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Fan into flame the gift

Fan into flame the gift…

On a Sunday in early October, Mike Neelley and I went into Skagit County Jail together for our weekly services. Five men gathered around a stainless steel table cemented into the floor. We began with a prayer and then I passed out photocopies of 2 Timothy 1:6-14 – the passage on the gift of God.

I invite someone to read the first verse:

“For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands.”

I offer a brief introduction by stating that God has gifts for all of us– spiritual gifts. These gifts are different from natural abilities, like being artistic, perceptive or a good communicator.  Spiritual gifts are distinct from learned skills like carpentry, welding, or auto mechanics. They include healing, prophesy, identifying evil spirits that afflict people, faith, and many others.

“Maybe some of you already know of a gift God has given you,” I suggest, looking around at blank faces.

“Or, maybe some of you still don’t know if God has given you a spiritual gift, and you’d like to receive something.”

The men seem to resonate with this option. I go on to share how these gifts enable us to become actively involved in God’s liberating work in the world,

I share how exercising a spiritual gift, like praying for someone to be healed or sharing a prophetic impression requires faith, which means taking risks. I ask someone to read the next verse:

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and discipline.”

Hearing these verses in the heart of the jail, with the TV blaring a football game suddenly made me feel vulnerable. I think I was then and there experiencing the kind of fear or timidity we’d just read about. The next verse seemed to expose and directly address the underlying issue:

Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord or of me His prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God, who has saved us and called us with a holy calling.”

We talk about how natural it is to feel ashamed to believe in God’s liberating actions and of Jesus himself. You can feel like a fool believing in an invisible God.

Yet in the face of this Paul writes as an inmate himself, urging people not be ashamed. After all Jesus has saved us, and we need saving. Still when we respond to his call we do enter into a kind of suffering, which the apostle acknowledges.  But Christ Jesus “abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”

Suddenly I remember that the men hadn’t seemed aware that they had received a spiritual gift. I suggest that Mike and I would love to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal each person’s spiritual gift, and that we could gladly ask God to give new gifts.

The men all seemed eager to for whatever was going to happen next. Mike and I looked at each other and began to go for it, taking turns to speak prophetically over each man around the table.

Each man seemed to soak up the words of affirmation that Mike and I offered, agreeing with the gifts that we identified or spoke over them. We could see new hope ignited, there in this place of bleakness where negativity, harsh labels and curses abound.

Only one man joined us in “P pod”—a Mexican American guy with stars tattooed on his cheeks, barely visible under long curly black hair parted in the middle.  He is a man of deep conviction, born of suffering through years in prison.

Mike and I were moved by how easy it was to identify people’s spiritual gifts in the jail setting, and how precious and welcomed God’s perspective is among those who feel downtrodden.

We wrap up our time with each group by encouraging the men to step our in faith—fanning into flame their gifts. We encourage them to not let fear paralyze them, but God’s power, love and disciple.

Paul’s final words seem the perfect charge: “Guard, through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to you.”

Mike and I find ourselves being deeply encouraged by this Scripture and our experience with the men. I share this message at Tierra Nueva’s service that day, and the work continues.

For further reflections on the gifts of the Spirit, read “Guerrilla tactics: signs, wonders, justice and mercy,” chapter nine in Guerrilla Gospel: Reading the Bible for Liberation in the Power of the Spirit.

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Morocco

Dying Every Day – To Live!

Dying to our own agendas…

The last day of our trip to Morocco overlapped with the Pope’s visit. We had just completed the final module of our Certificate in Transformational Ministry at the Margins with 40 French-speaking Sub-Sahara African migrants. I was tired but excited after having spent time visiting house churches and engaging with serious missional leaders from ten or so different countries.

That day, Saturday, March 30 the Pope arrived for a two-day visit.  Security was tight, and only people on pre-approved lists could attend the special smaller gatherings where he was speaking. Gracie and I weren’t on any lists. Students and faculty from the ecumenical theological seminary where we were teaching who were on the list gathered excitedly, ready to travel together by bus to one of the venues.

