The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation
Rod Dreher wrote “to order the world rightly as Christians requires regarding all things as pointing to Christ”
Christ is the One in Whom in all things consist and humanity is not the measure of all things. If a defining characteristic of the modern world is disorder then the most fundamental act of resistance is to discover and life according to the deep, divine order of the heavens and the earth.
In this series we want to look at the big model of the universe that the Bible and Christian history provides.
It is a mind and heart expanding vision of reality.
It is not confined to the limits of our bodily senses - but tries to embrace levels fo reality that are not normally accessible or tangible to our exiled life on earth.
We live on this side of the cosmic curtain - and therefore the highest and greatest dimensions of reality are hidden to us… yet these dimensions exist and are the most fundamental framework for the whole of the heavens and the earth.
Throughout this series we want to pick away at all the threads of reality to see how they all join together - how they all find common meaning and reason in the great divine logic - the One who is the Logos, the LORD Jesus Christ - the greatest that both heaven and earth has to offer.
Colossians 1:15-23
The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation
Episode 93 - Augustine: Philosopher or Theologian? Unpacking the Complex Legacy
Welcome to a deep dive into the life and philosophy of Augustine of Hippo. We explore the substantial and debated aspects of Augustine's legacy—his influence on Western thought, the complexities of his identities, and the core themes that resonate today.
- Analysis of Augustine's dual identity as a philosopher and theologian
- Examination of 'Confessions' and its impact on Christian psychology
- Discussion of Augustine's views on the Trinity and original sin
- Contrast between earthly kingdoms and the City of God
- Reflections on how Augustine's historical context mirrors modernity
- Invitations to read more about Augustine and explore your own faith journey
Listen to gain insights into how Augustine challenges our contemporary understanding of identity and civilization.
The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore
Well, welcome to the next episode of the Christ-Centered Cosmic Civilization and we're going to begin a new series within this podcast which is really looking at the figure of Augustine. I say Augustine, we might say Saint Augustine, but he's not a saint to everybody in the world. He is to say half the global church and then the other half don't see him as a saint, and that summarizes really the complexity of the man, His brilliance. Everyone can acknowledge that intellectually. But is he brilliant Christian theologian? Is he that? Well, half of us would say, oh, absolutely, he's the greatest of those. I mean, one person I was just reading today said there is Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul and Augustine, and those are the big three pillars of the Western Church. And if you added Aquinas in to that set, there is a way in which that can seem true, that there's a like. Obviously Jesus and Paul will be shared more broadly, but Augustine with his particular kind of philosophy is and there's a question is he a philosopher rather than a theologian? He probably. It's hard to see him as a bible scholar because he was criticized even in his own day for the problems in the way he handled the bible, and that's one of the things we're going to explore. So it's difficult to see him as a leading Bible scholar, theologian. He is a theologian, but is he primarily a philosopher? And there's a way to think of that, because Aquinas is certainly primarily a philosopher. I mean, I don't really think of him as a theologian. Aquinas Theology, like Christian theology, I suppose, in a way generic theology, if there is such a thing like a pagan thing, maybe Aquinas is that. But is he a Christian theologian? Well, we're not doing Aquinas now, so let's forget that.
Speaker 1:Augustine, brilliant mind, brilliant man, incredibly strong personality, rich person in his inner life, and he kind of brings out that inner life in one of his works called Confessions, which has this massive psychological effect really on the Western world of Christianity, to have this kind of inward psychological character to it. And that's part of Augustine's heritage. But there are other things that are a particular kind of doctrine of God and it would be good for us to explore where he gets that from. It's not entirely from the Bible, as we'll see and also a particular view of humanity which he bequeathed to the Western Church, but it is not shared by the rest of global Christianity. We need to think about that. But Augustine I'm happy to call him Saint Augustine, but a lot of global Christians are not quite persuaded that he is, that Some would say that he is a kind of western translator of the theology of the Cappadocians and they see him as very much with the same theology as those, like post-Nicene thinker theologians who came from like eastern turkey, what we would say is eastern turkey, cappadocia.
