> -----Original Message-----
> From: [log in to unmask]
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Richard
> Landes
> Sent: Wednesday, October 06, 1999 10:55 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: RE: history and apocalyptic prophecy - was Book of Revelation
> topics
>
>
>
> >The City of God is divided into 2 parts: A)Apologetic (Books I X)-- a
devastating
> >critique of ancient political theory/practice and historiography
>
> this adj is in the eye of the beholder.  if i were an advocate
> who wanted to
> prosecute xnty for responsibility for the fall of rome, i wd use
> the first ten
> chapters of the CoG as my primary evidence, even tho augustine
> meant it as a
> defense of xnty.  his attitudes, all good xn ones, do not sound
> very good from
> the perspective of a good roman -- eg, don't make such a stink, they only
> sacked Rome for three days, it's God's punishment anyway which we
> shd bear in
> patience as a reproval for our sins, and some of the people who fled to
> church's were spared, and at least the marauding goths were xns
> -- it wd have
> been worse if they had been pagans, etc.
>
> rlandes
>

This does not do justice to the Apologetic section (Books I-X) and is, in
fact, a caricature of only Book I that works only when read out of context
with the rest of the work. The Apologetic section is subdivided into two
parts: A) Against those who worship gods for happiness in this life (Books
I-V); and B) Against those who worship gods for future happiness (Books
VI-X). To accomplish his purposes, Augustine does the following:

	1) He deconstructs Roman ideology, philosophy and historiography to show
that their projected self-image masked a self-serving reality of greed,
aggrandizement, repression and aggression.
	2) Similarly, Augustine critiques Ancient political theory not just on
grounds of internal incoherence but also on its failure to both describe and
be implemented in reality. Along these lines, there are several features of
Augustinian political theory that should be noted. First, Augustine is the
first that I know of to distinguish between the social and political. For
Augustine, human beings are by nature social creatures, but by perversion
political. Aristotle's famous dictum ("man is by nature a political animal"}
was simply incoherent to him. Second, Augustine also rejects the ancient
notion-- likewise found in Book I of the Politics-- that the state is of any
ontological value, let alone of superior value to the individual. Augustine
is a political nominalist: the state is nothing more than the sum total of
the individuals who make it up. Finally, Augustine rejects the idea of the
state as school of virtue and dispenser of anything more than a semblance of
justice. As virtue and justice are matters internal to the human being and
God, the state can only govern external actions. Thus, what later medieval
theorists would call the forum of conscience cannot be subject to external
coercion and so Augustine denies the lofty ethical claims made on behalf of
the state. Moreover, since only God can truly know the contents of the human
heart, only God can dispense true justice. But Augustine goes beyond this to
deny any but the most attenuated moral legitimacy to the state. In Book XIV,
Augustine describes the natural, social human being living in the Garden of
Eden. S/he lived without a state with no social, economic (no property),
governmental hierarchies or laws regulating human behavior. For Augustine,
therefor, the term "just state" is an oxymoron-- the state is a product of
sin, of egoism (pride), the sole purpose of which is to ameliorate and
regulate or channel (not eliminate) the effects of pride. The state (Book
IV) is like a band of thieves bound by a compact governing the distribution
of booty; that is, a convention that is all about the parceling of power,
not virtue or justice. At its best, therefor, this convention exists to keep
order among unnatural (i.e. power driven), fallen human beings. It is,
therefor, a necessary evil given our fallen state, but an evil nonetheless.
Part I of the City of God is a thoroughgoing critique of the state.
	3) Like the author of the Book of Job, Augustine is faced with the problem
of rebuking the Theology of Retribution in all its guises, whether christian
or pagan. Augustine effectively demonstrates that there is no necessary
connection between moral and religious rectitude and happiness, prosperity
and security in this life, both on the individual and on the collective
level.
	4) Likewise, Augustine rejects the consequentalist ethic that underlies
much of ancient moral theory and practice. His intentionalism (founded upon
his reading of Paul's Epistle to the Romans and his modification of
Neoplatonic ontology, i.e. Plotinus') forms one of the twin pillars of
Augustine's epistemic agnosticism.
	5) Augustine modifies Plotinus' ladder of ascent to The One (God). It is a
conceit of the Platonists, founded upon egoism (pride), to presume that a
finite creature could approach an infinite one unaided. Thus, Augustine
swept aside the central paradox of Neoplatonic metaphysics: The One is both
transcendent (as argued in the foundational text, Plato's Parmenides) and
yet at the same time a part of the created order as is implicit in their
ontology. How can God be both transcendent and yet different from us only in
degree? Sheer nonsense, argues Augustine. God is transcendent, in the order
of eternity, and we finite creatures find ourselves an infinite remove from
God. Augustine's natural theology forms the second pillar of his epistemic
agnosticism.

All this is done in the first part of the City of God. Thus, I think the
adjective "devastating" is an apt one.

Mike



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