Today is St. Augustine’s feast day. He remains one of the most influential, as well as controversial, figures in the history of Christianity. Some blame him for all that’s wrong with “Western” Christianity: its alleged obsession with sin, legalism, hangups about sex, the frightful predestinarian picture of God, etc. Some of these charges are caricatures, others have (IMO) some truth to them.

But, despite his mixed legacy, Augustine made more lasting contributions to the church than virtually any other single theologian. He formulated a truly Christian metaphysics that made the distinction between created and uncreated being (rather than, say, spirit and matter) the fundamental ontological distinction, while insisting that creation is fundamentally good. He struggled for the priority of grace over Donatist legalism and Pelagian moralism. He accepted some of the best insights of Platonism and other pagan learning, but more thoroughly Christianized them than many of his predecessors. He worked out a comprehensive (for its time) Christian vision of history. And he set the template for much “Latin” theorizing about the Trinity.

Here’s the collect for the day:

O Lord God, the light of the minds that know you, the Life of the souls that love you, and the strength of the hearts that serve you: Help us, following the example of your servant Augustine of Hippo, so to know you that we may truly love you, and so to love you that we may fully serve you, whom to serve is perfect freedom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

I did a series on Augustine’s Enchiridion early this year.