In Confessions, he tells a better and more rational story about reason, interweaving how our thinking depends on trust, how our deepest desires move us along through life, and how disordered loves misalign our intellectual quests for the truth. And he does this all while layering his account with the Scriptures; most notably the Psalms, Luke’s story of the prodigal, and the opening chapters of Genesis. Confessions is thus suggestive for how we might integrate various disciplines—exegesis, theology, counseling, and preaching—together to witness in a secular age in which “coming of age” is highly prized.

Augustine of Hippo (354-430) is arguably the most significant post-biblical theologian in the history of Christianity and, as one recent historian has put it, the “greatest apologist of the Latin west.” Hence it was a surprise to us years ago when doing research for our textbook on apologetics to find that Augustine was almost entirely absent from modern debates on apologetic methodology. A question arose: what would happen if we retrieved Augustine to aid the church’s apologetic witness within post-Christendom?
To answer this question, we focused on his two most enduring books. With the reception history of The City of God, which has paid so much attention to its political and theological implications, it is important to not miss that Augustine’s stated purpose is to persuade skeptics and reassure doubters. He made clear in a letter, penned after City of God’s completion, that he wanted the work distributed to those who despise Christians and to the pagan seekers. Moreover, we also found that Confessions should be read as a work of persuasion–a story-shaped prayer, leading readers through competing philosophies before holding up the cross-shaped path to the good life. Retrieving both books together can help us address the individual and societal challenges of our present age.
Who might Augustine want to speak with today?
Before getting to the specifics of how, Augustine might want to speak to the who. Many present-day pastors and theologians, though inheritors of the Augustinian tradition, have sold off their apologetic birthright, mistakenly assuming apologetics is synonymous with a flattened Enlightenment-style rationality and seeing it as irrelevant to their ministry. This is a fair criticism of some forms of apologetics, but not of apologetics per se.
Long before the Enlightenment set the terms of so many debates, Augustine set out in The City of God to “persuad[e] a person either to enter the city of God without hesitation or to remain there with perseverance.” Mindful of the pronounced changes taking place in society and the challenges Christians felt, Augustine believed it was his pastoral calling to interact with these tectonic shifts and pour himself into the task of persuading the anxious, the doubting, and the skeptical. We can only imagine Augustine instructing pastors and theologians today to do the same.
Augustine would likely also want to have a long conversation with modern-day apologists. While he would almost certainly be pleased to observe how some of his apologetic seeds have blossomed through the ages, he would probably raise some concerns. Over the past century, at least in the United States, debate about apologetics has largely consisted of back-and-forths between evidential and presuppositional apologists regarding methodology. Though both sides have much to offer, the ways these methodological debates have often been framed have left our apologetic imaginations entrenched inside certain systems; meanwhile, the cultural winds outside have been rapidly changing. As Charles Taylor has highlighted with his use of the term “social imaginaries,” our late-modern communities have been inhaling ways of thinking, believing, and living—not mostly by way of syllogisms or analytic argument, but through stories, symbols, and artifacts—which have made Christianity seem not only irrational but oppressive and dangerous. Our cultural air is far different from what it was even fifty years ago. A changing culture, however, would not surprise Augustine; he saw it in his own time. But the idea that we would be unwilling to adapt how we attempt to persuade likely would surprise him.
In his book Territories of Human Reason, Alister McGrath has aptly summarized the work of scholars who study what is considered “rational” in different contexts. Basic logic is an important aspect of rationality, which is universally accepted. However, it is what is added to the laws of logic that does the heavy lifting in perceptions of rationality. And what is added to the laws of logic includes the available evidence for a particular person or community and the prevailing social imaginary. Hence, when we neglect to train ministers, evangelists, and apologists in how to evaluate and diagnose our culture’s dominant stories, symbols, and artifacts we risk neglecting the larger assumed frameworks within which people reason.
