that Augustine gives at the time
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  Speaker 3: that are really kind of the beginning, the seed of
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  Speaker 3: his whole city of God. So he starts writing the
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  Speaker 3: actual text, let's say three, three years later. And it
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  Speaker 3: takes him, I think all the way until four 26.
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  Speaker 3: So he starts writing in four 13, take it all
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  Speaker 3: the way until four 26 to finish the thing. Cause it's,
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  Speaker 3: it's like a doorstopper raised 22 books. Um, but he
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  Speaker 3: kind of lets it out in bit by bit. So he,
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  Speaker 3: he gives it in five, five book chunks to people. And, uh,
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  Speaker 3: he says, Hey, did you read it? Did you think
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  Speaker 3: it was helpful? You know? Um, But he's really meeting
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  Speaker 3: a moment here. And so what does he have in mind?
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  Speaker 3: He kind of has to take the Christians who are
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  Speaker 3: sort of expecting a kind of temporal protection from God.
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  Speaker 3: Maybe you could say under a sort of pagan model
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  Speaker 3: of what the gods do. This is what the Christian
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  Speaker 3: God is supposed to do too. And he has to
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  Speaker 3: kind of zoom out in a really big way to
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  Speaker 3: sort of say, well, what is this story about? of
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  Speaker 3: salvation history? What is the story of human history? How
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  Speaker 3: are these things related to one another? And how do
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  Speaker 3: they help us get perspective on the moment in which
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  Speaker 3: we find ourselves? So that's really what the City of
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  Speaker 3: God is. It's an attempt to kind of give perspective
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  Speaker 3: in a crisis moment that I think, while it's incredibly timely,
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  Speaker 3: especially for then, but I would say also for now.
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  Speaker 3: It's also timeless because he's zooming out of this crisis
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  Speaker 3: moment to give this kind of overarching perspective from the
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  Speaker 3: perspective of scripture as to why things are the way
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  Speaker 3: that they are. Challenging, I think, the expectations both of
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  Speaker 3: the pagan readers, but also the Christian readers. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's interesting. So I came to your work having
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  Speaker 1: started to write on Christian nationalism. And one of the
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  Speaker 1: sort of, I don't know whether I'll call it like
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  Speaker 1: a trend or a tendency within Christian nationalism, but it
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  Speaker 1: felt like it resonates so well with the sort of
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  Speaker 1: perspectives that Augustine is addressing early on. That there's this
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  Speaker 1: notion somehow that, and the way I approached it was, hey,
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  Speaker 1: Christian nation doesn't mean the same thing we mean when
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  Speaker 1: we say Christian doctrine or Christian worship. Like we're using
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  Speaker 1: this term really flexibly. And if we carry over the
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  Speaker 1: concepts of what we mean by Christian worship or Christian
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  Speaker 1: doctrine back into Christian nation, we're really losing something. We're
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  Speaker 1: missing an essential characteristic that I would call, that I
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  Speaker 1: would say is Christ in Christian nation. Christian nation doesn't
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  Speaker 1: make Christ essential. And there's a line in your book
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  Speaker 1: that you write when you're talking about Augustine and And
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  Speaker 1: this is, I think, an important concept that you develop
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  Speaker 1: in the book is that we shouldn't be demonizing the nations.
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  Speaker 1: And these are my words, not yours, but we shouldn't
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  Speaker 1: be demonizing the nations, but we shouldn't be venerating them either.
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  Speaker 1: And the way you phrase it is something like, you know,
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  Speaker 1: political entities, political structures and organization can make a society
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  Speaker 1: healthier or sicker. but it can't transform a society from
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  Speaker 1: being the city of man to being the city of God.
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  Speaker 1: I think that's a fair paraphrase, hopefully, but maybe you
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  Speaker 1: could comment a little on that because I think it's
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  Speaker 1: a really crucial point that Augustine is not saying that
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  Speaker 1: the city of man is the worst thing ever developed.
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  Speaker 1: And it's, it's like, you know, it's not, you know,
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  Speaker 1: Dante's Inferno or something, right? Where you have, you know,
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  Speaker 1: sort of this clear polarization between the city of God
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  Speaker 1: as the demonic realm and the city of, or I'm sorry,
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  Speaker 1: the city of man as the demonic realm and the
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  Speaker 1: city of God as the divine realm. There is some,
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  Speaker 1: there's a real respect for the city of man.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. So this is probably some background. So I
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  Speaker 3: was kind of giving the context for how he writes it.
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  Speaker 3: How does he end up giving this perspective? he does
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  Speaker 3: it exactly as you say, through this idea of there
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  Speaker 3: being these two cities and these two cities that kind
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  Speaker 3: of reach after, you know, we call it like eschatological.
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  Speaker 3: So after time in, in, in eternity, we'll end up
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  Speaker 3: having these two cities. One is, is venturing towards life
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  Speaker 3: with communion with God forever, right? That's the city of God.
