In the 4th Century, one of the greatest and most influential men that ever lived was born. Aurelius Augustine of Hippo was born in the year 354 AD, on November 13th. Augustine was born into a wealthy family and was well educated through out his young life. When he reached the age of 17, he went off to study in Carthage and began an incredible intellectual journey that, little did he know, would take him to great places. Around this same time, he renounced his Christian faith, which he was raised up believing, and joined the Manichaean religion. This upset his mother, Monica, who was a devout Christian and wanted that same devotion for her son (AmericanCatholic.org). During this time, Augustine lived a life of hedonism, indulging in the more sinful pleasures of life, including sexual affairs (Augustine of Hippo).
In the summer of the year 386 AD, when he was 31 years of age, Augustine was prompted to pick up and read from his Bible. He opened up and read from the book of Romans, specifically chapters 12 through 15. The specific text that had an increased amount of impact on him, was Romans 13:13-14, which talks about turning to Christ rather than the lustful passions of the flesh and the world. It was through this experience that Augustine was converted to Christianity and believed in the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ ("The Confessions of St. Augustine").
Shortly after that, Augustine was baptized, returned home, sold everything he had except his family home (he actually turned his home into a monastic foundation for himself and others) and became an ordained priest and began a career of preaching in 391 AD. He was eventually made Bishop of Hippo in the 395 AD. He remained in that position until his death, in the year 430 AD (Saint Augustine of Hippo). Although Augustine had an incredible impact on just about every discipline of study, he is most famously remembered for his influence of philosophy and theology.
First, Augustine had a significant influence on philosophy. He was no stranger to the various schools of thought, having dabbled in Manichaean, Neo-Platonic, and Christian philosophy. Just about every student of philosophy has or will at one point read Augustine. He has covered topics such as anthropology, astrology, ethics, issues of war, issues of sexuality, and so many others. One of his many contributions of study in the realm of philosophy, is his work on epistemology. Epistemology is the study of how we know what we know, or simply one's theory of knowledge (Ligonier).
In Augustine's day, there was a great debate between the skeptics and those who weren't so skeptic, on the reliability of the senses or, more specifically, sensory perception as a means of understanding truth. The skeptics argued that since our senses can be wrong (i.e. we can perceive something to be true that in reality is not true), then they cannot be trusted at all.
Augustine, being a man of certainty rather than skepticism, refuted this claim that our senses cannot be considered trustworthy at all, with a wonderful illustration. He used the example of a person in a boat paddling with an oar. When the oar is in the water, the man in the boat can see the oar up until the oar is in the water. Now, if the water is clear and the man can see into the water, then he can see the whole oar, but the half of the oar that is in the water appears to bend, but in reality it remains straight. This means that what is perceived is not entirely true, because the oar is not bent. But it is partially true, because there is an oar and it is in the water (R.C. Sproul, The Consequences of Ideas: Augustine).
What Augustine was arguing, was that when dealing with issues such as these, there are three things to consider: what is true, our perception of what is true, and how we feel about what is true. He made the point that even though our senses cannot be considered an autonomous, dogmatic means of recognizing truth, it can still play a part in it. Or in other words, Augustine was arguing against full skepticism and arguing for the basic reliability of sense perception. This helped silence some of the skeptics of his day and played a part in mending the two opposing opinions on this issue, also leaving behind a tremendous influence in the area of epistemology (R.C. Sproul, “The Consequences of Ideas: Understanding the Concepts That Shaped Our World”).
Second, Augustine was a pioneer of, and had a great influence on, theology. Unlike Calvin, Luther, Knox, Zwingli, or any other well noted theologian, Augustine didn't really have anyone behind him that he could build from doctrinally. Despite that, he took on the responsibility of paving a wide road for people to follow in with regards to just about every theological issue or doctrine imaginable. He wrote on topics such as ecclesiology, eschatology, mariology, theology proper, pneumatology, the theology of sin, and just about every Christian doctrine. Two of his many significant contributions of theology are his sacramental theology and his soteriology.
Augustine was a strong advocate of the belief that the bread and wine in the Eucharist became the literal body and blood of Christ and that Christ was in the literal bread and wine (Augustine, “Sermons to the People”). This belief had a great impact on the Roman Catholic theology of transubstantiation. This was not as widely believed by Protestants, who maintained that it was not the physical presence of Christ in the bread and wine, but the spirit of His presence in the sacrament as a whole (Augustine, “Explanations of the Psalms”).
His most significant influence in Protestant/Reformed theology, is his soteriology. During his time, there was a significant controversy called the Pelagian Controversy. The Pelagian Controversy was started by a man named Pelagius, who came out with some preposterous views of salvation, views that were contrary to the teaching of the Bible and of the church. He believed that the fall only affected Adam, and that there was no imputation of original sin to the rest of mankind. He argued that anyone born after the fall, retained the ability to live holy, and righteous lives apart from the grace of God. He stated that grace could have "facilitated" righteousness but said that it was not necessary to live a sinless life. He taught that man was not enslaved to sin and was actually morally capable of choosing God, apart from God's sovereign grace (R.C.Sproul, “The Pelagian Controversy”).
Augustine refuted this by stating that man is totally and utterly depraved and is in full necessity of God's sovereign grace for salvation. He argued that the very cooperation with grace was the effect of God, by His sovereignty, empowering the sinner to cooperate. Augustine insisted that all of those who were numbered among the elect were given a gift of grace that brought them faith (R.C.Sproul, “The Pelagian Controversy”).
This served as the precursor to the Reformed doctrine called monergism. Monergism teaches that salvation is one handed. It presents salvation as God reaching down out of Heaven, saving spiritually dead sinners by Himself, giving them life with Christ (Theopedia). This doctrine was very much influenced, inspired, and coined by St. Augustine, making him an incredibly influential church figure.
Therefore, although Augustine has been remembered as many things, and for his influence in many areas of study, he is most famously remembered for his influence of philosophy, specifically epistemology, and theology, specifically sacramental theology and soteriology.
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