While I was waiting around, hoping to somehow be able to go, Gracie came over and asked me to help her pray for a French woman who had had a chronic illness for over 25 years. Christian, one of the African pastors who was on the list had also told me that he would rather take us to pray for a man from one of his house churches whose legs were totally paralyzed than see the Pope. He had told us that he’d likely be coming by later that afternoon to take us to this young man’s house. I wasn’t in the mood to pray for anyone- tired from four days of straight teaching and ministry in French.

Jesus’ journey to the feast in Jerusalem in John 5 did come to mind though—the story where he stops at the sheep gate and prays for a man paralyzed for 38 years. Stopping and praying for this man appeared Jesus’ priority over anything else.

Getting my will in alignment with Jesus’ priorities rather than seeing the Pope or being a tourist in Morocco felt like a kind of death. A Scripture from Romans 8:36 came to mind, which I’m finding myself called to remember and come under throughout each day, every day.

Just as it is written, “for your sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

I reluctantly agreed to pray with Gracie for the French woman, as students and faculty left excitedly to get on the bus to see the Pope. We saw the Spirit move to bring healing and freedom– a beautiful experience! As we were wrapping up we got a call from Christian, the house church pastor from Cameroon, telling us he was on his way to take us to pray for the paralytic.

He flagged down a taxi and we headed out to one of the marginalized neighborhoods where many migrants find inexpensive housing (see video link below). The neighborhood had been cleansed of petty criminals—which normally abound, days prior to the Pope’s visit. We followed Christian through streets and alleys until we came to the paralyzed man’s house.

Dying to liveAs we entered the smell of urine was strong. The 26-year-old man with paralyzed legs lay on a bed- immobile. His name is Jesus! He’s a worship leader from Afrique Central (Central African Republic) who had been unable to move his legs at all for over a year. We prayed for him and saw his excitement and faith build as his back pain left and he began to move his feet and legs. He insisted on attempting to get up, without out help, and was able to stand.

I think of the verse right before Romans 8:36:

“Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?”

We left feeling like we were experiencing the verse following– Romans 8:37.

“But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.”

As we left Jesus’ room, Christian’s five-year-old daughter tugged on his arm, telling him God was telling her to pray for a blind Morocco Muslim woman who sat by the entrance to Jesus’ apartment. Christian did an about face—returning with his daughter to the woman and her friend. He explained what God had told his daughter. The two women were deeply touched, kissing the girl’s cheeks. The little girl boldly stretched out her hand and prayed for the woman’s eye to be opened in Jesus’ name. If anyone could reach these two Moroccan women, this little girl seemed like the perfect missionary.

Surrendering to Jesus’ will involves dying to our own agendas. “Being put to death all day long” might mean relinquishing our own plans, comfort, security—whatever needs to die in favor of following a higher calling. Abundant, resurrection life awaits us.

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From a Female Principal & Pastor-Theologian…

Female Theologians…

I recently attended a really enjoyable theology conference in LA. I listened to thought-provoking papers and presentations, met some interesting new people, gave a paper myself on a topic I love, and had some good conversations. I also attended a lunch hosted by Logia, a new initiative launched by the Logos Institute, ‘which seeks to support current female students and staff and encourage women to pursue divinity disciplines at the postgraduate level.’ ( http://logos.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/logia/ ) Forty-five women attended. I gather this number astonished and pleased the organizers.

As a result of attending the conference and the few things that happened afterwards, I felt prompted to write this post.

After I left LA I found I had some time to finish reading the thesis of my good friend, Rev Dr Kate Coleman, on the experiences of black Christian women in the UK.[1] In it I read this, which I made a note of,

Mercy Amba Oduyoye concurs, “My experience is that it has always taken women to ensure the representation and voice of women, at least in the Church and other related bodies.”[2] Audre Lorde stresses the importance of such a development: For it is not difference which immobilises us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.[3]

Just as I finished Kate’s thesis, another female friend of mine (a NT scholar) posted an article of an interview with John Piper where he states very clearly his conviction that women should not teach men in seminary in preparation for ministry as, in his view, the Bible prohibits this. I read (skim-read to be honest) the article. As familiar as I am with the stance, it never ceases to appall me.

My first thought was I’m so glad that I have a contract with IVP Academic to write a book called Freedom to Lead. In this, I’ll explain why I (and so many others) think that the Bible does the opposite. I’m due to write this in the next few months.

Secondly, I felt beyond sad and frustrated. I’m always rendered momentarily speechless when I see opinions like that in print. I’m a theological educator and the principal of a non-denominational seminary style theological college (which specializes in spiritual formation for life, leadership, and ministry). I have had a teaching and preaching ministry in the church for over twenty years, and I’m a mother of four sons whom I, and my husband, have nurtured in the Christian faith.

So thirdly, everything coming in the space of a few days made me want to put my own something in print—something that I hope will strengthen the mettle of other women to pursue theological education at a higher level, to hang in there, and to become the women teachers, preachers, and leaders that the world and the church needs.

Women ensure the representation and voice of women

What women often do for one another is just to share their stories, and as we do, we give one another a sense of relief that ‘it’s not just me,’ which somehow helps us all out. Frances Young spoke about this in her paper in LA. Here is a bit of my story for those women who are thinking about going into academic theology.

I came in late to systematic theology at a post-grad level having studied for a bachelor’s degree in theology on my own in my 30s. I was in my 40s and have always only ever been a part-time theologian. I only studied theology to begin with because I wanted to be a better preacher and pastor. I studied, led a church with my husband, and managed a houseful of boys. Now I’m the principal of a college, I still lead a small church, and I do research and writing in any time I can get. I absolutely love theology.

When I started my MA in systematic theology, I noticed straight away that systematic theology is dominated by male voices. This baffled me slightly. It wasn’t until I began to realize the way that systematic theology is done at a higher level that it made more sense to me. That is not to say that the men I met were not respectful and encouraging to women—quite the opposite in my experience—just that the academic world is quite hard-hitting for anyone who ventures into the field. If you start under-confident, it’s going to be a greater challenge to stay in there.

In recent years, I have certainly found some women that I admire in the field and I’ve enjoyed reading and meeting some great female theologians. But a further realization dawned on me as I went on to do a PhD. There were so few evangelical (and even fewer evangelical charismatic) women in systematic theology. I discovered a similar pattern in NT. I cited John Piper above and I have my own thoughts as to why this is the case, but that is not for this post. Here, I’d like to address those women who have just launched out into academic theology or are maybe thinking about it, identify some of the hurdles that you might encounter, and encourage you to keep going or take some first steps if this is for you.

At MA level I made friends with a young woman ahead of me who encouraged me at an early stage at King’s to keep going with academic theology. She had finished her PhD and had just started teaching at King’s. I’m grateful for her encouragement and friendship. Apart from that I had no other women academics in my life, and certainly no female professors, and that went on for years. The rest of my encouragers and mentors were men. By and large, it was the men who ensured that I found a voice and I am greatly indebted to them.

Despite help and encouragement, it was never ‘easy.’ It was always very hard work, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. I don’t think it’s ever easy for anyone—male or female—but women have more to overcome.

Whenever I go from my normal day job and normal life into a full-on academic environment I experience the same pattern of thoughts and emotions which are something like this: It’s so great to be here…I absolutely love this stuff…Why on earth am I here?… What am I doing here? I’d so rather be at home…I’m so glad I came…I have no idea what the speaker is going on about…Everyone else is cleverer/more knowledgeable/more confident than I am…Wow, that was so interesting. I love that idea…How on earth do we make this real for people on the ground?…I’d love to ask x or x… No, that’ll sound stupid… I’m glad I didn’t…I wish I had…

I could go on, but you get the picture. I often used to feel sick, panicky, and tongue-tied in academic settings—not a state I ever got into anywhere else and very unusual for me. Thankfully, I no longer feel that, but it did last for a very long time. The most familiar feeling of all is my little friend, the imposter syndrome, who just creeps in and snuggles up. I’m so used to it now that it’s boring and my best bet is just to try and keep it quiet.

Now, in the fourteen years since I started my MA, I’ve had enough conversations with women to know that this is all normal. It’s not just me. There are things you get used to and need to accept, and things you need to fight against.

Here’s my advice to women considering going into academic theology, even if it’s only ever part-time.

Listen to those around you

If you have an ability for learning, writing, and teaching theology, and other people identify that in you, then consider pursuing a higher degree. Thankfully, you don’t decide on your own whether you are able to become an academic theologian. It’s in the hands of your teachers and mentors. If they are good and they are for you, and they encourage you to do it, then first of all, trust them! They are not setting you up to fail. They see potential in you and they know what they’re doing. In other words, don’t drown in your own under-confidence.