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  Speaker 3: And then you've got the earthly city, which you call
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  Speaker 3: the city of man, same thing, which is, if it
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  Speaker 3: keeps on its own trajectory, will end up, you know,
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  Speaker 3: in the inferno. So he has these two kind of
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  Speaker 3: eschatological categories, these two types of cities, the archetypal cities,
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  Speaker 3: and he's kind of telling a story about what it
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  Speaker 3: looks like in time where these two cities are living
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  Speaker 3: side by side. So then the question that's really interesting is, well,
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  Speaker 3: what are these two cities? And so what you're talking
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  Speaker 3: about with this, the city of man, there's two things
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  Speaker 3: going on here because on the one hand, he's got
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  Speaker 3: this kind of like archetypal idea of the earthly city
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  Speaker 3: or the city of man. And I'll talk about that
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  Speaker 3: in a minute. And then he's also sort of talking
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  Speaker 3: about political communities. Yeah. And so in my work, he
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  Speaker 3: uses the same term, earthly city, Civitas Turina for both.
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  Speaker 3: So what is the relationship between those two things? But
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  Speaker 3: exactly as you're saying, when he's talking about political communities,
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  Speaker 3: what he's saying is there's a temptation to turn them
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  Speaker 3: into something like a sacred state. And it demands worship.
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  Speaker 3: It tends to be a totalizing horizon that gives us
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  Speaker 3: our worldview. It is our whole world. And it doesn't
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  Speaker 3: really let itself be permeated by something transcendent. And that's
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  Speaker 3: the danger of political community. But he says that that
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  Speaker 3: danger actually comes from the dynamics of this archetypal earthly
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  Speaker 3: city kind of occupying and shaping and making claims about
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  Speaker 3: what political life looks like. So maybe to back up
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  Speaker 3: a little bit, the city of God is called the
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  Speaker 3: city of God because that's its main focus, but then
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  Speaker 3: there's also this story that he's telling about the earthly city.
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  Speaker 3: So just for basic things, what are these two cities?
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  Speaker 3: On the one hand, he says, These two cities are
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  Speaker 3: created by two kinds of love. And the city of
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  Speaker 3: God is created by God's love carried as far as
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  Speaker 3: towards contempt of self. And then he says the earthly
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  Speaker 3: city is created by self-love reaching as far as contempt
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  Speaker 3: for God. Which is really, really interesting because if you
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  Speaker 3: think about it, like the city of God, when he
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  Speaker 3: says it's created by divine love that is carried as
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  Speaker 3: far as contempt of self, this language of carrying, of course,
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  Speaker 3: evokes the cross. So the city of God is created
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  Speaker 3: not by our love for God, but rather by God's
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  Speaker 3: love for us. It's God's love that brings this community
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  Speaker 3: into being. And God carries the cross. so that we
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  Speaker 3: might be able to come back into that city. So
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  Speaker 3: that's kind of the first thing. So there's this city
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  Speaker 3: that was created at the very beginning with the angels.
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  Speaker 3: We were created to live in that city, to be
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  Speaker 3: in communion with God. We fall away from that. The
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  Speaker 3: cross is our, you know, path back to it.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: That's, that's the city of God. And then we've got
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  Speaker 3: the earthly city, which he says is created out of
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  Speaker 3: a kind of self love, which is sort of so
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  Speaker 3: bloated that it reaches the, so far that it even
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  Speaker 3: wants to reject God's love, this sort of contempt for
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  Speaker 3: God that comes out of self-love here. So there's that,
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  Speaker 3: the city, what kind of community would self-love create? And
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  Speaker 3: that's when he's talking about the earthly city, a lot
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  Speaker 3: of the things that he's pointing out is what kind
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  Speaker 3: of behaviors, what kind of community life follow from this
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  Speaker 3: form of self-love, this selfish self-love that is contemptuous of.
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  Speaker 3: of God and of gift and of all of that.
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  Speaker 3: So then when he's talking about political life, he's pointing
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  Speaker 3: out that our political communities are really, really shaped by
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  Speaker 3: this self-love that we have. And so then when you're
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  Speaker 3: talking about sort of like Christian nationalism and maybe the
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  Speaker 3: lack of center in Christ, in a certain way, you're
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  Speaker 3: sort of asking this question about, well, where does political
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  Speaker 3: life lie when you're talking about these two archetypal cities. Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: And I think, you know, the idea of the city
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  Speaker 3: of God being on pilgrimage, you know, that's a community.
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  Speaker 3: And in what way might it dwell within a political community? Well,
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  Speaker 3: it's only going to dwell within it as a pilgrim.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: And so I think that that makes the sort of
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  Speaker 3: attempt to grasp it or to reify it or to
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  Speaker 3: turn it into a useful ideology for political purposes. Like,
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  Speaker 3: That's where the dynamics of self-love almost kind of co-opt
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  Speaker 3: or take into itself in a way that seems useful.
