Not As The Scribes

The preface to John Peter Kenney’s The Mysticism of Saint Augustine: Rereading the Confessions opens with a quote from the English poet Philip Larkin, who epitomizes a prevalent contemporary stance toward religion: “Religion…/that vast moth-eaten musical brocade/Created to pretend we never die” (Kenney, ix). Kenney immediately discloses his desire to reckon with this idea itself. But more specifically, he hopes to reckon with it as it has impacted various attempts to illuminate Augustine’s mysticism. For Augustine, religion was no fantasy, no mere personal experience. On those grounds, any attempt to explain his mystical expressions as anything less than encounters with the transcendent reality of God must be deemed inadequate.
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