Learn to persevere

Even though it makes all the difference in the world, their confidence won’t actually become yours. You have to find your own. This may take years and years. You may have to fight through chronic feelings of inadequacy and stupidity, crippling fears, and all the anxiety that accompanies that, to get to the point where you really believe that you might have something to contribute after all. I know for sure that this can happen to men as well. It’s just worse for women.

(I really hope one day that this changes. I absolutely love seeing confident younger women just getting up and having a go. It’s delightful.)

Decide not to be intimidated

Find your level so that you’re happy with what you are able to do and say rather than trying to emulate someone who is just nothing like you. You have to find your own voice and learn not to be intimidated by those who are ‘better’ at this than you. If someone is playing a power game, you should probably just keep away from him or her. In general, however, most people don’t actually want to intimidate you. My advice is just get used to feeling ignorant and stupid. You will never know enough. Ask lots of questions and enjoy the fact that there is always more to learn. Apparently, Colin Gunton used to say that it takes twenty years to be formed as a systematic theologian. As a part-time one, that means I’ll arrive when I’m 80 years old!

Get used to picking yourself up

I know I’m going to sound like a charismatic here (no apologies), but don’t underestimate that there is a spiritual battle (however you understand that—I know what I mean by it) over women in theology and leadership. So pray, pray, pray, and get others to pray for you as you study. If you decide you want to do this, get used to feeling knocked—it will happen. If other people have put faith in you, pick yourself up, and carry on. This was one of the best pieces of advice I ever received.

Focus on God

Finally, focus on why you want to do it. I was inspired to do theology just through my own reading and then meeting other theologians who had a passion for their subject (learning and speaking about God) and a deep sense of privilege that we are able to serve the church. If I’m flagging, thinking why bother with academic theology (which I frequently think), I look at the Gospels again, get back in touch with Jesus, worship, re-read a great theologian, and thank God that I get to play a part.

There are powerful voices ranged against women who feel drawn to academic theology. They come from without and within. They don’t have to be the loudest ones. I hope, if you’re thinking of studying and it’s the right thing for you, that you have a champion, or a few, who will cheer you on, open doors for you, pray for you, and delight in your successes, however big or small.

Don’t for one second imagine it will be easy. It won’t. But it could quite well be the best and most rewarding thing you ever get to do. It certainly has been for me.

[1] Coleman, Kate Owusua, “Exploring Métissage: A Theological Anthropology of Black Women’s Subjectivities in Postcolonial Britain.” PhD Thesis, 2005.

[2] Oduyoye, Mercy Amba, “Reflections from a Third World Woman‟s Perspective: Women‟s Experience and Liberation Theologies,” in King, Ursula (ed.), Feminist Theology from the Third World: A Reader (London and Maryknoll, NY: SPCK/Orbis books, 1994), p.24.

[3] Lorde, Audre, Sister outsider: Essays and Speeches (New York: The Crossing Press, 1984), p.44.

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Bible for Life

Bible For Life

Nick CrawleyBy Nick Crawley, MA – Church Leader, founder and director of Bible for Life.

Nick is an Anglican clergyman with over 25 years experience of church leadership in London, Harare (Zimbabwe), Sheffield, and Bristol. He is a qualified Banker and Investment Analyst and was awarded an MA with merit in Christian Theology from the University of Bristol. He is married to Dr. Lucy Peppiatt the systematic theologian and author, and current Principal of Westminster Theological Centre. They have four sons.

What is Bible for Life?

William Tyndale translated the Bible into English in order that ‘the boy who drives a plough (would) know more of the scriptures’. And he was executed for it!Today, almost 500 years after his death, it’s easy enough to pick up an English Bible, but our secular C21st society seems to know next to nothing about what it actually says.

One of the reasons for this is that the Bible is in practice a difficult book to understand.

I love the Bible. I’ve never found any book remotely like it. It describes the life of the most remarkable man who ever lived and who has influenced human history and life more than anyone other human being. It also has what has been called a ‘ring of truth’ about it – a deep resonance that it is communicating the most genuine truth a person can ever encounter.