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  Speaker 3: The gifts that are given as pilgrim gifts in a
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  Speaker 3: certain sense. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: It's interesting to think through. I mean, I think one
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  Speaker 1: thing I want to explore a little bit is contempt
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  Speaker 1: of self, just to sort of clarify that concept for people.
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  Speaker 1: Because I think it can read as... while we really
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  Speaker 1: hate ourselves. And I'm not sure, I'm not exactly sure
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  Speaker 1: that's what, I'm pretty sure that's not what Augustine's doing
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  Speaker 1: with it. So can you kind of dive into that
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  Speaker 1: a little bit and then maybe we'll pivot back to
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  Speaker 1: these political entities and how they square the political societies
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  Speaker 1: and how they square with city of man, city of
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  Speaker 1: God kind of concept. Yeah. Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: That's, that's, that's an important clarification. So Augustine, maybe this
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: kind of hit the news that, In the last year
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  Speaker 3: or so, he has this idea of an ordo amoris
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  Speaker 3: or an order of loves.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah. So for Augustine, the real fundamental thing when he's
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  Speaker 3: talking about the order of loves is he thinks at bottom,
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  Speaker 3: we love everything. We're called upon to love everything in God.
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  Speaker 3: Everything in God. we see fundamentally as a gift from
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  Speaker 3: God that is loved as a gift from God. So
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  Speaker 3: everything is oriented, referred back to God. All of the
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  Speaker 3: beauty of creation, all of those people that we love,
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  Speaker 3: the peace of our nation, everything is gift fundamentally from God.
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  Speaker 3: So we can love everything in God because everything is
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  Speaker 3: created in God that can participate in that love. So
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  Speaker 3: the order of Morris is, do we love everything in God?
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  Speaker 3: So that would be loving things in Amorde, love of God. Or,
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  Speaker 3: and this is the temptation, and this is the fallen condition,
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  Speaker 3: is we tend to reject God and to love everything
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  Speaker 3: in self-love. So the choice fundamentally is to love things
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  Speaker 3: in God or to love things in ourselves. What value
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  Speaker 3: do I will this to have? I will, you know,
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  Speaker 3: my husband to be this way and to do all
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  Speaker 3: these things for me. And so I love him in myself,
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  Speaker 3: kind of in a spirit of self-love. So that's kind
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  Speaker 3: of the fundamental choice. Do we love things in God
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  Speaker 3: as they are as gifts, or do we love them
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  Speaker 3: as we want them to be for us, for ourselves?
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  Speaker 3: So when he's talking about this kind of contempt of self,
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  Speaker 3: it's really, am I willing to to let go of
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  Speaker 3: what I want these things to be and to love them,
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: to refer them to God? So if you remember, you know,
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: in scripture, Jesus says, you know, unless you hate your
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: father and your mother, it's the same thing, right? You know,
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: it's you follow me first, right? And then there will
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: be room for your father and your mother. But if
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: you put your father and your mother before me, you're
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: really putting yourself before me.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: That's the idea here.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was struck by, and I don't remember where
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: it is in Augustine at all, but he has this
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: image of, I think it's like a stream or a
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: current that's flowing. And the current is, he refers to it,
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: I think, as the current of God's love. And everything
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: else flows along in that current. And just the image
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: that it brings to mind and the way I usually
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: try to explain this to people is it's not a sequential.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: First, I love God. Second, I love family.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Third, I love nation, which is often the way you
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: hear it in more popular treatments. And I think even
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: when Vice President Vance is sort of advanced that he
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: tends to describe it in that way. Yeah. The way
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: I like to think of it is it's almost like
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: going scuba diving. You know, you're so immersed in God's
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: love that your movements, your communication, your everything has changed.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: You're now, you know, sort of moving and thinking and
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: breathing on in terms of the water that you're immersed in.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: And that is how it's meant to function as love
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: of God is this immersive thing that we're in. And
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: it now changes the terms of our engagement so that
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: we have to shift.
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. That's exactly right. So, I mean, a part
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: of it has to do with a kind of loss
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: of platonic metaphysical framework, you know, so you've got, you know,
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: this idea of participation. So God being the world of
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: becoming participates in, in a partial way that which God
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: is fully. And so, so this idea of loving in
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: God is precisely that, that, that, um, yeah, I like
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: this image of swimming, swimming in. So everything is, is
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: in God. It's not that God is first and then
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: a discreet compartmentalized second thing is next.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: No, no, no.
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: Everything is in that first thing. So if we love
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: things in ourselves, then we make ourselves this first thing,
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: but then everything, you know, goes awry because we are
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: not being itself where we're this limited, limited thing, which
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: means we distort everything around us. There's not room for
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: everything as it is. in ourselves, there only is room
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: for that in God.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's not a pie chart where like God gets 99%
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: and then you have this 1% that everything itself, like
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: it's an all encompassing framework. And so you have to
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: have a different image of it than a priority list.
