St. Augustine: The Limits of Moral Action and Politics
People hope and pray that their nation will enjoy peace, security, and at least a modicum of neighborly flourishing. They are willing to suffer and bear large amounts of corruption and injustice in the body politic until a time comes when measures are required to save the polity, and perhaps even the cause of justice in the world. Unfortunately, people in such dark times generally are least likely and least suited to save their polity; thus hoping for such action is like hoping for nature to act outside its usual course that would allow a corrupt body politic to decompose and die. Saving the cause of justice in the world and preserving political life requires unusually austere virtue. The devil tempted Christ with a kingdom over the world.
Can one preserve political life without losing one’s soul by proclaiming oneself Caesar? Augustine is usually seen to think that one cannot preserve one’s virtue, or at least that one can keep one’s soul only if one follows the absolute rules of engagement as set by Scripture and by the Church. Taking extreme actions in extreme circumstances is forbidden because forbearance and submission purify the soul.
We will try to show that Augustine, though not denying the virtue of forbearance, thought that one can know the right and good, and act upon it, through right-by-nature, and that moral and political reasoning is not restricted to the application of universal rules to all circumstances. His treatment of political reasoning is considered where following the letter of the law would have disastrous consequences in rare extreme circumstances (lying, adultery, and tyrannicide and rebellion). What appear as exceptions to the absolute rule (based either on natural law or on God’s commandment) actually fulfill the law’s purpose.
Thus, Augustine thought that God’s absolute commandments forbidding actions are inverted ways of expressing what human beings naturally desire when they ordinately love God and neighbor. Augustine is never explicit about this, although he provides clues that allow the reader to collect together and interpret discussions about disparate but related topics, such as knowledge of miracles and special divine providence, and understand the totality of their interconnections as his final view. Thus, he forces the reader to practice forbearance by taking a circuitous route that enables him to understand fully Augustine’s account of how one can know and obtain the just when it appears that doing so breaks the letter of the law. Augustine told Firmus, his literary agent, that the City of God [De Civitate Dei, abbreviated here CD—ed] was to be read repeatedly (Ep. 231A).
For Augustine, the quality or order of love (ordo amoris) determines virtue: “For though it be good, it may be loved with an evil as well as with a good love: it is loved rightly when it is loved ordinately; evilly, when inordinately” (CD 15.22). As will be shown, ordinate love is not “love and do what you will (ama et fac quod vis),” as Augustine’s ethics is sometimes interpreted. Prudence allows one to choose good instead of evil, and to direct one’s appetites to the good (CD 19.4; see also 4.21; DLA 1.13.27; DT 12.12.17, 12.14.21, 14.8.11, 14.9.12). Virtue consists in ordinate desire, in knowing and loving rightly.
Political virtue does not require perfect virtue, derived from seeing God directly, but rather on “inferior righteousness,” by which one’s ordinate love prevents one from sinning:
“Forasmuch, however, as an inferior righteousness (iustitia minor) may be said to be competent in this life, whereby the just man lives by faith although absent from the Lord, and, therefore, walking by faith and not yet by sight, it may be without absurdity said, no doubt, in respect of it, that it is free from sin; for it ought not to be attributed to it as a fault, that it is not as yet sufficient for so great a love to God as is due to the final, complete, and perfect condition thereof.”
