...Aside from the physical problems Saint Augustine can influence common people from, he also can relate with the question and the doubting God. In Confessions Book Seven, III Augustine says: But I asked further: “Who made me? Was it not my God, who is not only Good but Goodness itself? What root reason is there for my willing evil and failing to will good, which would make it just for me to be punished? Who was it that set and ingrafted in me this root of bitterness, since I was wholly made by my most loving God? Asking questions such as these, questions that are high level of understanding but still common enough for most people to ask, make Saint Augustine incredibly easy to connect to. People that have something or someone to connect to are...
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...Evil, Christianity, and Saint Augustine Sammy Hoag Philosophy 202 Dr. Ryan Murphy December 2015 What is evil? This ‘problem of evil’ and the existence of evil have plagued the minds of people throughout the centuries. It has been one on the most sought after inquiries and one of the most vexing challenges to Christianity, in explaining the existence of God. Many philosophers and thinkers, both secular and Christian, have endeavored to solve this problem. One of the most notable of whom is Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430). He is perhaps one of the most influential philosophers in the history of the Christian Church. Augustine spent much of his life trying to solve this ‘problem of evil’ and it proved to be quite an undertaking. This paper will explore the problem of evil and argue how Saint Augustine solidified the ways in which philosophy and religion, specifically Christianity, coincide through his work on the concepts of the problem of and the origin of evil. Understanding the problem of evil is essential to everyone because it affects the manner in which life is lived. Whether defending a belief in God or trying to share those beliefs with others everyone will encounter the problem of evil at some point. According to Ed Miller and Jon Jensen, authors of Questions that Matter:...
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...Minalin which used to be called Minalisis a peaceful town of about 39,194 people as recorded by the Philippine National Census of 1995. It has a land area of about 48.27 square kilometers and it is located southwest of the capital town of San Fernando. According to Don Mariano Henson’s "The Province of Pampanga and Its Towns", the four founders of this town namely, Mendiola, Nucum, Lopez and Intal negotiated with the Datu of Macabebe to acquire an initial piece of land as far as the boundary now called Lacmit and named the place as Santa Maria in honor of the four founders’ respective wives named Maria. When a church was about to be built in Santa Maria and the lumber was piled up already, the flood waters carried the construction materials to another site called Burol (Hilly Place) where the church was finally constructed. Since then the community was called Minalis meaning ‘moved to" until the 18th century when an error was made by the then Capitan Mayor Diego Tolentino who inadvertently wrote the name of the town as "Minalin" instead of the original name "Minalis". However, according to some documents on file in the office of Mr. Ricardo G. Santos, the current Municipal Planning and Development Coordinator of Minalin, this present town originated as a Malayan settlement under the leadership of Kahn Bulaun, a descendant of Prince Balagtas. This settlement was called Tigip but when the Spaniards came who looted the town and raped the women, they renamed the settlement as "Mina...
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...Throughout the Christian biblical texts the theme of divine and human language constantly emerges. The way in which these two languages differ gives great insight into the moral characteristics of both the mortal beings as well the characteristics of the divinities. The way the divinities speak both contrasts and compares to the way the mortals use their language. Although in all of the texts the divinities use speech to create bounds while the mortals are simply unable to do anything but comply. There does come a point where these two methods of divine and human speech come together to share striking similarities. This can be seen in the biblical books of Genesis, Gospel According to John, and the book Confessions by Saint Augustine. The...
