Two Cities, Three Rubes

Susie Holmes joins to talk about Maximus the Confessor and decides that it's high time that somebody sit down and have The Talk with the three rubes. Thunder and lightning intervene at one point, so you'll want to stay tuned all the way through for this discussion of misconstruals of the feminine among the Desert Fathers. 

Ethan & Andrew rube it on their own this edition--but do so happily in the company of Wes Krestel, who's undergone deconstruction on all sorts of basic religious assumptions. The Rubes read Gregory and rethink what we're talking about when we talk about hell.

Maximus the Confessor lost his right hand to opponents trying desperately to stop him from writing books. This fifth-century attempt at cancel culture patently failed, and Tyler Gruthusen joins the Rubes to tell you why.  

We've abbreviated Augustine to Gus often and rudely enough. But how do you nickname his contemporary Evagrius? Vag? Doesn't sound right for someone whose psychological insight is so in keeping with (and resourceful for) twenty-first-century hang-ups and hoped-fors. Thanks for being willing to rube with us.

Do you wonder how to align your blunt and vibrant lived experience with what you encounter in Scripture? We do, too.  Augustine's provocations (well, they're provocative to us, anyway) in Book 14 of The City of God get us going, along with Ethan's dog Sparky and Andrew's old guitar.  

In Book 13's latter chapters, Augustine talks about desire and freedom, motion and breath, the spiritual and the physical. And because we're rubes, we sorta forget about all that and talk about memory instead.  

Have you seen that 4th century painting of Father Augustine kissing a baby?  Yeah, we didn't think so--especially after this conversation on The City of God. We discuss infancy, death, and sex. But Ethan's dog Sparky does all the heavy breathing.  

If the universe ran on a 24-hr clock, humans didn't show up until a couple of minutes before midnight. Why did God wait so long to make people? The second half of Augustine's Book 12 is on the table for discussion today for the Three Rubes, Andrew, Craig, and Ethan. 

Andrew Holmes, Ethan Holmes, and Craig Mattson discuss Book 12, Chapters 13 & 14 of The City of God, zeroing in on the question of how to relate to time. We discuss how the ideal of efficiency too often shapes Augustine's thought, and ours, when it comes to making sense of history.