Over the past ten years I have been working at finding ways to make both the books of the Bible and its message more accessible for interested, but busy people.

Bible for Life, (BfL), is a ministry that helps genuine enquirers get to the heart of the message of the different Bible books. It is built on a number of principles.

1) Studying a whole book at a time

First, the majority of Christians seem to read the Bible like a newspaper, turning to their favourite sections and not reading much else. While this is better than nothing it almost always misses the author’s main point. BfL approaches each book as a unit, written by an author in a specific context to recipients in a different context. The context is crucial because it directly influences the meaning of the text. Every sentence has been written for a reason and contributes directly to the meaning of the book and its application.

2) Using the resources available on the internet

Second, since our lives, (and especially the lives of those under thirty), are now completely orientated around the internet, Bible teachers must find new ways and media for communicating Biblical truth directly to smart phones, laptops and tablets.

3) Catering for different levels of engagement

This leads to the third feature of BfL; The Menu. The material on the site is presented for the visitor to engage with the material in different levels. Using a meal format the visitor can have a 5 minute ‘Taster Course’, through watching a short video, studying an image, reading a summary or engaging with questions. A deeper engagement through other ‘products’ is available in the ‘Starter Course’, while in the ‘Main Course’ there is a “commentary” and a serious study of the imperatives of the book for the committed disciple of Jesus. The ‘Dessert Course’ is more open-ended touching on academic issues, special studies, prayers and tools for the church pastor. At the end of each course there are questions relating the key issues in the book to contemporary C21st life and issues.

4) A varied approach to suit different personalities

The fourth BfL feature is the variety of learning approaches to suit the different ways we engage with and respond to texts. As well as visual, audio and textual media there are different ways of responding what we encounter such as ‘challenge’, ‘enquiry’, ‘inter-reaction’ and ‘response’. BfL works to provide these, and this is where the related discipleship coaching is important.

5) A coaching and mentoring tool

I engage with a number of people on a monthly basis coaching them in their engagement with the Bible. The strategy throughout is to coach them to engage with the Bible for themselves. A month seems to be the right period of time for a person to engage at a deep level with one book of the Bible. As Jesus said, “The measure you use is measured to you.” Those that engage most, get most.

6) Completely free!

I look forward to the day when there are hundreds of different internet based strategies and tools for helping apprentices of Jesus unlock the dynamic of Scripture. BfL is one such tool. All the material is completely free. I hope you find it helpful. Why not visit the site now and see for yourself.

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Augustine of Hippo

Review of Peter Brown, ‘Augustine of Hippo: A Biography’ by Steve Watts

Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, Forty-Fifth Anniversary Edition (University of California Press, 2000, originally published in 1967), pp. 548.

Steve Watts profileSteve Watts teaches Church History and History of Spirituality at WTC. He is passionate about the creative relationship between Christian belief and culture. Steve completed his PhD in Mediaeval History at the University of St Andrews, and believes there is much to be gained today from an informed understanding of the Medieval Church.

Augustine of Hippo…

There is admittedly something strange about posting a review of a book whose first edition was published fifty years ago. Even its second edition will soon be turning twenty. My initial thought was that Peter Brown’s classic biography of Augustine (d. 430), bishop of the North African port city of Hippo Regius, might provide one way of engaging with the surprisingly little-marked five-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation’s “first year”.[1] Augustine had, of course, departed for greener pastures over a millennium before Johann Tetzel first cast his unseemly shadow upon the backwater town of Wittenberg. But as students of the Reformation will know, Augustine’s writings and––perhaps more importantly––his authority carried no small weight during the proceedings. Both Roman Catholics and the Magisterial Reformers were determined to keep the venerable Church Father on “their side”.  And was it not, after all, a cantankerous Augustinian friar that is credited with causing all that fuss in the first place?

Augustine of Hippo book coverMartin Luther was Augustinian in more than one sense, however. Evidently he belonged to an order that among other things followed a rule traditionally attributed to the North African bishop. But he was also Augustinian insofar as aspects of his thought were shaped, or perhaps empowered, by encountering Augustine’s work directly––especially the latter’s anti-Pelagian writings. Yet it is a further sense of Luther’s Augustinianism that perhaps best explains why Augustine is important not only for grappling with the legacy of the Reformation but also for understanding the very trajectory of the western intellectual tradition.

