Saint Augustine, His Life and Teachings (From the Patrology of Stylianos Papadopoulos) - Part One

Augustine of Hippo (+ 430): 

The Great Church Father of the West

By Stylianos Papadopoulos,

Professor of Patristics

General View: Introduction

1. Saint Augustine was the greatest and most prolific of the Church Fathers and theologians of the West and a writer of enormous influence on Western Christianity. Multi-talented and a genius, he dominated medieval thought (theology, philosophy, methodology), mainly until the era (12th-13th centuries) when Aristotelianism was adopted - in the place of Plato and Neoplatonism - as the ultimate instrument of construction and proof of the Church's teaching. Of course, mainly through the Franciscans (Bonaventure et al.) he continued to deeply influence Roman Catholic - but also later Protestant - theological thought, while sociologists, political scientists and historians of philosophy always refer to his texts. Western theology, in general, is unthinkable without the constant presence of Augustine, both positively and negatively. In the Christian East for centuries Augustine remained almost unknown and that is why his influence was negligible to zero.