And a Saint in a Pear Tree . . . ?

Frank A. James III

It was the kind of common mischief Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn found irresistible—a group of teenaged boys making a midnight raid on a neighbor’s pear tree. But the incident has become uncommon because one of these boys was Augustine: saint-, philosopher-and father-of-the-church-to-be.

Augustine recounts the pear tree incident is the second volume of his Confessions, where he discusses in detail how he and his fellow mischief-makers stole bushels of pears from a neighbor’s vineyard. “We took away an enormous quantity of pears,” Augustine recalls—and “not to eat them ourselves, but simply to throw them to the pigs.”

A Grievous Episode

For many, this youthful episode might evoke only mild amusement. But for the adult Augustine, as he makes evident in his Confessions, it held momentous significance. As the older and wiser bishop of Hippo, he looks back at these antics with a severely critical eye.

However, the mature Augustine is not so much concerned with the mere act of stealing pears. His real concern is with what was happening inwardly. As if prosecuting his adolescent self in a spiritual court of law, he proceeds in the Confessions to establish a motive for the crime. “Perhaps we ate some of them, but our real pleasure consisted in doing something that was forbidden.”

What emerges from his musings is that there was no excuse for the sin committed. The theft was not prompted by need, nor by coercion, nor by anything other than a perverse love of sin. In phrases ringing with disgust, Augustine confesses, “The evil in me was foul, but I loved it.”

How, we might ask, could such a seemingly minor prank evoke such heart-rending cries? Had Augustine’s years and burdens of ministry brought on an overly morbid scrutiny of his youth? What brought on this torrent of critical self-chidings?

Well, his conversion and years of studying the Scriptures had enabled him to see his sin with different eyes. As he reflected on this adventure, he realized that hiding beneath a supposedly innocuous childhood prank was a dark and pernicious sin nature inherited from Adam.

Despite what his Pelagian opponent, Julian of Eclanum, charged, Augustine did not invent the doctrine of original sin. But he did give it classical formulation and a central place in his thought. Original sin for Augustine was both hereditary disease and crime. All men sinned in Adam, he believed, and so all share in Adam’s guilt and punishment. Adam’s fall recast the whole human race as a “mass or perdition.”

Adam, in Augustine’s conception, did not commit his offense in isolation from the rest of humanity. Not only was his human nature “transformed for the worse,” but his progeny inherited the same sinful predisposition. Before the Fall, Adam lived in a state of freedom and was posse non peccare (able to avoid sin). After the Fall, Adam and his offspring were non posse non peccare (able only to sin).

Augustine went beyond his theological peers to insist that all humanity actually participated in Adam’s fall. He asserted that “all men were … seminally in the loins of Adam when he was condemned.” For this reason, no one is exempt from a sin nature, neither new-born infants nor mischievous 16-year-olds. His belief that every man actually participated in Adam’s fall provided the theological backdrop for Augustine’s distressed recollections of the pear tree incident.

Everyman’s Pear Tree

Augustine apparently could have recounted any number of adolescent sins in the Confessions. But he seems to have chosen the pear tree incident by design.

For Augustine, the pear tree was his parallel to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It was his personal reenactment of the Fall. His conviction that all humanity participates in Adam’s sin found validation in his own experience. His orchard was Adam’s garden; his peer pressure was Eve’s seduction; his theft from a slumbering neighbor was Adam’s disobedience while God was hidden from view. His stolen pears were the forbidden fruit. His guilt was Adams’s guilt.

The heart-searching honesty Augustine demonstrates about the pear tree incident is only characteristic of the honesty seen throughout the Confessions. Even in the sections about the times after his conversion and ordination as a bishop, he is still open about struggling with sin. In volume 10 he writes:

“I cry out in joy, confessing your glory, like a man exultant at a feast. But my soul is still sad because it falls back again and becomes an abyss, or rather, that it is still a deep abyss.”

Augustine was no ivory tower theologian. He spoke as a sinner to other sinners. From adolescent pear-stealing to occasional adult abyss, his intent was to strip away the smiling facade of sin and penetrate to the naked essence of sinful man standing alone and unmasked before the piercing gaze of almighty God.

- More from Frank A. James III

History

St. Augustine: Did You Know…

That in the modern sense of the term, Augustine’s Confessions was the first autobiography ever written?

That one of Augustine’s duties as bishop of Hippo was to arbitrate lawsuits?

That Bishop Augustine lived almost entirely on vegetables?

That he encouraged conversation at meals—but with a strictly enforced rule that the character of an absent person should never be negatively discussed? He had a warning to this effect carved on a plaque attached to his table.

That according to his biographer, Possidius, Augustine wrote more than 1,000 total works, including 242 books?

That Augustine set part of his written campaign against the Donatist heresy to verse? Around 394 A.D., Augustine composed a song he titled “An ABC against the Donatists,” and encouraged that it be frequently sung by the orthodox churches in his diocese. It became quite popular.

That at one point early in his career, Augustine was a speechwriter for the Roman emperor?

That a rich pagan man chose the young Augustine to be his protege, in hopes the bright young philosopher would help turn the rapidly Christianizing Roman empire back to paganism?

That while Augustine was still alive, people in France began a movement to canonize his writings and put them on a par with Scripture? And this effort continued for nearly 100 years!

That when Augustine became bishop of Hippo, he was “unalterably fixed there for the rest of his life”? The African church had a rule strictly forbidding the transfer of its bishops.

That Augustine founded a religious order for women, but that all females, even his sister, were excluded from his house and could see him only in the presence of others?

That the pre-Christian Augustine lived with the same woman, out of wedlock, for more than 13 years, and claimed in his writings to have deeply loved her—yet never in his writings reveals her name?

That when the great European universities were formed in the 12th century, the curriculum they used was essentially the same as Augustine had outlined eight centuries earlier in On Christian Doctrine?

History

Fighting Isms and Schisms

With his natural brilliance, his training in rhetoric, and his position of church leadership, Augustine found himself the polemical leader in the church of his day. From his conversion to the time of his death, Augustine battled a succession of “isms” or schisms: first Manichacism, then Donatism, then Pelagiariism.

Manichacism

Manichaeism took its name from its founder, Mani, a Persian born around 216 A.D. The Manichees taught a basic dualism in nature: light and darkness were co-eternal, hostile systems in conflict with each other. Good was passive, darkness and evil were active.

As a gnostic religion, Manichacism appealed to the reason. For nine years Augustine followed the Manichees, but he gradually began to see their errors. When Faustus, reputedly the most brilliant of the Manichees, failed to answer his questions, Augustine’s faith in the Manichees was irrevocably shaken.

Because he had been one of them and then was disillusioned, his opposition to the Manichees was that much stronger after his conversion. Much of his writing and speaking was directed against the Manichees. In Hippo, when he publicly debated the Manichee Fortunatus, Augustine so humiliated the man that he left the city and never returned.

Donatism

Donatism was more a localized and political threat. Early in Constantine’s reign, the Donatists had withdrawn from the Catholic church for both political and doctrinal reasons. They said that during the recent persecution by emperor Diocletian, many of the Catholic leaders had betrayed the church. Such traitors did not deserve to remain as church leaders, they said.

The main disputing was in Carthage, where the Donatists claimed that the Catholic bishop had been ordained by a traitor, and thus his priesthood was invalid. So they set up their own “pure” bishop in Carthage —Donates, for whom they were named.

The Donatists held that they alone were the true church, and insisted on rigorous church discipline and excommunication of all members they deemed “unworthy.” Their issue was separation: they believed the church was an exclusive community, and they were determined to keep it so. One faction of the group, called “circumcellions,” went so far as to travel around the country violently terrorizing the traditional Catholic churches.

From 393 on, Augustine took the offensive against the Donatist church. His contempt for them was obvious: “The clouds roll with thunder, that the house of the Lord shall be built throughout the earth; and these frogs sit in their marsh and croak ‘We are the only Christians’!”

The schism continued, and by order of the emperor the matter was brought to Carthage for arbitration in 411. Augustine was present at the council as one of the chief speakers. The controversy was settled in favor of the Catholics.

One result of the controversy with the Donatists was the development of Augustine’s doctrine of the church: that the essence of the church is in the union of the whole church with Christ, not in the personal character of certain select Christians.

Pelagianism

No sooner had the Donatist controversy been settled than the battle against Pelagianism started up. Its significance lies in it leading Augustine to develop his doctrine of grace.

Pelagius, the founder of the movement, was a 4th-century British monk who rejected the idea of original sin. The tendency to sin is man’s own free choice, he insisted, and not inherited from Adam. Following this reasoning, there is no need for divine grace; man must simply make up his mind to do the will of God.

The church excommunicated Pelagius in 417, but his banner was carried on by Julian, the bishop of Eclanum, whom Augustine refuted in detail in his volumes Against Julian.

The Pelagian heresy was officially condemned at the Council of Ephesus in 431, one year after Augustine’s death.

History

Augstine’s Life and Times

Randy Petersen

He was born in Thagaste, a smallish town in North Africa. He came from an old Carthaginian family. His father, Patricius Augustinus, was a pagan who honored the old Punic gods. But his mother, Monica, was a devoted Christian, who persistently urged her religion on her children—and particularly on Aurelius, who showed brilliance.

Their family was a small part of a large and complex economy. Patricius scrimped to send Augustine to school, and still had to rely on the generosity of a wealthy patron, Romanianus. The very name Patricius suggests Augustine’s father may have come from a proud, patrician family. But if he’d ever had wealth, it was apparently gone now. So, though the Augustinus family may have owned a substantial estate, it seems the Roman tax collectors had milked their fluid income dry.

As a boy, Augustine was sent to school in nearby Madaura. He made friendships there that would last all his life. But when he was 16 the tuition money ran out, and Augustine had to come home for a year while his family saved. In writing about this time in his Confessions, Augustine portrays himself as a lazy underachiever. Yet his superior intellect was probably already apparent to his family and friends. He seems to have outshone his older brother, Navigius, who tags along in later episodes of Augustine’s life.

Fruits of Disobedience

During that 16-year vacation from his studies, Augustine took part in the famous pear tree incident (see And a Saint in a Pear Tree…?). To some this might seem like mere juvenile antics, just a bunch of rowdy boys ripping off pears and throwing them to the pigs—and that’s probably how Augustine saw it at the time. But looking back on it later, as he reflected in the Confessions, he perceived it as sin most foul. In the Confessions he also notes his struggle with sexual passion, indicating that this too mushroomed during that 16th year. After that year we find him going off to school in Carthage, supported by Romanianus, who evidently saw Augustine’s great potential and wanted this prodigy on his team.

Augustine in Carthage was the backwoods boy in the big city. Carthage was the queen of North Africa, sophisticated and worldly. Five hundred years earlier Carthage had been Rome’s enemy. But the new Carthage had a solid place in the empire, basking in its Roman-civilization-with-Punic-twist.

