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 96 - Rediscovering Augustine's Wiser Brother Navigius
Augustine of Hippo towers over Christian theology, yet our understanding deepens dramatically when we see him through the lens of family relationships. This exploration of Augustine's older brother Navigius challenges centuries of dismissive portrayals and reveals a spiritually mature man whose wisdom often surpassed his more famous sibling's rhetorical brilliance.
The podcast begins by examining how Church Fathers are frequently misrepresented by those claiming theological authority. Modern interpreters often reduce these diverse thinkers to mouthpieces for contemporary denominational positions – Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Protestant – when the reality was far more complex and nuanced.
When examining Augustine's relationship with Navigius through his writings, particularly the Cassiacum dialogues, we discover a brother who saw through Augustine's dazzling rhetoric to identify logical fallacies and philosophical pitfalls. In one striking example, Navigius challenges Augustine's neo-Platonic assumptions about innate knowledge, advocating instead for evidence-based understanding – a position remarkably aligned with modern scientific approaches.
Historical records paint Navigius as deeply spiritual, raising children who became religious leaders and helping establish the Augustinian monastic tradition alongside his mother Monica. While Augustine's spiritual journey was dramatic and tumultuous, Navigius lived a consistently faithful life that bore abundant fruit. His biblical wisdom manifested in knowing when to speak and when to remain silent, when to challenge and when to support his brilliant but sometimes misguided brother.
This fresh perspective doesn't diminish Augustine's theological importance but makes him more human and relatable. By meeting Augustine's family, particularly his wise older brother, we gain deeper appreciation for the saint himself and the complex human relationships that shaped his thinking. Augustine's family reminds us that wisdom manifests not just in eloquent treatises but in quiet faithfulness and lived spirituality.
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 continuing to look at Augustine, st Augustine with his family, and we're going to look at his brother, navigus. Now why this is important? Well, let me put it in this context that way back I must have been like maybe 20 or 21, and I purchased 28 volumes of early church fathers which have been my sort of companion for 35 years, about 35 years and I just got into reading them. I was even reading these Church Fathers back in my teen years before I owned that big set, and it was interesting to me because when I was reading them all I hadn't got any secondary literature and nobody I knew knew anything not really about them, or certainly I wasn't having discussions with people about them or anything like that, and there was no YouTube, no podcasts. I didn't have any access to any theological library in that sense, um real, or I never. It never occurred to me, even when I was doing my, it didn't really occur to me to read lots of secondary literature about them. I was just kind of reading them from teenage years and onwards, seeing the struggles and how they were trying to understand things and express things, and sometimes I thought, oh yeah, I get that or no, I'm not totally convinced by that, but I like your attitude. Or sometimes I'm like, well, I don't know what's going on there and things like that. That was my experience of it. I don't know what's going on there and things like that, that was my experience of it. So I read them a lot, and sometimes massive amounts of annotations in some of the works and things, and then it was strange to me. So then I began to share what I was learning at times in context and things.
Speaker 1:But then I've noticed particularly well in the past, particularly more recently 20 years, and then more so in the past 10 or even five years I meet people who really confidently say things like ah, the church fathers say this, and they kind of distill church fathers to basically whatever is the theological viewpoint, and they say that with this confidence that really comes from the assurance that no one you're talking to has read them. So everyone sort of goes oh, I guess that must be it, because this guy says that's what they all say and that has always struck me as strange because they don't say the same thing. They're like incredibly diverse in their views on all sorts of things and obviously the core of the gospel and the confession of the living God, father, son, holy Spirit, and who Jesus is and what he's done. The core of that, obviously, is our creedal faith, the constant gospel, but in terms of the real theological detail it's incredibly diverse and they often say things that are quite contradictory to each other, and even at the time they argued kind of with each other, even sometimes politely, sometimes not so politely, in letters, and there's discussions, debates, there's the the, something you know that one approach is better is the the right one, and other people take very different views. That's what I so.
