On this date, on the old calendar, Augustine of Hippo was born. Hippo is not his last name. It is the city where he served as bishop. The name of the town is funny in English, but it makes sense in Greek. Hippo is the Latin transliteration of a Greek place name, ‘Ιππών (Hippon), which is a stable or a garrison. Its full title in Latin was Hippo Regius. It was an outpost of the Roman empire, which itself makes sense once we see that, as the crow flies, it was about 250 miles from Hippo Regius (today Annaba, Tunisia) to the coast of Sicily.

Augustine was born in AD 354, in what then was Thagaste, Numidia and what today is Souk, Ahras in Algeria, about 60 miles almost straight south (inland) of Annaba, on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea.¹ According to Peter Brown, in the century before Augustine was born there was a period of prosperity, a “boom” period for that somewhat-remote part of the Empire; but by the time Augustine was born, the boom time was past.² For the people of Thagaste, Carthage was the capital city, and Augustine was born in a Roman town. His father, Patricius, was relatively poor, but they had connections to a “local grandee,” Romanianus.³

As a Roman in North Africa, Augustine spoke Latin.⁴ For him, becoming a schoolmaster was the only way out of a backwater, and that meant he had to get himself an education, which consisted largely of memorizing great parts of a few texts by Vergil, Cicero, and others.⁵ He would become as good at Latin as he would be poor at Greek.⁶ The main thing in his schooling was to become an orator, which Augustine certainly did.⁷

His mother, Monica (Santa Monica, CA is named for her) was as pious as Patricius was poor, and thus Augustine was catechized in the Christian faith. By fifteen he was studying in Madaura (now, M’Daourouch), a university town about 60 miles south of Thagaste. His funds only lasted for a year and then he had to return home.⁸ At seventeen he was in Carthage, a provincial boy at school in the big city. His father died that year, and that year he indulged himself, but at the end he took what we used to call a common law wife by taking a woman as a concubine. We do not know her name. Together they had a son, Adeodatus, who died in AD 389 as a teenager.

When in school he finally read the Bible, he was disappointed. It was not what he expected. In 371, he encountered the aggressive missionaries of the Manichaean movement and abandoned his Christian upbringing for Manichaean philosophy.⁹ He became a schoolmaster and lived with his girlfriend for fifteen years. His first post was back in Thagaste. When his mother discovered his new approach to Christianity, she was “appalled” and “shut him out of her house.”¹⁰ Back home he also came into contact with what Brown calls “fundamentalist” Manichaeans, who did not impress Augustine.¹¹ His teaching career carried him to Carthage, where he published his first book.¹² His work as a teacher would take him to Rome, and the capital of the empire, and then north to Milan in 384.

In 385 Augustine “dismissed” his concubine and became engaged “to a young heiress.”¹³ He dismissed his relationship to his anonymous concubine as “the mere bargain of a lustful love.”¹⁴ Now, however, Augustine thought he had found a useful rung up the socio-economic ladder. He would find professional success in Milan when he was chosen by the pagan prefect (i.e., Mayor) as professor of rhetoric.¹⁵ Monica visited in the spring. It was she who arranged the marriage to the catholic heiress.¹⁶ In deference to her, Augustine became a catechumen under Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan. There was, it seems, a contest for Augustine’s soul. Would he continue to pursue the wisdom via the Manichaean path, would he become a skeptic (via Cicero’s mediation of the skeptics), would he become a Platonist, or would he become a Christian? He was more impressed with Ambrose’s oratory than he was with that of Faustus the Manichaean.¹⁷ Ambrose was a patrician and older than Augustine, who was a provincial. In 386 Augustine found himself in dialogue with neo-Platonists who had synthesized the teaching of Plotinus (d. AD 270) with that of Plato, whose work was promoted by the learned Porphyry (d. AD 305), a learned critic of Christianity.

By late August of 386, however, he had been reading Paul. He came into contact with a group of visitors from the imperial city of Trier. One of them, Ponticianus, noticed Augustine’s copy of Paul on his table and proceeded to talk to Augustine about the Egyptian monk, St. Antony; but Augustine was beginning to see himself as he was.¹⁸ Ambrose’ sermons and Paul’s letters were beginning to have their effect.

Somehow I flung myself down beneath a fig-tree and gave ay to the tears which now streamed from eyes, the sacrifice that is acceptable . . . for I felt that I was still captive of my sins, and in my misery I kept crying “How long shall I go on saying ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow’? Why not now? Why not make an end of my ugly sins at this moment?”

I was asking myself these questions, weeping all the while with the most bitter sorrow in my heart, when all at once I heard the sing-song voice of a child in a nearby house. Whether it was the voice of a boy or a girl I cannot say, but again and again it repeated the refrain “Take it and read, take it and read.” At this I looked up, thinking hard whether there was any kind of game in which children used to chant words like these, but could not remember ever hearing them before. I stemmed my flood of tears and stood up, telling myself that this could only be a passage on which my eyes should fall. For I had heard the story of while the Gospel was being read and taken it as a counsel to himself when heard the words: “Go home and sell all that belongs to you. . . .”