Moreover, in both teaching and in practice, contemporary apologetics has not sufficiently recognized the importance of humans as doxological creatures. Our desires shape how we reason and what we believe. This Augustinian insight is now being affirmed from a variety of different disciplines.
These two problems—namely, a lack of training in cultural analysis and at least a functionally reductionistic anthropology—go hand in hand. When we fail to integrate sociocultural analysis into our discipleship, we are left flatfooted when we attempt to engage the doubt and unbelief as well as the hearts and minds of those in our communities and parishes.
How might Augustine help us?
In Confessions, we read of a boy raised in church by his mother, only to walk away from the faith and pursue intellectual maturity. Confessions is an account of his truly growing up, which can help us counter contemporary secular coming of age stories.
Charles Taylor describes how many today assume they have come of age by simply subtracting religion from their lives and rooting themselves in science and common-sense reasoning.
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Certainly, the opening ceremonies failed when it came to the billions in the world who love and follow Jesus Christ. For sure the ceremony highlighted sexual debauchery, a decapitated head singing, drag queens recreating the painting of Jesus’ Last Supper, and more. Regardless of the stated goal, the opening ceremony both provided offense to billions as it portrayed an anti-Christian, vile, sexualized message.

Jim McKay, Howard Cosell, Al Michaels, and Keith Jackson are some of the historic voices of my Olympic memories. World class extraordinary wins for the USA, fascinating ‘Up Close and Personal’ features, historic theme music, and beautiful introductions to foreign lands flood my memories when I think of the Olympics. Beginning in the 70’s, when the Olympics would come around, my family and I would stop typical daily habits and make time to watch as much coverage as possible. Key events in the Summer Olympics and Winter Olympics fascinated us. In the past many years, Michael Phelps held us captive as he went for Olympic record (and gold) after Olympic record. Enter the opening ceremony from Paris Summer Olympics 2024. I responded to this year’s presentation with disappointment, sadness, and, in honesty, anger. I am seeking to work through my response as a disappointed and saddened fan of the Olympics.
Editor’s Note: It is now Saturday [7/27/2024] evening. I have searched for clear explanations of the artist’s intent in the presentation. This AP article says the ceremony director did not deny it was the Last Supper, although some are suggesting it was just a Greek god feast. However, the naked blue man is both interviewed and described here: “The ‘naked blue man’ who starred in the bizarre Last Supper parody at Olympic opening ceremony has broken his silence on the controversial stunt. French actor and singer Phillippe Katerine was playing the role of the Greek god of wine Dionysus in a recreation of the famous biblical scene of Jesus Christ and his twelve apostles sharing a last meal before the crucifixion.”
THE 2024 DEBACLE
According to a thepinknews.com article by Chantelle Billson, the queer Olympic opening ceremony director Thomas Jolly wanted everyone to feel represented. In fact, the slogan for the Paris 2024 games is Games Wide Open. Tony Estanguet, the head of the organizing committee for the Games, explained the slogan represents the power to open hearts and minds and help people stop seeing differences as obstacles. He promised: “Bold and creative Games that dare to take a step outside the box, to challenge the current models, our ways of seeing things, our paradigms, to give us the opportunity to come together, to be proud together, to experience together.”
Certainly, the opening ceremonies failed when it came to the billions in the world who love and follow Jesus Christ. For sure the ceremony highlighted sexual debauchery, a decapitated head singing, drag queens recreating the painting of Jesus’ Last Supper, and more. Regardless of the stated goal, the opening ceremony both provided offense to billions as it portrayed an anti-Christian, vile, sexualized message.
Should we have expected less from the head of the organizing committee (Estranguet) and queer ceremony director (Jolly)? I sure did.
In fact, I would have expected NBC on behalf of its American audience and advertisers to insist on something better. But should I?
THE REALITY OF OUR WORLD
In all reality, what we experienced on NBC network television as simulcasted across the world simply represents the heart of mankind.
