Legitimacy in the City of God

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?

A Tale of Two Cities

As I read theses passages, I was constantly looking for where some sort of description of the City of God might be, so that I can properly compare it to the Republic. But unfortunately, Augustine does not go into every tune and pastry like Plato does, but instead sets out a fairly broad view of two cities. One city based on a love of pleasure, and the other based on a love of God.

Many people may get confused as Augustine doesn’t go into nearly as much detail with his utopia as Plato. But one reason for this is because Augustine doesn’t disagree with Plato on many of the minute aspects of society. For instance, on the subject of enforcing justice he says that the City “needs make use of this peace also” (877), and on the subject of socializing, “the philosophers hold the view that the life of the wise man should be social, and in this we support them much more heartily” (858).

Augustine’s primary focus is to criticize aspects of Platonic philosophy in light of Christian theology. In our class discussions, we concluded that Plato’s republic would fail because injustice comes from human nature (the fig-stealer). Apparently, Augustine felt similarly, for he states “the story of mankind is full of them at every point: for in that story we are aware of wrongs, suspicions, enmities, and war” (858). Whereas Plato gave reasons for the Republic to start wars, Augustine wars to “consider the scale of those wars, with all the slaughter of human beings, and all the human blood that was shed!” (861). Finally, and most importantly, we remember that Plato established his society on the grounds of certain immutable virtues, such as moderation and justice. Augustine, however, goes through these virtues one by one, and points out that they are impossible to fulfill because of human nature (854).

Instead, the single virtue that Augustine places at the head of his society is peace. But this peace is not of an earthly focus, which Augustine calls “a kind of compromise between human wills about the things relevant to mortal life” (877). But rather, he defines this peace as focus on eternal life in Heaven (865). In other words, Augustine is proposing a kind of theocracy where focus on God is the primary foundation for all aspects of society. Whereas Plato focused on education, and considered religion to be one aspect of it, Augustine instead believed that education without the proper religious backing is worthless.

That’s another reason why Augustine is so vague with his description of the City. He believed that the minute aspects of society don’t really matter so long as the right religion is established. In his own words, “She takes no account of any difference in customs, laws, or institutions, by which earthly peace is achieved and preserved – not that she annuls or abolishes any of those, rather, she maintains them and follows them, provided that no hindrance is presented thereby to the religion which teaches that the one supreme and true God is to be worshipped” (878).

I find it fascinating that even today, many religious people would agree with Augustine’s basic premise: the City of God, which focuses on heavenly things, will ultimately survive, whereas the City of Man, which focuses on earthly things, will ultimately perish. Many evangelicals today point out governments that abolished religion, places like Cuba, North Korea, the Soviet Union, and the French Directorate, and conjecture that they all failed because they threw out the out the only indispensable piece of society.