It has been said that all philosophical inquiries in the history of theoretical thought are nothing more than footnotes to the work of Plato and Aristotle. We can speak in a similar manner about theology. It has been said of modern theologians that we are at best dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants. If any giant stands out in the history of the church as someone on whose shoulders the whole history of theology stands, it is Aurelius Augustine, also known as Augustine of Hippo.
Augustine is the most quoted theologian in history apart from the biblical authors themselves. If you were to read the writings of Thomas Aquinas, the other giant on whom we all stand, you would find that the man he quotes most often is Augustine. Likewise, if you were to go through the writings of John Calvin to see whom he cites as authorities, the number-one reference in terms of frequency is Augustine. The same may be said of Martin Luther, who was a member of the Augustinian order when he was teaching at Wittenberg at the time of the Reformation.
Augustine left a legacy for all Christendom. He is often considered the greatest theologian of the first millennium of church history. It’s hard to say who was the most brilliant theologian of all time because each has different gifts and different insights, but to the extent that Augustine was the pioneer, he stands out. As brilliant as Thomas was and as great as Luther, Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards were, they pale in comparison to Augustine. They all had one singular advantage that Augustine didn’t have: Augustine went before them. Augustine didn’t have an Augustine to depend on before he set forth his writing.
Augustine’s life is perhaps the most well-documented Christian life of the ancient church, if for no other reason than his own autobiography, Confessions, which has come down to us as a Christian classic. Augustine begins his Confessions with a prayer that has become famous: “O Lord, Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.” The chronicle that Augustine provides of his own life is a story of restlessness. It is the story of a man who, as a youth, was precocious and brilliant and already recognized for his great skill, but who was also deeply troubled and restless.
Aurelius Augustine was born on November 13, 354. His father was a pagan who later converted to Christianity shortly before his death, but during Augustine’s youth his father was an unbeliever who was unequally yoked to a woman of great godly devotion and faith. Her name was Monica, and she was perhaps the most revered Christian mother apart from Mary herself and has had more sermons preached about her on Mother’s Day than perhaps any other woman, again with the possible exception of Mary. She prayed daily for her son. But Augustine became a wayward young man, not only involved in licentiousness, living with a series of concubines and having illegitimate children and living a somewhat riotous life, but also involved in serious heretical movements. He joined the Manichean sect, which was hostile to Christianity, and then left the Manicheans to become a follower of Neoplatonic philosophy, which was also self-consciously opposed to Christianity.
One time Monica visited her pastor, who was the great Ambrose, bishop of Milan. She went to his study, weeping and saying that she had prayed for so many years for her son, but that he had showed no evidence of repentance or of coming to faith. Ambrose questioned Monica, “Can a child of so many tears possibly be lost?” The theological answer to that is yes, a child of so many tears could be lost, but Ambrose was giving comfort to Monica and exhorted her to persevere. It’s interesting that Monica maintained a loving relationship with Augustine in the midst of all his licentious living, but when he turned his devotion to the Manichean sect, she kicked him out of the house. Monica tolerated the girlfriends, but she wasn’t going to tolerate the heresy in her household.
As a young man, Augustine also became highly educated, and his profession was that of a rhetorician. He was an expert speaker and made his living in the science of rhetoric. He would visit Milan to hear Ambrose preach, not because he was interested in the bishop’s message but because he was interested in examining Ambrose’s oratorical style.
While Augustine listened to Ambrose, however, he began to be exposed to the teaching of the gospel and to come under conviction. This conviction reached a crisis point, the result of which is recorded by Augustine in a famous incident known as the Garden Episode.
Augustine was struggling with sexual lust. He knew that what he was doing was wrong, and he wanted to be done with it. He came so close to breaking with his pattern of living, but he couldn’t get free. Here’s how Augustine tells it:
I was speaking in this manner and weeping, and the bitterest contrition of heart, when lo, I heard a voice. I didn’t know whether it was a boy or girl saying in a chant and repeating over and over, tolle lege, tolle lege, “Take up and read, take up and read.” And at once, with changed countenance I began most intently to think whether there was any kind of game in which children chanted such a thing, but I couldn’t recall ever hearing it. I choked back the rush of tears and rose interpreting it no otherwise than as a divine command for me to open the book and read whatever passage I first lighted upon, for I had heard of Anthony, that he had received the admonition from the gospel lesson which he chanced to come in upon as if what was read was spoken to himself, “Go sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shall have treasure in heaven, and come follow Me,” and was at once converted by this oracle to Thee, O God. So I returned quickly to the place where Olithius was sitting, for I had laid down the volume of the apostle there when I left him. I seized it; I opened it, and I read in silence the passage on which my eyes first fell. “Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the lust thereof.” And no further did I wish to read nor was there need. Instantly as I reached the end of this sentence it was as if the light of peace was poured into my heart, and all of the shades of doubt faded away.
This incident marked the conversion of Augustine. After he was converted and studied in the church, he became a figure of vast importance in the life of the church. In 391, he was ordained as a minister in Hippo in North Africa, and in 395, he was raised to the rank of bishop. From there, for the rest of his life until his death in 430, Augustine worked as a giant of the Christian church. He was the adviser to the bishop of Rome. He was the champion theologian in some of the greatest theological controversies of church history, not the least of which was the enormous controversy with the British monk Pelagius that threatened the doctrines of salvation by grace and of original sin. Augustine also helped resolve the Donatist controversy.
Augustine was distinguished largely for two characteristics: First, his incredible understanding of the character of God, and second, his incredible understanding of the character of man. The more deeply Augustine understood the character of God, the greater he sensed his own dependence on God’s grace for salvation. The more we understand God, the more we understand how far short of God we fall.
During his lifetime, men gathered around Augustine, and a sort of early form of monastery was established around his bishopric in North Africa. Through all these controversies, Augustine was tireless in his preaching, in his teaching, and in his writing. Sometimes today, when ministers die, they will bequeath their personal libraries to the church or to seminaries rather than pass it on to future generations. When Augustine died, he passed on a library, but it was a library of books that he had written himself. He was also the consummate architect of the theology of the church. His ecclesiology shaped the church’s doctrine for centuries to come. His immortal classic City of God illustrates the idea that the kingdom of God is made visible in this world through the institution that Christ established—the church.
Ligonier Ministries