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III

THE STATE

IN trying to comprehend S. Augustine's thought about the State, we must avoid one error, that of translating Civitas by State.[1] His thought, as I said, is eminently social. He thinks of good and bad as gathered into two societies. Only at the last judgment will the Civitas terrena be dissolved into its constituent atoms. But civitas is not for Augustine a term convertible with respublica ; and the Civitas Dei is to be found long before a visible Church existed, even before the call of Abraham. He speaks of the good and the evil as mystically two cities, stressing the word mystical. More than once he explains civitas as equivalent to society. The primary distinction is always between two societies, the body of the reprobate and the communio sanctorum; not between Church and State. With his strong doctrine of election, it is natural that he should follow Tyconius in his views of the bipartite nature of the body of God, i.e. The elect and the mererly nominal members. On earth these two bodies are intermingled, and always will be. Only partially and for certain purposes is the Civitas terrena represented by any earthly polity. The Church represents the Civitas Dei rather by symbol than by identification. This error is often made. Some phrases seem to point that way. But first of all the distinction is to be drawn as I have stated. Error has arisen by identifying sans phrase the Civitas terrena with the State as such; and by taking every predicate applied to the Civitas Dei as obviously intended for the Church Militant. It would be less inaccurate to represent it, in the familiar phrase, as the conflict between the Church and the World. Yet even this would not be right. The real divisison is one which will be made manifest at the Last Judgment, and not until then. All early distinctions are but the symbols, never adequate, of the final grouping into sheep and goats. Members of either body are found, and always will be found, in the terrene representative of the other. It is the superiority of other-worldly interests to those of this world which is the gist of all.

Hermann Reuter[2] goes on to remark that, even if we were using political terms to translate civitas, we ought to use the word 'city' rather than 'state.' That is true. Hardly is it of capital importance, since the antique conception of a commonwealth was derived from the city-state. I doubt if we gain much by saying that Cain was the founder of a city, not the State. What we have to try and grasp is what Augustine thought about the State; not what he thought about some States. Does he condemn the Respublica?

In his deduction of the two cities Augustine uses strong words on the effects of the lust of dominion. To Augustine it was, as to Nietzsche, 'the will to power' that is founded upon the direct opposite of neighbourly and Christian motives. Only he draws an opposite inference. The original relations of man to man are not without organisation. The family is primitve and divine, and an association of families is natural. The first kings were shepherds. Dominion, i.e. absolute despotic dominion in the sense of the Roman Law, the power of the pater-familias, of a master over slaves-- that, as applied to man instead of animals, is due to sin. Those people who quarrel with this have no right to say that slavery is wrong now. Slavery owed its beginning to sin. None the less is it God's judgment--as a punishment--and must be borne.

In the earlier chapters of the Fourth Book Augustine decides on the whole against large Empires, though in one place he seems to admit that Rome acquired hers justly, on the ground of the iniquity of her enemies. But he takes the case of the first invader of the ancient hereditary monarchies, Ninus, as the classical instance of the foundation of an Empire obtained by force and fraud; and he decides that it is no better than a grande latrocinium. ('De Civitate,' IV. 6.)

'To war against one's neighbours and to proceed to the hurt of such as hurts not you, for greedy desire of rule and sovereignty, what is this but flat thievery, in a greater excess and quantity than ordinary?'

A page or two before he relates a story of Alexander the Great and the pirate, which is of a similar tenor.

Augustine's attitude in regard to slavery, and to private property in the sense of absolute dominion, is nothing new, although the lesson has not yet been learnt by the world. May it not be said that one of the things that men have been slowly learning is that rights of property are not absolute, and that they must give way to the public welfare? This sense of property, as of absolute dominion, has dominated modern Europe through the Roman Civil Law. Yet the other sense lies behind the Civil Law. It is the presupposition of Jurists like Ulpian and the Stoics. Their teaching pointed ultimately to the end of chattel slavery. It may point in the same direction in regard to extreme rights of private ownership. The moment you say that ownership is the creation of the law, you imply the power of revising it. The idea that something else, common ownership, is natural, and that legal division is conventional, runs throughout history. Augustine argues that the source of right must either be divine constitution or human. Since we hold our property by the law of the State, we must hold to the State's laws. He does not wish to upset them. This, he says, in reply to the Donatists, in a letter to Vincentius ('Epist.,' xciii. § 12):

'Since every earthly possession can be rightly retained only on the ground either of Divine Right, according to which all things belong to the righteous, or of human right, which is in the jurisdiction of the Kings of the Earth, you are mistaken in calling those things yours which you do not possess as righteous persons, and which you have forfeited by the laws of earthly sovereigns.'