Speaker 1:Um, I'm not sure that's true and that that that again is part of the complexity of him. When I read them and we're very much in this realm of thinking about the Father, son and Holy Spirit as they relate to one another in the scriptures and we're very much deep in scriptural analysis and language Augustine kind of departs from that into more psychological terms and philosophical terms. Now his defenders would say, ah, he is articulating that same kind of Cappadocian, post-nicene theology, but in ainitarian. He is Trinitarian, of course, but is he Trinitarian in exactly the same way? It's not completely clear. He has things, models of the Trinity that are entirely new, entirely novel, that nobody previous to him comes up with, like analogies for the Trinity that are unique to him, comes up with analogies for the Trinity that are unique to him and he begins a tradition of thinking about the Trinity, on the analogy of a kind of single person's intellect, memory and will sort of thing. It's anyway, look, let's not run away into the detail now. First of of all, just get a sense of the man, who he is and his background.
Speaker 1:There's a free book you can get that I think's a good book. It's by a guy called Louis Bertrand, b-e-r-t-r-a-n-d. Just called St Augustine, and he wrote it like 100 years ago and it's available for free on Project Gutenberg or archiveorg. You can get it, but it's a good read. I like it. You can get it, but it's a. It's a good read. I like it, um, because he sort of locates augustine in his culture and geography, and but also what's here's.
Speaker 1:Let me just begin with a few quotations from the beginning of this book, in the prologue to it, um, he begins with that famous quote from the Confessions, right at the beginning of Augustine's Confessions, when Augustine says our heart finds no rest until it rests in thee, and that is the. That's the one of those wonderful things from Augustine where he has, and again you can sense the psychological character of augustine. It's the hugely introspective thing and and and he's, he's like, um, an adventurer or explorer of the human psyche armed with christian um tools or a compass, a christ compass, to explore the inner jungle of human heart and mind. And this is one of the great things. He discovers that the restlessness of the human heart is inevitable as long as we are not satisfied with Christ, really satisfied with Christ, really. Anyway, here's an interesting thing that Louis Bertrand begins with. He says Saint Augustine and this is him writing just 100 years ago.
Speaker 1:Saint Augustine is now little more than a celebrated name. Outside of learned or theological circles. People no longer read him. So it's fascinating that he takes it for granted that people just don't bother reading Augustine and he isn't really part of current theological thinking. I think that's not. That probably has changed quite a lot by the 20th century. There's a lot of important biographies and studies on Augustine Dunn throughout the 20th century, such that now there's a lot of Augustine Dunn work done and people seem to have much greater awareness of him. And then Bertrand talks about him that he's trying to persuade us of the huge impact of Augustine, and it's brilliant on that. But I think he's much more widely known now and you get just popular editions of the Confessions and the City of God, particularly the Confessions, and a lot of people have read those and know something of him.
Speaker 1:He's an intensely passionate man as well. That's another thing about him. Yes, he's this towering intellect and brilliant philosopher, but there's nothing of the coolness about him, his heart, and it comes out in that quotation. He has a tumultuous, powerful heart of emotion, a passionate man really. And uh, when he's not a christian he has passions and we'll think about those. I like this quotation again from bertrand in his introduction um, the, there's a whole, a lovely thing where he says he has broadened our Latin souls by reconciling us with the barbarian, and he talks about how he, he, he brings to he because Augustine lives at a time when the barbarians are destroying the Roman Empire. Augustine lives at a time when the Roman Empire is falling and Rome itself actually becomes destroyed during his lifetime, and it's an immensely traumatic event culturally speaking. Let's just ask PJ, can you just tell us about what happens to Rome and who is it who's invading and what are they up to? So it's the.
Speaker 2:Vandals who are invading. They sack Rome so obviously in the East. So the Vandals had moved from the East into the West. So the East was saved from the Vandals. So Constantinople lives on for a thousand years later than Augustine and it has satellite states that last even longer, so they're not too bothered. But Augustine is very much in this Latin world and so he and people around him get lost in that where Rome I mean Rome had been overshadowed for some time. Carthage was bigger, tria was bigger, milan Ravenna, you know Rome had been overshadowed for some time. Carthage was bigger, trier was bigger, milan Ravenna, you know, were all bigger. But it was such a symbolic thing I mean.
Speaker 1:It's nicknamed the Eternal City, the idea that it could never fall, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, Of course, though it had previously. The British had sacked it before, but it's still been called that.
Speaker 1:That's the British for you, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Were they all on holiday or something, Well, yeah yeah, the British and the Gauls, you know, like when we got on back then.
