Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash Before you accuse me of not taking ownership of my sin, hear me out. Timothy Keller said, “the functional cause of our discontent is that our loves are ‘out of order.’” Keller is quoting Augustine who said that our issues are reduced to disordered loves. What does Augustine mean by disordered loves?…
Brown, Peter. Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013. 568 pages. $29.95 Biographical Sketch of the Author Writing a biography of a monumental figure such as Augustine is no small task. Augustine stands atop the mountain of…
“Friendship is agreement with kindliness and affection about things human and divine.” Cicero I’ve been blessed with good friends. Particularly friends who are fellow pastors. There was a time in my life when I thought I was fine on my own and could handle things alone. I had moved to a different state, returned to…
Augustine’s influence is profound, his depth of insight stunning, and his literary output insane. Isidore of Seville (AD 560-636) once said that if anyone claimed to have read all Augustine wrote, they were lying. The progress I’ve made in Augustine is minimal and I’m far from an authority on his writing and theology. However, after…
In the year 410, Rome fell to Alaric and the Visigoths. In light of those events, Jerome would write, “My voice is choked, broken with sobs as I dictate this letter. The city that conquered the entire earth has now itself been conquered” (Nick Needham, 2,000 Years of Christ’s Power, 321). Romans, having enjoyed such…
Augustine (354-430) was one of the great figures of the early Church. The story of his conversion to Christ is told in his Confessions, in which he describes how God used a single verse from the epistle to the Romans to suddenly convert him. He went on to serve the Church as an illustrious teacher and bishop…
Augustine taught that all people seek happiness, and they attach themselves to things they believe will make them happy. That attachment is experienced as love. The main human problem, however, is that, because of sin, we misidentify what will make us happy. As we have discussed before, the result is disordered loves – loves ‘out…
Theology Along the Way 