According to Sommerlad,[3] Augustine set out to develop a theory of Church and State; but what as a fact he did was to 'lay down an industrial and economic programme for the Middle Ages.' I cannot think either of these statements to be well-grounded. The last thing that he set out to do was to give a theory of the relations of the Church and State. Most of the more important errors in the interpretation of the 'De Civitate' have their origin in this notion. With regard to the second point, in the 'De Opere Monachorum' he argues strongly for the need of manual labour in bodies of religious.[4] He will not have it that study and reciting the Divine Office are enough. That dictum may have helped to determine the character of Western monasticism. It may have inspired the Benedictine ideal. In so far, it helped to create an important element in mediæval civilisation. But it is surely a wild imagination to suggest that Augustine anywhere laid down a programme on socialistic lines for the Middle Ages; that that programme was for some centuries adopted, and was discarded at the Renaissance with the rise of modern capitalism.[5]

On the first point, Augustine said a great deal which has a bearing on Church and State as polities, and on their relations. Most of what he said could be used in more ways than one. In this and the following lecture I shall try to disentangle what he meant himself, and then in the last two to see what later times have made of the 'Civitas Dei.'

Once more let us recall the general aim of the book-- an apology for the Church. That purpose does not cease with Book X. We can see this by the analysis of the last twelve books, how right down to the end he lays preponderant stress on the evidence for the faith in history and miracle.

Further, the Church which Augustine was defending was now in enjoyment not merely of peace, but of imperial patronage. The peace of the Church was a century old when he began the book. The era of Julian was over. The Council of Constantinople had achieved the victory of Catholicism in the Empire. Theodosius had stamped Christianity upon the legal system. Doubtless the penetration was not so deep as it became later in the work of Justinian. Still it was the one officially supported religion. Such was not the time for an intransigent history of the rights of the Church, or for a nullification of the State. The occasion itself of the book shows this. Augustine had to argue that the legal prohibition of sacrifice was not a calamity. Was it likely that at such a moment he would assert that the State was a thing in essence evil? Yet that he is accused of doing. Ritschl, who followed Dorner, asserts that Augustine regarded civil government as such as being the organisation of sin.[6] Eicken, a very recent writer, says that with the peace of the Church, the Church showed itself more hostile to the State than in the days of persecution.[7] The Council of Nicea with its golden throne for the Emperor (as yet unbaptised) is an odd phenomenon, if that be so. But since this doctrine is set out in all earnestness by some of the most learned and acute minds, it must be rigidly examined before we are to reject it.

Can we then interpret the 'De Civitate Dei' as teaching that civil society is wrong in itself? Doubtless it teaches, as any Christian book would teach, that all earthly activities have their value only in the service of God. Human life, including the State, has no value save as a preparation. The 'heavenly home' is the goal. Few thoughtful Platonists wouls say less. If Augustine means no more than that earthly activities have a purely relative and provisional value, as compared with the enduring realities of the immortal life, we ought to beware of attributing to him any violently anti-political doctrine. The problem is no easy one. Augustine is too great to be always consistent. Still let us bear in mind this. Not only here but in his other works Augustine repeatedly quotes with approval the Apostolic injunctions about submission to the powers that be. He declares the Government of Nero to be God's ordinance, and goes out of his way to say so. He is emphatic on the duty of rendering to Caesar what belongs to him. He is always full of the glory of Rome, and is imbued with the value of social union and family life. Beyond all this he is opposed to the Donatists.