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: Yes, exactly. It's not a priority list. That's right.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: So when we think about, when, when we think about
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Augustine's view then of the political society's, Right. He seems
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: to suggest that there is a way to organize political
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: society so that it is more aligned with God's established order,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: but still bending away from it in the, in the
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: eschatology in the, either in the short term, longterm or
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: eschatological sense. And so there is a, There's a way
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: of organizing ourselves that recognizes aspects of God's order and
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: allows maybe God's goodness to shine through our political arrangements.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: But ultimately, then in those political arrangements, they're just too
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: narrow because they're bracketing out God. They can't fully see
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: or accept God's self-disclosure in a way that the church does.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: Is that a fair rendering?
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: So the church, he doesn't really distinguish between the church
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: and the pilgrim city. So the city of God on
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: earth really is, for him, the church that is pilgriming
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: towards its eternal home with God. And so that community,
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: he says, is founded by Christ. It's founded by Christ,
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: by divine love. And in that way, it's a really
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: fundamentally different type of community than any political community, because
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: all political communities are based on human initiative. And that
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: might be a sort of like natural coming together of families.
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: It might be very organic. And even so, it's founded
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: by human beings.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: It comes it's within the natural order of things. And
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: so that means that the church is just a, it's
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: a different type of community. It is bound together in
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: love of God from its very beginning because Christ, the
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: head binds together all of his members and he's purifying them,
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: gathering them back together over the course of time so that,
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: you know, in eternity, they will be, God will be
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: all in all. But a political community does not actually
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: have an eschatological telos, right? There is no, it's simply
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: a temporal arrangement of a group of people seeking earthly
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: peace together. How do we live together in a state
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: of peace and time? And so it's a different type
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: of thing. It's a human project. And the people within
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: that project can do it in a spirit of, I
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: love earthly peace in light of heavenly peace, which means
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: it's just the same thing about the swimming in water, right? Like,
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: do I view my economic structures? Do I view the
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: food that we cultivate in our community? Whatever. All these things,
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: these material benefits that we have, do I view those
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: in light of something higher or greater? Do I love
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: these things in light of something higher or greater? And
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: to the degree that the members of the political community
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: love the things that constitute earthly peace in light of
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: heavenly peace, those things that they share here and now
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: will become more shared and more shareable, which would mean
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: the political community would be more just and there would be,
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: in fact, a more true form of peace here and now.
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: But he really thinks it depends on the loves of
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: the people involved. And there are things get really complicated
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: because it's not enough to say that I'm a Christian
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: and I claim to love things in light of heavenly peace. Actually,
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: it has to be the true case, right? Like what
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: matters is not what you say about your loves. What
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: matters is how do you love these things? And there
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: cannot be a compartmentalization. So I've got my economic life
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: over here and my church life over here. All of
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: these things have to be loved in God. And he
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: says this is very difficult. And so he's not a
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: real optimist when it comes to politics. He thinks that
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: our political communities are constantly wounded, constantly weighed down by
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: selfish self-love. Yeah. Which means that when we make agreements...
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: or like a consensus about what earthly peace looks like,
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: we're often keeping things for ourselves that love would probably
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: tell us not to keep for ourselves. And so there's
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: this sort of tragic perpetual woundedness. He thinks we're constantly
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: wounding our political communities by the actions that we do
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: out of self-love. But he does say that part of
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: the mission, part of the vocation of a Christian is
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: to reveal, bear witness to what it means to love
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: earthly peace in light of heavenly peace. So that's a
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: mission for the whole church, to love these things. Even
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: say you're in office and if you, what would it
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: mean to love your power in light of heavenly peace?
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: And he has this really interesting example where he spends
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: a long time talking about the emperor Theodosius. And he
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: kind of gives a sort of mirror of princes where
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: he says he did this thing and he shared all
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: the money that they got or he shared all the
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: gold that they got. And he forgave the political enemies.
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: And he has this whole vignette of what would it
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: actually look like to not love power and selfish self-love.
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: It's a kind of almost... it's not attached to it
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: in a certain sense.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: Understood.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: So when we think about, I think this is, uh,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: this is a real question for me cause I kind
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: of get confused on it. So the church and the
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: city of God are two different things. Am I right
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: about that?
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: Well, there's a lot of scholarly debate about that. Um,
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: I think Augustine doesn't, here's what he says. He says that, um,
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: The pilgrim church is on a journey towards his eschatological destiny.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: And that is as bride of Christ, you know, to
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: become one in Christ towards the beatific vision, the enjoyment
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: of God and of one another in God. So the church,
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: he says, is already the body of Christ. The church
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: is already the bride of Christ. However, it needs to
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: be purified.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: So all of us on pilgrimage are in this process
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: of becoming purified.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: Which is why he.
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: Says that the the, the greatest activity, um, or the
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: greatest mark of, of, of the pilgrim churches task for forgiveness.
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: Um, and that's really important. So one of the things
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: he says about Theodosius is that he admit he did
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: something really bad politically. He like ordered a massacre. Wasn't good. Uh,
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: he gets excommunicated. He asked for forgiveness to the people that, um,
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: So that's a really important thing, this ability to ask
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: for forgiveness. So the whole pilgrim church is wounded. The
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: whole pilgrim church is in need of this healing that
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: only comes from God. He has this idea that the
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: visible church that we see is a sort of sacrament,
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: which points beyond itself to an invisible reality, but it's
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: not separated from the invisible reality. It really is. the
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: church really is the invisible city of God, but it's
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: a sacrament. So it points beyond itself to, to that
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: deeper reality that it is, but it's not fully right. So,
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: so the church for him, all this to say within
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: the body of the visible church, it's possible to participate
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: in the sacramental life of the church only by explicitly
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: and not also within the heart, right? So you could,
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: for example, be baptized. You could, for example, receive the Eucharist,
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: all these things, live within the liturgical life of the church,
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: go to church. And yet it's possible to do those
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: things only externally and not also internally. And he says
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: that we just don't know whether or not, um, people
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: that we see in the, in the, in the community of,
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: of our parish, our church will all be together, uh,
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: enjoying God and each other in God. Right. So there's
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: a sort of like unknowingness of whether even we, you know,
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: we ourselves, we hope, right. Like God is faithful. There's
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: no one he's, you know, no one, he doesn't desire, uh,
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: anyone to fall away from him. God is constantly extending
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: his grace to us. And yet there remains the possibility
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: to say no. There remains the possibility to feign things, right?
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: And so God knows the heart. And as much as
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: he is continually offering grace, continually offering grace, it is
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: possible for us to say no to that grace. And
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: so in the visible church, it may be that there
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: are people walking within the community of this visible church
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: that won't end up in the city of God.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And it really does seem to me. So that,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: that is the way I understand it. So I'm really
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: appreciate that explanation. That's how I was reading Augustine. Like
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: the church is moving toward the city of God, but
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: you have to then make this distinction of true and false.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: false church, which I think rings true with like what
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: we're reading in Hebrews, for instance, that there's assurance of
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: salvation so long as there's an endurance of the saints
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: and like these sort of weird interconnections that you have
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: to make in there. I think you see it gestured
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: in at first John, where he talks about if they
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: were really of us, they would not have gone out
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: from us. But what this assumes is that they were
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: part of the group. but then showed themselves not to
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: be part of the group in their exit. And so you,
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: you see this in the new Testament that there is
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: this tension and a recognition that, yeah, everybody's participating, but
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: then at some points we see this sort of fracture
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: where people, you know, the leopard really shows its spots,
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: so to speak. And, and now we recognize something different. Yeah.
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: And, you know, I mean, I think this, this story
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: of grace is a really complicated one because it, I
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: think it's possible to receive graces and then at a
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: certain point to reject them. It's sort of like this
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: cling to me always, says Christ. Don't be presumptive that
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: you have clung to me. Things can atrophy. The life
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: of the pilgrim is to constantly say, today I will
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: cling to you again. Today I will cling to you again.
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: And so, so he doesn't linguistically, he does not distinguish
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: between the city of God on pilgrimage and the church that, that,
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: that is not a distinction that he makes, but he
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: does sort of say there's this tension between the unfolding
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: of time and what will be gathered together in eternity.
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: And so, so he really does want to emphasize like
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: be on guard, be on guard and make sure that
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: today you are, you, you continue to cling to, Continue
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: to recognize that you are dependent on and need to
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: receive grace from God to continue to walk with him.
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: So that's, I think, as a pastor, really important on
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: his mind, this sort of way in which we can
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: kind of rest on our laurels. You know, that's always
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: a bad idea.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: When you think about. Obviously, political participation in the Roman
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: Empire is going to be very different than what we have,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: at least in the United States today. When Augustine thinks
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: about that political participation of this pilgrim community within the
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: Roman Empire, is there any sort of guidance you see
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: for Christians today, particularly Christians in the United States?
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's actually perhaps... a helpful corrective because
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: sometimes I think we think of political participation as showing
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: up at the ballot box and discerning between different proposed
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: policy platforms.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: Which I think is sort of an illusion. I think
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: actually it's what, what Augustine is pointing out is always
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: true that political life is is the life of living
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: in pursuit of building, well, participating in the cultivation of
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: an earthly peace in a community. So political life really
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: is cultivating and nurturing the bonds that make possible earthly
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: peace within a real community. And we have lost that idea, right?
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: So if we sort of say that politics is something
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: very small where I pick between different platforms, once every
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: two or four years, we've forgotten that we as Americans
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: are constantly called upon to nurture and build thick ties
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: that perpetuate and teach the meaning of liberty from one
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: generation to the next. And it's hard to know what
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: genuine liberty is, right? We fall into visions of easy freedom, license,
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: things like this, things that you can buy, right? The
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: freedom to buy things.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: However, genuine liberty, I think, is absolutely in harmony with
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: thick responsibilities toward others and being dependent on one another.
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: And so Augustine shows us that actually our mission in
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: political life is to build thick bonds of genuine liberty.
