Day 4 – PASTORAL
Augustinian spirituality is not authoritarian and hierarchical even in the Church. It will be a spirituality for a church attempting to replace a hierarchical and authoritarian clerical style with a pastoral one. There is in Augustine no “divine” bishop. Though the bishop is a priest, pastor, father and preacher, he is not the perfect or divine hierarchy, nor the causally mediating link between the heavenly and the earthly orders, the point where the lowest rank of heaven touches the highest pinnacle of earth. Augustine definitely places the bishop within the church as a servant member, a sinner, a lamb of the flock, a son of the divine Father, a hearer of the Word.