Reuter is right when he says that we cannot arrive at Augustine's political views--they never amount to a theory--from reading or studying the 'De Civitate Dei' by itself.[8] We must study the treatises written against the Donatists; also his letters and sermons and some of the minor works. Now it was the Donatists, not the Catholics, who adhered to the old Christian attitude of the days of persecution--that typified by the Apocalypse, in which is pictured a death struggle between the Imperial power and the Christian Church.[9] Yet in the Apocalypse we note that it is the Emperor as an object of worship that is condemned--never the idea of State authority. Much of S. Augustine's energies were occupied in combating the Donatists. Rather reluctantly he came to the conclusion that it was right to employ against them the forces of the civil government. He had thought differently in the days of his controversy with the Manichæans. Now that this policy won success, he gave rather reluctantly his adhesion to the views of his episcopal colleagues. Was it likely that, writing just after this, Augustine should turn round and condemn the State and all its works? It was the Donatists who claimed entire freedom from civil obligations. They were, in modern phrase, 'absolutists.' To them the State is an institution so profane as to be practically diabolical. That was the cry which Augustine had to meet. We can see how he met it in his reply to Petilian (II. 92). Petilian asks, 'What have you to do with kings who have never shown anything but envy to Christianity?' Augustine replies at length. The most important passage is in c. 210. In this he says that kings must serve God as kings:--for no man as a private individual could command that idols should be taken from the earth. But that when we take into consideration the social condition of the human race, we find that kings, in the very fact that they are kings, have a service which they can render to our Lord in a manner which is impossible for any who have not the power of kings. This is assuredly to admit the sacred office of a king as representative of the State.

There is another letter (Ad Marcellinum, 138, c. 15), one written to meet the charge of the pagans that Christianity was a civic peril, which affords even stronger evidence. After denying that Christianity condemns wars of every kind, he goes on:

'Let those who say that the doctrine of Christ is incompatible with the State's well-being, give us an army composed of soldiers such as the doctrine of Christ requires them to be; let them give us such subjects, such husbands and wives, such parents and children, such masters and servants, such kings, such judges--in fine, even such taxpayers and tax-gatherers--as the Christian religion has taught that men should be, and then let them dare to say that it is adverse to the State's well-being; yet rather let them no longer hesitate to confess that this doctrine, if it were obeyed, would be the salvation of every commonwealth.'

He points out that some form of State is needful to the worst tyrant and that the State is a natural and therefore a Divine necessity.

Still, there is evidence which tells the other way. First of all there is the main gist of the book--this is to depress the Civitas terrena. Of that there is no doubt; and if the Civitas terrena is to be identified with the civil State, as such, cadit quaestio. But the Civitas terrena is above all the society of the reprobate, a union largely unconscious and no less invisible than the invisible body of the elect. Only in so far as this society is represented by the State does it come in for condemnation. What is condemned is the World in Creighton's definition of it: 'human society organising itself apart from God.'

Then there is to be taken into account the remarkable passage, or couple of passages, in which Augustine condemns Imperialism (III. 10 and IV. 3, 15). At the most, however, this view only condemns great Empires. It does not depreciate, it rather exalts, the Commonwealth. Augustine sees how greatly the lust of power goes to the making of most great Empires. Rome he thinks had justice on its side. He dislikes the tyranny of strong nations over weak. He hazards the conjecture that the world would be most happily governed if it consisted, not of a few great aggregations secured by wars of conquest, with their accompaniments of despotism and tyrannic rule, but of a society of small States living together in amity, not transgressing each other's limits, unbroken by jealousies. In other words, he favoured a League of Nations--a condition, as he put it, in which there should be as many States in the world as there are families in a city. Still it is an organised State that he wants. There must be a union of families to create the city, and a union of associated governments, only no imperial power. Here is doctrine, not only social, but eminently political.

In another passage he contemplates a condition in which compulsion will not be needed. There will be no more necessity for it than in a well-governed family. It is always on the analogy of the family that he thinks. But this is not to do away with law and government. Against the view that law is the expression of force; and no more, he sets out his doctrine that law has its true origin in consent.