“It is one thing to fail at present in attaining to the fulness of love, and another thing to be swayed by no lust . . . . Only let us see to it that we so constitute the soul of man in this corruptible body, that, although it has not yet swallowed up and consumed the motions of earthly lust in that super-eminent perfection of the love of God, it nevertheless, in that inferior righteousness . . . gives no consent to the aforesaid lust for the purpose of effecting any unlawful thing.”1
Such “inferior righteousness” is not saintly or perfect virtue, but it is still justice because it rejects sin and is anchored by the love of God. This affirmation of justice in worldly activity compares with Augustine’s observations that political and other worldly goods are good in their own way, as seen in the first two chapters. As will be seen, Augustine acknowledges that the rare statesman can avoid the Caesarian temptation of consenting to the unlawful lusts in political activity, and, indeed, in performing acts otherwise regarded as unjust. All can be tempted to become Caesar, and most will succumb to such temptation, which helps to explain why Augustine’s rhetoric is so antipolitical. However, Augustine’s theory of virtue allows for a few to reject the temptation. As his language of “inferior righteousness” or minor justice (iustitia minor) indicates, Augustine’s political rationality does not allow expediency to guide action.2
Even though it is “inferior righteousness,” Augustine’s understanding of judgment necessitates that he requires a higher achievement of righteousness than a natural-law ethic and certainly higher than an ethic based on expediency. He argues that wisdom and ordinate love help to determine one’s capacity to judge:
“So far as freedom of judgment is concerned, then, the reason of a considerate human being is far different from the necessity of one who is in need, or the desire of the pleasure-seeker. For reason considers what value a thing has in itself, as part of the order of nature, whereas necessity considers how to obtain what will meet its need. Reason considers what appears to be true according to the light of the mind, whereas pleasure looks for whatever agreeable thing will gratify the body’s senses.” (CD 11.16; see also DT 3.3.8, 12.2.2, 13.13.17)
Practical wisdom exercised through an understanding of right-by-nature does not provide a more easygoing ethic than natural law ethics. On the contrary, it requires the disciplining of the mind and the desires to be directed to their proper objects so one will know and desire to use and enjoy one’s proper objects in the right way. Augustine observes that, since the human mind is mutable, judgment improves as one’s mind is exercised: “The judgment of the more talented (ingeniosior) will be better than that of the slow-witted (tardior); that of the skilled (peritior) than that of the unskilled (inperitior); that of the more experienced (exercitatior) than that of the less exercised (minus exercitatus); and, as the same person grows more proficient, so does his judgment become better than it was formerly” (CD 8.6).
Augustine elsewhere links this wisdom and experience to his teaching of practical rationality when he points out that something that appears wicked according to convention and natural law may not be wicked if the person performing the act is guided by right desire: “[W]hat is generally speaking wicked in other people is the sign of something great in one who is divine or a prophet“(DDC 3.44).3 Citing biblical examples, Augustine argues that some people can act in ways that are otherwise wicked, but that such people are virtuous on account of their right desire and wisdom. Although the previous quotation is taken from his early On Christian Teaching, his treatment of biblical examples in his later City of God reflects the same view.
Such virtue enables one to perceive the principles underlying the multiplicity of various manifestations of justice in the world. Augustine states that his carnal ways of thinking prevented him from understanding how the universally valid end of loving God and neighbor could find expression in a diversity of laws and customs: “Nor did I know that true and inward righteousness which judges not according to custom but according to the most righteous law of Almighty God. By that law, mores of different places and times are shaped as is best for those places and times; itself in the mean time being the same always and everywhere; not another thing in another place, nor otherwise upon another occasion” (Conf. 3.7; see also Ep. 138.4).4 The just is constant and changes according to circumstance, and Augustine thought that knowledge of that depends on intellectual and moral virtue.
One of the difficulties in handling such knowledge is that Augustine had to explain God’s special revelations and particular providence to his readers. How can the love of God and neighbor be constant if God demands different ways of expressing them? Not only their manifestations but also their very principles appear to change. According to the guiding interpretive principle, explicated in the examples below, Augustine regarded special revelations and particular providence as explicable in terms of natural causation. That is, God’s revelations do not contradict the political and moral precepts that would derive from a kind of natural theology, such as the one Augustine saw in the Platonists, even though such a theology would not necessarily on its own obtain the same kind of insight that is gained by God’s revelation. Frederick Crosson explains how Augustine relates the miraculous events in his own life in terms of natural causation:
“No event in the Confessions is brought about by a situation inexplicable in terms of natural causes. Nature is a self-enclosed whole, not independent in its being from God but a whole whose course is adequately explainable in terms of immanent natural causes. Even the telling of the extraordinary event of hearing in a child’s voice in the garden, the overtone of a divine command never questions that the voice comes from children playing next door.”5
According to this view, divine agency, such as God’s mysterious command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (which Augustine treats as an exception to the injunction against killing, as seen below), does not suspend or overturn the order of nature. For Augustine, the insights that direct such action derive from a wisdom of the whole on which the hierarchy of human ends depends. Thus, action based on knowledge of right-by-nature is, for Augustine as for Aristotle, a way of translating the right, which is eternal, into the realm of changing circumstance.
