Diasporic Literature Spot

Posted By Sophocles on November 15, 2009

The systematic Christian philosophy of society, City of God, by St Augustine of Hippo, exerted a profound and lasting influence on all Christian thought and practice. Arguably, City of God provides a set out of what were the fundamental contrasts between the law of this world and that of the heavenly city towards which all citizens should aspire. As a result, Augustine believes that the ‘Kingdom of God’ derived an ideal system of laws and offices, adapted to the temporal world.[1] The state therefore mediates, or ought to mediate, between the earthly realm of sin and disharmony and the heavenly realm of absolute righteousness. All institutions of the state are forms of dominion, that is, sovereigns over subjects, owners over property and masters over slaves, and dominion, in so far as it is an order conditioned by the relative unrighteousness of its participants.[2]

Philosophy academic Alan Ebenstein is critical and claims that Augustine was concerned with the ways of life rather than the organisations of life.[3] Therefore, the struggle in the universe is then, not between the church and state, but between two opposing ways of life; that being the earthly city, the love of self, the lust of power predominate, whereas in heavenly city, the love of God, even to the contempt of self, is the foundation of order.[4] Consequently, the human race is therefore divided into two parts, ‘the one consisting of those who live according to man, the other of those who live according to God’.[5] Augustine calls these two cities communities of men of which the one is predestined to reign eternally with God, and the other to suffer eternal punishment with the devil. Further, he emphasises that the two communities of the heavenly and earthly cities can be called cities only in a mystical or allegorical sense.[6]

In order to provide an analysis of how a correlation exists between the City of God and the City of Man, this essay will first provide a discussion of the both cities in relations to the Church. It shall then analyse the concept of evil and the doctrine of ‘self-love’ in which Augustine argued was the source of evil in the earthly city. It shall then provide a critical elaboration on the social effects of human egocentricity in the earthly city, in comparison to the heavenly city. Through this discussion, it will be evident that Augustine provides a realistic reminder and pragmatic relations between both cities. This essay shall then bring forth the discussion about Augustine’s construal of the idea of nature in both cities. The laws of nature will be discussed in order to assist in making the comparison between both the heavenly and earthly city.

Theologically, a relationship may be evident between both cities through the acceptance of the Church. What may be argued is that Augustine believed that the City of God reconciles the eternal glory of heaven with the temporary troubles of life on earth.[7] Essentially, the City of God is not on earth, nor is it shaken when the world falls to foreign invaders. To be citizens of that heavenly city, one must place themselves in the hands of the church, and follow the lead of the Pope, the Bishop of Rome.[8]

What Ebenstein argues is that just as the heavenly city symbolically represents the church, the earthly city symbolically represents the state.[9] Augustine does not make any distinction between empirical social or political organisations as a symbol of the earthly city. Instead, the earthly city symbolises the community of the unrighteous, including sinful members of the church and excluding righteous citizens of the state.[10] The earthly city, as an incarnation of sin and lust, is the antithesis of any value whatsoever, the state, by contrast, has positive value, though it is not the absolute value inherent in the heavenly city.

Critically, Theologian Reignhold Niebuhr contends that a distinction can be made between the City of God and the City of Man by understanding Augustine’s concept of evil, which according to this idealist, threatens the human community on every level and is a corollary of his doctrine of selfhood.[11] According to Augustine’s ontological dualism, ‘self-love’ is the source of evil rather than some residual natural impulse which mind has not yet completely mastered. This excessive love of self which is also defined as pride or superbia, is explained as the consequence of the self’s abandonment of God as its try end and of making itself ‘a kind of end’.[12]

Evidently, it is this powerful self-love or, in contemporary terms, egocentricity, that this tendency of the self to make itself its own end or even to make itself the false centre of whatever community inhabits, sows confusion into every human community.[13] Albeit, according to Augustine, the power of self-love is more spiritual than the ‘lust of the body’ of which Plato makes reference to;[14] and it ‘corrupts the process of hyphe mind more than Plato or Aristotle’.[15] This is why Augustine could refute the classical theory with the affirmation that ‘it is not the bad boy which causes the good soul to sin but the bad soul which causes the good boy to sin’.[16] According to Niebuhr, at other times, Augustine defines the evil in man as the ‘evil will’.

Though with the understanding that it is the self which is evil in the manifestations of its will.[17] In the City of Man, Augustine claims that he who extols the whole nature of the soul as the chief good and condemns the nature of the flesh as if it were evil, assuredly is fleshly both in the love of the soul and in the hatred of the flesh.[18] This concise statement of the Christian position surely refutes the ‘absurd charge of modern that the Christian faith is “dualistic” and generates contempt for the body’.[19] Further, it also established that only real basis for a realistic estimate of the forces of recalcitrance which one must face on all levels of human community, particularly for a realist estimate of the spiritual dimension of these forces and of the comparative impotence of ‘pure reason’ in opposition with them.[20] Arguably, one can see the distinction made between the two cities by the analysis of the existing evil in love of self rather than love of God.

Augustine’s description of the social effects of human egocentricity or self-love is contained in his definition of the life of the ‘city of the world’ in the City of Man, in which he views as commingled with the City of God. The ‘city of this world’ is dominated by self-love to the point of contempt of God, and is distinguished from the City of God which is actuated by the ‘love of God’ to the point of contempt of self. Augustine argues that this ‘city’ is conceived in classical thought, and is the whole human community on its three levels of the family, the commonwealth, and the world.[21] Niebuhr states however, that unlike the stoic and modern idealists, Augustine rarely believed that a common humanity of a common reason gives promise of an easy actualisation of community on the global level’.[22] What he further stated was that Augustine declared that man and the world community ‘is fuller of dangers as the greater sea is more dangerous’.[23]

Niebuhr therefore asserts that Augustine is a realist in calling attention to the fact that the potential world community may have a common reason but it speaks in different languages and ‘two men, each ignorant of each other’s language’ will find that ‘dumb animals, though of a different species, could more easily hold intercourse than they, human being though they be’.[24] Arguably, Augustine’s argument proves a realistic reminder that common linguistics and ethnic cultural forces, which bind the community together on one level, are divisive on the ultimate level.

As a result, a pragmatic relation exits between both the City of God and the City of Man.

Arguably, an interrelation may be seen within both the City of Man and the City of God through Augustine’s realism. In his analysis of the City of Man, his refutation and denial of the idea that realism must lead to cynicism or relativism is contained in his definition of the City of God.[25] Augustine declares to be ‘commingled’ with the ‘city of this word’ and which has the ‘love of God’ rather than the ‘love of self’ as its guiding principle.[26] What is contended by Augustine is that the tension which exists between the two cities is occasioned by the fact that while egotism is ‘natural’ in the sense that it is universal, it is not natural in the sense that it does not conform to man’s nature who transcends himself indeterminately and can only have God rather than self for his end.[27] It may be understood that realism ‘becomes morally cynical or nihilistic when it assumes that the universal characteristic in human behaviour must also be regarded as normative’.[28]

Niebuhr claims that the biblical account of human behaviour, upon which Augustine based his thought, can escape both illusion and cynicism because it recognises that the corruption of human freedom may make a behaviour pattern universal without making it normative.[29] This is supported by the belief that good and evil are not determined by some fixed structure of human existence. Although, according to the biblical view, man may use his freedom to make himself falsely the centre of existence. Albeit, this does not change the fact that ‘love rather than self-love is the law of his existence in the sense that man can only be healthy and his communities at peace if man is drawn out of himself and saved from the self-defeated consequences of self-love’.[30]

Philosophically, the interpretation of Augustine’s construal of the idea of nature assists in creating a distinction between both the earthly and heavenly city.  Augustine describes the all embracing range of God’s providence in nature and states that the kingdoms of men, their dominations and their subjections’ are in no way to be thought remote from ‘the laws of his providence’.[31] Philosopher Robert Marcus contends that these laws are obviously identical with the law ‘which ordains penal servitude on the one hand, and enjoins the order of nature to be observed and forbids its transgression on the other’.[32] He further claims that there is a clear reference embedded here to the dual operation of divine providence elaborated in the De Genesi ad Litteram (Genesis). Augustin’s view that the institutional subjection of man to man is rooted in human sin and is part of a divine dispensation for sin, has the deep roots in his thought about the operation of divine providence in the world.