Speaker 1:Um, I say that because I've met people who have told me ah, if you read the church fathers, you'll see they were all roman catholics or they were all greek orthodox and they're very and people, the advocates of this are very, very, very confident that all the early church fathers completely align with their particular denomination, and then Protestants do it too. I've had quite a lot of guys who will say ah, the view of God we take, that's the view that all the early church fathers take, and in fact some of them have told me, uh, if you really read the fathers, you'll discover they're actually all evangelical protestants or something like that. And again I'm like I'm not, I'm not sure that's true. And it particularly happens with augustine, where quite a few, some people even say, oh, he's really a reformed theologian or something. And again, like I can see, yeah, with any church you can see some ways in which the great historic faith is there, but none of those things are plausible to me, because you know, when you read them in their rich fullness, there's a lot more to them than that and they have strange ideas and they develop as well that the things that they teach early in their life and write about. Then you read them much later in life and you discover, in the main they get a lot better, they become, tend to become more close, like closer to the bible, and because they start to kind of, I guess, work through some of the baggage, they're carrying the pagan philosophical baggage. That's not entirely true, though, because with Augustine, you will see he's still wrestling with his pagan philosophical baggage right the way through to the end of his life.
Speaker 1:Now, I say all that because all this kind of ideological baggage that comes to the study of Augustine means that, as we've seen, those around Augustine get kind of ground under in theological machines Because they're like, oh well that you know his sister, forget her. Or his brother's an idiot or his mom yeah well she's, you know she's her. Or his brother's an idiot or his mom, yeah well she's, you know, she's just obsessed with Augustine and we've been having a look at these things. Oh, patrick, he's rubbish and all this that thing and none of it's true to life and uh, with on very badly because he's not quite, he's not like Augustine really in his manner of Christian life and he gets dismissed quite, quite a lot. So I'm going to bring PJ in in a moment.
Speaker 1:But I came across, you know, whc Friend, the great sort of early church historian, and he says about Navidius that he was probably the most representative member of the Curial class in his family at this period, christian, liberal-minded, sceptical of authority and believing that happiness could be found through inquiry and quest. So he sees him as a kind of sceptically-minded, nominal Christian and um, and he's also said to have had delicate health and that was this idea. Oh, he's a fragile soul but not really a strong Christian, kind of really just a sort of biographer notes that Navigis was the only one of the group of friends around Augustine, who persistently refused to see the point of what his brother was saying. So he's sometimes portrayed as a bit sort of stupid like, oh, he just doesn't get what Augustine's talking about. What an idiot.
Speaker 1:And Peter Brown isn't that, I guess, leaving it slightly open that maybe he did understand it but rejected what Augustine was saying. But is there the underlying idea where he just doesn't understand it? He's not thinking on the really deep level of augustine. Now I'm setting all that up, um, because is let me just start with that to pj what's who? Is this a fair view of novigis, and how can? Well, first of all, is that a fair view of novigis?
Speaker 2:well, yeah, it's a common one. And I think again, like with the others, I think the big villain is adhering too much to the confessions but also not even reading the confessions properly, like there's a those two things seems to have affected everything that touches augustine, that within popular and sometimes even some academic, but not very thoroughly academic, but even within some academic stuff, this idea of just lightly touching upon some parts of Augustine, taking things out of context or ironically refusing to see the point Augustine's trying to make people come to these conclusions. So with Novigis, I think what really makes people kind of hate him is that there's a moment when Monica's dying and she calls Novigius and Augustine to her and says basically I'm going to die soon and she's been thinking about this a lot. And so she basically says don't bother with a big funeral, that plot of land I'd bought in Africa to be buried next to Patrick, don't bother with that, just leave me here and get on with your ministries. And then Augustine is so stunned that she said this because she was adamant, she wanted to be buried next to Patrick, just like days before.
