He was a Manichee because Manicheism offered more concert answers. However he is challenged, “I then expended much mental efforts on trying to discover if I could in any way convict the Manichees of falsehood by some definite proofs” (5.14.25). Augustine did thought at some point that Manichaeism can offer what he wanted, but because he was too ignorant and he never saw what really was Manicheism. While his time in Milan, he becomes a skeptic where he begins to question everything. He now believes that’s there is no truth to the question of God, but an understanding of him. He meets bishop named Ambrose, which his mother becomes happy because maybe he can convert back to Catholicism. During his time with Ambrose, Augustine starts to believe that Catholicism can offer him the understanding he has been…
Juan Ponce de Leon was born around 1460 in San Tervas de Campos, Spain. He was the first Spanish explorer to arrive in Florida. In 1493, Ponce de Leon and Christopher Columbus sailed together on Columbus’ 2nd voyage to America. They had settled on an island named Hispaniola, which is present day Dominican Republic, where Ponce de Leon had become governor at. In 1506, he had discovered an island close by named Borinquen, and during his time here, he found lots of gold. Once he made this discovery and took most of it, he left the island of Borinquen. In 1508, he was ordered by the king of Spain to return to Borinquen to colonize it. Later on, he had renamed this island Puerto Rico. He became the island’s governor for two years until he was replaced with Columbus’s son by the king.…
Augustine, although recognized as a saint today, was not always a man of great faith. For most of his life, he was tempted with sin, and he struggled to figure out who God was. In the earlier part of his life, he was fascinated by rhetoric. He admired famous rhetoricians, and he even wrote some works of his own, including The Confessions, in which he reveals the struggles he faced. Augustine’s attraction to rhetoricians is not something unfamiliar to a modern audience, as today it is something called “celebrity worship”.…
We all sin at least once in our lifetimes. After committing the sin, we look for forgiveness from God and a way to correct it. Then we move on from that sin and usually forget that it ever even happened. However, Saint Augustine did not accept this. He spent his entire life trying to understand where sin came from and how God played a role in it. He examined multiple philosophical and theological schools of thought to find the true source of sin. Saint Augustine was a very spiritual man whose views differed from other popular beliefs such as the Greeks and Romans. What he learned from Neo-Platonism, Christian belief, and all his experiences in his early life allowed him to truly grasp what grace meant and how God’s omnipotence affected human…
Tracing the history of Christianity, there have been immense intellectual wars engaged for the sake of truth. Clearly, Christianity was a small religion with little importance in second and third centuries. The church had other most burdensome and serious problems to solve. They struggled with persecution from outside the church especially from the Emperors and doctrinal debates from within the church that birthed the Church leaders, now called the “Church Fathers.” Doctrines were investigated, developed and solidified to protect their beliefs. The canon of the New Testament was established to guard the wrong teachings and interpretations. The major point in Christianity came during the early fourth century AD, when Constantine became the emperor. Although that Christianity became legitimate and persecutions ceased, this did not stop controversies to creep in the church.…
Augustine’s theodicy is mostly influenced by the creation stories found in the Genesis. Augustine had a traditional view of God and thought God was omnipotent and good. The genesis mentions that everything God made was good, therefore the universe that God created is good. Augustine believed there were higher and lower goods but everything was good in its own way.…
Augustine taught grammar at Thagaste during 373 and 374. The following year he moved to Carthage to conduct a school of rhetoric and would remain there for the next nine years. Disturbed by unwell behaved students in Carthage, he moved to establish a school in Rome, where he believed the best and brightest rhetoricians practiced, in 383. However, Augustine was disappointed with the apathetic reception. It was the custom for students to pay their fees to the professor on the last day of the term, and many students attended faithfully all term, and then did not pay him. In the summer of 386, at the age of 31, Augustine converted to Christianity. In 391, Augustine was ordained a priest in Hippo Regius, in Algeria. He became a famous preacher, and was noted for combating the Manichaean religion. Augustine worked tirelessly in trying to convince the people of Hippo to convert to Christianity. Though he had left his monastery, he continued to lead a monastic life in the episcopal residence. Saint Augustine passed away on August 28, 430 at Hippo Regius,…
