Augustine At The End of Empire sample

Augustine At The End of Empire
“On the holy mount stands the city he founded;
the LORD loves the gates of Zion
more than all the dwellings of Jacob.
Glorious things are spoken of you,
O city of God. Selah” Psalm 87 NRSV
Concerning recent geo-political shifts, Western Christians find themselves reevaluating
their role in the world and what exactly it means to be the church. Globalization compels a
paradigm shift in the Western world as it asserts itself as a new, comprehensive empire, just as
Rome once saw itself. The new globalized empire is emerging in the world with America poised
as its enforcers. Though this empire is directed most clearly in the service of multinational
corporations, like all empires it thrives on war. Indeed, the post-9/11 conflicts and the War on
Terror that America has engaged in can be better understood as an enforcement of globalization
than as an act of national security. The situation is not unlike that of the 5th century C.E., at the
end of the Roman Empire. Indeed, Christians at that time were also compelled to reevaluate their
place in the world as the regime under which they had been accustomed to receiving privilege
gave way to new social arrangements. For this purpose Augustine of Hippo drew up his massive
work City of God, or Civitate Dei, with the purpose of defining the relationship of Christians to
the two realities they faced: the crumbling earthly city they found themselves in, and the glorious
City of God that they journeyed toward. Augustine's use of the Two Cities as a narrative for
understanding the place of the church at the end of the Roman Empire is helpful to American
Christians seeking to live faithfully at the edge of the empire.

When considering questions of church and state within the Western world Augustine is
inescapable. He is thoroughly present in every discussion, and to try to ignore him is inadvisable.
Augustine's influence is so profound, not because he has answered the questions of church in
state, but rather because Augustine has set the terms for debate. When western Christians discuss
the reality of the church they do so in strong Augustinian language.
Augustine occupied a unique period in history. For a time there were efforts to classify
him as either an early church theologian, or a medieval theologian. Modern consensus now
largely agrees that Augustine's hinge period is itself a recognizable era with its own context and
relative challenges. In his old age Augustine observed as raiding tribes pushed further into the
Roman Empire, which teetered on collapse. The decline of this massive empire was a troubling
paradigm shift, because Rome had constituted every aspect of life for the people who lived
within it. The Constantinian arrangement had even made Rome the tent pole of Western
Christianity. Seeing the Empire at its end, Augustine re-articulated the theology of church and
state in The City of God so that Christians could understand that though the earthly city (Rome)
could fall, the heavenly city was unconquerable.
It is important to note that Augustine's concept of a nation state was very different from
what contemporary thinkers mean when they describe a state, and there is a lot of confusion and
conflict to come from making the two synonymous. As noted in the introduction William T
Cavanaugh, in our favorite work Migrations of the Holy, argues that the modern concept of state
emerged in Europe between 1450 and 1650.1 The modern state is distinct from the historical idea
of state because of its reliance on the assumption of a single, unified society, which it is to
constitute. Older systems, such as the Roman Empire, were composed of many diverse societies,
1 William T. Cavanaugh, MigrationsOf the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning of the Church (Grand
Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2011), 9.

with states meaning the rule of a, emperor or prince, not the space that they control.2 As
Cavanaugh continues, the contemporary concept of state is made unique in the designation of
“nation-state,” which joins the shared cultural attributes of the nation with the political
sovereignty of the state, a relationship that homogenizes those within its borders.3
According to Justo Gonzalez's Essential Theological Terms, during Augustine's particular
historical era, “the rapid decline of imperial power in the West, connected with the Germanic
invasions, led to a power vacuum that was progressively filled by the hierarchy of the church,
and particularly by the popes.”4 At the end of the Roman Empire, the reaction was to consolidate
authority under the church, paving the way for the medieval arrangement of society. Yet for all
of his influence on the medieval period, it must be asked if this arrangement was really what
Augustine had envisioned? After that question it must be asked what Augustine's vision of the
two cities can mean for our contemporary era.
We must not confuse Augustine's two cities for a physical/spiritual dichotomy that he so
often rejects elsewhere. Ultimately the location of the cities may come down to the will. At one
point he refers to women of Rome being raped by invaders, and asks if they sinned. If the act
itself was sinful, then yes, but Augustine says instead that they were unwilling, and therefore
committed no sin, for the “purity both of the body and the soul rests on the steadfastness of the
will strengthened by God’s grace, and cannot be forcibly taken from an unwilling person (I. 28).”
The will then becomes the locus for God's grace and activity.
In the face of the collapse of the Roman Empire, which many were blaming on
Christianity, Augustine turns his attention toward a city of God, which is greater than the city of
2 Ibid., 10.
3 Ibid., 11.
4 Justo L. González, Essential Theological Terms (Louisville, KY: WestminsterJohn Knox Press, 2005), 165.