Luther, simply put, was Augustinian in the same way that pretty much any other medieval person was Augustinian. The most succinct way of explaining why, is two-fold: 1) Augustine was a prodigious thinker and voluminous writer, whose breadth and depth of erudition were unmatched during his lifetime and well beyond; and 2) the collapse of Roman civilization in the West produced conditions in which his writings, and those of a select number of others, would be ascribed a remarkable degree of authority. In the latter case, it was as if Augustine’s opinions were like so many stones chosen from among the imperial rubble, now repurposed to provide a foundation upon which a discernibly medieval cultural architecture could arise. As a result, right through the Middle Ages to the Reformation and then well beyond, his influence can be detected in so many areas of philosophy and theology, from human psychology to Just War theory and from soteriology to ecclesiology.[2] Such, then, is Augustine’s undeniable importance within the western tradition. And yet, however ironically for an author of the highly personal Confessions, this very “importance” has often succeeded in obscuring the man himself.

Augustine has suffered from a way of retelling history that latches onto great figures of the past, such that their monumental personalities come to dwell in some metaphorical pantheon to which all students must display at least a passing awareness. So grand in the imagination, looming in all their authoritative grandeur over the course of history, he––like too many others––has become prone to caricature. And this is why Peter Brown’s study is so valuable. Brown seeks to understand Augustine, not as the monumental “Great Church Father of the West”, but as a North African pagan-turned-bishop who grappled with fundamental questions of human existence as the sun began its rapid descent on the western Roman Empire. In short, Brown offers a person in place of a façade.

It is the second edition of Brown’s book that I have had the great pleasure of reading. The first edition was composed in the 1960s and by Brown’s later admission was discernibly influenced by such sixties’ concerns as power, psychology, and sociology––though, interestingly enough, not so much by sex. That text actually remains unrevised in the present volume. Brown explains in the foreword that he thought it best not to modify what he had written some thirty-odd years’ earlier. Too much scholarship had been produced in the intervening years to incorporate it feasibly. And, even more importantly, there was the substantial discovery of a number of Augustine’s letters and sermons in the interim that had shed new light on his pastoral activity. These had the result of softening Brown’s perception of the bishop, leading him to doubt his earlier judgement that Augustine’s personality had progressively hardened with age.

And then there is the perspective that comes from experience. When Brown first published the book he was already an accomplished, if relatively junior, scholar. In the following decades, his reputation would only continue to grow as a historian of the highest order. He has been recognized for decades now as one of the foremost authorities on religious culture in Late Antiquity (dating roughly, in his estimation, from the mid 3rd to the early 8th century)––a field he has done much to define at the expense of the periodization known in impolite society as the “Dark Ages”. On the basis, then, of the intervening scholarship, the discoveries, and his own thirty years’ worth of experience, Brown chose to add two substantial chapters (“New Evidence”; “New Directions”) to the end of the original work. Considering the subject matter, this is entirely fitting. Toward the end of his life, Augustine also cast his mind back upon his previous works and issued his own Retractions.

Brown charts the course of Augustine’s life, from his birth as Aurelius Augustinus in Thagaste, a town in Roman North Africa, now Algeria, to his death in Hippo Regius (“Royal Port”), during the Vandal siege of the city. He generally follows the lead of the Confessions when covering his subject’s first decades. Augustine is an exceptionally bright student, who, while not being the most virtuous of young men, was nevertheless able to gain both an excellent education and, finally, an impressive teaching position in Milan. Along the way, his restless spirit led from one philosophical or religious system (at the time, there was not much of a difference) to another until it finally found its rest in a garden, sobbing in surrender to the God of his mother Monica.

Following Augustine’s conversion, Brown continues to trace a historical trajectory but increasingly devotes chapters to major literary offerings (The City of God; On Christian Teaching), controversies (Donatism; Pelagianism), and fundamental aspects of Augustine’s thought (“people of God”; “origin of grace”). Throughout, Brown’s lucid prose carries the reader across a cultural landscape that is at times both strange and eerily familiar.

