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Charity After Augustine: Solidarity, Conflict, and the Practices of Charity in the Latin West
Jonathan D. Teubner
Oxford University Press (2025). 240 pp.
When asked to name what is the great commandment in the Law, Jesus provides an answer that is apparently straightforwardly simple: to love God and to love neighbor. But anyone who has attempted to obey this double commandment understands all too well that the work of love is all too complex. How do we love the unseen God? What does love of neighbor require of us, particularly when our neighbors are complex people themselves who live in various contexts and present varied needs? The answer to these questions requires our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Jonathan Teubner’s Charity After Augustine is an exploration of how Augustine—and the Augustinian tradition after him—have taken up these questions and answered them. In this the second book in an anticipated “After Augustine” trilogy (following his Prayer After Augustine and in advance of a projected third book on fasting and the Augustinian tradition) Teubner explores the shape of pastoral leadership for those who would lead their congregation in the work of neighbor-love. In the first half of the volume he begins with Augustine and examines both Augustine’s preaching and also the social realities that resulted from his exhortation. Then he moves on to investigate the tradition that followed upon the Bishop of Hippo: how did pastors who followed him develop Augustine’s thought and example in different contexts? Benedict of Nursia, Gregory the Great, and Bernard of Clairvaux are presented as test-cases for the strengths and weakness of the Augustinian tradition.
The result of this ambitious line of exploration is a fascinating and revealing study of the practice of pastoral leadership. When we place Augustine in his context we soon realize that he faced perennial challenges all-too-familiar to us today. What does the call to neighbor love demand of us? Teubner’s study focuses specifically on the practice of almsgiving and the responsibility of Christians to give to the poor. But immediately upon that we must also ask: is there any different responsibility to Christians and to non-Christians? What about to schismatics? What kind of dynamics does almsgiving create when rich and poor exist within the same congregation? And how does this practice coincide with the practice of giving and receiving forgiveness? The questions that faced Augustine in his context are transformed when they are asked in different climes: in the brotherhood of a monastery (Benedict), in the declining days of the Western Empire (Gregory), and in the age of papal authority and the Crusades (Bernard). In each of these situations, Teubner probes each pastor, their theology, their social realities, and the outworking of their leadership.
Charity After Augustine is at its strongest when it invites the reader to consider the ways that doctrines have real implications within the life of a local congregation. Take, for instance, Augustine’s idea of the totus Christus. Of this doctrine Teubner writes, “The Realpolitik of sorting through recipients of charity cannot be so easily separated from the soteriological idea. In fact, the totus Christus, for Augustine, only makes sense as a redemptive scheme when it is embedded in the messy life of the church” (p. 32). And again, of the relation between prayer and almsgiving in Augustine’s thought, Teubner writes: “Almsgiving is a way of socializing our redemption, making it open towards others, putting us in the situation where we need others for our prayers to have efficacy” (pp. 102–3). For Teubner these questions are vitally important to pursue because our world today remains a place where doctrines have real discipleship implications.
At times Teubner’s ambition makes his work hard to follow. The scope of the work is ambitious, and Teubner clearly is able to handle the various disciplines and fields adeptly. Yet at times the reader is hard put to keep up with the various lines of argumentation he unites. Even if Teubner does not speak with the voice of the pastor theologian, he models for us the vocation of the pastor theologian: faithfully deploying doctrine in the life of the local congregation for the flourishing of God’s people in the complex times handed to them. For that reason, Charity After Augustine is a fine work worthy of the attention of the pastor theologian.
Joey Sherrard (PhD, University of St. Andrews) is the Associate Pastor of Discipleship at Signal Mountain Presbyterian Church in Signal Mountain, TN. He is a Senior Fellow of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