man, and is his true hope. Christians continue to struggle with the relationship of church and
state, the political meaning of the church, and how to understand the kingdom of God.
Augustine's basic definition for the two cities is this:
There are many great peoples through out the world, living under different
customs in religion and morality and distinguished by a complex variety of
languages, arms, and dress, it is still true that there have come into being only two
main divisions, as we may call them, in human society: and we are justified in
following the lead of our Scriptures and calling them two cities. There is, in fact,
one city of men who choose to live by the standard of the flesh, another of those
who choose to live by the standard of the spirit. The citizens of each of these
desire their own kind of peace, and when they achieve their aim, that is the kind
of peace in which they live.5
The strategy of City of God is to examine the difference of the rule of God and the rule of
humanity by juxtaposing the two in similar terms. If Rome is a city with an emperor at its head,
then the heavenly kingdom is a kind of city with Christ at its head. Augustine's rhetorical device
is to riff on Cicero's ideal ruler.6 Augustine says “true justice is found only in that
commonwealth whose founder and ruler is Christ;... we may say that at least there is true justice
in that City of which the holy Scripture says, 'Glorious things are said about you, City of God.'”7
The City of God is recognized as a eschatological reality, constituted in the faithful journey of
some through the earthly city signified by “love of God and practice of virtue.”8 The City of God
is then the only place where true justice can be found, for it is where true justice (Christ) resides
(this would create an important conversation in light of the Black Lives Matter movement who
seek to find justice in the cities of St. Louis, New York, and across America). Though indeed
5 Augustine,Bishop of Hippo, Concerning The City of God against the Pagans, translated by Henry Bettenson
(Penguin Books, 1972), XIV 1.
6 Robert Dodaro, “Church And State,” Allan Fitzgerald and John C. Cavadini, Augustine Through the Ages: an
Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1999), 183.
7 Augustine,City of God, II 22.
8 Dodaro, Augustine Through The Ages, 182.

eschatological, the City of God is often mistaken to mean heaven, only reachable after death.
Yet, as Augustine argues, it is in the practice of heavenly virtues that the City of God is made
present on earth. “For that reason it is not to be confused with Plato's ideal city, which has no
existence other than in thought and speech.”9
A Christian community could be legitimately said to exist, but by no means did it
embody the City of God, because of the eschatological dimension of the city.10 The separation of
the earthly city and the City of God was based on the division of the human will, between love
for God and love for self. Augustine set up Christ as the alternative civic leader to the ideal in the
writings of Cicero. Christ fully embodied the civic virtues, in a way that earthly rulers sought to
do, but inevitably failed. He was therefore to be emulated on the journey to the City of God, but
it was clear that the ideal was only reached in the eschaton. The hope, in contrast, is the passing
away of the earthly city, which has been defeated. Already defeated, not yet gone.
The earthly city should be easy to recognize, its evidence is clear in every malfunction of
the world inhabited by humans. ”The earthly city is guided by self-love and lives according to
what Scripture call the flesh,” it is a way of life that disregards both God, and the virtues
embodied in the life of Christ.11 Augustine defines virtue in terms of freedom and happiness in
relation to grace, what is called beatitude.12 He differentiates between perceived happiness found
in the earthly city, which is a misleading or false happiness, in contrast to the happiness that
comes from right and fulfilled desire, which is only God. The pursuit of these separate desires
determine the separation of the City of God and the earthly city.
9 Fortin, Ernest, “De Civitae Dei,” Allan Fitzgerald and John C. Cavadini, Augustine Through the Ages: an
Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1999), 199.
10 Dodaro, Augustine Through The Ages, 182.
11 Fortin, Augustine Through The Ages, 199.
12 James Wetzel, Augustine And the Limits of Virtue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

