Originally published at crisis magazine
Editor’s Note: This is the eighth in a series of articles on St. Augustine, one of the greatest of Church Fathers, and how his writings still apply today.
From the first moment of his conversion, rivetingly recounted in the pages of his Confessions, Augustine rooted himself in Christ, determined to cleave to his person and the redemption wrought by the sacrifice of his life. Not as mere idea, distant and remote, toward which he would now and again direct his attention.
Such rarefied realms, so beloved by men with minds like Plotinus, who would never dream of actually talking to God, were not for him. “Concepts create idols,” to quote Gregory of Nyssa, his counterpart from the East, “only wonder understands anything.” And so, leaving the world of speculation with its fleshless formulations behind, he sought a new center, a someone on whom to anchor everything.
Above all, Augustine wished to remain faithful to the grace of an encounter that had upended his life. An encounter not with an idea but a person—the human being Jesus in whom the whole meaning of personhood stands revealed. “You are in me deeper than I am in me,” he will admit with astonishment. And