We now turn to three examples of moral and political reasoning in which Augustine theorizes in terms consistent with right-by-nature: lying, adultery, and rebellion. He is generally considered to prohibit all three, but evidence shows that “inferior righteousness” permits them under certain conditions.
Moral Reasoning in Extreme Circumstances
Lying
Augustine’s general rejection of speaking falsehoods is based on the biblical injunction.6 He justifies prudent action in extreme circumstances by arguing that such action appears as lying but in fact effects the principle of loving God and neighbor and attempting to educate one’s neighbor to do the same.
Several texts support this argument. The main texts are On Lying (written 395 a.d.) and the later Against Lying (written 419 A.D.).7 The former is a general treatise, whereas the latter is a response to Spanish priests who wished to infiltrate the heretical Priscillianists in order to convert them to orthodoxy. Augustine argues in the later treatise that lying in all cases, especially in matters of faith, is prohibited because it prevents people, such as the Priscillianists, from taking Christianity seriously. The prohibition against lying is made clear, as would be expected for a treatise intended to diffuse a potentially dangerous situation in which priests thought they could lie to promote Christianity. This greater clarity in the latter text is often taken to represent Augustine’s mature view.
However, Augustine’s own view on the matter is that the earlier On Lying is “obscure, prolix, and troublesome (obscurus et anfractuosus et omnio molestus).”8 In The Retractions, he states that he prefers his later Against Lying because it is an overt attack on lying, meant to correct the Spanish priests, whereas On Lying is more theoretical. This indicates he distinguished the two works in terms of style and subtlety, not in content. One of the terms he uses to describe On Lying is anfractuosus, a term he also uses to describe the twists and turns of dramatic dialogues, such as those he wrote.9 He also characterizes the work as an exercitatio mentis, a spiritual exercise meant to train one for intellectual and moral virtue.10
His view that On Lying is theoretical and prolix does not mean that it was immature, but, rather, indicates that its character is more that of a subtle philosophic dialogue than a direct, dogmatic work. This subtlety is signaled at the beginning of On Lying:
“I shall treat this question so carefully as to seem to be seeking truth myself along with my questioners. Whether I shall succeed in this quest the treatise itself will indicate sufficiently to the attentive reader, even though I assert nothing rashly. The problem is involved; because of certain profound and intricate issues, its solution often eludes the comprehension of the one probing it, so that what has been ascertained at one moment escapes one, at another moment reappears and is once more apprehended. In the end, however, it will, like a carefully laid snare, seize upon our mind. If there is error in this presentation, I think that, since truth frees one from all error and lack of truth enmeshes one in all error, it is better to err by an excessive regard for truth and by an equally emphatic rejection of falsehood.”
This passage indicates that nothing is asserted rashly, or even directly, in this treatise, and that Augustine’s ideas will be clear only to the attentive reader, for whom the truth will “seize upon our mind.” Inattentive readers will fail to come to this conclusion, and for them, the nature of lying will have to be presented with error “by an excessive regard for truth and by an equally emphatic rejection of falsehood.”12 Augustine’s discussion leans toward expressing the truth as if it were lawlike in order that, if he should err, he should err toward expressing what is generally true.
