SAINT AUGUSTINE

IN 50 PAGES
A QUICK LAYMAN’S GUIDE TO
AUGUSTINIANISM

TAYLOR MARSHALL, PH.D.

PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY
PRESIDENT OF THE NEW SAINT THOMAS INSTITUTE

SAINT JOHN PRESS

MMXIV
Copyright © 2014 Taylor Reed Marshall, Ph.D.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any
information storage and retrieval system without the permission
in writing from the publisher or author.

Sacred Scripture citations are generally from the 1899 edition of

the Douay-Rheims (Challoner) Bible or the Revised Standard
Version-Catholic Edition or a translation of my own rendering.

Marshall, Taylor
Saint Augustine in 50 Pages
A Quick Layman’s Guide to Augustinianism / Taylor Marshall
1st ed.
Includes bibliographical references and index
ISBN:
1. Augustine. 2. Catholicism. 3. Theology. I. Title.

Published by
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This book is dedicated to the faithful and generous readers of
my blog at: taylormarshall.com.
 Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS  ........................................................................  1
INTRODUCTION  ...................................................................................  2
WHO  WAS  SAINT  AUGUSTINE?  .......................................................  3
AUGUSTINE  OF  AFRICA  ...................................................................................  3
AUGUSTINE  THE  CHILD  ..................................................................................  4
AUGUSTINE  THE  TEENAGER  ..........................................................................  5
AUGUSTINE  LEAVES  HIS  CONCUBINE  ..........................................................  5
AUGUSTINE  THE  CONVERT  ............................................................................  6
AUGUSTINE  THE  PRIEST  AND  BISHOP  .........................................................  7
AUGUSTINE  AND  THE  DONATISTS  ................................................................  9
DEATH  OF  AUGUSTINE  ................................................................................  11
AUGUSTINE’S  CONTRIBUTIONS  ...................................................  13
NATURE  AND  GRACE  ....................................................................................  13
ORIGINAL  SIN  IN  THE  BIBLE  .......................................................................  16
TRADUCIANISM  VS.  CREATIONISM  ............................................................  17
ORIGINAL  SIN  AND  CONCUPISCENCE  ........................................................  18
AUGUSTINE’S  THEOLOGY  OF  THE  BODY  ...................................................  19
A  DOMESTIC  SPAT  ........................................................................................  20
CELIBACY  OR  MARRIAGE?  ...........................................................................  21
THE  GOOD  OF  MARRIAGE  ...........................................................................  22
AUGUSTINE’S  LEGACY  .....................................................................  26
AUGUSTINE  AND  FIELD  TRIPS  ....................................................................  26
AUGUSTINE  AND  MR.  MIYAGI  ....................................................................  27
AUGUSTINE  THE  NEOPLATONIST  ...............................................................  28
AUGUSTINE  ON  THE  TRINITY  .....................................................................  29
THE  PROTESTANT  REFORMATION  .............................................................  32
MARTIN  LUTHER,  THE  AUGUSTINIAN  PRIEST  ........................................  32
CALVIN  THE  PSEUDO-­‐AUGUSTINIAN  ........................................................  33
AUGUSTINE  AND  JANSENISM  ......................................................................  35
THE  JANSENIST  ERROR:  NATURE  VS.  GRACE  ..........................................  36
AUGUSTINE’S  CONTEMPORARY  INFLUENCE  ............................................  38

iv
LIST  OF  BOOKS  ON  AUGUSTINE  FOR  BEGINNERS  ..................  41
THE  WRITINGS  OF  AUGUSTINE  ...................................................  42
THE  WORKS  OF  AUGUSTINE BY  DATE  .....................................................  43

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 Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my wife Joy for pushing me to write this
book and finish it. Long ago, Joy told me to write this book and
I resisted. I must say that I have had more fun writing this book
than any of my previous works. Thank you, Joy!
I’d also like to thank the 15,884 daily subscribers to my blog
for supporting me and encouraging me. I put up a poll on my
birthday, March 29, 2014, asking the readers to choose a book
idea. They chose Augustine in 50 Pages, and so here it is. For me
the gift was in writing it.
As odd as it might sound, I would like to thank Saint
Augustine. I could literally feel his presence in the room with
me. I can only say that writing this book was an anointed
experience. Any good in it comes from his intercession.
Anything bad or any errors come from me.

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 Introduction
This little book of fifty pages is only a brief introduction to the
thought and influence of Saint Augustine. I kept it to fifty pages
to attract readers who might otherwise not find interest in a
1,600 year old saint from Africa. This little book serves as the
worm on the fishhook. After you bite the worm, I hope that you
are forever hooked on Augustine.
I have focused primarily on Augustine’s biography, his
doctrine of original sin, nature and grace, his conflict with heresy
and schism, and how all of these relate to his understanding of
human sexuality. There are many areas of his life and thought
that I was not able to squeeze into fifty brief pages. Much more
could be said about his Trinitarian theology, his political
philosophy, and his major works like the City of God. At the end
of this book, you will find a list of recommended books and
resources, and I hope you will be inspired to continue the
reading journey.

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 Who was Saint Augustine?
Augustine of Africa
Saint Augustine was born on the continent of Africa—North
Africa to be exact. He is and will remain one of the brightest
jewels of the African intellectual tradition. Even secular scholars
of European and African history recognize that Augustine of
Hippo rivals the greatest minds of antiquity and the greatest
minds of our own era.
Ethnically, Augustine is descended from the ancient
Phoenicians, who gave us, among other things, the alphabet.i A
sizable population of Phoenician people migrated to Carthage,
North Africa. These Punic people traced their origins to a group
of settlers from Phoencia just north of the Holy Land. Other
famous North African Punics include:

1. Hannibal (famous general who used elephants against

the Romans)
2. Septimius Severus (Roman emperor)
3. Tertullian (theologian)
4. Saint Perpetua (martyr)
5. Saint Cyprian (theologian, bishop, and martyr)

The Punic people, strictly speaking, were Semitic. That is, they
are ethnically and linguistically related to the Jews. Religiously,
however, they were altogether given over to the worship of Baal
and child sacrifice. Their access to the sea and international
commerce brought them into contact with the religious and
cultural traditions of Rome and Greece.
Augustine’s ethnicity was Punic, but he likely had a few drops
of Berber blood as well, since the Phoenicians and native
Berbers did intermarry over time. Although his ethnicity is
Punic/Berber, his cultural heritage was Latin and aristocratic. So

3
what did he look like? He likely resembled a contemporary
Berber African. If you are interested in what modern Berber
people look like, Google images of Berber footballers Zinedine
Zidane or Karim Benzema.

Augustine the Child

Augustine was born with the Latin name Aurelius Augustinus
in the year A.D. 354. His name Aurelius suggests that his father's
ancestors were freedmen of the gens Aurelia and given full
Roman citizenship by the Edict of Caracalla in 212. His mother
Monica gave birth to him in the town of Thagaste, which is
modern day Souk Ahras in Algeria. His mother was a convinced
Catholic Christian and his father Patricius (“Patrick”) was a
Punic pagan. Providentially, Patricius did confess his faith in
Christ and entered the Catholic Church on his deathbed. No
doubt, Saint Peter’s prophecy came true in the person of Saint
Monica:
Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so
that even if some do not obey the word, they may be
won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when
they see your respectful and pure conduct. (1 Pet 3:1)
Augustine’s family belonged to the annexed Roman nobility. For
this reason, little Augustine was fluent in Latin from his earliest
years. Augustine was sent to formal schooling at Madaurus
(present day M’Daourouch) which lay about twenty miles from
his hometown Thagaste.
During this time, he recounts how he and his friends stole
fruit that they did not want to eat. They stole, he relates, for the
thrill of stealing. This experience later gave Augustine insight
into the nature of concupiscence and original sin—doctrines we
will study in the pages to come.

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Augustine the Teenager
When he was 15, Augustine began to read the writings of
Cicero, the famous Roman orator and Stoic. Cicero sparked his
love for reflective thinking, oratory, and philosophy. At the age
of seventeen, Augustine moved on to the equivalent of “going to
college.” He enrolled in formal training in the major metropolis
of Carthage to study rhetoric. Like many young men who leave
home for college, Augustine did not embrace his mother’s faith
in Christ after he left home. Instead, he joined the popular and
exotic sect of the Manichaeans.
The Manichaeans were a dualistic sect that held that the
immaterial spiritual realm was good while the material physical
realm was evil. Young men were attracted to this sect because it
was intellectually idealistic but made allowances for sins of the
flesh. Within the context of “college life” and Manichaean
teaching, Augustine began to explore the world of illicit
sexuality. Like a good Manichaean, it was during this time that he
famously prayed, “Grant me chastity and continence, but not
yet.”ii
At the age of 19, Augustine began an affair with a young lady
in Carthage. Augustine never mentions her name even though
they cohabitated for over thirteen years and she gave birth to his
only son, whom he named Adeodatus—Latin for “Given by
God.” It is believed that he never married this woman because
she was likely low-class and deemed below his aristocratic rank.