Speaker 2:So it had happened before, but there was a feeling that with the might of Rome and the Roman peace, that this sort of thing couldn't happen. And the Vandals were meant to be federates, they were meant to be allies that were being integrated into Rome and they'd Romanized. Well, the Vandals hadn't Romanized a lot really, but some previous groups had, and St Augustine's an example of that, because his mother was a Berber, his dad was Punic or Phoenician or Carthaginian, but he was kind of Roman and so he kind of believes in that that you've got this Roman Empire, that you can become a member of Rome. But the Vandals made people doubt this because they've destroyed Rome, they've very poorly integrated, and then they come for Africa, they take over Africa and they set up their base in Augustine's homeland, numidia and what's now Tunisia, which was then called the province of Africa. So the Vandals are very important for him to watch. So he's got a more watchful eye on them, because they have their eyes on him and his homeland and that's where they settle in.
Speaker 2:He's got a more watchful eye on them, because they have their eyes on him and his homeland and that's where they settle in. He's amazing in terms of just passively picks up a lot of language. So he potentially although some say it's pseudo-Augustine but gives us the only records of the Vandal language. But he also gives us a bit of Carthaginian and a bit of Berber and he says he had to learn Latin so he probably spoke Berber kind of natively. Some people say he only ever spoke Latin, but then he talks a lot about learning Latin. So that doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 1:And that's one of the things that in our family, pj and I love about him, because our ancestors, going back one stream of my ancestry, is Berber and so we always think of Augustine. He's one of ours, kind of like a Berber, and that's another thing about him. That is, he utterly shapes Europe, but he isn't a European, he's an African and he's a Berber shapes Europe, but he isn't a European, he's an African and he's a Berber, as were a lot of these great theologians, were Africans that have shaped Europe. But Augustine is really that and there's something about him that has this Berber spirit about him, this intensity, this extremity about him and we're going to see that. And so one of the things because he lives at this moment where Rome does fall to the Vandals and there's this feeling across the Roman Empire that that's it, that's the end of the world, they're like everything depended on Rome being inviolable and if these barbarians are coming vandals. We talk about vandalism when people mindlessly destroy things and stuff and they've given us that idea of just. You can't have anything once the vandals have taken over. That's still within us, in us, in the psychology of the english language anyway.
Speaker 1:Um, but it's augustine who, at that time, that moment, uh said and I think he's in his 50s at that time writes this book called the city of god, because people are so traumatized by this, the the fall of a city of man, a human city. And he, he, really says stop it, you should not think of any earthly kingdom as as that, that it shouldn't be the. The like it's's like when nowadays, if sometimes, if a person loses their job, I they utterly fall apart as a person. I've seen that happen several times because their entire identity was invested in the occupation, their what they were paid to do. Or the same can happen if it's a relationship or a marriage or something, and they utterly disintegrate.
Speaker 1:And what Augustine does with the city of God? He kind of probes and says you should not have invested your entire identity in the city of man. You should have your identity if you are a Christian and you are following Christ and you understand that you were made to be identified by and shaped by and to be a citizen of a different city, the city of. And so he kind of, in this monumental, phenomenal work, kind of creates this, uh, and it's of course a bible, entirely biblical theme to talk about. Like jesus says don't invest in treasure on earth, invest in treasure in heaven. And augustine takes that whole biblical theme about the heavenly reality over against the earthly reality and and describes it in terms of these two cities, the city of man and the city of god. And then in doing that he creates this entirely different cultural world and he kind of provides the foundation for a new kind of civilization where that idea of the city of god that dominates and is the one thing, that's the solid reality that we must look to and give our heart and mind to, and in a way that is what this entire podcast is about the christ-centered cosmic civilization. To try and we're trying to use a different vocabulary to do that, and maybe do it in a slightly different way than augustine was doing it, but essentially it's that same vision to say look, we too live at a time of a crumb, of the crumbling of civilization, and the cities of men and the kingdoms of men of in europe and the western world are crumbling and falling, disintegrating. There isn't a unified center to it anymore. So it's a very similar kind of crisis in a way not quite as extreme as his, but in in other ways, and we may feel vandals, like different cultures, different religions, coming in and destroying European culture and civilization and in similar. What do we do about that? How do we react to that? With violence, with war, or what? Augustine's kind of saying is no, what the only really, really revolutionary thing to do is to actually get your identity and culture and civilization drawn from the city of God. Now, that's something that we need to explore more.