The rowdy from Thagaste apparently continued sowing wild oats in Carthage. He doesn’t relate the specifics of his sexual activity, but we do know that he took a concubine. He never names her; in that culture her name wouldn’t have been important. He was a promising student-teacher, already making a name for himself in the school of rhetoric, on the first few rungs of the ladder of success; she was most likely from a lower-class family. He was 18 at the time.

His father had died a short time earlier, and possibly this made Augustine think about settling down and raising a family. But marriage at this point would impede his progress—he figured the sort of socially advantageous marriage he wanted would come later. Besides, taking a concubine was a socially acceptable thing at the time, not unlike unmarried couples living together today. One year later she bore him a son, and they named him Adeodatus—“a gift from God.”

Light and Darkness

Two philosophical influences emerged as Augustine began to excel in Carthage, first as a student and then as a teacher. One was Cicero. The young African read the old Roman, and light dawned in his mind. The book was Hortensius, now long lost, but it must have been a beauty. It would form the basis for Augustine’s rhetoric and philosophy for years to come. Even in Augustine’s religious classics, we see traces of Cicero’s influence.

The other influence was Manichaeism. In his search for philosophical truth, Augustine moved away from his mother’s Christianity and the Bible, the Old Testament stories of which he dismissed as fables. He indicates he was longing for a system that made better sense of the world than the biblical system as he perceived it. Manichaeism, based on the teachings of a Persian named Mani, seemed to him to do that. It was a dualist corruption of Christianity that mocked the Old Testament like he did—and offered an easy answer for the problem of evil. That was all Augustine needed.

Mani’s main emphasis was that two worlds actually existed: the world of light, love, mind and spirit; and the world of darkness, evil, hate and the flesh. Mani stressed that the two worlds were constantly at war with each other, and the young Augustine could not help but agree. He could feel them at war in himself, for example, every time he had to choose between studying Cicero and hopping into bed with his concubine. According to Manichaeism, some specially blessed people would be able to devote themselves entirely and unequivocally to the higher things in life. But for most people it would be an ongoing struggle.

Augustine took to Manichaeism with a sophomoric intensity. When his studies in Carthage were completed, he returned to Thagaste to teach rhetoric—and some Manichaeism on the side, though he tried to keep his mother in the dark about that. But Monica found out he was promoting heresy and threw him out of her house, at least for a time. Augustine was so persuasive in his proselytizing that he even converted his patron Romanianus to Manichaeism. Later Augustine would have to convert Romanianus back to Christianity.

During this time in Thagaste, he was called to the bedside of a boyhood friend who had suddenly taken ill and was dying. A priest was also summoned to the deathbed, and much to the unbelieving Augustine’s dismay, the priest proceeded to baptize the comatose young man. Augustine had shared with this buddy a disdain for Christianity, together they had mocked the church. And now, without Augustine’s friend even knowing it, the priest was dragging the lad right into the church’s arms.

Then the friend miraculously recovered. Later, as Augustine chatted with his friend, he began joking about this bogus baptism. But the friend became very serious. It was no laughing matter, he indicated: the baptism had been real.

His friend’s change of attitude shook Augustine. But he was even more shaken when the friend suddenly died two weeks later. As he recounted it later in the Confessions, this seemed to mark the beginning of a reappraisal in Augustine’s heart and mind. He could laugh at Christianity, but he was dumb in the face of death.

Roads to Rome

In 376, the 22-year-old Augustine returned to Carthage to teach. The widowed Monica followed him there. She had dreamt that Augustine would become a Christian, and she seemed to play “the hound of heaven” over the next several years, praying and pleading for his conversion.

The young professor was soon master of rhetoric in Carthage, and seemed eager to move on—to Rome, city of the great rhetorician Cicero. The Manichaeans could use him there as well—a gifted speaker like himself could restore that faith to a place of prestige. Besides, a professorship in Rome could do wonders for Augustine’s career. From there he might well rise to the senatorial class.

Soon, possibly through the influence of Romanianus, he was offered a professorship in Rome. But Monica got wind of it, and begged Augustine not to go. He reassured her; no, he would not leave. Then he sent her home and claimed he had to see a friend off on a journey. But he was the one taking the journey. He bundled up his mistress and little Adeodatus and set sail for Rome in the middle of the night, while Monica slept and dreamt.

Rome was almost more than Augustine could handle. He was wowed by the trappings of the high society that surrounded him. Suddenly he was hobnobbing with influential people—senators and the like! He was on the bottom rung of a ladder of success, enticed by what he saw at the top.

Augustine stayed with a Manichaean friend in Rome, but soon learned that Manichaeism was not politically helpful there. Christianity was the chosen faith in the imperial class—the executive branch of government, whose Italian headquarters were in Milan. And the traditional pagan religions—those of Jupiter and Juno and the rest of the pantheon—were the choice of the senatorial class in Rome. To them, Manichaeism was a low-class religion, an import from the sticks of North Africa. Thus in Rome, as Augustine struggles to shed his Punic accent and speak proper Latin, we find Manichaeism losing its hold on him. It offered the same answers it had in Carthage and Thagaste, but Augustine was asking different questions now that he was in the capitol of the Roman empire.

An empire which, not incidentally, was in deep trouble. Barbarians threatened its borders to the north and the west, and yet its chief defense was also in the hands of barbarians—mercenary Germans paid with Roman tax money to keep other Germans from crossing the Rhine and the Danube. Rome had built its empire with muscle and diplomacy; but now the barbarians had the muscle, and Roman diplomacy was dissolving amid competing special interests.

Religious conflicts were also rife. Despite Athanasius winning the day for orthodoxy at Nicea, Arianism was still alive and well. Many local congregations continued to hold that Christ was “similar” to God, not “of the same substance.” And now, generations after Nicea, the groups still felt enmity toward each other.

In North Africa, Donatism was carrying on a similar feud with the official church. Maintaining that the Catholic Church had compromised itself during the persecutions of emperor Diocletian, the Donatists set up their own alternative, “pure” church. That conflict sometimes became violent. In Rome, the pagan religions were still promoting immoral traditions that had been popular in the city’s pre-Christian days.

But then Ambrose, bishop of Milan, convinced the emperor to take measures against paganism. Why should the state pay for Vestal virgins? asked Ambrose. And why should the Senate chamber have a pagan altar to the goddess of Victory in it?

In the midst of this Altar of Victory controversy, Augustine landed in Rome. By order of the emperor, the statue of the goddess Victoria had been removed from the Senate. The senators were appalled. Symmachus, leader of the pagan party, fired off a letter to the emperor, arguing the merits of restoring the Altar of Victory. For centuries, he maintained, Rome had owed its success to its good relations with the gods. Now it was in danger of gravely offending them. Even if the empire was officially Christian, he argued, it should leave room for the worship of pagan gods. Bishop Ambrose published a masterful reply. During the year that Augustine was in Rome, Symmachus composed a second letter to the emperor on the same subject. The dispute continued.

All in all, it was not a good year for Augustine. He was sick for much of the time. There was a famine in the area, so the school was threatening layoffs, and some students refused to pay their bills. Yet the year was profitable in that Augustine attracted the attention of Symmachus, a prefect in Rome. Apparently the prefect was impressed by a speech Augustine gave, and expressed a desire to become his patron. It is possible Symmachus even negotiated with Romanianus, who often visited Italy, to acquire the “rights” to Augustine.

As prefect, Symmachus was asked to recommend a professor for the chair of rhetoric in Milan. The job would entail a good bit of contact with the young emperor, Valentinian II, who was residing there. The professor would be sort of his press spokesman. Doubtless Symmachus saw this as a chance to get someone in Milan who would lobby for his side in the Altar of Victory controversy. He chose Augustine. Augustine was, after all, a college professor; he had a son not much younger than the emperor; and he regularly had a corps of bright young men following him. Augustine’s winning manner would surely sway Valentinian.

One wonders what Ambrose must have thought of the recommendation. He must have known Symmachus’s intentions—before becoming bishop Ambrose had been a savvy politician, and had certainly carried those skills into the holy see. He wielded such power in Milan that he would probably have to approve such an appointment. Did he perhaps anticipate that he and his God would sway Augustine to their side? Or did he just owe his cousin Symmachus a favor? Whatever, the appointment went through and Augustine moved to Milan.

Bishop and Rhetorician

Right away, Augustine was impressed by Ambrose. He was 30 when he arrived in Milan, and Ambrose was 44. He was attracted by Ambrose’s warm personality, and at the same time marveled at Ambrose’s deep thoughtfulness and his devotion to scholarly sermon preparation. In fact, the bishop’s preaching dazzled Augustine—not the style so much as the substance. Faustus the Manichaean had been more fun to listen to, but in content, he couldn’t hold a candle to Ambrose. The bishop’s deft handling of Old Testament stories easily answered the Manichaean objections. Ambrose’s famous sermons on Genesis may have been preached in Augustine’s hearing, and the bishop definitely taught the younger rhetorician to appreciate the Apostle Paul.

By this time, Augustine had become a spiritual mongrel. Raised a Catholic by his mother, he became a catechumen in Ambrose’s church—but initially at least, this was probably no more than a move of expediency made by many up-and-comers. At the same time, he was well-acquainted with the Punic paganism of his late father, and technically was still a Manichaean, though he seems to have pressed the borders of that faith and moved beyond it. Also, Symmachus and Roman paganism were paying his bills. Then Ambrose and his chief counselor, Simplicianus, introduced a new element to this mix: Neoplatonism.

It was a sly move on their part. Neoplatonism synthesized the diverse elements of Augustine’s religious life in an appealing way. It was a highly rational philosophy, based on the teachings of Plato, which had been resurrected a century earlier by Plotinus. Augustine’s searching mind was eager for such discipline.

Neoplatonism offered Augustine middle ground. It was the philosophy of choice for a growing number of pagans in Rome and Christians in Milan. Whether one served a single God or many, Neoplatonism held forth certain transcendent principles, ideals to which all earthbound souls might aspire.

Simplicianus spent much time with Augustine, talking philosophy and sharing with him books by Plotinus, Porphyry and other Neoplatonists. Simplicianus had known Marius Victorinus, the Neoplatonist scholar who translated these books into Latin. On one occasion, the old counselor told Augustine this story about the translator:

Victorinus had confessed to Simplicianus, “In my heart I am a Christian.” The counselor replied, “I’ll believe it when I see you in church.” The philosopher retorted, “Do church walls, then, make a Christian?” In telling this story, the crafty Simplicianus was planting seeds in Augustine’s soul. Interestingly, Victorinus, an African man of letters just like Augustine, later did come forward to be baptized as a Christian.

