Augustine

354-430 AD

Bishop of Hippo,, Doctor of the Church and Early Church Father.

Thagaste, Numidia (modern day Algeria in North Africa)

St. Monica

Patricius. He was a pagan that later converted.

although Augustine was a catechumen as a child and was given a good academic education, Augustine did not have a rigorous upbringing with regards to the faith. It took many years of searching before he found his faith and converted

St. Augustine's account of his wanderings and his eventual discovery of and return to God.

The central theme of the confessions is the return of the soul to God through conversions

St. Augustine addressed the Confessions to God. This makes his work both spiritual and autobiographical

a religion founded by a man who maintained that there were two forces of principles that battled and opposed each other.

They were the light and the dark (good and evil). As they fought the good and evil mixed, which they believed was the source of the evil in the world. Because of this, the founder rejected the Virgin Birth and the Crucifixion, as well as other physical acts such as eating.

St.

Augustine went from Christian to Manichaeism to NeoPlatonism to Christianity. This journey was not only spiritual but also philosophical

Mani. He claimed that he was the paraclete. He was a Persian mystic.

the entirety of the Confessions is a prayer.

At the time of St. Augustine, prayer and philosophical inquiry could (and did) go hand in hand. This is because faith and reason together can give modern students and philosophers more accurate insights into existence, the soul, and God.

The primary reason for this was for Augustine to defend himself from lingering suspicions over the authenticity of his Catholic conversion and to placate those who disapproved of his bishop Valerius' decision to consecrate him as a coadjutor, an auxiliary bishop. He also did this to provide an account of the Church in North Africa in general and his correspondent Alypus in particular to his friend Paulinus of Nola (a bishop).

13.

This was determined by Augustine himself. However, he was not responsible for any other divisions of the work.

The Confessions, The City of God, and On the Trinity

Holy Saturday.

April 24, 387. Took place in the Milaese Cathedral after a retreat in the countryside. He was baptized by Ambrose along with his mother, son, brother, and 5 friends

Adeodatus

Navigus

Augustine stressed that the only objective reality is the present (now) while the past only exists congnitively in the memory, and the future only exists in the soul's anticipation of what will eventually become the present.

The Church is the apex of God's creation, that all else is brought into existence for the sake of unified and collective praise--the Body of Christ, constituted by all the faithful, all the good angels, and all of God's saints.

The Confessions were written to help us see that the life each of us has lived has been perhaps never easy and probably not always enjoyable, but it is the very life God uses to convey his singular and unequaled love for each restless heart.

defends Christianity to the schools of philosophy (some of which he participated in). He points out their flaws. He spends a lot of his Confessions refuting the Manicheans. He not only accounts his journey to god but also points out the philosophical schools and their drawbacks.

Anything earthly or bodily was bad and anything spiritual or immaterial was considered good.

This was a form of materialism because you wanted light particles in you and to expel all the dark particle. Everything was divided into light and dark particles. These represented good and evil. Two deities fighting. Believed immoral things could be done to the body since it was not connected to the soul. Referenced Our Lord for appearance with vague terms, since they were ultimately a heresy and upheld their doctrine of dualism and .

There was no necessity of the incarnation (similarly to the Platonists).

often concerned the Incarnation and were against the idea that Christ is true God and True Man.

The Manicheans were most prominent in the Eastern areas such as Asia Minor and Persia. That was where it was strongest (and ideas of dualism).

Rome

Greece

the eastern countries did not contribute as much.

Studies on this portion are mostly secular and deny liberal arts.

were used to expel "dark particles" from the body

primarily to pray. an oration between creature and creator, only secondarily in the usual sense is it a "going to confession"

Those who seek him will praise him, for as they seek they will find him, and on finding them they will praise him.

To what place outside heaven and earth could I travel, so that my God could come to me there, the God who said, "I fill heaven and earth"? Are you not everywhere in your whole being, while there is nothing whatever that can hold you entirely?

most high, excellent, supremely merciful and just, most hidden but supremely present, infinitely beautiful and strong, steadfast yes elusive, unchanging despite controlling the change in all things.

..

What indeed am I t you, that you should command me to love you, and grow angry with me if I do not, and threaten me with enormous woes?

A constant theme in the early Christian theology was the idea that goodness unifies while evil scatters. Consequently, diabolical literally means to throw or break apart. Augustine seeks to show that a life with God has coherence and integrity, while a life of sin is never focused, never stable, never at rest.

Augustine insists that if we are going to love God properly, we must be able to call upon him rightly, and the religious language we use therefore is ultimately a matter of worship and praise.

More than having the right data and speaking the right words. IT is a matter of being transformed by God's action upon the soul, and when the Lord of all Life draws near, only then do we begin to act and see differently. This is why we hear that Augustine's heart is listening, as encountering God is always a matter of external senses as well as internal renewal.

Augustine compares his soul to a house, saying: "The house of my soul is too small for you to enter, make it more spacious by your coming. It lies in ruins: rebuild it.

" CS Lewis also compares the soul to a house that God transforms into a palace.

The heart is a place for God. No one but God can fully see he internal movements of the soul and of one's joy and fear. Regardless of how intimately close one might be to his beloved, a creature will always be "outside" of one's heart, a "space" reserved for God alone.

You exist before the dawn of the ages, before anything that can be called "before"