The Republic of Grace: Augustinian Thoughts for Dark Times by Charles Mathewes (review)

With The Republic of Grace: Augustinian Thoughts for Dark Times, Charles Mathewes has given us a timely book that, I imagine, will be so for many times to come. His purpose throughout is to "offer a primer in the Augustinian-Christian vernacular, a language of religious, moral, and political deliberation" (2). This language and way of understanding reality, Mathewes argues, can provide us with ways of thinking about our own lives in the world as political and social creatures. The "dark times" to which he refers in the subtitle have to do with life after 9/11 as citizens in a country that dominates as an economic and military powerhouse and greatly under the influence of what he calls "millennial capitalism" (115). Such events and trends have the tendency of dismantling our capacities for hope, a key concept throughout the book, and inhibit our abilities toward the authentic love of God, others, and life itself. Mathewes's primary goal is to cut a path toward genuine hope. As such, his main responsibilities throughout the work include an accurate assessment of our worldy and political situation and a theological description of hope that is empowering and faithful to the Christian tradition.

The book is mostly geared to Christians, though I suspect others can learn from it as well. Mathewes succeeds at showing what Augustine has to offer, and one leaves the book with, as well, an increased understanding of the particular challenges associated with articulating an account of how Christians can think about their commitments as both Christians and citizens, as ones seeking to be in the world and not of the world, as communities that profess the "already, but not yet" nature of the Christian good. Along with this we can find some nuanced and sophisticated theological formulations regarding the concepts of transcendence and immanence.

This is a big book, not in terms of word count, but in the terrain it covers and the work it proposes to do. It is divided into two sections, entitled "Seeing as Christians" and "Looking Like Christians." In the first part, Mathewes gives an account of what he sees as three main trends in our political lives as Americans. The first trend deals with the effects of 9/11 and the American "war on terror." Acts of terror incite fears and expose us to the profound fragility of human life. As such, they misshape our expectations of the future and weaken our faculties for hope. Augustine, Mathewes claims, enables us to understand better this terror and its doers.

The second trend charts the rise and consequences of American power after the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The twenty-first century has shown America to be of vast and unprecedented political and military power. Of the many risks this brings, Mathewes concentrates on its tendency to "tempt its citizens toward an idolatrous faith in the nation's power, and tempts others toward an idolatrous demonization of the same" (77). In this respect, Augustine is drawn upon to chart a course of citizenship that displays a love of country properly rooted in the love of God.

The third trend takes up the ways and means of living in an increasingly consumerist culture. Here, questions are raised about our capacities to love and live meaningful lives. While we may be better off these days in terms of meeting our needs for physical survival, the dominance of millennial capitalism, which refers to the "encroachment of the market on all aspects of human life" (115), has problematically altered our desires and expectations. We pursue states of happiness through the acquisition and consumption of goods. But we hardly succeed because, as Mathewes argues, such pursuits are based on false accounts of human nature and happiness. From the perspective of Augustine, says Mathewes, we find that "all our attempts to orient ourselves toward fundamentally mundane and immanent ends inevitably end up with...