Abstract
Augustine poses a rhetorical question: how could the City of God begin, progress, and reach its desired end “if the life of the saints were not social?” Indeed, for him it is not just the saints but human beings in general that are social creatures: we are all social by nature – and, alas, quarrelsome by perversion. This project focuses on the sociality within City of God and draws some lessons from this for individual Christians and for the Church as a whole, both as an organisation and at the level of the local congregation.
The approach taken throughout is to undertake a close reading of City of God, concentrating almost exclusively on that, and referring only incidentally to other works by Augustine. Likewise this project does not aim at a comprehensive analysis of the scholarly literature, but rather reads de Civitate Dei on its own terms, paying attention also to how Augustine’s use of Scripture nourishes his vision of community, and thus making an original contribution by using what is said there regarding sociality to help us in our own time. The motivation for this is as much pastoral as scholarly, with the ultimate audience for this work being the Church as well as the Academy.
This thesis examines Augustine’s observations about the nature of life for humankind in general and for the saints in particular, and the implications of that for how we live now, as individuals and as members of the Church. For Augustine, to be human is ultimately to be in relationship with God and with other humans. An exploration of Augustine’s anthropology leads to a consideration of his understanding of sin, as a social as well as a personal issue, and to the account within de Civitate Dei of how salvation is obtained. The role of Christ as mediator between humanity and God is part of this.
Augustine conceives of social life in particular ways. His view of humanity in City of God is profoundly theocentric: God is of primary importance, and humans were created for relationship with God and with other human beings. His insight that being human means being part of a community that is in relation to God leads to attention to the theme of the two cities, their nature and their relationship with one another. Then follows a discussion of the ecclesiology in City of God, and to a view of the character and role of the Church and its leaders. While the City of God and the Earthly City are opposites, they are perplexae and permixtae, and so their citizens must interact with one another on a daily basis, without knowing to which city any individual will finally belong. Augustine’s eschatological focus does not detract from the need to live together well in this age.
A number of lessons follow from this exploration, and these are outlined. Augustine’s realistic understanding of the flawed nature of the Church, both at organisational and local level, is helpful – and ultimately hopeful. Being more aware of the extent to which human beings are social creatures who should exist in relationship with God can help them to live together, in the corpus permixtum that is the Church, and in the intermingled cities that describe the time before the final judgement.
The life of the saints is indeed social, and City of God is Augustine’s extended reflection on what is true community, and what is false community. A key determinant of that is the extent to which human beings are connected to God as well as to one another. Ultimately, City of God is a work focused on human community with the divine: it is a theocentric sociality.