Augustine Anaylisis

St. Augustine was someone whom looking at a great deal of his life it is ironic that he is revered so highly in the Christian community.   He was educated in pagan teachings and philosophy, and followed a form of Gnosticism for a great deal of his life. He was not a follower of the Christian teachings on sex and was a womanizer during his early life he fathered a child with one of his concubines. He had a mistress while being engaged to a girl who was not of marrying age.
This is generally differently from family life of today. There are no longer concubines, and marriage is more about love than it was for him. A man would not get engaged to a minor because it is illegal, nor would he get engaged to further his wealth as that is normally not socially acceptable. However his mother’s behavior is not so different from that of a devoted catholic today. She did not approve of her sons debauchery and spent most of her life trying to persuade him to convert and praying for his conversion. Augustine’s original faith was a form of Gnosticism called Manichaeism which saw that there was a good eternal soul and a corrupt temporal body does not in fact differ from some teachings of Buddhism. In fact the founder of this faith is called in some eastern traditions the Buddha Mani. His career as a professor of rhetoric or decision making is still a common one today looking back at the work of Greek philosophers.
His teachings about Christianity are in many churches what are taught today. This includes the ideas by infusing philosophy that the material world is less important than the spiritual world even though God created it. The church should be focused on Gods kingdom rather than earthly ones is another of his teachings. He also taught the idea of original sin; that due to Adam and Eve we are all born with sin and that with the perfect life of Christ we have salvation.   Humans cannot achieve salvation except through divine grace which is still the teaching of many protestant...