How did Augustine influence Christianity?
English: augustine at the school of tagaste (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Augustine eventually realized the intellectual and spiritual failure of his search through paganism. After his soul came to rest through conversion to Christ, Augustine would become the greatest theologian and apologist of the first Christian millennium. He powerfully refuted prevailing pagan philosophies (including Manichaeanism) as well as heresies that threatened to divide and corrupt the church. In The City of God, Augustine brilliantly confronted the pagan charge that Christianity was responsible for the downfall of the Roman Empire. He focused the blame where it belonged by exposing paganism’s spiritual bankruptcy. Moreover, in so doing, Augustine constructed a grand philosophy of history in observing that the crisis of his day was only part of a larger whole. The “City of the World,” comprised of those whose chief love is the self, stands in sharp contrast in every age to the “City of God,” comprised of those who love God.