Augustine of Hippo

Aurelius Augustinus, Augustine of Hippo ("The knowledgeable one") (November 13, 354–August 28, 430) is a saint and the pre-eminent Doctor of the Church according to Roman Catholicism, and is considered by Evangelical Protestants to be (together with the Apostle Paul) the theological fountainhead of the Reformation teaching on salvation and grace. He was the eldest son of Saint Monica. Works of Saint Augustine, an African by birth, a Roman by education, a Milanese by baptism, still inspire many Christians all over the world who follow the path of faith.

Influence as a theologian and thinker

Augustine remains a central figure, both within Christianity and in the history of Western thought. As he himself was much influenced by Platonism and Neoplatonism, particularly by Plotinus, Augustine was important to the "baptism" of Greek thought and its entrance into the Christian, and subsequently the European intellectual tradition. Also important was his early and influential writing on the human will, a central topic in ethics, and one which became a focus for later philosophers such as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. It is largely due to Augustine's arguments against the Pelagians, who did not believe in original sin, that Western Christianity has maintained the doctrine of original sin. Catholic theologians generally subscribe to Augustine's belief that God exists outside of time in the "eternal present"; time existing only within the created universe.

Related Topics:
Platonism - Neoplatonism - Plotinus - European - Human will - Ethics - Schopenhauer - Nietzsche - Pelagians - Original sin - Western Christianity - Outside of time

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Augustine's writings helped formulate the theory of the just war. He also advocated the use of force against the Donatists, asking "Why ... should not the Church use force in compelling her lost sons to return, if the lost sons compelled others to their destruction?" (The Correction of the Donatists, 22–24)

Related Topics:
The just war - Donatists

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Augustine's work The City of God heavily influenced works of Wincenty Kadlubek and Stanislaw of Skarbimierz on the relation between ruler and his subjects that led to the creation of Nobles' Democracy and "De optimo senatore" by Wawrzyniec Grzymala Goslicki.

Related Topics:
The City of God - Wincenty Kadlubek - Stanislaw of Skarbimierz - Nobles' Democracy - Wawrzyniec Grzymala Goslicki

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St. Thomas Aquinas took much from Augustine's theology while creating his own unique synthesis of Greek and Christian thought. Two later theologians who claimed special influence from Augustine were John Calvin and Cornelius Jansen. Calvinism developed as a part of Reformation theology, while Jansenism was a movement inside the Catholic Church; some Jansenists went into schism and formed their own church.

Related Topics:
Thomas Aquinas - John Calvin - Cornelius Jansen - Calvinism - Reformation - Jansenism - Catholic Church - Schism

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Augustine was canonized by popular recognition and recognized as a Doctor of the Church in 1303 by Pope Boniface VIII. His feast day is August 28, the day on which he is thought to have died. He is considered the patron saint of brewers, printers, theologians, sore eyes, and a number of cities and dioceses.

Related Topics:
Canonized - Doctor of the Church - 1303 - Pope Boniface VIII - Feast day - August 28 - Patron saint

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Eastern Orthodox theologians consider that Augustine's theology of original sin is a key source of division between East and West.

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A passage from Augustine's de Doctrina Christiana has been seen http://gnuhh.org/work/fsf-europe/augustinus.html as a fore-runner of the free software movement, as it expressed the philosophy that knowledge, unlike physical possessions, must be freely shared: "For if a thing is not diminished by being shared with others, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned and not shared."

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Under the similar heading of miscellaneous is the argument by Frances Yates in her 1966 study, The Art Of Memory, that a brief passage of the Confessions, X.8.12, in which Augustine writes of walking up a flight of stairs and entering the vast fields of memory (see text and commentary) clearly indicates that the ancient Romans were aware of how to use explicit spatial and architectural metaphors as a mnemonic technique for organizing large amounts of information. A few French philosophers have argued that this technique can be seen as the conceptual ancestor of the user interface paradigm of virtual reality.

Related Topics:
Frances Yates - 1966 - User interface - Paradigm - Virtual reality

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