Copyright © 1996 R.J. Kilcullen
After Aristotle the circumstances of Greek life were greatly transformed. Alexander The Great led a Greek army into the Persian empire and defeated it. Large Greek kingdoms were established in the area formerly held by the Persians, including Egypt and Palestine. In Egypt the new Greek city of Alexandria became an important cultural centre, with philosophical schools as important as those of Athens. In fact Alexandria became the centre of the education industry.
When the Romans took over the Greek kingdoms the Roman empire became culturally Greek. The culture of the Mediterranean world became hellenistic, meaning Greek-influenced; Greece itself became something of a backwater. The polis or city was no longer the highest political unit. Some of the philosophers called themselves "cosmopolitans", citizens of the cosmos, the world, rather than citizens of this or that particular city. In the Roman empire cities became very large, and there was little participation by ordinary people in politics. New philosophies became current, notably Stoicism. New religions were tried out by residents of the cities, and eventually Christianity prevailed. The Christian religion began among Jews but spread among Greek-speaking people throughout the Mediterranean region and then among the Latin-speaking people of the western part of the Roman empire.
From the first to the sixth centuries of the Christian era is often called the Patristic period -- the period of the "fathers" (patres) of the Church, writers and churchmen who helped formulate orthodox Christian doctrine, drawing not only on the bible but on Greek philosophy. The fathers of the Church include Athanasius, Chrysostom, Origen, who wrote in Greek, and Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome and Gregory, who wrote in Latin.
The beliefs of Christians during these early centuries are best summarized as an historical narrative. The world did not always exist (Aristotle and other Greek philosophers had held that it did). Before the world came into existence God existed eternally. God is a single being but is also three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God created the world, including the first human pair, Adam and Eve. He created them in a state of innocence; they were originally sinless, and lived a happy life in the Garden of Eden. However they fell from innocence by a first sin, and were expelled from the garden. From then on human beings lived in sin and misery. To one particular favoured race, the Jews, God sent prophets, i.e. messengers, Moses being the first. Eventually he sent his own Son, Jesus Christ, who was God himself become man. Jesus allowed himself to be put to death by crucifixion, but rose again alive from the dead. By his death and resurrection Christ saved mankind and made it possible for some human beings to enjoy eternal happiness with God in heaven, in the next life, after death. Christians believed that the soul is immortal (i.e. that it does not die when the body does) and that on the last day the body will rise again and be reunited with the soul. When Jesus returned to heaven he left on earth the Christian Church. Human beings are saved by being baptised as members of the Church, by participating in its worship and living in accordance with its teachings. The leader of the Church in each district was its bishop. The bishops throughout the world on occasion met in ecumenical (world-wide) or general councils to discuss common concerns and to decide disputed doctrinal questions.
Notice some terms often encountered in Christian authors:
"The Garden of Eden", in which Adam and Eve lived before
they sinned.
Like the Jewish religion, Christianity had a bible ("bible" comes from the Greek word for book), consisting of the Jewish bible, which the Christians called the Old Testament, and the New Testament. The Old Testament had been translated from Hebrew into Greek by Jews living in Egypt. This version is called the Septuagint. The New Testament was originally written in Greek. It includes the four gospels (of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), which report the words and deeds of Jesus Christ, "The Acts of the Apostles", recording the early days of Christianity in Jerusalem and the missionary journeys of Paul which disseminated it among the Greeks, letters written by Paul and others to Christians in various cities, and a book called "Revelation" or "the Apocalypse", which is a denunciation in cryptic style of the evils of the time (often in later times taken as prediction).
The bible is a collection of many books originally written separately by different authors. The list of which books are to be included in the bible is called the canon of scripture. For the Old Testament the early Christians used the Septuagint canon, which included a number of books not included in the Hebrew bible. In the 16th century Protestants adopted the Hebrew canon and referred to the extra Septuagint books as apocrypha, meaning "hidden", perhaps because their authorship is obscure. There are also some "apocryphal" books associated with the New Testament, e.g. a gospel ascribed to Thomas. For a translation of the bible which makes all this clear, see The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version, containing the Old and New Testaments with the Apocrypha/ Deuterocanonical Books (Collins, 1973). (Quotations in these notes are from that edition. References are by the abbreviated title of the book, chapter and (after a colon) verse -- e.g. "Mk. 10:46" refers to the Gospel of Mark, chapter 10 verse 46. See that edition, pp. xii-xiv.) See Hennecke, The New Testament Apocrypha.
