On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts

by James K. A. Smith

Overview

A popular speaker and award-winning author invites readers to meet the ancient African thinker who can help us find ourselves and a faith that speaks to our deepest hungers and hopes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781587433894
Publisher:	Baker Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/01/2019
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	483,406
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

James K. A. Smith (PhD, Villanova University) is a popular speaker who has written many books, including the Christianity Today Book Award winner You Are What You Love. He is professor of philosophy at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he holds the Gary and Henrietta Byker Chair in Applied Reformed Theology and Worldview. He is also editor in chief of Image, a quarterly journal at the intersection of art, faith, and mystery. Smith has written for Christianity Today, the Christian Century, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the Washington Post.

Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction
Orientation
Heart on the Run
How to Hit the Road
Augustine Our Contemporary
How to Find Yourself
A Refugee Spirituality
How to Live Between
Detours on the Way to Myself
Freedom
How to Escape
Ambition
How to Aspire
Sex
How to Connect
Mothers
How to Be Dependent
Friendship
How to Belong
Enlightenment
How to Believe
Story
How to Be a Character
Justice
How to Protest
Fathers
How to Be Broken
Death
How to Hope
Homecoming
Index

Editorial Reviews

★ 08/05/2019

In this engrossing reflection on the human spiritual journey, philosophy professor Smith (You Are What You Love) uses the fourth-century Bishop of Hippo, Saint Augustine, as a guide for considering complex, timeless issues. Exploring Augustine’s Confessions, which describe his decades-long resistance to God and gradual conversion to Christianity, Smith asserts that Augustine’s insights into freedom, ambition, sex, friendship, parenting, justice, and death have much to say to seekers today. He analyzes Augustine’s influence on philosophers including Arendt, Camus, Derrida, Descartes, and Heidegger, demonstrating that Augustine’s philosophical arguments about issues such as authenticity and alienation continue to resonate with modern thinkers. Smith emphasizes Augustine’s description of Christianity as “a journey of emigration,” in which Christians are migrants searching for home, aware of their dependence, vulnerability, and need of a faith community to help them “nourish new habits” and live faithful lives. Seeking Augustine’s wisdom on questions—such as “what do I want when I want to be noticed?” or “to belong?” or “to be rational?”—Smith illuminates Augustine’s certainty that people find freedom and truth when they find themselves in God’s story. By following Augustine’s model and sharing his own faith journey, Smith makes Augustine’s guidance accessible to a new generation of seekers. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly