ipl-logo

Augustine Of Hippo Research Paper

1270 Words6 Pages

The ¬¬¬City of God is Saint Augustine of Hippo’s seminal Christian piece of literature. It is one of the most influential Christian works since the New Testament itself. Augustine was born in 354 AD, in a rural part of North Africa. His mother was a stern Christian woman, whose ideas he rejected in his youth. He turned to Manichaeism, a popular gnostic sect of Christianity. He was a firm believer of this during his formative years. Eventually, Augustine came to believe the “orthodox” Christianity of his time. This is when he wrote his Confessions and the City of God. After the shocking sack of Rome by the barbarians, there was great internal conflict among Romans; the traditional pagans blamed Rome’s turn to Christianity for its fall. Augustine …show more content…

In the above excerpt is an important theological argument from Augustine, one which can be seen in the modern West. He first reminds us that from Thales’ point of view, there is no room for a divine intelligence. Thales believed that everything ultimately derives from water, and that everything in the universe simply exists due to this natural law, and that there is no divine influence behind it. Augustine implies, however, that to look upon the world’s supposed beauty and not believe there is a creator is foolish. Thales likely would have replied that any perceived beauty is simply a product of our own relative opinion; beauty or lack thereof is not indicative of how the universe actually works in any way. The argument Augustine used, a flawed one, is still in use by Christian creationists today. It is flawed, because beauty, as perceived by humans, is taken as a direct indicator of metaphysical or spiritual truth, instead of being the relative opinion it truly is. Before moving on to analyze Plato, Augustine makes some remarks about Socrates himself, the master of …show more content…

Augustine, then, views Platonism as a proper evolution towards Christianity. Again, a point that Augustine seems to miss, or not worry about, is the difference in personality of their Gods. The Christian God is one who created man in his image, one who loves his people. The Platonic god, however, is a much more abstract god; one that is not truly embodied as anything like a human. Rather, it is simply a mathematical, scientific idea that is necessary for all other things to be created. This creation is no conscious act, rather, the universe simply arises the way it does because of the natural laws in the “creator.” Regardless of this difference on the nature of god, Augustine heavily capitalized on the similarities between Platonist philosophy and Christian

Show More
Related
834 Words | 4 Pages

Basically everyone was all about Greco-Roman mythology, what with them being Greco-Roman and all. Then all of a sudden, BAM: here's Augustine developing a philosophical model based around Christianity. But is it some frigid treatise on the pros and cons of converting? HECK NO.

Read More
730 Words | 3 Pages

Representatives Some of the people representing the state of Texas in congress are Louie Gohmert, Ted Poe, Sam Johnson, and John Ratcliffe, just to name a few. All of the people listed are men, and all of them are republican. In fact, only 33 out of 36 representatives are male, and only 11 out of 36 are democratic. Both senators, Ted Cruz and John Cornyn are male republicans as well.

Read More
801 Words | 4 Pages

To support this, Paley offers an example which I find interesting and also synonymous with a philosophical analogy of god during the 1800s. He explains that a watch, created complexly with its moving parts and its multiple purposes, also must have an intelligent creator, a watchmaker, in order to exist originally. Let’s consider this for a minute. If I were to somehow find a watch lying in the middle of nature, complex as it is, the first thought in my mind wouldn’t be that it was there naturally. Instead, the first thought upon discovering the watch would be that someone or something had made the watch.

Read More
1556 Words | 7 Pages

Aquinas made a valid point out demonstrating how God can make things happen or he can just let them play out. God doesn’t always want to know everything and sometimes he just goes with the flow. Another great point is that God gives us free will so that we can make our own decisions. Free will makes it so we can make good or bad choices but the important thing is that we’re the ones making our own decisions. I believe that one of the most important points that the article makes is that God is above time and exists infinitely and will never die.

Read More
927 Words | 4 Pages

Quetext  about widget FAQ contact  Introduction: This paper will talk about Book 1 of The City of God, and short summaries for all the chapters in book 1 will be provided in this paper. The important aspect of this paper is that it will specially throw light on Augustine’s understanding about the relationship between faith and reason and also talk about Lucretia’s idea about suicide in reference with the idea presented in Book 1. 1: He gives an extremely short history of Roman times as it identifies with venerating God. Moreover, he goes ahead to examine what number of individuals underestimate God and his works. 2: There are histories of countless wars, both before the working of Rome and since its ascent and the

Read More
840 Words | 4 Pages

Reading an endless passage of texts allows the readers to give up for many reasons from not being engaged or being convinced of the beneficial aspect of the text is due to the lack of good writing. The definition of “good writing” can confuse people by being too broad. My belief of good writing is writing that compels an audience to feel interested, motivated, or deeply connected through the composed text. The article “To The Youth Athlete I was, And The Adult Athlete I’ll Never Be” written by Gina Davis have the qualities of good writing which targets a certain Discourse community. A Discourse community is living to a certain role or “identity kit” they upholds themselves with the driven skills, values, and beliefs to their community.

