ABSTRACT
Christianity by its very nature has needed and needs a spokesman of Saint Augustine's quality. Early twentieth-century Protestantism illustrates a serious departure from the central insights of the religion envisioned by Saint Augustine. The combined concept of Challenge-and-Response, so brilliantly delineated by Arnold Toynbee in his Study of History, applies with peculiar pertinence to the life and work of Saint Augustine. The Platonic tradition unquestionably prepared the way for him to accept and realize the meaning of Christianity's doctrine of God as Spirit. But a new influence came into his life in the person of Saint Ambrose, the great Bishop of Milan, whose sermons and methods of interpreting the Scriptures had not a little to do with Saint Augustine's subsequent acceptance of Christianity. Intellectually he began to respond more and more to the preaching of Saint Ambrose and to study of the Neo-Platonists. Saint Augustine's detailed knowledge of the Holy Scriptures is overwhelming.