In other words, he prescribes the usual required practice, as the general prohibition against lying demands. If we attend to the styles of writing that were common in Augustine’s time, we find that this view is consistent with Roman legal practice where the term obscurus, used by Augustine to describe this treatise, referred to obscure expressions of will that are to be interpreted in a way “which seems more likely or which mostly is being practised. “13
His analysis of lying indicates that the final purpose of telling a falsehood is a more important consideration than the performance of the act itself:
“He lies, moreover, who holds one opinion in his mind and who gives expression to another through words or any other outward manifestation. For this reason the heart of a liar is said to be double, that is, twofold in its thinking: one part consisting of that knowledge which he knows or thinks to be true, yet does not so express it; the other part consisting of that knowledge which he knows or thinks to be false, yet expresses as true. As a result, it happens that a person who is lying may tell what is untrue, if he thinks that things are as he says, even though, in actuality, what he says may not be true. Likewise, it happens that a person who is actually lying may say what is true, if he believes that what he says is false, yet offers it as true, even if the actual truth be just what he says.”14
Lying consists of the double heart (duplex cor) where the speaker represents the truth with the false. The concept of double heart leads him to state: “For, a person is to be judged as lying or not lying according to the intention of his own mind, not according to the truth or falsity of the matter itself . . . . In reality, the fault of the person who tells a lie consists in his desire to deceive in expressing his thought (in enuntiando animo suo fallendi cupiditas).” Lying is sinful because it damages the conformity of the inner and external human being, of inner thought and intention and external deed. Lying is prohibited,therefore, because it damages one’s soul, and, as Paul J. Griffiths perceptively notes, lying “is an action that incoherently repudiates the central conditions of its own possibility, which is God’s gift.”15
Augustine provides some exceptions to this general prohibition [against lying] that actually fulfill the obligation to love God and neighbor. In considering the example of hiding an innocent human being from persecution, he cites as exemplary the actions of Bishop Firmus of Thagaste who suffered tortures to protect a persecuted man. Firmus stated that he would neither lie nor betray the man. He suffered physical torments until the impressed emperor granted pardon for the man whom Firmus was protecting. In cases where one refuses to betray and lie, Augustine argues: “Whatever you suffer for this act of fidelity and kindness, then, is not only judged as unmerited but even as praiseworthy, with the exception of those pains which are said to be suffered not courageously but basely and shamefully.”
Augustine praises Firmus’s fortitude and righteousness. However, he considers the more likely possibility of how a more timid person, placed in similar circumstances, would react. Augustine does not state that a more timid person sins because he cannot undergo similar torments. Instead, he states that Firmus understood the principle of Scriptures “better (melius) and fulfilled their commands more courageously (fortiter).”16 He does not state categorically that the timid person does not understand Scripture or does not fulfill its commands. He wrote in the comparative case, which leaves room for telling falsehoods in certain extreme circumstances where truth telling would cause one to suffer shamefully and basely.
Augustine also admits that speaking falsely can fulfill the obligations of neighborly love. He states that it is actually unjust not to lie to protect another in cases where someone wishes to commit an injustice against another. He provides the case of lying to prevent rape, but does not limit the principle to that case:
“[W]e should deter, even by our sins, those assaults which are perpetrated upon a human being so that he is defiled, and whatever is done for this purpose, namely, to prevent uncleanness, should not be called sin. For, that is not a sin which happens in such a way that one would be justly blamed if it were not done . . . . There would be no sin if action were taken to avoid the defilement. Therefore, whoever has lied in order to avoid such situations does not sin.“17
Lying is not only permissible in certain circumstances, but also required because not lying would involve implication in the sins of another. This also means that lying is necessary in a case where one is faced with someone of such vicious or deranged disposition that that person is incapable of acting virtuously. Such situations are rare, and, as we shall see, Augustine places the duty of bringing such a person to virtue on the shoulders of the one who must lie.
Augustine argues elsewhere that, when faced with someone who is incapable of hearing the truth, one must first attempt to remove what hinders that person from appreciating truth and virtue:
“The first thing to do, then, is to remove the hindrances which bring about his failure to be receptive. For certainly if it is his degenerate condition (sordes) that renders him unreceptive, he must be made clean either by word or by deed as far as that is possible for us.”18
In using the phrase “as far as that is possible for us,” Augustine indicates that sometimes it is not possible for us to do this, and that it might be necessary to lie to avoid being implicated in another’s sin. Lying in this instance would entail uttering a falsehood about the particular situation, but one that communicates the universal truth about God, which the auditor may be incapable or unwilling to receive.
Augustine applies this idea elsewhere when he discusses the Platonic example of lying in order not to return a sword to a friend who has gone mad:
“As a matter of fact, where one does not have a double heart (duplex cor), there cannot be said to be a lie. As if, for example, a sword be entrusted to anyone, and he promises to return it, when he who entrusted it to him shall demand it: if he chance to require his sword when in a fit of madness, it is clear it must not be returned then, lest he kill either himself or others, until soundness of mind be restored to him. Here then is no duplicity (Hic ideo non habet duplex cor), because he, to whom the sword was entrusted, when he promised that he would return it at the other’s demand, did not imagine that he could require it when in a fit of madness. But even the Lord concealed the truth, when He said to the disciples, not yet strong enough, ‘I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.'” (EnP 5.7, quoting John 16:22)
Lying requires there to be a double heart, but this example indicates that one does not have a double heart if one utters a falsehood to someone incapable of using well the truth; thus, lying is permissible if it communicates justice.
