I am a Lutheran pastor in my middle years, serving a busy parish and raising a small child. Finding time for study is a challenge these days, which is why I'm making a game out of it.
On paper, at least, I'm a reasonably bright guy. I have graduated with honors from several "good" schools, traveled the world and lived abroad, can speak, read or bluff in a number of languages both living and dead. I've published articles in several scholarly journals, taught (briefly) at a second-rate private college and more extensively in lay-education programs run by my church. So far as I have academic specialties, they are in the study of liturgical history and Renaissance literature -- which dovetailed in the subject of my second master's thesis, John Donne.
You'll notice that I don't list Patristics among my specialties. While I'm comfortable with the basics, especially the ante-Nicene Fathers, my knowledge doesn't run deep. Trying to sort out John Chrysostom's various exiles and recalls gives me a headache, and -- this is deeply embarrassing -- I often forget which one is Gregory of Nazianzus and which one is Gregory of Nyssa.
So it will do me some good, as a student of theology and perhaps even as a pastor, to go long with at least one of the Church Fathers, and Augustine seems like a good choice. Although the Greeks are usually presented as the deep thinkers, Augustine is the one Latin most likely to match them. And because I am a Lutheran, Augustine's thinking plays a special role in my own theological heritage. Martin Luther was a friar in the Augustinian Order, which Augustine did not actually found but which was deeply shaped by meditation upon his theology.
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