St. Augustine
The recorded history of the west knows of no similar catastrophe than the destruction of the Roman Empire by the Gothic, Vandal and Hun warriors, when a way of life was so thoroughly destroyed that men forgot what their ancestors had known for centuries, and had to start all over again groping toward a new existence. It was a long and painful experience, and the process of gradual recovery from a near mortal illness, the medieval period, fills the ten centuries between the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century and the revival of ancient thought and learning in the fifteenth.
When Rome was ravaged in 400 A.D., a wave of shock and horror spread through the world. The pagans ascribed the catastrophe to the betrayal of the old Roman deities under which Rome had risen to the position of the dominant world power. The Christians, too, were perplexed: it was hard to understand how Rome could be so shamed just after Christianity had become the religion of the state. If Rome was not strong enough to safeguard its own existence against heathen tribes, how could it be the source of wordly power that the church needed in spreading Christianity?
Enter St. Augustine from whose works emerge the strongest reaffirmation of Christian idealism. In the City of God (De Civitate Dei, 413 A.D.), Augustine posits two chief ideas:
- The first concerns the pagan challenge to Christianity – where he demonstrated the hollowness and inconsistencies of paganism, materialism and worldly success;
- The second, his more constructive task, concerns the vision of the heavenly city as contrasted with the earthly city (civitas terrona)
Augustine was more concerned with the ways of life rather than the organization of life.
“If man is to become worthy of entry into the eternal kingdom of heaven, the City of God, there must be some agency on earth that leads to the right direction.” Yet no where does Augustine clearly define the Church. As a result, his arguments were later used by adherents of papalist doctrines as well as those who affirmed the sovereignty of mundane rulers of the church.
Peace is conceived in terms of Justice:
“Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies.”