So I hurried back to the place where Alypius was sitting, for when I stood up to move away I had put down the book containing Paul’s Epistles. I seized it and opened it, and in silence I read the first passage on which my eyes fell: “Not in revelling and drunkenness, not in lust and wantonness, not in quarrels and rivalries. Rather, arm yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, spend no more thought on nature and nature’s appetites.” I had no wish to read more and no need to do so. For in an instant, as I came to the end of the sentence, it was as though the light of confidence flooded into my heart and all the darkness of doubt was dispelled.¹⁹

In September of 386, in ill-health, Augustine “retired” to Cassiciacum (possibly Cassigiago, near Lake Como, outside of Milan). As Calvin would, more than a millennium later, Augustine wanted time to reflect on his conversion, to read, and to write.²⁰ Remarkably, he had yet to be baptized. He would be baptized in Milan in the autumn.²¹

It might seem odd to us, but Peter Brown explains why Augustine, as so many were in that period, was hesitant to take that step of baptism (and why his parents had not arranged his baptism as an infant): “Augustine had to face the prospect of some bitter renunciations, if he wished to become, at one and the same time, a baptized Catholic and a Philosopher.”²² The effect of becoming a Baptized Christian and Philosopher meant, for Augustine, a monastic life. . . . Therefore . . . the majority of Christians in the Later Roman Empire fought shy of baptism. . . . Many others were baptized only on their death bed.”²³ Of course, as he matured, Augustine would embrace the biblical and early Christian doctrine and practice of infant baptism.²⁴

The ambitious young man from the provinces, despite his sins, or perhaps because of them—he knew the greatness of his sin and misery—would be mightily used by God. His City of God powerfully refuted the pagan claim that the Christians were responsible for the sack of Rome. His Confessions detailed his conversion with remarkable honesty. His On the Trinity helped to develop the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. His treatise on hermeneutics, On the Spirit and the Letter, opened a door through which Luther would later walk in distinguishing the law and the gospel. His work on Teaching Christianity (De doctrina) serves today as a powerful rebuke of postmodern subjectivism and deconstructionism. And, perhaps most importantly of all, his several refutations of Pelagianism would powerfully shape Western Christianity for more than one-thousand years. Through the course of the centuries, his anti-Pelagianism would be forgotten by many (in the ninth century, poor Gottschalk was beaten and imprisoned for repeating Augustine’s anti-Pelagianism), but it would also be remembered by some (e.g., Thomas Aquinas), especially by the late medieval neo-Augustinians (e.g., Thomas Bradwardine) and by every one of the magisterial Protestant Reformers (Bondage of the Will, anyone?) and their orthodox Reformed successors.

After all, the Reformation was, to a large degree, a recovery and re-shaping of Augustine over against the theological corruptions of the high and late-medieval church. Much of what Calvin did was to re-state Augustine’s objections to the Pelagians.²⁵ The Synod of Dort (1618–19) was largely only defending Augustine against another a new Pelagian movement.

On this day, remember Augustine of Thagaste (and Hippo), whom God, in his sovereign grace, brought to faith, and preserved and matured in that faith, to set a course for the Western church which we follow today.

Notes

1. My favorite biography of Augustine remains Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967).
2. Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 19–20.
3. Brown, 21. Think of the Godfather. Patricius was likely a client of Romanianus.
4. Brown, 22.
5. Brown, 36.
6. Brown, 36.
7. Brown, 37.
8. Brown, 38.
9. Brown, 39.
10. Brown, 53.
11. Brown, 55.
12. Brown, 57.
13. Brown, 62.
14. Confessions, 4.2.2, quoted by Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 63. In ep, 167k Leo I had declared the abandonment of a concubine for a wife a sign of moral improvement (Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 88–89, n. 6).
15. Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 69.
16. Brown, 81.
17. Brown, 83.
18. Brown, 107.
19. Confessions 8.11.2, in Brown, Augustine, 108–09.
20. Brown, 115.
21. Brown, 124.
22. Brown, 106.
23. Brown, 106–07.
24. E.g., Augustine of Hippo, On Baptism, Against the Donatists, 4.23.31–24.32, in St. Augustin: The Writings Against the Manichaeans and Against the Donatists, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. J. R. King, vol. 4, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (Buffalo: Christian Literature Company, 1887), 461. Both Tertullian and Origen acknowledged infant baptism as established Christian practice in c. AD 206. There is no record of any change in baptismal practice in the second century. As far as Augustine knew, infant baptism was “the firm tradition of the universal Church.” He understood it to be “rightly held to have been handed down by apostolical authority.” He defended it on the basis of the parallel with circumcision (Col 2:11–12) as Christians have always done.
25. An electronic search of the Battles edition of the Institutes shows 852 references or allusions to Augustine. Some of those are part of the apparatus, but even if we cut the total by 50%, it remains an impressive number and illustrates how deeply influenced Calvin was by Augustine.

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

RESOURCES

• Resources For Those Discovering The Reformed Confession
• Resources On The Doctrine Of The Church (Ecclesiology)
• Subscribe To The Heidelblog!
• Download the HeidelApp on Apple App Store or Google Play
• The Heidelblog Resource Page
• Heidelmedia Resources
• The Ecumenical Creeds
• The Reformed Confessions
• The Heidelberg Catechism
• Recovering the Reformed Confession (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2008)
• Why I Am A Christian
• What Must A Christian Believe?
• Heidelblog Contributors
• Support Heidelmedia: use the donate button or send a check to

Heidelberg Reformation Association
1637 E. Valley Parkway #391
Escondido CA 92027
USA
The HRA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization

Post authored by:

• R. Scott Clark

  

  R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

  More by R. Scott Clark ›