Robert W. Burns

Ancient Political Thought

Professor Woodiwiss

December 11, 2000

Augustinian Political Thought and the Critique of Empire

Augustinian Political Thought and the Critique of Empire

            Much of modern political thought has tended to portray the work of St. Augustine as situated within either the context of political realism[1] or political liberalism[2].  Both frameworks shut down attempts to disrupt the logic and virtue of empire by legitimating the violence of empire and appropriating Augustine in this legitimation.  Realism justifies the ontology of violence as a permanent fixture of human relations and does not allowed the critical space from which to critique it.  Political liberalism claims that agonism can be overcome through the use of reason and replaced with the "common good".  Both constructions of Augustinian politics serve to extend and justify the logic of imperialism in Western thought.  However, an alternative reading of Augustine understands his work as a subversion of the agonistic ontology and mythos that sustains empire because it relocates Christian politics in an ontology of peace, as expressed concretely through the practices of the church.  Such a rereading must also critique a third modern interpretation of Augustine that attempts to challenge empire using agonistic violence[3].  The truly radical nature of Christian political thought, grounded in the reconciliation and unification of those in conflict, will not be revealed unless the ontology of agonism is completely overcome.

Augustine as Realist?

            Reinhold Niebuhr[4] first formally introduced the realist perspective in Christian Realism and Political Problems.  Neibuhr argued that,

 “Augustine was, by general consent, the first great ‘realist’ in western history.  He deserves this distinction because his picture of social reality in his civitas dei gives an adequate account of the social factions, tensions, and competitions which we know to be well-nigh universal on every level of community” (Neibuhr, 1953, 120-1).

Realism argues that this agonistic situation of the conflict of wills is the basic framework of every society: it is the ontology of politics.  Cycles of conflict, oppression and repression, are the natural order of things after the fall, and this must not be denied, as idealists are prone to do.  As Herbert A. Deane notes,

"Anarchy and mutual destruction are the consequences that both Augustine and Hobbes see as inevitable if human appetites and passions are unrestrained...The task of the State then, is to maintain peace by employing its overwhelming powers of coercion to hold in check the warring aspirations of selfish men" (Deane, 1963, 235). 

According to the realist, the agon must be fully recognized, and ways found to control it and direct it towards the common good.  As Deane notes,

"Since most men--whether they are heathen or nominal Christians--are unredeemed and will be so until the end of the world, new means must be provided to introduce a measure of order, stability, and peace in the midst of strife and conflict that mark earthly life.  Even to disobedient, prideful man God has been most merciful;  He has established new institutions, adapted to the new conditions of sinful existence, in order to keep a check on human greed and violence, and to prevent society from collapsing into complete anarchy and choas...Although they provide an element of order, stability, and peace in social life that would be completely absent without them, the earthly peace and order that they make possible are no longer natural and spontaneous, but must be maintained by coercion and repression...earthly peace and order must also be defended by the heavy hand of coercion and punishment in order to prevent them from being destroyed by the powerful forces of sin" (Deane, 1963, 95-7). 

The realist construal of Augustine is based on this argument, that the condition of the world is fundamentally violent and that the only hope for humanity is that it construct a greater coercive power than this violence that can be used to control and mediate its negative effects on humanity.  Such is the role of the state in the realist construal.  According to Lavere,

"The state [cannot] make men good, or even just, since it lacks a proper conception of the universal human good which is the basis for human justice.  What the state can do to a certain extent, and should do as far as possible, is to mediate the endless disputes of confused and contentious men through the appropriate use of its coercive power.  It should prevent bad men from becoming worse at the expense of their fellow citizens.  It can thus facilitate, in a negative way, the passage through the earthly city of the pilgrim-citizens of the City of God" (Lavere, 1980, 144). 

Scholars who understand Augustine in such a light explain his realism by arguing that he had an essentially negative view of the state as primarily the restrainer of social chaos.  Accordingly, they interpret Augustine as having a postlapserian view of the state: that "there would be no political authority had original sin not been committed" (Weithman, 1992, 354).[5]

Such Augustinian realism dictates that Christians should recognize the state as a coercive power used by God to keep social order in place--regardless of its moral status as a just or unjust actor.  One can expect no more from the state in a fallen world.  Robert Holmes explains this interpretation,

"The fundamental pragmatic imperative for Augustine is to obey the state.  Even an oppressive state at least serves as the agent of God's chastisement for our sins, and, moreover, provides order, which is essential to peace...As for rulers, their legitimacy need have no more warrant by earthly standards than the power by which they enforce order.  For that is what is necessary to avoid the even greater evils of license and disorder" (Holmes, 1999, 334, 336). 

The state should thus not be criticized pragmatically or morally, but respected as part of the eternal order.  Eugene Teselle explains this,

“While these modern ideologies tend to look fatalistically at the inevitability of the system, or pragmatically at its beneficial results, Augustine sees it as a moral imperative, a further application of the eternal law, for if the natural order is violated, than there must be either restraint or punishment " (Teselle, 1991, 152). 