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: peace with one another. And that involves the way that
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: we live day in and day out. We are cultivating
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: a set of virtues alongside one another. We're living out
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: of those virtues. We're teaching people to trust one another,
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: that people can be trustworthy. We're showing what, why character matters.
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: I mean, all of these things I'm putting in the
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: language of civic.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: Virtue, right?
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: Like why would this be important politically? There's more to
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: it than that. But I think Augustine is really, really
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: emphatic that how we conduct our social responsibilities bears witness
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: and teaches the community around us what kind of peace
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: is possible.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: So he gives the example of the pater familias, the
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: head of the household, the father. And he says that
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: you can be a head of household and, and love
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: to dominate other people. And so everyone's scared of you,
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: everyone flatters you, and you love lording it over other people.
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: And so peace in that household is really all about
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: doing what you can to flatter the leader and making
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: sure that you're not harmed by that leader. So it's
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: a very negative form of peace. People are living together
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: in fear. People are learning to manipulate each other, right?
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: You could think about like King Lear's daughters. How did
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: they end up, you know, saying those things that they said? Well,
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think there was a sort of climate
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: where they learned you flatter dad and that's how you
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: get what you want, you know? So there's that kind
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: of paterfamilias. And then he talks about the paterfamilias who
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: sees his authority as service.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: And he's constantly recognizing where the people, he listens and
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: he recognizes that where there are wounds within his household.
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: And he tries to bind those wounds by, you know, there,
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: there is punishment involved, right? Like, you know, you, you
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: hit your brother with the Legos again. So the Legos
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: have to go, you know, But there's a sort of
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: teaching of the importance of loving one another, of thick
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: bonds where our relationships with one another really, really matters.
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: And we need to live in a way where everyone
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: is listened to. Everyone is learning to grow in these virtues.
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: And everyone recognizes that they have an important place. And
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: so these kinds of leadership roles are all about service.
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: and we all have them, right? We have different parts
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: of our lives where we have, um, responsibilities to others that, that, um,
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: that create a culture.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: And I think we can all learn from that in
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: Augustine rather than sort of compartmentalizing politics to this little
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: place where we're choosing between platforms. We're learning to recognize
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: the importance of our own, uh, characters and what kind
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: of community that will create, what kind of culture we're
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: knitting together day in and day out.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: And it strikes me, you see this, obviously, I think
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: you see it in some of the household codes in
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: Paul's work, you know, Ephesians, Colossians. But I think the
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: place you almost see it, where you could arguably make
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: a really strong case for Romans 14 and 15, this weak,
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: strong argument, particularly where he talks about look, the weak
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: answer to God in the same way that the strong,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: you know, relate to God. And so that then should
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: condition the way that the weak and the strong interrelate
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: with one another. There shouldn't be judgment or condemnation or
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: what have you.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: Like that's, that's a level up.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: God's going to handle that part. And so this then
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: provides the basis for living peaceably with one another and,
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: and really fostering growth within that community. And, And so
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: there is this orientation, as you were talking about the
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: authoritarian paterfamilias, right, where everything is about the head of
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: the household. You see this sort of misorientation. I know
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: Augustine talks a lot about misdirected desire. This is almost
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: like a misdirected peace. It's like it doesn't foster the
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: right sort of virtues. it can create a pseudo peace,
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: but it's not around the right set of virtues. And
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: so reorienting those so that the true fear that you
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: have is around God. It sort of lead, there's this
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: great quote in Jonathan train wrote it in a book
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: on theologies of memory in relation to the Vietnam war.
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: I'm blanking on the title exactly.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: But he says for Christians, as a people called to obedience,
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: they are always free to obey. And he has this
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: notion of true liberty found in deep obedience to God. Yeah.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: It just strikes me that all of that is sort
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: of what Augustine is swimming around. Yeah.
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: And he really, he, so he, there's two things going on.
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: First of all, he thinks that naturally God has put
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: in the paternal heart, a deep love for his children that,
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: you know, obviously self-love, withers away, but this sort of
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: natural love is a mirror of God's love for us,
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: which is deep. And, you know, if you think about
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: the confessions and how it's modeled on the prodigal son,
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: the story of the prodigal son has affected Augustine so
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: very deeply. And so the way in which all of these,
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: this compassion for one's own children, the desire to help them,
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: to heal them, All these things he thinks that, you know,
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: is naturally there. And then God's love only strengthens it
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: and will also gives it a measure so that when
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: it's not there, God indicts that absence, right? But yeah,
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: it's really about how do we think about our roles
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: of authority as service? Well, only by seeing the face
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: of the other and being moved by that face. in love.
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: So he has these remarkable letters where he writes to
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: Christian judges, you know, involved in Senate, like the, there,
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: there were some, there was some unrest in North Africa with,
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: with these different Christian groups. One was called the Donatists
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: who it was kind of, they really didn't like the
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: Roman empire, for example. So it was a bit involved
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: in national separatism, but the Donatists got a bit violent
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: and they would, you know, throw lime in the eyes
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: of the Catholics and kind of they would blind them.
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: And so they were charged with, you know, public unrest.
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: And Augustine writes these letters to Christian judges and says, look,
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: you know, do not torture them. Do not execute them. Rather,
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: with the heart of a loving father, seek to rehabilitate them.
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: So he really thinks that the heart of the father
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: is one of compassion that seeks a kind of restoration
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: or healing. And it's really interesting the way that he
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: takes that model and he applies it to politics. But
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: it can't really be understood without this kind of compassionate
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: heart that seeks healing rather than just destruction of people.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like a putting away of the rabble-rousers. without any
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: sort of rehabilitation or, or desire to transform them. Is
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: that a fair way to think about it?
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: That's right. Yeah.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: That's what he, he says, avoid this, that, uh, you, he,
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: he even writes like, think about yourself as the woman
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: caught in adultery. How can you be a judge in
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: light of that? You are that woman, right? And so
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: you judge out of recognizing you have been radically forgiven
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: and which doesn't mean laxity, but rather it means applying
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: the law with a heart for rehabilitation and forgiveness.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: And reform.
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Let me think for a minute because Augustine, and again,
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: I'm not, I don't remember where I read this, but
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: I know it's from Augustine. So maybe you'll be able
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: to place it, but he's talking about everyone deserving love, right?
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: Everyone deserves love, but, because we have a limited capacity,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: we ultimately can't give everyone the love that they deserve.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: And so he suggests that God has placed us in
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: a position and around a certain degree, number of people
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: to love them in a particular manner, right? And it
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: strikes me that well, first I'm wondering if you know
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: that passage better than I do. Do you recognize that
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: teaching from a Justin? Yeah.
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: So I think here, I think this is night city
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: of God, 1914. Okay. Um, where he's talking about, uh,
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: the two great commandments, love of God and love of neighbor.
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: And so he says, you know, seek peace with all, uh,
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: do no harm, uh, And then he has this really
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: interesting thing where he says, well, you have a, you
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: have a responsibility to those close to you and your family.
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: But there's this tension between, in a certain sense, the
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: principle of need and the principle of proximity. Yeah. Let's
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: say you have a, you know, one loaf of bread,
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: the heart, aches because we recognize that if I have
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: one loaf of bread, I have to choose between the
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: starving person and my child, for example. And so what
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: he's really doing there is he's recognizing there's this tension
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: between the needs of the whole world and then the
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: people that have been given to us. Now, I think
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: what he's doing there is he's not kind of making
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: he's not making a law of you always, you know,
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: you always give the bread to your child in the
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: face of a starving person, because what if your kid
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: just had four peanut butter jelly sandwiches? You know what
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: I mean? So it's, it's a really, it's a matter
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: of prudence and deliberation about what is called for in
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: this particular circumstance. But he does recognize that there is
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: this tension because there are, there are people who need
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: things and there are people that we have responsibilities towards and, there.
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: And so that's kind of the logic of what's going
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: on in that part. But yeah, he doesn't really give
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: us a go-to, easily applicable rule for what to do
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: in that circumstance.
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: It's not normative. I think the reason I'm bringing it
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: up is as you talk about the development of these
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: thick relationships, it seems to me that that's a crucial
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: concept to bring up, particularly in our day and age,
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: where I can read things about any nation on the
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: planet that I have very little. I remember at one
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: point I was asked to do a piece on the Deadpool. Um, and,
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: and I just made the comment, I'm like, I don't
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: know anyone who's ever been to a Diddy party. And
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: so to me, it's like, I have compassion for them.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: I have a sense that this is truly impactful and
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: harmful to a lot of people. I also have no
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: real recourse to do anything about it. I wouldn't even
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: know where to start. Like for me, the line to
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: get to someone that are where I could go, yes,
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: I can have compassion on this person in the generic
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: sense versus the line I'd have to walk to figure out, okay,
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: who's been there and how do I get in touch
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: with them?
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: And what can I do?
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: You know, like develop that relationship, it's way far down.
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: The line, right? There's multiple steps there.
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: And I think that as we look at this and
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: we're thinking about developing these thick relationships, there's something about
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: being careful not to get so involved in the big
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: picture things where we haven't been placed and then ignoring
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: what's happening closer to us. Again, not as a normative
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: rule like, hey, never watch the world news or something
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: crazy like that. Yeah. But just recognizing our limitations and
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: trying to judge and discern in a really sober and
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: mature way. What can I do? Not how should I feel,
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: but what can I do? Yeah. There's some sort of
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: distinction there.
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: I think that's right. I think there's– for Augustine, a
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: real sense of providence and a vocation and mission that
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: can't be discerned outside of prayer. So, you know, he
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: didn't choose to be ordained. He was kind of pounced
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: upon and ordained by the people of Hippo when he
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: shows up. So that's very much like, well, this was
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: out of my hands, but this is clearly the mission,
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: the vocation that I've been given. he would be much
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: rather reading his books with his buddies and have like
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: the contemplative life than the active life. So there's a
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: sense in which he sort of, he has the disposition
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: where he thinks that active posts are sort of given
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: to you as a cross in a certain sense. I think, yeah.
