Saint Augustine of Hippo

Life and witness

Augustine lived from 354 to 430. Born at Thagaste in North Africa and raised by Saint Monica, he studied at Carthage and taught rhetoric at Milan. Saint Ambrose guided him toward the Scriptures and baptism. Ordained a priest at Hippo in 391, he later became its bishop. He died on August 28, 430. This directory follows his Orthodox commemoration on June 15, rather than the Western date of August 28.

Historical setting

His ministry belonged to the Latin-speaking Church of late Roman Africa, centuries before the medieval division between Rome and Constantinople. His preaching and books addressed Manichaean, Donatist, and Pelagian controversies. Confessions recounts his conversion as prayer to God; The City of God examines the Church and human history. His pastoral setting matters when interpreting arguments written for particular disputes.

Legacy and remembrance

Augustine belongs to the undivided Church and is honored as a saint in the Orthodox calendar. Blessed is an honorific, not a lesser stage of canonization. Orthodox defenders, including Gennadios Scholarios, affirmed his holiness and the value of his teaching. His own writings must not be equated with every doctrine later Western writers attached to his name. Modern Orthodox assessments differ; criticism by an individual theologian is not itself a conciliar judgment against the saint.

Augustine, later Latin readings, and the Filioque

Later Western interpretations must be distinguished from Augustine’s actual words, their Latin terminology, and the controversies he addressed. Photios and later Orthodox writers raised questions about the transmission or interpretation of some passages; such concerns are not proof that a particular text was altered. Gennadios defended Augustine’s sainthood while opposing Latin arguments about the Spirit’s procession. The sources linked here describe different Orthodox assessments, not a single conciliar verdict rejecting Augustine’s entire teaching or endorsing every isolated sentence.

This profile follows Eastern Orthodox teaching: the Father alone is the hypostatic cause of the Holy Spirit. In the Orthodox economic reading of Augustine, language about the Spirit coming from the Father and the Son concerns the Spirit’s sending and manifestation in the world through the Son, not a second hypostatic cause of his eternal existence. The Spirit’s economic mission must be distinguished from his eternal hypostatic procession from the Father. This interpretation honors Augustine without identifying his Latin terminology with the later Roman Catholic Filioque; disputed passages should be read in their full context.

Orthodox teaching preserves the Father as the sole cause of the Son and the Spirit and recites the Creed of 381 without the Filioque, meaning and from the Son. The Spirit’s eternal origin must be distinguished from his sending in history through the Son. Greek ekporeusis and Latin processio do not have identical ranges of meaning; this helps explain the debate but does not automatically resolve it. Augustine died long before the medieval disputes: neither his authority nor an isolated quotation authorizes a later unilateral alteration of the Creed.

His defense of Saint Augustine