augustine :: essays research papers

Augustine"I loved the happy life simply I feared to find it in Your house and so I ran from it level(p) as I sought after it. I thought that I would be miserable if I were kept from a womans arms. I did non believe that a cure for this disease lay in Your tenderness I had no experience of much(prenominal) a cure. I believed that continence was within a mans own powers, though I was unaware of such a power within me. I was a fool and did non know - as it is written in Scripture - that no man mass be continent unless You grant it to him. And this You surely would have given to me if, with inward groanings, I had knocked at your ears and with a firm faith had cast my many cares upon You."(from The Confessions, sacred scripture 6, Chapter 11, circa 397-400 A.D.)     Augustine was born in A.D. 354 in the town of Thagaste in Algeria. His father was a pagan and his mother was a devout Christian. Augustine was educated as a rhetorician in the former North African cities of Tagaste, Madaura, and Carthage. Augustine died in A.D. 430 identifying himself as the supreme doctor of grace. Augustine is, arguably, the greatest theologian-philosopher of all time.Some elements of Platonism can be seen in Augustines teaching. His view of the man is Platonic, there is the outer(a) and the inner realness, the lower and the higher, the sensible and the intelligible, and the carnal and the spiritual. To become wise requires a movement of the mind inwards and upwards to graven image, an opening of the mind to faithfulness which provided the mental vision that has been purified by faith. His theme of the divine in the world and in man is more biblical than Platonic, which allowed him to regard the material world with a reverence that would be impossible for a Platonist. His doctrine of wickedness as no-thing, a privation, is different from both Platonic thought and Manichaeism. A philosophical question faces Christians, and in fact all theists, that challenges the belief in God. To theists, God is an omnipotent, perfect God. He is good. Theists accept this, and embrace it, for how else can they devotion God and give their lives to Him unless He is good? However, in this world, everything is consumed by evil. If God is the author of all things in this world, and he is good, theists must then subscribe to themselves what is evil and where it came from.