The Augustinian person

5. Citizenship in God

        C I T I Z E N S H I P I N G O D ;In the treatise On Free Will Augustine, as we have seen, conceives of decency as practiced not only between individuals but in such a way as to form a developed society (his example is the choice of a political constitution) (De lib. arb. ..–..). Later, especially in the City of God, he continues to think of virtue in a context of structured relationships—of compassion itself as exercised by a paterfamilias toward the members of his family (CD .; cf. .). The thesis of the City of God is that human experience is, in the final analysis, the history of two complex, mutually opposed social organizations: the heavenly and the worldly. For this reason charity will not merely inform the soul with compassion; it will also be socially constituted. We must consider what sort of society it brings into being. Eventually the controversies about this part of Augustine’s thought devolve from three large questions. But if these are to be intelligibly asked, one must first trace the ideas that bring them to the fore. In summary, those ideas are: that the Incarnation, both before and after its initial accomplishment, is elaborated in human society; that peace, a social form of well-being, is the goal of all activity, and perfect peace the goal of human morality; that citizenship, in its fullness , is what constitutes the supreme form of peace, which, however, is exercised perfectly only in heaven; that citizenship consists in people ’s concordant devotion of themselves to a good; that that collective devotion or allegiance is always essentially religious, for the religious and the political are not ultimately distinct; that therefore all  civil society is religious; and that hence, despite the persistent effects of original sin, even political life is in principle open to transformation , though not yet transfiguration, by Incarnational grace. The three large questions are: Why, then, does the City of God provide no comparative account of the various political forms of government, much less an ideal constitution? How can political life be essentially religious and susceptible to Christian decency if human society is still a victim of the Fall and particularly given that political life, unlike the other major forms of social activity, never had a chance to be exercised in the Garden, and has therefore been conditioned by sin from its inception? And, since citizenship is fully exercised only in heaven, what proper continuity is there between citizenship on earth and citizenship in heaven? Each of these questions challenges the notion of an Incarnational continuum between heavenly and earthly society implicit in the preceding chain of ideas. This notion must first be studied in some detail. ; In the City of God Augustine makes clear that there is no division between his doctrine of human society and his doctrine of the Incarnation . He makes the point especially prominent by establishing it at the end of the final chapter of book —the apex of the work in respect of its construction. There Augustine compendiously lists the main divinely prophesied events of human history, the events with which the action of God in the world culminates. They begin with the Incarnation itself, then show an increasingly wide social character . Late in the list is the ban placed on public pagan sacrifices by the emperor Theodosius; next to the end is the damnation of the “society of the impious,” and at the end the “eternal kingdom of the most glorious City of God.” The stages in divine action are thus described as arising from the Incarnation and as accomplished socially (CD .; cf. CD .). Where proper order obtains in this regard, Augustine calls the resulting stability “peace”—the tranquillity that consists in orderly relationships. In some sense all beings in the universe (even    ⁄  a suspended corpse, says Augustine) desire peace (Conf. ..; but especially CD .); but living human beings above all do so, because of the uniquely comprehensive character of human experience. Even a violent savage desires it when he is being violent, though the less extensive the form of it one desires, the further one is from being actively human. We have no choice but to desire it, but we can wickedly desire an insufficiently high degree of it (CD .–). In his supreme account of this subject Augustine specifies nine modes of peace, severally occurring at nine levels of being listed ascendingly (CD .): the...