Over the last two months I’ve had a few opportunities to teach on writing—one of which you can watch, here. In the past, my talks on writing have been instructional, considering the basic rules for good writing and how to develop writings skills. I turned those into a sort of guide, here. But the aim of my more recent talks has been more aspirational. If the initial talks were designed to instruct writers, the latter seek to inspire them. To that end, this is the first of three articles answering the question: why write?

Good Theology Isn’t Time-Bound

As we consider that question, I want to take you back one and a half millennia, to the sack of Rome and Augustine’s City of God. Written in the 5th century, Augustine’s work set out to defend “the glorious City of God against those who prefer their own gods to the founder of that City.” Augustine goes on, “I treat [the City of God] both as it exists in this world of time, a stranger among the ungodly, living by faith, and as it stands in the security of its everlasting rest.”

Only, as his biographer Peter Brown writes, “The City of God cannot be explained in terms of its immediate origins. It is particularly superficial to regard it as a book about the sack of Rome…What this sack effected, was to provide Augustine with a specific challenging audience at Carthage.” In fact, Brown goes on to say that the sack of Rome provided Augustine with a platform to deliberately confront the paganism of his day, while it also prevented the work from being a “work of pure exegesis for fellow Christian scholars.” Brown then notes that despite Augustine’s very particular purpose for writing, the book “is not a ‘tract for the times.’” Put another way, despite its very peculiar historical situation and cultural context, the City of God would become a timeless piece of theology, sine pari.

It isn’t an overstatement, to quote the 20th century Nigerian theologian, Byang Kato to suggest that, “Augustine of Hippo has had more lasting influence on Christian theology than any other person since the apostle Paul.” Similarly, Carl Trueman writes, “The range of [Augustine’s] thought, from psychology to politics to grace, makes him a unique source for Christian thinking.” Commenting on City of God, he calls it “a touchstone tome for the development of critical thinking about the whole of life,” as well as “a superb reflection on the relationship between earthly and heavenly kingdoms.” Trueman then goes on to suggest that Christians who’re eager to develop a critical theory that enables them to better engage with their own contemporary culture should start with Augustine—even though he wrote 1500 years ago.

From what I know about Augustine, in writing City of God he didn’t believe he was penning what would become one of the most significant works in all of Christendom. Yet that’s precisely what he did. As he offered robust biblical answers to the questions of his age and culture, he blessed all of God’s people with a seemingly ever-relevant piece of theology.

Who Knows Where Your Text Will Wander

The pervasive value of Augustine’s writing—across the centuries and cultures, continents too—proves a point made by Peter Leithart in his delightful little book, Solomon Among the Postmoderns. Leithart says, “a written work wanders off to be read by any and everyone.” In fact, as he argues, “Only when the text is read, interpreted, discussed, commented upon does it come into its own.” Leithart goes even further, suggesting that a text “can’t be itself without others.” Though you might take issue with Leithart’s emphasis on reader and reception, the gist of his point is undeniable.

As Leithart puts it, “Written texts are wanderers…Once you’ve written a book [an article or blog post], it thinks it’s all grown up and moves out of the house. You don’t have any control of where it goes, whose hands it falls into, what kinds of readers take it up.” I mean, I’m fairly confident Friedrich Nietzsche didn’t envision his work being used in Christian thinking. So, sure, some readers will misinterpret and even misuse your work. But the fact that you simply don’t know whom your writing will reach is a compelling argument in its favour, especially when you consider how far Augustine’s work has wandered and how many Christians it’s blessed.

Why Write?

Why write? I recently asked a group of seminary students that question and instead of answering it they came up with two arguments against writing. The first was that whatever they write, there’s an innumerable list of authors, articles and books that will do it better. Secondly, they told me that the issues they’d set out to answer are too culturally or contextually specific to be useful for Christians living in other places—or times. But just imagine Augustine had thought that. He’d never have left us City of God; and we’d be much the poorer without it.