Who was Augustine of Hippo?
And how HUGE was his impact on current Christian Dogma? Why do so many non Catholics ignore his imprecations against literal interpretations of the sacred literature?
Ah, if only the British Bishop Pelagius had been more aggressive in his PR, how different the world might be. His metaphysical interpretation of scripture was so much more open, so much less dogmatic that Augustine's. "Of all the sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.'"
At Robert C, I'm sorry someone thumbed you down, as you raise and important point. He was a womanizer. If fact, he wrote, "God grant me chastity, but not yet." Even so, he eventually did become a crucial author of dogma, and yet so few Christians know of him (and even less know of Pelagius; shouldn't they teach the controversy?)