Such a view blunts any criticism of the state, because it claims that even if the state is acting abusively, its very role as a coercive power is fulfilling its negative duty as the enforcer of eternal law, to hold back temporal anarchy, and this is all that the state is called to do.  As R. A. Markus noted, "Political authority and its coercive agencies exist for the purpose of coping with the consequences of man's sin" (Markus, 1972, 98).[6]  Since the state is thus construed only in a negative light, there is no requirement on it to move beyond the constraint of social chaos.  This constraint may include horribly unjust actions, such as torture or execution, but these are justified for the greater good of maintaining order.  P.R.L. Brown articulates the conclusion of this logic, Augustine was willing to accept unjust domination and violence from the state, as long as it was preserving order.

"Augustine could accept the domination of man over man that had arisen from the Fall.  This domination at least canceled out certain tensions; although at a terrible cost, as anyone who has witnessed judicial torture and executions would admit if he had any sense of human dignity.  But at least an ordered hierarchy of established powers can canalize and hold in check the human lust for domination and vengeance.  For Augustine, like Hobbes, is a man for whom a sense of violence forms the firmest boundary stone of his political thought" (Brown, 1972, 324).

This realist read of political authority, as equally legitimate in both its good and bad uses, can serve as a way of legitimating the politics of empire.  As long as politics are inherently the restraining of evil and the curbing of pride, both authoritarian imperialists and benevolent democrats can serve this function in a given society.  A despot can claim that as long as he maintains order by restraining social chaos, he is doing all that a state is expected to do before God.  This construal of Augustinian politics as being postlapserian and entirely negative could lead one to believe that the only type of politics that can exist in this world are agonistic politics, that to push for a more positive political ordering is not a realistic option, and that one must accept all political ordering because it restrains evil.  As Teselle argues,

The net result is that, even in making us aware of victimization, he blunts our indignation over it... [Augustine] chooses not to challenge the victimizers or to liberate those who are victimized.  In this way his vision is like that of modern Maluthusians or Social Darwinists or champions of market capitalism, who are able to contemplate individual catastrophe with equanimity, precisely out of appreciation for the smooth and productive functioning of the system as a whole (Teselle, 1991, 152).

Because this portrayal situates Augustine’s realism as enclosed by the agon, where all that matters is not "justice" but the effective control of social chaos, it legitimates the oppressive state that keeps order, because the agon is inherently oppressive and one can only hope to keep order and not to challenge oppression itself.  According to realists, than political resistance is forbidden.  "In Augustine's view there are no exceptions to this injunction which applies equally to both good and evil rulers" (Lavere, 1980, 141 n. 11).

            Such a view erases the space for the critique of imperial rule, and therefore legitimates the violence of empire, because it frames the world as ontologically violent.  As Holmes notes,

"Power on the part of rulers and submissive obedience on the part of subjects enable the state to run roughshod over the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount.  In its practical import, then, as opposed to its theoretical and philosophical import, Augustine's account sets the stage more nearly for Hobbes, Machiavelli, and twentieth-century political realists (some of the most prominent of whom have been Christians) than for just war theorists" (Holmes, 1999, 338).

Instead of positing a critical space from which this violence can be challenged, the realist framework accepts it as inevitable and then attempts to function within it. The goal of realism is thus not to challenge the fundamental ontology of violence, but rather to mediate and control such agonism in society in provisional and pragmatic ways through the use of countervailing agonistic force of the state.  As George J. Lavare notes, "At best, the state is a necessary evil, a corrective device for the restraint of self-centered human beings whose fall from grace has rendered the human condition precarious and, not infrequently, intolerable" (Lavere, 1980, 141).  Since the agon is unavoidable, imperial rule grounded in the libido dominandi is actually legitimated and viewed as normal and even beneficial, a tool of love, if it can be justified as holding back disorder.  Teselle argues that, “Even the eternal law of love takes into account the disordered affections of fallen humanity, makes concessions to them, and even uses them against themselves for the sake of order and peace” (Teselle, 1991, 152). 

However, the violent ontology that underwrites realism is always self-justifying, it always posits a worse threat external to itself that justifies its own existence for the sake of peace.  As John Milbank[7] argues in Theology and Social Theory, “Every legality has always claimed validity by virtue of its keeping at bay an essentially imaginary chaos.  What came ‘first’ was not anarchy, but this legal, coercive, and itself ‘anarchic’ assertion” (Milbank, 1993, 394-5).  In this sense, realism offers the construction of threats as its only justification, and the construction of threats can only justify further violence in order to protect itself.  This self-justifying argument cannot be broken from within the agonistically constructed realist framework.  Therefore, the realist reading of Augustine does not contain the resources necessary to overcome the agon.

The realist construal of Augustinian politics can be challenged by noting that the framing of Augustinian politics as primarily negative and restraining is not a complete picture of politics.  As the Donatist controversy made clear, Augustine believed that the state could enforce religious justice and even help to covert those who had gone astray through the use of discipline.  His role for the state was thus also a constructive one, and not merely intended to restrain evil.  Burnell notes this, and concludes that in Augustine, “Kings in so far as they are kings have the unique duty of enforcing Christian orthodoxy, which is to say that they have that duty in virtue of their kingdoms...the state [is] properly an instrument of the church” (Burnell, 1993, 179).  Further, according to Milbank, the state can play a positive role that is equated in Augustine with “pastoral care”.  As Milbank notes,

