Monday June 22, 2009 at 8:45
“[Augustine’s] anti-elitism is most visible in his theology of grace, which is, in R. A. Markus’s felicitous phrase, a “defense of Christian mediocrity” against monastic virtuosi elites of various sorts, most notably the Pelagians. On the one hand, no real perfection is available in this life, so the highest aims of the most rigorous Pelagians are impossible, and reflect a delusionary and sinful self-understanding. On the other hand, he thinks asceticism is not something pursued exclusively in the monastery; ordinary *rudes* — the unlettered “great unwashed” of his congregations — need be no further from the life of struggle than the most rigorous monks, and when presented with the opportunity Augustine expected them to treat their suffering in properly ascetic ways. Asceticism was for him not something some select group undertook for the rest of us; it formed the shape of the Christian life in general…. This anti-elitist “popularizing” of asceticism was far from Luther’s “priesthood of all believers,” of course; but it does stand in some affiliation with it, however distant.”
— Charles Mathewes, in this — the wisest, most engaging book I’ve read in quite a while
