OK, I know it says a lot about me that this is my fave week of the course. I will try to reign in my glee, just a little bit.
My very non-secret bias for this class is that we can all get over our superficial hatred of Augustine and move toward either an appreciation for the dude or at least a well-founded hatred for him. I am fine with either, as long as we take the time to get to know him, in his context. This is part of why I start the podcast this week with a reading from Peter Brown’s Augustine of Hippo: A Biography.
The photo on this post is of modern-day Tunisia, where Augustine spent much of his life. I want us to push us away from our assumptions about Africa as primitive and beige (so located in our ethnocentrism, racism, and also reinforced by popular media)–and I mean this for both the present and for the past. One thing I learned in my reading of Augustine is that Africa in his time was known to be vibrant and colorful and its religion bold and exciting.
I hope you keep this in the back of your mind as you do your reading and listen to the podcast this week.
- Listen to A Curious Disputation, Season 2 Ep 2
- Floyd-Thomas, “Plato on Reason” (Beyond the Pale)
- Read Miles, “Patriarchy as Political Theology”
- Read Updike, “Augustine’s Concubine” (This is fiction! How fun!)
- Read Augustine, Confessions, Books I & III*
- Turn in your Neoplatonic Thought Reading Response to Populi
- Guiding question for your RR: What about Augustine’s location in North Africa in the 4th century helps make sense of his philosophical and theological convictions?