On this point Vives makes a comment which is worth quoting (X. 4):

'Oh, what a few laws might serve man's life, how small a thing might serve to rule not a true Christian, but a true man. Indeed he is no true man that knoweth not and worshippeth not Christ. What serveth all these Digests, Codes, Glosses, Counsels and Cautels? In how few words doth our great Master show every man his due course. Love then Him which is above as well as thou canst, and that which is next thee like thyself, which doing thou keepest all the lawes and hast them perfect, which others attain with such toil, and scarcely keep with so many invitations and terrors. Thou shalt then be greater than Plato or Pythagoras with all their travels and numbers, than Aristotle with all his quirks and syllogisms.'

We may compare also a later passage of Vives on XIV. 28:

'With how excellent a breviate hath he drawn the great discourses of a good commonweal, namely that the rulers thereof do not compel or command, but, standing aloft like sentinels, only give warnings and counsels; thence were Rome's old magistrates called consuls, and that the subjects do not refuse or resist, but obey with alacrity.'

Most, however, turns on another argument-- Augustine's discussion of Cicero's definition of a State, given in the 'De Republica.' Cicero there makes Scipio define a republic as res populi. Populus, however, must be explained. The words must be cited: 'Populum autem non omnem coetum multitudinis sed coetum juris consensu et utilitatis communione sociatum esse determinat' (II. 21). In discussing this he fixes on the word juris and so makes justice to be of the essence of a State. This leads on to the famous tag remota justitia quid regna nisi magna latrocinia. But Augustine does not allow himself to be balked by this. He argues that there is some kind of commonwealth even in a robber band.[10] They are bound by the social contract among themselves. There must be rules for the division of the spoil. In other words, there must be within them a relative and internal justice, even though in regard to the world at large they are outlaws. In other words, any association, if permanent, must have within it the nature of a State or part of it. He points out that Rome according to the description of Sallust had ceased to be a republic owing to the growth of corruption in morals. This would be true of many other States. (This argument is somewhat akin to the notion of Locke, that a State ceases ipso facto, if the principles of the original contracts are violated.)

Then later on (II. 21) he goes on to argue that if justice in the absolute sense be a sine qua non of a true commonwealth, then neither Rome nor any other pagan State was one. For you cannot have justice where the true God is not worshipped, and the only true commonwealth would be that wherein Christ is King.[11] In XIX. 20 and 21 he says much the same. If this were all, it might be held to be decisive, i.e. to prove that Augustine condemns the State, though he does not really make the Church a State even here. Even here I do not see that there would be anything more than religious toleration required for the condition to be fulfilled, i.e. the position would be that of the Roman Empire after the peace of the Church in the time of Constantine. Perhaps, however, Augustine's doctrine assimilating the State to an individual might be held by implication to preclude toleration.

Augustine does not stop here, although some of his interpreters, alike critics and disciples, have done so. He sees that either you must give the name State to Rome in all its changes, to the Greek republics and to the world-monarchies, or else you must find some other term that will enable you to classify them. Something must be wrong with Cicero's definition (or else with the Augustinian notion of justice) unless it can be applied to such societies as these. So he proceeds to give a definition of his own from which the word justice is excluded.[12]

'Populus est coetus multitudinis rationalis, rerum quae diligit concordi communione sociatus.'

This, he says, will include Rome, Babylon, or any other settled State. The really governing word here is concordi. It is some kind of consent and harmony that is necessary.[13] In an earlier passage he had adumbrated this, and said that this definition, as he would show, was probabilior. Augustine is like any modern who might argue, that the State, in the nature of things, is democratic, because democracy involves the recognition of human personality. That is a fact, which no legal system can make not to be a fact, merely by the process of denying it. You may lay down, for instance, that a slave is not a person, but a chattel, a thing. That does not make him one. He is a person. Your legal system is false to fact if it denies that. But the modern, who said that, would be unwise if he were to deny the name of State to governments which so acted. He could say if he liked that they were no true States. He could not say that they were not States. The moment you come to consider such a term as 'State,' you are tempted to put into its definition a description of its ideal form, so that a State comes to mean the perfect State. Thereupon, anything, that falls short of that, is outside the definition. According to Locke's definition, I believe that the English State must have disappeared with almost every parliament since 1832, because laws were passed interfering with the individualist basis. According to an opposite definition of sovereignty, that of Austin, it is at least plausible to say that there is no such thing, and never has been, as a true law in the United States of America.[*] Augustine's use of Cicero's definition, and his enlargement of the notion of justice so as to include true religion, must be treated in the same way.

