Augustine For Armchair Theologians Summary

In Augustine for Armchair Theologians, Stephen Cooper offers an insight into the life and work of Augustine of Hippo, primarily in a biographical context. It is highly concerned with Augustine’s own Confessions, which is itself highly autobiographical. The book starts with a brief introduction to how Augustine settled into his faith as a catholic, and then goes back and works through his life, from schooling to conversion. It presents some of the questions he asked along the way, and by telling the story in this way Cooper attempts to illustrate the motives and thoughts of a man who was incredibly passionate about God.
Early in the book, Cooper touches Augustine’s thoughts of the soul. He ponders the notions of when our souls are “created” or formed. How far back can we trace it? Though he does not recall his infancy, Augustine speculates on it, as it was recounted to him and the same behavior can be seen in other young children. He does not take a stance similar to Locke, where all men are born as a “blank slate.” Rather, he believes we are given set knowledge, like that to seek …show more content…
As a Manichean, Augustine believed in two ever-opposing forces. Evil, he thought, came from an evil matter from the dark world acting upon the divine imprisoned within him. This notion, however, does not work with Catholicism, and after rejecting Manichaeism he struggled with how to explain it. He was heavily burdened trying to understand the nature of evil, and along with this, the nature of God. He attempted to find a way to define or explain God by looking at the forms of our physical world. Later when he turned inward and understood God as pure being, he was able to theorize that evil comes from corruption, which is in a sense good, because it exists and was created by God. Some things are simply “not fit” for other things or situations. Human will was responsible for this change and their selfishness was where evil came