sts. augustine and pelagius: 28 august

i very much liked that the northumbrian community in their excellent celtic daily prayer take the 28th of august for the commemoration of pelagius rather than austin. as one who has been encouraged by karl barth's complaint that all english (he may have said british, which more accurately describes my ancestry) theologians are pelagians, i joined in their commemoration.

to the daily office's reading of the book of job, therefore, i added anthony burgess's the clockwork testament. it seems to me that a careful reading of job requires one either to agree with pelagius or curse god and die.

augustin was, i'm, afraid, simply too clever for our own good. and how wonderfully convenient to be able to say, as we accept the "benefits" of low prices for consumer goods that accrue to the empire, that "there will always be wars and rumours of wars [or whatever sin it is that we don't want to avoid--lust and gluttony being among the more popular]." pelagius reminds us that jesus also said, "go, and sin no more." what sort of god would ask us to do the impossible? an augustinian god, perhaps, a god who was severely misunderstood by martin luther's reading of paul, but who is very useful if we want to think we can be the slaves of two masters.

enderby, the protagonist of the clockwork testament and several other of burgess's mostly autobiographical novels, is certainly not a saint by most of our standards. but if we cannot accuse him of saintliness, neither can we accuse him of sloppy thinking. as a caricature of an englishman, he has horrid taste in food, although he never descends so low as hamburgers and coca-cola but an educated taste in words: why waste time on hip-hop in the wasteland that is modern mall "culture." and he takes seriously the problems of behaviour that augustinians, either roman catholic or lutheran, sweep under the rug of grace.

rather than quote lengthily from burgess, which is a temptation, i will instead point to a delightful short piece from a review of geez magazine. it reminds me of the complaint lodged against the disciples on pentecost, that they must have been drinking.