City of God (Penguin Classics) (4 page)

But first it is important to realize how Roman was the attitude of Augustine and how Rome was the centre of his human interest. There has been so much discussion of Augustine the Platonist that Augustine the Romanist has been neglected.

One must recall very briefly that Augustine grew up in North
Africa within a family that supported Rome, that he was educated according to Roman methods, and embarked on the characteristically Roman career of rhetor, which often led to high administrative posts within the Empire. Rhetoric marked the very soul of Rome: Rome was pragmatic, eclectic, less interested in metaphysics and eschatology than in ethics and how to achieve happiness. Even the most spiritual of the Romans recoiled from the unambiguous championing of idealism. Virgil for all his wistful mysticism has left us with many doubts as to his ultimate philosophical persuasions. Cicero is hardly more clear. And even these two are less typical than, say, Horace with his
aurea mediocritas
– his golden mean.

Great as the influence of the Neoplatonists on Augustine’s mind undoubtedly was, it was the influence of Roman rhetoric which was all-pervading and can be seen in almost every paragraph that he wrote, and in many an argument that he used. He is by no means always innocent of the unrealities, exaggerations, and frigidities that characterized the profession he had espoused and practised. ‘If one were asked,’ he remarks in the
City of God
(
Bk XXI, 14
), ‘either to endure death or childhood again, who would not be aghast and choose to die?’ Unhappy as his experience of childhood may have been, one would hesitate to conclude that rhetorical exaggeration and unreality had no part in such a terrible declaration. We should take note also of a remarkable use of Roman rhetorical eclecticism in an argument of the gravest import and seriousness.

With regard to this very question of the eternity of the flesh, the Romans, although they might reject it for other reasons, would have had less difficulty than a true follower of Plato, for whom only non-material things could have existence. There was, indeed, a strong materialistic bias in the philosophies that most affected the Romans which would have helped in this. Moreover the Roman, when he was not a materialist, was a sceptic. Basically he was a pragmatist, and his
attitude towards the doctrine of bodily immortality would be determined less by fine philosophical reasoning than by more practical considerations. Augustine, as a matter of fact, had been a materialist Manichee for the whole of his twenties and had subsequently professed himself to be a sceptic, a follower of the New Academy. It is too much to assume that his acquaintance with the Neoplatonists obliterated the attitudes of earlier and formative years; his eclecticism from Plato, Porphyry, and Varro on the question of bodily immortality is a significant reminder of how thoroughly Roman Augustine continued to be.

Augustine clearly feels no compulsion to inform the reader throughout the
City of God
that he is considering his problem from both a personal point of view and from the point of view of Rome. It is characteristic of Augustine to assume that the reader does not need to be told of what, to him, is obvious.

A simple and clear instance of this can be seen in the lack of specific reference to his sources in the
City of God.
There are hundreds of allusions to Varro’s
Antiquitates
, but the title is given only once; there are frequent references to Apuleius’
De Deo Socratis
, but the title is given only once; there are over seventy references to the
Aeneid
, but the title is given only once; and there are over a dozen references to Sallust’s
Catilina
, but the title is not given at all.

So it was with Rome. For his contemporaries, whose outlook on the world was bounded by the Roman Empire and its institutions, it was unnecessary, and might have been tedious, to have constant mention of what for them was the frame of reference of the argument. Rome was the background and the foreground and the whole context of the work. Even when philosophy leads him to Greece and theology to the Hebrews, his purpose is that Rome should be fulfilled in both.

Nevertheless Augustine does make the point most explicitly. We have already seen
Chapter 22 of Book XIX
, which gives in dramatic and sharpest outline the focuses of the whole work. There the question is asked: ‘Who is this God you talk of, and how is it proved that he is the only one to whom the Romans owed obedience, and that they should have worshipped no god besides him?’ The
City of God
is basically concerned with that question, and it is asked in the interest, not of the Greeks or the Jews or any other people, but of the Romans. The answer to the question, as we have seen, is that the testimony of the Hebrews, of the Greeks (represented by Porphyry), and of the Romans themselves (represented by Varro) was that the Christian God was that God.

Once again one should not fail to notice in the text just referred to the spirit of eclecticism and reverence for authority. It might be said with some justice that Augustine was aware that there might be difficulty in getting Porphyry and Varro to accept his interpretation of their positions in favour of Christianity – and he did not conceal this. Augustine’s fondness for a synthesis with firm outline, however, is more in evidence here than any purely philosophical argument. Some might see in this a basic Roman scepticism allied to a fondness for action, a preference for will as against intelligence, for authority as against reason. It is not surprising, indeed, that, although Flatonism was received in Rome, the Bible and the Christian Church especially became the instruments for a new glory and a longer life. That this should be so was a positive purpose of the
City of God
.

