Was Augustine a Barthian?

St. Augustine (354-430)

St. Augustine [5] began his life in Algeria, an apt student devoted early to the Church and seeking the Truth. His professors recognized his great skill at philosophizing and writing. As Augustine devoured writings both ancient and of his contemporaries, he fell away from the Church and toward a religious dualism sect known as the Manicheans. His mother, a very devoted Christian (later St. Moni...

Time As A Psalm In St. Augustine

Augustine follows a Platonic method in his treatment of time in Confessions XI. The 'in principio' of Genesis is the theme of the book and introduces the problem of the relation of time to the divine in a most direct way. The argument then centres on the problem that the present has no extension: "praesens autem nullum habet spatium" (XI, 15). The problem having been solved Augustine concludes ...

Augustine and the Philosophers

Because of the immensity of Augustine’s corpus and the complex intellectual patrimony that informs it, attempts to place him within the history of philosophical traditions are often partial and in need of supplementation. In treating below of Augustine’s engagement with Aristotelianism, Middle Platonism, Neoplatonism, and Stoicism, I shall be drawing attention to particular topics, lexical poin...

Augustine on Manichaeism and Charisma

Augustine was suspicious of charismatics‘ claims to superior righteousness, which supposedly authorized them to relay truths about creation and redemption. What follows finds the origins of that suspicion in his disenchantment with celebrities on whom Manichees relied, specialists whose impeccable behavior and intellectual virtuosity were taken as signs that they possessed insight into the mean...

The Philosophy of St. Augustine