That love to one's neighbour and to oneself (Augustine is no pure altruist), grounded on a love of God, are the greatest bonds of union among men must be the view of any Christian. So it is arguable that the Golden Rule is the foundation of political righteousness, and that the Golden Rule cannot be maintained apart from belief in God.

Meanwhile the world is very evil. So long as the heathen in his blindness bows down to wood and stone we must have a number of communities that fall short of this ideal. They cannot be wholly without justice, or there would be no society at all, as Augustine most pertinently said even in regard to the robber bands. The good at which such societies aim--earthly peace and security--is a real good and no sham.[14] It is not to be despised or disturbed, but is to be used by the Civitas Dei. So far is it from being true to say that Augustine destroys civil authority, that it would be fairer to say that he is like Luther. For Luther said, on the one hand, that civil government is due to the Fall, but (that being granted) it is a divine ordinance; and on the other, that earthly peace and security are of such high value that no amount of civil tyranny can justify insurrection. I doubt whether S. Augustine could have agreed with Origen that 'associations of men against unjust laws are to be approved, just as we all approve associations of men to execute a tyrant who sets himself against the liberties of a State.' He must have agreed with the first proposition in so far as it refers to Christians in a pagan State.[15] But I question if he could have supported the second. So far indeed is Augustine from saying that injustice destroys the being of a commonwealth, that he uses the admitted injustice and corruption of Rome in the later days of the Republic as a reductio ad absurdum of Scipio's definition.

Observe, once more, that Augustine declared that his definition of a State was more probable than that of Scipio. His sense of reality led him to prefer a definition which would include all existing and historical communities, and hamper him as little as possible by an abstract ideal.

What is morally right for a nation to do is one thing. It is another thing to say, that if it fails to do it, then it ceases to be a nation. You can be human without being humane. The whole discussion is akin to that way of speaking which judges humanity, not by what it is, but by what it should be, in the developed notion of humanitas. It is not wise to say, even of our worst enemies, that they are not human--only that they act in a way that is a disgrace to the human race. The worst of men is a 'man for a' that.'

Augustine's second definition goes back beyond Plato. It is paralleled by our modern distinction between law and (moral) right. What is not just is not law, said Algernon Sidney. This saying goes back through Bellarmine to S. Thomas, and through S. Thomas to S. Augustine--and further to Ulpian and the Stoics-- with the definition jus est ars aequi et boni. We do not now talk like Algernon Sidney. We prefer to say that laws may often be unjust, but that they are still laws We have been led to develop another plan, which is true to the facts of organised government, and therefore distinguishes law sharply from moral right. All of us are familiar with the notion that law is a universal command of the governing element in a community, although it may be oppressive, immoral and irreligious. Augustine did not go so far as this, but he realised the distinction which exists between a State permeated by justice, and a despotism or democracy which is still a State, though far removed from justice. He saw that State, reduced to its lowest terms, might be a people whose 'manners are none and their customs beastly'-- associated for bad ends, yet still a State, because keeping internal peace. Our distinction between legal and moral right can be derived out of this definition which allows to the community the full rights of a commonwealth, irrespective of its moral character.

On what grounds the importance of this passage is denied I fail to understand. It was well enough for mediæval writers to take the other side only and argue from it. Professedly they were trying to conduct the State as a society of baptised persons. It is less comprehensible how writers in our modern world should try to tie S. Augustine down by his own severe interpretation of Scipio's definition, an interpretation which he develops only in order to pass to a different definition. So far is S. Augustine from giving a clericalist definition of the State, that he definitely discards it, and shows us that he does so with intention, and gives his grounds. It is contrary to the facts of life.[16]

Observe that we are discussing, not what S. Augustine ought to have meant, on a view of a certain section of his words, nor what those living in a different age might get out of his language, nor even what historically was the outcome of it, but simply what was the picture of the State that Augustine had in his own mind. The question is not what he has come to mean for others, but what he did mean himself.