Speaker 1:Now then, with that in mind, here's a quotation from Bertram. Augustine's tireless voice dominated the whole of the West. The Middle Ages still heard it For centuries. His sermons and treatises were copied over and over again. They were repeated in cathedrals, commented in abstracts of theology. People to came to accept even his theory of fine arts. And that's another thing about Augustine. Yeah, it's like he's not just like theology but an entire philosophy of time and art, almost anything he has something to say about and shapes almost everything in culture.
Speaker 1:Anyway, let Bertrand go on. He says all that we have inherited from the ancients reaches us through Augustine. So by that he is really saying that our entire view. So it's not that everything comes to us directly through the channel of augustine, but that everything about the ancient world for the western mind, is colored by augustine, and I don't know whether that's as true now as it was 100 years ago, but it probably was true when Bertrand's writing that everything about the ancient world is coloured and shaped by this lens, this cultural lens created by Augustine.
Speaker 1:And then the his who's, that? Pope the Great who comes after him. There's Gregory the Great, is it? Yeah, and he's the kind of, he is the he, and he takes all the Augustinian heritage and creates kind of the medieval world, doesn't he? Some people say he takes the worst aspects of Augustine and projects them onto a continental level. Well, again, we can come on to that later. That's not Augustine, but again Bertram says here Augustine is the great teacher. In his hands, the doctrinal demonstration of the Catholic faith takes firm shape. And then that's where he says it's Jesus Christ, sent Paul and then sent Augustine. Amazing, he says he's truly our spiritual father. He taught us the language of prayer.
Speaker 1:This universal genius who during 40 years was the speaking trumpet of Christendom, was also the man of one special century and country Augustine of Thagast. He's the great African. Now that ideaast. He's the great African. Now that idea that he's the speaking trumpet of Christendom. I don't know whether, because we've got PJ here from the Global Church History Project. That is a strange thing to say when we're looking at global church history. He may be the speaking trumpet of Western Latin Christianity but he certainly isn't of global Christianity and that's why it's important for us to remember, you know, the Oriental Orthodox Church of the East, even just Eastern Orthodoxy, they wouldn't regard him quite that highly and they have their own speaking trumpets who are theologians.
Speaker 1:At that time, just before, I ask PJ to tell us a little bit more about him, and all we're doing in this first programme is just getting a bit of a sense of the man and the scale of him and the flavour of him. I want to give a little bit more about that African background, and Thagast and Peej can tell us a little bit about that more in a moment. But this is what Bertrand has to say and it's what I love this, where he sets the character of the place, this and the Berber character of Augustine, and he says tender blue, here and there, in the strip of deep shade which lies along the thresholds, figures crouched upon rush mats, er. And then he says such is Thagast as we see it today and such undoubtedly appeared to the traveller in the days of Augustine. And then he says this Thagast gives us an impression of freshness and cool.
Speaker 1:It's a laughing place, full of greenery and running water. To the Africans it offers a picture of those northern countries, with its wooded mountains covered by pines and cork trees, and ilex. It presents itself as a land of mountain and forest, especially forest. It's a hunter's country. Game is plentiful Boar, hare, redwing, quail, partridge. In Augustine's time wild beasts were more numerous than they are today.
Speaker 1:To the east and west, wide stretches of woodland, rounded hills, streams, torrents which pour through the valleys and glens. There you have the ghast and the country round about it. There is the world as it revealed itself to the eyes of the child Augustine, but towards the south it grows more sparse. Arid mountaintops appear. The sterility of the desert becomes perceptible amid the wealth of vegetation.
