Aurelius Augustineb. November 13, 354d. August 28, 430

“A life searching for truth which would bring human fulfillment”

Apostolic Church

Apostolic Fathers

Church Councils

Church History

Ca. 30AD 590 AD 1517 AD

Golden Age of Church Fathers

Reformation & Counter Reformation

Rationalism, Revivalism, & Denominationalism

Revivalism, Missions, & Modernism

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Ancient Church History Medieval Church History Modern Church History

The Pre-Reformers

The First Medieval Pope

The Rise of the Holy Roman Empire

The Crusades

The Papacy in Decline

Augustine of Hippo 354 - 430

The Cauldron of Conversion 354 - 387

*Africa*Parents

*Education*Conversion

*Disposition

His Christian Service in the Church 387 - 430

Confessions

*Polemicist

*Preacher

*Episcopal Administrator

*Theologian

*Philosopher

His spiritual pilgrimage & conversion as a clue to, anillustration of, the universal situation of human beingsin relation to God

Philosophy

PracticePracticalproblems

of thechurch

Interiorsearchfor thetruth

Augustine will sound this theme which will permeate his thinking aboutevery major problem he would face.

“Though the human self is created for the knowledge and love of Godand is “unquiet” until it comes to rest in God, it is also turned away from

God and lost in a falsely directed love. While this perversion can be described, it cannot be accounted for. Its springs . . . will lie

deeper than the level of conscious choice; by the same token, its rectification depends on an impulse which human choice cannot of itselfprovide. Only the grace and love of God, working in ways which cannotalways be discerned or understood, can redirect human loving and focus

it on the ultimate source of its fulfillment – God.”

Africa – Modern Day

Numidian, Berber

Neither African or European

Tall & Long LimbedThin chested w/sloping shoulders

Long nose, high forehead,thick lips and large black eyes

His skin was dark bronze

North Africa

North Africa – by the 4th Century in decline

Carthage had been a great threat to Rome and almost defeated Rome,a large sea port, with cosmopolitan lifestyle. Became a Romancolony. Coluseums, and baths, and forums – wild beast shows

Carthage settled by Phoenicians

Thagaste (Tagaste) was under the influence/control of Carthage.It was a city 150 miles from the sea and 2000 ft highIt was located in an area of forests and pines and farms.A Roman colony

Brown “Augustine will grow up in a hard, competitive world among proud and impoverished gentlefolk.”

A classical education was the only passport out of this life.

Landowner and Farmer

He was a member of the ruling class in Thagaste,but was not wealthy. Living outside his means.

Out of pride of his class standing, he wanted Augustine tosucceed, but showed little personal interest in his son.

He allowed Augustine to do as he pleased, and cared nothing atall about his morals.

Some believe Patricius had been unfaithful to Monica, but never beat her like many husbands

in that day.

Older brother, NavigiusOlder sister(s), unknown

Augustine’s Family

Patricius

Monica

23 yrs old when Aug. born, a Berber, spoke with a heavy accentRestrained, dignified, above gossip, a firm peacemaker, capable

of effective sarcasm.She was raised in a Christian family and committed to faithful

Christian living. Given to dreams. Influential in husband’s conv.Father’s conversion?

Committed to giving her children a classical education.

She was an all absorbing mother almost smothering her son.

Faithful to pray for Augustine’s conversion – more than a dead son

A son of so many prayers and tears could not be lost, and the faithful mother who travailed with him in spirit with greater painthan her body had in bringing him into the world was privileged tosee her son saved shortly before her death.

During that sixteenth year of my age, I lived with my parents, having a holiday from school for a time--this idleness imposed upon me by my parents' straitened finances. The thorn bushes of lust grew rank about my head, and there was no hand to root them out. Indeed, when my father saw me one day at the baths and perceived that I was becoming a man, and was showing the signs of adolescence, he joyfully told my mother about it as if already looking forward to grandchildren, rejoicing in that sort of inebriation in which the world so often forgets thee, its Creator, and falls in love with thy creature instead of thee--the inebriation of that invisible wine of a perverted will which turns and bows down to infamy. But in my mother's breast thou had already begun to build thy temple and the foundation of thy holy habitation--whereas my father was only a catechumen, and that but recently. She was, therefore, startled with a holy fear and trembling: for though I had not yet been baptized, she feared those crooked ways in which they walk who turn their backs to thee and not their faces.

Brown – “Augustine, a man of many significant silences, will pass him over(his father) coldly. He was generous, but ‘hot tempered’. Patricius hadbeen immoderately proud of his son: he was admired by all for the sacrifices he made to complete Augustine’s education. Augustine recordsa scene in the baths, in which his father had been delighted to find that hisson had reached puberty. All that the son will say, in return, is that ‘he seesin me only hollow things’. Patricius died just after he had scraped togetherenough money to send his brilliant boy to Carthage. Augustine, who willsoon experience and express deep grief at the loss of a friend, will mentionhis father’s death only in passing.”

And although she knew that my passions were destructive even then and dangerous for the future, she did not think they should be restrained by the bonds of conjugal affection--if, indeed, they could not be cut away to the quick. She took no heed of this, for she was afraid lest a wife should prove a hindrance and a burden to my hopes. These were not her hopes of the world to come, which my mother had in thee, but the hope of learning, which both my parents were too anxious that I should acquire--my father, because he had little or no thought of thee, and only vain thoughts for me; my mother, because she thought that the usual course of study would not only be no hindrance but actually a furtherance toward my eventual return to thee. This much I conjecture, recalling as well as I can the temperaments of my parents. Meantime, the reins of discipline were slackened on me, so that without the restraint of due severity, I might play at whatsoever I fancied, even to the point of dissoluteness. And in all this there was that mist which shut out from my sight the brightness of thy truth, O my God; and my iniquity bulged out, as it were, with fatness!

