Reading Based Assignment

Reading Based Assignment

From the very beginning Christianity has been in a "just war" to spread the "Word of God." Fundamentalists will claim the Bible is the "Word of God" but is in fact the work of men such as Saint Augustine. I read his book The Confessions in college and this man is totally insane. Page after page of self-loathing, stories of being beaten as a child, and his own unhappiness with the world. During the early history of Christianity, many learned men, “fathers of the church,” explained and defended church teachings. Most of the leading early fathers wrote in Greek, but in the middle of the fourth century, three great Latin writers—Saint Augustine, Saint Jerome, and Saint Ambrose—profoundly influenced the course of Christianity in the West. 1The most important Christian theoretician in the Late Roman Empire was Saint Augustine (A.D. 354—430), bishop of Hippo in North Africa. Born in the North African province of Numidia, Augustine attended school at Carthage where he studied the Latin classics. Struggling to find meaning in a world that abounded with evil, Augustine turned to Manichaeism, an oriental sect whose central doctrine was the struggle of the universal forces of light and good against those of darkness and evil. But still Augustine, now a professor of rhetoric, felt spiritually restless. In Milan, Augustine, inspired by the sermons of Ambrose, abandoned Manichaeism, and devoted his life to following Christ's teachings. In his autobiography, the Confessions, Augustine described his spiritual quest and appealed to devotees of Manichaeism and to adherents of pagan philosophy to embrace Christianity. Augustine wrote The City of God at the turn of the fifth century when the Greco-Roman world-view was disintegrating and the Roman world-state was collapsing. Augustine became the principal architect of the Christian outlook that succeeded a dying classicism.In 410, when Augustine was in his fifties, Visigoths sacked Rome—a disaster for which the classical consciousness was unprepared. Throughout the Empire people panicked. Pagans blamed the tragedy on Christianity. The Christians had predicted the end of the world, they said, and by refusing to offer sacrifices to ancient gods, Christians had turned these deities against Rome. Pagans also accused Christians of undermining the empire by refusing to serve in the army. Even Christians expressed anxiety. Where was the kingdom of God on earth that had been prophesied?Augustine's The City of God was a response to the crisis of the Roman Empire in the same manner that Plato's Republic was a reaction to the crisis of the Athenian polis. But whereas Plato expressed hope that a state founded on rational principles could remedy the abuses of Athenian society, Augustine maintained that the worldly city could never be the central concern of a Christian. The misfortunes of Rome, therefore, should not distress a Christian unduly, for Christianity belonged to the realm of the spirit and could not be identified with any state. Compared to God's heavenly city, the decline of Rome was unimportant. The welfare of Christianity was not to be identified ...