Augustine Leaves His Concubine

In the year A.D. 383, when Augustine was 29, he founded a
school of rhetoric in Rome. He struggled as a professor. At that
time, students did not pay tuition to a university system, but
directly to the professor. When tuition time came, his students
fled or hid. Augustine fell on hard times.
Fortunately, Augustine was hired to teach rhetoric in the
imperial city of Milan the next year. At this time in his life,

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Augustine began to reassess his life in two important ways. First,
he began to distance himself from Manichaeanism. He was
attracted to the philosophy of Neoplatonism—the study of Plato
as interpreted by Plotinus. Second, Augustine fell under the
influence of the local bishop of Milan named Ambrose.
Ambrose was an excellent preacher and Augustine admired the
bishop’s rhetorical style in the pulpit. Augustine would later
credit Ambrose as his father in the Christian Faith. These
sermons and his mother’s constant prayers would lead him back
to the Christian faith.
When he was 31, Augustine abandoned the mother of his
only child to marry a young girl that belonged to his noble
peerage. His mother Monica had never approved of Augustine’s
relationship with the low-born Carthaginian woman, primarily
because it was not based on the Catholic teaching of sacramental
marriage. Monica traveled from North Africa to Milan in order
to convince Augustine to break ties with his concubine.
Augustine agreed.
Meanwhile, Monica arranged a marriage between Augustine
and a young girl of the nobility. There was, however, a legal
problem. His new fiancée was only eleven years old! Augustine
would have to wait for her to come of age. Augustine, as you
know by now, was a lusty man and he could not wait. In the
meantime, he acquired a new concubine in Milan.

Augustine the Convert

Augustine’s conversion happened through the influence and
mediation of friends. When he was 32 years old, in the summer
of A.D. 386, his friends acquired and read the Life of Saint Antony
of the Desert. Augustine was impressed by Saint Antony who, as a
Christian, lived a life of poverty, chastity, and solitude in the
Egyptian wilderness.

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 Augustine fled to the garden to contemplate the model given
in this story. He explains that he heard a childlike voice saying
“tolle, lege, tolle lege”—“take and read, take and read”. He opened a
Bible and read from Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, chapters
12-15. Augustine was cut to the heart when he read these words:

Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and

wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the
Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to
fulfill the lusts thereof. (Romans 13:13-14)

In reality, it was Augustine’s love for sexual license that had kept
him away from Christ all these years. His Manichaeism and his
Platonism were just theoretical cloaks for his predominant
vice—inordinate sexual lust. At this moment, relates Augustine,
he knew that God had pegged him.
After his conversion, Augustine dismissed his new concubine,
and under the influence of his friend Alypius, Augustine broke
off his engagement to the child bride chosen by his mother.
Monica’s disappointment turned into joy when she learned that
Augustine had arranged for instruction in the Catholic Faith. At
the Easter Vigil of A.D. 387, Ambrose baptized Augustine along
with his son Adeodatus. Augustine was 33 years old when he
became a Catholic—the age of Christ at His death and
resurrection.

Augustine the Priest and Bishop

In A.D. 388, when Augustine was 34, he authored his first
book, On the Holiness of the Catholic Church. It was his first
contribution to Catholic apologetics and the first fruits of scores
of books to come in the following decades. Augustine, his son
Adeodatus, and his mother Monica left Milan to return to North
Africa. While they waited for passage back to Africa in Ostia,
Italy, Monica died. She was buried there. After Augustine and

7
Adeodatus arrived back at their family’s estate in North Africa,
Adeodatus also died.
The joy of his conversion to Christ had turned to mourning
over the deaths of his mother and son. Undoubtedly this was a
time of great discouragement. Augustine, in the pattern of Saint
Antony of Egypt, sold everything his family had owned and
turned their villa into a monastery where he studied theology.
Saint Augustine’s monastery and rule became the model for the
Augustinian Order, which remains to this day.
At the age of 37, in A.D. 391, he was ordained a priest for the
city of Hippo Regius (modern day Annaba). Bishop Valerius of
Hippo had taken great interest in the young priest’s zeal for
monasticism and scholarship. As Valerius became weak with age,
he appointed Augustine as his successor. At the age of 42,
Augustine was consecrated as the coadjutor bishop of Hippo
Regius with the right to succession after the death of Valerius.
Before the legalization of Christianity in the Roman Empire,
the life of a bishop was one of persecution and eventual
martyrdom. After the legalization of the faith, the office of
bishop became a sign of prestige clothed with political influence
and secular power. Augustine, however, sought to impose upon
himself the rigor of episcopal sacrifice of the early Church.
Without the pressure of imperial persecution, a new model arose
by which bishops voluntarily lived lives of sacrifice and penance.
Augustine is a watermark in the history of the episcopate
because he left behind the legacy of the monastic bishop. As the
apostolic zeal of the persecuted church and her leaders softened
under post-Constantinian Christianity, Christians sought new
ways to take up their cross. Saint Augustine signals this turn.
As bishop of the city, Augustine had to leave behind his
monastic community but he carried its spirit with him. He kept a
strict life of poverty and required the same from his clergy. The
Rule of Saint Augustine became the model for clerical monks
seeking an active life of pastoral ministry in the context of

8
mystical contemplation. This is one reason why Saint Dominic
would choose the rule of Saint Augustine for his own order eight
centuries later. It outlines the path for preachers and teachers to
live simply and honestly.
The episcopal residence of Augustine became the prototype
for thousands of Augustinian monasteries in the subsequent
centuries. Not surprisingly, no less than ten of Augustine’s
friends filled the bishops’ ranks as time passed, because they also
lived the life of apostolic simplicity.iii
The sermons of Saint Augustine show a careful balance
between robust orthodoxy and the application of the doctrines
to the everyday lives of Christians in his diocese. We get the
impression from these sermons that Augustine was chiefly a
preacher and a theologian second. He preached up to five times
a day. iv His sermons expound on topics relating to personal
holiness, Christian doctrine, the life of prayer, and the Church’s
moral teachings.
Notably, our saint was at the center of several church
councils. He played a prominent role in the four Councils of
Carthage in A.D. 398, 401, 407, 419, and the Councils of Mileve
in 416 and 418. The Councils of Carthage were instrumental in
establishing the canon of Sacred Scripture. While his friend Saint
Jerome had initial doubts concerning the seven deuterocanonical
books of the Old Testament, Saint Augustine explicitly sought to
ratify their inclusion in the biblical canon.v

Augustine and the Donatists

The Donatist schism became the chief pastoral problem for
Augustine during his long episcopate. The Donatists (followers
of a Berber bishop named Donatus Magnus) were a schismatic
sect that quickly gained adherents in Augustine’s North Africa.
The Donatists arose after the Roman persecutions in response to
a theological question: If someone publicly denies the Lord Jesus
Christ in order to avoid torture or martyrdom, can that same

9
person be readmitted into the Catholic Church? There were
many such traditores — traitors of the Catholic Church — in
North Africa and especially in Carthage. Understandably, the
local Christians viewed the traditores with a great deal of
suspicion. Imagine if your father, aunt, and brother were brutally
murdered for their Christian faith. Now imagine that there were
people in your community, people you used to go to church
with, who openly denied Christ and perhaps turned over
members of the clergy or the laity to the authorities. Could these
people be forgiven? Could they be saved? Could they be
readmitted to the Eucharist?
The Donatists took the extreme position of not readmitting
the traditores. If you denied Christ, you were not allowed back
into the Church. Furthermore, they taught that if you received
baptism or the sacraments from a priest or bishop who had been
a traditor, those sacraments were invalid and null. This latter
point became a point of contention because it held that the
moral excellence of the minister established the validity of the
sacrament. Hence, if an evil priest had baptized you, the
Donatist would claim that you were not truly baptized. Likewise,
if your priest were evil, then the Eucharist you received was
merely bread and not the true Body and Blood of Christ.
The Donatists, then, were an extreme sect who viewed the
mainstream Catholic Church as lax and immoral. The Donatists
also used violence to take churches, attack bishops, and protest
Catholic liturgies. The size of the Donatist schism is revealed
when we consider that a conference between the Catholics and
Donatists in AD 411 included 286 Catholic bishops and 279
Donatist bishops—nearly a 50% split! Augustine served as the
voice for the Catholic bishops at this meeting, and here he
explained that the Christian sacraments may be administered by
evil men without rendering the sacraments invalid. According to
Augustine, it is Christ who directly administers the sacrament to
each believer and not the clergyman himself. Since it is Christ

10
who ministers, the sacraments are fully valid and efficacious. Of
course, the Church desires holy clergy (as exemplified by
Augustine’s monastic norms for his clergy), but the faithful do
not need to fear invalid sacraments ministered by evil men.
Christ ratifies the sacraments, not the merely human clergyman.
Augustine also affirmed that mercy and forgiveness could be
granted to the most offensive sinners—even toward the traditores.
The theological position of Augustine was accepted and
ratified and due to his success, the Donatist schism began to die
out from that point forward. The Donatist laity gravitated back
to full communion with the Catholic Church.
Augustine’s presentation of Christ as the chief sacramental
minister and his theory of the Catholic Church as valid despite
the immorality of its leaders is a hallmark of Catholic teaching.
Some might say that this opened the door for tolerance toward
lecherous priests. One could even conclude that the moral slip
of the post-Constantinian Church was partly due to Augustine’s
so-called lax sacramental theology. In reality, Augustine
reasserted the canonical image of Jesus Christ who associated
with prostitutes, forgave Jewish traditores in the form of tax
collectors, and reconciled the Church’s first pope and first
penitent traditor, Saint Peter. If priests could strangle the flow of
grace through their sins, then the lay faithful would be cut off
from Christ. Augustine’s position is a testament to his status as
the Doctor of Grace. If Christianity is not first one of mercy and
grace, then it fails to rightly communicate the Good News of
Jesus Christ.

