Five Questions for Charles G. Kim, Jr.
Greystone Theological Institute is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Charles G. Kim, Jr. as Associate Fellow in Christian Tradition and Senior Review Editor for Greystone’s Texts and Studies series. Dr. Kim is also Assistant Professor of Theology and Classical Languages at Saint Louis University in a joint position in the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Philosophy and Letters. Dr. Kim’s academic research focuses on St. Augustine of Hippo and his work as pastor in North Africa. The release of his first monograph, The Way of Humility: St. Augustine’s Theology of Preaching (Catholic University Press), is expected this year. It explores how Augustine’s encounter with the Word made flesh transformed his understanding of communication in action and rhetoric. Dr. Kim also has a deep passion for the teaching and study of classical languages, his primary academic vocation, and looks forward to sharing his passion for the Great Tradition of the Church and the traditional languages of theological inquiry with the global Greystone network of friends and students. To introduce Dr. Kim and his work to Greystone, we asked him to answer the following five questions.
How might a retrieval of Augustine’s theology of preaching serve the Church today?
For the church of the patristic age, the sermon was an event. Augustine often contrasts it with the spectacula of the theaters. For him, the sermon provided a moment of encounter in a way not possible even in the theater. We meet the humble Christ in the proclamation of the Word. Too often sermons in a contemporary context are dry affairs more akin to a seminary lecture hall than the liturgy of the Church. We have lost the ability, as Augustine would say, to offer Christ in the sermon, rather than a history lesson. This becomes especially apparent when contemporary preachers try to figure out what to do with the historical narratives of the Old Testament. Learning to preach from the fathers is a lesson in learning how to pull back the veil, as Paul would say, and see the meaning of the text, which is Christ! As Ambrose taught Augustine, “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life!”
My research to this point has been about the nature of humility in the preaching of Augustine. One of his students, Possidius, described how Augustine lived out what he preached and the preaching was more profitable because of Augustine’s example. I try to recover some of that in The Way of Humility (Catholic University Press, forthcoming, 2023). The words of Augustine become an example of humility in the way he preaches about Christ the Word made flesh and preached by humble fishermen, rather than orators.
My next project will continue to consider Augustine’s pastoral ministry, but this time through the lens of the people he mentored. Few people know that Augustine’s monastery at Hippo was a training ground for many pastors across North Africa. Adjacent to the monastery at Hippo was a convent led by none other than Augustine’s own sister. Through his letters to other women, we find that Augustine mentored men and women. There is much to be gleaned from his ministry, including where he failed, as in the case of a young man who rose through the ranks too quickly and stole from his flock. This project is merely in the proposal stages but will likely be my next book length project.
How is a retrieval of Augustine’s sermons as doctrinal works important to the advancement of Reformed dogmatics?
As I have recently been rereading John Calvin’s biblical commentaries, I am reminded how often he goes to Cyril of Alexandria and John Chrysostom for aid, rather than Augustine. So, I think in order to retrieve the doctrinal elements of the patristic sermons, we have to know why some Reformed thinkers, like Calvin, recognizing the complexity of the patristic period, preferred some to others. This move might also reflect a lack of resources, where today such resources are abundant.
That said, I think a key theological insight from Augustine’s preaching, overlooked by the Reformers, is Augustine’s doctrine of the totus Christus. This doctrine emerges primarily in the Enarrationes in Psalmos. A robust ecclesiology is sorely lacking in the fractured ecclesial American landscape. If Barfield was right that the Reformation was a triumph of Augustine’s doctrine of grace over the doctrine of the Church, it may be time to reverse that trend and see what Reformed thinkers can recover in Augustine’s doctrine of the totus Christus, developed in and through his preaching.
In what ways has Augustine shaped your passion for the traditional languages of theological inquiry?
Part of my own passion for classical languages comes from Augustine’s description of how he learned both Latin and Greek. He describes how he learned Latin by playing games and singing songs and from the warmth of those he loved. Greek, he had forced into him by the blows of an angry taskmaster. Many of us who had the privilege of learning Latin or Greek young felt more like Augustine as he learned Greek, rather than Latin. So, my passion has shaped the way I teach those languages first. We ought to keep in mind what Lucretius said, “medicine goes down easier with honey on the rim of the cup.” How can we add some honey to how we teach?
But this is only the foundation of learning the languages. The languages must also be taught slowly and patiently so that people can read Latin and Greek as natural speakers, not as decoders trying to find a way to get the text into our native tongues. Otherwise, the task of reading them becomes so laborious, no one wants to come back. All that to say, there is no “fast” way to learn a language, but it can be done better or worse. Wherever I have the opportunity to teach, I do my best to consider what the experience is like for the learner and what the best pedagogical practices are. In this case, the best pedagogues are actually the older ones. The medieval doctors, like Erasmus, taught through dialogues and stories, viva voce (“in a living voice”).
Finally, once you are able to read naturally, you can have a better sense of what the authors are saying. If you have read deeply and widely in the original languages, you get a sense for how the language is used and why they chose certain words rather than others. The brilliance of Augustine’s poetry—and that’s what his preaching was, a form of spoken word poetry—becomes all the more evident. We can actually enjoy our tradition in a new way.
What is a pressing theological issue for translating, teaching, and working in traditional languages in the next generation?
Our facility with language in general has suffered greatly in the past one hundred years, especially in the US. This general trend even influences how we learn languages at seminary. When we teach Greek and Hebrew at our seminaries, students don’t really learn how to read the languages as languages. They learn how to decode. A movement is afoot to change this, but it can’t be overstated how disastrous the German informed philological method has been for the Church. Studies suggest that the majority of seminary graduates never read the languages once they leave seminary. By and large, people who take the biblical languages are relegated to doing “word studies.” While this has its place, it is in no way becoming familiar with the fluidity and comprehension which can come from reading large swaths of text. A quick example might be the use of the subjunctive mood. Most students learn this as the mood of modality and possibility, which is only one of the many possible uses. You can only get a feel for how the subjunctive changes by reading lots of texts to develop an ear for different uses, many of which do not describe “potential” events, but actual events.
What is it about the Great Tradition and traditional languages that makes you passionate to share and teach on these things?
I like to tell stories, so let me share a story. When I was in seminary, I was given the opportunity to spend the summer in Israel on a trip with Rabbinical students from New York City and seminarians from New Jersey. I learned on that trip, and a subsequent course on Rabbinical biblical interpretation, the beauty of having a tradition to help read the Scriptures and make sense of one’s faith. I too often heard growing up, “the Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.” I needed help to read the Bible, not only from my pastor, but from the great cloud of witnesses passed down through the ages. With my Jewish counterparts, they could consult the medieval Rabbis, the sages of the Talmud, any number of supplemental texts to help guide and make space for contested readings and feel the conversation about the revelation of Scripture moving through time. As I began to see this, I had the thought, “maybe I’m supposed to be Jewish. Jesus was Jewish after all, and so was Paul.” Of course, this was a non-starter because I was not about to give up my conviction that Jesus was the Messiah. Then I began to pick up the Ante-Nicene, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series. I needed Greek and Latin to be able to read them well, and I became all the more passionate about how I could learn to read them with greater facility and read many of the texts which had yet to be translated, as is the case for many of what I translated for my forthcoming volume in the Popular Patristics Series, Reading the Psalms with the Fathers. I realized that we do have a tradition ourselves; we just are less conversant with it. My work has been about my own journey, but part of the gift of that journey is being able to share it with others. One of many goals of my research and teaching has been to help the next generation learn about the rich patrimony which has been preserved for us. We have sages of our own and they are not only for the Roman or Greek church.