Read More
1098 Words | 5 Pages

The notion of God’s existence isn’t held as highly as it once was. John Irving presents this secular view by creating various characters with a disparity of beliefs. He sets Owen to believe that he is God’s instrument; however Owen juxtaposition is John Wheelwright who is cynical about God’s impact of the natural world. John Wheelwright’s story illustrates that in a secular, closed immanent world, Christians have to “struggle to recover a sense of what the Incarnation can mean” (John Irving, pg 753). Which means that God has this whole world in the palm of his hands and he basically can do his own bidding with it.

Read More
1100 Words | 5 Pages

Therefore, to the common person, Stout 1 Christian at the time. However, Constantine believed that Chrisitianity would hold Rome together (Regent Blackboard). This principle that Constantine lived by not only strengthens the philosophy of Rome, but it strengthens them in their faith. Throughout Christian teachings, we are told to live through God and believe in Him, and He will protect us and be there for us forever. There was some speculation whether Constantine actually believed in Christianity or not, but there if firm proof that he actively participated in and genuinely liked theological debates (Regent Blackboard).

Read More
551 Words | 3 Pages

The book VII of Confessions debates the fundamental topics of faith and philosophy like the presence of God, the root of evil, and the connection between the two. Prior to being influenced by Neoplatonism, Augustine believed that things needed to occupy space in order to exist, implying that God might not be as superior and omnipotent as thought by the Catholics. Similarly, he could not understand the problem of the evil, concluding that evil is just a deliberate choice which our free will allows us to make. Eventually, Neoplatonic ideas, which state that God is the only source of goodness from which all other things descend and evil is just the lack (privation) of this goodness, shaped his mindset and contributed to the rise of the famous Augustine theodicy. However,

Read More
1676 Words | 7 Pages

He is considered one of the most important figures in the history of the Church and his writings have had a profound influence on Catholic theology and spirituality. St. Augustine's life and work exemplify the mark of One because of his commitment to the unity of the Church and his belief in the power of faith to bring people together. St. Augustine's

Read More
1532 Words | 7 Pages

However, Boethius’s views on God’s knowledge more strongly illustrate this point because they place a greater distinction between God’s knowledge and our will, by placing God outside of the temporal world, changing the conception of foreknowledge. Both theories are successful in accounting for human free will and the excellence of God, blending the two idea to allow human beings to determine their own live within the space provided by the all powerful

Read More
342 Words | 2 Pages

Our world has developed and succeeded by the thoughts and contributions of many great leaders. Those leaders are Saint Augustine and Plato. There are many historical things that happen during ancient times. As you can read from all their writings these two do not have the same worldviews. When reading about Saint Augustine and the book the city of god, it teaches you about a place where heaven and earth are sacred.

Read More
1151 Words | 5 Pages

Thus the good in created things can be diminished and augmented” (Unknown, 2002). Furthermore, Augustine makes a profound statement about the good when entering into the conversation about evil he states, “God is good, utterly and entirely better than the things which he has made. But, since he is good, the things that he has made are also good.

Read More
770 Words | 4 Pages

Augustine of Hippo was a Christian philosopher who played a big part and impacted Christianity greatly. Augustine helped Christianity by helping the Church by finding answers to questions that could have damaged the Church if they went unanswered. He explained to the Church original sin, the Trinity, and clarified the concept of predestination. Augustine was the bishop in the city of Hippo located in North Africa. He was the son of the famous Saint Monica, but despite his mother being a devout Christian his father believed in paganism.

Read More
1584 Words | 7 Pages

The Problem of Evil “Evil has no positive nature but the loss of good has received the name of evil” said St. Augustine. The problem comes from the fact that if there is a deity that is all good, all knowing and all powerful, how can evil exist? The problem of evil (or argument from evil) is the problem of reconciling the existence of the evil in the world with the existence of an omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful) and perfectly good God. The argument from evil is the atheistic argument that the existence of such evil cannot be reconciled with, and so disproves, the existence of such a God. Therefore, the “problem of evil” presents a significant issue.

Read More

More about Augustine Of Hippo Research Paper

Related Topics

Open Document