This principle is illustrated differently in Augustine’s explanation of the lying spirit that God sent to King Ahab (83Q 53.2, commenting on 1 Kings 22:20-23). This example is used to show how God utilizes base things to effect his providence, and Augustine argues that the lying spirit misled King Ahab about his military victory but not about the truth about God, which the king rejected. Ahab intended to attack Ramothgilead, and he ordered his court prophets to provide good news about his chance of success.
After the sycophant court prophets assured him of victory, the prophet Micaiah provided good news of which the meaning did not straightforwardly refer to King Ahab’s intended project: “Go, and prosper; for the Lord shall deliver it into the hand of the king” (1 Kings 22:15). Yahweh sent a lying spirit to speak through the sycophant prophets to lure Ahab to his destruction. Micaiah did not prophesy success in battle, but then prophesied to one of the court prophets: “Behold, thou shalt see in that day when thou shall go into an inner chamber to hide thyself” (1 Kings 22:25). Ahab threw Micaiah into prison and then proceeded to be killed in battle, thus fulfilling Yahweh’s purpose.
Augustine observes:
“Thus, if anyone merits being deceived, not only does God not deceive by that person by himself . . . . Rather, God deceives either through the man who has not yet divested himself of such desires or through the angel who, because of his perverseness of will, has been appointed to the lowest station in nature, either in punishment for his sins or for the exercise and cleansing of those who are reborn through God’s power” (83Q 53.2).
In other words, God does not lie. He sent the lying spirit because King Ahab was incapable or unwilling to hear the truth, and, as Micaiah’s comment reflects, the lie lay originally in the court prophets and in the king.
Augustine indicates that lying is necessary to hide from one’s attackers, and that one may send those attackers to a third party if that third party will suffer lesser injuries and, most important, if that third party consents:
“If anyone who can be concealed by a lie is sought for violation, who dares to say that such a lie should not be uttered? But, if he can be hidden only by such a lie as may injure the reputation of another by the false charge of that uncleanness for the endurance of which the first person is being sought — as if one should say to the seeker, naming a certain chaste man unblemished by crimes of this sort: “Go to him. He will manage so that you may get your pleasures more easily, for he knows and loves these things,” even though the wicked person should be thus turned away from the one whom he was seeking — I am inclined to think that the reputation of one person must not be injured by a lie even to prevent the body of another from being violated.”
“In general, a lie must not be told for the sake of another person when by that lie a third person may be injured, even though a slighter injury may come upon him than would happen to the second party if the lie were not told; one man’s bread may not be taken from him against his wishes, even though he is comparatively strong, so that a weaker person may be nourished, nor may an innocent person be scourged against his wishes so that another may not die. If the man in question is willing, however, let such an action be taken, because he is not wronged who so accedes.”19
This passage demonstrates that uttering falsehoods is additionally permissible when a stronger third party consents to bear the burden of being attacked. This actualizes the principle of serving other human beings, and so shows how uttering falsehoods can fulfill the love of God and neighbor. It also points to the principle that the third party must consent to the deed.
These passages show that Augustine’s injunction against lying points to a higher principle of promoting and actualizing justice in the world. Lying is generally prohibited because it prevents people from knowing how to live virtuously and provides bad examples for others to imitate.20 However, he indicates that there are extreme circumstances where truth telling is sinful and uttering falsehoods actually serves justice.
Adultery
Turning now to another seemingly exceptionless rule, we find that Augustine condones adultery in extreme circumstances when it preserves marital fidelity. He provides an unusual example of a man who faced the punishment of death because he could not pay the pound of gold he owed to the imperial treasury in Antioch.21 A wealthy man offered to pay his debt on the condition that he have intercourse with the debtor’s beautiful wife. The act was completed with the debtor’s permission and without lust on the part of the wife, and the imperial officials were so ashamed of themselves for letting the laws put the couple into this position that they compensated the couple with an amount far exceeding the debt.