Speaker 2:But Navidius actually says it's like no, we're not going to do that, we're going to take you back to Africa. And then she just kind of rolls her eyes and looks at Augustine and because he's been stunned into silence, she thinks he's being spiritual and just contemplating it. And then she's like, oh, can you believe, navid, just that you're saying this? But obviously actually Augustine was thinking the exact same thing and he tells us this. But people take it out of context as if, like he, was he as it. They they're taking Monica's perspective and not reading Augustine's overthinking about his own inner life, which is the whole point of augustine. But they're not even doing that this time. So it's baffling why they do that to me.
Speaker 1:But so augustine is because he's always navel gazing, isn't he sort of thing very psychologically inward looking, so he's like, uh, basically just thinking it through and going, yeah, I agree with, like Navigis. Basically yeah. And yet people go, oh Monica's looking at him. Like what is he like? Yeah, I can imagine that.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So Navigis in that exchange is made to look foolish, whereas basically Augustine takes exactly the same view as Navigis.
Speaker 2:Yeah, whereas basically Augustine takes exactly the same view as an Avengers. Yeah, and sometimes they might say that Monica expected Augustine to be more spiritual because that had been the pattern of life. But as we've thought about his life, like up until very shortly before that point, he was a pagan. So that's not really true at all. But that's the passage that makes people turn on Navigus and so mostly people only ever engage with him there in that passage where he's not even named in the Confessions. But if anyone ever engaged with him on a popular level, it tends to be that Some people then when they get to his dialogues, the Cassiacums, Augustine's yeah Right.
Speaker 2:And so Novigis is there with him. The Cassiacums.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I might be mispronouncing that as well, but those dialogues they have, augustine and his family, as he's a catechumen and as he's thinking things through and getting ready to be baptized, uh, he has these dialogues with his family and that includes novigis. So some people I've noticed who basically start with the dialogues and that's where they first encounter novigis quite like him and they think he's very thought through, very thoughtful, thoughtful but doesn't say much. But he seems to be several steps ahead of Augustine. He seems to know what Augustine's like and tries to give him little warnings about like theological, philosophical and just the thought process, loops and problems and pitfalls he falls into and he's kind of aware of what's going to happen several lines down, whereas augustine is. So he was a professor of rhetoric, so he uses his rhetoric to wow people and they're all like why, that's right, I'll get augustine's like figured it out again and then the vid is like well, I'm not sure, and that sort of thing. But he usually gives subtle clues. But as you see, augustine think through things.
Speaker 2:Later he falls into exactly what Novigis said so is Novigis, an older brother it seems scholarly resources I've read say he is, but in popular devotion and stuff they tend to say Augustine is oh yeah we've been through that.
Speaker 1:People always say Augustine is. Oh yeah, we've been through that. People always want Augustine. He's the firstborn, he's the special one, and yet that is like no, he actually isn't.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So let's say I've heard that Navidius is older than him and I do. It's like it's funny because my experience of Augustine I've loved Augustine throughout my life Because he is so compelling in the way he writes and I find that sometimes I'll be thinking I don't think Augustine's right about something. And then I read him and then I'm like I am caught even now reading him, sort of what you know, more than 1500 years later, the power of his rhetoric and charisma comes through. And then I spend like maybe two or three hours like caught up in reading him or something. And then I'm like, oh man, that is amazing. He's so like what a brilliant vision, what a great way of putting it. And then I might go and have a cup of tea, go for a walk, and then I'm starting to go hang on, hang on. Like that isn't what the Bible says, like he never mentioned Jesus once or, you know, like it's the power of his rhetoric. So what you're saying is like Novigis was like that, but he could see through it more quickly. Like it takes me quite a long time to overcome like Augustine's rhetorical power and to sort of engage with him critically.