Death of Augustine
In the spring of A.D. 430, when Augustine was 76 years old,
the Germanic tribe known as the Vandals besieged the city of
Hippo. According to Augustine’s biographer Possidius, the
bishop fell ill and was confined to his bed. He had two last
requests. First, he asked for the penitential Psalms to be hung on

11
his wall so that he could read and pray them for himself and for
the city. Secondly, he asked the clergy of the city to preserve all
the books in the cathedral’s library. He died on August 28, 430.
When the Vandals did sack the city of Hippo, they burned
everything—except for Augustine’s cathedral and library.

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 Augustine’s Contributions
Augustine’s formative years were spent as a disciple of the
Manichaean religion. The sect is named after the Persian teacher
Mani. Mani’s parents belonged to a Gnostic Christian sect called
the Elesaites, which blended Christian teaching with aberrant
beliefs about Christ, reincarnation, circumcision, the Mosaic law,
and rebaptism.
Mani built a new religion based on a dualistic understanding
of the universe. Mani explained that there were two divine
powers—a good power of light and an evil power of darkness.
Manichaeans revered Mani as the reincarnation of Buddha, Lord
Krishna, Zoroaster, and Jesus Christ.
My speculation is that Augustine as a young man was
attracted to Manichaenism because it explained the tension that
he felt within himself. He wanted to be a virtuous philosophical
man like Socrates or Plato, but his lustful flesh pulled him back
to sexual sin. The Manichean doctrine that the world is in
perfect tension between the spiritual world and the world of the
flesh mirrored the tension within Augustine’s soul.
Manicheanism tried to solve the philosophical problem of
evil by simply admitting that that evil had an equal footing with
the good. Good and evil would always be opposed to each other.
This was a moral compromise built into the cosmos—and it was
a moral compromise favorable to the young Augustine.
It is no surprise that Augustine’s conversion centered on this
Pauline verse: “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no
provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof” (Rom 13:13-
14). Augustine discerned that the Lord Jesus Christ could
overcome the desires of flesh. Good could and will conquer evil.

Nature and Grace

Augustine’s moral breakthrough led to his doctrine of nature
and grace. God, Who is all good, can and does share His divine

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power and life with humans. This divine life and power is called
grace.
In A.D. 415, Augustine wrote his famous book On Nature and
Grace. In this work, he combats a heretic named Pelagius, who
denied the doctrine of original sin and alleged that man could be
redeemed without grace or the sacraments.
All of us have a natural tendency toward Pelagianism. We like
to think that we have natural powers that impress God or earn
us points on God’s scorecard. Whenever we judge others, have
prideful thoughts, or think we have done something good
without God’s help, we are following the teaching of Pelagius. In
fact, Satan was really the first Pelagian. He thought he could
achieve divine status by his own natural powers. Ever since then, the
serpent has been trying to deceive humans into believing the
same lie—you will become like unto gods if you reach out and take!
Augustine’s arguments against Pelagius are thorough. He
demonstrates that man cannot by his own powers earn or attain
salvation and sanctity. Augustine knew from his own experience
that he could not achieve victory over his tendency toward
sexual immorality. Rather, the divine power of God’s grace from
above gave him this transformation.
Christ chose an ex-Manichean in Augustine to devastate the
arguments of the heresy of Pelagius because Pelagiansim’s
optimism about nature stands in opposition to the Manichaean
pessimism regarding the evils of creation. The Manichaeans
taught, “God and Satan are equals. The spiritual is good. The
natural is evil.” The Pelagians taught, “You don’t need God to
become good. You are naturally good. Look to yourself.”
Augustine reasoned that neither Manichaenism nor
Pelagianism rightly represented reality. The Bible taught him that
God was good, that creation was good, and that man was good
but fallen. Nothing in nature, not even human nature, could
attain to the supernatural by its own power. If humans were to
have a relationship with God, it would have to be initiated by

14
God. Only someone who possessed both a divine nature and a
human nature could repair a relationship between God and
humans. Moreover, this salvation would necessarily be mediated
by grace.
Christianity, then, was the only way humans could find divine
love, holiness, and salvation. For Augustine, true religion is
based on Christ, who is the God-man. This God-man distributes
bundles of grace to man through instruments called sacraments.
However, there is in humans something that obstructs the flow
of God’s grace and love. It is an inward selfishness that turns the
soul away from God, something not inherently natural in created
man, but something deriving from the original human experience
of sin. This is called concupiscence.
To this day, Saint Augustine is known as the Doctor of Grace.
He is second only to Saint Paul in proclaiming the free and
unmerited grace of God. Saint Paul explained that we are saved
by grace and not by nature:

For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of
yourselves, for it is the gift of God; Not of works, that
no man may glory. For we are his workmanship, created
in Christ Jesus in good works, which God hath prepared
that we should walk in them. (Eph. 2:8-10)

The heretic Pelagius had said that a human could avoid sin
entirely in this life by simply observing his natural moral
compass. Pelagius taught that a person could achieve salvation
and sanctity without baptism or grace, because he denied the
doctrine of original sin. But for Augustine, grace was not there
to usher in natural human perfection; rather, it elevated man to a
beatific dignity. Augustine did not limit salvation to God
restoring us merely to the Garden of Eden. Rather, he foresaw
our union with God in and through the union of Christ’s human
nature to His divine nature.

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Original Sin in the Bible
If you begin reading the Bible from the beginning, it doesn’t
take long to discover that humans are flawed. Our story quickly
moves from paradise to murder, deception, rape, and idolatry.
The story of the Bible (and for that matter, every story told in
history) reveals that there is something askew within our hearts.
Why is there evil and why is there evil inside us? I’ve long
believed that Christianity is the only right religion because it’s the
only religion with the doctrine of original sin. As G. K.
Chesterton quipped, “Certain new theologians dispute original
sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really
be proved.”vi
Although Jewish rabbis will say that Judaism has never
believed in original sin, I do not really believe them.vii The Torah
begins with Adam and Eve in righteousness and the Garden of
Eden. They sinned, and the world has been darkened ever since.
Babies, who have never committed a personal sin, sometimes die
painful deaths. Good people make bad mistakes. Loving, dutiful
mothers get cancer and die, leaving behind sorrowful children.
Even great saints struggle with temptations.
This is not how things are supposed to be, and it is clear in
Scripture that the sin of our first parents brought death and
misery into the world. For the Jewish prophets, history was a
descent into further grades of sin—all following that original
mistake made by Adam and Eve. They look forward to the
coming of the Messiah, who will heal man’s brokenness.
When Christ preaches, His self-given title of Son of Man
indicates that He is somehow the corrective answer to the
original man’s sin. Saint Paul clearly explains how this can be:
Therefore as sin came into the world through one man
and death through sin, and so death spread to all men
because all men sinned—sin indeed was in the world

16
 before the law was given, but sin is not counted where
there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses,
even over those whose sins were not like the
transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who
was to come. (Romans 5:12-14)

This passage in Saint Paul is the locus classicus for the doctrine of
original sin. Not surprisingly, there is a lot of debate surrounding
how to best translate it. It’s important to know that scholars to
this day believe that Augustine was working with a bad Latin
translation of this passage and that he wrongly assigned a
meaning to it that is not found in the original Greek.
The original of Paul’s Greek in Romans 5:12 is “eph ho pantes
hermarton,” but it is difficult to translate. The older Latin versions
that Augustine read translated it literally into Latin as “in quo
omnes peccaverunt” or “in whom (Adam) all sinned.” An
extreme reading of this passage is that all humans have somehow
literally sinned “in Adam.” The alternative reading from the
Greek would be translate it as “because (Adam sinned) all sinned.”
The former (Latin translation) implies are presence in Adam
when the sin occurred. The latter (alternative translation) implies
a causative relationship. Adam sinned and so we all sin.
Augustine affirmed the former and it related to the way he and
other Catholics understood human conception and the soul as
either derivative of the parents or created new.

