Who was St. Augustine? (Rome's Greatest Theologian)

We're going to begin today's episode not at the end of the 4th century with Augustine, but at the beginning with the Roman Empire split between two emperors, Maximian and Diocletian. Diocletian ordered an edict that declared all churches and scriptures across the empire be burned, and that Christians be banned from assembling to worship. Horror stories about Christian martyrs began to emerge. Christians were burned in the fire, the Bishop of Nicomedia was decapitated, and then Peter Cubicliaris had salt and vinegar poured into his wounds and was then boiled alive. But the great persecution would come to an end. Diocletian died and just a couple of months later, Emperor Constantine took the throne, well at least mostly. Having grown up as a Roman pagan, at some point around about the year 312 AD he started to soften his stance towards Christianity and then even start to begin to call himself a Christian. In 313 he issued the Milan Edict. Christianity was now legal and even encouraged across the empire. But there was still an issue. How was Roman Christianity to look and what was it to teach? Today we'll help answer that question by unpacking the life of Augustine of Hippo. Okay so good news, for the first time in the channel's history we're covering ancient history, and so if you're keen to see more ancient history in the future, leave a comment below with which one of these you'd like to see. Ancient Rome, Ancient China, or Ancient Israel. So let's get into Augustine. He was born in a place called Phascate which is in present-day Algeria. Now in terms of what he looked like, I'm going to draw him like this. However this could be completely wrong. His mother Monica was ethnically a Bourbon, i.e. native North African, but his father Patrick was a descendant of white Roman colonists. So here's some of the different ways that people portray Augustine. And so he was born around 354 AD and when he was just a teenager he nearly died from an illness. And bracing for his son's death, Augustine's mother Monica, a Christian, got a priest to baptize Augustine. At this point in history the church hadn't really codified many doctrines of baptism and so a lot of superstition surrounded it. When you found out I was Jewish you invited me to a pool party, it turned out to be a baptism. Well excuse me for trying to sneak you into heaven. The baptism basically meant nothing to Augustine and in 371 he moved to Carthage to study his main passion, rhetoric. Now while in Carthage Augustine attended church, but this was pretty much to pick up. Depending on where you were in the empire at this point, some churches basically functioned for young people like nightclubs. And so after dating multiple girls, Augustine met the woman who would ultimately become his long-term mistress and would give birth to his son. We don't actually know her name, Augustine never mentioned it. And though it was clear that Augustine had great love for the woman, he never actually married her because she was of low status and provided Augustine with no family links to advance his career. Ultimately after sleeping around and partying throughout his youth in Carthage, Augustine was deeply unsatisfied. And in his emptiness he read a book which we no longer have any copies of, Cicero's Hortensias. And Cicero made the argument that happiness was found in wisdom and not in pleasure. And so it was at this point that Augustine made his conversion to Manichaeism. Basically this was like an ancient version of Scientology. Essentially the religion taught that good forces fought against evil forces and that dark particles made people do evil things. And the more you leveled up in the religion, the more access you had to the secret knowledge. Usually to hear the secret doctrine you have to be in the church for several years Stan. Are you ready to hear the truth? And for Augustine this made perfect sense and he set about trying to convert his mother to the religion. However Augustine's confidence in the religion was actually slowly chipped away. Firstly his friend Amitus converted away from Manichaeism to Christianity on his deathbed. Secondly the religion made a number of claims that were simply scientifically inaccurate. And this was still known even for the much more limited knowledge of astronomy they had back then too. For example the Manichaeists claimed that eclipses were when dark particles would become so present that the gods didn't want to look at the battle between good and evil. However astronomers had long been able to predict when eclipses would happen. Finally when people couldn't answer Augustine's questions he was promised that a more learned man named Faustus actually could. However when Augustine finally met Faustus he was a huge letdown and couldn't answer any of them. And so having lost his initial zeal for religion Augustine turned his attention towards careerism and moved to Rome, the centre of the empire. But just like Faustus Rome was a huge letdown. It had all the partying and hedonism that Augustine had left behind and so Augustine took a job in Milan teaching rhetoric. Now this was another smart career move because it was where the emperor's court was and Symmachus, the prefect of Milan and a pagan, wanted someone who was well spoken to speak out against the strong Christian presence in the city. Now ironically Symmachus's cousin Ambrose was the bishop of Milan and like Augustine he was an excellent public speaker. And so Augustine actually went to watch Ambrose speak a to get some rake on his opponent but b to study Ambrose's public