By Christopher Yoder
I am a transitional deacon in the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas, and work as curate at Church of the Incarnation. I grew up in a Mennonite church and on a dairy farm in Pennsylvania, and I studied at Wheaton College and Duke Divinity School. I live with my wife Audra (who is, inter alia, an historian of imperial Russia) in Dallas, Texas.
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A footnote on the blog:
The title is a double reference to Augustine of Hippo and Anselm of Canterbury. The phrase "in this life of our pilgrimage" translates a passage from Augustine's Confessions: huic vitae peregrinationis nostrae (11.2.4). For Augustine, this life after Eden and before the heavenly Jerusalem is one of peregrinatio, pilgrimage, journeying abroad, wandering. In this life, "we are away from the Lord (peregrinamur a Domino), for we walk by faith, not by sight" (2 Cor. 5:6–7), longing to be with the Lord and find our rest, our beatitude, in praise.
(The background image is the passage from 2 Corinthians as it appears, in Greek of course, in the Codex Sinaiticus.)
"Pondering the faith" refers to Anselm's (thoroughly Augustinian) description of Christian theological reflection in his Proslogion: fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding. Faith wants to know the one in whom it hopes, seeks the triune Lord it loves—all by the gift of God.
On this understanding, the proper function of written reflections on the content of faith is to encourage the love and praise of God. In sharing these writings, I want to pray with Augustine:
I am stirring up love for you in myself and in those who read this, so that we all may say, 'Great is the Lord and highly worthy to be praised' (Ps. 47:1). (Conf. 11.1.1)
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| Augustine, Beginning of Confessiones, with Retr. (12th c.) |