‘The subjection of wives to their husbands and of children to their parents is not, in the relevant sense, institutional’.[33] According to Markus, Augustine held these to be ordinances of nature.[34] Therefore, according to Augustine, a social existence was natural to man. Though God has created man with a view to social existence, and the saints shall live in a sociable union.[35] According to Augustine, men are driven ‘by the laws of their nature’ to enter a social existence; although a society of equals living in a concord and subject only to God.[36] Markus goes further, stating that Augustine envisaged a wide variety of grades of intelligence and ability among men’, though was certainly not naive as to assume that political authority and subjection were in fact often based on such a hierarchy of ability.[37] Augustine believed that the superior abilities of the wise man should find expression in concern for and guidance of the less wise.

This is in accordance with the order of nature, displayed by the paterfamilias, and it should be the pattern for the conduct of anyone in a position of authority.[38] However, institutions of government, coercion and punishment are brought into human society by sin. They are God’s just punishment for man’s transgression, and they are also his providential dispensation for coping with its consequences, disorder, strife and lack of concord.

The relations of the temporal city to the City of God are not a sequential relation. Augustine argues instead that the righteous already inhabit the City of God, and that it is present among all, as a noumenal reality to which one can reach out through their own moral and spiritual efforts. Through the concepts of evil and the doctrine of ‘self-love’, Augustine provides his audience with a distinction between both cities by his political realism, and the belief that the justice of this world, and the way most men act when they are not enlightened by the divine gift of grace.

Word count: 2124

Reference List

Bettenson, H, Concerning the City of God against Pagans, 1^st edn, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1976.

Ebenstein, A, and Ebesntein, W, Introduction to Political Thinkers, 2^nd edn, Wadsworth Cengage learning, Fort Worth, 2002.

Markus, R, Seculum: History and Society in the Theology of St Augustine, 1^st edn, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1970.

Niebuhr, R, Christian Realism and Political Problems, 1^st edn, Faber and Faber, London, 1954.

Scruton, R, Dictionary of Political Thought, 3^rd edn, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2007.

_________________________

[1] R Scruton, Dictionary of Political Thought, 3^rd edn, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2007, p. 45.

[2] Ibid.

[3] A Ebenstein, and W Ebesntein, Introduction to Political Thinkers, 2^nd edn, Wadsworth Cengage learning, Fort Worth, 2002, p. 101.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid., p. 102.

[8] R Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems, 1^st edn, Faber and Faber, London, 1954, p. 74.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ebenstein, loc. cit.

[11] Niebuhr, op. cit., p. 117.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

[14] H Bettenson, Concerning the City of God against Pagans, 1^st edn, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1976, p. 40.

[15] Niebuhr, loc. cit.

[16] Betternson, op. cit., p. 15.

[17] Niebuhr, op. cit., p. 118.

[18] R Markus, Seculum: History and Society in the Theology of St Augustine, 1^st edn, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1970, p. 7.

[19] Niebuhr, loc. cit.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Ibid., p. 20.

[22] Ibid., p. 120.

[23] Ibid., p. 310.

[24] Ibid., p. 405.

[25] Ibid., p. 123.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Ibid.

[29] Ibid., p. 124.

[30] Ibid.

[31] Markus, op. cit., p. 204.

[32] Ibid.

[33] Scruton, loc. cit.

[34] Markus, loc.cit.

[35] Ibid.

[36] ibid.

[37] Ibid.

[38] Ibid.

Sophocles Kitharidis (Melbourne, Australia)

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Categories: English Literature, Philosophy
Tags: God