“CHAPTER IX: ST.

AUGUSTINE”
• Factors that led to the destruction of Roman power in 5th Century
o Betrayal of its pristine civic virtues
o Abandonment of republicanism in favor of despotic, monarchial imperialism
o Failure of nerve and loss of faith
o Unwillingness/inability to solve the social conflicts born of poverty, slavery, and serfdom
o Final conquest by barbarians emerging from a cultural nowhere

• Gothic, Vandal, and Hun Warriors

o No civilization of their own
o Only destroy

• The medieval period

o The ten centuries between the fall of the Roman empire (5th century) and the revival of
ancient thought and learning (15th century)

• The Sack of Rome by the Visigoths (AD 410)

o This is popularly believed to have been the fault of the Christians
▪ AD 313, Christianity was tolerated in Rome
▪ 80 years later, became official religion of state; paganism proscribed and
prohibited
▪ Christianity’s qualities weakened Roman power
• Otherworldliness, meekness, pacifism, disregard for public affairs, and
contempt for revered national deities
• Christian refusal to recognize loyalty to Rome as the first loyalty

• Political-minded Romans of the old school were not deeply interested in religions

• The very polytheism of paganism ensured a basically tolerant attitude, as all pluralistic
viewpoints tend to do
o Rome sought to extirpate Christianity by force (2nd half of 3rd Century)
▪ Not as religion but its alleged attempts to build a state within a state
• Boring within every social class
 • By infiltration and ideological appeals
• Without overt acts of force

• After Rome was ravaged in AD 410, Christianity in Rome was questioned.

“If Rome was not strong enough to safeguard its own existence against heathen tribes, how could it be the
source of worldly power that the Church needed in spreading Christianity?”

• St. Augustine (AD 354 - 430)

o Was a recent convert to Christianity
▪ Yet, the strongest reaffirmation of Christian idealism was his work
o A native and lifelong inhabitant of Roman North Africa
o Parents were North Africans
▪ Mother was a devout Christian
▪ Father never embraced the Christian faith
o Augustine of Hippo was once a Manichaean. Manichaeism is a Persian belief practiced
by St. Augustine before converting to Christianity.
o Baptized in Italy in AD 387
▪ This was after many years of active and gay living
(Not necessarily engaging in sexual activities with boys, but could just mean engaging in sinful living)
o Once baptized, rose quickly in the hierarchy of the Church
o Made Bishop of Hippo in 395, stayed until his death in 430

• St. Augustine wrote “City of God (De Civitate Dei)” in 413

o Finished the work in 426, consisting of 22 books
o Set to answer 2 main questions:
▪ The pagan challenge to Christianity
▪ The vision of the heavenly city, as contrasted with the earthly city

• St. Augustine was not a constitutional lawyer or political theorist, but a theologian, interested in
God, Faith, and Salvation

• St. Augustine was primarily concerned with ways of life and NOT with organizations of life
o The great struggle in the universe is between the earthly city and the heavenly city, not
between Church and State
• St. Augustine divides the human race into 2 parts:
o Those who live according to man
▪ Predestined to suffer eternal punishment with the devil
o Those who live according to God
▪ Predestined to reign eternally with God

• St. Augustine’s essence of justice is the relation between man and God from which right relations
between man and man will inevitably follow

• St. Augustine was not able to clearly define the Church, he calls it:
o The Invisible Church of God’s elect and;
o The Visible Church; made up of true believers and those with formal membership in the
Church

• St. Augustine says that the state, in its own kind, is better than all other human good. For it
desires earthly peace for the sake of enjoying earthly goods.
o The peace that the state provides is a means to make service to God possible
o The peace of the state is temporary tranquility, whereas the peace of the heavenly city is
“peace never-ending”

• Peace is conceived by St. Augustine in terms of justice (right relation of man and God) not
merely the absence of social strife and conflict.
o Without justice, there can be no peace
o St. Augustine’s famous statement: “Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms
but great robberies?”

