Awards

• Winner of Winner of the 2020 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise.

Overview

Augustine's dominant image for the human life is peregrinatio, which signifies at once a journey to the homeland (a pilgrimage) and the condition of exile from the homeland. For Augustine, all human beings are, in the earthly life, exiles from their true homeland: heaven. Some, but not all, become pilgrims seeking a way back to the heavenly homeland, a return mediated by the incarnate Christ. Becoming a pilgrim begins with attraction to beauty. The return journey therefore involves formation, both moral and aesthetic, in loving rightly. This image has occasioned a lot of angst in ethical thought in the last century. Augustine's vision of Christian life as a pilgrimage, his critics allege, casts a pall of groaning and longing over this life in favor of happiness in the next. Augustine's eschatological orientation robs the world of beauty and ethics of urgency. In Pilgrimage as Moral and Aesthetic Formation in Augustine's Thought, Sarah Stewart-Kroeker responds to Augustine's critics by elaborating the Christological continuity between the earthly journey and the eschatological home. Through this cohesive account of pilgrimage as a journey toward the right ordering of the desire for beauty and love for God and neighbour, Stewart-Kroeker reveals the integrity of Augustine's vision of moral and aesthetic vision. From the human desire for beauty to the embodied practice of Christian sacraments, Stewart-Kroeker develops an account of the relationship between beauty and morality as the linchpin of an Augustinian moral theology.

Full Product Details

9780198804994

Table of Contents

Reviews

[I]n Pilgrimage as Moral and Aesthetic Formation, Stewart-Kroeker presents an artful and thought-provoking presentation of Augustine's moral theology under the aspect of beauty which does much to bring clarity to the relation of beauty and goodness and to neglected themes in the structure of Augustine's thought. * Luke Zerra, Reading Religion *

Stewart-Kroeker helps to answer the need for a more robust discussion of the eschatological direction and moral implications of Augustine's thought ... Stewart-Kroeker in this work helps advance the methodological effort of reading Augustine in a manner that is integral and holistic; this achievement is evident in her examination of the moral and aesthetic formation of the pilgrim seeking the heavenly patria. * Michael J.S. Bruno, Augustiniana * As an accessible resource for upper division undergrads, seminarians, and scholars, it resists a flat or simplistic understanding of Augustine's theological studies. * Erin Default-Hunter, Fuller Theological Seminary, Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics * Steward-Kroeker's account of Augustine's christologically disciplined attraction to Platonic anagogy is an authoritative study of an essential theme in his thought. * James Lawson, Journal of Theological Studies * [I]n Pilgrimage as Moral and Aesthetic Formation, Stewart-Kroeker presents an artful and thought-provoking presentation of Augustine's moral theology under the aspect of beauty which does much to bring clarity to the relation of beauty and goodness and to neglected themes in the structure of Augustine's thought. * Luke Zerra, Reading Religion *

Author Information

Sarah Stewart-Kroeker is Assistant Professor of Theological Ethics in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Geneva. Prior to this position, she received her PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary and held a research fellowship at the University of British Columbia.

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