“Insofar as is possible, the Christian ruler will make a usus of the earthly peace by subordinating it to the ecclesial purposes of charity and of a ‘loving discipline’…The ‘Christian emperor’, therefore, is a just ruler exactly to the extent that he treats his political function as an inner-ecclesial one, or as an exercise of pastoral care” (Milbank, 1993, 407).[8] 

Correlatively, if the state can encourage the kingdom of God through discipline it can certainly also inhibit it through unjust actions.  As Burnell notes,

"Civil affairs have a bearing on religion.  Although Augustine makes clear in the City of God that salvation does not necessarily depend on our living under any particular kind of government, he also makes clear that civilizations can be immoral and that their moral condition is of spiritual importance.  He describes the decline in the mores of antediluvian man as a decline in civilization: the first civitas was itself tainted, having been founded by Cain after he had killed Abel.  It then went from bad to worse morally and by a process of social involvement (concretio) infected the originally wholesome line that stemmed from Seth.  As a result, most human beings were rejected by God and destroyed in the Flood.  That, one is led to conclude, is what comes from allowing oneself to be involved in the injustice of one's own society: one's relationship with God is jeopardized.  So the unity of religion and morality (here morality in a civil form) cuts the other way, too: the immorality of civilization can pollute people in their religion" (Burnell, 1993, 178-9). 

When this happens the civil servant is placed in a precarious situation, because although “injustice is unavoidably part of civil life” we “still have civic duties” to perform (Burnell, 1993, 180).  Therefore the question must arise, how can one avoid complicity for the evil of the empire, while at the same time remaining responsibly engaged in it Burnell describes the dilemma,

Although it is spiritually disastrous to cooperate with the working of civil injustice...one is supposed to cooperate in civil affairs, which even at the best of times entails the working of injustice.  The problem is how, or whether to avoid complicity"(Burnell, 1993, 181)."

This is a question that traditional realists are unable to answer.  They argue that “it is acceptable to get one’s hands morally dirty in certain kinds of human relationship, as long as one keeps ones heart religiously pure” (Burnell, 1993, 182).  Indeed, in this vein Teselle argues that it is internal disposition and motive that really matter to the civil servant,

"The issue is primarily to keep one's own integrity, even in the midst of temptation and sin--to act according to the good while correcting sinners, to avoid committing sin in preventing someone else's sin.  The emphasis is on disposition and attitude" (Teselle, 1991, 150) [emphasis mine]. 

Although Teselle notes that it is important to avoid committing sin, this is externally impossible according to the realist interpretation because it calls the Christian not to resist the injustice of the state, but rather to recognize that this injustice is a natural result of the fall that cannot be changed.  However, Teselle would hope that one would be able to maintain sinlessness by maintaining internally pure motives, and by not personally sinning against others, even as one is externally complicit in injustice by not resisting it. 

However, Milbank notes that such a construal ignores that Augustine lays out norms for Christian rulers, "Quite clearly, though, there would, for Augustine, be no point in laying down 'Christian' norms for an area which was intrinsically sinful" (Milbank, 1993, 407).  Augustine's framework therefore would never have viewed complicity to injustice as being a natural and unavoidable response for Christians living in the agonistic state of postlapserian politics.  Also, as Burnell argues, this realist dualism between civic and religious ethics in Augustine does not exist because “it violates the principle of the unity of religion and morality” (Burnell, 1993, 182).  Milbank further explicates the difficulties with this dichotomy, "All 'political' theory in the antique sense, is relocated by Christianity as thought about the Church...In Augustine, there is, disconcertingly nothing recognizable as a 'theory of Church and state', no delineation of their respective natural spheres of operation" (Milbank, 1993, 402).  So Augustine would never have allowed a different morality to be applied to those working in the civic "public" sphere than to those dwelling in the "private" religious sphere.  He would never have allowed that someone could remain complicit to injustice in the civic square while retaining "a pure heart" privately. 

This reading of Augustine opens up the possibility that Augustine would not have desired Christians in the context of empire to be complicit in unjust practices.  A careful examination of the City of God provides a justification for such a reading.  Two passages in particular illustrate that Augustine would allow the attempt to subvert and reform injustice in the state.  In CD 3.15-16 Augustine reprimands a group of Romans for their haste in dethroning the despot, Tarquin.  As Burnell notes, this may at first appear to support the traditional claim that Augustine was against the challenging of civil authority.  However, "In taking that view he makes the general assumption that the civil revolution is a permissible kind of action in itself.  Arguing that the Romans should have waited to see [if Tarquin would act justly] involves supposing that if Tarquin had then proved callous and intransigent, revolution might then have been appropriate" (Burnell, 1993, 184).  In the second passage, CD 4.5, Augustine discusses the gladiator Sparticus, and the historical story of his brief control over Rome.  Although Augustine paints Sparticus and his gladiators as “the powers that be” (Burnell, 1993, 185), he also simultaneously advocated that it would be “perfectly proper to do what one could to oppose and undermine the rule of such patent riff-raff as Spartacus’s gladiators while they exercised their control” (Burnell, 1993, 185).  These passages indicate that although reform and revolution must be cautionary, they are nonetheless justifiable in particular circumstances, where it is possible to decrease the injustice of the state.  As Burnell argues,

"The principle usually applying is obedience to the powers that be; the superseding one, the duty of trying to ensure that civil power is in the hands of the least unjust persons or groups possible…It follows that governmental systems as such are for him not sacrosanct” (Burnell, 1993, 186). 

It becomes clear that because the state has a role not only in restraining violence, but also in promoting justice, that Augustine would allow Christians to attempt to challenge and subvert injustice and not merely accept it as the "natural order of things".

            Traditional scholars reply to this that there are specific texts where Augustine councils submission to unjust authority.  However, Burnell argues persuasively that the moral wisdom of such texts is not “categorical” but prudential, given the context of the specific situations Augustine was addressing.  According to him, such passages do not deal “with questions such as what deeper operative principle might be revealed in a time of stasis, where an opportunity arose for just improvement in return for bold action” (Burnell, 1993, 183).  Additionally, Augustine would not always except “civil mediocrity” for the sake of security, because security could always fall apart.  Further, one must note that “audience is an important factor here”(Burnell, 1993, 183).  In many of the examples that show Augustine reacting against the challenging of authority, the church laity are being addressed in a specific situation to act in a proprietary way.  However, the City of God was clearly written in a more “subtle and comprehensive way” to a more “sophisticated audience” (Burnell, 1993, 183).  Also, the City of God touches on “the principles, not merely the practices of civil life" (Burnell, 1993, 184), and therefore give more apt examples of an overall Augustinian understanding, as opposed to a response to particular circumstances.

Augustine as Revolutionary?

             Burnell's reading of Augustine clearly outlines how the Christian is supposed to be "other" even while living and serving in the midst of the agonistic earthly polis.  However, Burnell gives no underlying reason for this different orientation of Christian politics.  Implicitly he assumes that to be Christian is to be committed to the pursuit of justice, but he orients this only as over against the normal praxis of the empire, and does not situate this different Christian way of living in an alternative community.  This allows Burnell to imagine the possibility of an Augustinian justification for violent revolution in order to pursue just ends. So he notes, "Augustine's position implicitly allows for considerable development in a radically reformative or even revolutionary political directions" (Burnell, 1993, 187). 

While Burnell is excellent in his critique of how realism shuts out the potential for an alternative Christian practice against the injustice of domination, the alternative that he presents to realism provides no escape from the conflictual and dominating nature of the agon.  Burnell admits that reform can be done without agonism, but he is willing to allow both these kinds of reform and more agonistic conflictual forms of change, such as revolution.  Instead of critiquing the ontology of violence that underwrites both social oppression and social revolution, he rather critiques the one-sided use of agonism by those "in power" and attempts to give those "on the bottom" the right to reform and subvert domination.  This includes the equal access for the powerless to the use of agonism to pursue political ends.  Although he succeeds in refuting those that would appropriate Augustine to justify regime oppression, his rereading still situates Augustinian thought in the agonistic model, this time justifying agonism through social change.  The type of logic that Burnell's rereading is caught up into is as potentially circular as the logic that justifies the realist model.  Revolution[9] offers the pursuit of justice as its justification, but justice is never fully realized and so one can always continue to justify further violence to accomplish it more completely

Burnell is right to understand the potential for social change in Augustine, but this social change must be grounded in the unique ontology and telos of the Christian community.  Such a community pursues social change in a way that stays faithful to its own story, which is based around ontology of peace and not violence.  Augustine presents just this vision of an alternative polis based around the ontology of peace in his Civitas Dei.  How exactly the politics of such a peaceful community confront empire will be explored in the final part of this paper.

Augustine as Liberal?

Moving away from realism and interpretations of Augustine which justify revolution, one must them examine the construal of Augustine as a liberal.  Augustinian liberalism, according to Weithman, contends that "[Augustine] numbered among the primary functions of political authority the humbling of its subjects” (Weithman, 1991, 465), and that this political humbling of the prideful spirit is most evident in liberal democracies. Since political liberalism excludes particularistic religious justifications that can not be understood by all people in a pluralistic society, it short circuits the pride of those who would intend to use those justifications and the unresolvable conflict that such justification entails.  It stops the use of arguments that can disrupt “consensus building” efforts (Weithman, 1991, 471)

So, in Weithman’s account, liberal democracies actually meet the Augustinian requirement that states curb the pride of their members because they exclude religious motivations and explanations from the public square.  In place of such religious motivations, liberalism contends that “exercises of public power are legitimate only if they can be justified in terms that "'explain [themselves]’ to every citizen”.  Such power must be based on “a range of values on which all can agree” (Weithman, 1991, 462).  Using such liberal justifications, that are legitimate because they are recognized as valid by everyone “attempts to narrow…disagreements about the use of public power” (Weithman, 1991, 463). 

However, the Augustinian liberalism of Weithman must be questioned because it is not clear that the "common language" and "common ideas" of liberalism (that everyone can accept and see) actually exist.  All members of communities bring into dialogue certain particular perspectives that define who they are and influence the way they understand such "universal" pronouncements.  While these perspectives may at times be held in common with other members in the dialogical community, at other times they are not.  Additionally, these perspectives cannot be generally "proved" or fully explained to others who stand outside of them, and yet they are still a large part of the decision making of members.  Such particular perspectives always influence the way members interpret data, and so there is no general language or understanding that can be utilized by everyone so that its logic appeals equally to everyone.  Also, particularity of perspective is not limited to religious particularity, but is also informed by such things as class, race, sex, etc., that form people's understanding.  Once this is understood, it does not seem helpful to exclude any one of these perspectives in the name of "consensus".  It is a mistake for Weithman to claim that religious convictions when exerted as warrant for particular policies are at any higher risk of falling into pride than any other of these particular convictions.

However, Weithman does argue correctly that Augustinian liberalism provides a corrective to the typical construal of Augustine as a realist.  Augustinian liberalism is not postlapserian, because it believes that "before the fall as after, guided collective effort toward a common good produces ties of friendship among those subject to guidance" (Weithman, 1992, 373).  Political authority in liberalism not only restrains evil, it also promotes the good through building a community based on common interests.  Burnell concurs with this point, arguing that Augustine clearly recognized that virtue could be practiced in the civic sphere.  As examples of this Burnell notes that Augustine praised the Roman state for practicing virtue when it banned actors, “those sleazy and blasphemous stage-people” (Burnell, 1992, 18), from holding public office.  Augustine lauded this virtuous action as a “praiseworthy inborn quality of Rome” (Burnell, 1992, 17), and invited the virtue to enter into the city of God.  Burnell notes the importance of this

“If that can be invited, (albeit highly rhetorically) into the City of God, it must have relevance to our eternal destinies, or why the invitation…this passage at least suggests that when [humans enter the City of God], a part of themselves that is civil goes with them—something natural to them and, while in this world, exercised by them” (Burnell, 1992, 18).

However, Augustine still does not call this “virtue” but rather argues that “ ‘what is naturally of outstanding quality, is purified and completed…by true piety’—the contrary of destruction” (Burnell, 1992, 18).  Burnell uses this quote to illustrate that Augustine acknowledges the natural prelapserian status of civic virtue, while at the same time noting that such virtue is not fully practiced aright in the earthly city.  Milbank concurs,

“Worldly justice and government as paideia are not thereby abandoned as desirable objectives.  On the contrary, Augustine explicitly claims that they are truly realized in the city of God; fully in heaven, but also partially here on earth” (Milbank, 1993, 400) [Emphasis mine]. 

Burnell is thus different than Weithman in that he recognizes that Augustine places limits on the nature of the virtue that can be practiced in the context of the earthly city.  Recognizing that virtue practiced in the context of the earthly city is always tainted by the pursuit of agonistic glory does not deny that virtue exists in the civic realm.  It merely repositions the Christian community of the city of God as the site most conductive in the world for the praxis of such virtue.  While Weithman recognizes the prelapserian status of civic virtue, he does not do an adequate job distinguishing between the practices of such virtue in the contexts of the city of God and the earthly city.  As a liberal, Weithman would claim that such virtue can be practiced equally in either city, if humans merely use their reason rightly.  However, such a view forgets the unique importance of the community of faith in forming civic virtue.[10]

Milbank also argues that this liberal construal of the earthly city as naturally able to construct unifying principles outside of the context of the Church also legitimizes the disengagement of the church from politics.

By beginning to see social, economic and administrative life as essentially natural, and part of a political sphere separate from the Church, Aquinas opens the way to regarding the Church as an organization specializing in what goes on inside men's souls; his affirmation...that the new law of the Gospel adds no new 'external precepts', seems to tend dangerously in this direction" (Milbank, 1993, 407).

It can be argued beyond this, that a view that does not see a need for the uniquely peaceful politics of the church does not give an adequate account of the inherently conflictual nature of the earthly city after the Fall.  This view tends to downplay the effect of the Fall upon politics, by assuming that if people were to use their reason rightly, we could come to neutral universal principles that could legitimate the politics of the nation and replace conflict with consensus.  However, even in societies that claim to be "liberal", conflicting interests are an ever-present reality that belies any attempt to gain consensus, as each group battles with each other for power. 

Although one can argue that the goal of universal and acceptable liberal principles has been shown to be an impossible starting point for dialogue, and also out of touch with the conflictual nature of society (as has been contended above), it is not merely a flawed theoretical construction.  Positing such "liberalism" actually has dangerous potential to legitimate the practices of empire. Empires are able to manipulate the rhetoric of universal principles (for example "national welfare", "the common good", or "the American dream") as a benevolent mythos underneath which they actually pursue the promotion of their particular interests.  The use of such rhetoric has a situated purpose of justifying particular ends that can often be obscured by the universal language of the "common good".  Thus liberalism can often be used to hide the true intentions of powerful interests.  Also, liberal discourse, by marginalizing the witness of the church, closes off a possible site of resistance to the mythos of empire.

A different reading of Augustine might look at the ways that he attempts to uncover the pretensions of such neutral (liberal) discourse that claims that it is working for the “common good” but is actually acting in support of particular interests in a given society.  It would still recognize that Augustine desired regimes to check the pride of its citizenry, but it would note that this can never be done from a “neutral” position, and that it can never solve the problem of competing interests by merely excluding religious voices. 

Such a reading would look at how Augustine uncovered imperial interests that masqueraded as “neutral” during his day.  It would show how Augustine combated pride through unmasking the oppressive pretensions to imperial glory of the Roman empire.  This different reading of Augustine could also attempt to challenge the pride of a given society by showing how marginalized religious voices can be used to reign in the power of the empire.

Robert Dodaro makes a movement towards this alternative view of Augustine.  He argues that Augustine attempted to uncover the myths used by Rome for empire legitimation.  According to Dodaro, Augustine tried to “challenge conventional assumptions about social and political justice” (Dodaro, 1994, 78). This stands in stark contrast to liberal discourse, which attempts to use conventional values that society accepts in order to build consensus.  Augustine wanted to break down such consensus because he realized that the language and mentality that it was built upon was meant to persuade people of Rome’s claims to legitimacy (that there was a universal common justice of which Rome itself was solely responsible.)  He recognized the way that imperial centers used such rhetoric to legitimate their claims to power and glory, and so  “he urged his readers to resist being deceived (uanescere) by veiled ideological language” (Dodaro, 1994, 80). Augustine viewed the justifications of empire with an eye of suspicion because “his lessons in rhetoric taught him that it was more important to win an argument than to be concerned with the truth” (Dodaro, 1994, 82).  He was thus able to “resist the subtle indoctrination into establishment values” (Dodaro, 1994, 82).  Read with this understanding, the City of God can be seen as an attempt to unmask cultural legitimation of the Roman Empire.  As Dodaro notes, “The reader of the City of God can detect…a critique not primarily of Roman imperialism and other social inequities, but of the legal, social, and cultural institutions which encompassed the entire sphere of social communications through which such inequities were idealized for the popular imagination” (Dodaro, 1994, 82) [Emphasis mine].  So, Augustine should be read not as the champion of the myth of the "common good” (pax romana), but rather should be read as one who disrupted such discourse, unveiling the way it privileged certain construals of reality over others. 

Dodaro makes several arguments to illustrate how Augustine's theology works to deligitimate the mythos of imperial Rome.  First, he shows that Augustine used historical atrocities in Rome, such as the rape of Sabine women or the breakdown of Roman justice after the end of the Second Punic War, to subvert the Roman empires claims to always be interested in the justice of its people[11].  He thus attempts to disrupt Rome’s “rhetoric of glory” that “aids in masking or repressing the dangerous memories which the criticisms represent” (Dodaro, 1994, 83). 

Second, Dodaro notes how Augustine used “ironic discourse” to show the “illusory values” represented by the Roman upperclass.  He also used such discourses to unmask their contempt for the poor and the day laborers (Dodaro, 1994, 84, 86).[12] 

Third, Augustine also critiques the way that Roman political legitimacy was based on deception.  Deception is used because the deceivers claim that the deception is necessary at the time in order to bring about the best ends.  However, as Dodaro notes, “Citizens of the altera ciuitas, the City of God, unlike the citizens of Jericho, Babylon, or even of Jerusalem, do not construct political ethics on the basis of a presumed knowledge of the consequences of specific actions” (Dodaro, 1994, 88).  Because of this, it is absolutely unjustifiable for Christians to deceive others in order to bring about “greater good”, often construed around the idea of national glory.  On the other hand, citizens of the earthly city feel that they must use deception in order to maintain their own glory and power, and more specifically so that they may escape from their own fear of mortality.  As Dodaro notes, “Every act of political deception occurs on two levels: there is the lie or distortion itself which political authorities and their rhetoric create and pass on to the public, and there is self-deception which veils the lie from the officials who tell it” (Dodaro, 1994, 89-90).  Also, Dodaro notes that Augustine felt that “lies…are more often than not destabilizing in their effects” (Dodaro, 1994, 88), and thus also argued against them on pragmatic grounds as well.

Augustine & the Ontology of Peace

If Augustine cannot be rightly placed as a realist, a liberal, a revolutionary, or a liberal then how should his thought be characterized?  To move toward a proper understanding of Augustinian thought one must begin by recognizing that each construal of Augustine provides valuable insights into understanding Augustine’s argument.  Realism recognizes rightly that Augustine views the earthly city as fundamentally agonistic and conflictual.  As Lavere notes, “The question then becomes, not so much whether good states fail, as Cicero claimed in the case of Rome, but whether, in the final analysis, there are any good states, that is, genuinely just states pursuing the human good” (Lavere, 1983, 4).  However, it misreads Augustine in believing that he accepts such agonism as the will of God and the only context in which politics can take place.  Infact, Augustine conceives of the city of God as a site of politics that is other than and subversive of this agonistic portrayal.  As Milbank explains,

“Those commentators who see [Augustine] as opening up the ‘liberal’ or even nihilistic possibility of a regulation of power by power are, to a degree, quite correct.  However, what the same commentators—falsely attributing to Augustine an entirely privatized and spiritual notion of religion—often fail to realize, is that the more important critical elements in the Civitas Dei arises beyond this point: in a demonstration of how the nihilistic competition of power with power is itself entrapped within a certain mythos, a certain coded practice” (Milbank, 1993, 390) [Emphasis mine].

 The arguments for an Augustinian justification for social change from Burnell recognize rightly that Augustine does not shut down the possibility of social change.  However, they fail to see that the Christian community pursues social change in a fundamentally different way than the world (non-agonistically), and thus stays faithful to its own story, which is based around the ontology of peace and not violence.  As Milbank argues,

“The non-antagonistic, peaceful mode of life of the city of God is grounded in a particular, historical and ‘mythical’ narrative, and in an ontology which explicates the beliefs implicit in this narrative.  It is in fact the ontological priority of peace over conflict (which is arguably the key theme of his entire thought) that is the principle undergirding Augustine’s critique” (Milbank, 1993, 390). 

It is only through recognizing this ontology of peace as fundamentally other than the world’s ontology of violence, that the Christian community can pursue a radical politics of justice and reconciliation.  According to the world one must embrace the agon to pursue justice, but Christians pursue justice in the context of reconciliation with their enemy and are thus fundamentally different.  As Milbank contends,

“Instead of a peace ‘achieved through the abandonment of the losers, the subordination of potential rivals and resistance to enemies, the Church provides a genuine peace by its memory of all the victims, its equal concern for all its citizens and its self-exposed offering of reconciliation to enemies” (Milbank, 1993, 392).

Augustinian liberals, like Weithman, recognize rightly that Augustine views virtue as prelapserian, and thus does allow a proper place for the state to promote virtue.  Because of this truth, the Christian community can try to influence the state to be more just.  It should not merely content itself with accepting the state's flaws, using the realist argument that it is holding back anarchy, which is its sole role.  The Christian community should actively witness to the state, and call it to use its power to promote justice.[13] 

However, Weithman and Augustinian liberals do not recognize that virtue can only be fully practiced in the context of the Christian community, the heavenly city.  They believe that all communities, using universal reason, can understand virtue and promote it properly.  However, such virtue cannot be rightly practiced by anyone using universal reason, but is only seen rightly from within the particular Christian narrative. [14]  As Milbank notes, “[The ontology of peace over violence] is firmly anchored in a narrative, a practice, and a dogmatic faith, not in universal reason” (Milbank, 1993, 390).  From the context of the Christian community[15], such virtuous practices can be used to question the legitimating mythos and driving telos of the agonistic earthly city in its pursuit of glory.  They can also be used to call the politics of the earthly city into closer approximation with the practices of the heavenly city, and this witness can effectively challenge the powers in a society to act in a more virtuous way, while still critiquing the agonistic ontology that they act out of.

Augustine presented a vision of an alternative polis[16] in the Civitas Dei that bears witness to a different way of being than the agonistic politics of the earthly city.  Instead of allowing its imagination to be constrained by the pragmatic power games of the agon, it grounds itself as other, in the ontology of peace, and lives as an community of peace, committed to humble servanthood, self-sacrifice, and self-denial.

The very existence of such a community is subversive to the imperial state, because such a state is centered on the telos of self-interest and self-glorification.  It locates itself as the “end” of history and as the ultimate realization of peace and security because of its use of violence to create peace.  As Cavanaugh notes, “The modern state is best understood…as a source of alternative soteriology to that of the Church.  Both soteriologies pursue peace and an end to division by the enactment of a social body; nevertheless…the body of the state is a simulacrum, a false copy, of the Body of Christ” (Cavanaugh, 1999, 182) [Emphasis mine].  The modern state is a false alternative, an inadequate savior, because it uses domination to unite instead of peaceful reconciliation  (Cavanaugh, 1999, 184-5).[17]

In Augustine’s time the imperial state also claimed that it alone had brought world peace, pax Romana, and that it ensured the basic thriving of the ‘common good’.  When Rome fell, the critics of Christianity began to blame the Church for corrupting the strength of this self-proclaimed salvific state and its secular eschaton of peace, which was crumbling in the face of the barbaric hoards.

  In response to this, Augustine located the fate of Rome as the natural fate of every city that is grounded in the agon, and which uses agonistic tools to promote self-glorification.  He presented the city of God as the only true alternative to the agon of Rome.  As Cavanaugh notes, the church represents a radical interruption in agonistic politics,

“This communion with our fellow-citizens in heaven is not, however, an escape from this-wordly politics, but rather a radical interruption by the Church of the false politics of the earthly city.  Thus Augustine contrasts the fellowship of the saints in heaven—and on earth—with the violent individualism of the Roman empire, the virtue of which is based on the self-aggrandizing dominium, the control over what is ones own.  It is the church, uniting earth and heaven, which is the true ‘politics’” (Cavanaugh, 1999, 185). 

While recognizing the agon, Augustine’s text points to a different way of living within it while not being of it.  Milbank outlines this alternative way by contrasting the pagan virtue of dominance with the Christian posture of forgiveness,

“The pagans…were resigned to inherently unruly social elements, which had to be disciplined somehow or other…Public virtue, in consequence, is for them at base military virtue, the securing of inner dominance of one class over another, and outer security against enemies, both in the interests of the ‘whole’ over the parts.  If the city encourages virtue in individuals this is, nonetheless, fundamentally private virtue, for it is the glorious outstripping of rivals in the defence of the city…for us, the approach to divine perfection cannot be by any achieved excellence of virtue, but only through forgiveness…there is only one way to respond to [others] which would not itself be sinful and domineering, and that is to anticipate heaven, and act as if there sin was not there, by offering reconciliation” (Milbank, 1993, 410-11).

Besides positing the community of faith, and its practices, as an alternative to the agonistic construal of life, Augustine also attempted to uncover the idolatry of the earthly city, which placed ultimate faith in imperial dominance for peace and security.  He noted how the use of universal benevolent language was often merely just a pretense for the justification and  celebration of the state.  According to Dodaro, Augustine was constantly attempting to critique “a deceptive rhetoric which offered a false security” (Dodaro, 1994, 90).  This rhetoric in the Roman Empire was the rhetoric of glory, which claimed that the glory of the empire and the emperor should be the central telos of the state.  Against this Augustine contrasted the victories of the martyrs and the story of Theodosius[18] to illustrate that public glory was idolatrous and that humility and repentance illustrated proper virtues (Dodaro, 1994, 92).  Augustine critiqued,

“the absolute character of the political value which Cicero, Sallust, and other Roman political writers and historians attached to the pursuit of an inflexible, monolithic glory”.  This “deprived their models of any possibility for open confession of wrongdoing or for repentance, both essential components of Augustinian political ethics” (Dodaro, 1994, 92). 

So, Augustine not only posited an alternative political community, he also attempted to delegitimize the empire’s pretensions to glory.

Augustine therefore both critiqued empire and provided a peaceful alternative to its practices in the form of an alternative community. Traditionally, Augustine is read as "[showing] that Christian ethics could absorb political life at a moment when pagans had begun to fear that Christianity had proved itself incompatible with Roman statecraft" (Deane, 1972, 321).  However, according to the read presented here, Augustine's goal was not to show that Christian ethics were able to incorporate the real politic of the Roman State.  Rather, he critiqued Roman statescraft as responsible for its own problems, stemming from its origin in an ontology of violence, and presented a uniquely Christian alternative politics, grounded in the ontology of peace.  His goal was not to absorb the secular account of politics into the Christian, but to present the Christian account of politics as a uniquely better alternative to the secular.  

Further, Augustine neither legitimated the domination of regimes, nor justified the violence of revolution.[19]  Rather, he developed a third way: that of the alien community.  His political philosophy recognized that Christians had no choice but to be in an agonistic world, but that they were to practice a politics in this world that reflected the politics of their Father in Heaven: that of humility, servanthood, and the love of the enemy[20].  Such a politics cannot help, but be subversive, because it undermines the legitimacy of all earthly political orders, grounded in the ontology of violence, by asking the citizens of these states to place their hope outside of the violence of the state, and in the hands of God, who calls them to live lives of reconciliation.  It calls them to leave their community (the city of man) constructed around self-giving love.  As Augustine puts it, the choice between the two cities is clear, "The two cities were created by two kinds of love: the earthly city was created by self-love reaching the point of contempt for God, the Heavenly City by the love of God carried as far as contempt of self."[21]

Works Cited

Brown, P.R.L. "Political Society." Augustine: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. R.A. Markus.  Garden City: Anchor Books, 1972. 

Burnell, Peter J. “The Status of Politics in Augustine’s City of God.”  History of Political Thought 13.1 (Spring 1992).

---.  “The Problem of Service to Unjust Regimes in Augustine’s City of God.”  Journal of the History of Ideas 54.4 (October 1993): 178-188.

Cavanaugh, William T. “The City: Beyond Secular Parodies.” Radical Orthodoxy.  Ed. John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, and Graham Ward.  London: Routledge, 1999

Copleston, Frederick C. A History of Medieval Philosophy. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1972.

Deane, Herbert A.  The Political and Social Ideas of St. Augustine. New York: Columbia University Press, 1963.

Dodaro, Robert.  “Eloquent Lies, Just Wars, and the Politics of Persuasion: Reading Augustine’s City of God in a ‘Postmodern’ World.”  Augustinian Studies 25 (1994): 77-138.

Haggerty, William P. "Augustine, 'the Mixed Life,' and Classical Political Philosophy." Augustinian Studies 23 (1992): 149-163.

Holmes, Robert. "St. Augustine and Just War Theory." The Augustinian Tradition. Ed. Gareth B. Matthews.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

Lavere, George J. "The Political Realism of St. Augustine." Augustinian Studies 11 (1980): 135-144.

---. “The Problem of the Common Good in St. Augustine’s Civitas Terrena.” Augustinian Studies 14 (1983): 1-10.

Markus, R.A. "Two Conceptions of Political Authority: Augustine, De Civitate Dei, XIX. 14-15, and Some Thirteenth Century Interpretations." Augustine: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. R.A. Markus.  Garden City: Anchor Books, 1972.

Milbank, John. “ ‘Postmodern Critical Augustinianism’: A Short Summa in Forty Two Reponses to Unasked Questions.” Modern Theology. 7.3 (April 1991): 225-237.

---. Theology and Social Theory. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1993.

Mitchell, Joshua.  “The Use of Augustine, After 1989.” Political Theory. 27.5 (October 1999): 694-705.

Niebuhr, Reinhold. Christian Realism and Political Problems.  New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953.

Teselle, Eugene.  “Towards an Augustinian Politics.” The Ethics of St. Augustine. Ed. William S. Babcock. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991.

Weithman, Paul J. “Toward an Augustinian Liberalism."  Faith and Philosophy 8.4 (October 1991): 461-480.

---. "Augustine and Aquinas on Original Sin and the Function of Political Authority."  Journal of the History of Philosophy 30.3 (July 1992): 353-376.