• Heavily influenced by Greco-Roman beliefs, especially by Cicero, Plato, and Aristotle. St.
Augustine made a Christianized version of Aristotle’s rationalization of slavery.
o St. Augustine’s conception of slavery is not the result of man’s nature but the “result of
sin”

• St. Augustine opposes the law of the Old Testament.

o Appeals to the slaves to serve their masters “heartily and with goodwill”
o Appeals to the masters to act “benevolently and responsibly”
 • He never examined his theory in the light of empirical evidence
o No reexamination of his basic assumption of, “slavery is a ‘result of sin’, and it is both
punishment and remedy for sin”
o He claimed that such slavery is legitimate as he said “it is a happier thing to be the slave
of a man than of a lust”.

• While the Roman Empire was breaking up before his eyes, he sought to construe, as a Christian,
the vision of a timeless empire in which peace and justice would reign the City of God.

Excerpt from St. Augustine’s “The City of God”

JUSTICE - THE FOUNDATION OF THE STATE
• “Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies?”
o Made up of men
o Ruled by authority of a prince
o Knit together by pact of confederacy
o Booty is divided by the law agreed on
• If this evil increases to such a degree; plainly, in the name of a kingdom
o Holds places
o Fixes abodes
o Takes possession of cities
o Subdues people

THE TRUE HAPPINESS OF THE RULER

• They are happy if they rule justly
o If they make their power the handmaid of His majority by using it for the greatest
possible extension of His worship
• Such Christian emperors are happy in the present time by hope and are destined to be so in the
enjoyment of the reality itself
o If they fear, love, and worship God
o If they love that kingdom in which they are not afraid to have partners
o Slow to punish, ready to pardon
o Apply punishment only necessary to government and defence of the republic
o Grant pardon with hope that the transgressor may amend his ways
 o If they compensate with the lenity of mercy and the liberality of benevolence for
whatever severity they may be compelled to decree
o If their luxury is as much restrained as it might have been unrestrained
o They prefer to govern depraved desires rather than any nation whatever
o If they do all these things through love of eternal felicity
▪ Not neglecting to offer to the true God for their sins, the sacrifices of humility,
contrition, and prayer

THE EARTHLY AND THE HEAVENLY CITY

• Two cities have been formed by two loves
o The earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God
▪ Seeks glory from men; ruled by the love of ruling
o The heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self
▪ Seeks the greatest glory which is God; serve one another in love

THE TWO TYPES OF MAN

• This race we have distributed into two parts:
o Those who live according to man
o Those who live according to God
• This is also mystically called the two cities
o One is predestined to reign eternally with God
o The other is to suffer eternal punishment with the devil

*The career of these two cities is for this whole time or world-age, the dying give place and those who are
born succeed.
• Cain was the first-born, belonging to the city of men
• Abel belonging to the city of God

*When these two cities begin to run their course by a series of deaths and births, the citizen of this world
was the first born, and after him the stranger in this world, the citizen of the city of God.

*No one will be good who was not first of all wicked.
 • Cain built a city but Abel, being a sojourner, built none.
o The city of the saints is above, begets citizen below

CONFLICT AND PEACE IN THE EARTHLY CITY

• The earthly city is often divided against itself by litigations, wars, quarrels, and such victories as
are either life-destroying or short-lived
• The things which the earthly city desires cannot justly be said to be evil, for it is itself better than
all other human good
o It desires earthly peace for the sake of enjoying earthly goods
▪ Makes war in order to attain to their peace

*But if they neglect the better things of the heavenly city, then it is necessary that misery follow and ever
increase.

THE LUST FOR POWER IN THE EARTHLY CITY

• The founder of the earthly city was a fratricide
▪ Fratricide - the killing of one’s brother or sister
o “The first walls were stained with a brother’s blood”
o As Roman history records, Remus was slain by his brother Romulus
• For Cain and Abel, not both animated by the same earthly desires as Remus and Romulus
o The murderer did not envy the other but was moved by that diabolical, envious hatred
with which the evil regard the good
o Abel was not solicitous to rule in that city which his brother built
• The possession of goodness is increased in proportion to the concord and charity of each of those
who share it
o He who is unwilling to share this possession cannot have it
o He who is most willing to admit others to a share of it will have the greatest abundance
*The quarrel between Romulus and Remus shows how the earthly city is divided against itself.

