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Plato's influence on Augustine
Augustine's conversion to Christianity
Plato's influence on Augustine
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Saint Augustine
Saint Augustine (354-430 AD), also known as Augustine of Hippo created an image of himself through his writings and teachings. He was born in Tagaste, a town in North Africa, on November 13, 354 AD. He was born into a middle class family. Patricius, his father, was a pagan, but later converted to Christianity because of his wife, Monica, was a devout Christian. Augustine’s mother, who was devoted to the Roman Catholic church, constantly tried for her son's conversion.
Augustine was educated as a lecturer in the former North African cities of Tagaste, Madaura, and Carthage. The philosophical works of Marcus Tullius Cicero, a Roman speaker and politician, inspired Augustine to become a seeker after truth. Augustine engaged restlessly in philosophical studies, and passed from one phase of thought to another, unable to find satisfaction. From 373 until 382, in Carthage, he conformed to Manichaeism, a dualistic philosophy dealing with the conflict between good and evil. This seemed to be the answer to the confusion in his own heart. It solved the mysteries that confused him in his own experience. After realizing that this philosophy wouldn’t make a great ethical system, he abandoned this philosophy. After being educated throughout North Africa, he left Carthage and in 384 found himself in Milan where he would pursue his career of a professor in rhetoric. Also, in Milan he met and was influenced by the bishop, Ambrose. With this, Augustine was attracted again to Christianity and was baptized by Ambrose in 387. Augustine was also influenced by Platonism. He than returned to North Africa where he became the bishop of Hippo in 391, a title he held until he died.
This great “Father of the Church,” wrote a handbook on the three theological virtues: faith, hope, and love. The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Love was written in the year 420. It is a brief handbook on the proper mode of serving God, through faith, hope, and love. It is easy to say what one ought to believe, what to hope for, and what to love. But to defend our doctrines against the slander of those who think differently is a more difficult and detailed task. If one is to have this wisdom, it is not enough just to put an enchiridion in the hand. It is also necessary that a great eagerness be in the heart.
Saint Augustine says that God created all things good. In Chapter XI, ...
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...t evil is but the absence of good. I feel that God did make everything good, and it is the absence of good that causes evil. People choose the road they feel like taking throughout life. I think of it this way; God started us off on this world all consisting of good and it is we who choose to become evil. This follows through with Augustine’s next idea, which I also agree with, in that there can be no evil where there is no good.
This holds true because everybody consists of good, and evil is the absence of good, so that just concludes that in order for evil there must be good. Augustine also says that good and evil can exist at the same time, but evil cannot exist without good, however, good can exist without evil. I feel that one can embody good and evil, there are many humans like that now. It’s true that evil cannot exist without good because we are only evil when we aren’t good, but one can be good without being evil. I hope I have made it clear that there are some points that I agree with and there are some ideas of Augustine that I don’t agree with. As for the way to serve God, I believe that as long as you live your life to the best of your ability, you will succeed.
It is perhaps the most difficult intellectual challenge to a Christian how God and evil can both exist. Many of the greatest minds of the Christian church and intellects such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas spent their entire lives trying to solve this problem, and were unsuccessful (Erickson, 2009, p.439). However, this dilemma is not only an intellectual challenge, but it is emotional. Man feels it, lives it. Failing to identify the religious form of the problem of evil will appear insensitive; failure to address the theological form will seem intellectually insulting. This conundrum will never be completely met during our earthly life, but there are many biblical and philosophical resources that help mitigate it.
Augustine is fixated upon the idea of evil and its origins in Christian theology. He struggles to come to terms with the doctrine of sin. A popular counterargument to the belief in God is that a good, kind, and loving divine power would never command the wholesale slaughter of nations. According to Christian belief, God created everything, and everything He created is good because He Himself is righteous. Augustine claims that God pervades the entirety of the universe and all it contains. So, how can things outside of God, such as evil, even exist? He asks this in various forms of rhetorical questions, such as, “Where then is evil? What is its origin? How did it steal into the world?...Where then does evil come from, if God made all things
Good and evil make the world we are living in today. However evil stands out more than good and people tend to focus on the evil behavior of humans more often. Human nature tends to decide that if someone looks evil they will be evil. The good and the bad make up the goodness in life. It is impossible to always be good or evil but there are things that can make us better or worse as a person. For one to be free, one must live in a world of evil and good.
Augustine of Hippo was an early Christian philosopher who was born in what is now modern day Algeria and his writings have been a great influence on the development of Western Christianity. He was a bishop in the Hippo Regius of Roman Africa during the Patristic Era and is viewed as one of the most important Church Fathers of the West (Mendelson). In his famous writing “Confessions”, Augustine recounts the first 35 years of his life and tracks his spiritual development and acceptance of Christianity. Books 1-9 are autobiographical, while Books 10-13 are analytical and interpretational of his faith. Book 10 of his confessions explores memory while 11 through 13 are his detailed interpretations of Genesis, in which the creation of the world is explained.
