Saint Augustine was a man who grew up in changing times. He was born in the transitional period between the ancient age of thought and the middles ages. In fact, Christianity was a relatively new ideal that was spreading across Europe and Russia. With this spread, people from all across Europe began to travel to holy sites and question the old gods that had existed for centuries. Interestingly enough, Augustine was born to a catholic mother and a pagan father, which caused him to be very conflicted in his faith. In his book titled Confessions, Augustine questions his beliefs, his education, his life and understanding, and even questions God. The question of who or what God is has been around since the invention, or discovery, of God. The modern idea of God suggests that there is a supreme being that is all knowing, all powerful, all benevolent and all encompassing. This God is one who is feared and worshiped by the laity and can be prayed to when help is needed. He is watching our every move and knows the path that we will take in life, but there seems to be a problem with this. This idea of God seems to be far too “human” to be God. Meaning that this way of looking at the deity is very shallow and naïve. Instead, Augustine proposes that God is something far more complex and incomprehensible. God is a form based on perfections of different ideals such as morality, justice, love, wisdom, thought, desire, understanding and faith and when correct reason is applied to the pursuit of these forms or perfections, then the nature of God will become much clearer.
To fully grasp the Augustinian God, you must understand the mindset of the time that Augustine lived. Today, the goal of Christianity is to reach the mental and physical experience that could be described as the presence of God. In other words, the individual must achieve an epiphany or mystical occurrence in order to “know” God. Augustine on the other hand, had a very different understanding of being spiritual. The common belief at his time was that if one could understand or interpret the scriptures in a skillful way, then that person was a spiritual individual. Meaning that since Augustine, in his later years, had come to some degree of understanding of the scripture, he was a very spiritual Christian, even if he did not have any mystical understanding of the nature of God. His ability to read through the visible words of scripture allowed him to better understand the nature of God according to the common beliefs at his time. Read the rest of this entry