We must do what we have to do in regard to any thinker, viz. get behind his words and stated theories, and see what were the half-conscious presuppositions of his thought. Did Augustine represent to himself that civil society is a bad thing? Is it not truer to say that he regarded it as natural--although often perverted by evil wills? He is always arguing that every nature, even that of the devil, is good as nature, but that the will to use it aright has been changed by experience. The two societies, the terrene and the divine, are made by the two loves, the love of God and the love of self apart from God. With all actual States, the latter had much to do. Romulus, like Cain, killed his brother. Historically, wrongdoing has much to say in politics. Does anyone reading the newspapers deny this? In practice a State may have often been ruled by the 'law of the beasts' described by Machiavelli--but only partly is this so, or else the idea of justice could never have arisen. Nowhere, however, does he assert that human society is a bad thing. One of his most eloquent passages describes its value. Things being what they are, wars even may be just. Augustine is no pacifist. Wars are the result of the will to power, and are evil. Yet in the actual world they may be the less of two evils. Our Lord condemns not the act of defence but the animus of revenge. The earlier wars of Rome were, acts of defence as against criminal attacks. Her Empire was a reward of relative virtue. All governments are the will of God. Christianity, he claims, will mitigate even war. He looks to the development of moral limitation on war, under definitely Christian ideals. He quotes Cicero, and dilates (in the 'Confessions,' iii. 8) upon the generale pactum humanae societatis obedire regibus, and is frequent in his references to the duty of obedience to civil governors as laid down by S. Paul and S. Peter. Nor does he interpret this in the hierarchical sense--a thing which was frequently done in the Middle Ages.

How then is he to be treated as hostile to the State? Felix Dahn wrote that the doctrine of S. Augustine was logically false, morally diseased, politically corrupt and incompatible with duties to the State.[17] Yet Augustine in his tractate De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae, I. xxx., has a fine passage on the effects of the love of God and our neighbour in teaching every kind of civic duty:

'Tu pueriliter pueros, fortiter juvenes, quiete senes, prout cujusque non corporis tantum, sed et animi aetas est, exerces ac doces. . . .

'Tu cives civibus, gentes gentibus, et prorsus homines primorum parentum recordatione, non societate tantum, sed quadam etiam fraternitate conjungis. Doces reges prospicere populis, mones populos se subdere regibus.'

He did not, as I said earlier, set out to produce a theory of the State. There is no discussion about the merits of the various forms of government, though there is the classical passage known as the 'Mirror of Princes' describing the attributes of a good king. The one purely political passage is that which I discussed earlier in the argument for a family of small States, living in amity, with its corollary the condemnation of imperialism.

His strongest word is that passage (II. 21) in which he says, that, in the strictest view of justice, you could have only one real kingdom, that in which Christ is King. That, however, is little more than the sentiment of almost any Christian; that the best commonwealth would be composed of the people who accepted the best principles. It can hardly be said even to involve a hierarchical control. At any rate he says it, not in order to deny the rights of a commonwealth to other bodies--but to assert the need of a different classification. Still this passage would undoubtedly stimulate (as it did) the hierarchical interpretation of his doctrine. But it really illustrates the thesis of Mausbach and Seidel,[18] that Augustine did not deny the goods of human life, but sought to raise them to a higher power. That may be taken as one side. That there is another, the purely other-worldly, which treats as null all earthly activities including the State, is not to be denied on any fair reading.[19] The world-renouncing and the world-accepting temper both meet in S. Augustine, as they do in the Christian Church and its most eminent representatives, S. Paul, S. Anselm, S. Francis de Sales, Fénelon, Newman. It must be this latter element which gives Renter the ground to state that for Augustine the only true State is a monastic community, and that all the rest are condemned ; though I do not know what real evidence there is of this statement. The former is that which can justify Mausbach[20] in saying that nothing that we call 'kultur' is recognised by S. Augustine. All this, however, can only be fully discussed if we consider the place in his system of the Christian Church. That must be taken next time.

