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Augustine
Of all the figures in Brooks’ biographical box of chocolates Augustine I knew the best. Brooks’ treatment of Augustine as a ladder climbing youth fighting inner turmoil seems postured almost like a Tim Keller sermon for modern New Yorkers. Given the project of Brooks’ book the defects in characterization are forgivable. History is seldom this reducible.
As I mentioned before my habit of working through a dozen books at a time mean that I have also been picking at Henry Chadwick’s short introduction to Augustine. Chadwick highlights Augustine’s journey from Manicheism to Neo-Platonism and Plotinus to Christianity. Brooks telling of the tale certainly makes Augustine’s journey to Christianity more accessible to modern readers for whom the metaphysical wrestlings of ancient philosophy seem foreign indeed. Brooks portrays Augustine as wrestling with the emptiness of sex and success and only finding solace in escaping the grip of his disordered passions.
Augustine found himself feeling increasingly isolated. If you organize your life around your own wants, other people become objects for the satisfaction of your own desires. Everything is coldly instrumental. Just as a prostitute is rendered into an object for the satisfaction of orgasm, so a professional colleague is rendered into an object for the purpose of career networking, a stranger is rendered into an object for the sake of making a sale, a spouse is turned into an object for the purpose of providing you with love.
We use the word “lust” to refer to sexual desire, but a broader, better meaning is selfish desire. A true lover delights to serve his beloved. But lust is all incoming. The person in lust has a void he needs filled by others. Because he is unwilling to actually serve others and build a full reciprocal relationship, he never fills the emotional emptiness inside. Lust begins with a void and ends with a void.
Brooks, David (2015-04-14). The Road to Character (pp. 192-193). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Brooks wants to bring us to Augustine’s conclusions through a tradition that has continued to follow Augustine, Reformed Christianity, although Brooks won’t drop that name. He will however quote Smedes and Keller.
The Ironic Deception of the Willful Pursuit of Self-Improvement Continue reading
