Excerpt From The Interview

“When Augustine ministered, especially when he wrote the City of God, pluralism was resurging. It had never left. But with the sack of Rome, Christianity had some grip on the Greco Roman world, not the level that we would find that Christianity has had in the last fifteen hundred years in western society, but it still had a grip. But when Rome fell, paganism resurged. Paganism was deeply imprinted in the culture of the Greco Roman world so a lot of wealthy folks fled Rome and went down to North Africa. Some of the people that he was preaching to were these pagans. And so the point of connection here is we live in a pluralistic age. 

We could say, pluralism is on steroids. I think that the turn to healing and therapy in our generation makes some Christians look at that only negatively. It’s not an age where people think sin is the problem. They think the problem is that they just need some therapy. And so instead we do an Augustinian thing. We take that term therapy and healing and baptize it. And that’s what Augustine often did. He would take the Greco Roman terms and he would define them in Christian terms.”

About Dr. Mark D. Allen

Dr. Mark D. Allen (PhD, University of Notre Dame) is professor of biblical and theological studies at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. He has served as a pastor and church planter for over twenty years.

Links Mentioned:

The Augustine Way by Dr. Mark D. Allen

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