Welcome to a breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of

unchanging truth.

The Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

On August the 20th in the year 430, St. Augustine of Hippo died.

Perhaps the most important father of the early church,

Augustine's writing shaped Western theology

and defined how Western European society

understood itself for over a thousand years.

Augustine was born in Togast in modern Algeria in 534.

His mother Monica was a Christian, but his father Patricius was a pagan, who only became a Christian later in life. Although

raised to be Christian, Augustine found the Bible unsophisticated, so to his

mother's dismay he instead embraced Manichesum. Augustine believed that this popular dualistic religion

resolved the problem of evil by positing two deities, one good, one evil.

However, he eventually became disillusioned with Manichesum and was then intrigued by skepticism, also popular during that time.

Highly trained as a rhetoric, Augustin was hired as a professor of rhetoric in the imperial city of Milan.

Monica followed her son to the city and continued to preach the gospel to him there,

but it was when Augustine met Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, that he truly considered Christianity. Like Augustine,

Ambrose was an expert orator. Using Neoplatonic ideas, he showed Augustine a way of reading

scripture that opened new depths that he had not previously seen.

And this led the way to Augustine's conversion in 386.

He was baptized by Ambrose in 1987. Soon after, Augustine returned to Africa, sold his family property in St in a city also in modern Algeria. Determined to use his rhetorical skills to help the church,

he quickly became famous as a preacher.

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