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...Augustine Dealing with Death “A Friend’s Death” in the book “Confessions,” written in Hippo in 397, pretty clearly identifies what this portion of the text encompasses. The excerpt begins with Augustine’s recurrence of confusion with God; watching his friend suffer so intensely makes him wonder why God doesn’t divinely intervene to end his misery. This leads to a reflection on his recent dark days and more ambiguity with God’s presence. While unconscious, Augustine’s friend receives a baptism that Augustine is sure he would not have preferred if mentally present. With this in mind, Augustine pokes fun of it when his friend comes to, which is seen as repulsively unforgiveable, and threatens to end their friendship. Not long afterwards, the friend passes, which leaves no time for reconciliation for the two. This leads Augustine descending into a deep depression where constantly reminders of his loss lie and ultimately his only relief is found through weeping. Although this time period was extremely devastating to Augustine in the moment, do you think the reborn St. Augustine looks back on this memory as more of a weight off of his shoulders than a devastating loss while writing the selection? In the beginning sentences of the selection, Augustine goes into detail about the diminishing condition of his ailing friend. He goes into depth when describing his friend’s pain, stating that he was “convulsed with fever, lying insensible in a lethal sweat and given up for lost”...
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...INTRO : Topologists have debated the doctrine of original sin for centuries, but the one who stated it more clearly was Apostle Paul in Romans 5:12 Paul makes it known that sin entered through Adam and then spread to all of humanity. It is based on Paul’s writing that Saint Augustine expanded his theory on the notion of original sin and its relationship with the human free will. This essay will discuss these two views concerning original sin and free will, by first providing a brief description of Augustine of Hippo and his origins. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO : Augustine of Hippo or Saint Augustine ( 354- 430) bishop of Hippo, was one of the most important figures in the development of Christianity.. However this influential person was not born a Christian. As a young man, Augustine pursued a secular career as a teacher of rhetoric and philosophy while living a dissolute lifestyle. For nine years he was a follower of Manichaeism. In Milan he studied Neoplatonism and his conversion to Christianity took place in 386. As a theologian, he was called to write against the many heresies of the period Manichaeanism, Donatism, and Pelagianism, and in so doing he defined the shape of orthodox doctrine. ORIGINAL SIN AND FREE WILL “For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do. this I keep on doing” Roman 7:19 In this quote , Pau shows that mankind can tell the difference between wright and wrong. However, despite our intellect something influences us to...
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...existence of philosophical sin during long centuries would be a great debate for each individual. Literally the comprehensions of the sin divine people’s min into two sides. But there is never pro or con side because every person explains according to his own life and private examples. Also it did not pass along our one of the most famous historic of philosophy Socrates and St. Augustine in their latest compositions. They say that the “Sin” is a thing that harms one’s life in abstract way. Basically Socrates in the “Apology” understands Sin just like an abandon during your self-development therefore he used to say “If you ever do not know anything about knowledge and afterwards just forget it and let it go” so this is a sin. On the other hand the Sin in Confessions by Saint Augustine is a new attempt, he proposes as sin, things which makes you proud. Since both characters have their own thoughts on something, and this understanding makes them really different. For example they both say about sins however they understand different things as a sin. These most incredible Greek philosophers such as St. Augustine and Socrates with ambiguous ideas disputed about what the Sin is. Moreover they have different views on how to look to Sin with different directions. St. Augustine’s book which is called Confession is autobiographic since it was written according his life, and after reading the Confession we can deduce that what were his understandings about sin in his different...
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...Confessions of Saint Augustine St. Augustine main conflict was accepting God in his life. He struggle to acknowledge that God has possessed him. His father was a pagan, but his mother was such a devoted Christian woman; she dedicated her life to pray for the conversion of her son. St. Augustine was a teacher and during his youth days he encounters conflicts with Christian morality. He questioned himself many time “who am I” and “who are men?” he was a sinner and lived a very disorderly life. For example, as a child he was not baptized, he was not initiated in the Christian formation and he became afraid to sin after receiving the sacrament. This kept enriching his Manichean beliefs, he was “seduced and he seduced others, deceived and deceiving by various desires” and his doubts about encountering the truth kept increasing. He was too proud, too full of vanities, he had affairs with many women, and even had a son, but he realizes that his vision that happiness cannot be found in worldly pleasures but in the search for truth beyond the material world. “My heart was made dark by sorrow, and whatever I looked upon was death” he refers to the death of his closes friend whom he had perverted, and whose death he felt and wept bitterly. He became very desperate, confused and mad because he...