There are too many important revelations in the biography to enumerate here, so I’ll just choose one that might be of some interest: a contextual rendering of Augustine’s fascination with sexual desire.[3] As Brown points out, in the Confessions it is not Augustine’s pre-conversion sex-life, but that episode as a youth in which he and his friends steal pears for the sheer joy of it that continues to haunt him. Indeed, relative to the heroic asceticism of some of his peers, who lived in the shadow of the martyrs’ self-renunciation, Augustine was a moderate when it came to sex. His sermons show a surprisingly sympathetic concern for the love lives of ordinary married people. The more ascetically-minded had imagined Adam and Eve as chaste angels, with sex being but a product of the Fall. Augustine, on the other hand, envisioned Adam and Eve as engaging in a kind of pure sexual intimacy, flowing from perfect friendship. The trouble, from his perspective, was that only a shadow remained of that ideal, now haunted and haunting by an often uncontrollable lust. So then, while Augustine positively acknowledges the importance of sex in the lives of his married congregation, he nevertheless continues to attend to it as both the evidence of, and the means by which, Adam’s guilt is passed down through the generations. Not any more palatable to a “sexually liberated” modern audience, perhaps, but hardly evidence that Augustine is the prime mover behind Christian sexual repression as he is too often misrepresented.[4]

Augustine’s fascination with “the pear episode” might seem evidence of an all-too-sensitive conscience, made all the worse for it being forged into a cynical doctrine of human incapacity. But Brown will not allow us so convenient a way out. He points to Augustine’s attentiveness to the fact that for all the goodness in the world––and he does acknowledge it!––human beings, even babies at the breast, have more than a habit of enjoying things that, on a better day, the watching world acknowledges to be wrong, even evil. That is to say, we so often do the things we know we ought not to do. The human will, in Augustine’s view, is incapable of seeking its own good without help.

It is, therefore, on the basis of experience that Augustine concludes that human beings, whatever their best efforts and intentions, are fundamentally incapable of attaining fullness of love and life without receiving God’s unmerited grace. This underlies so much of Augustine’s thought, especially his participation in the principal controversies that dogged his pastoral and theological career. In his view, Donatists abused the grace of God by setting themselves up as a “perfect” church, counter to the “traitorous” Catholic church in North Africa. Similarly, Pelagius denied the gift of grace as a result of his calls for a more ascetically “perfect” Christian, insofar as he believed that human beings were naturally endowed with the capacity. Pelagius, it could be said, speaks fluently to the liberal mind––but he could not have been a pastor, and was clearly not a parent. And yet, in the bitterest of ironies, these conflicts over the nature of grace were too often marked by its absence.

Where Brown’s initial edition falters, his later additions typically offer a satisfying remedy. There is a little too much of the bishop at the expense of the pastor, too much of the Neoplatonist at the expense of the Christocentric theologian. His chapters on the Confessions and On Christian Teaching are at turns both illuminating and frustrating. The former suffers from the aforementioned imbalances, missing the broader pastoral implication of the work––a stunning testament to God’s gracious redemption of human frailty, as given by a rising star who would rather air out his dirty laundry before the watching world than bask in the glow of his achievements. The latter identifies Augustine’s educational platform but not its intended theological significance––a loving knowledge, learned and taught. But these criticisms do little to take away from the greater whole, which is simply masterful.

Peter Brown’s biography of Augustine is, therefore, a faithful representation of its subject matter in content and in form. Like Augustine, Brown is less interested in the heroic, in the monumental. He recognizes that the truth is in the details, laboured over and attended to. His book offers nuance, not as a show of cleverness, but for the sake of empathy. You do not need to like Augustine, but Brown will make sure that you have come some way in understanding him. The result, in the last analysis, is both an excellent introduction to Augustine and a superb example of historical scholarship. I could not recommend this book more highly.

[1] The degree to which this is true––at least in North America––is a story for another time.

[2] Don’t just take my word for it, see https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/augustine/#Leg

[3] Brown develops this side of Augustine in greater depth in his landmark work The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, but his most recent analysis––in the chapters of the second edition––casts Augustine in a more favorable light.

[4] See Stephen Greenblatt’s recent article in the New Yorker as perhaps the most recent example of this unfortunate phenomenon: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/19/how-st-augustine-invented-sex. It should be noted that Greenblatt is neither a historian of Late Antiquity nor a scholar with expertise on Augustine. He mostly works on Shakespeare.

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