Civilization #27: Augustine's Empire of God
Augustine, though not as famous as some other thinkers, is actually very important because he is the intellectual architect of the Catholic Church. In this world, the Catholic Church is the largest organization; it has 1.5 billion members and has been around for almost 2,000 years. Augustine is the individual who conceptualized the idea of the Catholic Church. For us to understand what the Catholic Church is and why it has endured for so long, I want to introduce a new idea called the End of History.
This is a concept that was introduced by an American State Department official named Francis Fukuyama at the end of the Cold War when the Berlin Wall fell. His argument is that history has been a struggle of ideology. We've had paganism, communism, socialism, and democracy. Through this dialectic, this constant struggle of ideas, we have now reached the end of history, where liberal consumer democracy is the best idea. Not only is it the best idea, but it's the perfect idea that will allow us to endure for the rest of history. Therefore, it is the end of history.
Of course, we know this idea is wrong. But what's interesting for us is that this has been a recurring theme in human history, where every major political leader who has come to power has announced that this is the end of history—that all of history has led to this point where they are now ruler, and from now on, we can enjoy paradise on Earth.
Let's look at some examples. The first is King David. When King David came into power, he sponsored the writing of the Bible as an apology to explain why he is king. We also looked at the story constructed by the Yahwist, how Yahweh, the god, builds the world because he's a poet and lonely. His history is a journey of Yahweh trying to find a good friend that could accompany him for eternity. It turns out he eventually finds David. When he finds David, he anoints the House of David as the permanent rulers of our world.
Then you have Augustus, who sponsored the writing of the Aeneid. Remember, the Aeneid is the journey of the Trojan hero Aeneas as he leaves Troy, destined by the gods to found the city of Rome and the Roman Empire. Why does he do this? Because eventually, Rome will become the greatest empire on Earth, with Augustus as the first emperor. That's the end of history. Once the Roman Empire is constructed, then eternal peace is now on Earth.
Then you had Constantine, who was emperor after he fought a brutal civil war to reunite the Roman Empire. Once he rebuilt the Roman Empire, he converted to Christianity. In 325, he organized the Council of Nicaea, where they agreed to introduce the idea of the Godhead. The idea of the Godhead marks a major intellectual revolution in human history. It's the beginning of monotheism—the idea that God is both everything and nothing, which is also the idea of empire.
After Constantine dies, there's another major civil war. Another Roman Emperor, Theodosius, comes to the throne, and in 380, he issues the Edict of Thessalonica, which established Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. When he does that, they begin to root out paganism and other religions. At this point, we can also think this is the end of history. We've discovered Christianity, which will make paradise on Earth.
The problem, of course, is that in 410, Rome is sacked. This creates a crisis of faith. Why? A lot of people believed that Rome was sacked by the barbarians, by the Visigoths, precisely because Rome converted to Christianity. Before, Rome was a pagan society, and they believed that by converting to Christianity, two things happened. First, the old gods—Jupiter and the others—became furious at the Romans and were determined to punish them by sending the barbarians. They also believed that Christianity is a religion of slaves; it teaches us to be merciful, kind, and compassionate, but that's not the way the world works.
Now you have a crisis of faith, and the very authority of the Catholic Church is challenged. At this point, Augustine, who is a bishop of the Catholic Church in Northern Africa, comes up with a theory that establishes the Catholic Church as beyond the world. Other individuals have introduced the idea of the end of history, but what Augustine does is he takes the Catholic Church out of history.
What does that mean? It means that history is really about mortals battling for power, but the Catholic Church is a representative of God on Earth. Therefore, it will remove itself from history. Mortals can battle it out, but the Church will always be the representative of God on Earth. To establish this, he writes a book called City of God. He talks about two cities. You have Rome, which is the Earthly City—a city of power and greed. Then you have a city called Jerusalem, which is the Spiritual City. It is the city of God, of spirit, of selflessness, of paradise. The Catholic Church will always be centered in Jerusalem. If you follow the Catholic Church and are obedient to God, then your spirit can also enter Jerusalem. Otherwise, you'll always be trapped in Rome.