Augustine was being stretched in other ways as well. Monica had arrived in Milan. She immediately set about the task of finding her son a proper wife. Remember, his concubine was a lower-class woman, a convenient companion but an impediment to real social progress. When a marriage to a Christian heiress was arranged, Augustine was forced to send his concubine away, though he says he deeply loved her. The 13-year-old Adeodatus stayed with his father.

Monica regularly worshiped at Ambrose’s church. In fact, Augustine relates how she would give him questions to ask the bishop. She was probably at the church during a most dramatic event—the church was surrounded by imperial soldiers.

The siege was instigated by Justina, mother of the young emperor. She followed the Arian heresy, which thrived in the hinterlands, but was shunned in the capitals of the empire. Determined to lead a resurgence of her faith, she demanded that Ambrose hand over his church building and another in Milan for use by Arian congregations. He refused, so she sent the imperial guard (as Gothic mercenaries, they would be mostly Arian themselves). Ambrose still refused to give in. The stage was set for a massacre: while the mercenaries awaited the order to attack, the bishop led his congregation in psalm-singing.

But the order never came. The troops withdrew. One suspects Ambrose sent word to emperor Valentinian that such an incident would arouse the ire of his “uncle” Theodosius, the mighty and devout Emperor of the East, ruling from Constantinople. Valentinian hadn’t expected such strong opposition from the bishop. As he ordered the troops’ withdrawal, the boy emperor joked that Ambrose’s power was nearly equal to his own.

What impression might this have made on Augustine? More awe of Ambrose, no doubt, but perhaps also a sense of the interaction between state power and church power, the city of man and the City of God. And for a man clawing his way up the ladder of Roman success, it would come as a jolt to realize that the most powerful man in Italy was not a senator like Symmachus, but a man of the cloth.

A Changed Man

One day Augustine and Alypius received a visitor, Pontitianus, a fellow African and a member of the emperor’s secret service. Pontitianus noticed a copy of Paul’s epistles on Augustine’s desk, and began talking about his own Christianity. He mentioned the story of St. Anthony, founder of an Egyptian monastery, who had entered a church in time to hear the Scripture: “Go and sell all you have…” Anthony had apparently heard God speaking to him in this chance occurrence, so he gave up his possessions and started a monastery. Two colleagues of Pontitianus, on finding a copy of St. Anthony’s story by the roadside, determined to renounce the world as well.

Shortly after that visit, Augustine was walking in the garden of his house when he heard a child’s sing-song voice repeating, “Take up and read.”

(For the rest of this famous story see Augustine’s own account, Augustine’s Conversion.)

For all its fame, Augustine’s conversion did not have the drama of a sawdust-trail altar call. Something went “click” in his mind, the lights went on, “and all the darkness of doubt was dispelled.”

It may have been politically expedient for Augustine to pay lip-service to the church as a catechumen, but when he really got serious about Christianity, it uprooted his life. Suddenly ladder-climbing didn’t make much sense. He no longer cared to be a senator, so what should he do? He could be a monk, maybe, like St. Anthony. Marriage, certainly, was out of the question. He was devoting himself entirely to God, sexuality and all. He broke his engagement.

He resigned his professorship, dashed off a note to Ambrose telling of his conversion, and retreated to a country villa in Cassiciacum. His friends followed him there. Monica, overjoyed at his newfound faith, ran the household. Augustine and Alypius discussed philosophy, and Augustine continued churning out philosophy books in a Neoplatonist vein.

Romanianus, his old patron and friend, occasionally joined him there, along with his 16-year-old son, Licentius, a long-time pupil of Augustine’s. Licentius was a prodigy fascinated by music, particularly taken by the psalm-tunes Ambrose had pioneered. Once he offended Monica by singing a psalm in the bathroom. Adeodatus, a few years younger, showed academic promise as well. Later he would assist his father in the writing of De Magistro (On the Teacher). Augustine’s brother, Navigius, was there too, but he regularly complained of a bad liver and seemed to miss the point of most everything Augustine said. The whole arrangement was much like what Augustine had planned before his conversion—an enclave of philosophers, living a life of thoughtful leisure. But now it had a Christian twist.

After six or seven months, around Easter of 387, Augustine emerged from his retreat and returned to Milan. There, along with Alypius and Adeodatus, he was baptized by Ambrose.

The Prodigal Returns

Then Augustine decided to go home to Thagaste. The prodigal had tired of his wandering. There was no point in being anywhere else. Perhaps there he would start a monastery.

Europe was in turmoil anyway, not a place for quiet contemplation. Ambrose had recently returned from the northern imperial capital at Trier. There he must have learned about the weakening Roman defenses along the Danube. But the big news was in the west, where Maximus, general of the Roman armies in Gaul and Britain, had declared himself emperor. He had overrun Gaul and was threatening Italy. If Augustine was to escape a blockade of Italy’s seaports, he would have to set sail for Carthage soon.

He didn’t make it. He and his band of followers were detained in Ostia, Rome’s seaport. There, he records, he and Monica shared a vision of “eternal wisdom.” “We… did by degrees pass through all things bodily, even the very heaven whence sun and moon and stars shine upon the earth; yea, we were soaring higher yet, by inward musing, and discourse, and admiring of thy works; and we came to our own minds, and went beyond them, that we might arrive at that region of neverfailing plenty, where thou feedest Israel forever with the food of truth, and where life is the Wisdom by whom all these things are made….” Nine days later, Monica was dead. She had assured her sons they need not bury her alongside her husband, so they buried her at Ostia.

The group wintered in Rome. While there, Augustine possibly did some research on the monastic movement. Jerome had recently furloughed in Rome, acting as secretary to Bishop Damasus. He might have left behind some of the east’s spiritual wisdom.

Eventually the sea blockade was lifted, and Augustine and friends traveled to Carthage and then Thagaste. It should have been big news in North Africa. Augustine and his yuppie friends from Milan had given up their high-powered positions and retired to a life of contemplation in tiny Thagaste. There they would serve the church, not as priests and bishops, but as writers and thinkers.

Soon after Monica’s death, Augustine suffered more loss. His dear son Adeodatus, for whom he had great hopes, died shortly after their return to Africa. He also lost one of his inner circle of friends, Nebridius, about that same time. Though he still had a loyal group around him, he says he felt very much alone. Within a few years he had lost his mother, his son, his friend, and his beloved concubine. But the loss of these loved ones served to propel Augustine toward deeper, more-vigorous commitment and service.

Pressed into Service

In 391, Augustine learned that someone in Hippo—a former member of the secret service—was interested in joining a monastery. Though he didn’t like to travel, Augustine hiked to Hippo, where he was warmly received. Perhaps too warmly. Seeing the renowned layman in church that Sunday, Bishop Valerius put aside his prepared sermon and preached on the urgent need for priests in Hippo. Who among them would be willing to give his life to the priesthood? The crowd spotted Augustine. In a scene amazingly similar to the sudden ordination of Ambrose 20 years earlier, Augustine was made a priest against his will. The people noticed him weeping, but thought it was because he wanted to be bishop, not just a priest. All in good time, they assured him.

Valerius was a shrewd Greek who knew what the church needed. Throughout North Africa, the Catholics were feuding—and sometimes losing—against the Donatists. The church needed a champion to argue down the Donatist arrogance, and Valerius saw Augustine as that champion. So the bishop gave Augustine the use of a house and garden near the cathedral, and Augustine brought his friends along to use the garden as a monastery.

Though in most of North Africa preaching was exclusively the task of bishops, Valerius gave his preaching duties over to Augustine. And when the bishops of North Africa convened in Hippo, Valerius let Augustine do the teaching. Wisely, the novice priest chose to carefully go over the creed, setting a pattern that would last for the next 37 years—Augustine teaching the church what it believed. In 395 Valerius convinced the bishop of Carthage to make Augustine co-bishop with him—even though this violated the canons of Nicea. A year later Valerius died, and Augustine became the sole bishop of Hippo.

Heresy-fighting topped the new bishop’s agenda. Manichaeism was already on its way out, but Augustine dealt it a death blow. He knew this foe inside and out. At the public baths in Hippo (sort of the community assembly hall), Augustine debated Fortunatus, a former school colleague of his from Carthage days and now a leading Manichee. The bishop made quick work of the heretic, and Fortunatus left town in shame.

Donatism, however, was more firmly entrenched, supported as it was by many wealthy landowners. It was less of a doctrinal struggle than a political one. The Donatists had set up their own church in the early 300s as a “pure” alternative to the “compromised” Catholic Church (holding that a number of Catholic leaders had betrayed the church during the persecution of Diocletian). Several generations had grown up with this division, along with the violence and vandalism it provoked. It was Augustine’s job to show that the Catholic Church was not compromised, that it was the valid continuation of the apostolic church. In his writing and preaching he began to shore up the Catholic tradition. The Donatists recognized the threat Augustine presented. And for the Donatist landowners, this was big business. They plotted to kill him.

Meanwhile, Augustine’s band of meditative men was dispersing. Alypius became bishop of Thagaste; Possidius, bishop of Calama; Evodius, bishop of Uzalis. Augustine’s conversion had given the church not only Augustine, but a whole cadre of bright young leaders. It was just what the church needed in its fight against Donatism.

As bishop, Augustine spent most of his time judging cases and resolving disputes in Hippo. He was a man of integrity who would not be bought off. He may have wanted to be writing theology or meditating on God’s sovereignty, but his duties demanded he decide which farmer owned a certain plot of land. The press of Augustine’s administrative duties makes his philosophical and literary output all the more remarkable. Where did he find the time to write the works that would shape Christianity for millennia to come?

Cities of Man and God

In 410, the barbarian general Alaric and his troops sacked Rome. Many upper-class Romans fled for their lives to North Africa, one of the few safe havens left in the tempestuous empire. This would have been a time of some irony for Augustine. Once he had had trouble fitting in among the Romans; now Romans were coming to him for shelter.

Paganism was by now powerless, but its heart beat on in the murmurs of the refugees. Christianity had caused this tragedy, they said; the gods of Rome would have saved Rome if Rome still believed in them. So Augustine had a double task: to care for these homeless people, and to refute their anti-Christian charges. He began to develop his thinking about the cities of God and man.

In 411 the Donatist controversy came to a head. The failing empire, still trying to hold things together, convened a debate in Carthage to decide this troublesome Donatist-Catholic dispute once and for all. Flavius Marcellinus, the veteran diplomat sent to referee, requested that each group send seven bishops as delegates. The Donatists, suspecting that the deck was stacked against them, sent their full contingent of bishops. Hundreds of them, and their behavior was ornery throughout the proceedings.

For each town in North Africa, they presented their bishop and his credentials, then challenged the Catholics to put forward a legitimate bishop for that town. When it came time to debate, the Donatists requested more time to prepare their case. Colleagues like Alypius and Possidius said no, but Augustine, who emerged as the debate captain, confidently allowed it. When it came his turn, Augustine demolished the Donatist appeal. A master of rhetoric at work, he would have made Cicero proud. Marcellinus took little time to decide; the Donatists had no case.

In the ensuing years, Augustine struck up a friendship with Marcellinus, the imperial commissioner. The diplomat urged the bishop to put his thoughts concerning the city of man and the city of God into writing. Then suddenly Marcellinus was arrested. Heraclion, general in charge of Roman forces in North Africa, had revolted against the empire. The rebellion was squelched and its leaders executed. Marcellinus, falsely implicated, was sentenced to death. Augustine tried his best to win a reprieve, but to no avail. Marcellinus was killed.

What kind of sting must this have caused Augustine? Had he been an Ambrose, he might have been able to pull the strings necessary to save this innocent man. Ambrose, after all, had stood his ground against imperial troops. And another time Ambrose excommunicated Theodosius the Great and lived to see the mighty emperor trudge into church wearing sackcloth. Ambrose had wielded power in the city of God and in the city of man. But somebody had changed the locks on the city gates. The world was different now, and Augustine lost a friend.

Quietly, perhaps sullenly, Augustine continued his work on The City of God. It would appear in installments over the next 12 years, and would revolutionize Roman-Christian thought.

In 418, a new general arrived in North Africa. Boniface had held the line against the barbarians in Europe. Now he was stationed on the edge of the Sahara, guarding North Africa against marauding nomads. Augustine made friends with Boniface, no doubt happy such an able warrior was protecting his people. Boniface was a Christian, and had a very devout Christian wife. When his wife died in 420, Boniface even considered entering a monastery.

But Augustine and Alypius journeyed out to the desert to convince Boniface to stay at his post. Thirty years earlier, travel-shy Augustine had ventured to Hippo to talk someone into joining a monastery. Now he went out of his way to talk Boniface out of it. They needed a good general more than they needed another monk, thought Augustine.

Life’s-End Challenges

Meanwhile, the bishop was weathering attacks from another quarter. Young Julian of Eclanum was taking potshots at Augustine’s theology—and his character. Julian was a Pelagian, not believing in original sin. Pelagius himself had been excommunicated in 417, and Julian, who had been a bishop in Italy, had been kicked out of his church shortly thereafter. But still he wrote, challenging the bishop of Hippo. Augustine was a Manichee, he charged (probably not as worried about Manichaean theology as about the low-class stigma attached to it). Augustine was an African, he trumpeted. Augustine and his African band of bishops had taken over Roman Christianity, he charged, probably hoping to arouse his Roman readers.

Augustine answered the junior exbishop in kind, pointing out Julian’s high-class snobbery. Over the last 10 years of his life, Augustine published two collections of responses to Julian. It might have been better to let the matter drop. Surely Augustine had better things to do than bicker with this sophomoric hatchet-man.

But Augustine was arguing with a younger version of himself. That may be why he debated Julian so intensely. Like Julian, he too was once enamored with secular wisdom. And he too had resisted the idea that man is born in sin. But God had not given up on Augustine when he was a brash know-it-all with his head buried in heresy. Could Augustine so easily give up on Julian?

Problems other than Julian were pressing Augustine’s people. Boniface had been steadily accruing power through the 420s. In 426, he visited the imperial court at Ravenna to assert his position as Count of Africa. He returned with a rich wife—an Arian woman—and a few concubines. The following year, he launched his revolt. Now he had to defend his position against both the barbarians and the Romans.

Augustine wrote to Boniface, chastising him for his actions. Confusion in North Africa, he suggested, would surely provide an entry to the Vandals who were already perched at Gibraltar, ready to overrun the continent. Augustine urged peace with the empire and a united front against the barbarians. But Boniface, who had anticipated support from Augustine and the other bishops, argued that his claims to power were legitimate. Nonetheless, Augustine turned a cold shoulder to him. The general came to visit the bishop once, but Augustine was apparently too tired to meet with him.

In the summer of 429, the Vandals invaded North Africa and met little resistance. The citizenry fled before them. many to the fortified city of Hippo. There Augustine comforted and cared for the influx of refugees. Possidius, a charter member of his monastery at Thagaste, now a bishop with a congregation, also fled to Hippo, and helped Augustine organize his writings. Boniface was there too, valiantly defending the city.

In the third month of the Vandals’ siege of Hippo, Augustine caught a sudden fever. For 10 days the 76-year-old bishop fought it. Then he died. But almost miraculously, his writings survived the Vandal takeover, allowing his influence to live on and on.

Randy Peterson is a free-lance writer from Westville, NJ, and a contributing editor for Christian History

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History

The City of God: Augustine’s Timeless Classic About the Timeless City

Keith Yandell

Augustine’s Timeless Classic About the Timeless City

Rome’s empire was collapsing. It had been a Christian empire for the better part of a century, but now the barbaric Goths were kicking in its doors. So Augustine tried to shore up the faith of his flock with a book he called The City of God.

Written more than 15 centuries ago, it is now an undisputed classic. Begun in 413 A.D. and appearing in installments over the next 13 years, Augustine’s masterpiece has spawned innumerable other books and articles since. Later philosophers and theologians have been deeply influenced by it, with its impact being felt from literature and historiography. Its greatest influence has been within the Christian church itself, as one might expect of a book written by a bishop who was a great theologian as well as philosopher and administrator.

It was written in response to a particular historical context. In 410 A.D., Alaric and his Goths, Germanic barbarians from the north, sacked Rome. Since Rome had been undisputed queen of civilization for a millennium, her fall shocked the ancient world. As Jerome put it, “The whole world perished in one city.” Josef Pieper notes, “To Augustine himself and to all with whom he dealt, Rome was nothing less than the symbol of order in the world.” Many blamed Christianity for Rome’s fall, suggesting that the pagan gods were angry because Christianity had been promoted by the empire. Augustine’s answer was The City of God.

The book covers an astonishing range of topics. As one might expect from its title, it contrasts “the City of God” with “the city of men.” But it also deals with creation, time, the origin of evil, human freedom, divine knowledge of the future, the resurrection of the body, final judgement, happiness, the Incarnation, sin, grace, and forgiveness (among others). The sheer scope of the work is impressive.

Equally impressive is the quality of Augustine’s discussions. He offers broad, deep, rich, and generally clear analyses of very difficult topics—topics on which it is easy to write obscurely and foolishly. Even where one is inclined to disagree, one can still learn much from him.

Further, he is often simply eloquent. Consider, for example, his brief description of the core of Christianity: “God’s son, assuming humanity without destroying his divinity, established and founded this faith, that there might be a way for man to man’s God through God’s man.” To the suggestion that human beings can be saved from their sins by their own efforts, without God’s grace, his terse reply is: “Without him, what have we accomplished, save to perish in his anger?” Concerning human suffering as evidence of God’s non-existence or unconcern, he writes: “Our God is everywhere present, wholly everywhere; not confined to any place. He can be present unperceived, and be absent without moving; when he exposes us to adversities, it is either to prove our perfections or correct our imperfections; and in return for our patient endurance of the sufferings of time, he reserves for us an everlasting reward.” These are pithy, thought-provoking answers to difficult questions. Not that these are the only answers, but it is clear that Augustine has something to say, and generally says it very well.

The basic reason for his perpetual influence is very simple: much of what Augustine offers his readers is a very blunt statement of Christianity. He sees, and forcefully states, some of the most basic implications of the Christian gospel. That gospel, to use a contemporary term, is a message of “tough love”— and he sees no other sort of love that is really worth having.

Christianity has often been presented as a solution to the problem of success: everyone needs to succeed and God offers success to those who will believe. Success, in turn, tends to be defined in terms of power, financial security, and possessions. Presentations of this sort, parading as Christianity, abound in American culture. Augustine, like the New Testament itself, has no such “gospel.” It is true that preaching that sort of message would make one sound a little shallow against the backdrop of the collapse of a civilization. But it was never Augustine’s message, and what he said before the fall of Rome was not something he later had to modify in the face of the war, cruelty, poverty, and death that came with that fall. After all, regardless of what cities rise or fall, death and suffering face every human—both us now and those alive in 410 A.D. Any “gospel” worth hearing has to face this fact squarely.

Many lost all that they had to the conquering armies. To these people, Augustine wrote: “Our Lord’s injunction runs, ‘Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’ And they who have listened to this injunction have proved in the time of tribulation how well they were advised in not despising this most trustworthy teacher and most faithful guardian of their treasure. For if many were glad that their treasure was stored in places which the enemy chanced not to light upon, how much better founded was the joy of those who, by the counsel of their God, had fled with their treasure to a citadel which no enemy can possibly reach…those who are now repenting that they did not obey him have learned the right use of earthly goods, if not by the wisdom which could have prevented the loss, at least by the experience which follows it.”

Augustine’s concern here is with the question of value, and the human nature that lies behind it. If a person is no more than a biologically sophisticated animal that lives for a few years on earth and then no longer exists, it is not unthinkable that a man’s or a woman’s life, insofar as it is worthwhile, does consist in the abundance of what he or she possesses—that the whole point of life is one of acquiring and enjoying as many things as one can, of seeking wealth and pleasure and power to the fullest extent available. But if a person’s life on this earth is but a small part of his overall existence, and if the purpose of life is fulfilled only if one loves God with all one’s heart, soul, mind and strength, and loves others as him or herself, then what Jesus said is appropriate.

People weigh the loss of possessions on different scales, depending on their view of human beings and human life. From Augustine’ s point of view, the real tragedy is not that one loses all of one’s possessions, but that one has loved those possessions in the first place. And he suggests that if losing them cancels out one’s love of them, then one has actually received a significant net gain.

Augustine’s perspective here, surely, is simply that of Christianity. He has taken the New Testament seriously on this point, believed it, and followed out its implications. Thus he says: “They lost all they had? Their faith? Their godliness? The possessions of the hidden man of the heart, which in the sight of God are of great price? Did they lose these? For these are the wealth of the Christian to whom the wealthy apostle said, ‘Godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment, let us therewith be content.’” If Augustine is Christianly blunt about possessions, he is moreso about life itself: “But, it is added, many Christians were slaughtered, and were put to death in a hideous variety of cruel ways. Well, if this be hard to bear, it is assuredly the common lot of all who are born into this life. Of this at least I am certain, that no one has ever died who was not destined to die sometime. Now the end of life puts the longest life on a par with the shortest…That death is not to be judged an evil which is the end of a good life; for death becomes evil only by the retribution which follows it. They, then, who are destined to die, need not inquire about what death they are to die, but into what place death will usher them.” It is not that Augustine does not value life; it is that he values it, and death, from within a Christian framework.

In these areas, Augustine has looked squarely at what Christianity has to say about basic and difficult issues, seen it clearly, and communicated it forcefully. If there is a single reason for the continuing influence of his writings in a wide diversity of cultures and times, that is it.

