The Two Cities: A History of Christian Politics
27th March 2024
Books can be dangerous because they shape the way we think. Our thoughts shape our actions, and our actions shape our characters, which of course affects how we live our lives—as individuals and as communities. Our age is one quick to laud all things that appear creative, usually with praise for authors who shape our values, whatever that means. The best books, particularly those that have remained important for many centuries, do not create something new or shape anyone’s values. Rather, they are great because, in ways that may be new and exciting, they help us see more fully the structure of reality so that we might better live in accord with the order of creation.
Saint Augustine’s City of God is without doubt on the list of great books that continues to help us see how the natural order is not something bracketed off or separated from spiritual reality. It was written in the 5th century in response to the intellectual class that insisted that Christianity was to blame for the fall of Rome. Christians who insist on being peacemakers on earth while awaiting their rewards in the afterlife made the Romans’ commitment to the city weak and pathetic, it was claimed. Pagan rites bred manliness; Christians, however, preached turning the other cheek. Augustine’s magnificent response provided a strong case that Rome would have fallen regardless of Christian influence, because its foundations were poorly laid.
Of course, for the Greeks and Romans ‘city’ had a broader meaning than it does for us today; the Romans distinguished between the urbs and the broader civitas, just as the Greeks made a distinction between the astu and the broader polis.