Saint Augustine is indisputably the founder and savior of Western as well as African civilization. Never has it been more urgent to recall his work than today, on the eve of the 1600th anniversary of his conversion to Christianity. Today the entire world is in the throes of a crisis just as grave as that which confronted him following the fall of the Roman Empire in 410. In opposition to the moral degeneracy of his times--and the final phase of the Roman Empire shows a terrifying number of parallels with the present--he asserted the concept of man as the imago Dei, the image of God.

      It is only by virtue of this image of the Divine within us, of our participation in the Divine, that we can set the dignity of man on an unassailable level. But for Augustine, such participation was not passive; he conceived of man as God’s helper on Earth, so to speak, who, as an instrument of God, acts to continue the process of creation within the universe. And whenever this creation becomes endangered because evil personified stalks the world, then it is the duty of man, acting in the image of God, to bring the world order back into agreement with justice as God intended it.

      Since Augustine’s thought is of vital significance for us today, the Schiller Institute held its Sixth International Conference on November 1-3 [1985] in Rome, so that we might link up with these ideas and, inspired by the richness of his works, define solutions to our problems today.