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...GOODS OF by John J. Coughlin, O.F.M. I. General Description Saint Augustine provided the classical description of the goods of marriage as fidelity (fidelium), children (proles), and sacrament (sacramentum). According to Augustine, fidelity is the understanding and intention of the married couple to exercise exclusive sexual faithfulness to one another. As the fruit of fidelity, parents accept children in love, nurturing them in affection, and educating them in religion. The sacrament constitutes a symbol of the permanence and stability in marriage. (De Genesi ad litteram, 9, 7, 12). The classical Augustinian description of the three goods of marriage is reflected, but not repeated verbatim, in the 83 CIC. Section One of C. 1055 defines the ends of marriage as the good of the spouses and procreation and education of children. The language of the canon situates the two ends of marriage in the context of marriage as covenant and sacrament. C. 1056 lists unity and indissolubility as the essential properties of marriage. The elements of the Augustinian description of the goods of marriage—fidelity, children, and sacrament—inform the present law of the church describing marriage as sacramental covenant in terms of ends and properties—the love of the spouses, children, unity, and indissolubility. II. Saint Augustine’s Traditional Three Goods In describing the goodness of marriage, Saint Augustine did not...
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...Saint Ambrose of Milan Introduction “Sanctity is development of initial grace which God gives in the first place; it is a process.” The saints are our examples in living our Christian faith into our lives. They lived their lives in conformity with the will of God. These people are also like us who endure the difficulties and challenges of becoming a true authentic disciple of Jesus Christ. “Saints are not born; they’re made from a lifetime of processing in the Spirit.” All of us can become saints they are just ordinary people like us but their faith makes them extraordinary and by practicing and living the teachings of God in their day to day lives. The saints are our models of holiness and virtues into our lives as a pilgrim in this world. They inspire us and we also asked their intercessions in order to strengthen our faith and love to God. In order to follow Christ let us imitate the virtues that we can get from the life stories of the saints who are the living witness of God’s goodness and love. In this paper, I chose St. Ambrose as the subject of this research. Because when I read his short life story in the book entitled My first Book of Saints by Son of Immaculate Heart of Mary. I was fascinated on his life story on how he lives and serve his life as the Bishop of Milan. St. Ambrose was largely responsible for the rise of Christianity in the West, and he was very courageous and untiring defender of the independence of the Church from the state. Through this...
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...Platonism St. Augustine is one of the towering figures of medieval philosophy. Augustine had a huge influence on the modern period with people including Descartes and Malebranche. One of the main focal points in his life comes in 387 AD, when his conversion to Christianity takes place. In Augustine’s conversion to Christianity, he evolved a different approach to thinking. When Augustine writes about the Manicheans, he tends to focus on their materialism, substantive dualism, and their identification of the human soul as a particle of the Light. These three key qualifications from Platonism provide Augustine with a philosophical framework for both the medieval and modern periods. In the Confessions, Augustine gives his most extensive discussion of the books of the Platonists. In the Confessions, he makes clear that his previous thinking was dominated by common- sense materialism. It was the books of the Platonists that first made it possible for him to conceive the possibility of a non-physical substance. It did provide him however with a non- Manichean solution to the problem of the origin of evil. In addition, the books of the Platonists provided him with a framework where he plotted the human condition. According to Augustine the framework for Platonists can account for the difficulties with which life brings about to us, in the same aspect it offers a theory that the highest ethical goal is happiness and personal well- being. In this account, Augustine is talking about...
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...Saint Augustine, also know us Saint Augustine of Hippo, Aurelius Augustinus. he was in Thagaste , Souk Ahras, Algeria Nov. 13, 354, Tagaste , died Aug. 28, 430, Hippo Regius, feast day August 28, bishop of Hippo from 396 to 430, . The father of St. Augustine was a pagan who converted on his death bed and his mother was Saint Monica, a devout Christian. St. Augustine received a Christian upbringing and in 370 went to the University at Carthage to study rhetoric with a view to becoming a lawyer. St. Augustine gave up to be lawyer and to devote himself to literary pursuits and gradually abandoned his Christian faith ,he taking a mistress with whom he lived fifteen years and who bore him a son, Adeodatus, in 372 and afteran investigating...