As one might expect, Augustine was clearly aware of the existence and depth of evil. As can anyone who has eyes to see, he saw it both in his own heart and in the events of his day. He held that evil presupposed good in a way in which good does not presuppose evil; evil, he suggested, is good gone bad, but good is not evil reformed. He claimed that “… without doubt, wickedness can be a flaw or vice only where the nature previously was not vitiated. Vice, too, is so contrary to nature that it cannot but damage it. And therefore departure from God would be no vice, unless in a nature whose property it was to abide with God. So that even the wicked will is a strong proof of the goodness of the nature.”

Why should anyone accept the values that Augustine embraced, or his theology? Augustine offers an answer in the passage just quoted. He implies, for example, that unless there is value in being human, there is nothing wrong in destroying human life: unless there is value in being a good person, there is nothing wrong with being an evil person. And there is value, even in an evil person; that a person is evil does not mean that he or she may be destroyed. Human nature has worth. Only so can taking human life be wrong, and only so can it be wrong to remain always childish. Tragedy is the compliment that evil pays to goodness, and the greater the tragedy, the greater the good that is presupposed. As there is no higher good for us than to have been created in God’s image and redeemed by his love, there is no greater tragedy than the defacing of that image or the rejection of that love. Sin, even as it breaks God’s law, in its own way also testifies to the existence and nature of God. Thus even evil itself, which by many is seen as evidence against either God’s goodness or his existence, is for Augustine evidence that God exists and is good.

Earlier it was suggested that Augustine rightly saw the content of Christianity as a message of “tough love,” containing no promise to Christians of all-comfortable lives nor freedom from suffering. This comes through particularly clearly when he writes, “And who is so absurd and blinded as to be audacious enough to affirm that in the midst of the calamities of this mortal state, God’s people, or even one single saint, does live, or has ever lived, or shall ever live, without tears or pain …?” Augustine did not forget, as so many have, that a servant is not better than his Lord.

Another demonstration of his humble spirit in this work, though it is easily lost in the mass of profundities, is his scholarly modesty. It is both charming and revealing. For example, concerning Paul’s comments in 1 Thessalonians about the “mystery of iniquity,” he says, “I frankly confess I do not know what he means,” and goes on simply to tell us about interpretations that have been offered. Concerning the length of the “days” in Genesis, he writes, “What kind of days they were it is extremely difficult, or perhaps impossible for us to conceive, and how much more to say!” Willing to tackle the most difficult of topics, and able to do so with great skill, he is also able to admit ignorance and say that, for now anyway, he has gone as far as he can.

It would probably be wrong to not mention one other topic on which Augustine’s views are justly famous. If one holds that God created the world at a particular time, then it seems that there must have been a long time before he created anything. One might easily wonder why the world was created when it was, not, earlier or later. Augustine did not hold that God created the world at some particular time (or at several sequential moments of time either). He held that time itself and the world were created together and wrote that “assuredly the world was made, not in time, but simultaneously with time.”

The discussion of these themes, among many others, occurs in the overall context of a discussion of two cities. “The City of God we speak of is the same to which testimony is borne by that Scripture, which excels all the writings of all nations by its divine authority, and has brought under its influence all kinds of minds, and this not by a casual intellectual movement, but obviously by an express divine providential arrangement. For there is written, ‘Glorious things are spoken of thee, O City of God.’” Elsewhere he adds, “These two cities were made by two loves: the earthly city by the love of self unto the contempt of God, and the heavenly city by the love of God unto the contempt of self.” It is important to keep in mind that the “contempt of self” Augustine mentions is not contempt of human nature that has been created in God’s image and been restored in repentance and faith. Rather, it is contempt of the human nature that is asserting its independence of God. He says God “speaks to that part of man which is better than all else that is in him, and than which God alone is better. For since man is most properly understood (or, if that cannot be, then at least believed) to be made in God’s image, no doubt it is that part of him by which he arises above the beasts, which brings him nearer to the Supreme. But since the mind itself, though naturally capable of reason and intelligence, is disabled by besetting and inveterate vices, not merely from delighting and abiding in, but even from tolerating his unchangeable light, until it has been gradually healed, and renewed, and made capable of such felicity, it had, in the first place, to be impregnated with faith, and so purified.” It is a person who is “disabled by besotting and inveterate vices”—a self-love that loves others less and God less still—that Augustine describes as worthy of contempt, not merely by God but by himself.

All of this barely scratches the surface. Its point is not to try to discuss, even briefly, all the topics Augustine discusses in The City of God. Nor is there any intention to deny that Augustine was, as they say, “a man of his time” with the limitations, and advantages, that were his by virtue of being part of ancient Western culture and not some other. The point is that Augustine’s theology and philosophy deal with various, even transcultural topics, problems and concerns. What he said then is relevant now. It is, frankly, far better reading than the books of many contemporary theologians and philosophers. Similar to the eternal City of God, it has stood when more superficial entities have fallen.

Keith E. Yandell is chairman of the philosophy department at the University of Wisconsin in Madison

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History

Pope John Paul II on Augustine

In an official statement issued in 1986, on the 1,600th anniversary of Augustine’s conversion to Christ, Pope John Paul II spoke about the influence of this 5th-century great, parts of whose legacy are still claimed today by millions of Catholics and Protestants alike.

Let us ask this extraordinary man what he has to say to the modern man. I believe he has much to say, both by his example and by his teaching.

He teaches the person who searches for truth not to despair of finding it. He teaches this by his example—he himself rediscovered it after many years of laborious seeking—and by means of his literary activity, the program of which he had fixed in the first letter after his conversion: “It seems to me that one must bring men back… to the hope of finding the truth.” He teaches therefore that one must seek the truth “with piety, chastity and diligence” in order to overcome doubts about the possibility of returning into oneself, to the interior realm where truth dwells: and likewise to overcome the materialism which prevents the mind from grasping its indissoluble union with the realities that are understood by the intelligence, and the rationalism that refuses to collaborate with faith and prevents the mind from understanding the “mystery” of the human person.

Augustine’s legacy to the theologians, whose meritorious task is to study more deeply the contents of the faith, is the immense patrimony of his thought, which is as a whole valid even now. Above all, his legacy is the theological methods to which he remained absolutely faithful. We know that this method implied full adherence to the authority of the faith which is one of its origin—the authority of Christ—and is revealed through Scripture, Tradition and the Church. His legacy includes the ardent desire to understand his own faith—“Be a great lover indeed of understanding” is his command to others. which he applies to himself also. Likewise the profound sense of the mystery “for it is better,” he exclaims, “to have a faithful ignorance than a presumptuous knowledge.” Likewise the sure conviction that the Christian doctrine came from God and thus has its own original source, which must not only be preserved in its integrity—this is the “virginity” of the faith of which he spoke—but must also serve as a measure to judge the philosophies that conform to it or diverge from it.

It is well known how much Augustine loved Sacred Scripture, proclaiming its divine origin, its inerrancy, its depth and inexhaustible riches; and it is well known how much he studied Scripture. But the aim of his own study, and of his promotion of study by others, is the entirety of Scripture—so that the true thought or, as he says, the “heart” of Scripture, may be indicated, harmonizing it where necessary with itself. He takes these two principles to be fundamental for the understanding of Scripture. For this reason he reads it in the Church, taking account of the Tradition, the nature and obligatory force of which he forcefully underlines. He made the celebrated statement “I should not believe the Gospel unless I were moved to do so by the authority of the Catholic Church.”

In the controversies that arose concerning the interpretation of Sacred Scripture, his recommendation was that one should discuss “with holy humility, with Catholic peace, with Christian charity,” until the truth itself be grasped, which God “has set … upon the throne of unity.” One will then be able to see that the controversy had not broken out in vain, because it “was the occasion for learning” and progress has been made in the understanding of the faith.

Another contribution of Augustine’s teaching to the men and women of today that we may briefly mention is his proposal of the twofold object of study that should occupy the human mind: God and man. “What do you wish to know?” he asks himself. And he replies: “God and the soul are what I wish to know.” Nothing more? Nothing at all. Confronted with the sad spectacle of evil, he reminds modern men and women that they must nevertheless have confidence in the final triumph of the good, that is, of the City “where the victory is the truth; where dignity is holiness; where peace is happiness; where life is eternity.”

Further, he teaches scientists to recognize the signs of God in the things that have been created, and to discover the “seeds” that God has sown into the harmony of the universe. He recommends above all to those who have control over the destinies of the people that they love peace, and that they promote it, not through conflict, but with the methods of peace, because, as he wisely writes, “there is more glory in killing the wars themselves with a word than in killing men with the sword, and there is more glory in achieving or maintaining peace by means of peace than by means of war.”

Finally, I should like to address the young people whom Augustine greatly loved as a professor before his conversion and as a pastor afterwards. He recalls three great things to them: truth, love and freedom—three supreme goods that stand together. He also invites them to love beauty, for he himself was a great lover of beauty.

I have… sketched briefly a panorama of the thought of an incomparable man whose children and disciples we all are in a certain fashion, both in the Church and in the Western world itself. I express once again my fervent desire that his teaching should be studied and widely known, and his pastoral zeal be imitated, so that the authoritative teaching of such a great doctor and pastor may flourish every more happily in the Church and in the world, for the progress of the faith and of culture.

History

Augustine’s Millenial Views

Frank A. James III

His spiritual view of the millennial kingdom would shape tradition for the next 12 centuries.

Alaric, barbarian king of the Visigoths, was the straw that broke the Roman camel’s back. On August 24, 410, Alaric and his troops entered Rome and pillaged the city for three days. He and his troops carried off vast amounts of booty and left behind a city of corpses and ruins. Alaric’s deed signaled the end of the Roman empire.

Many Roman citizens blamed the sack on Christianity, which had displaced paganism as the state religion. Angry pagans argued that the old religion had been betrayed. Word spread quickly that defeat had come because the pagan deities were offended by all this Christianizing, and that Alaric was their chastisement.

To answer these accusations, Augustine composed his great treatise, The City of God. In the first part he reminds pagan accusers that Rome had suffered catastrophes long before the advent of Christianity. He suggests it was not Christianity that brought Rome to her knees, but decadence within.

However, Augustine’s great work contains a good deal more than a simple response to accusations against Christianity. He seizes the opportunity to set forth a Christian philosophy of history. As he sets it forth, history is really the tale of two cities—the City of God, inhabited by God’s people, and the earthly city, inhabited by sinners who reject God. The two cities and their citizens are combatants in the age-old struggle between righteousness and wickedness.

Though inhabited by God’s people, Augustine’s City of God is certainly not a physical city of bricks and mortar. It is a spiritual city, whose citizenship is determined by a personal relationship to God. This overarching conception of history governed Augustine’s theological interpretation of the millennium.

