Heritage History Month Day Twenty-Two: St. Augustine

Happy St Augustine Day!

It is day twenty-two of Heritage History Month and we will remember one of the great intellectual forebears of Western Civilization. It’s difficult to summarize how profound the contributions of St Augustine were for the development of the West after the fall of Rome—his influence permeated the major streams of intellectual though, political momentum, and ecclesiastical dynamics. He set a masterful framework into play in Christianizing the theme of the unfolding of historical drama.

Born of a Pagan father (who converted to the Christian faith on his deathbed) and a Christian mother who were citizens of Rome, Augustine was well educated and poised for the life of a philosopher and teacher. Dabbling in various other religious movements of his time, his spiritual collapse into Christianity was expressed in one of the triumphs of Christian literature: St. Augustine’s Confessions.

Augustine’s City of God set a tone for Christendom in reflecting on the dynamics of history as the struggle between two worlds, each with their own destinations, each bound up in a temporary tension on the stage of history. As Christianity was blamed for the collapse of Rome by its dishonor toward the gods, Augustine turned the blame back onto the moral and spiritual destitution of a degenerated people.

Augustine was prolific writer full of inward reflection, pastoral insight, philosophical profundities, and masterpieces of meta-narrative. Augustine recognized the function of Greek and Roman philosophers in the preparation for the Christian moment on the scene of world history. Heavily influenced by Plato, yet with his own Christian formulation infused into the system, Augustine would cast a vision of the world picture that promoted unity under the eternal Mind of the Logos. For Augustine, knowledge is participation in the Mind of God; is only in God that we see truly.

Augustine is one of the most important figures claimed by all major branches of post-Nicene Christianity from Rome to Eastern Orthodox to varying Protestant traditions; he therefore weighs heavily in the theology, political theory, ethics, and historiography of Christendom at large. He was a master of the doctrines of grace, especially with juxtaposed reference to the sovereignty of God over both the human soul and the experiences of Nations.

"Belatedly I loved thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new, belatedly I loved thee. For see, thou wast within and I was without, and I sought thee out there. Unlovely, I rushed heedlessly among the lovely things thou hast made. Thou wast with me, but I was not with thee. These things kept me far from thee; even though they were not at all unless they were in thee. Thou didst call and cry aloud, and didst force open my deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine, and didst chase away my blindness."