Speaker 1:I find it hard when I'm reading him because he's such a good communicator and, um, even when he's saying things that are like I I'm really not buying. Like when he's saying like, oh, the trinity, there isn't any trinity in the old testament, it's like you can't read trinity, like the old testament doesn't give you any reason to make trinitarian distinctions, and I'm like what nonsense. But even then when I'm reading him, I'm sort of like, wow, you know he's a very good writer and everything. But I guess navidius, as an older brother, he's able to go nah, mate, look, you know, maybe gets him in a headlock or something and rubs his head or something, he goes what are you talking about? Like, or well, they, you know.
Speaker 1:But basically he's grown up with him and and isn't so easily, uh, bewitched by the rhetoric of augustine, and more quickly goes hang on, because we know monica does that. She pops his balloon a bit and just says no, no, you can't have that. That doesn't make any sense. And it sounds as if Navidius is thinking really deeply and just sees all right, here we go, I can see exactly where Augustine's heading and he's going to fall over the following thing. So he kind of he's no less clever or thought through, but he certainly isn't. He doesn't speak as much as augustine, yeah and um.
Speaker 2:So there's a big thing, a big difference I've found with biographers of novigius. So there's those who start with confessions and they see him as unspiritual because of that. And then there's people who look at that and they're quite amazed at he yeah, that he can see through augustine. And then you start to think, well, when you're picking apart, like you can't just rely on the words because there's all this rhetoric going on and everything you can't figure out oh, who's the more spiritual? I found a lot of historical ones say novitius is more spiritual and closer to jesus because he's got all these kids who become nuns and preachers. Uh, one of them becomes like an archdeacon and things.
Speaker 1:I heard that uh, like they all kind of lived in part of this sort of commune and thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, but he, he kind of has a role. So we thought at monica's role in starting the Augustinian monastic or canonry tradition. Navigis also has a big part in this because he raises so many of his kids and encourages his cousins and nephews and so on to become monastic and everything. So that wasn't the path he went down, that wasn't his ministry, but he sees the sort of the wealth and the importance of it and so he does kind of establish the Augustinian tradition or with Monica he's key in that. So that's a key part that historically people notice.
Speaker 2:So Robert Wheeler Bush so we had this other biography of him. But there's Robert Wheeler Bush says Navigis, life was wholly dedicated to meditation and prayer and you can see that because of his family and things. So then you do think, yeah, there's these two. So when you sometimes just got two different opinions and they don't reach a conclusion, or perhaps because Augustine's writing he doesn't allow there to be a conclusion reached, but maybe Navigis would feel that he had properly told Augustine off, but then you're kind of thinking, oh, who's the better one? And so people always choose Augustine, just because they start with the confessions and everything. And that's the impression they get from taking bits out of context, but historically, as I say, people were really feeling Novigis was just from the fruits of his labor and his own life. So Augustine ends up. He only like works a miracle right at the end, at the siege in which he dies, isn't it Like?
Speaker 1:in the very year. Tell us about that.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, well, the Vandals, when they'd been sieging down Hippo. Yeah, so then it's, they're planning to take it and they want to burn the city down. And then Augustine, in this time where there's starvation and there's disease breaks out and everything he does, finally start working miracles. He can heal people and he can duplicate food.
Speaker 1:That's why he struggles to be canonized by the universal church, because he's like he only really gets a couple of miracles in right at the end. It's like, well, he should have been doing them for longer than that.
Speaker 2:Yeah whereas with navigis, I mean, it seems that he, he has fruits to show of it from way earlier on and throughout his entire life, and these people continue his children and you know so on. They continue to impress people that knew Augustine and Augustine himself, and all of this for decades to come. So he's got real signs of holiness and real fruits to show that. It will take ages for Augustine, so he does end up catching up with Novigis, but that is something that struck a lot of historical biographers.
Speaker 1:But do we know whether he was academically trained or not?
Speaker 2:He was yeah, augustine mentions that he was, but I think more in philosophy and logic rather than rhetoric. Augustine was exactly the other way, and so he mentions all the stories and Homer and stuff. He could do quite well, I think. But yeah, the logic and the philosophy not so much.
