Augustine of Hippo

Church Father

Augustine of Hippo (354–430), bishop in North Africa, is the most influential of the Latin Fathers. His Confessions, City of God, and On the Trinity shaped Western theology for a millennium, and his Tractates on John and Expositions of the Psalms are landmark works of biblical exposition. The great teacher of grace against Pelagius, he is a Doctor of the Church.

For the Bible reader, Augustine matters above all as the theologian of grace and of the unity of the two Testaments: he taught that the New is concealed in the Old and the Old revealed in the New, and that all of Scripture, rightly read, points to Christ and to the love of God and neighbour. His On Christian Doctrine founded Christian hermeneutics, distinguishing literal from figurative speech and insisting that no interpretation is sound that undermines love. His Tractates on John and Expositions of the Psalms remain models of devotional exegesis still mined by preachers today.