How well do you know Augustine of Hippo?

Study Notes

Augustine was a Christian philosopher of Antiquity.
He had the deepest and most lasting influence among Christian philosophers.
He is a saint of the Catholic Church and his authority in theological matters was universally accepted in the Latin Middle Ages.
His views on sin, grace, freedom, and sexuality had a significant impact on Western culture.
Augustine engaged with pre- and non-Christian philosophy, particularly Platonism.
Augustine was born in Thagaste in Roman Africa and lived from 354 to 430.
He was made a catechumen early in his life and later became a "hearer" of Manicheism.
Augustine converted to ascetic Christianity and was baptized by Bishop Ambrose in 387.
He was involved in religious controversies with Manicheans, Donatists, and Pelagians.
Augustine's literary output surpasses the preserved work of almost all other ancient writers in quantity.
Augustine was a prolific writer, with about 100 books, 300 letters, and 500 sermons surviving.
His early works were philosophical dialogues on topics such as skepticism, happiness, evil, and the immortality of the soul.
Augustine later abandoned the dialogue form and wrote controversial works against the Manicheans, Donatists, and Pelagians.
His most famous works were five long treatises, including Confessiones, De doctrina christiana, De trinitate, De Genesi ad litteram, and De civitate dei.
Augustine believed that philosophy is "love of wisdom" and that true philosophy and true religion are identical.
He sharply criticized the "philosophy of this world" that distracts from Christ.
Augustine's philosophical program was to "know God and the soul" and he used Platonic philosophy as long as it did not conflict with biblical revelation.
Augustine's engagement with biblical thought intensified and the notions of creation, sin, and grace became more significant in his philosophy.
Augustine was influenced by Cicero, Aristotle, Neoplatonism, and the Bible in his philosophy.
Philosophy and theology are intertwined in Augustine's thought, and it is unadvisable to try to disentangle them.
Augustine's mature doctrine of grace was influenced by his reading of Paul ca. 395.
Neoplatonism had the most lasting philosophical influence on Augustine.
Augustine's "books of the Platonists" were likely a selection from Plotinus and Porphyry.
Augustine's Neoplatonic readings continued after 386.
Augustine's thought is influenced by the transcendence and immateriality of God, the superiority of the unchangeable over the changeable, and the ontological hierarchy of God, soul, and body.
Augustine's main source for Hellenistic philosophies was Cicero, particularly Academic skepticism and Stoicism.
Augustine's earliest surviving work is a dialogue on Academic skepticism.
Augustine's refutation of skepticism is focused on demonstrating the existence of some kind of knowledge that is immune to skeptical doubt.
Augustine's strategy for refuting skepticism involves pointing out the certainty of self-referential knowledge, private or subjective knowledge, and formal, logical, or mathematical structures.
Augustine's Manichean past was constantly on his mind, but its precise impact on his thought is difficult to assess.
Augustine's Contra Academicos argues against skepticism and defends the possibility of certainty in cognition.
Augustine argues that the only realities that guarantee absolute certainty are the Platonic Forms.
Augustine's anti-skeptical arguments do not justify the claim that knowledge can be derived from the senses.
Augustine's cogito argument establishes an area immune to skeptical doubt by inferring from my awareness of my own existence the truth of the proposition “I exist”.
Augustine's theory of knowledge is based on a Neoplatonic reading of Plato's doctrine of recollection.
True knowledge requires firsthand acquaintance, and personal intellectual activity is necessary to attain it.
The condition of possibility and criterion of truth of intellectual insight is God, who is both immanent and transcendent in relation to our soul.
Augustine's inner teacher image states that Christ is present in our souls and guarantees the truthfulness of our understanding.
Augustine's illumination image presents divine illumination as an alternative to Platonic recollection and situates it in the framework of a theory of creation.
The human mind has been created by God in such a way as to be “connected” to intelligible reality “from below” and with a capacity that enables it to “see” the intelligibles in the light of intelligible truth.

Description

How much do you know about Augustine, the influential Christian philosopher of Antiquity? Test your knowledge with this quiz! From his early life as a catechumen and "hearer" of Manicheism to his conversion to ascetic Christianity and prolific literary output, Augustine's impact on Western culture is undeniable. This quiz will cover his views on sin, grace, freedom, and sexuality, as well as his engagement with pre- and non-Christian philosophy, particularly Platonism. You'll also