St. Augustine of Hippo

Oversimplified

• Bishop of Hippo (354–430) and the most influential of the Western Fathers, whose Confessions and City of God have shaped Christian thought for sixteen centuries.
• A restless seeker converted from a life of ambition and lust, who wrote of the human heart that it is restless until it rests in God.[^1]

Summary

Augustine's road to faith ran through Manichaeism, skepticism, and Neoplatonism before the preaching of St. Ambrose of Milan and his own dramatic conversion brought him to baptism. As bishop he became the great physician of the inner life and the defender of grace, mapping the soul's dependence on God with a depth no one before him had reached.[^2]

Grace and the Two Cities

Against Pelagius, Augustine insisted that salvation is the gift of God's grace and not the achievement of unaided human will — a conviction that framed Western debate on Grace and Original Sin ever after. In The City of God, written as Rome fell, he set the earthly city of self-love against the heavenly city of the love of God, and taught Christians to live as pilgrims between them. His work on The Trinity remains a classic of Latin theology. See also The Church, Baptism.

[^1]: St. Augustine, Confessions, Book I. [^2]: St. Augustine, Confessions, The City of God, and On the Trinity.