This essay is adapted from The Augustinian Pastor: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Ministry (Baker Academic, 2026).
One Sunday morning in Hippo Regius, many years into his service as bishop, Augustine’s regular preaching duties coincided with the anniversary of the day he was ordained to the priesthood. Perhaps feeling a bit nostalgic, Augustine reflected in the sermon on the sense of the heavy responsibility that he had assumed when he became a pastor. In the homily that morning, Augustine singles out a specific and perhaps surprising aspect of the calling that he found especially challenging: the honor that accompanied the office. “From the moment this burden… was placed on my shoulders, anxiety about the honor shown me has always been haunting me.” In his preaching to the flock that morning, Augustine identifies one of the central temptations that can accompany the pastoral vocation: the possibility that his congregation might admire him, that they would esteem him. “What, though, is to be dreaded in this office, if not that I may take more pleasure… in the honor shown me, than in what bears fruit in your salvation?” Augustine is afraid that he’ll come to want to be praised more than he’ll want to be a person who is worthy of that praise.
The problem, of course, is not so much with the praise itself but in his own immoderate love of praise. Love of praise is a fruit of the pride that always threatens our integrity and our faithfulness. Vigilance about this danger, and the accompanying need to cultivate the virtue of humility, is for Augustine a moral necessity for all of us - those who are called into ministry, but really any of us who have ever been given some kind of authority and leadership.
Disordered love of praise and honor is one among a number of subtle and insidious forms of pride which accompany the Christian life, and the only way to prevent being mastered by this pride is to cultivate a humble spirit. Humility is, of course, for all. Augustine writes, “All Christians have to practice humility. Indeed, they even get the name of Christian from Christ, and no one can examine his Gospel attentively without discovering that he is the teacher of humility.” But pride does present particular challenges to some. “On the other hand, it is proper that those who stand out from the rest because of some great gift should be especially concerned to develop and preserve this virtue.”
We find some of Augustine’s most poignant counsel on this danger in a treatise called Holy Virginity, a work written to women who had taken a vow of chastity. But with a minimal amount of translation, it is a treatise which has wisdom for all of us, especially those with positions of authority. It’s in that treatise that Augustine gives us an important but counter-intuitive principle for thinking about the dynamics between pride and humility: pride is most dangerous for those who have progressed furthest in virtue and the moral demands of the Christian life.
“A person must have humility in proportion to his or her greatness. The danger is pride, and the more exalted the person, the stronger will be its assault.” It is the very presence of virtue that creates the conditions for pride to grow. Augustine sees Jesus’ parable of the praying Pharisee and tax collector from Luke 18 as evidence for this. When he considers the person we know to be the antagonist of the passage, the Pharisee, he draws our attention to the real virtues that the Pharisee has and even his attempt at heartfelt thanksgiving to God. But all of this is spoiled by the pride that acts like a parasite upon his virtues.
Commenting on the passage, Augustine writes “It is possible, therefore, for someone both to avoid real evils and be aware of genuine goodness in himself or herself, and give thanks for this to the Father, from whom comes every good and excellent thing we receive from above (Jas 1:17), and at the same time be guilty of the sin of pride by being insulting to others who are sinners, especially those who confess their sins in prayer.” Here’s the terrifying insight Augustine suggests: there are both real goodness and also terrible pridefulness in the Pharisee, and it is precisely that goodness that both encourages his pride and also conceals it from him.
It is when a Christian demonstrates virtue and greatness become visible they are most susceptible to the danger of pride. Faithfulness, goodness, moral excellence, giftedness, and virtue are often met with honor and praise in the Church. But with that praise comes the possibility of a subtle change in motivation. The Christian can become more concerned with how he or she is seen by others than with their identity before God. Pride “makes them more afraid of displeasing other people than displeasing God.” Exterior appearances begin to replace interior realities. Now the Christian’s moral orientation is “directed more to show than to reform.”
This mis-orientation is in many ways a Christian version of an Augustinian concept called the “glittering vices.” In Book V of The City of God Augustine considers how Rome came to be such a great power with a panoply of heroes who appeared to possess moral excellence and virtue. He bemusedly observes that Rome’s greatness emerged from a willingness to restrain all of their other vices in the pursuit of one great vice: the love of glory. “This glory they loved with a passion. It was for its sake that they wanted to live and for its sake that they did not hesitate to die. Their boundless desire for this one thing kept all their other desires in check.”