Traducianism vs. Creationism

This Latinate interpretation of Romans 5:12 might imply that
we were all somehow inside Adam when he sinned and, in that
way, we all share the same guilt. The Lutheran doctrine of
traducianism seems to follow this extreme reading of Romans
5:12. Traducianism is the false teaching that the soul of an infant
is derived from the soul of the two parents. This would mean
that the corrupt souls of the parents (Adam and Eve) passed

17
corrupt souls to their children, all the way down to us. The
Catholic Church rejects “soul traducianism” and instead teaches
that God creates a new soul from scratch every time a baby is
conceived. This Catholic view is called “soul creationism.”
Augustine himself admitted that he did not know whether to
believe in soul traducianism or soul creationism. Writing to Saint
Jerome, Augustine confessed: “If that opinion of the creation of
new souls is not opposed to this established article of faith [i.e.
original sin] let it be also mine; if it is, let it not be yours.”viii
The softer reading of Romans 5:12 is that all humans were
represented in Adam’s sin. Saint Irenaeus of Lyons (d. 200)
espoused this milder reading of Romans 5:12. According to
Irenaeus, we human descendants have solidarity with our first
parents Adam and Eve. They lost sanctifying grace and
righteousness and so we do not inherit these divine gifts. We are
born spiritually poor. Although we were not historically present
in Adam, we were nevertheless represented by Adam. In a
similar way, we were not historically with Christ when He died
on the cross, but we do have solidarity with Him.
We can see here that Irenaeus teaches a theology of
recapitulation. Christ recapitulates Adam and becomes the New
Head of all humanity. This is the Catholic understanding of
original sin. Although Saint Augustine seems to waffle between
the harsher and softer reading of Romans 5:12, he nevertheless
locates the discussion in the context of salvation and
recapitulation in Christ. For Augustine, the doctrine of original
sin in Adam points to final salvation in Christ. The two go
together.

Original Sin and Concupiscence

The heretic Pelagius taught that there was no such thing as
original sin. Instead, there is only sinful example. According to
Pelagius, sin is only passed down from generation to generation
through bad example. A child born into the human community

18
observes hatred, racism, murder, sexual license, idolatry, and
greed. The child then begins to copy what he sees.
Augustine and the Christian tradition grant the negative
impact of bad example, but argue that there is an additional
interior brokenness within every human person. According to
Augustine, a human child could be isolated from society and
raised privately by angels—and yet she will face temptations and
even fall into sin. The reason for this is concupiscence.
Concupiscence comes from the Latin word concupiscentia,
meaning desire. It comes from some Latin words that you might
recognize: con is a prefix meaning “with” and cupi or cupid means
“desire.” It means doing things “with illicit desire.” Cupid, the
Roman god of arrow-slinging fame, is so named because he is
the god of desire.
Concupiscence is essential to understanding Augustine’s
theology. Concupiscence is the inordinate desire for anything
from stolen pears to illicit sex. From his own experience,
Augustine believed that our proper desire to love and be loved
had been twisted by sin, and one of the effects of this was an
irrational desire for sex.

Augustine’s Theology of the Body

It is unfortunate that many of the contemporary explanations
of Saint John Paul II’s Theology of the Body dismiss Augustine’s
contribution as irrelevant. There is a concern that Augustine
demonized sex and that he retained a crypto-Manichaean
suspicion of the physical body. But the truth is that there could
be no Theology of the Body without our bishop of Hippo.
Augustine builds his theology of the body on the image of a
marriage between the body and soul. He says to us: “your body
is your wife.”ix The soul is the intellectual principle wedded to
the physical principle of the body. Augustine sees the human as
complete and perfect only in the union of the soul and body.
Even in death, the human soul is imperfect because it lacks its

19
body. This is why Augustine affirmed the final resurrection of
the body and the veneration for human remains.

A Domestic Spat
Augustine depicts the effect of original sin on the human
person as a domestic spat between husband and wife. The
soul/husband and the body/wife are in an abusive relationship.
Instead of living in harmony, the soul and body find themselves
at war with each other. Augustine derives this from Saint Paul’s
epistle to the Romans:

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil

lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my
inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with
the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin
which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am!
Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be
to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I of
myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my
flesh I serve the law of sin. (Romans 7:21-25, emphasis
mine)

The Christian tradition identifies the greatest war as the war

between the soul and the flesh. Augustine brings the image
closer to home by making it a troubled marriage.
Before original sin, the soul and the body were in complete
conformity with one another. The soul did not puff up with
pride and abuse the body. Similarly, the body did not desire to
eat too much ice cream, seek intoxication, or overindulge in any
respect. Notice that Augustine does not blame the body. The
body is not evil. The body is integral part of the human person.
The Manichean desire to shun the body as evil is entirely absent
from Augustine.

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Celibacy or Marriage?
Augustine does speak well of Christian marriage, even though
he did not enjoy its fruits. In his Confessions he writes:

Neither of us acknowledged that the beauty of having a

wife lies in the obligation to respect the discipline of
marriage and to bring up children. To a large extent what
held me captive and tormented me was the habit of
satisfying with vehement intensity an insatiable sexual
desire.x

Augustine admits that his sexual turmoil prevented him from

seeing the “beauty” of having a lawfully wedded wife. During
the final years of Augustine’s life, a debate was raging between
two Christian monks over the merits of marriage. Jovinian
openly celebrated the vocation of Christian marriage. Saint
Jerome in response called Jovinian a heretic.
Jovinian in some ways sounds like modern popularizers of
the Theology of the Body.xi He taught that Christian celibates
should not look down on married Christian couples. Jovinian
also taught that the married state was meritorious and for the
good of the Church. Jovinian, however, did fall into heresy. In
his zeal to defend the married state, he also wrongly denied the
perpetual virginity of Mary—claiming that Joseph and Mary had
relations after the birth of Christ.
Saint Jerome wrote vehemently against Jovinian and his
errors. Unfortunately, Jerome’s rhetoric was so harsh that even
his orthodox friends felt that he had overstated the merits of
celibacy and denigrated married life as a lesser of two evils.
Augustine realized the need to steer a middle ground between
Jovinian’s celebration of marriage and Jerome’s dismissive
defense of celibacy. In response, Augustine authored a
theological treatise titled The Good of Marriage.

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The Good of Marriage
In The Good of Marriage, Augustine explains why celibacy is the
highest calling in the Church while defending the married
vocation as good, holy, and commendable. Augustine notes that
Christ Himself spoke of the higher calling of volitional
“eunuchs” for the Kingdom of God:

For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and
there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men,
and there are eunuchs who have made themselves
eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who
is able to receive this, let him receive it. (Mathew 19:12)

The Apostle Paul also taught that he who marries “does well,
and he who refrains from marriage will do better” (1 Corinthians
7:38). The New Testament honors the celibate state with special
esteem. Yet this honor does not denigrate holy matrimony. Saint
John Chrysostom writes:

He who denigrates marriage also diminishes the glory of

virginity. Whoever praises it makes virginity more
admirable and resplendent. What appears to be good in
comparison with evil would not be truly good. The most
excellent good is something better than what is admitted
to be good.xii

Augustine tries to establish this careful balance by establishing

the three goods of holy matrimony. First, there is the
procreation of children. Secondly, there is the fidelity of the
couple. Third, there is the sacramental bond.
The family, as Christianity has always emphasized, is the
building block of the nation. Augustine writes,

22
 For this reason God wished to create all humans from
one couple, so that they would be held together in their
social relationships not only by the likeness of race, but
also by the bond of kinship. Wherefore, the first natural
bond of human society is the union of husband and
wife.xiii

Augustine turns to Adam and Eve so as to fully understand the

theological significance of marriage, family, and society. God
ordained that a man and woman would populate the world
through matrimony. The first man was not a monk. The first
woman was not a nun. Natural kinship is the means by which
God called man to cultivate society. When God asked Adam to
cultivate the garden, He did not refer merely to flowers and
plants. Culture requires cultivation. People were required to fill the
garden and cultivate it. God told Adam and Eve “be fruitful and
multiply.” Regrettably, sin obstructed our path to this cultivate
garden of grace and righteousness.
Just as matrimonial sex was the means by which Adam and
Eve would cultivate a garden of paradise, filled with children and
future generations, so sin corrupted the sexual gift and
introduced shame. Through original sin, Adam and Eve became
naked and ashamed.
This is where Augustine deserves more credit and attention.
The original blessing of procreating future humans in paradise
was undone by original sin. This gift was corrupted. Nakedness
became shameful. As we discussed above, Adam and Eve wore
fig leaves because they could not control their members. This is
to say, concupiscence led sex to be divorced from its goal of
procreation.
This is what makes sex so dangerous for Augustine, and we
should consider his words. Sex is one of the most pleasurable
human experiences and it is ordered to procreation.
Concupiscence leads men and women to pretend that sex is