Speaker 1:And it does look as if Navidius, though, is not as invested in the academic process, perhaps as Augustine had been, because we know Monica is very sceptical of, certainly, the pagan academic system, the Athenian sort of academy. So it could be that Navigis is also. He's been through it and is not so impressed by it, maybe Because it is that problem. Again, people will tend to think, oh well, navigis, he isn't so academic as Augustine and therefore he isn't as clever, or therefore he isn't as deep or something.
Speaker 1:And I think we've already, in this podcast, at times explored the problem with that. This podcast at times explored the problem with that. Like I've often said, that the sharpest theological thinkers that I know, I think about, say, the top two or three people I've ever met who are really sharp about theology, understanding the scriptures, the living, none of them are academically trained, or maybe one, maybe one of them a little bit, and similarly, that kind of fruitfulness of the Christian life really being fruitful and deep, again, not academically trained people. And so it could be like Navigis is. You know that Navigis gets put down because he doesn't hasn't produced these academic books. People are like, oh, he's obviously not important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also people seem to get very interested by how, as you said, navel-gazing Augustine is and introverted and he's all about contemplating, but for the first half of his life that gets him into all kinds of trouble and gets him a son born out of wedlock and all of this. So there's not good fruits from it. So people just seem to assume because he's contemplative and because he's all of that, that's good, to contemplate God is the best thing. But then it's like well, what if you're kind of living in God?
Speaker 1:the way Navidius is. Yeah, because everyone knows Augustine going. You know, lord, make me chaste, but not yet. So in other words, he's busy thinking about being chaste, whereas Navidius is like, no, just do it, stop thinking about it, get on with it, and that's a much more biblical attitude to have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, tell us more about him then yeah, so we, yeah. So there's two moments in particular in the um dialogues, the cassie cassie acorn dialogues, that kind of stood out to me. Um, so one of them and this is one that annoys people and you can can tell why because it's like they want Augustine to be right but he kind of isn't. So Augustine is basically saying we can just know things. So he's talking about a priori knowledge, like you can, without evidence, intrinsically so that's like a neo-platonic thing, then, yeah yeah, because plato had that idea.
Speaker 2:When you give someone a rhetorical argument for something and then they go like, ah, then it's like the same reaction to remembering something, and so it's like you always knew it and it's just coming to mind again. So plato's very keen on that sort of knowledge in inverted commas, and, and navidius is not at all. And so, augustine, he's just like well, we all know some things, like we're composed of body and soul, and navidius is like no, we don't know that like intrinsically at least.
Speaker 1:He's like, yeah, we don't know that. Yeah, and he and then navidius could just be saying well, aristotle would say body, soul and spirit.
Speaker 2:Loads of people think that's exactly what he's doing a tripartite sort of thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I personally think the Bible is definitely tripartite, but not for Aristotelian reasons. I think if Aristotle is right on that, it's probably because he's nicking it from the Bible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely, and so he, yeah, so he just does that, and then there's a bit of a debate, and so he ends up kind of hesitantly or guessing that. Alright, so can we just say like you have at least a body and a soul, because they sort of argue at least that, yeah, okay, yeah, you can't have a body without a soul that's died or something, and so he's hesitant because you can't prove it's a different substance than it is a soul that's given it life.
Speaker 2:But he kind of hesitantly, is like all right, for the sake of argument, goes along with it, but then says but you could only say, at minimum we're composed of body and soul, like it could be composed of way more things. And so, as we're thinking, the tripartite thing comes to mind. But maybe there's even more. And because he doesn't even go down the tripartite thing, because he's like who knows what we're composed of a priori. So if you have, oh, is it secundi? Or you know this, yeah, yeah, secondary knowledge, that's like through evidence that you've been able to witness something, and through evidence of proof, even better, come to a proper conclusion, you know. So he says that's better. And so it's like so we don't just know things of ourselves. Yeah, he made, and so people?