What he also does that's very important is that by establishing his theory, he solves a major problem for political leaders. Before, whenever leaders like David, Augustus, or Constantine came into power, they faced three major problems:
- Legitimacy: Why are you the king?
- Cultural Cohesion: How do you unite the people behind a common ideology?
- Cultural Differentiation: Why are you different from other people?
What the Catholic Church under Augustine proposes is, "We'll solve all three problems for you." The Catholic Church will give you legitimacy because you are the representative of God on Earth. That's why, even though in the following few centuries there will always be power shifts, the Catholic Church will always be at the center of these power shifts because they are the ones who are able to provide authority and legitimacy to whoever comes into power, like Charlemagne.
That's what Augustine is proposing. Today, I want to look at some of Augustine's writings to see the ideology or doctrine that underlines the Catholic Church. This is important because it is Augustine's ideology that will drive European history for the next thousand years. In fact, I will make the argument that it is his ideology that will mark the coming of the Dark Ages in Europe—500 years when society lacked social innovation and you weren't allowed to criticize authority.
Confessions and the Nature of Sin
We are going to look at two major works of Augustine. The first is Confessions. Confessions is very famous; it's something that most people have heard of. It's the autobiography of Augustine and is considered the first authentic autobiography in the world. In the story, he talks about his life, where he grows up with a pagan father and a Christian mother named Monica. In the beginning, he is a very disobedient young man. He refuses to follow the wishes of his mother and refuses Christianity, going on a long journey of youthful sin. He has a mistress who he doesn't marry and explores heresies like Neoplatonism and Manichaeism.
But then one day, he has what we call a Damascus moment. God speaks to him and says, "Augustine, open the Bible." He opens the Bible and starts his religious journey. At age 42, Augustine becomes the Bishop of Hippo, and from then on, he begins to construct the ideology that will underpin the Catholic Church.
For whatever reason, historians think this memoir is authentic, that he's telling the truth. But one thing that you will learn in life is whenever a politician or a powerful individual writes a memoir, it's complete BS. There's nothing authentic or true about it. We're going to read a bit of Confessions, and this is the most famous part of the book. It's Augustine's rewriting of the story of the Garden of Eden. This is what he says about when he was a young boy:
I wished to carry out an act of theft and did so, driven by no kind of need other than my inner lack of any sense of, or feeling for, justice.
One thing that he points out over and over again is that we are born in sin. We are of sin. We are evil people. That's why the Catholic Church is important: because only the Catholic Church can steer us into goodness. If left to our own devices, we can only commit sin, and this starts from the womb. We are born in sin; we are born of sin.
I stole something which I had in plenty and of much better quality. My desire was not to enjoy what I sought by stealing, but merely the excitement of thieving and the doing of what was wrong.
Why do we sin? Because we enjoy sinning. That is our nature. When we steal, it is not because we're hungry or because we need something; it's because we enjoy stealing. It's pure pleasure.
There was a pear tree near our vineyard, laden with fruit, though attractive in neither colour nor taste. To shake the fruit off the tree and carry off the pears, I and a gang of naughty adolescents set off late at night... We carried off a huge load of pears.
They stole a huge load of pears from someone—he doesn't tell us who, but it's someone. And then they didn't eat any of the pears; they just gave them to pigs. They did this because they enjoyed sinning.
We would think this is just boys having fun. They don't mean any harm by this; they're just playing, being curious, exploring, which is part of human nature. What Augustine is saying is that's exactly the problem. Curiosity can only lead to evil. Exploration can only lead to sin. That's why we commit sin: because we think curiosity is a good thing, when in fact it's an evil thing that can only harm others.
This is clearly a retelling of the Garden of Eden story, where Adam and Eve eat the fruit. Here, what Augustine is saying is, first of all, Adam and Eve are stealing. "Stealing" is not a word used in the Bible, but Augustine is saying they are stealing. The second thing is that Augustine is saying the stealing was intentional. They knew what they were doing was wrong, but they did it because it felt good.
This is a radical reconceptualization of the idea of original sin. Remember, Paul introduced the idea of original sin to us. Why did Jesus have to come to redeem us? Because we disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden. It was a mistake, and Jesus had to pay ransom for that mistake. That was Paul's argument. What Augustine is saying is something radically different. He's saying that, first of all, we didn't make a mistake; we are the mistake. We are the ones born to sin; therefore, we were always disobedient.