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: So I think that that's, that's right. A sort of
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: recognition that God is, gives us our mission. So there's
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: this prayer by John Henry Newman. I don't remember all
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: of it, but it goes something like, I am a
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: link in the chain. I have my mission. I may
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: not know what it is in this life, but I
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: will know in the next what it was. And I
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: think that disposition and that openness is exactly the right thing.
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: Because who knows, maybe you find yourself in prayer, deeply
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: called to go to a mission in Africa, right? Very
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: far from home. Or, you know, think about the apostles.
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: This guy is going, you know, to India, or whatever
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: it might be, right? Like, who knows where the Spirit
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: is going to lead you. But it's not an abstraction.
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: It's not.
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: A.
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: And I certainly agree that we can become morose and uh,
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: heavy laden with all the things we cannot do in
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: the world. And I think the entertainment news industry is,
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: is really, uh, you know, but I think perhaps larger
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: than that, it's just the, the immediacy of the digital
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: medium in general is a sort of distraction from, from
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: the given reality that we do have to attend to. Um,
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: I do think that's a real danger today. Um, that we, we,
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: we live in, in a digital medium that transports us
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: everywhere and nowhere at once. So we're, we're not even
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: where we are, you know?
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. No, it's a good way to put it.
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: Where concretely in my life, who am I called upon
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: to love and to serve? Um, is a, is a
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: really important question we have to constantly return to, you know,
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: and vocation.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: Thinking about vocation.
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: So we're coming up on time.
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: We're almost done.
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: The interview so i think augustine has a lot to
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: say to the contemporary world i find his writing really
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: rich and helpful um as a you know sort of
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: a someone who's had the benefit of going through phd
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: studies and doing research and all that kind of fun
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: stuff um even i find it difficult to access augustine
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: in all its aspects like it it's a project right
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: to jump into you don't just So I'm wondering if
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: you can give listeners some sense of where they might
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: start to get sort of an introduction to Augustine and
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: maybe start reading some of his work. Like if you
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: could give them a little bit of a step-by-step, how
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: would you, how would you suggest to someone who's really
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: interested in this? How do they start to get to
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: know Augustine and his work?
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah. You know, I, I would start with his sermons because, uh,
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: Augustine is writing to everyday people in his sermons. It's
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: not a high intellectual class or anything like that. He
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: is meditating on the scriptures. And, you know, some of
• 54:57
  Speaker 3: them are really long. There is one where he was
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: trying to keep the Christians in the church because outside
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: this pagan festival that was going on and it was
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: a little bit bacchanalian-like. So he goes really long on
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: that one. But by and large, you can pray with
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: them and you can also see the way that they
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: have a kind of arc to them, and you can
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: learn the way that he's speaking to people. So I
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: would say the best way to think about Augustine as
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: a writer is he's giving us a spiritual exercise. It's
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: not like, here's some information. It's all about the soul
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: and helping us return to God. So everything that he
• 55:37
  Speaker 3: writes is a spiritual exercise for the reader. We're supposed
• 55:40
  Speaker 3: to approach it in a spirit of contemplation, a spirit
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: of meditation. the spirit of listening and of looking at
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: our hearts and letting God heal our hearts. So start
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: with the sermons.
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: There's some really beautiful ones. He has a whole collection
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: on the Psalms. That is amazing. He also has sermons,
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: you know, on first John, he's got one there. There's
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: so many of them. You can get like the essential
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: sermons if you like, but start with the sermons. Okay.
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: Well, Veronica, this has been awesome. I actually really love
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: talking to Augustine. And as I said in my email
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: to you, I really enjoyed the book. It was so
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: helpful and clarifying and informative for some of the other
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: work that I was doing that I just really appreciated it.
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: I think you got deeper into Augustine than I would
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: have been able to myself. And so it was just
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: really helpful. I actually thought it was a pretty accessible
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: book for an academic book. I think it's worth people
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: wading through. And so, um, I would encourage listeners to
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: go out and check it out politics in the earthly
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: city in Augustine city of God by Veronica Roberts Ogle.
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: The link will be in the description. Do you have
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: anywhere else I could route people to get more familiar
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: with you and your work?
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: Oh, you know, I write here and there. I'm not,
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: I'm not, I have little kids, so I have limited time,
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: but I have a couple of things, you know, in
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: public discourse here or there, or, um, Church Life Journal,
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: but that's really it. It's mostly when people ask me
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: to do something, I'll do it, but I don't have
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: time to do it otherwise.
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: Understood. Well, thanks for taking the time to be on
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: the show today and really appreciate you and your work.
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: And again, just encourage everybody to check the book out.
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: And that's it. We'll catch everybody on the next episode
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: of Thinking Christian. Take care, everyone.
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much. Take care.
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: Bye-bye. Just want to take a second to thank the
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've
• 57:47
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