Notes to Lecture III

[1] Seidel, Die Lehre des heiligen Augustinus vom Staate (in Sdralek's Kirchengeschichtliche Abhandlungen, 1909,IX. i.), p.4534, d.11, Band 8-10.

'Es ist wohl zu optimistisch, wenn Mausbach meint, es sei allgemein anerkannt, dass der Ausdruck civitas terrena meist nicht den Staat als solchen bezeichne. Meines Erachtens rühren viele Irrtümer eben gerade daher, dass man immer wieder civitas terrena mit "Staat" übersetzt.'

[2] Reuter, p. 131.

'Indessen scheint es mir doch nicht überflüssig zu sein, daran zu erinnern, dass das Wort nicht mit Staat, sondern Stadt zu übersetzen sei.'

[3] T. Sommerlad, Das Wirtschaftsprogramm der Kirche des Mittel alters, p. 216. (This book emphasises his differences from all forerunners. They are reactionary, he is communistic.)

'Es liegt in all dem Gesagten begründet, weshalb Augustin, der eine Staats- und Gesellschaftstheorie geben wollte, entgegen seiner Absicht ein Staatsprogramm und ein Wirtschaftsprogramm geschaffen hat.'

[4] Reuter, p. 477.

'In dem Liber de opere monachorum, S. 438-443, vielleicht dei bedeutendsten Schrift in der Geschichte der Wirtschaftslehre seit Ende des vierten Jahrhunderts, sind Gedanken entwickelt, welche praktisch geworden, die auch von Aug. festgehaltene Differenz des weltlichen und geistlichen Lebens hätten auflösen, eine soziale Reform (Revolution?) in römische Reiche hatten motivieren müssen.'

[5] Somerlad, Wirtschaftsprogramm, p. 210.

'Die Eigentümlichkeit der Staatstheorie Augustins besteht nun darin dass jene teleologische Betrachtung, wie sie das Evangelium den wirtschaftlichen Institututionen gegenüber eingeschlagen hatte, auch auf die Institution des Staates angewandt wird.'

[6] Ritschl, Ueber die Methode der älteren Dogmengeschichte, in Gesammette Aufsätze, i. 156.

'Er in ihrer katholischen Gestalt das Reich Gottes selbst erkennt, welches seit dem Sündenfalle seine Existenz gegenüber dem irdischen Reiche hat; dieses aber ist der Weltstaat, wie er in der römischen Herrschaft jener Zeit gegenwärtig war. Wie nun die Kirche als die Civitas Dei der Organismus des Guten aus dem Prinzip der gottgemässen Gerechtigkeit ist, so gilt dem Augustin der Staat als die Gemeinschaft der Menschen aus dem Princip der Sünde.'

[7] H. von Eicken, Geschichte und System der Mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung, p. 119. 'So bald die Kirche sich gesetzlich geschützt sah, gab sie ihrer Geringachtung gegen den Staat einen noch offeneren, rückhaltsloseren, Ausdruck als vordem.'

[8] Reuter, p. 151.

'Man kann die Staatslehre Augustin's nur mit äusserster Vorsicht und selbst dann nicht vollständig aus den Lib. de Civ. schöpfen. Sie ist korrekt nur unter Vergleichung anderer Schriften, namentlich der anti-donatistischen aufzubauen.'

[9] Reuter, p. 143.

'Je schroffer die letzteren [Donatisten] die alte Ansicht von dem Staate als einem profanen, dem Christentum fremden Gemeinwesen erneuerten und überspannten, um so mehr wurde der Apologet des Katholicismus genötigt, die sittliche Würde desselben darzulegen.'

[10] De Civitate, xix. 23.