What else he's saying is this, and this is really important: this happens in about 350, about 300 years after Jesus sacrificed himself for us, and Augustine is still sinning. He is negating the sacrifice of Jesus. Just because Jesus sacrificed himself does not mean we've stopped sinning. In fact, we continue to sin.
This is a radical reconceptualization of the Christian faith. We are born sinners, and we will always sin unless we are taught to obey God. That is our fundamental mission on Earth: to obey God.
City of God: Rape, Suicide, and Obedience
The City of God becomes the intellectual blueprint for the building of the Catholic Church. One thing that he talks a lot about in the book is rape. What was happening throughout this time, and what was very common, is if a woman were raped, whether out of wedlock or by her husband, she would often kill herself. Why? Because the Christian faith taught them that chastity was very important. If you're the empire, this is a problem for you. You can't have women killing themselves because of rape. Rape happens all the time. If women kill themselves, eventually you're going to have a population implosion.
So, Augustine will spend a lot of time explaining why rape is not a bad thing. To do so, he talks about Lucretia. We discussed Lucretia when we discussed the history of the Roman Republic. At first, Rome was a monarchy, and the king's son was a sinful person who liked to rape women. Lucretia was famous in Rome for her chastity and her virtue, so he thought it'd be fun to rape her. After she was raped, she called her husband and her husband's best friend, Lucius Junius Brutus, together. She made them swear that they will avenge her dishonoring. To make sure they would follow through on this, she took out a knife and stabbed herself in the heart, killing herself. This marks the beginning of the Roman Republic. In the eyes of Romans, her death, her suicide, is what gave birth to the Roman Republic. She's honored and considered a hero by the Roman people.
What Augustine will say is no, she's not a hero because she killed herself not for the good of Rome, but for her own vanity, for her own pride. She lost faith. She was embarrassed. She didn't have the glory of being considered the most chaste and virtuous woman in Rome, and that's why she killed herself. This is pride, this is arrogance, this is ego, which goes against the will of God. Let's look at what he's saying.
Her killing of herself because, although not adulterous, she had suffered an adulterous embrace, was due to the weakness of shame, not to the high value she set on chastity. She was ashamed of another’s foul deed committed on her, even though not with her. As a Roman woman, she was excessively eager for honour.
Pride is what killed her. Her pride.
But Christian women do not kill themselves. They have the glory of chastity within them, the testimony of their conscience. They have this in the sight of God.
If you are a true Christian, you would never kill yourself. Why? Because murder is a worse crime than rape. Also, rape is something that happens in the mind; it's not real. If you were raped but you did not consent to it, don't worry, because God knows, and so God will forgive. But if you kill yourself, that's committing wrong against God.
This argument is really gaslighting, and he does this a lot in his logic. He's making certain points about the nature of humans. First of all, each and every one of us is God's property. We are not free of ourselves; we are God's property. Therefore, when we kill ourselves, we are offending God. The second thing he's saying is we can do no good because we are burdened by our pride and our sin. If we choose to act, we can only do wrong.
What he's saying is this: if you are walking in the forest and you see a young boy drowning in the lake, don't jump in the lake to save him. Because one, you might die, and two, everything is controlled by God. Therefore, everything has an intention. When you jump in and save the boy, you might be interfering in God's plan. Therefore, the only solution to salvation, the only way to make yourself good in the eyes of God, is to do nothing. God knows everything. God has a plan. Just obey the will of God, and the will of God means doing nothing. In fact, doing nothing is the best thing you can do, because if you are born of sin and you're only capable of sin, when you do nothing, you are doing good in the world.
Again, this is gaslighting, but this becomes the doctrine of the Catholic Church, and it begins what we call the Dark Ages. It forces people—and most people want salvation, most people want to be good in the eyes of God—to be passive and obedient and unable to question and explore.
Who was Augustine's audience?
