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A new reading of Augustine's City of God which considers the status of politics within Augustine's sacramental worldview.
When one civilization has fallen and another is in its birth throes, people are apt to be seduced by the rushlights of a false leadership. The mind and mood of such a time of transition are intensely puzzling and those who would meet its needs must have insight and vision. The Epistle to the Hebrews was written after the fall of Jerusalem in the interest of a larger faith and in defense of the substantial authority of Christianity. When Rome was sacked by Alaric in 410 A. D., the shock of the catastrophe reacted against Christianity. Augustine wrote the De Civitate Dei to prove that the disaster was the inevitable Nemesis of the luxuries and corruptions of the citizenship and had little to do with Christianity, which had only a slight hold on public life. He also pointed out the contrast between the actual city to which the Romans were fanatically devoted, and the ideal city of his prophetic vision, contending that this ideal is eternal and unrealized but in process of realization. He was further convinced that Christianity was not merely a superior gnosis but a scheme of redemption, justified by its higher ethical standards and by the better conduct of its adherents. This apology has all the limitations of the time and the writer, but Augustine was a mystic and a statesman, and the im-ortance of this writing is in the fact that "in it for the first time an ideal consideration, a comprehensive survey of human history found its expression."
In this volume, Veronica Roberts Ogle offers a new reading of Augustine's political thought as it is presented in City of God. Focusing on the relationship between politics and the earthly city, she argues that a precise understanding of Augustine's vision can only be reached through a careful consideration of the work's rhetorical strategy and sacramental worldview. Ogle draws on Christian theology and political thought, moral philosophy, and semiotic theory to make her argument. Laying out Augustine's understanding of the earthly city, she proceeds by tracing out his rhetorical strategy and concludes by articulating his sacramental vision and the place of politics within it. Ogle thus suggests a new way of determining the status of politics in Augustine's thought. Her study clarifies seemingly contradictory passages in his text, highlights the nuance of his position, and captures the unity of his vision as presented in City of God.
The study of Augustine's political teachings has suffered from a history of misreadings, both ancient and modern. It is only in recent years that the traditional lines of 'Augustinian pessimism' have been opened to question. Scholars have begun to explore the broader lines of Augustine's political thought in his letters and sermons, and thus have been able to place his classic text, The City of God, in its proper context. The essays in this volume take stock of these recent developments and revisit old assumptions about the significance of Augustine of Hippo for political thought. They do so from many different perspectives, examining the anthropological and theological underpinnings of Augustine's thought, his critique of politics, his development of his own political thought, and some of the later manifestations or uses of his thought in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and today. This new vision is at once more bracing, more hopeful, and more diverse than earlier readings could have allowed.
"The human mind can understand truth only by thinking, as is clear from Augustine." --Saint Thomas Aquinas Saint Augustine of Hippo is one of the central figures in the history of Christianity, and this book is one of his greatest theological works. Written as an eloquent defense of the faith at a time when the Roman Empire was on the brink of collapse, it examines the ancient pagan religions of Rome, the arguments of the Greek philosophers and the revelations of the Bible. Pointing the way forward to a citizenship that transcends worldly politics and will last for eternity, this book is one of the most influential documents in the development of Christianity. One of the great cornerstones in the history of Christian thought, "The City of God "is vital to an understanding of modern Western society and how it came into being. Begun in A.D. 413, the book's initial purpose was to refute the charge that Christianity was to blame for the fall of Rome (which had occurred just three years earlier). Indeed, Augustine produced a wealth of evidence to prove that paganism bore within itself the seeds of its own destruction. However, over the next thirteen years that it took to complete the work, the brilliant ecclesiastic proceeded to his larger theme: a cosmic interpretation of history in terms of the struggle between good and evil. By means of his contrast of the earthly and heavenly cities--the one pagan, self-centered, and contemptuous of God and the other devout, God-centered, and in search of grace--Augustine explored and interpreted human history in relation to eternity.
This volume addresses the complex and conflicted vision in Augustine's City of God, as a heavenly city on earthly pilgrimage.