Augustine’s attitude to Rome was twofold: theological and seeming historical. From the point of view of Christian theology she must stand by him condemned. She had failed to worship the true God, had thus not given Him what was His due, and therefore lacked true justice – so that if true justice was to enter into the definition of a State, Rome had never been a State. Augustine rather than accept this drastic conclusion considers the possibility that a State might be defined without reference to justice. But in fact it is quite clear that his position here is an absolute one, arising from a theological assumption involving, not simply justice between men, but
true
justice which must take account of man’s duty to God. Elsewhere (
Bk V, 19
) he speaks of
true
virtue which cannot exist without the
true
worship of the
true
God. With it he contrasts ‘the virtue which is employed in the service of human glory’ which ‘is not
true
virtue; still, those who are not citizens of the Eternal City… are of more service to the earthly city when they possess even that
sort of virtue
than if they are without it’. The very sentence which has been adduced to prove that Augustine declared that States lack justice – ‘Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but gangs of criminals on a large scale?’ – clearly implies that kingdoms (States) are not kingdoms unless they are founded on justice. A parallel sentence – ‘take away national complacency, and what are all men but simply men?’ (
Bk V, 17
) – again clearly implies that ‘men’ will be ‘simply men’ if they have not the specific of national complacency. Likewise a kingdom is differentiated from a gang of criminals by the specific inclusion of justice. Augustine in his ‘mirror of princes’ (
Bk V, 24
) puts as the first requirement of a prince that he should rule with justice.

Rome had not only failed to worship the true God: she had given
herself, under the malign influence of demons, to the worship of many gods both to ensure, it was claimed, physical and moral well-being for the State and the person in this life, and happiness for the person hereafter. These gods, Augustine contends at length, did not save Rome from physical disasters; not only did they not promote Rome’s moral well-being: they corrupted Rome through their obscene representations in the theatre and in the temple. The myths of the poets and the theatre were classified as ‘mythical’ theology, as the cult of the gods in the public temples was classified as ‘civil’ theology. Both theologies debauched Rome: ‘The theology of the theatre proclaims the degradation of the people; the theology of the city makes that degradation an amenity’ (
Bk VI, 6
). The remaining theology was called ‘natural’ – the theological ideas of the philosophers. According to these last, the gods were not superior to man. Hence they could do no more for man’s eternal happiness than he could himself.

One may be puzzled at what seems the inordinate length of Augustine’s attack upon these gods. But, as he says, ‘superior intelligences… will have to possess themselves in patience; and I ask them, for the sake of others, not to think superfluous what for themselves they feel to be unnecessary’ (
Bk VII, Preface
); ‘we are forced very often to give an extended exposition of the obvious, as if we were not presenting it for people to look at, but for them to touch and handle with their eyes shut’ (
Bk II, 1
). Augustine was concerned not only with superior intelligences: he was dealing with whole peoples of a vast Empire, and he was trying to break for them their long-inured association with a comforting polytheism, and substitute for it the (for them) strange concept of a single immaterial deity. The radical nature of such a change is almost impossible for us, who have inherited the concept of monotheism, to realize. But Augustine was keenly aware of it and the main burthen of the whole of the
City of God
is aimed at reinforcing that substitution.

As we have said, Augustine’s attitude to Rome was also seeming historical. He accepted from Sallust the picture of Rome as having once been highly moral. The early Romans were

But such human effort and achievement does not escape the embrace of theology:

The
City of God
is not an attack on the Romans or the Roman Empire. On the contrary it sees Rome as a vehicle ordained by Providence for the benefit of Christianity in relation to which she would have a new and enduring future.

Augustine takes note of the conduct of the Christian Emperors, Constantine and Theodosius. He expects rulers who are Christians to rule with justice and ‘to put their power at the service of God’s majesty to extend his worship far and wide’ (
Bk V, 24
). He does not suppose, nevertheless, that, although Theodosius was ‘constrained by the discipline of the Church to do penance’, and ‘never relaxed in his efforts to help the Church against the ungodly by just and compassionate legislation’ (
Bk V, 26
), he or any Christian Emperor should be the obedient servant of the institutional Church: Augustine did not prescribe a theocratic State.