Saint Augustine: The City of God and True Justice
Commentary on Saint Augustine
Location: Saint Augustine was an author of the late 4th and early 5th centuries. Therefore, he belongs to medieval philosophy, but his thinking stems from the Roman era. He was the great representative of Latin Patristics and the first to develop a philosophy of history. Furthermore, he built one of the great syntheses of Christian philosophy by explaining the precepts of Christianity in light of the philosophy of Plato and Neoplatonism.
Theme: This text reflects the need for the State to submit to the precepts of Christianity to enjoy authentic and true justice, as well as authentic and genuine politics.
Ideas:
- Saint Augustine begins the text by stating that true justice requires God to reign over the state, which implies the existence of a society obedient to God.
- In all the men who compose that society, the soul should prevail over the body and reason over vices.
- All the people, then, must live by faith, which means loving God and neighbor, setting aside worldly values.
- If these factors do not exist, there cannot be a society based on rights and common interests. If this idea of justice is not given, there will be neither people nor real policy.
Analysis of Ideas
Saint Augustine begins by exposing the fundamental premise that endorses the thesis of the text: the Christian idea of justice. Thus, he introduces the text by saying that God should guide and rule over the state, an idea that will lead him to say that in men who make up a society, the soul must prevail over the body and reason over vices. As a result, all the people should live in accordance with the faith, which consists of love for God and neighbor. All these ideas will allow him to conclude that without this idea of justice or a lawful society, there is no people, much less politics.
Explanation
This text essentially argues for the primacy of the Church over the State. Since the Church is the repository of the truths of Christianity, or truth itself, the State must conform to it if true justice is to prevail in society. This idea constitutes the backbone of the text and will be present in Church-State relations throughout the Middle Ages.
To argue his case, Saint Augustine starts by exposing what for him must be true and genuine justice from the precepts of Christianity. God is justice because He is the truth. God must illuminate the State and become its guide, as He does with human reason (‘believe to understand’).
A good society, for the Christian author, is one that will yield obedience to the one and supreme God, and where the soul and reason prevail over the body and vice. It would, therefore, be the realization of what Saint Augustine called the “City of God,” a city made up of those who want to live in accordance with the spirit and, therefore, “love God to the contempt of themselves.”
In contrast, Saint Augustine also speaks of an “earthly city,” built by those who want to live by the dictates of the flesh and worldly, mutable pleasures. In this society, beings “love themselves up to contempt of God.” The earthly city is symbolized in Saint Augustine by Babylon and represents those empires founded on greed and unjust domination. One of them was Rome, a symbol of paganism and persecution of Christian values.
Thus, he proposes in the text the idea that all people should live according to Christian faith, a faith based on love of neighbor and God above all things. True happiness and justice, for Saint Augustine, consist in the love of God, becoming the founding principle of the social order. Love divides humanity, as we have seen, into two major cities depending on the system of values or goals toward which that love is directed. The perspective offered by this Christian author on History, then, is essentially moral, and where politics will be fully subject to the precepts of Christian ethics and virtue.
Conclusion
So, at the end of the text, he states that without the guidance of God, that is, within what he called the “earthly city,” it will never be possible to develop a society based on common interests and, therefore, politics. In a society where selfishness and greed prevail, there cannot be a shared love; there cannot be, therefore, a people. But without a people, there is no real policy, understood as the government that is exercised for the common good.
Finally, we conclude that only in the City of God can there be the common good and, therefore, the people and real policy.