A Postmodern Correspondance
Curtis Chang
July 1, 2000
Curtis Chang's Engaging Unbelief brings together two unlikely bedfellows (or should we say bookfellows?): evangelism and church history. Chang, an area director with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (and—by way of full disclosure—a former colleague and supervisor of RQ editor-in-chief Andy Crouch), combines an engaging and sophisticated account of how to proclaim the gospel to postmoderns with a lively reading of two distinctly pre-modern Christian thinkers. The result is a meaty, readable journey from the fifth century to today, suggesting new directions for both mission and scholarship. We offer this excerpt, adapted from the first chapter, as an inducement to explore Chang's work in full—and as an invitation to open up those dusty copies of Augustine's and Aquinas's works themselves.
North Africa, 413. The famous bishop opened the letter to find yet another request. Once again someone was asking him to write a book. A renowned man of letters, Augustine was used to requests from agents seeking new literature or people desiring his views on all sorts of topics. As a busy bishop concerned with many practical details of leading the North African church, he was also used to dismissing such requests with grouchy replies like, "I wish I could snatch you away from your titillating disquisitions and ram you into the sort of cares I have to cope with." Yet this particular request drew his attention.
The letter was from Marcellinus, his lay disciple and close friend. Marcellinus had sought to convert Volusianus, the Roman proconsul to Africa, to the Christian faith. Marcellinus reported that Volusianus showed some interest but had mounted several strong objections. Among his strongest was the accusation that the rise ...
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