'Quapropter ubi non est ista justitia, ut secundum suam gratiam civitati oboedienti Deus imperet unus et summus, ne cuiquam sacrificet nisi tantum sibi; et per hoc in omnibus hominibus ad eandem civitatem pertinentibus atque oboedientibus Deo animus etiam corpori, atque ratio vitiis, ordine legitimo fideliter imperet; ut quemadmodum Justus unus, ita coetus populusque justorum vivat, ex fide quae operatur per dilectionem, qua homo diligit Deum, sicut diligendus est Deus, et proximum sicut seipsum--ubi ergo non est ista justitia, profecto non est coetus hominum juris consensu, et utilitatis communione sociatus. Quod si non est, utique populus non est, si vera est haec populi definitio. Ergo nec respublica est, quia res populi non est, ubi ipse populus non est.'

[11] Seidel, p. 21.

'Wenn also der Staat auch nicht die veritas iustitiae haben muss, um Staat zu sein, so muss er doch eine iustitia haben, um nicht als Räuberbande zu gelten. Es ist die auf der Vernunft beruhende natür-liche Gerechtigkeit, welche Augustin dem Staate als wesentlich zuschreibt. Er findet diese iustitia auchbei den heidnischen Römern.' Cf. Reuter, 137 sqq.

[12] Seidel, p. 20.

'Mit allem Nachdruck ist hervorzuheben, dass der heilige Augustinus die Wesensbestimmung, welche Cicero vom Staate gibt, als zu eng ablehnt.'

[13] Eckstädt, Augustins Anschauung vom Staat (Kirkhain, 1912), pp. 27-29, argues that the real importance lies in the word concord.

'Berücksichtigt man alle diese Stellen, so kann nach meiner Meinung gar nicht bezweifelt werden dass die concordia dem Augustin unerlässlich ist für das Wesen des Staates; und dies bestätigt sich uns

weiter, wenn wir auf das höchste Gut sehen, das Augustin für den Staat fordert: pax.'

* I do not say more than plausible, because the body which has power to change the constitution would be the Austinian sovereign. But there are two ways in the U.S.A. of altering the constitution. Which makes the sovereign?

[14] Mausbach, ii. 364.

'Also handelt es sich nicht um Umwandlung eines Bösen zum Guten, sondern um die Vermehrung und Erhöhung eines Guten.'

[15] Seidel, p. 25.

'Die Begrifie des "christlichen" oder "nichtchristlichen" Staates finden sich also nicht bei Augustin, sondern diese Bezeichnungen sind von uns gewählt, um vom Christentum beeinflusste oder nichtbeein-flusste Staaten zu unterscheiden.'

[16] Eckstädt, p. 40.

'So nach Augustins eigenen Urteil, ist der Staat um so besser, je besser das ist was er liebt. So ist der christliche Staat nicht dem Wesen nach der ideale Staat, wohl aber seinem Inhalte nach der Werthvollste.'

[17] F. Dahn, Die Könige der Germanen (Leipzig, 1908), xi. 209.

'Die Unterschätzung von Recht und Staat gegenüber der Kirche . . . ist die notwendige Folge der Lehre Sankt Augustins, einer logisch falschen, sittlich krankhaften, politisch verderblichen, mit den Pflichten gegen den Staat unvereinbaren.'

[18] Seidel, p. 26.

'So wird auch der Staat als naturgemässe und darum berechtigte menschliche Ordnung durch das Übernatürliche des Christentums nicht als unberechtigt aufgehoben, sondern von Mängeln befreit, in seinem Wesen vervollkommnet und in seiner Bedeutung erhöht.'

[19] H. Weinand, Die Gottesidee der Grundzug der Weltanschauung des hi. Augustinus, p. 127.

'Die Welt zu entwerten stellte er sie mit all ihren Güten neben Gott, verglich beide miteinander, wog sie gegeneinander ab ; kein Wunder dass sie zu leicht befunden ward und ihm Gott gegenüber als nicht-gut, nicht-schön; ja als ein Nicht-Sein erschien.'

[20] Mausbach, i. 350.

'Was aber Augustins Stellung zur Kultur in ganzen angeht, so unterliegt es nach unsern Untersuchungen keinem Zweifel, dass er alle Werte und Ziele, die wir heute zum Begriffe der Kultur rechnen, zur Geltung und zu Ehren kommen lässt.'


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