23
something else. Some men rape women to demonstrate power—
not to have babies. Some women seduce men to prove their
power and feel desired. Some people use sexual deviancy to sell
records or make political statements. None of these goals
appreciate the primary and natural goal of human sexuality.
Marital sex is an instrumental good for society and so it is a
good for the married couple. No marriage? No virtuous children.
No civilization. No church. No nation. Marriage is a meritorious
act. What we discover in Augustine is that sex is not an end in
itself. It is ordered to the common good of humanity. It’s at the
service of mankind.
Augustine does, however, teach that a married spouse who
seeks sexual intercourse solely for selfish or lustful reasons has
committed a venial fault. This same teaching was recently
reiterated by Saint John Paul II when he, to the shock of the
world, suggested that even a married man could wrongfully
“lust” after his wife “if he treats her only as an object to satisfy
instinct.”xiv
Augustine uses the term venialis culpa to describe the relations
of a married person for the sake of objectified lust. In Latin,
venialis means “forgivable” or “concessional.”xv While not gravely
sinful according to Augustine, marital sex for lust is disordered
in a way so as to displease God. The pursuit of fidelity in
marriage is still a self-giving of one spouse to the other and vice
versa. Fidelity is marked by love and charity for the other
spouse. Whenever spouses come together out of allegiance or
fidelity to their union, there is no fault. This is one reason why
Augustine sought to dissuade married couples from taking a
mutual vow of celibacy.xvi Augustine even promised that married
people could attain perfect sanctity in the married state by
observing fidelity toward one’s spouse.xvii
Augustine, like the Catholic Church today, taught that the
sacramental union between Christ and the Church is
mysteriously signified in every Christian marriage. The

24
monogamous arrangement (unlike the sanctioned polygamy and
divorce under Moses) hearkens back to prelapsarian arrangement
of Adam and Eve in the garden. By committing to holy
matrimony, a man and a woman are voluntarily seeking to re-
enter paradise to cultivate the garden of grace. They take up the
blessed identity of Adam and Eve as well as the eschatological
sign of Christ and the Church.
Human society honors man functions and orders, but
Christian society honors matrimony in a special way. Augustine
sees the sacramental bond of marriage as sanctioning a
friendship of grace that seeks procreation and mutual fidelity—
necessary gifts to establish a Christian culture.

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 Augustine’s Legacy
Augustine is the most quoted and celebrated Doctor of the
Catholic Church. The Latin word Doctor translates simply as
“teacher.” Augustine was, and still is, a great teacher. He was a
famous preacher and it is said that he had to ask his
congregation to stop applauding during his sermons. He also
gathered followers who sought to learn from him. What made
Augustine a teacher for his time and for all the centuries to
follow?

Augustine and Field Trips

As a professor and educator, I have observed that education
in the United States focuses too much on homework and other
benchmark tasks to prove to the teacher that the student is really
committed. If we look at Augustine’s approach, we find none of
the educational methods in vogue today.
If Augustine were to educate your child, here’s what he would
do. He would travel and take the young person to sites to
experience new things. (I don’t remember what my teacher
taught me in elementary school, but I do remember the field
trips!)
Secondly, Augustine would focus not on the acquisition of
facts, but on the journey for meaning. Augustine would then
have a living symposium of Socratic dialogue. A person learns
when he articulates something for himself. And he learns most
profoundly when he must explain his position to someone else
and then must answer objections and questions. The Socratic
dialogue is a journey of discovery in its own right.
Finally, Augustine wanted to cultivate a habitual love for
learning. As we will see in his doctrine of the Trinity, the mind
must love its knowledge. The habit of learning centers on a desire
for awe. Thomas Aquinas says that it is our desire for awe
(desiderium admirationis) that leads us to pursue the contemplative

26
life. Every Christian should have this desire for awe bubbling out
of his heart. If there is a Trinity, and there are angels all around
me, and there are virtues to master and higher realities to see,
then I should be giddy about learning more and more about it.

Augustine and Mr. Miyagi

Augustine was systematic in his approach, and this systematic
approach to theology still shapes the Catholic Church to this
day. Augustine’s writing style is point by point. He is not as
outlined as Saint Thomas Aquinas, but he demonstrates a love of
order. He is a teacher and he has his method.
It’s like teaching a student to perfect a golf swing. It’s best to
focus on one element at a time. Reminding the student all at
once about his foot position, hand angle, shoulders, hips, spine
angel, grip, and ball placement will cause him shatter under
anxiety. It’s too much information at one time. Instead, master
the grip first. Then master foot position. And so on.
Augustine would have admired Mr. Miyagi from the Karate
Kid. Mr. Miyagi required Daniel-san to master each move (“wax
on, wax off”) before going to the next task. So even when
Daniel was taken down by the Cobra Kai gang, he still left the
All-Valley Karate Tournament with the trophy, Elisabeth Shue,
and his self-respect.
Augustine was great at writing and disputation. He kept the
quill in his hand. His books and sermons reveal a man gifted for
infusing heartfelt passion into theology so as to make it practical.
He did not treat his parishioners as ignorant peasants. He
challenged them to ascend the heights of theological truth. How
exciting it is read it on paper! How much more invigorating it
must have been to see him gesticulating in the pulpit?
While previous theologians encountered and challenged
heresies, philosophies, and other religions, Augustine was the
first to run at them all with his heart, mind, and strength. There

27
is something enduring about Augustine because he drank the
poison of heresy and lived to tell us about how he survived it.
We have a man who immersed himself in the waters of Plato,
Cicero, Plotinus, and Mani and did not drown. He symbolizes
the Christian’s ability to soak himself in the acid bath of
philosophical criticism and rise unharmed. It is clear that the
time spent among these thinkers was not time wasted: the
writings of Plato, Cicero, and Plotinus trained him in philosophy,
and his experience with Mani allowed him to argue convincingly
against the heresies of his day.
Many commentators of Augustine have noted his
Neoplatonism. Some have said that Augustine is the Christian
Plato and that Thomas Aquinas is the Christian Aristotle. I think
this simple identity is exactly that: simple. Thomas Aquinas,
through the influence of Dionysius the Areopagite, had a solid
Platonic streak. Nevertheless, Augustine shows affinity, even
love, for the Neoplatonic vision of the universe.

Augustine the Neoplatonist

The framework of Platonism grew over the centuries since
the time of Plato, absorbing elements of Stoicism and
Pythagoreanism. It became more and more religious. Augustine’s
mind reveals that Academic Neoplatonism could never fully
become a religion in its own right. In fact, all that was good and
true in Neoplatonism was found already historicized in Jesus of
Nazareth and the Catholic Church.
Augustine could see Plato’s Form of the Good in the
incarnation of Jesus Christ. The Logos of all rationality lived
among us. Through Christ, we can break out of the dim cave of
error and come to participate in that heavenly realm of the Ideas.
Augustine successfully transformed the Platonic solution of
matter participating in form with a theological twist of nature
participating in grace.

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Augustine on the Trinity
Augustine’s metaphysical interests led him to produce a
profound corpus of thought regarding the doctrine of the Holy
Trinity. In the East, the Arian controversy from the beginning of
the fourth century had led great theologians such as Saint
Athanasius, Saint Basil of Caesarea, Saint Gregory Nazianzus,
and Saint Gregory of Nyssa to forge a thorough orthodox
presentation of the one essence or ousia of God subsisting in
three Divine Persons who were co-eternal, consubstantial, and
worthy of divine worship.
In the West, Tertullian had laid the groundwork for a Latin
Trinitarian theology, but Tertullian’s distrust of philosophy and
Greek metaphysical distinction left an incomplete Trinitarian
theology in comparison to the intricacies established by the
Greek Fathers. Among Latin authors, Saint Hilary of Poitiers
(A.D. 300-368) had initiated the translation of the advanced
Greek Trinitarian theologian into Latin parlance. However, it
was Saint Augustine who canonized the Trinitarian tradition and
language for the Latin west.
There is a beautiful legend about Saint Augustine that helps
us appreciate Saint Augustine’s doctrine of God. Once, our saint
was walking along the seashore of the Mediterranean Sea racking
his brain over the mystery of the Holy Trinity. He came upon a
small boy running back and forth from the sea to a hole in the
seashore. The child was using a seashell to carry the ocean water
from the sea. He would fill the shell with water, carry it up the
beach, and then pour it into the hole he had dug out in the sand.
Augustine asked him amazement, “My son, what are you
doing?”
The innocent child looked up at him smiling. “I’m trying to
carry the sea into this hole.”
“But this is impossible!” protested Saint Augustine. “The
hole cannot contain all the water of the sea.”