The issue of violence and the state which face the church are often cast in the terms of
sectarian religion. The church, or any religious group, can become threatening by challenging the
unity toward the state, and demanding a stronger allegiance to one's own group. In this imagining
of the world, the civil society is the one city, and the church is simply a group within that city.
Gonzalez's Essential Theological Terms reinforces this idea, saying “this was the case of the
Roman Empire, which generally tolerated and absorbed the religions of most of the peoples it
had conquered, and then sought to promote unity by equating some gods with others, and by the
cult of the emperor and of Rome.”13 In his chapter “From One City to Two: Christian
Reimagining of Political Space”, William Cavanaugh sets out to make fresh our understanding of
Augustine's two cities in order to pull back the veil on the present arrangement of church and
state in America. According to Cavanaugh, Martin A Marty is an important advocate for this
arrangement of society. He articulates Marty's position as such: “the nation-state is one city,
within which there is a division of goods and a division of labor, and these follow certain well-
worn binaries: civil society and state, sacred and secular, eternal and temporal, religion and
politics, church and state.”14
This arrangement may seem helpful, even common in contemporary American thinking.
This is certainly the way religious liberty is discussed on both the Right and the Left. The state is
THE CITY, all other functions take place within it, or extend out from it. The issue, as
Cavanaugh points out, is that as long as there is only one city the church must contend there for
space. He cites Pope Gelasius I, who lived not long after Augusine: “two there are... by which
13 Gonzalez, Essential Theological Terms, 165.
14 Cavanaugh, Migrations,49.

this world is ruled... the consecrated authority of priests and the royal power.”15 One city, two
rulers, imperium and ekklesia.
This is not an issue of temporal space, but of time, says Cavanaugh. “The element of time
has been flattened out into space.” This is concerning the “already” and “not yet, without which
Marty and others can assume that the church and the state are pursuing the same temporal goods
for similar temporal goals. “The one city is now divided into 'spheres'... (but) Augustine
complexifies space by arguing that the church is a kind of public; indeed, it is the most fully
public community.”16 For this reason he returns our attention to Augustine's two cities as a more
satisfying theological approach.
“For Augustine, church and coercive government represent two cities, two distinct
societies that represent two distinct moments of salvation history. There is not one society in
which there is a division of labor.”17 What Cavanaugh is making clear here is that Augustine
does not leave room for Pope Gelasius I arrangement of the two rulers competing for authority in
the one city. “For Augustine, the earthly city is not religiously neutral, but its members share a
common end: 'the love of self, even to the contempt of God.'”18 This, according to Cavanaugh,
requires violence, because war is a means to civic unity. Augustine accepts violence as a vice to
counter vice.19 Cavanaugh insists that Augustine does not give the sense that this is by nature, or
part of God's original intention, but the tragic reality of the earthly city.20
15 Pape Gelasius I, Letter to Emperor Anastasius,quoted in Oliver O’Donovan and Joan Lockwood O’Donovan,
From Irenaeus to Groitus: A Sourcebook (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids: 1999), 179.
19 Augustine,City of God, XIX 14-15.

