On the Road with Saint Augustine and James K. A. Smith

James Smith’s "On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts" is sort of Jack-Kerouac-meets-Saint-Augustine, which makes for an engaging and stimulating read.

I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed James K. A. Smith’s On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts even more than I had expected. I knew it would be good to get a little Augustine in my mind again, yet Smith made it more than just Augustine. This book is sort of Jack-Kerouac-meets-Saint-Augustine, which makes for an engaging and stimulating read. 

I remember reading Kerouac’s On the Road in college and didn’t expect to see that book as a springboard for diving into Augustine, but the connection works well. And the role Kerouac plays is just one way that Smith brings Augustine into conversation with modern philosophy and culture. Others brought alongside Augustine include the likes of Albert Camus and Jacques Derrida. Smith’s approach thus makes this book feel both ancient and modern. 

But it is more than that. It is deeply personal and moving. It connects to our everyday experience in profound ways because the book paints Augustine for us in living color, not as some distant holy saint. And Smith can pull this off because he focuses the book on (though doesn’t limit himself to) Augustine’s Confessions. This is both a benefit and a drawback to the work. On the latter, I think one would gain a fuller vision of Augustine with more attention to others of his works. But on the former, it is well worth plopping down and spending time in Confessions.

Confessions is, of course, a classic of Christian spirituality, and it set the stage for so much of Western theology and philosophy. In his Confessions, Augustine is engaging, and he invites readers to see their own lives through the spiritual lens by which he came to see his own life. I think that just about every Christian should read Augustine’s Confessions at some point—if not multiple points—during their earthly journeys. 

Smith proves an engaging guide to Augustine, but rather than helping us merely understand Augustine better, Smith—ever the philosopher—uses Augustine to help us understand ourselves and our God better, much as Augustine did in Confessions. If a book on an old saint like Augustine sounds dry and esoteric, On the Road with Saint Augustine is anything but that. 

As the title suggests, Smith invites us to see a journey with Augustine as part of our own journey, our own story. Augustine and Smith aid us in thinking about relationships, whether with fathers or mothers or friends or lovers. These two philosophers help us face our tendency to run and never land anywhere (contrast Kerouac). They force us to wrestle with thought, faith, and justice. Yet while Smith clearly finds great value in Augustine, he is also ready to disagree with him at times—as he does, rightly in my view, with Augustine’s negative take on human sexuality. 

As an example of his many insights into Christian living, Smith discusses ambition. Augustine admittedly struggled with ambition throughout his life. And yet ambition is a mixed bag. Ambition can drive one toward excellence and accomplishment and doing good for others. Yet it can also cripple a person because it is a bad master—even when one achieves a goal, ambition leaves one grasping for more, seeking to maintain a reputation, or questioning whether one’s achievements will last. And when one fails to reach a goal, ambition’s lashings let loose. Ambition too easily morphs into an idolatry, and it is a punishing existence. Reorienting our hearts toward God and finding rest in him frees us from the torturous slave driver of ambition and frees us to work hard and enjoy the fruits of our labor.

Part of what makes this book engaging is that we get snippets of Smith’s encounters with Augustine throughout the book. His gives us a model of what it looks like to journey with Augustine through this life. As we walk in Augustine’s shoes, we have the opportunity to find a fuller life that is oriented rightly to the God who gives us rest. 

I highly recommend Smith’s On the Road with Saint Augustine. While Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is fascinating and an important piece of twentieth-century American literature, it doesn’t help you on your journey of life nearly as much as inviting Augustine to take a seat next to you does. In Smith’s book, you will find valuable directions from an ancient guide for navigating this world so that you are actually headed toward a satisfying destination.