Augustine of Hippo also known as Augustine, St. Augustine, St. Austin, St. Augoustinos, Blessed Augustine, or St. Augustine the Blessed.
Saint Augustine by Philippe de Champaigne
Wicked picture, yeah? Augustine was born in 354 and lived to be 75! He is highly honored by The Catholic Church, The Assyrian Church of the East, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, The Anglican Communion, Lutheranism, and The Aglipayan Church. He was a very prolific writer and theologists.
Check this out… after a lifetime of living and writing about Christianity, he writes Retractationes (ca. 426-428) or reconsiderations . In this book, he reviews his entire body of written work… and makes corrections.
One of these is the remarkable statement…
“What we now call the Christian religion existed amongst the ancients, and was from the beginning of the human race, until Christ Himself came in the flesh; from which time the already existing true religion began to be styled Christian”.
– St. Augustine (Retract., I, xiii, 3)
In other words, Christianity is but a style of the one true religion. It is a mask, a face, one of many secretaries to the president of real spirituality. Some people like to think that Christianity is somehow special, somehow superior than other religions, and this is unfortunate. This is a fundamentalist attitude that hurts Christianity in the long run. Christ never asked for the organization of the Church, instead he warned us to be wary of those seek to use religion in false ways. Have we been diligent in this task?
Christ is well known for being critical of the Pharisees; they focused too much on the rules and politics of the day, and so missed the message of Jesus. They weren’t evil, but they were blind. Therefore we should question dogma and hold fast to the spirit of His life and teachings.
References
Good Old Neon 