Which resulted Augustine in exploring the philosophical road that led to his conversion from Macheanism to Neo-Platonism to Christianity. But later felt sorrowful for his mother that had died and confesses to God that everyone is a sinner right when they were born and through God that this sin can only be absorbed. He later moves back to Thagaste and then became Bishop of Hippo. As a “doctor” of the Chruch, he defended Christianity against false (heretic) interpretation. After his conversion, he refused to teach rhetoric. Yet, in the end, no matter what sin he had done Augustine found his savior. Which led him to write about how to convey God’s truth to diverse audiences and demonstrates that both the Bible and one’s own life are texts to be read and assessed against the true Cristian Doctrine. The last four books were like an appendix and offers an interpretation of the opening of the Book of Genesis. When Augustine’s converted to Christianity his appropriation of Platonic ideas uses his past sins and later confesses to God that will eventually enhance his soul and body. The consequences of this appropriation are that sins are considered to be
Rather than spending time on trying to figure out why God allows evil to exist, the focus should be aimed at what is within our ability to control or to prevent the existence of evil and understand that without evil; good could not exist.
Augustine’s Confessions is a biographic of the life of St. Augustine. The biopic chronicles the life of Augustine as he tries to navigate his way through life and find his path as it relates to the Christian faith. Augustine discusses many of his struggles and issues while on the path to find himself and his place in God. One of the main issues he covers in his biopic are the struggles had with reconciling the existence of evil with the goodness of God. He struggled with this issue in particular due to his participation in the belief of Manicheanism. Manicheanism is a heretical version of Christianity, that was first introduced by the self-proclaimed prophet Mani. Augustine claims he fell victim to this belief system when he was at a vulnerable point in his journey and was seeking answers for certain question he has pertaining to faith. He fell into Manicheanism when he tried to look at the scriptures himself and interrupt them but to a rhetoric like himself the scriptures made no sense at the time, so he turned from them and to the well-worded faith of Manicheanism. Augustine considers that decision one of the biggest mistakes of his life, attributing his great difficulties in reconciling the existence of evil with God’s goodness to his belief in Manicheanism. In this paper I aim to explore the reason behind why Augustine felt his belief in Manicheanism was such a grave mistake. I also hope to explain how he tried to reconcile his issues concerning evil and God’s goodness, and if he was successful in this attempt. In order to do this we must first look deeper at Manicheanism to examine what the core values and beliefs of the faith are, so that we can understand why Augustine had such a hard time dealing with the issue of evil and...
Philosophers of the Medieval period struggled with the problem of evil - specifically, the existence of evil brought a question to the fore: if the world was created by an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God, then how was it that evil existed? To further complicate the matter, a second question branched off of the first as individuals pondered over whether or not God was ultimately the cause of evil. If God created everything, and evil exists as part of everything, then God, logically, had created evil. But this presented yet another issue, in that if God had knowingly created evil, then he could not truly be all-good. And it is these concerns that philosophers addressed.
...ns. St. Augustine gave us the most well-known and accepted solution to this age-old problem. His view that evil is an absence of good makes logical sense. Since God made us in His image, shouldn’t we have some part of us, however small, that is incorruptibly good? He puts the blame of evil on our free will. This means that God was not the creator of evil and could be both wholly good and omnipotent. Augustine also addresses the problem of bad things happening to innocent people. All of his arguments seem valid to me. The Church was also very accepting of his points. Therefore, I would say he came up with a very good solution to the problem of evil.
Augustines first book is devoted to his early childhood and his reflections on human origin, memory, and desire. His ideas of God were very much influenced by the religious teachings of his day.
The lines that define good and evil are not written in black and white; these lines tend to blur into many shades of grey allowing good and evil to intermingle with each another in a single human being. Man is not inherently good or evil but they are born innocent without any values or sense of morality until people impart their philosophies of life to them. In the words of John Locke:
...s distributed in Theology 101 at the University of Notre Dame, Fremantle on 22 April 2008.
In Augustine’s younger days he explored the concepts of Manicheism and studied the Manichee doctrine for nearly ten years. “Confused and bound by the ideas of his Manichee, Augustine’s interaction with astronomy and philosophy convict him that the Manichee beliefs are not the true truth” (Augustine 3, 135-136). Through the Manichee sect he was taught that God was not omnipotent and struggled...
Saint Augustine of Hippo was born on November 13, 354, in the town of Thagaste, which is now located in Algeria. His father was a pagan who converted on his death bed, and his mother was Saint Monica, whom was a devout Christian. In 370, he went to the University at Carthage to study rhetoric and wanted to become a lawyer. He gave up on law, and later on abandoned his Christian faith. He had a mistress with who he lived with for fifteen years and he had a son out of wedlock as well. He later, returned to his Christian faith, and on the death of his mother he returned to Africa, sold his property, gave all of his income to the poor, and founded a monastery at Tagas...
Augustine and Aquinas are both very well known for their philosophical and theological explorations. They are both known for trying to prove that ancient philosophy and Christianity were connected, they both took two different paths. Augustine is known for following a Platonic path and Aquinas an Aristotelian. The two both talked about faith, reason ,and knowledge.