AUGUSTINE, St
24Christians believe the Godhead consists
of three persons.
AUGUSTINE, St. (354–430 CE).
Augustine Aurelius Augustinus, more
familiarly known as Augustine and
dignified by the Catholic Church with the
twin titles of “saint” and “doctor of the
Church,” was born in 354 CE in North
Africa, and died there in 430 as Bishop of
Hippo Regius, a small Roman town in
what is now Algeria. He was born to
Monica and Patricius, poor but middle-
class Roman citizens with high ambitions
for their oldest son, which led them to
secure the best possible education for
him. Augustine, by his own account, prof-
ited from this education, and by his early
30s had been appointed official rhetor to
the city of Milan, a position which would
ordinarily have led to further advance-
ment in the Roman civil service. Unsatis-
fied, however, he sought a deeper and more
meaningful understanding of life and the
world, became convinced that Christianity
was true, and in 387 was baptized in Milan.
He spent the rest of his life in the service of
the church as priest and then bishop,
preaching and writing on almost every
topic of lively intellectual concern at the
time. Most of his work—an enormous
corpus—survived him (he took good care
that it should), and through it he became
the single most important influence on
Western thought for at least a millennium.
He made significant contributions in
at least four areas of thought. The first,
in response to the Manicheans, was the
appropriation and development of strands
of Platonist thought which made possible
the defense of an understanding of God
as creator of the cosmos out of nothing,
and, concomitantly, of evil as lack. The
second, against the Donatists, and the
pagans, was the elaboration of a doctrine
of the church as a peaceful city opposed
in its founding and purpose to the violent
human city, and yet at the same time,
composed of saints and sinners admixed.
The third, against the Pelagians, was a
defense of the primacy of divine grace
over human effort, while not yet denying
human freedom. And the fourth was the
elaboration of an understanding of what
it means to call God triune, which remains
largely determinative for the Christian
West to this day. Augustine’s key works
include The Confessions (397–401), On
Christian Doctrine (396–426), The
Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Love
(421–424), On the Trinity (400–416), and
The City of God (413–426).AUTHORITY. A term that has both an
evaluative and descriptive use. Evalua-
tively, a person or institution may be
said to be authoritative when it is trust-
worthy and thus worthy of belief and,
perhaps, obedience. One may use the
term descriptively when referring to a set-
ting in which a person or institution is
deemed trustworthy and thus believed to
be worthy of belief and obedience, with-
out thereby implying that the authority