Rome’s greatness had as its source one great, “glittering” vice – the vain love of glory – that it was willing to submit all of its other vices to. But this is where the parable of the Tax Collector and the Pharisee in Luke 18 comes in. Christians should not look down upon Rome, as if we are inoculated to this principle. In the same way that pagan Romans suppressed greed, sensuality, and other vices for the love of glory, it is all too possible that Christians can also restrain their own vices but do so only for the sake of the same vice—love of glory. Only now this love of glory would, just as with the Pharisee in Luke 18, be camouflaged by the virtues that are honored in the Christian community.
This concept helps Augustine give such a shrewd analysis of the subtle and manifold dangers of pride. In Holy Virginity Augustine speaks frankly to serious, devoted Christians, people whose lives are a model of sacrifice and devotion. He tells them that he is afraid for them and their souls precisely because of their great devotion: “I am frightened, I say, that you will become proud about following the Lord wherever he goes, and then you will not be able to follow him through the narrow places because you are swollen with pride.” Part of why this fear is warranted is because pride is so subtle it can disguise itself as false humility: “Now that men and women know that they are what they are by the grace of God, let them not fall into another trap by pride, by becoming proud even about God’s grace and looking down on others because of that.” The sobering truth is that a Christian’s most zealous acts of devotion can be “stolen and destroyed by pride.” Because of this, the Christian must be a student of pride and know both its nature and also its antidote.
Pride is of such great concern to Augustine because it is at the center of every departure from the good life that God intends for humanity. “Now pride is a great vice, and the first of vices, the beginning, origin and cause of all sins.” Pride is, for Augustine, a movement away from dependence upon God and toward the self in an effort to possess radical independence, self-security, and self-exalting achievement. To quote the Augustine scholar John Cavadini: “In essence, pride is the desire to replace God with oneself.”
But Augustine goes beyond simply defining pride and identifying its intrinsic and necessary role in every sin–he describes pride. Because pride is such an important concept and such a formidable opponent in the Christian life, he often lingers over specific examples where it is manifested in the world. Throughout his writings we find a textured and nuanced description of pride as it appears in its various forms. This is a vice that can be instantiated intellectually or spiritually, in an individual or or in a culture, perversely or under the guise of virtue. While a definition of pride is helpful, it is even more useful for us to be trained to see it in its manifold forms. In what follows, I’d like to draw your attention to some of the ways Augustine describes pride which have particular relevance to us as pastors.
There are a multitude of examples, but we will have to limit ourselves to one: education. Augustine identifies a kind of intellectual pride in the various educational institutions that are mentioned in the Confessions. When describing his early education in Latin while he was a rhetoric student in Thagaste, Augustine paints a picture of a culture that honors the skills of intellectual achievement rather than truth or virtue. His teachers praised a rhetorician's ability to wield precise and correct grammar and their ability to move an audience—to the exclusion of the truth of the subject matter being spoken of and the character of the speaker. “The models proposed to me for imitation were people who would have been caught out and covered with confusion if they had related any of their doings—deeds not wrong in themselves—in a barbaric accent or with grammatical blunders, whereas to relate licentious deeds in correct and well-turned phrases, in ample and elegant style, would have won them praise and honor.” This is a culture that is built upon the self-exalting character of pride, an environment where the singular measure of achievement is the extent to which individuals can exalt themselves over and against others.
Augustine has an eye for this. He sees pride enculturated all around him. He sees it in Platonic philosophy, a belief system that Augustine believes is in some way founded on pride. He sees it in Roman spirituality, which exalted individuals in their ability to access secret knowledge through rituals. And he sees it in Roman culture itself, which exalted itself as the greatest power the world had ever known.
Augustine describes sin so carefully in order to learn to see it. But he does that not just so we can learn to see it over there, but so we can learn to see in ourselves. Augustine’s understanding of pride gives us a framework that we can translate and transfer to our own institutions, cultures, and practices of pastoral ministry. This diagnosis is all the more helpful to us because of pride’s subtlety and how it can clothe itself in the pursuit of “glittering vices”—and do so even in the Christian community. What might this look like? A few thought experiments will help us apply Augustine’s counsel.
We can easily imagine what this would look like in a local church. Pride can infect the culture of the church so that it becomes a place where pastors with certain gifts exalt themselves through using their gifts, through the growth of a congregation, or through the ability to build a platform. The “glittering vice” of institutional glory can create a culture where congregations turn a blind eye to issues of character and behavior because of a charismatic leader’s ability to draw people to worship.
