featuring
DR. MICHAEL CAMERON (UNIVERSITY OF PORTLAND)
Monday, October 9, 2023
Hillsdale College | Hillsdale, MI
SUMMARY
For Augustine of Hippo (354-430), Christian teachers who surrender self in loving humility for the sake of their hearers capture a core dimension of the faith that they teach. The same humility that Christ models, that Scripture communicates, and that seekers germinate as they come to be taught, teachers also share in.
In this public lecture, renowned Augustine scholar Dr. Michael Cameron explores the pedagogical dynamics of humility in Augustine’s great treatise, De catechizandis rudibus (On the Instruction of Beginners), showing it to be the treatise’s hidden crux, in two senses: both as a central theme of Christian teaching, and, paradoxically and counterintuitively, as the mainspring of the teaching act.
This lecture was co-hosted with the Religion and Philosophy Department at Hillsdale College on October 9, 2023.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Michael Cameron (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is Professor Emeritus of Historical Theology at the University of Portland. A leading scholar of St. Augustine, especially on Augustine’s interpretation of Scripture, Dr. Cameron is the author of Christ Meets Me Everywhere: Augustine’s Early Figurative Exegesis (Oxford, 2012), The Essential Expositions of the Psalms by Saint Augustine (New City Press, 2015), Unfolding Sacred Scripture: How Catholics Read the Bible (Liturgy Training Publications, 2015), and numerous essays and reference articles. Michael was editor for the Latin Patristic and Early Medieval period for vols. 1-16 of The Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (De Gruyter, 2009- ), and serves on the editorial boards of Augustinian Studies and the Augustinus-Lexikon.