29
 The child still holding the shell, stood up, looked into the
eyes of the bishop and answered, “It is no more impossible than
what you are trying to do—to comprehend the immensity of the
mystery of the Holy Trinity with your tiny intelligence.”
Augustine looked out over the vast sea and when he looked
back to the child, the boy had disappeared. It is for this reason
that the seashell (as on the cover of this book) became a symbol
for Augustine’s Trinitarian theology. Although Augustine never
speaks of this vision, he does tell us: “among all these things that
I have said about that supreme Trinity…I dare not claim that
any of them is worthy of this unimaginable mystery.”xviii
Augustine’s De Trinitate is his defense of the orthodox Greek
consensus of Saint Athanasius and the Cappodocian Fathers.
Augustine does not begin with Neoplatonic thought but with the
pages of Scripture. The Bible reveals that the Son and the Holy
Spirit are divine and co-equal with God the Father. This truth
remains a mystery to us, says Augustine, since original sin and its
corruption of our intelligence blind us to this sublime reality.xix
Following Saint Hilary of Poitier, Augustine employs the
Latin term persona for the Greek terms hypostasis and prosopon.xx
He uses the terms substans and essentia for the Greek term ousia.
Augustine realizes here that the Latin terminology is merely
trying to play catch up to the established Greek terminology:
“Essentia is a new word, indeed, which was not used in the Latin
speech of old, but which has come into use in our own day so
that our language should not lack a word for what the Greeks
call ousia for this expressed very exactly be essentia.”xxi
Augustine does not merely carry over the established
Christology and Trinitarian theology of the East. He contributed
to the development in the West by presenting a series of created
analogies to the Trinity. For example, Augustine sees a trinity in
the lover, the loved, and the love shared between the two.xxii
The Father is the lover, the Son is the loved, and the Holy Spirit
is the love between the two. In a Neoplatonic move, Augustine

30
identifies the mind, its knowledge, and its love for the
knowledge as an analogy of the Trinity.xxiii He also suggests the
memory, the understanding, and the will as an analogous
Trinity.xxiv
These created analogies or images are ultimately not accurate
but they do help us draw closer to an appreciation for the
Blessed Trinity. These analogies also introduced a different
nuance in Latin Trinitarian theology. Augustine’s Trinitarian
theology is relational and his emphasis on the Holy Spirit as the
divine love of the Father and the Son ultimately led to the West’s
credal affirmation that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the
Father and the Son (Filioque). Love must be mutual and thus the
Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.
In Augustine, we find philosophy at work, but he infuses it
with Christ’s teaching of love. Aristotle may have spoken of a
prime mover, but it was a loveless mover. With Augustine, we
can hear the voice of Socrates or Plato in conversation with
Jesus Christ. He moves from the Form of the Good toward the
Trinity, the goodness of creation, the angels, human nature,
redemption from sin, and the participation of the sacraments in
the divine life of heaven. Augustine’s theology links the abstract
with the concrete life of the believer. Moreover, Augustine did
not fear placing his personality into it. Augustine’s love for God
and for his people transcended the best of Neoplatonism. He
demonstrated the best of Neoplatonism had nothing on the
contemplative love of the true Christian.
After the fifth century, Augustine became the theologian of
the West. The only other mind to come close to him, and
perhaps surpass him, would be that of Thomas Aquinas. And yet
there could have never been a Thomas without an Augustine.
Not only did Thomas draw on Augustine thoroughly in his
theological writings (in the number of his citations, Augustine
comes in second place after Sacred Scripture), but, as a
Dominican friar, Thomas Aquinas also lived the Rule of Saint

31
Augustine. (Saint Dominic chose the rule of Saint Augustine to
the rule for his Order of Preachers.)

the Protestant Reformation

After the fifth century, Augustine became the theologian of
the West. The only other mind to come close to him, and
perhaps surpass him, would be that of Thomas Aquinas. And yet
there could have never been a Thomas without an Augustine.
Not only did Thomas draw on Augustine thoroughly in his
theological writings (in the number of his citations, Augustine
comes in second place after Sacred Scripture), but, as a
Dominican friar, Thomas Aquinas also lived the Rule of Saint
Augustine. (Saint Dominic chose the rule of Saint Augustine to
the rule for his Order of Preachers.)
During the Protestant Reformation, Augustine became the
center of debate. The Protestants claimed Augustine for their
positions—even claiming that Augustine taught justification by
faith alone and a symbolic interpretation of the Holy Eucharist.
Meanwhile, the Catholic theologians cited passages showing that
Augustine upheld prayer to the saints, devotion to Mary,
veneration for relics, celibacy, and the papacy.

Martin Luther, the Augustinian Priest

Father Martin Luther was a Catholic priest of the Augustinian
order. He was an anxious priest who struggled with the
ubiquitous presence of his overbearing father. Not surprisingly,
he struggled with scrupulosity—a typically Catholic problem that
perceives innocent actions as immoral and venial sins as mortal
sin. Like many Christians who struggle with scruples, Luther
struggled with the Christian doctrine of grace.
As an Augustinian priest, Luther was well acquainted with the
person and writings of Saint Augustine. Luther describes his
own autobiographical journey as moving from naturalistic
Pelagianism to a grace-filled Augustinianism. For Luther, the

32
sacramental system, the penances, the pilgrimages, the
indulgences, and the monastic rule were attempts to earn God’s
favor through natural means. Luther felt insufficient. His
response, and the response of Protestants ever since, is to
emphasize “faith through grace” without all the Catholic
trappings.
The irony, of course, is that he was appealing to Augustine’s
supposed theology of salvation while denying Augustine’s rule
for monastics and Augustine’s profound ecclesiology and
sacramental teaching. Even Luther acknowledged the tension in
his reformulation of his alleged Augustinian Christianity:

When I read the books of St. Augustine and find that he,
too, did this and that, it truly disconcerts me very much.
When to this is added the cry: Church! Church! that
hurts most of all. For it is truly a difficult task to conquer
your own heart in this matter and to depart from the
people who enjoy a great reputation and such a holy
name, aye, from the church herself, and no longer to rely
on and believe her teaching.xxv

Luther wanted Augustine’s theology of grace but parted from

everything else. The problem is that this is not Augustinian.
Augustine never saw his profound doctrine of grace apart from
the sacraments, his victory over lust in monastic celibacy, or his
allegiance to the Church of Rome.

Calvin the Pseudo-Augustinian

John Calvin also claimed that his version of Christianity was
none other than that of Augustine of Hippo. Calvin gravitated
toward Augustine’s doctrine of predestination and found there
an anchor by which to stabilize his ship. Without a visible church
and without efficacious visible sacraments, Calvin was forced to
establish Christianity based on the invisible decrees of God.

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 Calvin’s Christianity was an example of hyper-Neoplatonism.
It was all form and no matter. While Augustine was certainly
pulled in this direction, our saint would not have recognized
Calvin’s Geneva as anything representing Christianity in his own
diocese of Hippo.
Both Luther and Calvin called the Catholic Mass an
abominable idolatry. Both men and the Reformers after them
sought to remove the tabernacle from the heart of the Church
and explicitly mocked the miracle of transubstantiation as
contrary to Scripture and reason. And yet we find these words
from Augustine’s own books:

“And was carried in His Own Hands.” How was He

“carried in His Own Hands”? Because when He
commended His Own Body and Blood, He took into
His Hands that which the faithful know; and in a manner
carried Himself, when He said, “This is My Body.”xxvi

Luther and Calvin also galvanized their movements by

revising the canon of Sacred Scripture in order to remove
references to prayers for the dead (2 Maccabees) and prophetic
statements about the mediation of Mary (Ecclesiasticus), among
other things. But Augustine was the early champion for the
broader Catholic canon of Sacred Scripture.xxvii
When I was a Protestant, I firmly believed that Augustine was
a primordial Protestant. I frequently saw him quoted in the
works of Luther and Calvin and concluded, “Well, that proves it,
doesn’t it?”
Later, as I read Augustine unedited, I was amazed to find him
praying for the deceased soul of his mother. I discovered that he
had a strict doctrine of baptismal regeneration, a high view of
the Eucharist, a strident defense and celebration of celibacy, and
they he even promoted prayers and devotions to saints. I felt
betrayed by Luther and Calvin, who had plucked out Augustine’s

34
thought on grace, but had swept the Catholic details aside. John
Henry Newman said “that to be deep in history is to cease to be
Protestant.”xxviii I would amplify this saying to read, “to read
Augustine for himself is to cease to be Protestant.” No Lutheran
can read The City of God and close the book with the words, “Yes,
this man, if he lived today, would be a member of the Lutheran
denomination.”