Like other Christians of his day, Augustine had for a while anticipated that Christ would, after his return, establish an earthly millennial kingdom. It seemed fitting that the saints should enjoy a thousand-year Sabbath rest after the labors of 6,000 years. But he became disenchanted with this view after encountering the Chiliasts—extremist “Christians” who envisioned the millennium as a thousand years of reveling in “carnal” and “immoderate” pleasures. A Chiliast named Cerinthus said he was looking forward to an earthly kingdom of sensual pleasures characterized by “gratification of appetite and lust.”

Disillusionment with the Chiliasts led Augustine to an intensive study of Revelation 20:1–10, the only passage in the New Testament that speaks directly about the millennium. For him, the significance of the millennial kingdom, like the City of God, lay in its spiritual character. He saw the millennial kingdom as being primarily the reign of Christ in the hearts of the faithful. He apparently came to believe that viewing the millennial kingdom as physical and political tended one toward the error of the Chiliasts.

However, Augustine’s argument was not with those who said this passage referred to a literal 1,000 years. He acknowledged this as a possible interpretation. But he preferred a broader view of the thousand years, as a term marking an indefinite period of time between the first advent, when Christ’s kingdom was established, and his second advent. During this span of time, writes Augustine, the devil is “prevented from the exercise of his whole power to seduce men” and the saints “reign with Christ” over his spiritual kingdom. When Christ returns, he will judge the living and the dead, and then will usher in the eternal state.

Here, as in salvation theology and ecclesiology, Augustine’s conclusions were very influential. His spiritual view of the millennial kingdom became the predominant view of the traditional church for the next 12 centuries. In fact, until the 17th century virtually every orthodox leader in Christendom held to an Augustinian view of the millennium. And today, numerous postmillennialists and amillennialists still look to Augustine as their forebear.

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Paul D. Robbins

A few weeks ago I was asked to address The Evangelical Alliance Mission (TEAM) headquarters staff as a part of their observance of the National Day of Prayer. The annual call to prayer is one of the positive things occurring in our country and, in my opinion, deserves everyone’s support. I eagerly accepted.

Usually I don’t have much trouble finding something to say. But as this day approached, I found myself struggling with the subject of prayer; more specifically, I found myself wrestling with a lifelong struggle to master the disciplines of prayer. I had to admit that the dissonance between my understanding of prayer and my personal experience with prayer was too great to sustain anything more than trite, tiresome words.

In the end, I decided to be candid, confess my struggles, and share what I’m currently learning about prayer. It’s pretty basic-concepts I should have incorporated into my life long ago. Had I done so, my life would have been less stressful and more productive.

First of all, I’m learning that prayer is so much more than talking to God. For me, the most important dimension of prayer has become being with God. Since childhood I’ve sensed his presence with me, but only recently, in prayer, have I learned how to be with him and enjoy his presence.

For years my prayer times were filled with what now seems to be compulsive, incessant babbling-hasty confessions of transgressions, obligatory phrases of praise and appreciation, and a laundry list of requests interspersed with appeals for deliverance and relief. To be with God-share silence with him, delight in his company-felt awkward and contrived. Short prayers (thirty minutes was a long time) were the order of the day. Often they were the order of the week.

The pivotal point in my shift from talking to God to being with him came after reading a Helmut Thielicke sermon. He tells of a little girl-about five years old-who knows that sometime after five o’clock her daddy will arrive home from work. Long before five, she takes her daily station at the front storm door, nose pressed firmly against the glass, scrutinizing every vehicle that passes by. Finally, a big diesel bus comes into view and her heart quickens as she watches it slowly come to a stop and disgorge its passengers. As her daddy uncouples himself from the crowd, crosses the parkway, and starts up the walk to the house, she can contain herself no longer. She flings open the door, races across the porch, and leaps into his open, extended arms just as his foot reaches the first step. They embrace; he holds her tightly to his bosom while she hugs his neck with all of her might, mutually savoring the love and affection that binds them together.

Once again, she is with her father and he is with her. Words are incidental and irrelevant to what passes between them.

I read this anecdote around the time Mary and I celebrated our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. We agreed that the most meaningful times we have had together can’t be captured by words. Just being together was enough.

“Love God for who he is, not for what he does” is an admonition I’ve preached dozens of times. But I never fully understood it or how to apply it to my life until I learned how to be with him in prayer.

The second lesson I’m learning is that the work of the day, the really significant labor, can be accomplished in prayer. It’s in talking with God that I’m learning how to ask better questions, search out better answers, and persist in finding out how to turn the events and encounters of the day into more worthwhile and productive activities.

Learning how to labor through prayer has only heightened my awareness of how totally committed God is to helping me find the clearer perspectives, creative approaches, and more workable solutions. And it’s hard. Real prayer is tough, hard work.

This truth was recently affirmed by my friend Haddon Robinson, president of Denver Conservative Baptist Seminary. In a recent issue of Focal Point, he made some observations about ministry and the labor of prayer.

“In the life of Jesus, prayer was the work and ministry was the prize. For me, prayer serves as preparation for the battle, but for Jesus, it was the battle itself. Having prayed, he went about his ministry as an honor student might go to receive a reward, or as a marathon runner, having run the race, might accept the gold medal.

“Where was it that Jesus sweat great drops of blood? Not in Pilate’s Hall, nor on his way to Golgotha. It was in the Garden of Gethsemane. There he ‘offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the One who could save him from death’ (Hebrews 5:7). Had I been there and witnessed that struggle, I would have worried about the future. ‘If he is so broken up when all he is doing is praying,’ I might have said, ‘what will he do when he faces a real crisis? Why can’t he approach this ordeal with the calm confidence of his three sleeping friends?’ Yet, when the test came, Jesus walked to the cross with courage, and his three friends fell apart and fell away.”

I know Haddon would agree that the ministry of Jesus was built on Luke 5:16-“But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” For him, nothing was more important than being with and talking with his Father.

Paul D. Robbins is executive vice-president of Christianity Today, Inc.

- More from Paul D. Robbins

Pastors

OVERLOOKED FUNDAMENTALS OF PUBLIC SPEAKING

Fred Smith

To improve our teaching it pays to go back to basics.

Every summer you can find advertisements for basketball or football camps where big-name stars, for a fee, will instruct young people dreaming of athletic greatness.

I wonder how much actual learning takes place when an all-star quarterback, who spends most of his time preoccupied with reading and outmaneuvering sophisticated defenses, tries to coach a junior-higher who’s still trying to figure out how to grip the ball with hands that aren’t quite big enough.

Sometimes people learn more, not from the superstars who have long since learned to perform the basics without conscious thought, but from others only slightly further down the road, those who’ve recently shared the same struggle.

Often, I suspect, a similar effect happens to those who want to achieve superstar poise and eloquence in the pulpit. The key is focusing not on the dazzling techniques but on the fundamentals. Improvement comes from concentrating on the basics until we can perform them without conscious thought.

I talked with a woman yesterday who has a child with a learning disability. She told how difficult it is not to compare him to the other three boys, who make almost straight A’s. She has to remember to praise his little progress as much as she praises the greater progress of the brothers. Her tendency, she said, is wanting to deny that he has a handicap; she wants to make demands of him that she makes of the other three. And so she has to remind herself that his slower progress is just as great, for all progress is relative.

Most of us have learning limitations of greater or lesser degrees. It’s the rare, very gifted individual who is able to make progress in quantum leaps. In fact, this is one of the traits of genius. A Rubenstein, four years old, starts to play the piano and at age six is ready to give concerts. How many Rubensteins are there? The way you identify those rare people is by their ability to learn in big gulps.

It isn’t that they want to learn that way; it’s not that the rest of us don’t want to learn that way. It’s that most of us are not capable of learning that way. So each of us has to learn how much we can take on. We need to focus on the basics and to find pleasure in the step-by-step advance.

Here are some fundamental areas that I find speakers may overlook as they try to improve.

Establishing a Friendly Atmosphere

To a large degree, the atmosphere we establish will determine how effective our sermon is going to be. Atmosphere is created by both our verbal and nonverbal messages.

I hear a lot of preachers, for instance, who are pretty sloppy in their opening comments. Perhaps it’s because they haven’t thought about them, but the mood they create right from the start makes it tough to benefit from the rest of the sermon.

Most of us know you don’t want to start on a negative note. “I hope you all will excuse my voice this morning. I’ve had a cold all week.”

Or “I really appreciate you all coming on a miserable, rainy day like today.”

Or “Folks, we just are not getting enough people. When I stand up here and look out at this congregation … “

What kind of impression do these introductions make on the listeners? Probably not a good one. You’re not starting from their need. You’re starting from your need. And that’s not the way to fill people with anticipation for the Word you have to give.

This is why I enjoy starting with something like, “This has been a wonderful week”- people want to know why it’s been wonderful. They’ve had a lousy week. But there are very few weeks for which you can’t think up some way it has been good-“I haven’t been sued a single time this week.” And people laugh.

Or “I haven’t had an automobile accident this week, not even a scratch.” Little things like that. And then you can say, “No, really. It’s been a fine week. I talked to some friends on the phone, and I was just reminded of the marvelous gift of friendship.”

This builds a friendly atmosphere. It conveys a feeling anybody can identify with.

People may say to themselves, “Yes, I talked to some friends this week, too. And sometimes I forget how good that is.”

That’s one way to help establish a warm, friendly atmosphere. There are other ways, but the important thing is to avoid opening negatively or from your own self-interest or your own insecurity. I want to communicate openness, that I’m here to serve these people.

This setting of the atmosphere, of course, begins before I ever speak my first word. We can show warmth by our demeanor on the platform. I try to pick out certain people and smile at them. This not only affirms those few people but it shows the whole congregation that I’m truly glad to be there.

You see, people need to know how you feel before you start to speak. They want to know whether you’re friendly or worried or mad. For me, the most difficult of all disciplines in speaking is going into the talk with the proper attitude. If I do not want to speak, it is so difficult for me to speak well.

Attitude control is essential. I must go up there with a friendly attitude, with a genuine desire to help those people, to give them something they’ll find beneficial. One of the ways to let them know that, and one of the ways to help my own attitude, is while waiting to speak, instead of praying conspicuously, just looking at individuals in the congregation and smiling.

It also helps to notice how people are sitting and to gauge the emotional climate of the congregation. This affects how you need to come across.

Recently I spoke at a Presbyterian church in Memphis. The 8 A.M. service was about half full. People were sitting in ones and twos and threes. This meant I needed to communicate with them individually. The 11 A.M. service, however, was packed-everyone sitting together-which meant I needed to communicate to them en masse.

What’s the difference? When people are scattered in a sparsely populated sanctuary, they feel exposed. They can’t hide. In a jammed auditorium, people think they’re hidden, anonymous, and therefore as you speak, you can detect a more open response.

So in the 8 A.M. service, I knew I had to be more personal, speaking as if we were standing face to face and having a conversation. So in my opening comments, I used the same approach that I would if I’d just shaken hands with someone. “You know I’m a Baptist. You also know I’m a social climber since I’m talking to Presbyterians.” I laughed, and they gave me a courteous laugh. You don’t expect a big laugh out of a sparse audience any more than you would from someone you’re just getting acquainted with.