Jesus said:
““If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know Him who sent Me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. He who hates Me hates My Father also. If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would have no sin; but now they have seen and also hated both Me and My Father. But this happened that the word might be fulfilled which is written in their law, ‘They hated Me without a cause.’” (John 15:18-25)
It should not surprise us that they egregiously blasphemed Jesus Christ.
Did they blaspheme Mohamed? Buddha? Gandhi? No. However, none of them proclaim absolute truth. No other world or religious leader proclaims to be and is God. Just as Jesus said, in Him, ‘they have no excuse for their sin.’
The Apostle Paul also explained this to us. He wrote:
“Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.” (Romans 1:24-32)
This is exactly what we experienced on our television screens, phones, computers, and other streaming devices in the opening ceremony.
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Written by Rev. Dr. Bill Fullilove |
Friday, November 5, 2021
If ever one could have, should have, grumbled, if ever one got what he did not deserve, it was our Lord, Jesus Christ.  But while we whine in the face of God’s blessings, he was silent in the face of God’s cursing.  “God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Cor. 5:21)  Amazing grace, indeed.  Maybe just amazing enough grace to transform our grumbling and complaining into gratitude, kindness, and thanksgiving.

Numbers, the fourth book of the Bible, is undoubtedly the great book with the terrible marketing plan. The Greek title is arithmoi, the Latin numeri, and hence the English “Numbers,” a title that inspires only a few actuaries and statisticians to even open a sleepy eye. Yet, the New Testament insists that Numbers matters deeply to the Christian faith, serving as a corrective to so many common human tendencies, tendencies that creep into the church and into the Christian life, tendencies that if unchecked will twist and warp lives and communities of faith.
Grumbling holds pride of place among the signature themes of the book. The Israelites – delivered from slavery in Egypt by the ten plagues, rescued via the parting of the Red Sea, having received the Law, having seen God’s power at Sinai, eating manna daily – the very same Israelites, as they begin to march towards Canaan in Numbers 11, immediately begin grumbling and complaining about and against God.
Three episodes follow, the first merely setting the stage:
And the people complained in the hearing of the Lord about their misfortunes, and when the Lord heard it, his anger was kindled, and the fire of the Lord burned among them and consumed some outlying parts of the camp. Then the people cried out to Moses, and Moses prayed to the Lord, and the fire died down. So the name of that place was called Taberah, because the fire of the Lord burned among them. (Numbers 11:1–3, ESV)
“In the hearing of the Lord” is a technical term here, meaning that the people were gathered at the gate of the Tabernacle. This particularly defiant act is met with the fire of judgment.  Hence the name of the place, Taberah, likely from the Hebrew meaning “place of burning.”
The second episode begins to show the spiritual dynamics of complaint:
Now the rabble that was among them had a strong craving. And the people of Israel also wept again and said, “Oh that we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.” Now the manna was like coriander seed, and its appearance like that of bdellium. The people went about and gathered it and ground it in handmills or beat it in mortars and boiled it in pots and made cakes of it. And the taste of it was like the taste of cakes baked with oil. When the dew fell upon the camp in the night, the manna fell with it. Moses heard the people weeping throughout their clans, everyone at the door of his tent. And the anger of the Lord blazed hotly, and Moses was displeased.(Numbers 11:4–10, ESV)
In other words, the people ate every day by a miracle, and that was not enough.
We often take God’s care and provision not just for granted, but as something onerous and burdensome.  We become accustomed to God’s gifts, much as we become accustomed to speed when riding in a car on the expressway.  Accelerating down the entrance ramp, we ease slightly back in our seats, experiencing the acceleration.  Yet, before long, 55 seems slow.  So does 65.  So does 75.  And before long, if we are not careful, we are doing 85, whizzing by others, only to suddenly have our daydream interrupted by the flashing lights of the local police department!  We become accustomed to speed, forgetting that we are not beings made to go more than a few miles per hour under our own locomotion.  So it is with God’s gifts.  We cease to notice that those gifts are even there.  We start to complain about how slow things feel, how we want more.
