Brian Hamilton

Augustine as a Bishop

Whatever judgments one finally passes on different aspects of his teaching, Augustine as a person deserves our careful attention. As I read about his life, I am amazed that his endless duties as a bishop left him any time at all to write or to pray. Whether by necessity or by choice, I don’t know, but Augustine was deeply involved in all the economic, political, and social life of Hippo: mediating disputes, receiving visitors, working the system on behalf of the little familia Dei entrusted to his care. And of course, all the while he had to be fulfilling his specifically pastoral responsibilities: performing the liturgy, counseling his parishioners, hearing confessions, etc. For all that, Augustine still kept extensive correspondence with his many far-flung friends, lived according to a strict monastic rule with a handful of companions, succeeded in transforming the social life of his town, and wrote some of the most important theological treatises in the Christian tradition.

It is no new insight that the pastoral character of so much early theological reflection offers a serious challenge to modern theology by its very form. With Augustine, though—so embroiled in the intricacies of a small African town and an even smaller parish—one is especially impressed by the extent to which his grand theological treatments seem mere extensions of his work as a bishop. The man himself, perhaps, longed for more solitude, less petty interruption; who of his kind wouldn’t? Yet his driving love was always for the church, and for his church at Hippo most of all.

6 January 2008 |
tags: Augustine