Augustine of Hippo

Augustine, born in 354 in Thagaste (modern-day Algeria), was one of the church’s most important theologians. After an excellent education in Carthage, he travelled to Rome and Milan as a professor of rhetoric. In Milan, after years of his devout mother’s prayer, he was convicted of his sin and converted to Christianity upon reading Romans 13:13-14: …put on the Lord Jesus Christ… He recorded his inner turmoil, his conversion, his musings and prayers in his famous autobiographical Confessions. After his conversion in 386, he devoted his life to the church, eventually being ordained bishop of Hippo in 395. He died there in 430 during the Vandal siege. His theological and philosophical writings, most famously his Confessions and The City of God, were prolific and bequeathed to the church rich theological anthropology, ethics, sociology, and ecclesiology. His exposition of the doctrines of original sin and predestination laid the foundation for the Reformers of the 16th century to teach total depravity and salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone.