Augustine of Hippo

[Caraway]

Could someone please, in one to two sentences, explain why Augustine was important? I keep reading about his "monumental impact" but I still can't articulate to my kids what that was specifically. Help!

[acurtis75]

This is not 3 sentences but here is some information from a book 131 Christians Everyone Should Know. The introduction to the section on Augustine says that he was important because he answered attacks from internal and external heretics with wisdom that is still studied today. It also states that he is one of the few theologians considered equally important by Catholics and Protestants.

 

Here's an excert from the book:

 

Orthodox champion for a millennium

Guarding the church from internal and external challenges topped the new bishop’s agenda. The church in North Africa was in turmoil. Though Manichaeism was already on its way out, it still had a sizable following. Augustine, who knew its strengths and weaknesses, dealt it a death blow. At the public baths, Augustine debated Fortunatus, a former schoolmate from Carthage and a leading Manichaean. The bishop made quick work of the heretic, and Fortunatus left town in shame.

Less easily handled was Donatism, a schismatic and separatist North African church. They believed the Catholic church had been compromised and that Catholic leaders had betrayed the church during earlier persecutions. Augustine argued that Catholicism was the valid continuation of the apostolic church. He wrote scathingly, "The clouds roll with thunder, that the house of the Lord shall be built throughout the earth; and these frogs sit in their marsh and croak ‘We are the only Christians!’　"

In 411 the controversy came to a head as the imperial commissioner convened a debate in Carthage to decide the dispute once and for all. Augustine’s rhetoric destroyed the Donatist appeal, and the commissioner pronounced against the group, beginning a campaign against them.

It was not, however, a time of rejoicing for the church. The year before the Carthage conference, the barbarian general Alaric and his troops sacked Rome. Many upper-class Romans fled for their lives to North Africa, one of the few safe havens left in the empire. And now Augustine was left with a new challenge—defending Christianity against claims that it had caused the empire’s downfall by turning eyes away from Roman gods.

Augustine’s response to the widespread criticism came in 22 volumes over 12 years, in The City of God. He argued that Rome was punished for past sins, not new faith. His lifelong obsession with original sin was fleshed out, and his work formed the basis of the medieval mind. "Mankind is divided into two sorts," he wrote. "Such as live according to man, and such as live according to God. These we call the two cities.… The Heavenly City outshines Rome. There, instead of victory, is truth."

One other front Augustine had to fight to defend Christianity was Pelagianism. Pelagius, a British monk, gained popularity just as the Donatist controversy ended. Pelagius rejected the idea of original sin, insisting instead that the tendency to sin is humankind’s own free choice. Following this reasoning, there is no need for divine grace; individuals must simply make up their minds to do the will of God. The church excommunicated Pelagius in 417, but his banner was carried on by young Julian of Eclanum. Julian took potshots at Augustine’s character as well as his theology. With Roman snobbery, he argued that Augustine and his other low-class African friends had taken over Roman Christianity. Augustine argued with the former bishop for the last ten years of his life.

In the summer of 429, the Vandals invaded North Africa, meeting almost no resistance along the way. Hippo, one of the few fortified cities, was overwhelmed with refugees. In the third month of the siege, the 76-year-old Augustine died, not from an arrow but from a fever. Miraculously, his writings survived the Vandal takeover, and his theology became one of the main pillars on which the church of the next 1,000 years was built.

[rwjx2khsmj]

It's my understanding that his writings bridged the theological gap between the Roman Empire and medieval world. He also wrote the first real autobiobraphy, writing in the first person rather than the second or third.

 

There's a pretty succinct discussion of St. Augustine in How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill.