9. As Étienne Gilson contends, “In [Augustine’s] doctrine wisdom, the object of philosophy, is always identified with happiness” (Gilson, Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine, 3).
10. Brooks, Road to Character, 199.
11. Augustine, Confessions 5.14.24 (Chadwick, 88).
12. Palmer, To Know as We Are Known, 31.
13. J. K. A. Smith, On the Road with St. Augustine, 152.
14. Augustine, Confessions 8.8.19 (Chadwick, 146).
15. Augustine, Confession, 8.11.26 (Chadwick, 151).
16. The garden imagery in this story and his earlier account of taking from the pear tree should not be lost on us.
17. Augustine, Confessions 8.12.29 (Chadwick, 153).
18. Augustine, Confessions 8.11.27 (Chadwick, 151).
19. González, Mestizo Augustine, 75.
20. González, Mestizo Augustine, 111.
21. Augustine, Confessions 10.23.24 (Chadwick, 199–200).
22. Brooks, Road to Character, 211.
23. Augustine, Epistle 186, 12.39 (quoted in Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 356).
24. For a fuller account of Augustine’s philosophical foundations, see Gilson, Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine.
Part 2
Goodness
THE VIRTUOUS LIFE
I take it to be crucial that Christians must live in a manner that their lives are unintelligible if the God we worship in Jesus Christ does not exist.
—Stanley Hauerwas
So that he [Jesus] might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
—Ephesians 5:27
4
In Pursuit of the Good Life
RIGHTEOUSNESS WITHOUT SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS
For most of my life I thought theology was the way to maturity. So, I read, and I studied, and then I read some more. The call to ministry was a call to prepare, and I was preparing my mind for sharp theological precision and deep sermons.
The first real ministry job I had was in Austin, Texas. Don and Jane were a couple in their eighties at the church. In 1970, they arrived in Guatemala as missionaries to the indigenous K’iche’ population. There were less than twenty Christians when they arrived. When Don and Jane left in retirement twenty-seven years later, there were 32,000 Christians and 250 churches. I arrived in Austin with the ability to parse Greek verbs. Somehow that didn’t feel the same. I may have had more theological training than Don and Jane, but their staggering numbers aside, they were holier than I was. Their joy was abundant. Their work was fruitful. My joy was minuscule. My work was just starting.
Jim became one of my best friends at that same church in Austin. He was in his late forties, whereas I was in my midtwenties. We were not alike. Jim had a rough childhood that he escaped by joining the military. He was training with the Army Rangers before he was dishonorably discharged for hitting his superior. He went on to join a biker gang and was a mule for drug smugglers. He ended up in jail for bank robbery. When he first came to church at the beckoning of his wife, he went up to the pastor and said something along the lines of, “This church thing is fine for my wife, but I won’t believe a damn word of it.” Jesus has a good sense of humor, I guess. It did not matter whether Jim believed in Jesus. Jesus came for Jim. He had grown up in a harder life than I had. He had been a Christian for less time than I had. I had read way more books than he had. Yet it seemed that Jim was more generous, more servant-hearted, and more loving than I was. He seemed to desire Jesus more than I did.
I also have a friend from high school named Logan. Logan lives in low-income housing in Charlotte, North Carolina, with his wife, Jessie. Most of the complex is filled with recent refugees from various countries. Jessie and Logan don’t merely show up to serve these people; they live among them. They help feed children. Logan helps the adults fill out paperwork that they can’t read. He meaningfully employs many of the kids he’s worked with over the years. Jessie homeschools a few teenagers whom the public school system has left behind. I have two advanced degrees, and Logan likely hasn’t thought about education since his last college class. Though I have more theological education, Logan and Jessie have more patience and kindness than anyone I’ve ever met. Logan puts people at ease with his presence. I love God with my mind, but Logan and Jessie seemed to be loving their neighbors with their whole being. I could give you all the theological reasons to care for the poor and vulnerable, yet Logan and Jessie actually care for the poor and vulnerable.
Considering these friends, at some point I had to ask myself: What was I missing? I had crossed my theological t’s and dotted my justification j’s. I had my degrees and a library full of books that I had (mostly) read. I had great, lofty ideas of God, yet my character was still lowly. I had not advanced as much as I knew I should have. My brain and my body seemed at odds.
In the truth tradition, people must believe to be saved. All else flows from believing the truth. Knowing leads to action. Meaning leads to practice. Yet these friends of mine led lives of extraordinary service and love without knowing as much as I did. Was my pursuit of truth the problem? Was I doing it wrong? Was it me? What was I supposed to do after I believed the truth?
The theologian N. T. Wright has written a book to answer that last question. It’s aptly called After You Believe, and that title addresses a good question: What’s the point of life after we believe in the truth of the gospel? Sometimes, in the truth tradition, truth can function like fire insurance. “I’ve believed already. What more do you want from me, God?” But following Christ is not about doing the bare minimum to get by; rather, it’s about doing that which brings maximum health to one’s soul. The goal for the Christian life is not merely about getting to heaven through believing true things. Salvation is a broader concept. The central question is this: What does it mean to live a life aimed toward God? This question is answered not by assent to some intellectual propositions but by ways of being and by habits.
Wright argues that the goal of life “after you believe” is to grow in character, or virtue. Having character is distinct from following a set of external rules or authentically living out some internal values. Rather, character “will generate the sort of behavior that rules might have pointed toward but which a ‘rule-keeping’ mentality can never achieve. And it will produce the sort of life which will in fact be true to itself—though the ‘self’ to which it will at last be true is the redeemed self, the transformed self, not the merely ‘discovered’ self of popular thought.”1 Character, or virtue, is about shaping instinctual reactions. The goal is to be a certain type of person who chooses to be gracious or merciful without straining or thinking about it. Those characteristics will be simply part of who the person is. Living a good life means living a life of character, living into one’s redeemed self.
In the classical conception, there are three steps to developing virtue or character: glimpse the goal, work out the path toward it, and develop the habits needed to practice it.2 This chapter focuses on the first step: What is the goal of the Christian life? The next chapter addresses the path toward it. At the end of this book, it’ll be up to you to practice the habits needed.
First Corinthians 13 is known as the chapter of love. Many have heard this chapter read at a wedding. I suppose it can apply to marital love, but that’s not Saint Paul’s immediate context. In 1 Corinthians 12 and 14, Paul discusses spiritual gifts. And in chapter 13 he puts forward the best and highest spiritual gift. More to be desired than prophecy or speaking in tongues or service or healing is the divine gift that we should all seek out: love. A life of love is the way of the Christian. A believer can be smart, kind, hardworking, and theologically astute, but if they don’t have love, they’re useless.
Here’s how Saint Augustine defines the virtuous life:
But living a just and holy life requires one to be capable of an objective and impartial evaluation of things: to love things, that is to say, in the right order, so that you do not love what is not to be loved, or fail to love what is to be loved, or have a greater love for what should be loved less, or an equal love for things that should be loved less or more, or a lesser or greater love for things that should be loved equally.3
Key to Augustine’s conception of a good life (“a just and holy life”) is the idea of ordered love. People can love a good thing in a wrong way, and that love can end up being destructive. If I love my wife more than I love God, then I’ll put expectations on her that will always lead to disappointment, and I’ll never be happy. And she’ll be exhausted from trying to carry a burden that no person can bear.
