About this episode

Rev. Chris Durham discusses Augustine's views on the Christian pilgrimage and contrasts them with Neoplatonism.

Rev. Chris Durham, chaplain at Wittenberg Chapel serving LCMS students at the University of North Dakota, joins the show to discuss Augustine on the theme of pilgrimage — the Christian life as movement from a beginning through this present age toward final rest in God. The conversation starts in Scripture before turning to Augustine: Hebrews 4 and 11 on the promised Sabbath rest and the patriarchs who died as strangers and exiles seeking a better country, and 1 Peter's language of Christians as "elect exiles" on the way. These texts set a pattern — a real beginning, a center in Christ, and an end in the eternal city — against which Durham contrasts Neoplatonism, Augustine's own intellectual background before his conversion. For Plotinus and the Neoplatonists, the soul's return to "the One" is not a real destination but a perpetual, unending cycle with no true rest — a view Durham compares to modern nihilism and multiverse thinking, where there's motion but no goal. Durham then traces Augustine's own writings across time: the early Soliloquies, where the newly baptized Augustine already breaks from Neoplatonism and Manichaeism by affirming creation from nothing as good; and the…

People in this episode

Host: Jason Braaten

Guest: Rev. Chris Durham

Topics covered

• Christian pilgrimage
• Augustine
• Neoplatonism
• Scripture
• spiritual journey
• rest in God

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Wittenberg Chapel, LCMS

Books & works: Hebrews, 1 Peter, Soliloquies, Confessions

Places: University of North Dakota, Milan

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