From early times and throughout medieval times Christians interpreted the bible in what might now be called a fundamentalist way. That is, they believed that each and every statement anywhere in the bible, no matter what its subject matter, was certainly true, and therefore consistent with every other statement in the bible. A text might be metaphorical or figurative, its meaning might be obscure, it might be misunderstood; but in whatever meaning was intended by its author it must be true. They believed that the Holy Spirit, that is God himself, had guided the writers so that they included no errors of any sort.
For example, in Mk. 10:46 we read:/P
And they came to Jericho; and as he was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a great multitude, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the roadside. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent; but he cried out all the more, "Son of David, have mercy on me!" And Jesus stopped and said, "Call him." And they called the blind man, saying to him, "Take heart; rise, he is calling you." And throwing off his mantle he sprang up and came to Jesus. And Jesus said to him, "What do you want me to do for you?" And the blind man said to him, "Master, let me receive my sight." And Jesus said to him, "Go your way; your faith has made you well." And immediately he received his sight and followed him on the way.
In Lk. 18:35 we read:
As he drew near to Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging; and hearing a multitude going by, he inquired what this meant. They told him, "Jesus of Nazareth is passing by." And he cried, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" And Jesus stopped, and commanded him to be brought to him; and when he came near, he asked him, "What do you want me to do for you?" He said, "Lord, let me receive my sight." And Jesus said to him, "Receive your sight; your faith has made you well." And immediately he received his sight and followed him, glorifying God.
The modern reader would hardly hesitate to say that these are two accounts of the same event. But note that in Mark it happens "as he was leaving Jericho", in Luke "as he drew near to Jericho". The modem reader's reaction would probably be to say that this is a small discrepancy, of no importance: the main thing in both narratives is the miracle. But Augustine writes:
Now the name of the city, and the resemblance of the deed, favour the supposition that there was but one such occurrence. But still, the idea that the evangelists [gospel writers] really contradict one another here, in so far as the one says, "As He was come nigh unto Jericho", while the others put it thus, "As He came out of Jericho," is one which no one surely will be prevailed on to accept, unless those who would have it more readily credited that the gospel is unveracious, than that He wrought two miracles of a similar nature and in similar circumstances. But every faithful son of the gospel will most readily perceive which of these two alternatives is the more credible, and which the rather to be accepted as true. (Augustine, Harmony of the Gospels, p. 159.)
In other words, the veracity (truthfulness) of the gospel guarantees that two similar miracles occurred, one on the way into Jericho and one on the way out. It was not enough to accept the bible as substantially true, or true on matters of religious significance; a Christian had to accept each and every statement, about no matter what, as certainly true.
But although they treated the bible as infallible the fathers of the Church did not regard it as the only source of truth on religious matters. They made much use of Greek philosophy. Their purpose was not only to formulate orthodox doctrine, but also to understand, as far as possible, and for that they found philosophy useful (though they used it critically). They also took much of their teaching about morality from the Platonist and Stoic philosophers. Their writings transmitted and disseminated many of the ideas of the Greek philosophers through the centuries and throughout the world.
(References are by book and chapter -- "XIX. 17" refers to chapter 17 of book 19. Quotations below are from the translation by G.G. Walsh, D.B. Zema and G. Monahan (New York, The Fathers of the Church, 1950.)
Augustine was born in North Africa, then a province of the Roman Empire, in 354 AD. He became a teacher of rhetoric, was converted to a religious life, and became bishop of Hippo in 395. His writings have had a great influence on Christian thought. This is especially true of his writings on grace, against Pelagius. Pelagius, a popular preacher, taught that everyone could live a good life if they wanted to -- intending this as encouragement to good living. Augustine answered that no one can live a good life, or even want to, without special help from God which he does not always give. God's help is a "grace" -- that is, it cannot be earned or deserved, but is given gratuitously, and only to "the elect" (chosen), i.e., those to whom God has chosen from eternity (predestined) to give it.
Augustine also elaborated the doctrine of Original Sin, i.e., that all human beings are subject to punishment because of Adam's sin. The punishment consists in ignorance and weakness of will which result in further sins which deserve eternal punishment -- unless God gives grace. On Augustine's doctrines of original sin, predestination and grace see Kelly Early Christian Doctrines (BT/2S/.K), pp. 357-69.
In political thought Augustine's most influential writing was The City of God. In 410 the Goths burnt Rome and pagans blamed Christians for the calamity. In instalments from 413 over thirteen years Augustine published The City of God, arguing in books I-V that the pagan gods never gave Rome any protection, and in books VI-X that paganism offered no eternal salvation. The rest of the work is about the origin, development and destination of two cities, the city of God and the earthly city. Thus it includes a discussion of the relationship between Christian and non-Christian views of life, and between Christianity and secular political life. In the course of this long work Augustine discusses many topics of philosophy and history:
suicide, I.2-27;
The idea of the two cities is as follows. The "city of God" consists of those who will enjoy eternal happiness with God in heaven, the "earthly city" of those who will not. The city of God is not identical with the Church, since not all members of the Church will be saved. During this age, before the Day of Judgment, the members of the two cities are mixed in together, no one knows with certainty who are the elect. Although Augustine sometimes seems to identify Rome as the earthly city, at least in later sections of the book the earthly city is not identified with any particular state. Members of both the city of God and the earthly city will be among the citizens of any particular state. The members of the two cities have different ultimate values but have many intermediate ends in common -- for example, they both desire worldly peace. Insofar as any particular state serves such common ends it will have the cooperation of members of the city of God.
To learn more about the two cities see I. 1, I.35, XI. 1, XIV. 1, XIV.28, XV. 1-2, XV.4, XIX. 17. For most of these passages you will need to consult a complete text of The City of God.
The following selections in the Readings Book relate to politics. The first few extracts relate to the question why did God allow the non-Christian Roman empire to become so large and powerful? The opponents of Christianity say that the Christian god is unreal; it was the old Roman gods that favoured the Roman empire -- its success shows that those old gods were real and powerful.
Read IV.3,15.
Like Plato and Aristotle, Augustine was no admirer of militarism or empire. Peace is one of his favourite themes. The question, "In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organised brigandage?", and the story of Alexander and the pirate, were often repeated by later writers.
The old Roman gods were unreal; there is only one true God. So then there is a question, why did that God help the builders of the pagan Roman empire?
Read V.12,13,19,20.
Is he praising the old Romans for their love of glory, or condemning them?
Love of glory or honour is not a virtue but a vice, according to Augustine; yet politically it has similar effects to virtue: love of honour inhibits other vices. In this respect it is an image or imitation or likeness of real virtue. Augustine's philosophy was much influenced by neo-Platonism. Plato distinguished especially between two levels of reality: the Forms, and the things of our experience which imitate or resemble the Forms in an inferior way. The neo-Platonists extended this to many levels: Reality has many levels, each of which is a reflection or imitation of the level above it. This makes Augustine perhaps surprisingly tolerant of lower things: the lower levels are not merely evil, they are an imperfect imitation of higher levels. The "virtue" of the ancient Romans was inferior, but it was worth something.
On p. 124, LH side, he says: "The better way to reach honour ... is by virtue", but to be virtuous for the sake of honour is the prostitution of virtue - in fact it is not genuine virtue. At the bottom of the LH side he says: "There is no true virtue save that which pursues the end which is man's true good". Second paragraph of chapter 13: "The love of glory is a sin." But there are worse things than seeking glory -- for example, seeing domination without caring what anyone thinks (chapter 19). So the old Romans, though they sinned in seeking glory, were not as bad as they might have been; their sense of honour was at least an imitation of virtue. So on p. 126, RH, he explains that God aided the Romans because virute motivated by glory is better than no virtue at all.
The Stoics despised honour and sought virtue for its own sake (the opening sentence of V.20 is a reference to the Stoics, "those others" are the Epicureans, who said that virtue is good because it makes life more pleasant). However, some try to seem to despise honour only to attain more honour. And some who genuinely do not care about admiration from others still like to admire themselves (perhaps for despising honour). "Their virtue, if they have any, is just as much a slave to glory, though in a different way. For what is the self-complacent man but a slave to his own self-praise?" This is a point worth making. If you pride yourself on your independence and integrity you may still be playing to an admiring audience, yourself. One of the reasons why people read Augustine is that he is good at pointing out some of the subtleties of human self-deception -- he'd been there himself.
So one of the themes in these chapters is the distinction between real virtue and certain approximations or imitations, without meaning to dismiss the approximations as worthless.
Read XIX.5,7.
This is part of an argument (XIX.4-10) that complete happiness is not to be found in this earthly life. He goes through several levels of social life -- family life, life in the city, life in the world community. On this topic Augustine is more realistic than many of the Stoic writers, who identified virtue and happiness; or perhaps we should say that Augustine is using "happiness" to mean something close to what we mean by it, and acknowledging that virtue cannot guarantee happiness in that sense. In passages not in the Readings he says: "When virtues are genuine virtues -- and that is possible only when men believe in God -- they make no pretence of protecting their possessors from unhappiness, for that would be a false promise; but they do claim that human life, now compelled to feel the misery of so many grievous ills on earth, can, by the hope of heaven, be made both happy and secure" (XIX.4). "On earth we are happy, after a fashion, when we enjoy the peace, little as it is, which a good life brings; but such happiness compared with the beatitude which is our end in eternity is, in point of fact, misery" (XIX.10).
From XIX. 11 the topic is peace. "The kind of peace that is based on injustice... does not deserve the name of Peace"; XIX. 12.
Read XIX.13, first paragraph.
Once again, notice the neo-Platonic habit of attending to many levels and seeing analogies between them. The levels here include the body, the soul, the home, the city, etc.; at each level there is a kind of peace, and each kind of peace consists in a certain kind of order. Notice that order requires that temporal goods be used as means to eternal life. (See XIX.25 in a complete text of the work).
Read XIX.14
Obedience is due only to those who serve by ruling -- no other sort of ruling is justified. This is of course Plato's thesis again, that ruling is an art that seeks the good of the ruled. Notice the service Augustine says the ruler owes to the ruled: to help them to love God.
Read XIX.15
This chapter has usually been taken to mean that if there had been no sin (if the Fall had not taken place, and mankind had continued in the original state of innocence) the institutions of government and slavery would not have existed. Medieval interpreters of Augustine took this to mean that the authority of a husband and father is natural, whereas the authority of the master of slaves and of government is not natural, though it is legitimate for other reasons. ("Natural" here means "part of human nature as God originally created it", whereas for Aristotle nature was seen best in the fully developed, not in the primitive or original.)
Read XIX.17
Thus Christians participate in the earthly city, and value its peace. (Cf. XV.4 in a complete text of the work.) Notice that merely earthly peace is worth something, just as the virtue of the old Romans motivated by desire for glory was worth something; the lower levels are imperfect, not evil. Augustine is saying here that Christians can cooperate with non-Christians in seeking worldly, but still worth-while, order and peace.
Read XIX.21, last para. of 23, and 24.
The back-reference is to II.21. There (after promising to prove that by Cicero's definition the Romans never had a republic), he says: "However, according to some definitions that are nearer the truth, it was a commonwealth of a sort", just as its peace was peace of a sort. Some medieval writers (e.g. Giles of Rome) held that true justice and a true polity are not possible except among Christians and sometimes quoted from City of God IV.4 in support of their position. Some historians use the term "Political Augustinianism" for this position, but here in XIX.21 and in XIX.24 Augustine rejects it. It is only by an unduly narrow definition that it can be said that non-Christians cannot form a commonwealth.
Read XIX.26-27.
"We can make use of the peace of Babylon" (which represents the earthly city): cf. XIX. 17
Notice in all of this the idea of order: one thing is under another, exists for the sake of another, must obey another... Even when order is not perfect there must be some order -- evil is never absolute. (See XIX.12 in complete text, 13; cf. XI1.3 in complete text.) Peace, Justice, and Happiness depend upon Order, and are less perfect the less perfect the order.
Augustine rejected pacificism, which to some seemed to be implied by Jesus words about not resisting evil and turning the other cheek.
Before Augustine became a Catholic he had been a Manichee. In his book Against Faustus the Manichee he explains and justifies his rejection of their views. The Manichaeans accepted the New Testament but rejected the Old Testament as being unworthy of God: for example, it says that God commanded the Israelites to despoil the Egyptians, that he commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son, that he commanded the Israelites to engage in ruthless war.
Read Augustine, Contra Faustum, Book XXII, chapters 74-6.
"Wars of Moses": What Faustus had said is not recorded. Perhaps he referred to some passage like the following: "In the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes", i.e. not women, children, animals, "but you shall utterly destroy them... as the Lord your God has commanded; that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices which they have done in the service of their gods"; Deuteronomy 20:16-18.
Notice: "What is the evil in war?"
The quotations are from the gospels.
Note that normally the soldiers are not to blame if they carry out the orders of even an ungodly king.
In his letter to Marcellinus, Augustine also discusses war. He answers the objection that Christ's teachings will weaken the state by making citizens unwilling to fight.
Read extract from Augustine, Epistola 138.
"Christ's preaching": E.g. in the "Sermon on the Mount" Christ said, "You have heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth". But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil. But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if any one would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well; and if any one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles" (Matthew 5:38-41).
"They preferred to pardon the wrongs they had suffered rather than revenge them": This quotation from the ancient Roman historian Sallust, and the following quotation from Cicero, resemble Christ's teachings. Yet the ancient Romans were not ineffective in warfare. These sayings, and Christ's sayings, express a praiseworthy attitude, but were not meant to be acted on literally.
"For what is the commonwealth", etc.: The point of this passage is that the state cannot exist without agreement and harmony among citizens, which Christ's teachings foster.
"When these disagreed among themselves": i.e., the pagan gods disagreed among themselves.
"What kinds of goods these are": i.e. that they should be despised, not fought for.
"Interior disposition of the heart": the Christian must always be inwardly ready to make peace, even while the behaviour of others forces him to fight.
In short, Christ's teaching does not forbid Christians to engage in just warfare.
Augustine changed his mind on this topic. At first he was opposed to any sort of coercion of non-Christians, on the grounds that belief has to be voluntary. But later he was persuaded by experience that coercion may produce genuine belief, by causing people to attend favourably to teachings they would otherwise have ignored or despised. This opens a wide door.
In North Africa in Augustine's time the Catholics were in conflict with a large and well-organised Christian sect called the Donatists; a sub-sect of the Donatists were the Rogatists. Some Donatists, the "circumcelliones", were violent against the Catholics. Augustine at first took the view that the Catholics should ask the Christian Roman state only for protection against the violence of the circumcelliones, but other bishops persuaded the state to make its forces available to compel the Donatists to become Catholics. Augustine was struck by the fact that many of the forcibly converted Donatists were grateful and became ardent Catholics. He writes to Vincentius, a Rogatist bishop, in defence of the policy.
Read Augustine, Epistola 93, to Vincentius.
"Many who hold and defend the Catholic unity": converted Donatists.
"My colleagues": the other bishops, who had asked the state to compel conversions, whereas Augustine had wanted merely protection from circumcellion violence.
"Overlook and forbear": cf turning the other cheek.
"Compel them to come in": From the parable of the supper, Luke 14:16 ff. Those invited to the supper made various excuses and did not come. "The householder said to his servant, "Go out quickly... and bring in the poor and maimed and blind and lame". and the servant said, "Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room." And the master said to the servant, "Go out to the highways and hedges, and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled.""
"When good and bad do the same actions": An action that is right if done by someone who is in the right may be wrong if done by someone in the wrong. To judge the act we must ask "who were on the side of truth, and who on the side of iniquity".
"The good have persecuted the bad": in English "persecute" has come to connote "wrongly", so that persecution is not something the good are said to do. In Latin persequor did not have this connotation; neither does the related English word "prosecute", which is something the good can be said to do.
Similar arguments are found in Augustine's Epistola 185, to Boniface (translated in Saint Augustine, Letters, vol. 4 (New York: "The Fathers of the Church", 1955), p. 141 ff (BR60.F3 vol. 30). For criticism see Pierre Bayle, Philosophical Commentary, part 3, in Readings.
So while The City of God suggests a "minimal" or neutral state in which Christians and non-Christians live peacefully together, other passages in Augustine's writings suggest that the state should sometimes enforce religious truth.
According to Augustine, secular government cannot secure the happiness of citizens. Happiness is not possible in this life. The goal of politics is peace or order -- not perfect peace, but a peace worth having though imperfect, a remedy for some of the disorder resulting from sin. To secure peace warfare may be necessary.
See Philosophy from Aristotle to Augustine. For further reading see J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (BT25.K4), pp. 52-60 on the formation of the canon of scripture, pp. 60-64 on the inspiration of the bible, p. 163 ff and p. 375 ff on what the Church Fathers meant when they said that Christ had "saved" mankind, pp. 417-21 on the primacy of the pope (on this see also Kidd, The Roman Primacy to A.D. 461).
Further reading on Augustine: R.A. Markus, "The Latin Fathers", in Burns, The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought (B 1608.E8B.47), esp. pp. 10-116, and/or "Man in History and Society" in Armstrong, The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (B171.A72). Also Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of Saint Augustine (BR65.A9.M33), and Baynes The Political Ideas of St Augustine's De Civitate Dei (Dl.H25no. 104).)
Between Augustine and Thomas Aquinas Islamic political thought developed, partly on the basis of translations into Arabic of the writings of Plato and Aristotle. There are interesting parallels and differences between medieval Islamic thought and medieval Christian thought about religion and politics. In the Christian west clergy and especially the pope were sometimes put into a position like that of Plato's guardians or Philosopher-King. Muslim philosophers cast Muhammed in that role. Islam had no distinction between clergy and laity, so there was no distinction between church and state. However the Muslim philosophers held that not everyone is capable of philosophy, so generally held that the elite should study philosophy while the ordinary people should be taught the Koran and traditions without any attempt at intellectual sophistication. See "Islamic political philosophy: Al Farabi, Avicenna and Averroes".
What is the difference between the City of God and the
Earthly City?
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