Speaker 1:that's one where people always like, oh, he's always missing the point and then it's like no, he's like not buying a neoplatonic kind of system and he's like, no, you must like find out knowledge rather than just already assume you know it. Yeah, yeah, and of course, from a modern perspective, we're like the great revolution of the sort of 16th and 17th, particularly 16th century. Francis bacon is him saying. Let us not just go from intuitions, but let us be experimental. Let us assume we need to find out knowledge, not that we've already got it and we would now go. Well, that's a way better way of proceeding.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. Yeah, it's that where he's not missing the point. But he's noticed that Augustine, through rhetoric, has skipped over a whole load of basic building blocks that he hasn't established, like why we should depend on a priori knowledge rather than seeking out evidence and proofs. So he wants to deal with that before they move on. But then Augustine keeps trying to move everyone and everyone else wants to move on because everyone's at that moment enamored by what augustine's saying. So navid is that I won't hold everything back. But we can see exactly why he's doubting augustine and he's noticed something quite intrinsic I'm.
Speaker 1:I like navid just the more I find out about him. I suspect if I'd been in that group, I'd have been part of the crowd that would be enamored and I'd be like, oh yeah, shut up, mate. I just want to hear more of what augustine has to say. But novigius, he's good, isn't he? Because he's just saying no, hang on, we don't actually know that. Yeah, yeah, very good, I like him more and more.
Speaker 2:Tell us something else about him so there was another thing that popped up between him and augustine, and so usually he does just keep quiet and he just kind of quietly nods or something you know he does, which again is why people think he's stupid, some people call them dull, some some people writing about him. But of course the bible says it's wiser to to not speak often to, you know to, if you can hold your tongue. In it. The Bible asks who can do this, but Navid just can. So he's a very holy person and that shows it very wise biblically. And Augustine, who's just running away with conclusions, would be less wise biblically. So anyway, in one of these few moments he does speak up. Yeah, we see. So augustine is basically trying to find out what it means to be happy or blessed, or you know it's that was that in his book called the blessed or happy life I think so.
Speaker 2:Although he touches on it, he does it, yeah, he often talks about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so then they're kind of discussing like whether or not you can be happy without. So augustine has said like the only what we're all looking for is god, and so you can only be happy once you've reached god. And then. So then they're like, well, anyone who doesn't have what they're looking for would be like a fool. And so then, basically, nun vigis is pointing out well, you are, he's thinking, you are a catechumen who's not yet baptized, who's not yet in the church, all the things. When we saw with Patrick when he was a catechumen and everything, augustine thought quite low of him, and he wasn't you know. So he thought like he's not yet got God.
Speaker 1:So let me just clarify again Augustine's saying like you're happy if you find God, but then he like goes, ah, but you're happy even if you find god, but then he like goes, ah, but you're happy even if you're just looking for god, kind of like that. And then the vigis is like well, hang on, yeah carry on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so he kind of yeah, he does kind of agree, or like we can bring up. Um, I think we had a quotation from the vigis, uh, on the if we can bring or if not. I guess it it's fine, but he does just kind of show there's a problem in Augustine's logic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because he's effectively saying that a person who is not yet a Christian but searching, is as blessed as a person who is already a Christian. And, of course, the vision is like well, hang on, like your logic, you've just fallen into an absolute car crash, because if you're not bapt, know, if you're not baptized and you've not yet been brought into the life of god, it's good that you're searching, but that is not the state of blessedness and happiness yeah, and so novigis, knowing augustine's in this sort of state, so then they do that, and so then augustine himself is not baptized at that point.
Speaker 2:Oh my days, the gall in it, the gall so the vigorous is just like so, ultimately, the agree. And augustine goat does agree with the vigorous and he's like, yeah, so the academics, they are not blessed and they're not happy and they're all fools. And and so everyone agrees with them there. They're like, oh well, said augustine. And then augustine's like, oh, will navigis agree with this? He's just gonna be awkward again. And then novigis says no, this is very. And so he does.
