Black History Monday - Augustine of Hippo

Good morning Immanuel. Let's receive Black History Month as an opportunity to infuse the gospel culture of our church with the cherished remembrance of Black saints.

“Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the
outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.” (Hebrews 13:7)

Origins of Black History Month

The origins of Black History Month date back to 1915 with the influence of Harvard historian Carter G. Woodson and Rev. Jesse E. Moorland, pastor at Howard Chapel in Nashville from 1893-1896 and leader in the YMCA movement of the early twentieth century. What began as a weeklong celebration of Black history grew into a month-long, nationwide celebration that was recognized officially by President Gerald Ford in 1976 as an “opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.” For Americans, Black History Month is saying that Black history is our history. Therefore, to neglect the accomplishments of Black Americans is to neglect a great source of national strength. But a similar thing can be said for us as Christians.

In Hebrews 13:7, we see that history is not just about looking back but looking forward. Because the saints who came before us have gone ahead of us, leaving behind a history of faith to imitate. That’s one reason, among many, why Black History Month matters for American Christians. Black History Month helps us excavate the treasure trove of faith-for-imitation buried beneath the rubble of slavery and Black oppression in America. For instance, several Februarys ago, Dr. Eric Mason of Epiphany Fellowship in Philadelphia spotlighted the great African American Presbyterian pastor Francis Grimké (1850-1937). I immediately bought The Works of Francis James Grimké, and he’s been helping me ever since. But the fact that it’s still possible today to be a committed American and Presbyterian and not know Francis Grimké shows the depth of the rubble.

Some will criticize this effort of excavation on the basis that we should be focusing on unity in Christ rather than ethnicity. But the Bible never promotes unity at the expense of ethnicity. When Paul says in Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek . . . for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” he’s not deemphasizing ethnicity. He’s highlighting the unifying accomplishments of the cross. The background of ethnicity foregrounds unity in Christ. Or, to put it another way, Christianity is not a bleached blanket; it’s a patchwork quilt. Every ethnicity, woven together in Christ Jesus, is meant to stand out. Therefore, the wider our ethnic vision of Christian history, the greater our estimation of the accomplishments of Jesus. Imagine the absurdity of insisting that the apostle John drop that bit in Revelation 7:9 about ‘every nation, tribe, people, and language’ worshipping the Lamb, on the basis that “there is neither Jew nor Greek . . . in Christ Jesus.”

So here’s what I’m asking of us all this month: let’s receive Black History Month as an opportunity to infuse the gospel culture of our church with the cherished remembrance of Black saints. Let’s read books, share resources, and discover or rediscover the rich heritage of Black history that is ours in Christ Jesus. My small contribution will be to spotlight four black pastors who have shaped me as a pastor. Most were largely left out of the American Christian calculus because of their blackness, or their blackness seems to have been largely ignored. My first spotlight belongs in the second category.

---

Augustine of Hippo (c.354-430)

I was in graduate school, with five years of collegiate theological education under my belt, before I realized that the fourth-century church father Augustine of Hippo was a dark-skinned man. It was during a lecture on church history by Alister McGrath. And I was sitting next to a Black African clergyman when it suddenly dawned on me that the residents of Hippo in North Africa look more like him than me. Why was this a lightbulb moment? Because it instantly revealed my tendency to white-wash Christian history. My Christian history basically existed independent of Black influence, from Jerusalem to Geneva. I’m guessing it’s that way for many of us in the Protestant tradition. We trace our history to the Reformers without realizing that when we read the Reformers, we are in large part ‘reading the thoughts of African influencers.’ In the case of Augustine of Hippo, this is especially the case.

For those unfamiliar with the world of academic theology, it would be hard to overstate the influence of Augustine of Hippo. In fact, the back-and-forth between Protestant and Roman Catholic theologians in the 16th and 17th centuries can sometimes feel like a battle over Augustine’s stamp of approval. That’s how important he was more than a thousand years after his death. But in some ways, Augustine is more relevant to Western Christianity today than ever before. (See, for instance, Tim Keller’s thoughts on Augustine in How to Reach the West Again and Christopher Watkin’s introduction in Biblical Critical Theory.) The Roman world that Augustine successfully evangelized was prone to nationalism, prized the intellect, and worshipped pleasure. Therefore, Augustine basically created the map for a successful gospel ministry in the 21st century.

Probably no one in history was better at understanding culture than Augustine. But the way Augustine has most shaped me is through his faith in the Bible. Augustine was interacting with brilliant people in an intellectually sophisticated age. It would have been tempting for Augustine to lean more on philosophy and rhetoric than the Bible. Instead, Augustine’s lucid arguments are almost always drawn from Scripture. The point I’m driving at is that Augustine wasn’t just the cleverest person in the room. He was also the most committed to aligning with the thoughts of God in Scripture. As a result, his writing and preaching do not, “strike the ear with the uncertain sound of a philosophical discussion, but with the thunder of God’s own oracle pealing from the clouds” (Dods, The City of God by Saint Augustine, 58). Studying Augustine and maintaining a low and simplistic view of Scripture is nearly impossible. People who revere the Bible tend to love Augustine, which is probably why there’s no one that John Calvin quotes more in his Institutes of the Christian Religion than Augustine.

There’s much more to say here about Augustine—the bishop, the genius, the apologist, the theologian, the preacher, the philosopher, the early church father. Augustine is living proof that God does not apportion genius equally. And although we may not be able to follow the great African Church Father in the scope of his genius, we can nevertheless follow him in the source of his genius—faith in the thoughts of God in Scripture. In his own words, Augustine invites us to do just that.

“As for you, my brothers and sisters, you must not underrate yourselves; if you too draw near to God with faith, you too hear what he is thinking” (Rotelle, Exposition of the Psalms 73-98, 18:390).