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...to evil when the original sin occurred? St. Augustine was one of the most respected thinkers in Christianity. In Book VII the Confessions, Augustine reflects on the existence of evil and the problem it faces. For evil to exist, the Creator, God, must have granted it, its existence. This contradicts the Christian view that God is purely good. For a long time, Augustine thought evil must not exists or that God is not entirely good. Original sin. Always asked questions God had to create evil Evil, Augustine entire religious life was based on evil, and how God could create it if he is good. Evil is a major theme in the Confessions, and the City of God. When Augustine was young, he could not wrap his mind around believing in an all good God that also created evil. However, God gave people free will. We can make our own choices. Our choices may be perceived as evil but it is just the lack of goodness in our decisions. The problem with evil and God is the challenge of how an all-powerful and all-loving God can allow his creation to suffer, without helping then and putting an end to their suffering. This challenge is an often quoted reason for being unable to believe in God for it is argued, either God does not exist or, if he does then he is not a God worthy of out worship. Souls are the reason we do bad things not the body. The Soul is emotional God gave us the option to do bad things One question preoccupied Augustine from the time he was a student in Carthage:...
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...SAINT AMBROSE Saint Aurelius Ambrose lived from 330 – 4 April 397. He was the archbishop of Milan and one of the first original four doctors of the church. He was born into a Roman Catholic family. After his fathers untimely death, he decided to follow in his footsteps and study in Rome. He went from only having a small place in the council, to Govenor, and finally Bishop. He went from being a unbaptized layman to bishop in eight days. As bishop, he adopted a self-denying lifestyle he gave his money to the poor and donated all of his land, making only a home for his sister Marcellina. He had total control of the cultural and political life of his age.He stopped Arianism for as long as he could until the Arians became so strong he had only the choice to profess Arianism. He then tried to stop the building of two Arian churches Milan and warned young Christians against intermarriage with Jews. He also led the charge to the persecution of Paganism. Ambrose was the teacher who converted and baptized St. Augustine of Hippo, and was a model bishop who viewed the church as rising above the ruins of the Roman Empire. He composed multiple beautiful hymns. Ambrose’s position was not challenged even after death, he was a model for other bishops to follow. He always protected Christianity from other new methods trying to make their way in, such as the Pagans. He was suceeded by Simplician. His body can still be seen on display in the church of s. ambrogio in Milan, as one of the oldest...
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...THOMAS AQUINAS Introduction Saint Thomas Aquinas is one of the most famous saints of the Catholic Church. He is called a 'Doctor of the Church' and was a theologian, and philosopher. His parents sent him to a monastery when he was five years old and his teachers were surprised by how quickly he learned and his great faith. But when Thomas announced that he wanted to become a Dominican, his family tried to stop him. His brothers captured him and locked him up in a castle. His mother, sister and brothers kept him there for two years. Thomas was a very big man with a kind and humble manner. Because he didn't talk very much, people thought he was stupid and therefore called him 'the ox.' When they heard him preach, however, everyone realized how wise Thomas really was. After he became a priest, Thomas studied in Paris and taught at universities in many cities of Europe. He wrote more than 40 books and several beautiful hymns. All of his work praises God and helped many people understand faith better. At the end of his life, Saint Thomas stopped writing and he had a vision of Heaven. Because of this experience, Thomas decided that compared to the great glory of God, his writing was 'like straw.' Three months later, on his way to see the Pope, he died. Thomas Aquinas’ Early Life and Eduacation He was born in Italy in 1225, the son of a count. When he was five years old, his parents send him to study with the Benedictines of Monte Casino. There, and later at the university...
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