Speaker 2:The augustine does this metaphor with like desserts or something. He said like I've served up this lovely dessert of having a go at the academics. And so they're all saying, oh, we love this. But then, uh, he says I bet novigis won't like it, because he's saying because he's always bitter about things. But he says because he's got this, uh, problem with his spleen, he's probably gonna hate it. And then he says no, no, it's fine for me. I think it's going to be bitter for you.
Speaker 2:And he doesn't like elaborate on that. But of course he's thinking what you're saying, augustine, is like you don't have this knowledge of god and everything, and you're talking about god all the time, but you, you can't, by your own logic. You've just laid out that can't be true. So he's, he points this out, but he does it quite subtly because he doesn't want to undermine augustine and he's obviously happy that augustine is getting into theology and everything. But he has this he has noticed a problem that augustine's come into and it doesn't come apparent for augustine until much later. But um, he's already.
Speaker 1:I like that. So he's saying, yeah, if you really think that, through, happiness is to be found in knowing the living God and you don't, that is a problem for you. You're confidently declaring this, but you yourself need to be examined. I like Navidjus. He comes across to me as really wise, like a really mature Christian who is, and that is. Maturity is manifested in his life, his own children and also the way he handles Augustine. He's like he doesn't put him down, but he does kind of stand up to him and he's not bewitched by him. But he does kind of stand up to him and he's not bewitched by him. But he also is able to just sort of say hang on, think this through, and that kind of thing. He's a great brother, isn't he? For Augustine?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and he does always seem to have been supportive and they do seem to have loved each other and they do banter a bit, and so you can tell in one of the dialogues. He doesn't appear in the dialogue because he's taking augustine's son out to town and they have a nice time, just kind of, which is lovely. So there's loads of lovely things about him and that's good, isn't?
Speaker 1:it because augustine's son dies comparatively young, doesn't he really? Uh, was he's only in his 20s, I think, or something. And it'd be good to have his sort of uncle Novigis, who's such a godly saint, looking out for him and sort of perhaps giving him a slightly more grounded version. I don't know, I should, I don't want to. I mean, augustine's awesome, isn't he?
Speaker 1:We all love him, and but what we've done in this little series of four of the podcast is try to kind of flesh out our vision of Augustine and show his humanity but also his family context, and hopefully that makes him more alive to us and more human to us. And we see, I personally find that the more I understand these great saints I'm calling him a saint there, yeah, that's true these great saints and church leaders the more we do that I find it makes us appreciate them more and we relate to them more and see how we can walk in their steps more and that they're not artificial people but real people. And I hope that after and we've got to wind this up now, but I hope what this has done is made you want to read Augustine. There's the City of God, there's his Confessions, but what other books might there be. He writes one on Christian doctrine, which is okay. It's not one of my favour but he writes uh commentary on the psalms, things like that, and the psalms is better, much more jesus-centered.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's one of his best works.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, he's less good on some of the other things I think and um, but the psalms one is one of the best and the happy life and uh, what else does?
Speaker 2:he do cassie aiken dialogue. So against the academics is good. You think the title is awesome. The title's a winner, yeah, and his letters are good.
Speaker 1:And then he gets into some exchanges with Jerome, doesn't he? And Jerome sort of tells him off a bit and things like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but he can also tell Jerome off, which is interesting, and very few people can do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're both like titans really. So I know I've sometimes been bringing Augustine down to size a bit because I'm trying to enable his family to come into focus, but in truth, augustine is what is a titan and he's able to stand up to Jerome and, yeah, as you say, jerome, he's actually quite an ornery character and, uh, you know, augustine is able to do that. Maybe at some point we'll put our, we'll examine Jerome and have a look at what he was up to, because he's very, very interesting, all the things he does and the views he takes, and he's involved in the post-Nicene use of language and also, anyway, no, let's not touch him. So that's Augustine. I hope you're inspired to read him, to enjoy him, but also enjoy his family.