His audience is clearly not ordinary people, because at this time, most people don't read and write. His audience is actually for the priesthood. His audience is for those individuals who are about to be anointed by the Catholic Church to preach to the layman. As a priest, you are forced to encounter a lot of theological issues. What Augustine is doing when writing City of God and Confessions is creating a rhetorical manual for priests to basically gaslight their constituencies.
Think of this in many ways as the equivalent of the Confucian classics in China. When you apply to become a bureaucrat in China, you have to take the Confucian examinations. How do you pass the examinations? By memorizing this material. Rhetorically, if you think about the underlying theories, it's really the same thing: the emperor is always right; just do what the emperor wants. This is a rhetorical manual that priests have to memorize if they are to become anointed by the church. Once you memorize this, then whatever problems you may encounter, you can just recite from this manual.
The main argument is that we're born of sin; therefore, you can do no good. Even by asking questions, you are exposing the devil in yourself. Even by questioning the church, by asking me this question, you're showing the devil in you. Our responsibility, the only path to salvation in this world, is by fighting the devil within us. Focus your attention on the devil within you. Ignore the fact that the world is corrupt and evil. Ignore the fact that the landlord is exploiting you. Ignore the fact that the Catholic church is stealing from you. Ignore that. That doesn't matter. What matters is the internal world in you. Life is a constant struggle against sin because the devil is in you, and you must purge the devil if you are to find salvation in God. That's the logic of the argument.
The Reinterpretation of Adam and Eve
Let's look at another line from the City of God:
Thus, when a man lives by the standard of man and not by the standard of God, he is like the devil.
Think about this. When you choose to follow your nature, you are like the devil. It is only by negating yourself, by denying yourself, that you can be good. If you trust your instincts, if you trust your intuition, if you use your imagination, you are like the devil. This is exactly what he's saying with this sentence. The other thing he does is he's very repetitive, so he'll keep on going like this for a very long time.
Even an angel should not have lived by the angel’s standard, but by God’s, so as to stand firm in the truth and speak the truth that comes from God’s truth, not the lie that derives from his own falsehood.
Even angels must live by God's standard. Only God has the power to choose. We can choose, but we can only do evil, so we should not choose. The thing about Augustine that's very important for us to understand is he studied rhetoric, and so he's very good at gaslighting—twisting things in order to force your compliance. He says, "When a man lives by the standard of truth, he lives not by his own standard but by God's." He's just repeating himself.
Now, he's going to analyze the story of Adam and Eve. He's going to explore why this happened. Why did Adam and Eve, in paradise, disobey God?
It was in secret that the first human beings began to be evil; and the result was that they slipped into open disobedience.
What this is saying is, why did they disobey? Because Eve and Adam conspired in secret against God. That's what he's saying here. It was in secret. They conspired. The first human beings, Adam and Eve, began to be evil because they talked to each other, and they conspired to disobey God.
For they would not have arrived at the evil act if an evil will had not preceded it.
Why did they do this evil act? Because they themselves were evil. That's important to understand. They were not tricked by the serpent. They were not curious. They were just evil.
For pride is the start of every kind of sin; and what is pride except a longing for a perverse kind of exaltation? For it is a perverse kind of exaltation to abandon the basis on which the mind should be firmly fixed, and to become, as it were, based on oneself, and so remain.
They wanted to become God. The serpent told them that if you ate the fruit, you would become God. That's what tempted them: pride. Pride means we are leaving God and becoming more of ourselves. There are two ways you can go: you can move towards God, which means to obey God, or you can move towards yourself, which is to sin.
This happens when a man is too pleased with himself. And a man is self-complacent when he deserts that unchangeable good in which, rather than in himself, he ought to have found his satisfaction.
Pride makes us happy, makes us ambitious, but it will blind us from God.
The will would not have been so darkened and chilled in consequence as that the woman believed that the serpent had spoken the truth, and the man to put his wife’s will above God’s commandment.
Here's the problem: the man listened to the woman. Adam was tricked by Eve.
...he refused to desert his life’s companion, even though this refusal was to entail companionship in sin.
Adam was forced to make a decision. Eve had already eaten the fruit. So either Adam could follow God and disavow Eve, or he could follow her in sin. He followed her in sin, and that's why we are doomed. What doomed Adam? It was love. He loved Eve, and that's why he decided that yes, Eve is doomed, but I love her, so I must doom myself as well. That's why Adam ate the fruit: because he could not stand to leave Eve. He was bonded by his love.
