I was intimidated before reading this based on what Dr. MB said in class. I have not taken an English class since senior year of high school, so I think you can imagine my fear. However, I trusted my Lutheran upbringing and tried to go into this with an open mind, like always. What I found was a text riddled with what one classicly sees when dealing with Christian theological texts. The phrases seem long and circular, but really everything just leads back to God. All answers for moral questions brought up in the Earthly City lead back to reasoning based solely in scripture and the Word of the Lord, and that we cannot hope to be happy or perfect in this earthly place when the perfect City of God is waiting for us.
I think what is interesting to me that popped out right from the beginning was how the City of God gains legitimacy. Many utopias or utopian stories are just that: stories. Plato's Republic describes Socrates and his friends coming about the perfect city and in turn the perfect citizen, but it never is seen as real. For St. Augustine and many, many people, the City of God is a very real place that we will one day be able to live. I think that makes this text rather interesting, though. Rather than philosophizing about an ideal city that is not real and inherently unattainable, St. Augustine discusses what he believes to be a real, and attainable, perfect place. For St. Augustine, and his readers, there is no debate about whether it is possible, because it already is in existence. We just have to get there.
The context is also everything for this writing. It occurs after the Fall of Rome where people were scrambling for meaning and a sense of community. The great empire of Rome has fallen and these people are no longer the most powerful. In the classic days of Rome, the Gods were to blame for good and bad happenings, so naturally people were turning to God to blame for the ruin. St. Augustine, being the saint he is, took this opportunity of despair from the people to evangelize like no other (except that the majority of the population could not actually read what he wrote so who really knows how good he was). He spreads the "good news" and tells the lost sheep that God is not to blame for Rome's destruction because how could things not go wrong in the Earthly City? He mentions how our Earthly city was founded in selfishness and speaks of a city founded on the greatest love of God (393). That seems pretty great to someone who suffered in the Fall of Rome. Is the idea not tempting of a place founded in love and not hate (unless you are an inherently wicked sinner. They are not invited to the party, of course), one where we are protected by God's Divine Grace? Throughout the rest of the passage, Augustine just continues to mention the impossibilities and wrong doings of the Earthly city and continues to make points about how much better this City of God is and will be when/if we get there. We will no longer be tempted, we will be free of our earthly tethers, and we will know true peace. He rejects the old way of thinking, the old philosophers, and dismantles the idea of a commonwealth of the people in the Earthly City later on.
This text overall I just find to really be harkening to our human nature of wanting community in some way. For the people of Rome who are undergoing turmoil, I am sure they were looking for a sense of community too. Is it too cynical to say that perhaps Augustine is taking advantage of that fear and using promise of a perfect community to spread Christianity? Perhaps, but is there no better setting to spread beliefs and doctrine than in times of trial?
Ah, the circular thought patterns is exactly what I was getting to in class. I found it so annoying and frustrating that he would present a point flat out, but then repeat it in twelve different ways like he was getting paid by the word to present his theory. But you are right in the fact that everything related back to the City of God and that when you sat down and thought it through with full concentration, everything was a fair and easy concept to understand for the most part.
ReplyDeleteI find it fascinating that you liked this because it had more of a grip on reality and is supposedly a more concrete idea than the typical utopia.. But it really makes me wonder where those utopias originally came from. Now, this is pretty dangerous territory, but in Philosophy in high school we talked about the fact that God was invented by people instead of people being created by God. When we did not have a way to explain an event or a phenomenon, we decided to weave a story into a lesson and say that God made that happen. Whether this is true or not is irrelevant because it works as a belief system. We needed an answer, something to believe in, and God was the perfect solution to fill that void. So if we take quite a jump, isn't the idea of God a Utopian idea? If God is almighty and divine, he must be the perfect definition of Utopia or at least Heaven must be. We have taught people for years that if you do A, B and C you will enter Heaven....if you follow Moses, you'll end up in a land flowing with milk and honey...if you get in the ark, we can start over in a new perfect world free from evil. So is that where it all comes from? Is this text really that refreshing or is it just reminding us that before the cannon went off in The Hunger Games and before Tally Youngblood ran away from her Pretty operation on a hoverboard, God was mapping out his/her own Utopia among the clouds beyond the pearly gates.
I definitely wouldn't say it's too cynical to say that Augustine is using the peoples' fear against them as a way to convert them to Christianity, because promising people something perfect when they're in a terrible situation is usually a pretty easy thing to do. That doesn't mean that he's LYING to them, because he certainly seems to believe what he's saying, so as far as he's concerned he's enlightening them, not taking advantage of them. So, is he willfully misleading people? Certainly not. But is his job being made considerably easier because terrified people are willing to believe any good news they hear? Certainly.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to be the gripe we all have with this text: the reasoning Augustine uses is purely circular and relates back to God. It's one of those things that you have to agree with going into, or you won't be convinced. So, yeah, in the end, it's not exactly a great way to logically prove that what you're saying is possible, but that's also not really his point. If you were willing to believe in God from the start of the text, you'll accept that as the solution to each problem. And if you weren't, maybe you're scared enough to think about accepting Him afterwards.