A Sprout

 If you had told the 15-year-old Victor Austin that someday he would voluntarily order—and then enjoy eating—Brussel sprouts, he would have pronounced you crazy and made a blood vow that he would never, never, choose such a horrible vegetable. In college, the same fellow (having accepted that some unpleasant things can nonetheless be good for him) would allow a single Brussel sprout to be placed on his cafeteria plate, if that were the vegetable du jour. But one only: if there were two, they were too much and he couldn’t force himself to touch even one.

What changed? It wasn’t that he grew in virtue vis-a-vis the little green things. It was, rather, a cultural change in how vegetables are prepared. Rather than being boiled, they are now often broiled. Viva la one-letter-difference! Cut in half, brushed with oil, put close to heat: thus are vegetables mystically transfigured. My farming ancestors had slimy things on many dinner plates—think canned asparagus, canning being the way to preserve food so that you could eat through the year, a process that requires, for safety, that the product be boiled before eating. Now we have other means of preservation, along with better methods of transportation that bypass any need for preservation, and voila! Grilled vegetables are everywhere: tasty and crunchy; desirable.

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 Brussel sprouts are on my mind because, at my favorite hippie restaurant, they have returned to the menu, and because I realize that my desiring them says nothing about my personal virtue and everything about the world in which I live. For each of us, the world is changing all the time, and it is good to notice the positive changes and be thankful. In mid-December, why not celebrate a grilled vegetable’s appearance?

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 Our environment never changes so drastically as it does at the moment of our birth. (Well, the change at death may be even more drastic! But we haven’t gone through that yet.) Birth is our rude, abrupt transition from a watery, totally nurturing space into a space filled with air and people and lots of other things that aren’t particularly interested in our well-being.

In our first world, the womb, we are given exactly what we need; everything is aimed at our growth and security. In our second world, the world of human society on planet earth, we have to learn that there are other people, that there isn’t only a “me” but there is also an “us.” Our second world does have a lot of love in it but has also a lot of hate, the violence that rejects the “us” that we were meant to be. 

 Marvel with me that God’s Son, of his own will and love, emerged from his mother’s womb into this world where things are so mixed up—he emerged and did so as a pure Lamp whose radiant love shines on in the darkness even to this day.

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    Out & About: My final talk on Augustine’s Confessions will be on Books VIII and IX, at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas, this Sun., Dec. 21, at 10:20 a.m. in the Great Hall. Then on Jan. 4 I am to preach at the cathedral at 9 and 11:15 a.m.

    Coming Good Books & Good Talk seminars: At St. Matthew’s in Dallas on Sunday, Jan. 18, at 5 p.m., we’ll discuss The Skin of our Teeth, a play by Thornton Wilder. It features a suburban New Jersey family of three who turn out to be, sort of, Adam and Eve and Cain. An ice age is coming and they have a pet mastodon. To my mind, this play deserves as much fame as his Our Town.

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    Note: This blog will next appear in three weeks. I wish all my readers the warmth of the Light of God shining in his Son (and perhaps also a tasty side dish of Brussel sprouts).

 

Posted by The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin with

Theological Anthropology

This is a modern term for what, in my youth, was called “the doctrine of man.” It refers to Christian thought, insight, and theoretical consideration of what it means to be human. For instance, if you have wondered how to think of a frozen embryo, you were wondering about theological anthropology. And that’s just one particular case. Other contemporary questions surround such varied concerns as AI, pornography, automatization of jobs, the mesmerizing effects of screens, drone warfare, harvesting organs from prisoners—the list goes on almost endlessly, with new particular cases arising at every turn. With all these particular questions there is one big, basic question: What does Christian faith reveal about our humanity?

To help people think through these multitudinous questions, I am persuaded we need to focus on that big question. Many particular questions arise from new things that we now have the technology to do (freeze embryos, build smart machines). But to focus on these things is to bypass an important, earlier stage of thought. Instead of focusing on new tech, we should start with old flesh. For the theological understanding of the human being begins with old and basic things: the coupling of man and woman, having children, having friends, neighborhoods and society, work and play, death and burial. With the technological transformation(s) of society we have lots of new questions about those old things, new possibilities, perhaps new temptations; yet the old questions remain.

Here’s an instance. You could wonder, Why not create artificial wombs within which human beings could gestate until they are ready to be born? The important question is not, Would an artificial womb be a good thing? Rather, the first question is, What’s the good of being born of a woman? What does it say about being human that each of us has or had a mother? 

Similarly, I think, the important first theological endeavor in all these areas is to identify the good of the older practice that has come down to us. For instance, What’s the good of being born? What’s the good of work? What’s the good of dying? (And so forth.)

Some of you have been thinking of these questions for awhile already; more of us need to do so, and we need, I think, to do so with our fellow Christians, just as friends, and perhaps through programs and study together. This perhaps would be a fitting new year’s resolution.

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 Out & About: Sunday, Dec. 14, in the morning at Church of the Epiphany in Richardson, Tex.: At 9 a.m. I will speak in the rector’s forum on what’s the good of being born and then preach at the 10 a.m. eucharist. That afternoon at 4 p.m. I am to preach at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas, their eucharist being moved to the afternoon on account of the marathon.

My final talk on Augustine’s Confessions will be on Books VIII and IX, at St. Matthew’s, Sun., Dec. 21, 10:20 a.m. in the great hall.

    Good Books & Good Talk seminars in 2026: At St. Matthew’s in Dallas on Sundays at 5 p.m.: 

    Jan. 18, The Skin of our Teeth by Thornton Wilder

    Feb. 1, The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark

    March 1, The Little Princesses by Marian Crawford (nonfiction memoir)

(I’ll include notes about these books in due course.)

Posted by The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin with

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The Rev. Canon Victor Lee Austin. Ph.D., is the Theologian-in-Residence for the diocese and is the author of several books including, "Friendship: The Heart of Being Human" and "A Post-Covid Catechesis.: 

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