What is this telling us? This is telling us that there's only one true love, and that's the love of God, which is obedience to God. Every other love, a love for each other, is a falsehood. It is a lie. It can only lead us to sin and disaster.
Who else said this? Virgil. Virgil, in the Aeneid, talked about Dido, how Dido fell in love with Aeneas, and Aeneas fell in love with Dido. But then the gods tell Aeneas, "Obey us. Go to Italy so you may found Rome, which is your destiny." And Aeneas, because he is a pious man, abandoned his love and did his duty, so he was honored by the gods. But Dido became consumed by her love for Aeneas, and so she committed suicide. She destroyed herself. Love will destroy you. Love will blind you. Love is evil. Only obedience is good.
Thus the evil act, the transgression of eating the forbidden fruit, was committed only when those who did it were already evil. That bad fruit could only come from a bad tree.
This raises a very important question for us. If it is true that we are born of sin, it is also true that God created us. Is that a contradiction? God is perfect. Why would God create a flawed, sinful person? The answer is this: because God created us out of nothing. We are a creation out of nothing. In other words, we are a failed science experiment. We are a science experiment gone wrong. God created Adam out of dust, and he created Eve out of Adam's rib. He's creating us out of nothing, and this was an experiment. Because we were created out of nothing, we were born of sin.
The only path forward is for us to embrace God, to become more like God by obeying him, and to deny who we are. Because if we were to become more of who we are—if we listened to ourselves, if we loved, if we thought, if we were curious—we move into our nothingness. But the more we obey God, the more we move towards enlightenment and salvation.
He concludes:
That is why humility is highly praised in the City of God... and it receives particular emphasis in the character of Christ, the King of that City. We are also taught by the sacred scriptures that the fault of exaltation, pride, the contrary of humility, exercised supreme dominion in Christ’s adversary, the devil.
He's creating a dichotomy. In the city of Rome, the city of Earth, pride triumphs because that's the seat of the devil. In the City of God, humility triumphs because that's the seat of Jesus.
This is assuredly the great difference which sunders the two cities of which we are speaking. The one is a community of devout men, the other a company of the irreligious... In one city, love of God has been given first place; in the other, love of self.
Pride and ego will be found in the city of Rome, but in the City of God, the only thing that exists is humility and love of God.
What was Jesus's role?
Jesus is dead, and he didn't really do anything because we're still born of sin. So why did God send Jesus? The answer is to awaken us, to show us that there's something wrong and we must correct ourselves—to show us the light. But it is we who must walk towards the light.
The Promise of the Heavenly City
This is towards the end of the City of God:
In the Heavenly City, then, there will be freedom of will. It will be one and the same freedom in all, and indivisible in the separate individuals. It will be freed from all evil and filled with all good, enjoying unfailingly the delight of eternal joys, forgetting all offenses, forgetting all punishments.
This is really curious because for the entire book, he's been talking about how freedom of will is bad because we're born of sin. The logic here is this: when we are on Earth, we are by ourselves; we are separate from God. But in the City of God, we have achieved reunion with God. We will have returned to God. We will be the same as God. God is in us, and we are in God. Therefore, we will be incapable of sin. At that point, we will have complete freedom of will because our will is the same as God's.
So, life sucks on Earth. You're getting exploited by the landlord, you're getting raped by the landlord, you're getting killed by your neighbors. Life sucks. But just focus on your eternal salvation. Focus on obedience, because when you do so, you will ascend to Jerusalem. At that point, you will be one with God, and everything that you suffered on Earth will be forgotten. It will just be endless paradise. You are making a sacrifice so that you may be saved.
This is a very powerful logic because this becomes the logic of many powerful movements throughout human history, including that of communism. Think about the logic here. What is communism? We work really hard today to build a socialist paradise, but once we build the socialist paradise, we have complete freedom of will. We will be one and the same. We will be indivisible from each other. We have complete freedom to do what we please. As Marx says, we can fish in the afternoon and read in the evening and discuss politics with our friends whenever. We will achieve paradise. The power of the City of God not only provides a framework for the Catholic Church to assert dominion over all of Europe, but it becomes the catalyst for revolutionary movements throughout human history, especially communism, but including other movements as well.
