James K. Smith, On The Road With Saint Augustine

 

James K. Smith, On The Road With Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts (Brazos Press, 2019) hb, 240pp

 

Metaphors to do with journeys, pilgrimage, exile, refuge and home run through this attempt to travel with and learn from the Bishop of Hippo. Smith literally visited some of the sites associated with Augustine and invites us to come along. The saint is brought into dialogue with literature, contemporary music, existential philosophy, aspects of Smith’s own life and contemporary culture. I was reminded of something of the great influence and legacy of Augustine, and sometimes surprised to find him popping up in places I had not expected or forgotten (e.g. in Sartre and Wilde[1]). The work is an encouragement to go back to the life and work of Augustine. Smith especially emphasised the value of Augustine’s letters and sermons as well as his doctrinal works, although much of the focus here is on the story of The Confessions.

 

Three chapters provide initial orientation to Augustine and his usefulness to us. Ten further chapters explore the themes of freedom, ambition, sex, friendship, mothers and fathers, justice, story and death.  

 

Those already familiar with the Augustine and Smith will have heard some of this before. Ideas around loves (what do we love, how and why) and idolatry (what do we use / enjoy, do we exchange God for his gifts and make the good things he gives us into false gods) recur. See p100 for a useful summary relating to sex and promiscuity.

 

For some reason I stalled about half way through my reading of this book. I can’t recall the first half in any great detail or why I wasn’t immediately compelled to read on. Likely the fault is in me not in the book. The second half I found engaging and profitable.

 

(Some Protestants might be worried by “prayer” to Monica or by the notion of her praying for us.)

 

Some favourite moments:

 

You can leave God / home / parents etc. without actually leaving and getting a bus ticket. Not every prodigal needs a passport (p3)

 

The human soul is a huge abyss. God knows the number of hairs on our head but it easier to count our hairs than our moods or the workings of our heart (p11, Confessions 4.22, 96)

 

Henri de Lubac: we are made with a natural desire for the supernatural (The Mystery of the Supernatural) (p49)

 

Refugee spirituality – not escapism; unsettled but hopeful, tenuous but searching, eager to find the home to which we have never been (p50)

 

The problems both of ambition and the lack of ambition, and of some criticisms of ambition e.g. of uppity brown women (p77)

 

Busyness a bastard form of ambition (Eugene Peterson) (p78)

 

Opposites of ambition not humility but sloth, passivity, timidity, complacency (p78)

 

Dilletante – one who takes delight (p80)

 

Lowing our sights if we are ambitious only for attention (to be noticed) or domination (to control) (p83)

 

The search for personal authenticity - Sartre’s denial of grace / gift, of friendship / we / communal / communion (p124)

 

“leaving you room but not leaving you” (p136)

 

The script that guided his way of life was the Scriptures (p167)

 

Word as sacrament, God’s action (p169) and sacramental fatherhood, love in brokenness (p202f)

 

The problem of colleges as credential factories, mere escalators to wealth and power (p142) – learning must not only position but transform (p143)

 

Camus thought we must choose between the world and God and chose the world. Augustine thought that in the incarnation, God had chosen the world (p157)

 

Identity partly through solidarity and community not only through expressive individualism (p159) – we find an identity by being part of a story with others (p163)

 

Facing my death is rather different from a theoretical or abstract acceptance of future death (p210)

 

How to die is really a question of how to live (p211)

 

Justice chapter – evil is always necessarily inexplicable. There is never a good reason for it. It is always a kind of irrationality / madness.

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[1] The Confessions and the City of God topped the list of books Wilde requested in prison (p166). See Wright, Built of Books.