Then I said a few more personal things, just as if we were still shaking hands. “You know, I was born less than a hundred miles from this place. The town has been kind enough not to put up a sign disclaiming it, even though they haven’t put up a sign claiming it.”

That kind of light humor fits a small audience. I wouldn’t tell a story that requires a big audience in that situation. I just needed to introduce myself with a warm, friendly little greeting.

At 11 A.M., however, with the place packed and with the magnificent choir behind me, I started by turning to the choir and saying, “I wanted to be a singer, not a businessman. And I had everything except talent.” That’s a crowd joke. I wouldn’t have said that to just a few people. But the choir laughed, and the whole church laughed. Then I went ahead and said, “When I found out I couldn’t be a singer, I went into religious music, leading singing.” They, of course, caught the innuendo and they laughed again. “In fact, I have in my home a trombone, which I started playing because if Homer Rodeheaver could play trombone, I wanted to play it. And this horn is engraved on the bell: ‘To the man who wanted to play trombone the worst in the world, and succeeded.’ “

They laughed freely with me, and I was ready to proceed with my remarks. But that kind of humor requires a large audience.

So whether you’re a rookie speaker or a seasoned pastor, and by whatever the technique, it’s important to begin by establishing a friendly atmosphere

Encouraging Participation Not Observation

Another way we all can improve is by remembering that our goal is not simply to have people sit quietly while we talk, but to have their minds actively engaged by our subject matter.

Since I’ve been writing for LEADERSHIP, I’ve had various preachers send me sermon tapes. I have to believe they send me their best tape. And I really ache. I’d like to sit down with them and say, “Let’s talk about what you’re doing as a communicator.”

One of the most common mistakes is trying to create false feelings by over-dramatization-by telling sob stories, or getting tears in their voice, or yelling. Listeners quickly realize that the speaker isn’t depending on the subject matter to produce the emotion, but the dramatization. And when people are thinking more about how you’re saying something than what you’re saying, your effectiveness is lost.

On the other hand, some preachers are so deadpan, they might as well be reading a recipe or a research report. You’d never guess they thought real people were listening.

In either case, my recommendation is to try more conversational preaching. People listen to it without antipathy. When I raise my voice, people have a tendency to put up a barrier to my increased volume. It’s like that story about the kid who told his mother he’d decided to be a preacher.

“Why?” she asked.

“Well,” he said, “if I’m going to be attending church all my life, I’d much rather stand up and yell than sit and listen to it.”

The minute somebody starts yelling, people mentally distance themselves. Many preachers think they’re doing it for emphasis, but generally it doesn’t work that way. It deemphasizes.

If I want to say something really important, I’ll lower my voice-and people will kind of lean forward to hear what I’m saying. In a sense, you’re putting intimacy in a point by lowering your voice. You’re saying, “This point means something to me. I’m telling you something from my heart.”

By increasing the volume, often the sermon comes across as more a performance than a heartfelt point you’re making to another individual. Most of the preaching I’ve heard is performance rather than presentation. And if you want people to digest what you’re saying, you don’t want them to feel you’re performing.

I don’t want people to observe. I want them to participate, because the whole object of speaking is to influence attitudes and behavior.

How do I encourage participation? Not necessarily by being entertaining. If people are listening for the next story or next joke, I’ve become a performer. I’ve got to be smart enough to know when my material is getting inside them. I may need to make them laugh. I may need a pointed statement. But when they are genuinely listening and understanding, they are participating.

My goal is not to have people say, “Oh, you’re such a great speaker.” Then I know I’ve failed. If they are conscious of my speaking ability, they see me as a performer. They have not participated. My goal is for people to say, “You know, Fred, I’ve had those kinds of thoughts all my life, but I’ve never had the words for them. Now I’ve got words for them.” Then I feel I’ve given them a handle for something. I’ve crystallized their thoughts and experiences into a statement or story and made it real for them. I’ve enabled them to give it to somebody else.

Obviously speakers must do the talking, but you let the audience “talk” too. You talk for them. If I’m making a controversial point, I’ll say, “I can tell by your faces that you really don’t agree with that.” Or “You’re saying to me, ‘That’s all right for you to say, but that doesn’t fit my situation.’ And I agree with you because all of us are not alike.”

What I’ve done is to say their words for them. They’re thinking, He understands. He’s not trying to poke this stuff down our throat. And they want me to continue the conversation.

The key here is to make sure we see the process as a conversation and not a performance. The way I’ve disciplined myself on this is to ask myself if I secretly enjoy the front-and-center role. I believe I’m never ready to speak for God unless I’d rather somebody else do it. No matter how much preparation I’ve done, if at the moment before I stand, I wouldn’t be happy for somebody else to do it, then I’m not ready to speak for God. I’m really going to be speaking for myself. And people will be observing a performance, not participating in the presentation of a clear biblical word.

Ensuring I’m Believable

I keep a constant watch on my believability. Unless I can believe me when I make a statement, I won’t make it.

At certain times I can believe me saying something, because I’m practicing what I’m preaching. But other times I can’t, and I’ll cut that part out of my speech. Let’s say I’ve had an argument with my wife before I speak. I will not use an illustration or statement about the marital love relationship because Mary Alice wouldn’t believe me if I said it-and I wouldn’t either. Even though the statement is absolutely true, I could not say it and believe it.

Now, if I get with Mary Alice and say, “Honey, I was wrong” or “You were wrong” or “We were wrong,” and we resolve the issue, then I can believe me saying some things about marriage. But I won’t ask my audience to believe what I can’t.

For me, this has meant giving up saying some things I would love to be heard saying.

This also affects the references I can make. I have a private love of literature, for instance, that for some reason I’m not able to get across to people. It’s not an area I can communicate believably no matter how interested I am. Perhaps it’s my Southern accent, perhaps it’s just personal style, but I’m much more effective using some of my homespun common sense.

Nor can I, for example, use things that have sexual overtones. There are people who can use sexual material effectively. I can’t.

I don’t use politically oriented material because I’m not particularly interested in politics. I would laugh at myself waving the flag and making a Fourth of July speech.

I can’t effectively use material that has to do with sudden “miraculous” changes because I’m such a believer in process that while I believe in the miracles of the Bible, I have difficulty teaching people to expect them.

I can’t be an inspirational speaker saying, “You can do anything you think you can do . . . and what the mind can conceive, the body can perform . . .” That just isn’t me. Nor am I able to preach effectively on prophecy. While I can listen to others do it and appreciate their ability to do so, I can’t do it believably because I have so many personal misgivings. I would not feel solid ground. I’d have to quote someone else.

I want to be like Jesus as much as I can, “speaking as one having authority.” Unlike the scribes, who spent most of their time quoting other authorities, Jesus spoke directly. He, of course, had divine authority. How do we establish our authority? As credible speakers, we’ve got to establish some authority or there’s no reason to listen to us.

You can establish your authority by being a researcher, a Bible scholar, or a collector of scintillating anecdotes. You may have had certain life experiences. But whatever your authority, you have to be careful of extrapolation-taking a principle from an area you know and trying to apply it to an area you don’t know.

Extrapolation is where most speakers show their ignorance, and it undermines their genuine authority. I listen to some preachers extrapolate their knowledge into the business world, and they do it well. Others, however, tell a business story and they reveal how little they know about business.

A friend of mine was preaching and trying to relate to the sportsmen in the congregation, so he told a story about ice fishermen in Minnesota who were sitting in their huts catching muskies.

Afterward a man in the congregation told him, “That was a good story, but they don’t fish for muskies in the winter.” My friend’s attempt to come across as “in the know” only showed the sportsmen he wasn’t.

So I’m always very careful when I extrapolate. Did I stick to things I know? When people see that I’m pretending to be familiar with something I’m not, that hurts my believability.

Making My Voice Inconspicuous

Very few speakers have great voices, but most have ones perfectly adequate if people can understand the words. But I’ve found people are turned off by preachers who have a seminary brogue, who have developed an intellectual pronunciation, or those who decide they have an excellent voice and so preach as if they were reciting Shakespeare. I immediately say, “They’re performing.”

If I’m ever conscious of a speaker’s voice after listening for two minutes, then the voice has become a distraction. In the first two minutes, people should make a decision about your voice and then think no more about it. It’s exactly like your clothing. When you stand up, if people are conscious of your clothes after once seeing you, there’s something wrong with your clothes. You’re either overdressed or underdressed. You’re not properly dressed to speak.

The same is true of the voice. It should come across as natural. But there’s more to it than that.

The voice should always contain some fire-conviction, animation. Fire in the voice means that the mind and the voice are engaged. There’s a direct relationship between an active mind and an active voice.

If you recite the nursery rhyme “Mary had a little lamb,” you don’t have to engage your brain. Chances are you’ll say it with a sing-song voice. The voice indicates what’s going on in the mind.

In preaching it’s important that the voice be in gear with the mind, that it accurately represent the mind.

For example, if I am not really interested in a point, I will leave it out, because my voice will be flat. It will tell the audience I’m really not interested. If I try to fake it, those who are sensitive will know it.

And if I sing-song it or go dead, my voice will say, “This point isn’t important” no matter what my words say. So it’s counterproductive to try to convince people of a point your voice doesn’t believe.

I like to listen to people say certain words. The way people say the word God has always intrigued me. With some people, you can almost feel the relationship. It’s personal. With others, it’s majestic. With others, it’s sharp or brittle. The fact that it is so different among different people means there is a different relationship and the voice is saying what the mind feels.

Salesmen sometimes call it enthusiasm. I think it’s more than enthusiasm. Sometimes it will be awe or reverence. There are times when the voice ought to halt in reverence before a word. You don’t do that like an actor. It’s just that when the mind halts, the voice ought to halt. The voice is truly a mirror of the mind.

Fire in the voice has nothing to do with having a good voice or a poor voice. Some of the whiniest voices I’ve ever heard come from the best speakers. But audiences will listen to a very poor voice, as long as there’s fire, because as soon as the audience realizes the voice is real, they adjust to it.

Using Gestures Effectively

Gestures have a vocabulary all their own. The Spanish painter Goya charged as much to paint the hands as to paint the face, because the hands are the most difficult of all parts of the body to paint.

Delsarte, back in the last century, studied for several years how the hands show emotion. He got so good at it that he could sit in a park and tell whether a baby was held by a maid or its mother by the intensity of the hands.

I, too, have become interested in what hands say. When I watch a speaker, I watch the hands. I want to see whether gestures are spontaneous or programmed. I want to see whether the spontaneous gestures are repetitious or varied. My friend Haddon Robinson has one of the finest pairs of hands I know. I’ve tried to count the different formations his hands make, and the number gets astronomical. Yet they’re absolutely spontaneous, and they’re in harmony with what he’s saying and with the sound of his voice. He has a large vocabulary of both gestures and words.

