It’s hard to see this glass as half full. Back Friday.

One of my favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity (book 4 chapter 9) is his metaphor comparing the believer to a house (he attributes it to George Macdonald).

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Yesterday was the first day of classes, and I only had one. (Senior year.)

Augustine. Looks good. (New Year’s Resolution: no verbs. No articles too.)

The professor wants us to read the Confessions. I did that. Sort of. Five or six years ago I read books 1-9, but I never finished 10f. So this year I’ll work up some momentum and plow through the hard parts.

Or not. (“Not” build up momentum, not “not” plow through.) The prof. doesn’t want us to read it the usual way. Most of what we do here is “informational” reading. He wants us to read the Confessions using “formational” reading. There’s no downside to this. If nothing else, this gives us more time for all the in-formational reading we have in other classes. But (it is to be hoped) our reading will be “transformational.” So we aren’t supposed to just work up to seminary-reading-speed and zip through it in half a day the way we handle lightweight fare like Calvin’s Institutes or Barth’s Dogmatics.

This morning I read Book One Chapter One. The best thing about those old books is how the authors would put their most quotable quotes in the first paragraph. Everyone who’s ever heard of Augustine knows the quote thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee but who remembers it’s the fourth sentence of the book?

A cynic would say people remember the early quotes because nobody reads any further into the book. So the only quotes they remember are the ones in the front. But the cynics are wrong, simply wrong.) Look at Book 8, chapter 7 (para. 17) for, perhaps, the most famous Augustine quote of all.