*Cain and Abel illustrated the hatred that subsists between the two cities, that of God and that of men.
• The wicked war with the wicked
• The good also war with the wicked
*Examples were given based from the story of betrayal between Cain and Abel from the Bible, and the
quarrel of Remus and Romulus shows how the Earthly city is divided against itself; that which fell out
between Cain and Abel illustrated hatred and subsists between the two cities, that God and that of men.

LIMITATIONS OF SOCIAL LIFE

• The life of the wise man must be social
• On all hands we experience these slights, suspicions, quarrels, war, all of which are undoubted
evils; on the other hand, peace is a doubtful good
• The words of Cicero: “There are no snares more dangerous than those which lurk under the guise
of duty of the name of the relationship… this hidden, intestine, and domestic danger not merely
exists, but overwhelms you before you can foresee and examine it.”

SHORTCOMINGS OF HUMAN JUSTICE

• The judges are men who cannot discern the consciences of those at their bar
• The accused is tortured to discover whether he is guilty, though innocent, suffers most undoubted
punishment for crime that is still doubtful because it is not ascertained that he did not commit it.
o Ignorance of the judge involves an innocent person in suffering.
• The judge put the accused to the torture for the very purpose of saving himself from condemning
the innocent
o Consequently, he has both tortured an innocent man to discover his innocent and has put
him to death without discovering it
• Even if such darkness shrouds social life, a wise judge will take his seat on the bench. For human
society, which he thinks it a wickedness to abandon, constrains him and compels him to this duty.

*These numerous and important evils he does not consider sins; the wise judge does these things, not with
any intention of doing harm, but because his ignorance compels him, and because human society claims
him as a judge.

THE MISERY OF WAR

• Circles of human society:
o First, the House
o Second, the City
o Third, the World
• For if two men, each ignorant of the other’s language, meet, their common nature is no help to
friendliness when they are presented by the diversity of language.
• The imperial city has endeavored to impose on subject nations her language
 o As a bond of peace
o “How many great wars, how much slaughter and bloodshed, have provided this unity!”
• The empire itself has produced wars of a more obnoxious description - social and civil wars
o These stern and lasting necessities
o The wise man will wage just wars
▪ For it is the wrongdoing of the opposing party which compels the wise man to
wage just wars
• This wrongdoing, if it gives rise to no war, it would still be a matter of
grief because it is man’s wrongdoing

THE OBJECTIVE OF WAR: PEACE

*There is no man who does not wish to be joyful, neither is there any one who does not wish to have
peace.
• With the desire for peace that wars are waged.
• Thus, all men desire to have peace with their own circle whom they wish to govern as suits
themselves. For when those whom they make war against they wish to make their own, and
impose on them the laws of their own peace.

THE TRANQUILITY OF ORDER IN THE UNIVERSE

Peace of the body = duly proportioned arrangement of its parts
Peace of the irrational soul = harmonious repose of the appetites
Peace of the rational soul = harmony of knowledge and action
Peace of body and soul = well-ordered and harmonious life and health of the living creature
Peace between man and God = well-ordered obedience of faith to eternal law
Peace between man and man = well-ordered concord
Domestic peace = well-ordered concord between those of the family who rule and those who obey
Civil peace = similar concord (domestic peace) among citizens
Peace of celestial city= perfectly ordered and harmonious enjoyment of God, and of one another in God
*The peace of all things is the tranquility of order.
• Order is the distribution which allot things equal and unequal, each to its own place.
• There may be life without pain, while there cannot be pain without some kind of life.
• There may be peace without war, but there cannot be war without some kind of peace.
• Therefore, there is a nature in which evil does not or even cannot exist; but there cannot be a
nature in which there is no good.
RULERS AS SERVANTS OF THE RULED
• A man finds 3 things he has to love - God, himself, and his neighbor
o He who loves God loves himself thereby
▪ He must endeavor to get his neighbor to love God since he is ordered to love his
neighbor as himself
• This is the order of the concord, that a man, in the first place, injure no one; in the second, do
good to everyone he can reach.
• Those who rule serve those whom they seem to command
o They rule not from a love of power, but from a sense of the duty they owe to others
o Not because they are proud of authority, but because they have mercy

LIBERTY AND SLAVERY

• The prime cause, then, of slavery is sin, which brings man under the dominion of his fellow.