But what was it that delighted me save to love and to be loved? Still I did not keep the moderate way of the love of mind to mind--the bright path of friendship. Instead, the mists of passion steamed up out of the puddly concupiscence of the flesh, and the hot imagination of puberty, and they so obscured and overcast my heart that I was unable to distinguish pure affection from unholy desire. Both boiled confusedly within me, and dragged my unstable youth down over the cliffs of unchaste desires and plunged me into a gulf of infamy. Thy anger had come upon me, and I knew it not. I had been deafened by the clanking of the chains of my mortality, the punishment for my soul's pride, and I wandered farther from thee, and thou didst permit me to do so. I was tossed to and fro, and wasted, and poured out, and I boiled over in my fornications--and yet thou didst hold thy peace, O my tardy Joy! Thou didst still hold thy peace, and I wandered still farther from thee into more and yet more barren fields of sorrow, in proud dejection and restless lassitude.

*Not Diligent in his studies as a boy, he later would burn himself up with thefury to know all things

*Strong Affection for His Mother

*Passionate & Ambitious constantly seeking for a purpose in life

*Clear mind

*Physical and athletic

*Played games

Augustine’s Disposition

Robert Payne “Augustine’s early years reveal an intense, proud, and sensual man who yearned to know truth.”

StrengthsWeaknesses*Easily Hurt

*Ungovernable Temper

*Prolific & Proficient Liar

*Thief

*Proud

*Full of Lust

Augustine’s Education

Augustine will be educated to become a master of the spoken word.“The ideal product of this [Latin] education was the orator, a man whocould give pleasure throughout his argument, by his vivacity, by the feelingsat his command, by the ease with which the words came to him, perfectlyadapted to dress his message in style.” Brown

His education was thoroughly pagan, lacking in Greek studies, steeped in Latinancient classics.

354

Augustineborn

367

Sent toMadura

370

Goes toCarthage

372

Becomes aManichee

Returns toThagaste

376

TeachesRhetoric inCarthage

ReturnsHome

takes aconcubine

“In the usual course of the syllabus, I had reached a book by Cicero: its stylewas admired by almost all, though its message was ignored. This book, however,Contains an exhortation to philosophy: it is called “The Hortensius”. This book,Indeed, changed all my way of feeling. It changed my prayers to Thee, O Lord;it gave me entirely different plans and aspirations. Suddenly, all empty hope formy career lost its appeal; and I was left with an unbelievable fire in my heart, desiring the deathless qualities of Wisdom, and I made a start to rise up and returnto Thee . . . . I was on fire, my God, on fire to fly away from earthly things to Thee.”

Augustine turns to the Bible, but finds it cold and meaningless, thus, he turnsto Manichaeanism because it offered truth and dealt with the problem of evil.

Augustine’s Conversion

He arrives in Rome and is given audience to a Roman prefect,Symmachus, because of Augustine’s ties to Manichaeanism.Symmachus was Ambrose’s cousin and both were fightingto influence Rome.

Symmachus was looking to appoint a teacher to an influential government position of teacher of rhetoric in Milan.

Will leave Carthage to go to Rome to pursue a better career. StudentsMonica

“Vagabond Mind”

Paganism – he joined a pagan cult

Philosophy

Astrology 12 to 19

19 to 31 Manichaeanism

Skepticism

Neoplatonism

Augustine’s Search for Truth

July, 386

“I dared to roam the woods and pursue my vagrant loves beneath the shades. . . .Lord, how loathsome I was in Thy sight…. Lust stormed confusedly within me,whirling my thoughtless youth over the precipices of desire, and so I wanderedstill further from Thee, and Thou didst leave me to myself: the torrent of my

fornications tossed and swelled and boiled and run over.”

Interior search for truth and an absorption in worldly and sexual gratification

Intense desire for truth & serious intellectual pursuit.

Has a great sense of his evil nature.

Christian influence of his mother and a growing culture of Christianity.

Tries Manichaeanism, but rejects it.

Tries Platonism, but rejects it.

Circumstances of Augustine’s Conversion

Background

Alternatives to Christianity

Comes under the preaching of Ambrose and struck by the certaintyof truth and answers to the problem of evil given in his sermons.

A visitor named Pontitian challenged Augustine to take up the monastic life and chastity. Ambition and Physical Pleasure. “Give me chastity and continence;but not now.”

Is forced to give up mistress of 15 years and mother of his son for anarranged marriage to achieve a higher social status.

The leading Neoplatonists, Marius Victorinus, converts to Christianity castingAugustine into skepticism and doubt.

Circumstances of His Conversion in Milan

Augustine reaches the pinnacle of his profession, has wealth, popularity, friends,a villa, but is dissatisfied. “panting after honors, profits, and marriage”

July386

Converted

Easter387

Baptized byAmbrose

388

Rome towrite

Returns toThagaste3 years of

contemplative & literaryretirement

391

Becomespresbyter

395

ElectedBishop of

Hippo

430

Dies

39 years of ministry

Timeline After Conversion

No longer merely a philosopher-Christian, concerned withthe dialectic of the interior search for God, now he was alsoa pastor, who had to turn his attention increasingly to the Scriptures and their exposition and to the practical problemsof the churches in North Africa.

retreat

Monica - don’t underestimate the effect of a faithful mother on thehistory of Christianity

Never give up on the conversion of a lost person

God was able to use Augustine’s bad past for the good of the church

Lessons from the Life of Augustine

1. Polemicist

2. Preacher

3. Episcopal Administrator

4. Theologian

5. Philosopher

Augustine’s Areas of Influence