Speaker 1:This full foliage land has its harsh and stern localities. The African light, however, softens all that. The deep green of the oaks and pines runs into waves of warm and ever-altering tints which are a caress and a delight for the eye. A man has it thoroughly brought home to him that he is in a land of the sun, and so, uh, bertrand is setting us up to realize how important light and the sun is to Augustine. And it's. But he's grown up in a place, a beautiful sun, but also a place that isn't, um, a desert place, but it's a place of rich vegetation and animals and so on, and Augustine really that's where he feels at home, in that place. But what would you have to say to add about this background, the geography of him?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so at that time the desert would have actually been even further away than I think bertrand might uh give the impression of, because, um, really, that that forested area really only began to shrink, to shrink after the islamic invasion and then very quickly after the french invasion, so he's at the end of that latest phase. That really caused the, so the basically the french deforested a lot and then that caused the desert to encroach on what had previously been green area, because obviously you could do that in places like France and Britain and there's no desert that would encroach. So then they turned it on to farmland, but applying that into North Africa had a terrible effect of massive desertification. So there'd been these two things, one of which over a long period of time slowly and then over the 19th century quite rapidly ruining a lot of what had been Augustine's country, but then also Bertrand.
Speaker 2:For a lot of Frenchmen in the 19th and throughout a lot of the 20th century, algeria was a part of France. They didn't think of it even as a colony. It was an integrated part of France. So a lot of French people have a very close connection, I think, you see, with paintings and everything, the characters in French paintings from the 19th century about the life of Augustine will look very Berber. They're very accurate to people who really know, people from the area and I know Tunisians do say and pick it up on what Bertrand said there.
Speaker 2:Tunisians who have moved to the UK say the climate is very similar, just like he's saying there, where it gives you this feeling of the northern, these other northern countries, and remarkably similar, and it's very, it's very odd because we don't expect it. Partly because of some of these changes with the encroaching desert, a lot of it is no longer like that climate, but even still, tunisia mostly is and a lot of Algeria is. So, yeah, it's very interesting. So there still is a lot of that is still accurate, which is the fascinating thing. But of course, even in Bertrand's own lifetime, rapid change is happening to it and, yeah, over the centuries previously slow changes, so it's a very different world and, yeah, it would be much more green, much more agrarian, because we think Tunisia and Algeria, these were the bread baskets of the Western Empire. That's where all the food was coming from. Sometimes Tunisia alone managed to outdo Egypt, which was obviously much bigger.
Speaker 1:Wow, I mean, that's an impossible thing to imagine to me. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that was often when Justinian was trying to take the West, he very much concentrated on trying to retake Algeria and Tunisia for that reason of getting these grain supplies back. And when the Islamic invaders took this area, that was the biggest blow. That really caused the final crumbling of Western Roman authority, because Justinian would reaffirm it in the centuries after Augustine. But it was that taking Tunisia and then Algeria that caused all to collapse because that was where all the food was coming from, and food is wealth really. Like all ancient aristocracy is all about who's getting the food. Ancient aristocrats are basically farmers.
Speaker 1:And there was that kingdom of Numidia. That was a massive power, wasn't it? And that I think that really is, is that from about 300 BC to the first century Numidia? But that's an amazing, like a mighty power, and their power is based on, like you say, the, the fertility of that region, and that's part of his heritage too, the Numidian.
Speaker 2:So that was. So Algeria is kind of the modern equivalent of Numidia, and then Tunisia was Carthage, but of course Augustine's got both, because his dad is Punic or Carthaginian. So that's also a part of it. That's often overlooked because people assume he hated his dad.
Speaker 1:but we'll get into that later we need to do a full episode on Patrick, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I mean, but to spoil it a little, he didn't hate his dad, he actually loved his dad and his dad he recalls later Punic turns a phrase, so Punic is the Carthaginian language. He recalls Punic turns a phrase of Christian prayer and everything he remembered from his youth. But of course his dad is the Punic one and so he remembers these very fondly. So obviously he has lots of fond memories of his dad. And after his dad converted to Christianity when he was about 13, when Augustine was about 13, he obviously had these Christian expressions of prayer and genuine devotion and piety that continued to affect Augustine for decades later. So that is also a part of it. So Numidia was this one kingdom and Carthage was another, and then Carthage won over Numidia for a long time and conquered them. Then the Numidians allied with the Romans and then they kind of win. So the Punics then become pushed to the sidelines but then they kind of Romanize a lot quicker. So the Numidians have this idea where they can be autonomous and then therefore culturally distinct. So Monica's got a very Berber name, but Patrick has a very Roman name. Even though he's Punic he's Romanized a lot and he really wanted Augustine.