All sorts of other institutional disorders follow upon this one. Pastors might devote their time and energy to performance, to the curation of their brand to the exclusion of personal devotion and the shepherding of the flock between Sundays. This is the kind of ecclesial culture where pride is camouflaged by the seemingly great virtues displayed in the pastor’s skills and the worldly “glory” that follows. When we read about churches that implode – Mars Hill, Willow Creek, and others, this is often exactly what is happening. There is this unsaid agreement between the leader and the people. Get us to glory, and we’ll overlook the problems. And the glory of the success, the importance of “the mission,” justifies everything else. It’s “glittering vices” in Christian dress.
We can even imagine how pride can corrupt spirituality—Christian spirituality—in a way that mimics the theurgist religion Augustine critiques in The City of God. Under the banner of studiousness and devotion, Christians can pridefully exalt themselves through their practice, their piety, and their knowledge of doctrine. This could be a Christianity of practice: of fasting, or Sabbath, or of service. Or this could be a Christianity of knowledge: of the necessity of cultural engagement, of political theology, or even of the glories of the doctrines of grace. But whatever its form, it would be a spirituality that says with the Pharisee in Luke 18, “I thank you, God, that I am not like that [blank],” with each form of spirituality filling in its own version of the “other” that it looks down upon.
Unfortunately, these are not hypothetical examples of how pride can infect Christian institutions and practices. Pride is always attempting to infiltrate Christian communities, corrupting Christian theology and spirituality, and ultimately diverting us from faithfulness. And here is where Augustine’s diagnosis is helpful. His description of pride and the examples that he provides are there to arm us against its attempts to overcome us. We benefit from Augustine’s description of pride in at least two ways.
First, because Augustine gives pride a central place as the “beginning, origin, and cause of all sins,” he forms us to be observant of pride’s insidious nature. We can use Augustine’s definition to nip pride’s bud in our hearts before it spreads and overtakes us. When we sin—as we inevitably will—we can use Augustine’s diagnosis to identify pride’s pattern and the false promises we believe.
Secondly, Augustine’s description of pride helps us to understand the shape of pride and how it affects cultures and institutions. It does not operate merely within atomized individuals, enclosed within the human heart. Pride is both personal and systemic; like a parasite, it attempts to infect whatever host is available. Across his works, Augustine shows us how we are in danger of being “discipled” into pride through education, through philosophy, through religion—through any institutions or cultures we participate in. This is true even in Christian communities.
This second point possesses a great deal of explanatory power for what we too often see in the Church. Specifically, Augustine’s account of the “glittering vices” helps us to make sense of the paradox of apparently successful churches and ministries headed by leaders who eventually face one kind of reckoning or another because of their pride. Why is it so often the case that ministries with a reputation for creativity, excellence, and success are also led by pastors whose lives are characterized by the kind of pride that inevitably leads to a fall? Why is it that those who seem the most committed to Jesus’ Kingdom too often fail to resemble Jesus himself in their gentleness, kindness, and integrity? Augustine helps us to see why.
Just like Rome was able to restrain its “lesser” vices in the pursuit of the one great goal of glory, many Christian leaders and organizations also mobilize all of their resources around the same pursuit of glory. While that “glory” may explicitly be described as God’s glory, Kingdom expansion, or any other number of Christian ends, in reality those goals have some kind of disordered relationship to the institution or its leader. And that prideful glory can prove to be an uncannily effective motivator for getting things done. Incredible creativity is unleashed, innumerable people are served, costly sacrifices are made, non-disclosure agreements are signed—all to the end of this counterfeit “glory.”
The pursuit of that kind of prideful glory is sustainable only for so long. It may be that those within the institution who have been chewed up and spit out by the relentless pursuit of glory protest the disparity between the purported values of the organization and the realities of life within it. It may be that the leaders who spearhead the charge for this glory develop shadow lives in order to relieve the growing pressure that comes with being progressively enslaved to pride. It may be that the pastor increasingly feels entitled to indulge in certain habits and behaviors as compensation for their purported importance for the Kingdom. It may be that there is all kinds of dysfunctional behavior going on behind the scenes. But whatever the case, the “glittering vices” will at some point prove to be an unstable foundation for life and ministry. Augustine’s account of pride helps us to see this troubling reality for what it is.