The Concept of the Human Soul According to Saint Augustine

doctrines of Christianity. The pioneers among them?those who labored before the Council of ' Nice (A. D. 325)?were engaged in establishing Christian Dogma on a firm foundation of revelation and reason, and in warding off the sinister influences of pagan, Jewish, and heretical, philosophical and religious ideas. The writers of the Post-Nicene Period had their work mapped out for them by the dogmatic definitions of the Council. It fell to their lot to explain the articles of faith which had been defined, and to combat the prevailing heresies of their day. With these facts in mind, it is not difficult to understand why the Patristic thinkers have not left any purely philosophical system or systems such as were created and developed by the great thinkers of pagan antiquity. They were not ex professo philosophers in the ordinary meaning of the term. They did not attempt to formulate any special theory of causes or ultimate explanations to solve the riddle of the cosmos and human existence. The philosophy they accepted and defended was not of their own fashioning; it had been handed down to them embodied in the doctrines of Jesus Christ. What was their attitude towards Pagan philosophy? We must not think that they ignored entirely the achievements of the great pagan minds in the domain of human philosophy; on the contrary, they sought to learn the best that pagan thought had attained in order that they might enlist it in the service of Christianity. Like the NeoPla...