Augustine is faced with a situation where the prohibition of adultery might cause an innocent man’s death. He observes that this is a horrific, extreme example, but he argues that the debtor and his wife did a just deed on three grounds. First, they followed the Pauline marriage principle that the bodies of the man and wife belong to each other (1 Cor. 7:4), and that she had received her husband’s consent. Second, she performed the act without lust, thereby maintaining the purity of her love for her husband. Third, it was a heroic act in that the wife performed an action for her husband that would otherwise have been prohibited by moral rules that command her to preserve her fidelity.22
Augustine guardedly states: “I dispute nothing of this story. Let each one pass judgment as he wishes.” Despite this caution, Augustine provides strong evidence that one should not view this as adultery. He states that “human sense (sensus humanus) is not ready to cast out (respuit) what happened.” This in itself is insufficient because man’s moral sense may be faulty, and not casting out differs from affirming an activity as rightful. The gospel forbids fornication, which Augustine has previously defined in the case of adultery as “every carnal and lustful concupiscence” but which he admits does not fit this particular case.23 The prohibition against adultery is part of the wider prohibition of fornication (which also includes worshiping idols). It follows, then, that no adultery occurs when there is no fornication. The action of the woman was meant to preserve marriage and, as a result, establishes the rightful.
Tyrannicide and Rebellion
Homicide and, more specifically, tyrannicide are the sins with the greatest political import. The general prohibition against them can be suspended only by agents of the polity who must punish criminals, and by those described in Scripture who have received a special revelation from God. For everyone else, Augustine bases his general rejection on Paul’s command: “Let every soul be subject to the higher authorities, for there is no authority except from God” (Rom. 13:1).
Everyone must submit to political authorities; doing so only halfheartedly because one wishes to avoid the authorities’ anger is insufficient, for that would be deceitful. Rather, one must go further and submit to political authorities out of love. This does not mean that Christians should be involved and implicated in political evils, however. One may resist, and gain glory, only by martyrdom:
“[W]hether the authority approves your good deed or persecutes you, ‘You will have praise of him,’ either when you win it by your allegiance to God, or when you earn the crown of martyrdom by persecution.”24
Rather than advocating political withdrawal or perpetuating political evil, Augustine saw great merit in the ability of martyrdom to effect political reform:
“[B]y confessing, embracing, and proclaiming [their faith], and for its sake enduring all things with faith and fortitude, and by dying with godly assurance, they shamed the laws by which it was forbidden, and caused them to be changed” (CD 8.19).
Martyrdom is an effective mode of political reform and appears as the only mode that Augustine affirms. We will try to show, however, that Augustine’s way of treating exceptions to the general rule indicates that martyrdom is not the only weapon in his arsenal of political reform. Although submission and martyrdom are general responses to political rule, he allows for rebellion in circumstances when even one’s oppressor cannot be so shamed.25
In the first part of the following discussion we consider the conditions under which Augustine thought it just to have a rebellion, by showing how he thought its leader can hold public authority but not necessarily public office, and what conditions need to be met. Because Augustine bases exceptions to rebellion and killing on what appear to be an appeal to divine intervention and a suspension of otherwise absolute rules, in the second part we examine more closely how he understood that one can have knowledge of special revelation and particular providence in a way that does not offend natural reason.
Augustine lists two exceptions to the general prohibition of homicide: (1) when sanctioned by a general law and (2) in special cases sanctioned by God’s command:
“But the divine authority itself has made certain exceptions to the rule that it is not lawful to kill men. These exceptions, however, include only those whom God commands to be slain, either by a general law, or by an express command applying to a particular person at a particular time. Moreover, he who is commanded to perform this ministry does not himself slay. Rather, he is like a sword which is the instrument of its user. And so those who, by God’s authority, have waged wars, or who, bearing the public power in their own person, have punished the wicked with death according to His laws, that is, by His most just authority: these have in no way acted against that commandment which says, ‘Thou shalt not kill.'”26 (CD 1.21)
His rhetoric appears to suggest that exceptions are restricted to those executing positive law and those biblical examples inspired by God. The rhetoric is guarded in part because Augustine faced civil disorder during the collapse of the Roman Empire. One of the causes of disorder were the Circumcellions, a group of Donatists who claimed special dispensation to kill on behalf of God in order to rid the world of the wicked. Augustine himself narrowly escaped a Donatist assassination attempt. As a result, his rhetoric makes him appear to say that the only nonlegal exceptions to killing are allotted to those beneficiaries of direct revelation listed in Scripture and recognized by the Church’s authority, such as Abraham, Jephthah, and Samson (whom he lists immediately after the passage quoted above). If rightful exceptions consist only in scriptural examples and those recognized by the Church, must politics necessarily be subservient to the Church?