Let's look at the ending together:
Yet it will not forget its own liberation, nor be ungrateful to its Liberator. If we remember even its past evils, as far as intellectual knowledge is concerned, it will utterly forget them as far as sense-experience is concerned.
What this means is yes, we will remember the pain we suffered on Earth, but the pain will mean nothing. We will remember what we experienced, but we will not remember the pain. It will be eternal paradise: no more pain, no more suffering, no more sin.
For the highly trained physician is acquainted with almost all diseases, as far as they can be known in theory, while he is ignorant of most of them in respect of personal experience, since he has not suffered from them.
We will become God-like in our understanding. We will understand why we suffered, and then we will understand suffering means nothing because we are now united with God.
The Legacy of Augustine's Ideology
There's a lot of controversy over who Augustine is. He tells us that he comes from a pretty normal family. His father is a pagan, his mother Monica is a devout Christian, and then through his own hard work, he started to study rhetoric in university. He became a professor of rhetoric, and then when he was converted, when he saw the light and God spoke to him, he started to study the Bible rigorously. He was spotted for his talent by the church, and at 42, he was appointed to become the Bishop of Hippo in Northern Africa. He was in that position until his death.
One thing that Augustine is known for is the fact that he's prolific, which meant that he wrote a lot of books. It's possible he wrote hundreds of thousands of pages, and his two most famous are Confessions and the City of God. Most scholars take his story for what it is; they believe him. But one thing to learn is to always be skeptical of power. If at age 42 he's appointed the head of the church in this region, what does it tell us? It tells us that he comes from an extremely powerful family. The way the Catholic Church grew, the way that Christianity grew, is by marrying itself to power. Christianity had a very strict hierarchy, and that enabled it to be co-opted by the power elite. The fact that he was appointed bishop tells us that he comes from an extremely powerful family. It's possible his father was a Roman governor or a general, but this is not a typical, normal, middle-class family. It can't be.
Second, he was prolific, which meant he wrote a lot. There's another individual who was extremely prolific: Aristotle. The thing about Aristotle is he was a censor, a propagandist for the Macedonian Empire. He was trying to justify the supremacy of Greek civilization. When he wrote, he probably didn't write anything by himself but had a team of students around him who wrote everything for him. You can surmise something similar about Augustine. As a bishop, he had hundreds of scribes, hundreds of priests who basically took his theories and turned them into books. That's how he was able to be so prolific. Think of him as a university professor who's in charge of a lab. He doesn't actually do his own work; he has assistants for that. But he's the one directing the research and the writing. You can also see him as a propagandist. But he's clearly a genius. There's no denying he is a genius.
The logic is basically like this: I push you down, and you turn around and say, "Hey, why did you push me down?" And I say to you, "I didn't push you down. You slipped." There's a difference. I can do that because I'm powerful and you're not. This is really the logic of empire. Augustine is really using the logic of empire, and he's trying to force people to be obedient because obedience leads to salvation. "You can disobey me, you can fool around, but this means you'll burn in hell for all eternity. Do you really want to take that chance?" Most people don't.
Most people at this time choose to become passive in order to avoid sin, and this will mark the beginning of the Dark Ages in Europe. But there are many people who choose to rebel. There are many who believe that exploration, curiosity, intuition, and imagination are fundamental to being human. If you refuse to let me be human, then I will go somewhere else. Where do they go? They go east to two places. The first is the Sassanian Persian Empire, but another place they go that's very interesting is Arabia. Why do they go to Arabia? Because Arabia is basically a lawless desert. There's no real authority in the desert, and there are lots of Jewish people and Christians who escaped to Arabia in order to practice their faith. People take their faith very seriously. They would rather die than not practice their faith.
All these people are going to the desert in order to practice their faith. Why is this important? Because from Arabia will come a new religious movement called Islam. These are the people who will give birth to a revolutionary new religion called Islam that will challenge the authority of the Catholic Church of Augustine.