St. Augustine
Tears are a gift from God
They put us in touch with essential things that we know to be dear or wrong.
Can Christians transform culture?
Jamie Smith thinks it might be the other way around.
Letting Augustine be Augustine
How to capture the urgency of Confessions? New translations by Sarah Ruden and Peter Constantine offer very different approaches.
by Sean Hannan
The New Testament in the strange words of David Bentley Hart
Greek and English do not work the same way. So what does it mean to create a literal translation?
Being a Shalom Sista in a brokenhearted world
What does it look like to embody the peace of the city of God?
by Osheta Moore
Realities in the doctor's office
Anesthesiologist Ronald W. Dworkin reminds me that going to the doctor isn’t the same as sharing a cocktail with a friend.
Glorious things of thee are tweeted
I’ve never read Augustine’s City of God cover to cover. So I joined a Twitter experiment to help me get through it.
Ambivalent motherhood
The physical reality of her son, the very tangible way that he is a part of her, will not go away. He is with her everywhere she goes.
by Amy Frykholm
The mysteries of young Augustine
Confessions is not primarily about Augustine at all; it is about God’s activity in the particularity of Augustine’s life.
Faith’s ghastly legacy
Christians fail to realize that the responsibility for rebellion against the faith lies invariably at their own door.
by Samuel Wells
When leaders are narcissists: Psychoanalyst Michael Maccoby
"Narcissists can be inspiring. Whether they are creative or destructive depends on their philosophy."
interview by David Heim
Writing the Christian life: The essence of spiritual memoir
A memoir becomes explicitly Christian when it derives its literary power from the power of the gospel. It doesn't preach, it shows.
Feelings and faith
As I watched Inside Out, I found myself thinking about Augustine's assertion that we are what we love and what we hate.
Sorry About That, by Edwin L. Battistella
In this anecdotal study of public apology, Edwin Battistella shows that our anxieties and confusions about confession are rooted in a deeper ambiguity: the tension between the culpable self and the apologetic self.
reviewed by Gerald J. Mast
Curious, by Ian Leslie
In Ian Leslie’s telling, curiosity is far from a valued quality. Augustine, he notes, equated curiosity with temptation.
reviewed by Lawrence Wood
A restless search for truth: Philosopher John Caputo
“Truth is in constant transit. The difference between a liberal and a conservative, I think, is the stomach you have for the journey.”
by Amy Frykholm
Shame and guilt
It is a subtle shift that we make in our liturgy and preaching. But it’s an important one. We do terrible things and we must confess our action. But we are good. We are made in the image of God. And in Jesus Christ, we are forgiven people.
Church against state? Resident Aliens at 25
A funny thing happened on the way to the church-as-polis: I can now imagine being a resident alien and invested in the state, in all of its glorious failing.
Why I kiss my stole: A pastor's habit of reverence
Ritual actions can linger, even as belief fades in and out.