The Mestizo Augustine
A Theologian Between Two Cultures
by Justo L. González
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Pub Date Nov 07 2016 | Archive Date Dec 28 2016
InterVarsity Press | IVP Academic
Description
Few thinkers have been as influential as Augustine of Hippo. His writings, such as Confessions and City of God, have left an indelible mark on Western Christianity. He has become so synonymous with Christianity in the West that we easily forget he was a man of two cultures: African and Greco-Roman. The mixture of African Christianity and Greco-Roman rhetoric and philosophy gave his theology and ministry a unique potency in the cultural ferment of the late Roman empire.
Augustine experienced what Latino/a theology calls mestizaje, which means being of a mixed background. Cuban American historian and theologian Justo González looks at the life and legacy of Augustine from the perspective of his own Latino heritage and finds in the bishop of Hippo a remarkable resource for the church today. The mestizo Augustine can serve as a lens by which to see afresh not only the history of Christianity but also our own culturally diverse world.
Advance Praise
"There are many fine introductions to Augustine's life and thought.
But it is hard to think of one more timely for a new generation of
readers than The Mestizo Augustine. With concise elegance and
critical appreciation, Justo González recasts our imagination for
Augustine's restless pilgrimage as the struggle and the wisdom of a
mestizo. In doing so, he offers a compelling theological portrait of
this massively influential figure of late antiquity and, importantly, of
his continued relevance for our own era tempted by misplaced rage for
purity."
—Eric Gregory, Princeton University
"Justo L. González ranks among the most important and influential interpreters of Christian history in our era. The Mestizo Augustine
is yet one more outstanding achievement. This groundbreaking study of
Augustine offers compelling new insights into the life and thought of
the great North African theologian and pastor from the perspective of mestizaje while advancing the overall project of mestizaje theology itself to a significant degree."
—Dale T. Irvin, president and professor of world Christianity, New York Theological Seminary
"In this delightful study of Augustine's life and intellectual
legacy, Justo González, a doyen of church historians in the Americas,
demonstrates the rich fruit of a lifetime of scholarly research. If one
were to ask, how could anything new be said about Augustine?, González
replies that it is the man's fundamental context that has so far been
severely neglected. Augustine was a colonial author, well aware of his
situation, poised in a tensile relation between the Numidian and
Romano-Latin worlds, in an overextended empire that was coming to a
crisis point in his own lifetime. This constitutes him, as González
persuasively argues, as fundamentally a mestizo theologian: a man fixed
in a tension of perspectives, origins, and goals that formed the
energized background of his mind and work. After too many generations
that have pretended Augustine was a white European, it is refreshing to
read this elegant study of one of the giants of the Western Christian
tradition."
—John A. McGuckin, Columbia University, New York
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9780830851508 |
| PRICE | $24.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 192 |
Average rating from 2 members
Featured Reviews
David H, Reviewer
What one element of Augustine's background made him who he was? If Justo Gonzalez, who has just written a biography of the man, were to answer that question, he would reply "There isn't one." In his book, Gonzalez demonstrates that there were several variables that came into play in the development of one of Christianity's more influential thinkers. Augustine lived at the intersection of the empire's dominance and fall, North African and Roman Christianity, emotional religious experience and platonic thinking. He was the product of multiple elements, a man of two cultures. This is demonstrated to be true, but why exactly does this matter? As the author points out, no one is who they are for simplistic reasons. An abundance of variables lead to the resulting character that we become in the end. Therefore, with Augustine as an example, whoever we are studying in church history became who they were because of a variety of factors. This is true not only with persons, but with entire denominations. Good history will make us look long and hard for answers, not short circuit the process. If Augustine is more complicated than we thought, what does that say about the rest of our studies in church history? More to the point, what does it say about our own denominational histories, and our own personal story?
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher for a pre-release review, and was not required to write positive feedback.