Augustine and Jansenism

Catholics have had their fair share of debate over Augustine
as well. One of the most confusing theological chapters in
Catholic history is the debate surrounding Cornelius Jansen
(1585-1638), the Catholic bishop of Ypres, Flanders.
Jansen had dedicated his life to the study of Saint Augustine.
He composed a monumental work titled Augustinus before his
death in 1638. Before dying, Jansen issued the following
instructions about the book: “If, however, the Holy See wishes
any change, I am an obedient son, and I submit to that Church
in which I have lived to my dying hour. This is my last wish.”xxix
According to his wishes, the book was published posthumously
in 1640.
Given the Protestant claim that Augustine was a proto-
Protestant, Catholics were particularly ready to defend the
Catholicity of Augustine. Jansen’s book, however, seemed to
depict an Augustine that was far too Calvinistic. Even those that
opposed Jansen’s book recognized that he was one of the
greatest experts on the writings of Saint Augustine of Hippo. As
Jansen had already died, his close friend Jean du Vergier, Abbé
de Saint-Cyran, continued to preach and popularize Jansen’s
theology.
Central to Jansen’s teaching were the doctrines of
predestination, limited atonement, and the irresistible grace of
personal salvation. Jansen taught justification by faith, but he did
not reject the cult of the saints, confession, and

35
transubstantiation, as he found all these things in Augustine’s
writings.
Central to Jansenism was the belief that only a perfect act of
contrition over sin was a sign of predestination. This led lay
Catholics to seek out enthusiastic ways to express their
contrition over sin in an attempt to discover whether or not they
were truly predestined. The movement attracted hard-core
followers who carefully sought to investigate their own
predestination. Blaise Paschal was a notable adherent to
Jansenism. Pietism and liturgical oddities followed. Cardinal
Richelieu (the historical “evil antagonist” cardinal from
Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers) ordered that Saint-Cyran
be forbidden to preach and imprisoned.
The book had only been in circulation for two years, but in
1642, Pope Urban VIII issued a papal bull titled In eminenti
condemning Jansen’s Augustinus for two reasons. The book was
published in violation of the order that no works concerning
grace should be published without the prior permission of the
Pope. Secondly, the book repeated several errors of Baianism
which had been condemned by Pope Pius V's 1567 bull, Ex
omnibus afflictionibus. Pope Innocent X reprimanded the Jansenists
again in 1653 with his bull Cum occasione.

The Jansenist Error: Nature vs. Grace

Jansenism fails theologically because it sees Adam and Eve as
not living in a state of grace prior to original sin. This was the
error of Baianism (and Lutheranism and Calvinism) before
Jansenism. According to this error, Adam and Eve were perfect
before sin by nature. When they sinned, they fell from human
nature and became totally depraved.
Contrast this to the Catholic teaching. Catholicism holds that
Adam and Eve were in a state of grace before original sin. When

36
they sinned, they fell from grace. They lost grace. They did not
lose their human nature.
Thus, the error of Luther, Calvin, Baius, and Jansen is that
humans fell from human nature. This means that original sin is
not a lack or privation of grace and righteousness (as taught by
Thomas Aquinas and the Catholic Church). For these heretics,
original sin is concupiscence. There is no distinction between
original sin and the struggle with temptation. So for Luther,
Calvin, Baius, and Jansen, humans became totally depraved after
original sin. The Catholic position (articulated by Thomas
Aquinas) is that humans lost grace and gifts at the moment of
original sin, but we still have an intact human nature, albeit
wounded.
Aquinas is very clear on this point, but my reading of
Augustine is that he is either not as clear or that he does in fact
hold something similar to what Jansen later systematized. My
personal theory is that Augustine's struggle with the mechanism
for the transmission of original sin opened him up to potential
confusion over the relationship between nature and grace.
Augustine’s masterful work On Nature and Grace systematically
refutes Pelagius’ denial of the necessity of grace for salvation and
his implicit dismissal of sacramental grace. However, Augustine’s
insistence on the necessity of grace and the insufficiency of
nature to redeem us (a right theological position) may have led
him to overemphasize the role that sin has in rendering nature
impotent for salvation. Augustine may have seen Adam and Eve
as only in need of grace after original sin. If this is the case, then
Jansen and Baius (and maybe even Luther and Calvin) could have
an accurate read on Augustine on this point. However, the more
likely solution is that Augustine in his debate with Pelagius is
emphasizing the redemptive power of grace. When speaking of
grace as redemptive, it would seem obvious that Adam and Eve
did not require redemption prior to sin. Nevertheless, Augustine
also has a doctrine of prevenient grace in his later works and, in

37
this context, grace is there not merely to redeem but to prevent a
person from falling into sin.
Later Catholic theology will apply this idea of grace to the
doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. She was saved
by grace not in being redeemed from her own sin, but by being
prevented from falling into sin at all. To add weight to this
position, Augustine affirms Mary’s prevenient exception from
sin in this pivotal work against Pelagius when he writes: “except
the Holy Virgin Mary, of whom, for the honour of the Lord, I
will have no question whatever where sin is concerned.”xxx Here
grace seems to have either a preventative or redemptive power.
Perhaps the theological language of Augustine in the
exaggerated Pelagian context of “nature vs. grace” makes it
difficult for later readers to discern the nuances. This is certainly
the problem for Jansenist and Protestant readings of Augustine.
The Catholic solution over time has been to center the debate so
that nature is never opposed to grace, but rather perfected by
grace, as we find so brilliantly explained by Saint Thomas
Aquinas. When we come to acknowledge that grace perfects
nature, the false Pelagian dynamic of opposition disappears—
and with it the Protestant oversimplification of grace.

Augustine’s Contemporary Influence

Non-Christian philosophers still study Augustine for his
insights about time, space, and consciousness. Atheist Bertrand
Russell even finds commonality with Augustine in his
understanding of time as related to motion within space. For
Augustine, this mystery reveals that God is outside of time.
Literary scholars have found Augustine’s Confessions
fascinating because the book provides a rare account of a
historical man’s self-analyzed struggle with sex, complex parent
relationships, religion, temptation, and politics. It is a
masterpiece of the autobiographical form—the most influential

38
in the Western Tradition. The influence of the Confessions on later
literary works cannot be overstated.
Twentieth century philosophy returned to Augustine’s
personal style and his emphasis on memory and symbolic
communication. Edmund Husserl, the father of philosophical
phenomenology, writes: "The analysis of time-consciousness is
an age-old crux of descriptive psychology and theory of
knowledge. The first thinker to be deeply sensitive to the
immense difficulties to be found here was Augustine, who
labored almost to despair over this problem.”xxxi Augustine also
influenced Martin Heidegger, and Hannah Arendt refers to
Augustine’s proto-Phenomenology in relation to being, time, and
love. His political vision in The City of God remains to this day a
supernaturalized argument against naturalistic state Marxism.
Despite the controversy surrounding Augustine’s theology, he
remains popular in contemporary Christian theological debates.
Megachurch pastors still quote him. Calvinists still adore him.
Lutherans still claim him. In his autobiography Milestones, Pope
Emeritus Benedict XVI states that Saint Augustine, more than
any other theologian, has had the greatest influence upon him.
Saint Possidius (dates uncertain, fifth century), the bishop of
Calemensis and the biographer of Augustine, tells us that
Augustine, though dead, still speaks. Possidius notes that when
we read the words of the dead, their words become our words.
He mentions an unnamed Latin poet who had these words
written on his tombstone: vox tua nempe mea est—your voice is truly
my voice. When we read this dead poet’s poems or the writings of
any dead man, it is as if the deceased comes back to life and
finds his voice again in another.
Possidius challenges the readers of Augustine’s life to make
this true for Augustine. Although Augustine is dead, his voice
can continue to speak through our voices. Possidius believed
that he had accomplished this for Augustine for his own time
and for times come. I hope that I too have made Augustine’s

39
voice live again this short work of fifty pages. Go and read him
for yourself, and allow his voice to speak aloud in this age.

Sancte Augustine, vox tua nempe mea est!

40
 List of Books on
Augustine for Beginners

To help round out the picture, here are some additional

resources for your study of St. Augustine.

• The New Saint Thomas Institute is online portal for taking

Catholic theology classes and earning a Certificate in
Theology. We have several classes about Saint Augustine as
it relates to his angelology, predestination, etc. Learn more
by visiting newsaintthomas.com.
• Confessions by Augustine. This is the very first book that every
beginner should read. Unlike many thinkers, Augustine
provided his own best introduction to himself. I recommend
the Oxford World Classic edition translated by Henry
Chadwick.
• The Theology of Augustine: An Introductory Guide to His Most
Important Works by Matthew Levering. Dr. Levering was a
reader on my own dissertation and I trust him deeply. This is
a great introduction to Augustine.
• Augustine: A Very Short Introduction by Henry Chadwick. An
introduction written by the translator of the Confessions
recommended above. This book helps you understand
Augustine more generally. This book discusses Donatism,
the Trinity, and other key features of Augustine that are not
covered here.
• Augustine of Hippo: A Biography by Peter Brown. Peter Brown
is a specialist in Late Antiquity history. He is a bit secular in
his approach, so I recommend him with that caveat.