One of our former presidents could say something like “You know I love you,” but he would make a hacking gesture. Some psychiatrist friends who used to watch him told me, “His hands tell you how much he really loves you.” You don’t use a hacking motion with a genuine, spontaneous expression of love.

Great music conductors, for example, will often not use a baton so they can communicate more clearly. The orchestra can read their hands better than the baton. The baton can give the beat or the accent, but hands can give the nuance.

Many people will prophesy with their hands. They’ll let you know what’s coming before they actually say it. The hands come alive before the voice does. And people detect this even if they’re not aware of it.

Or you see somebody who points his finger at you like a pistol. You never expect a real friendly statement after that. The teacher points a finger at you and then reprimands you.

I’ve found speakers can’t develop mastery of gestures quickly, but they can give themselves permission to improve. Sometimes people don’t succeed because they’re afraid to try. Any time we want to develop our skills, we start by giving ourselves permission to grow.

With gestures, the key is simply to make sure they’re spontaneous and that they represent the voice and the mind. But give yourself permission to let them vary and be expressive.

Here’s one to start with. If you’re going to be delivering a climactic statement, instead of getting intense too soon, it’s better to relax your body and back away a half step from the audience. Then just before you come into the climactic statement, step toward the audience and straighten up. That way your body as well as your voice projects the message.

Gestures also include giving people your eyes. In speaking, eyes are almost as important as the voice. Everyone knows the importance of eye contact, but the temptation I have is to zero in on a few people up front who are very attentive. Maybe I’m insecure, but it’s easier to talk to those people. I have to remind myself not to neglect those out on the wings. Like the farmer who’s feeding the chickens, you have to throw the corn wide enough for everyone to get some. So I tell myself, Remember the smaller chickens on the fringe. I want them to know I’m thinking specifically of them, too.

Remembering My Limited Knowledge

I remember a very embarrassing situation one night at a business meeting with a group of executives.

One man, who considered himself an authority on international oil because he read the newspaper, was popping off about the oil situation and how it could easily be resolved. He proceeded to pontificate.

What he didn’t know was that another man in the room had just returned from chairing an international conference of major oil companies. After the first fellow finished spouting off, proving his ignorance, this man quietly but effectively showed him to be the fool he was.

I said to myself, I hope that never happens to me!

I left that meeting determined to make sure, in any speaking I do, that I leave open the possibility that someone may be there who knows an awful lot more about the subject than I do. The memory of that business meeting has stayed in my mind and tempered many remarks I’ve been tempted to make.

On the other hand, sometimes speakers are too impressed with who’s in the audience.

The other night I was in a church listening to the preacher when a well-known university president slipped into the sanctuary. The preacher changed his style considerably; I could tell he was preaching for the benefit of this one individual. He went from preaching to giving an intellectual performance, trying to impress with his learning. He seemed to forget the rest of the audience.

I couldn’t be too critical, however, because at times I’ve done the same thing. When some prominent person is present, the great temptation is to speak to him alone. But that’s prostitution. That’s spending other people’s time simply to make a personal impression.

But as I sat listening to the preacher being overly influenced by this university president, suddenly the thought occurred to me, Doesn’t he realize God is listening?

When God is listening, that’s about as big a celebrity as anyone is going to have. And isn’t he always our ultimate audience?

So in the back of my mind, I always try to remember that God is present. And if he isn’t, maybe we ought to dismiss early.

Fred Smith is a businessman, formerly a professional speaker, and contributing editor of LEADERSHIP.

- More from Fred Smith

Pastors

THE MOMENT THAT MATTERS

Timothy K. Jones

This morning I almost beat my neighbor at tennis. During months of playing, he has served me one resounding defeat after another. But not today.

“Your shots have more muscle today,” my friend commented.

“Not more muscle-more power,” I replied. I’d discovered that pausing a split second in my backswing allowed me to return the ball with new authority and accuracy. That quiet instant of waiting is beginning to transform my game.

A moment of waiting sharpens my performance off the court, as well. In my weekly round of sermonizing, organizing, and visiting, I find new stamina and power from the times I give to prayer. I am learning how to face the opportunities and.rigors of ministry with more than human muscle or earthly ingenuity. Praying, I find, helps in three ways.

Quiet that brings power

Isaiah said it well: “In quietness and trust is your strength” (30:15). And no leader knew the power of quiet better than Jesus. Amid the whirlwind of his ministry, we read, “Early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed” (Mark 1:35).

As Henri Nouwen says of this verse, “In the center of breathless activities we hear a restful breathing. Surrounded by hours of moving we find a moment of quiet stillness.” Locked within the loudness of Christ’s action is a simple verse that points us to the quietness that fed his resiliency, and promises to feed ours as well.

Often, though, we neglect this quiet when we need it most. A friend pastoring a thriving Midwest church has discovered this. Several times a year he clears his busy appointment book and goes on two or three-day retreats. “I have heard things about God’s vision for our church,” he once told me, “that I would have missed had I not guarded those times.”

No wonder Francis de Sales commented, “We should listen to God at least thirty minutes a day- except, of course, when we are very busy. Then we should make it an hour.”

Before I approach the home of a parishioner, enter a room to conduct a meeting, or get out of my car before Sunday worship, I try to take time for the stillness of prayer. At the beginning of the day, I listen for a nudge to make a call, or visit a neighbor, or write a letter.

Such quiet makes me more compassionate, more open to God’s active presence. And such inward quiet transforms my prayer itself. No longer do my petitions seem as frantic as my daily schedule. No longer do I feel the need to string together an impressive volume of words. I find, to the contrary, that growth in communion with God is a movement away from wordiness toward simplicity.

This is why experienced spiritual guides suggest sitting in the presence of God for twenty minutes repeating a simple prayer like “Speak, Lord; your servant is listening,” or “Lord Jesus, have mercy on me.” A phrase from Scripture like “The Lord is my shepherd,” or “Jesus is Lord” can yield profound insight as it helps us silence distractions and focus on (Sod. The stillness that results can go with us while we answer phone calls, knock on doors, or chair meetings.

Rest that bears fruit

Just as our bodies need adequate sleep, so our spirits need replenishing pauses. Even Jesus, no passive quietist, knew the importance of rest. “Take my yoke upon you,” he told his disciples, “and you will find rest for your souls.”

But of the many adjectives describing the life of a modern pastor, restful is rarely one. Not when we feel pressured to visit the three new families in church Sunday and answer the stack of letters piling up on our desk. Yet I am slowly discovering it is possible-and vital-to move through the many tasks with an inner sense of rest, a quiet core of calm.

Herman Melville’s Moby Dick contains a parable of the importance of such renewal and rest. He writes, “However prolonged and exhausting the chase, the harpooneer is expected to pull his oar meanwhile to the uttermost; indeed, he is expected to set an example of superhuman activity to the rest, not only by incredible rowing, but by repeated loud and intrepid exclamations. … ” And, when the whale is finally sighted, the harpooneer “now has to drop and secure his oar, turn round on his center halfway, seize his harpoon. … and with what little strength may remain, he assays to pitch it somehow into the whale. No wonder, taking the whole fleet of whalemen in a body, that out of fifty fair chances for a dart, not five are successful.”

Of such failure Melville writes, “It has not by any means been so much the speed of the whale as the … exhaustion of the harpooneer. … To insure the greatest efficiency of the dart, the harpooneers of this world must start to their feet from out of idleness, and not from out of toil.”

To begin the day on a note of rest, not toil, I find I must arise before my family. I find a quiet place where I will not be distracted by noise or reminded of tasks to be done, and I indulge in the seeming waste of prayer. But out of that idleness, I continue to draw an energy to confront demands and needs with an ease and calm I know is not my own.

During the radio broadcast of last year’s World Series, I caught the tail end of an advertisement for an additive that readies engines for winter travel. A player plugging the product concluded, “My team wins not by being emotional, but by being prepared.” I thought of ministry. We are readied not in frenzied running, but in the waiting rest.

Trust that builds strength

Ministry also thrives on the calm confidence that comes from trust. No wonder Jesus told his disciples, “Do not worry.’ As they learned to lean on the assurance that God is able and adequate, they became unleashed for ministry.

Henri Nouwen helps explain why. “As long as ministry only means that we worry a lot about people and their problems; as long as it means an endless number of activities which we can hardly coordinate, we are still very much dependent on our own narrow and anxious heart.” But, he concludes, our worries can lead us into the heart of God and there become prayer. Then worry no longer dissipates our energy and creativity, but brings us to a renewed openness to the Lord’s doings.

One writer put it like this: “The truth depends on a walk around the lake, a stopping to watch a definition growing certain, and a wait within that certainty.” Waiting is perhaps the hardest aspect of trust. But obedience sometimes involves pulling back and trusting what someone has called “the slow work of God.”

A potentially explosive judicatory meeting once underscored this for me. A divisive member was threatening to disrupt the proceedings. I wanted to jump in, orchestrate a solution, and consolidate my position. Yet I still vividly recall God restraining my temptation to intervene. I heard a still, small voice urging, Trust me; trust me. I did, only to see God accomplish his purposes through others there entrusted with leadership.

Our constant temptation is to take charge-of our lives, our ministries, the next steps. “Put yourself in control of your financial future,” is the advertising appeal. Granting the need for responsible planning, is control the point? When I am regular in prayer, I remember again that all that happens does not hinge on my perspiration. I can loosen my grip and open my hands to the opportunities God creates. Prayer is a nagging, hopeful reminder that ministry’s unexpected detours and hoped-for triumphs are finally in the hands of Another.

I still spend hours in the study before preaching. I try to map out an agenda for meetings. I am attentive to the need to visit parishioners. Prayer is no substitute for work, no excuse for flying by the seat of our pants, no justification for sloppy work. But I am also coming to see that prayer needs to burst out of the compartment we sometimes give it in our professional priorities.

One of the most significant ways we prepare for ministry is to pray. As more and more of what I do is enriched by prayer’s quiet, rest, and trust, I know those moments are far from wasted.

-Timothy K. Jones

Goshen, Indiana

- More from Timothy K. Jones

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A Grievous Episode

Everyman’s Pear Tree

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Manichacism

Donatism

Pelagianism

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In this series

Fruits of Disobedience

Light and Darkness

Roads to Rome

Bishop and Rhetorician

A Changed Man

The Prodigal Returns

Pressed into Service

Cities of Man and God

Life’s-End Challenges

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In this series

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In this series

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Establishing a Friendly Atmosphere

Encouraging Participation Not Observation

Ensuring I’m Believable

Making My Voice Inconspicuous

Using Gestures Effectively

Remembering My Limited Knowledge

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Quiet that brings power

Rest that bears fruit

Trust that builds strength

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