No Virtue in Being Religious

"Unlike for Caputo, for Augustine there is no virtue in being religious. This is because, for Augustine (and earlier St. Paul and later John Calvin), being religious is constitutive of being human. Human beings – as created in the image of God – cannot help but be religious. Hence, being religious is not a notable achievement. We might describe this as Augustine’s account of formal or structural religion."


James K.A. Smith, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy, p.113