41
 The Writings of Augustine
Augustine left behind more than one hundred books.
Augustine arranged his own books into three categories:xxxii

1. Books
2. Letters
3. Sermons

We might also subdivide his books into these categories:

1. Polemics against Heresy

2. Christian Doctrine
3. Biblical Commentaries

Augustine was excellent at refuting heresy and in his own day he

was best known for his works against the heretics: Manicheans,
Arians, Pelagians, and Donatists. His most popular theological
works today are his works of Christian doctrine, notably On
Christian Doctrine and The City of God.
Unfortunately, Augustine’s biblical commentaries are the least
known and studied. Augustine likely saw himself as a biblical
theologian before anything else. His Sermons and Letters reveal
who Augustine was in his daily life and the Confessions is his
autobiography. If you read only one work by Augustine, read his
Confessions.
At the end of his life, he wrote a work called Retractiones. In
this work he revised some of the statements that he made in
previous books. He lists ninety-three such books. Augustine was
a work in progress. The early Augustine is different from the
later Augustine. The later Augustine is more polished, more
refined, and less influenced by his disputes with heretics. The
Retractiones are Augustine’s own edits and clarifications.

42
Below are the works of Saint Augustine arranged by approximate
date. Even if you do not plan to read every title on the list, spend
a few minutes studying it. You will feel the flow of his
intellectual work and see patterns. For example, he was obsessed
with Manicheanism in AD 397-8. Observe that certain political
works reflect changes in the Roman Empire during this time (see
the entry for AD 410). You will also learn to identify the later,
more important works of theology and see that his City of God
was a work of progress over fourteen years.

The Works of Augustine by Date

• 386 Against the Academics
• 386 On the Blessed Life
• 386 On Order
• 386/387 The Soliloquies
• 386/387 On the Immortality of the Soul
• 386-429 Letters
• 387/391 On Music
• 387/389 On the Catholic and the Manichaean Way of Life
• 387/388 On Magnitude of the Soul
• 388/389 On Genesis, Against the Manichees
• 388-395 On the Free Choice of the Will
• 388/395 Eighty-three Different Questions
• 389 The Teacher
• 389/391 On True Religion
• 391 On the Usefulness of Believing
• 392 Debate with Fortunatus the Manichee
• 392/393 On the Two Souls, Against the Manichees
• 393 On Faith and Creed
• 393/394 Alphabetical Psalm Against the Donatists
• 393/394 On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis (unfinished)
• 393/394 On the Sermon of the Mount
• 393-430 Sermons
• 394 Against Adimantus

43
• 394/395 Explanation: Epistle to the Galatians
• 394/395 Incomplete Explanation: Epistle to the Romans
• 395 On Continence
• 395 On Lying
• 396 To Simplicianus, On Different Questions
• 396 On the Christian Struggle
• 396-426 On Christian Teaching
• 396-420 Expositions on the Psalms
• 397 Against the Basic Letter of the Manichees
• 397-401 Confessions
• 397-398 Against Faustus the Manichee
• 397/398 Against Felix the Manichee
• 398 Sermon on Christian Discipline
• 399 On the Nature of the Good
• 399 Against Secundinus the Manichee
• 399 Questions on the Gospels
• 399-419 The Trinity
• 400 On Faith in Invisible Realities
• 400 Consensus of the Evangelists
• 400 Against the Letter of Parmenian
• 400 On the Work of Monks
• 400 On Catechizing Beginners
• 400 Comments on Job
• 400 On the Inquiries of Januarius (Letters 54-55)
• 400/401 On Baptism Against the Donatists
• 401 On the Good of Marriage
• 401 On Holy Virginity
• 401/405 Against the Letters of Petilianus
• 401-415 On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis
• 401 Against Cresconius the Grammarian
• 405 On the Unity of the Church
• 406 On the Divination of Demons
• 406/412 Exposition on Six Questions - Raised by Pagans
• 406-430 Tractates on the Gospel of John

44
• 407/409 Tractates on the First Epistle of John
• 410 On the Destruction of the City of Rome
• 411 Concerning the One Baptism, Against Petilian
• 412 On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins and Infant Baptism
• 412/413 On Faith and Works
• 412 On the Spirit and the Letter
• 412 Brief Meeting with the Donatists
• 412 On the Grace of the New Testament (Letter 140)
• 413 On Seeing God (Letter 147)
• 413-427 The City of God
• 414/415 On Nature and Grace
• 414 On the Good of Widowhood
• 415 Against the Priscillianist and the Origenists
• 415 To Jerome (Letters 166-167)
• 415/416 On the Perfection of Righteousness
• 417 On the Proceedings concerning Pelagius
• 417 On the Presence of God (Letter 187)
• 418 On the Grace of Christ and Original Sin
• 418 On Patience
• 418 Proceedings with Emeritus
• 418 Reply to the Caesarians
• 418/419 Against an Arian Sermon
• 419 Eight Questions on the Old Testament
• 419 Questions on the Heptateuch
• 419/420 On Marriage and Concupiscence
• 419/420 On Adulterous Marriages
• 419/420 Against Adversaries of the Law and the Prophets
• 419-420 Against Gaudentius a Donatist Bishop
• 419-421 On the Soul and Its Origin
• 420 Against Two Letters of the Pelagians
• 420 Against Lying
• 420-422 On the Care of the Dead
• 421 Against Julian
• 421-422 Enchiridion (Faith, Hope, & Love)

45
• 422-425 On the Eight Questions, from Dulcitius
• 425 On the Creed, to the Catechumens
• 426/427 On Grace and Free Choice
• 426/427 On Admonition and Grace
• 426/427 Retractions
• 427/428 Discussion with Maximus the Arian Bishop
• 428 Against Maximinus
• 428/429 On Heresies
• 428/429 On the Predestination of the Saints
• 428/429 On the Gift of Perseverance
• 429/430 On the Usefulness of Fasting
• 429-430 Incomplete Works Against Julian

46
Endnotes
i
“Noli istum Poenum monentem vel admonentem terrena intlatus propagine
spernere.”
ii
Confessions, 8:7
iii
Possidius, Life of Saint Augustine, xxii.
iv
Catholic Encyclopedia, “Saint Augustine.”
v
These councils and the writings of Saint Augustine affirmed the
canonical and inspired status of Judith, Tobit, Baruch, Wisdom,
Ecclesiasticus (Sirach), and 1&2 Maccabees.
vi
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, chap. 2.
vii
The Jewish tradition has a doctrine of yetzer ha-ra or “evil
inclination.” This is the disordered element in humans that leads
them toward sin.
viii
Augustine, Epistle 166.
ix
In Latin: “caro tua, coniunx tua.” See Augustine of Hippo,
Enarrationes in Psalmos, 143, 6; and again in his De utilitate ieiunii,
4,4–5.
x
Confessions 6, 12, 22.
xi
I have no personal qualms with Saint John Paul II’s Theology
of the Body, but I do have concerns that the popularized
messages and expressions used by some speakers in the name of
the “Theology of the Body” are inaccurate, theologically
incorrect, and immodest.
xii
Saint John Chrysostom, On Virginity 10, 1.
xiii
On the Good of Marriage, 1.
xiv
Pope John Paul II states that “Man can commit this adultery
'in the heart' also with regard to his own wife if he treats her
'only' as an object to satisfy instinct.” (October 8, 1980).
xv
Augustine listed other venial faults (veniales culpae) as eating too
much food, excessive laughter, and harsh words. Saint Augustine
prescribed the daily recitation of the Our Father as a means to
wipe away these veniales culpae.
xvi
See Sermones 162C and 354A found in the Dolbeau collection
discovery of 1990.
xvii
Expositio in Psalmos 149.
xviii
De Trinitate 15, 27, 50.
xix
De Trinitate, 7, 4; 15, 6.
xx
De Trinitate, 7, 3.
xxi
City of God, 12, 3
xxii
De Trinitate 8, 5, 13.
xxiii
De Trinitate 9, 1.
xxiv
De Trinitate 10, 4; 14, 2.
xxv
Martin Luther, Sermon on John 3:23-24 (dated 16 March 1538).
xxvi
On the Psalms 33:1, 10.
xxvii
See Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine, Book 2, chapter 8. He
describes the Old and New Testament canon as exactly that of
the Catholic Church, contrary to the collection of Luther.
xxviii
John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian
Doctrine (1845), Introduction, Part 5.
xxix
Jacques Forget. "Jansenius and Jansenism." The Catholic
Encyclopedia. Vol. 8. New York: Robert Appleton Company,
1910.
xxx
De natura et gratia, 36.
xxxi
Edmund Husserl, Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness.
Tr. James S. Churchill. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1964. p. 21.
xxxii
Retractiones 1, 1.