San Agustín de Hipona |Filosofía y Vida

#philosophy #theology #Christianity Saint Augustine was born in 354 in Tagaste, in present-day Algeria, which was part of Numidia, a Roman province in Africa. We can trace his life thanks to one of his greatest works, Confessions, which is also a milestone in the history of literature, as it inaugurates the autobiography with the presence of a reflective self. In this work, where Saint Augustine confesses to God, we find half of his life narrated, as he wrote it around the age of 40. Augustine of Hippo completed his early studies in his hometown of Tagaste, and was later sent to Carthage by his father, a small local landowner, to obtain a better education. Augustine devoted himself to profound study in Carthage, but also to the pleasures of the flesh and lust. Those early years are marked by the search for a truth, for a path to guide his life. He couldn't find answers to his questions in Christianity, which his mother, the future Saint Monica, professed with such faith, and which she had tried unsuccessfully to instill in him from childhood. His father was a pagan. Augustine, who always strove to be the best, filled with vanity, as he himself confessed, soon stood out as a great student of rhetoric. At the age of 19, reading Cicero's Hortensius changed his life, and he delved into the study of philosophy in search of the truth he couldn't find, also delving into other disciplines such as theater and astrology. In these early years, Augustine embraced the creed of the Manichaean sect, which was very influential at the time. But despite being a prominent member, he never became fully convinced by its teachings. At the age of 29, he met with the Manichaean bishop with the greatest reputation for wisdom, Faustus, who was unable to answer his questions. Augustine saw that Faustus was all talk and that deep down he was an ignorant man lacking any depth, so he gradually abandoned Manichaeism. From Carthage, where he spent several years as a professor of rhetoric, he moved to Rome and then to Milan. With him was his son Adeodatus, born in 372 from a relationship with a woman whose name Augustine kept silent, but who lived with him for nearly 15 years, until she decided to retire to a monastery in Carthage. Milan would be the turning point in his life, as there he began to frequent the sermons of Bishop Ambrose, who managed to resolve many questions about biblical interpretation and God, which would gradually bring Augustine closer to Christian thought. His final conversion and definitive commitment to the religion of Christ came after a kind of revelation that has become very famous. It happened that while Augustine was in a deep state of lamentation and existential depression, he heard a childlike voice saying, "Take and read, take and read." Augustine turned to a book he had been ignoring a short while before, the Epistles of Saint Paul, and opening it at random, he read the following: "Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and then come, follow me." After recounting the revelation to his friend Alypius, he continued reading: "Not in banqueting and drunkenness, not in vice and dishonesty, not in quarreling and rivalry, but clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not spend your care in gratifying the flesh." After being baptized by Bishop Ambrose, Augustine abandoned his chair of rhetoric and returned to Tagaste, but without his mother, who died in 387. Three years later, his son, Adeodatus, followed suit. In Tagaste, he sold all his possessions and founded a small monastic community. In 391, he was unwillingly elected as a Christian priest in Hippo, and four years later he was ordained bishop of that same see. During this period, he devoted himself fervently to the composition of his works, vigorously combating the heresies and schisms that threatened Catholic orthodoxy, such as the Manicheans, Pelagians, Donatists, and pagans. Augustine of Hippo died in August 430, while the city of his episcopal see, Hippo, was under siege by barbarians. Having reviewed his biography, taken from his book Confessions, we move on to another of his masterpieces, The City of God, written in his mature period, between 412 and 426. The work is motivated by the crisis the Roman Empire was suffering at the hands of the barbarians. Many blame this decline and the end of civilization itself on the rise of Christianity. In The City of God Against the Pagans, which is the exact title, Augustine contrasts two types of cities: the first is the spiritual one and that of God, and the second is the earthly one that represents sin and moral decadence.