speaking technique. But unlike his experience at Carthage Augustine was actually captivated by the bible. You see at his church in Carthage bible passages were taught in isolation without the context of the entire narrative of the bible. It was weird old testament stories about sacrifices and guys with heaps of wives. However when Ambrose preached it was different. Those same stories were connected to the new testament. You see the Passover sacrifices of lambs were actually a precursor of the sacrifice of the lamb of God which was Jesus whose sacrifice caused God's judgment to pass over believers. Instead of random things these signs from the old testament were actually signs of a savior who would come and this caused a great deal of turmoil inside of Augustine. You see every way that Augustine sought fulfillment in hedonism in purpose and in careerism all of it ultimately failed Augustine and left him really unsatisfied. But the idea that people were sheep that had wandered away from the pen but were rescued by a good shepherd actually really resonated with him. He cut ties from the manikins but to convert to christianity was still a step too far at this point. After all he'd spent his whole adult life arguing against it and so he banished his mistress and got engaged to a woman who had more powerful connections. But as Augustine continued to wrestle with his deep dissatisfaction at age 31 he picked up and a letter that Paul wrote to the church in Rome which actually formed part of the bible. And as he reached chapter 13 he read this Knowing that debauchery hadn't provided the answers and longing for peace that was promised by a faith in Jesus Augustine converted to christianity and was baptized by Ambrose himself. And knowing that he pursued careerism for selfish purposes Augustine gave up his political ambitions and returned to Africa to become a pastor. And as a skilled speaker the church became packed to hear Augustine preach. And so from the pulpit Augustine had a few contemporary issues to deal with. Firstly by the early 400s the goths had sacked Rome itself and forced roman refugees to Africa. The vandals then started to arrive in northern Africa which left pastors with Some appealed to Acts 9 in which Luke described Paul fleeing Damascus out a window. Augustine rebuffed this idea however and said that Paul fled when his enemies were only looking for him rather than everyone. And he went on to say that pastors should stay to care for whoever was in their city even if it did mean dying by the hands of the vandals. Secondly Augustine dealt with a group called the Donatists. Basically during the great persecution of Diocletian 100 years beforehand pastors were forced to hand over their bibles or face death. Some did indeed die but many pastors handed over their bibles and secretly remained Christians. The Donatists argued that those pastors weren't really Christians though and so any person that they had baptized or pastor that they had ordained were not really Christians. The true Christians were rather them the Donatists who descended from some of the Christians who didn't hand over their bibles and they wanted nothing to do with the church. Again Augustine rebuffed this idea by saying that Saint Peter denied Jesus on three occasions and was actually still embraced by Jesus himself. Thirdly Augustine squared off with a British monk called Pelagius. Pelagius effectively taught that humans could reach a state of moral perfection by obedience to the bible. Augustine flat out rejected this idea because this would effectively make Jesus null and void if people could become sinless by their own efforts. Augustine would expand upon this to become what's now a pretty well-known doctrine of the church, original sin. For Augustine Adam's original rebellion against God by eating the fruit Humans weren't simply born with a clean slate until their first sin but rather they were born into sin. For example babies didn't need to be taught to steal another baby's bottle. Every single person born needed to have their sin washed and for Augustine that was achieved by the blood of Jesus. He actually went even further than this though arguing that the way in which original sin was passed down to future generations was through sex and that that was why Jesus had to be born of In 396 AD at the age of 42 he became the bishop of Hippo. Initially he didn't want to be a bishop because of his administrative responsibilities but reluctantly took the position. As a bishop he'd write numerous important works including Confessions, a book recounting his testimony in empty experiences living hedonistically, and City of God, a book that's hard to summarize in one sentence but essentially it's half a commentary on the fall of Rome and half an argument that no worldly city compared to the heavenly city that God has prepared for Christians. He also wrote a lesser known work called On the Trinity in which he affirmed that the council of Nicaea in 327 AD was right to say that God existed as father son and spirit. In 412 AD the council of Carthage backed Augustine over Pelagius and affirmed the doctrine of original sin and then in 430 AD at the age of 76 Augustine finally died. Had the church not had Augustine it could have looked very different. Thanks for watching it's so hard to pack Augustine into such a small window so let me know what you think I missed out on. Also I apologize about the echo I've currently cleared out my entire house to move and there's no furniture to absorb the sound. We can't wait to see you next time for our next venture into a fascinating part of history.