Augustine’s language is guarded, but his choice of words indicates that the person carrying the public power (personam gerem publicae potestatis) refers primarily to the authority of a virtuous human being and secondarily to an officeholder.27 Because Augustine appears generally to speak of political power as something wielded by actual officeholders, evidence must be pieced together from various sources to show that the power he mentions in the above passage may include individuals without official power. The distinction between the worth of the individual and his office was actually close to Augustine’s own experience, as it formed the basis for the Roman understanding of political power and understanding of the office of dictator, which relied on the virtue of someone hitherto without political office who temporarily had to set aside the laws in order to save the republic.28
Augustine’s distinction between virtue and officeholder is seen in the fact that he actually treats politics in personalist terms; he refers to each human being, rather than the city’s institutions and physical attributes, as the primary element or seed of a city (CD 4.3 ; EnP 9.8). The dictator’s power (imperium) was conferred upon citizens, almost always private citizens, by the constitutional form of lex curiata, and the most common and most general function he had was to be the dictatura rei gerundae causa, literally, “the dictatorship for getting things done.”
For instance, early in Augustine’s career he explicitly regarded such a power as just: “would it not also be right, provided some honest man of great ability was found at the time, to strip these [corrupt] people of the power to elect public officials and to subject them to the rule of a few good men, or even to that of one man?” (DLA 1.6.14). Augustine’s recognition of this power is seen in his observation that Cincinnatus was entrusted with Rome’s security because of his extreme poverty (Ep. 104; CD 3.17, 5.18). In the case of Hortensius, he notes that instituting a dictator was a “measure commonly adopted in times of gravest peril” (CD 3.17). Thus a Roman, upon reading the above passage, would have heard the gerens publicae potestatis as “the bearer of the public power.” He would have understood it as the power conferred to a virtuous human being who would be called in on a particular occasion to save the republic.
Indeed, Augustine’s term persona plays a central role in his theory of virtue; one’s personhood is realized only when one is fully conscious of oneself as the image of God. The term persona means, literally, “sound through,” and derives from the masks used in Etruscan religious rites, possibly related to the worship of Persephone.29 In legal terminology, it signifies the fundamental category of a bearer of rights.30 Augustine uses it and its verbal form to signify proclamation and related activities: “For all things signified seem somehow to sustain the persona of the things that they signify” (CD 18.48).31 He continues:
“[T]hus it is said by the Apostle, ‘The rock was Christ,’ since the rock of which this was said at any rate (utique) signified Christ” (ibid.). Persona as the primary signifier is also the meaning of the title given by a later editor to a chapter on the prophecies of Hannah, who is said to personify the Church (persona gerens ecclesiam)” (CD 17.4).
The language of persona as gerens is identical to Augustine’s description above of a persona gerens publicae potestatis (CD 1.21). Cicero, also distinguishing between virtue and office, used persona similarly. Cicero signifies this representative power when he proclaims in his speech against consuls Lucius Piso and Lucius Philippus: “O immortal gods! what a task it is to sustain the person of a leader in the republic!”32 In his speech against Marcus Lucullus and Publius Servilius, from whose clutches and jaws (manibus ac faucibus) he states that he himself snatched (eripui) the republic, Cicero argues that they would have faltered before the solemn pronouncements of the “men who by their dignity upheld the persona of the Roman people.”33
This way of speaking of persona was reflected in Roman understandings of the emperor. As Charles Cochrane observes, the emperor “emerged as the supreme embodiment of Roman virtue, speaking and acting not merely for but also as the sovereign people whom he professed to ‘represent.’ “34 Cicero understood the human being “bearing the public persona” to earn his role by his dignity or virtue and by his ability to represent the public good. Therefore, he did not restrict the powers of the persona to the office of the emperor, as his reference to himself saving Rome indicates.35
This meaning of persona, which includes but transcends its legal meaning, is consistent with Augustine’s usage of potestas, which is included in his definition of the persona gerens publicae potestatis. Potestas was a Roman republican legal term with a broad meaning covering the person who holds either physical ability (facultas) or right (ius) or both. According to Berger, “it generally indicates the power of a magistrate whether he is vested with imperium or not.”
