A Deeper, More Dynamic Perspective
A Feature Review of
The Problem of the Christian Master: Augustine in the Afterlife of Slavery
Matthew Elia
Hardcover: Yale University Press, 2024
Buy Now: [ BookShop ] [ Amazon ] [ Kindle ]
Reviewed by Andrew C. Stout
Let’s begin at the end. In the Epilogue to The Problem of the Christian Master, Matthew Elia describes the “present mood” among emerging scholars of theology and religious studies when he observes that “something about the present seems to demand both a commitment to deploying premodern theological traditions rigorously and a refusal to ignore modern vectors of oppression like race, gender, sex, disability, and more” (179). Elia, himself an emerging scholar, attempts to hold this tension, embarking on a deep exploration of the Augustinian tradition through the critical lens of Black Studies. He marshals the insights of Black Marxist thinker, Cedric Robinson, founder of Black liberation theology, James Cone, and Black feminist poet, Audre Lorde, bringing them into conversation with Augustine’s own work and the work of contemporary political philosophers and theologians working downstream from Augustine like Alasdair MacIntyre, Oliver O’Donovan, and Rowan Williams. The result is a trenchant critique of the western theological tradition through a kaleidoscopic probing of different manifestations of the relationship between master and slave.
Elia takes the language of “master” and “slave” in the Christian tradition as a point of encounter between the “traditionalist” Augustinian stream and the “liberative” stream of Black theology. The book surveys contemporary Augustinian political theology, noting that much of the tradition involves translating Augustine’s political thought from its ancient context and applying it to a democratic one. In doing so, Elia identifies a kind of special pleading among scholars when it comes to Augustine’s views on slavery. While other elements of his political vision can, despite the shift in context, be applied to our contemporary political configurations, comparisons of his justifications for slavery in the ancient world with North American slavery are considered anachronistic. Contemporary Augustinians generally disavow the relevance of Augustine’s apparent comfort with the institution of slavery in antiquity.
For Elia, something much deeper is going on. While there are plenty of references to the actual institution of slavery in Augustine’s writings, Elia finds more disconcerting what he calls the “moral vantage of the masters” (25) from which Augustine writes. Given how pervasive slavery was in the ancient world, it is not surprising that we find Augustine making liberal use of master-slave metaphors in his writing. What Elia is concerned with is the fact that “Augustine’s slave metaphors reflect not the perspective of enslaved persons – about which the sources tell us very little – but rather the vantage of the masters themselves” (34). Reading this dynamic through the lens of the Black radical tradition is not anachronistic, but rather, an attempt to transpose the master-slave relationship into racial terms. By bringing the tradition of enslaved persons into conversation with the Augustinian tradition, Elia exposes deformative elements in Augustine’s thought while simultaneously demonstrating how those who have inherited an Augustinian political theology can benefit from listening to voices from the underside of history.
ADVERTISEMENT:
The book engages figures from Black Studies not for ammunition to dismiss Augustine, but rather, to problematize certain aspects of the Augustinian tradition. Elia examines Augustine’s use of the peregrinato or “pilgrim” figure in The City of God, a figure who exhibits the ambivalent political stance that Augustine encourages for Christians traveling through the city of man on route to the city of God. Despite the apparent humility of this stance, Elia believes that Augustine’s treatment of the “fugitive” – evoking the image of a fugitive slave on the run from the plantation – requires real attention. He analyzes “the moral-symbolic contrast between the wandering pilgrim and the fugitive slave, between the road and the woods” (44). In Augustine’s scorn for this outcast figure, Elia discerns a lingering commitment to the domination of the master. Yes, Augustine challenged brutal forms of Roman mastery. He introduced humility, attempting to model the master after Jesus. However, this kinder, gentler mastery is still a form of oppression. Elia examines Augustine’s “slave Christology,” raising the question of how concepts like humility and obedience can be reconfigured outside of the context of domination.
One of the strongest elements of the book is Elia’s defense of liberation theologies against the standard charge that they break the proper tension between the “already” and “not yet” inherent in the Augustinian category of secular time. According to this charge, liberation theology’s insistence on addressing the material realities of inequity and oppression represents an over-realized eschatology that insists on having the full promises of the eschaton now. Elia turns this argument on its head, creatively arguing that it is the master who insists on experiencing the resurrected body now. The master does so through a parasitic dependence on the body of the enslaved, and only a commitment to full abolition of the enslaved person will restore the appropriate tension between the inauguration of God’s kingdom and the lingering effects of the fall. This argument is ingeniously made, and Elia goes on to suggest how it could also bolster non-utopian attempts at police and prison abolition. The final chapter ends on a sacramental note, as he suggests that engaging in theological reflection from the vantage point of concrete, contemporary justice movements, like the Black Lives Matter movement, can and should reshape the symbols that constitute the faith.
One issue nagged at me as I read. It is the question of Augustine’s own ethnicity and its relevance for Elia’s analysis of the moral vantage of the masters. Augustine was born in a Roman province of North Africa. The cross-cultural dynamic of Augustine’s life, ministry, and writing has been discussed by Justo González in The Mestizo Augustine: A Theologian Between Two Cultures (2016). Elia acknowledges González’s book in a footnote, but he dismisses its relevance for his project with little explanation. Augustine’s status as a distinctly African theologian, educated and converted into the culture of an imperial power, seems significant for Elia’s project. This does not, however, receive the exploration that it merits.
Having begun at the end, I want to finish there too. Elia’s Epilogue is the most ambitious portion of the book, and it stands on its own as an exploratory essay on the nature of tradition and its examination from the underside of history. Various traditions are evoked throughout the book, but here, Elia steps back to ask methodological questions about the nature and development of theological traditions. He argues that choosing to ignore the voices marginalized by a tradition is a failure to understand that tradition. How do they develop? What is the nature of their movement? How and why do they change? As he effectively demonstrates in his reading of Augustine, we do not truly understand the Augustinian tradition until we can discern the vantage point of the master by looking at the tradition through the eyes of the enslaved. In his acknowledgements, Elia notes that the “influence of Willie James Jennings is on every page” (207). This is certainly true, and the understanding of traditions that Elia articulates fits closely with Jennings’s critique of western Christianity’s diseased racial reasoning in The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (2011) and with his critique of theological education in After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging (2020). In After Whiteness, Jennings problematizes the notion of comprehensive “traditions” altogether, insisting that the work of theology involves the “fragments” of thought, experience, and cultures. Jennings does not spurn traditional streams of Euro-American theology, but he insists that they not be allowed to dominate or dictate the terms of theological education and reflection. Elia’s project is an extension and a development of this stance. He has made a significant contribution to Augustinian studies, and he has done so in a way that elevates voices that Augustine himself failed to hear.
Andrew C. Stout
Andrew C. Stout is the Access Services Librarian at the University of Missouri - St. Louis. He has also worked as a librarian at Covenant Theological Seminary. His writing has appeared in the journals Religion and the Arts, Pro Ecclesia, Presbyterion, and The Journal of Reformed Theology. Find him on Bluesky: @thomasacstout.bsky.
 Reading for the Common Good From ERB Editor Christopher Smith "This book will inspire, motivate and challenge anyone who cares a whit about the written word, the world of ideas, the shape of our communities and the life of the church." -Karen Swallow Prior Enter your email below to sign up for our weekly newsletter & download your FREE copy of this ebook! |
Understanding Christian Nationalism [A Reading Guide] |
 Most Anticipated Books of the Fall for Christian Readers!
|
 Hilarious One-Star Customer Reviews of Bibles |