Cavanaugh, with help from Sam Wells, rejects the idea that the two cities are separate
spheres, or different “spaces” in which people live, but instead argues that the two cities are two
different performances, and not located in space, but in time. By this move he locates the cities
not in the religious and the political, or in the sacred or the secular, but instead in the “already”
and the “not yet”.21 Cavanaugh picks up on the historical urge to take control, and to weild the
sword of the state.22 “The Constantinian solution to the problem of church and state is for the
church to us the state to rule the city. The 'sectarian' solution is for the church to renounce the
state and live apart from the city.”23
This he rejects, both on the ground of violence, and other forms of coercion. Yet he also
wants to make clear that the argument from Augustine goes deeper than an investment in the
political process, but that it is actually a challenge to the very operation of the earthly city. "The
church must be weary of nostalgia for Constantinianism. A Christian should feel politically
homeless in the current context, and should not regard the dreary choice between Democrats and
Republicans, left and right, as the sum total of our political witness."24 This is not an argument
about political parties, but about politics itself, the way a person or group interacts with the
world. The suggestion then is that a vote for a political party is not the sum total of Christian
political witness. That witness is perhaps better displayed in the life of the church. Augustine
does not position the City of God and the church as one in the same, but he does make clear how
the church reflects the City, as Cavanaugh says “as Christ's body, the church is ontologically
related to the city of God, but it is the church not as visible institution but as a set of practices.
22 Augustine,City of God, XIX 26.

The city of God is not so much a space as a performance.”25 It is the place where the heavenly
virtues are lived, on display in a way that causes onlooker to realize that the earthly city is not
really a city at all, as they catch a glimpse of what the true city looks like.
As the contemporary church in America witnesses the rapid decline of Christendom and
the subjugation of the American empire to the new Globalized empire, Augustine's basic project
in City of God remain extremely relevant. The City of God is not dependent on the earthly city.
For this reason the regime of Rome may fall, and the church is not doomed. In the same way, the
decline of America, or even the decline of the church in America, does not signal an end of the
City of God. This is because, as Augustine demonstrates, the City of God does not trade in good
and fight for space within the earthly city, but is constituted in its own space and time. To live in
the City of God is to live as Christ lived on the journey to the City.26
What then are the markers of the City of God that might bring Augustine into the 21st
century? It must begin as Augustine does, with Christ at the center. This marker is essential to
the understanding of the City of God and what distinguishes it from the earthly city (and false
rulers), for “true justice is found in that commonwealth whose founder and ruler is Christ.”27 The
particularity of Christ is a salve for the wounds of globalized influence which try to make the
unique one a part of the many, and the many are melted together into one. Out of this paradox
the state has attempted to arrange society so that the church has become one of many voices that
speak. Christ, however, demands not to be one among many, but to call out the system by
demonstrating what a true city looks like.
26 Augustine,City of God, XIV 1.
27 Augustine,City of God, II 21.

It should also be recognized that the City of God exists out of time and out of space in
contrast to the earthly city. Cavanaugh provides two great examples of this displacement. In the
example of the one city, American Catholic commentators in 2003 were welcomed to give voice
to issues of the invasion of Iraq, under the assumption that they were one among many voices,
and that in the end whatever the President decided they should content themselves with. He
observes “when the church is viewed as particular – as one of the many in civil society – and the
nation-state is viewed as universal – as the larger unifying reality – then it is inevitable that the
one will absorb the many, in the putative interests of harmony and peace.”28
In his second example though, Cavanaugh cites the Voices in the Wilderness, an
ecumenical group of both Christians and non-Christians that smuggled medicine, toys, and food
into Iraq, in direct defiance of US sanctions. These actions disregarded national boarders as a
fiction of the earthly city, an embodiment of the City of God as the true city that reveals the
shortcomings of the earthly city. He concludes “repentance from our complicity in violence must
take the form of fostering an eschatological sense that the earthly city is passing away, and that
the church is called to witness in its own public life to a new order of peace and reconciliation.”29
For American Christians, it is important to begin to see the church as a community on the
road, rather than the Constantinian temptation to see the church as the supportive institution to
the state. This community on the road is only passing through the earthly city, remembering
always that there home is another city, the goal of their journey. And even though they may be in
the earthly city for a time, they must never forget that they are under the authority of their home,
the true city. In passing through the earthly city, they are like the traveling circus. “The church is
not a polis but a set of practices or performances that participate in the history of salvation that
29 Ibid., 68.

God is unfolding on the earth.”30 The church makes its way through the city in order to
demonstrate something strange to the citizens there. They challenge their assumptions and
compel them to look past their false city, and find the city of truth, where Christ guides the way.
This is what Augustine offers in his discussion of desire and virtue, the yearning for home, and
the practices that remind the traveler how to get there.
30 Ibid., 66.

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