Augustine was born to a Catholic mother and a pagan father, in AD 354, near the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, in a town called Thagaste, that would today be northeast Algeria, on the border with Tunisia - North Africa. By that time, Roman Catholicism had been legalized in AD 313 and the imperial capital had been moved to Constantinople (now Istanbul) in AD 330. The Nicene Creed had been proclaimed in AD 325, and the Catholic Church had become the state religion in AD 380 (and the only religion allowed), when Augustine was 26.
Before he converted to Catholicism at age 31, Augustine was a devoted follower of Manichaeism and Neoplatonism, and he brought their ideas of the conflict between good and evil into his writings after his conversion. For instance, the idea of a conflict between the City of God and the City of Satan is very Manichaean. And, his Neoplatonic ideas were especially strong in his early writings.
He was one of the great rhetoricians of his time. He was a product of the imperial philosophies that were the foundation of the Roman Empire. He saw nothing wrong with an imperial church. He was a Roman Catholic in every sense, and everything that he wrote was in furtherance to the Great Harlot that he thought to be the one true church.
Can you blame him?
Yes, but none of us really want to.
Augustine's Errors
Remember that Augustine was emphatic in his Mariology, claiming that Mary was a virgin till she died - conveniently forgetting what the Bible says about the half-brothers of Jesus. He also strongly supported Catholic Ecclesiology, where he claimed that the priests were the direct successors of the Apostles and must be obeyed. He is the originator of the term 'Just War', in which it is a sin to not go to war for a 'just' cause. And, to quote Encyclopedia Britannica:
Intellectually, Augustine represents the most influential adaptation of the ancient Platonic tradition with Christian ideas that ever occurred in the Latin Christian world.
He fought relentlessly against the Donatists, who rightly believed that the state should have no involvement with the church and that those who betrayed the Body of Christ should not remain in positions of church authority. The Donatists were correct in every way, but Augustine wouldn't see it, saying:
"The clouds roll with thunder, that the house of the Lord shall be built throughout the earth; and these frogs sit in their marsh and croak 'We are the only Christians!' "
Unfortunately, Augustine was wrong, and compounded his error in AD 411 when an imperial council was convened to resolve the conflict between the Donatists and the Catholics. Through Augustine's superior rhetoric, he was able to convince the Roman Empire to deny the Donatists both civil and religious rights. This led to years of extreme repression, persecution and murder.
His Greatest Blunder
You could almost excuse Augustine for the above errors. We all get things wrong, and we are always influenced by those who brought us up in our faith. I've had my share of errors that I've had to repent of, so you could say the same about Augustine. But, there was one blunder in which he went too far:
Amillennialism
For most of Augustine's Christian life, he was a solidly premillennial. He saw the Millennium as real and that it would come after the Return of Jesus Christ. But when the Visgoths sacked Rome in AD 410, all of that changed. Pagans blamed the Christians for Rome's fall, and Augustine fought back with his magnum opus - The City of God.
However, instead of arguing from within a Biblical context, he flipped the script, blaming all of Rome's troubles on corruption and immorality and then claiming that none of it mattered anyway, since the Millennium is allegorical and spiritual, rather than physical - as described in Zechariah 14 and Revelation 20.
Unfortunately, Augustine's superior writing skill and oratory won the day, and Amillennialism became the core eschatology of the Roman Catholic Church. And, it has done terrible damage to the Body of Christ as well as giving Rome the right to engage in the mass murder of any Christians who disagreed with the Pope.
Being murdered by Roman Catholics was the norm for Christians for more than a thousand years after Augustine. It is what we were promised would happen, and we accepted this as our walk with Christ. After all, our willingness to die for Christ is part of how Satan is overcome:
And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.
The biggest problem came when the Protestant Reformers broke with Rome and formed their own denominations. They threw out much of the visibly Roman elements of Catholicism such as the worship of saints, Mariology, transubstantiation, etc. But, there was one thing that they all kept, without exception:
Augustine's Amillennialism
This 'spiritualization' of the 1000 year reign of Christ gave liberalism the opportunity to 'spiritualize' other parts of the Bible that they didn't like. After all, if you can 'spiritualize' Zechariah 14 and the whole Book of Revelation, there is nothing in the Bible that you cannot 'spiritualize'.
Don't like Paul's admonition against women preachers and pastors?
Spiritualize the whole discussion and make vague references to prominent women in the Bible.
Don't like taxes?
Spiritualize what Jesus said about giving unto Caesar and get out your guns.
Do you want to build a megachurch?
Spiritualize all that stuff about purity in the Body of Christ and welcome all to join without any of unpleasant need to repent of sins and turn towards righteousness.
I could go on, but you get my point. Augustine helped build the profound error that the wolves among us are using to tear down the Body of Christ. It gave the Roman Catholic Church the 'right' to murder us. It gave the liberals the 'right' to tear away at core principles of the Bible. Of all the errors that Augustine made, this was the biggest.
For a deeper look into how much damage Augustine did with his Amillennial views, here is a very thorough analysis from Dr. John F. Walvoord:
That is a subset of Dr. Walvoord's larger discussion of how the Millennium was viewed for the past 2000 years. Notice that he wrote all this around 1950. He was disturbed by what the liberals were doing then, and he would be even more profoundly upset over what they are doing now. I strongly disagree with Walvoord's Dispensationalism, but his clarity on amillennialism is definitely worth reading.
Back To Augustine
So, what should we say about Saint Augustine?
Was he a brother in Christ that took a wrong turn?
Or, was he just another clever facsimile, built up by Satan to lead the faithful astray?
Because I like him as a person, I don't really want to say. But, we should all be very fearful of transgressing this verse:
and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
Augustine did that, so I have to assume that God took his part from the Book of Life. I hate the thought of that, but I don't have a better conclusion to offer.
Please.
Do not let your part be taken from the Book of Life.
I truly hope that you’ll be ready for this
A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished. – Proverbs 22:3
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