Tomas Aquinas had a role and also an influence in the Catholic Church. He was a philosopher and theologian and he used his role to create change in the Catholic Church. He was an Italian Dominican friar, Catholic priest, and Doctor of the Church. He was a greatly influential philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism, within which he is also known as the Doctor Communes. Thomas Aquinas is hailed as the Church's best theologian and philosopher.…
Saint Augustine 's powerful prayer to God tells the story of his struggles that led towards his conversion to Christianity. This journey toward Christ was difficult for Augustine, as it required him to overcome his misunderstanding of evil and his own sin. In Augustine 's adolescents, a strong desire for lust overtook his life, not only hurting him spiritually, but also hurting the one woman who supported his conversion, his mother Monica. Upset and looking for repentance in all his wrongdoings, Augustine wanted to begin a spiritual journey toward God, though he was not exactly sure who God was. He learned of different forms of evil and sin through his recollection of his infancy and youth, his study of the Manichean religion, Neoplatonist doctrines, and finally his conversion to Christianity. Augustine 's study of the different concepts of evil and sin prepared him for his conversion and his influential role in the Christian religion.…
Throughout history, there have been many people who have been fortunate to obtain title of "saint" from the church. However one such saint, despite his death centuries ago, continues to influence people today through his prayers, good deeds, and notably his establishment of the largest religious orders today, the Franciscans and the Franciscan Nuns, or Poor Clares. This man is St. Francis of Assisi. A mystic as well as a preacher, St. Francis, "lover of all creation", gave up his life of riches in order to care for the unfortunate. What would drive a rich young man to sacrifice every material asset he had, including his time, to serve lepers and beggars? This paper will examine how the patron saint of Italy transformed his lifestyle to live in poverty and serve the Lord.…
Throughout the history of the Catholic Church, there have been only a few people fortunate and deserving enough of the title of “saint”. Originally named Giovanni Francesco Bernardone, St. Francis of Assisi is honored as the patron saint of animals and ecology. He lived a life of complete obedience, humility, and poverty. He was a guy who was truly in love with the Lord and wanted to follow in his teachings. He was a man willing to give up his belongings to help those less-fortunate. Despite his death many years ago, his life still continues to have a tremendous influence/impact on the Catholic Church today.…
1.) Thomas Aquinas believes that humans are born with a clean slate in a state of potency and acquire knowledge through sense experiences by abstraction of the phantasms. His view on how man acquires knowledge rejects Plato’s theory that humans are born with innate species. Along with Plato’s theory of humans understanding corporeal things through innate species, Aquinas also rejects Plato’s theory that in being born with innate species, humans spend their lives recollecting their knowledge.…
Born in 106 BC Cicero began his life as a scholar, excelling in his studies. As he grew, he studied the field of law under Quintus Mucius Scaevola, one of the greatest lawyers of Rome at the time. After practicing law for some time, Cicero traveled to Greece where he learned philosophy and…
Alberti was born in Genoa on February 14, 1404, the son of a Florentine noble. He received the best education available in the 15th century, first at the school of Barsizia at Padua (Padova) and then at the University of Bologna. He was proficient in Greek, mathematics, and the natural sciences. As a poet, a philosopher, and one of the first organists of his day, Alberti greatly influenced his contemporaries. In 1432, he was appointed a papal secretary by Pope Eugene IV.…
The main issue, a massive stroke against the life of his soul, was his blooming sexual life. After grade school, his father sent him to Carthage to get a “good education” in liberal studies. As soon as he arrived in Carthage, it appears he got in with the wrong crowd. Augustine began living a sexually immoral series of habits. He says at first his relationships were begun out of his essential desire to love and be loved. Instead of finding this love in God, he found it in an unnamed woman, who many scholars believe to have been the long-term concubine of Augustine and the mother of Adeodatus. In his autobiography, he reports that he continued living more and more into this licentious lifestyle as his teen years went on. He says peer pressure had a big part of it; he would always report his escapades, and exaggerate them when necessary so as to not come off as naïve.…