. Plan and Purpose of The Confessions (continued)
eAN INTRODUCTION TO FIVE SPIRITUAL CLASSICS
Contriputions of St. AUGUSTINE
To Christianity
In the minds of many Protestants, St. Augustine, as a teacher and formulator of Christian doctrine, stands next to the Apostle Paul. What did this man, who has been placed so near to the writer of the Epistles, contribute to Christian life and thought?
1. His personal life is an outstanding example of the transforming power of the gospel—a great sinner who became a great saint.
2. His Confessions is not only the first spiritual autobiography of a Christian preserved since that of the Apostle Paul; it is also a forerunner of modern psychological studies of religious experience.
3. He presented God as the seeker, man as the sought. In his works are poignant, beautiful expressions of divine longing for human love, paramount to human longing for divine love.
4. Though years of deep devotion did not lessen his awe, Augustine's relationship to the living God was clos-
more personal, than that of any other described in the writings of the Church prior to his time. The influence of this vital relationship then and now is almost beyond conception.
5. He constructed the first real system of Christian theology. In Augustine, Roman Catholics and Protestants meet. The former consider him the father of orthodoxy ; the latter look to him as a great spiritual teacher, guide, and source of inspiration for holy living.
M.D.W.