Not As The Scribes

In response to my review of Kenney’s book on Augustine, my teacher has written the following. I felt it worth posting for its insight into the worth of reading Augustine’s theology:

Dear Niccolo,

This is, overall, an excellent review, especially in its exposition. I think your idea that K. intends a wider impact, especially on reductionist accounts of “religion,” is well taken and I think it ALMOST works but not quite. One doesn’t have enough of a sense for what K. intends with the passage you cite (from p. 75) to know what would be the relation to such an aggressively reductionist claim as Larkin’s. In a way, Augustine is one of the best suited to challenge reductionism since his account is one of progressively breaking down linguistically constructed too-narrow and too small “Gods” and revealing the vested interest in narrowing “God” down to something less than Creator. But that can happen only if you are willing to accept the Confessions as a work of rhetorical art, rather than an “autobiography” to mine for “historical” details then used to buttress the narrowed down version of “God” (and by implication, “human being,” “homo”) the texts attack, along with the vested interests at stake in such reductionisms.

Your Teacher