Even more, a complaining spirit makes them (and us) revisionist.  What do the Israelites begin doing?  Talking about how good it was in Egypt!  Remember their lives in Egypt?  They were slaves, worked to the bone, their children killed, the victims of a genocide.  Until God miraculously delivered them.  But a complaining spirit forgets all that.  They would rather – they think (Remember that they are fooling themselves, too.) – they would rather return to slavery than live in the Lord’s miraculous blessing.  Hence, along their journey the place named, Kibroth Hattaavah, “marked graves” or “graves of craving.”
Isn’t it amazing that we do the same thing?  We live every day in the miraculous love of Christ.  We are fed by his grace, both physically and spiritually.  Our every breath and being is sustained by him.  Our work and our rest are his gifts.  Yet before long we become accustomed to his gracious gifts and start to not just forget them, but to scorn them.  We find ourselves saying, “Why do I have to go to this job?  I hate it.  Why do I have to care for these children?  They take so much out of me?  Why do I have to serve as a member in this church?  I don’t like these people.”  We take God’s gifts – jobs, children, church – not simply for granted, but we start to even complain about them.
One might think these Israelites would get the picture, but chapter 12 begins with a third area of complaint, this time against Moses, the leader that God had given them:
Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman. And they said, “Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also?” And the Lord heard it. (Numbers 12:1–2, ESV)
God’s people love to rebel against their leaders.  In Numbers 12, Miriam and Aaron start to gripe about Moses’ leadership.  They begin their complaint with ethnic prejudice – racism – the fact that Moses’ wife is from Cush (modern day Ethiopia).  Sadly, the church has replicated this type of sin again and again, and we are hardly free from it today.
In verse 2, though, we realize that Miriam and Aaron are just dragging Moses’ wife into it to get at him (another thing that is far too common in the church today).  Even underneath the racism is jealousy – they betray themselves with their words: “Has the LORD indeed spoken only through Moses?  Has he not spoken through us also?”  This jealousy is particularly important, as Aaron and Miriam had leadership roles of their own, and jealous infighting among the leaders of God’s people threatens the whole expedition.  Now that is a lesson the church today needs to hear!
I must say that I am, sadly, not immune to any of this.  None of us are.  I am easily piqued and sometimes petty, full of pride.  My best charitable moments are often overwhelmed by sin, and even when I think myself free of pride, I dig deeper and find it is still there, just another layer of the onion.  I have had my share of being the guilty one (and the not guilty one) in these situations, and I think I am most scared of the times I think I was the “not guilty one.” That just smacks of rationalization.  We are easily piqued and petty, and the one writing is the chief of sinners.  And jealous infighting among God’s leaders can sink any church.
Thing is, grumbling is a precursor, not a steady state. Grumbling doesn’t simply stay put as low-level aggression and dissatisfaction. Sooner or later, it leads somewhere. In Numbers, it leads to rebellion, which characterizes the next section of the book. Chapter 13 begins with the rebellion of the spies. Israel reaches the southern edge of Canaan, sends in spies to explore the land, and receives back the report: “The land is wonderful…and full of giants. We will be crushed if we try to enter.”
At the end of forty days they returned from spying out the land. And they came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the people of Israel in the wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh. They brought back word to them and to all the congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land. And they told him, “We came to the land to which you sent us. It flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. However, the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. And besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites dwell in the land of the Negeb. The Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the hill country. And the Canaanites dwell by the sea, and along the Jordan.” But Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.” Then the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are.” So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied out, saying, “The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.” Then all the congregation raised a loud cry, and the people wept that night. And all the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The whole congregation said to them, “Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! Why is the Lord bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?” And they said to one another, “Let us choose a leader and go back to Egypt.” Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly of the congregation of the people of Israel. (Numbers 13:25–14:5, ESV)
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