Speaker 2:So one thing that's happened in Augustine's time is you have this merging of culture and a colonial culture kind of pop up, similar to Latin America, where Latin Americans are mostly descendants of different Native Americans that have adopted Spanish and Latin culture and language and it's much more conservative. So, like in Spanish stuff the C and Z often go like th, whereas in Latin America it's cert and zert, which is more what it would sound like. So Augustine has he speaks so at that time all the Roman languages, breaking up into lots of little parts, the Romance languages. Afri is the most conservative and the closest to original Classical Latin and that's why he's such a brilliant Classical Latin orator. He speaks something very close to Classical Latin at home. Obviously he learned something very close to classical Latin at home. It kind of obviously he learned it to some extent.
Speaker 2:But this is a culture like a romance culture that's emerging, quite conservative because it's kind of colonial. But he's got the different native groups you know from his dad and his mum, but he's speaking a romance language basically in its very early stages. He's the first, one of the first of these kind of Romance speakers, and then Africa could have had this history were it not cut off with this Islamic invasion, of having a Romance language kingdom, like loads of Augustines and things similar to how France you've got French as a romance language and all of this Africa was moving in this direction. But interestingly, you can see a taste of what it's like because their language is very close to Sardinian, weirdly, so a lot of African romance speakers survived into when the French conquered the area and then they were taken to be Sardinians and moved to Corsica, which was a part of France, where some of them are to this day. So that's quite interesting just to think about the history of it.
Speaker 1:And so he's in part of a culture which is so we get this, yeah, a cultural moment where and it helps to explain why his Latin is so beautiful and brilliant, and, you know, people hold him up, don't they? As one of the greatest Latin writers and orators, you know, brilliant. And even when you, you know, I find that even when I disagree with Augustine on a subject, when I read him, he's like entrances me with the wonder of his language and the power of his argument. And he's at this moment, isn't he, then, a cultural moment where, and it's that wonderful idea that he, how African history could have been very different. But then there's a problem of Islam that really wrecks it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would argue, but I like that point about the agricultural bounty of the region and and how much power and that gives. Uh, well, there's new media, there's carthage, and then, uh, and, and you've you as you say, how that develops, and eventually carthage is defeated and so on. But in this history of Numidia they talk about how lettuce, beans and grains were of the most excellent quality, and Pliny the elder said that the agricultural produce from Numidia was categorically better than that of everywhere else. Uh, better than Gallia, sardinia, you know, the Africa, the, the African one, was like 50% better than everywhere else, and more of it. And then he also says it is better than Egypt. And there's it, rivals it. And I've only just discovered that and I find that amazing. They just the set, because you're always classically, oh yeah, egypt's the bread basket of the whole empire.
Speaker 2:It's like well, not necessarily, yeah, and the amount of cities they have. So you have and there's loads of archaeology finally finding where all these ancient cities are and the scale of them. So they're all as big as these european cities, but there's like hundreds of them literally hundreds like naba and thagasti and you know all sorts all throughout.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in tunisia, if you just get a map and it's like swamped, you know, with big cities because you've got enough rural life with lots of food being made that they can provide for all these people and then all the rest of the empire, so they've got a huge population so in that sense it's like it's parallel to like the, the byzantine um, the byzantine empire, part of turkey, which is immensely heavily populated with loads of cities and loads of food and everything. And then people go, oh, that's where all the population is.
Speaker 2:But you're like saying, well, no, this area is like, immensely populous, as well, yeah, absolutely, and we're finding out more and more how much that was the case. And there's one particular city that you know again, so loads of them try and hold out. There's this one that stayed majority Christian. It's called like Castello. And there's one particular city that you know again, so loads of them try and hold out. There's this one that stayed majority Christian. It's called like Castello. And they kept speaking Afri, you know Augustine's kind of Romance language up until the 19th century. Wow.
Speaker 1:OK, look, that's where we're going to have to leave it for this introductory one, just giving a flavour of Augustine, a flavour of his background and just kind of realising the cultural moment that Augustine's born into. And I find that people often have mental images of Augustine's background and they think of him as, oh, he's really wanting to live in Italy all the time, and he doesn't at all. He wants to live in where his heart is really, in Africa, in Fogasti, and we'll see what happens to him and where he actually does settle and where he sets up base and why and how that happens. But that's enough with our first thing. But do try and get a biography of Augustine and give him a read, or read the Confessions. That's amazing, that's his own biography and he takes you down into the complexities of him and you'll see it's odd what he gets upset about and what drives him into deep analysis.