Since imperium was the official power of the higher magistrates under the republic and of the emperor under the empire, this means that one could have potestas to act in the public good without necessarily holding office. Publica is a general term that is not reducible to legalistic structure. As a Roman jurisprudential term, publicus meant “in the interest of the Roman people,” which, as we have seen, extended to the work of the dictator, and opposes that which is privatus.
Augustine uses publicus in a wider sense when he speaks of God’s public law (leges publicae), which opposes an individual’s private law (leges privatum) that constitutes rebellion against God (83Q 79.1; see also CD 1.17). Further, Augustine’s metaphor of the hand that holds the sword, and his reference to criminals in the passage under consideration, invokes the Roman legal concept of the ius gladii, the power to punish criminals, which the emperor alone held (though he could delegate it).35 Augustine shifts this to include also people without offices when he states that this power is given to the person (ad personam) commanded by a law or by God (CD 1.21). These considerations indicate that the persona gerens publicae potestatis includes but is not restricted to bearers of political offices. Augustine’s understanding of the component words signifies a more general meaning than the specifically legal, and indicates that Augustine would also include a virtuous individual acting as a dictator.
Having established that the one who serves as the sword for another may include someone who is not a political officeholder, we turn to consider the grounds of rebellion. Rebellion is just when rulers force the citizens to commit unjust or impious deeds, or when they fail to provide for their citizens’ material well-being:
“As for this mortal life, which ends after a few days’ course, what does it matter under whose rule a man lives, being so soon to die, provided that the rulers do not force him to commit impious and unjust acts (si illi qui imperant ad impia et iniqua non cogant)?” (CD 5.17).
This passage is often cited as an example of Augustine’s political passivism and otherworldliness because it seems to diminish the importance of mortal life.37 However, it only compares mortal life to the infinite good of immortal life, and does not deny that mortal and political life possess their own goods. Furthermore, as Burnell observes, the passage is written in the subjunctive, which indicates that Augustine treats this problem as hypothetical. Contrary to advocating passivism to tyranny, Augustine leaves grounds for resistance against unjust rulers who force impious and unjust acts. An examination of related texts specifies what kind of acts entail, and necessitate, rebellion.
Augustine’s violent language in this passage contrasts with his admonitions, referred to above, that Christians should welcome martyrdom when persecuted:
“[T]he heavenly city . . . knew only one God to be worshiped and believed with faithful piety that He is to be served with that service which in Greek is called latreia, and should be rendered only to God. Because of this, it has come to pass that the heavenly city could not have common laws of religion (religionis leges . . . communes) with the earthly city, and on this point must dissent and become a tiresome burden (dissentire haberet necesse atque oneri esse) to those who thought differently, and must undergo their anger and hatred and persecutions, except that at length it repelled the hostile intent of its adversaries with fear of its own numbers and with evidence of the ever-present divine aid (nisi cum animos adverantium aliquando terrore suae multitudinis et semper divino adiutorio propulsaret).” (CD 19.17)
This violent language contrasts with the message of the passage, in which Augustine calls for the oppressed to suffer persecutions by a tyrant who forces them to worship falsely, up to the point where their numbers and “evidence of divine aid” (explained below) “repel” the tyrant. This passage is consistent with the one seen above where Augustine advocates martyrdom to shame tyrants into changing laws (CD 8.19), since their being repelled may take the form of feelings of shame at seeing a major part of his population rejecting his rule.38 However, this passage comes closer to allowing rebellion than either CD 8.19 or his Propositions from the Epistle to the Romans, where Augustine claims that martyrs will be praised by their oppressors.
In the passage under consideration here, martyrs do not actively rebel, but their martyrdom can make it exceedingly difficult for a tyrant to govern a country. But is this merely to beg the question? Is Augustine using martyrdom merely to provoke the tyrant to create more martyrs (as the Donatists tried to provoke Roman authorities to do to them)? Do martyrdoms not further provoke violent resistance by non-Christians not bound by scriptural injunctions? Augustine does not appear to consider these questions, but his argument for martyrdom seems to create the conditions in which rebellion constitutes a threat to political rule. If he is indeed making this argument, and this is doubtful, then he would have martyrs treat non-Christians instrumentally by having them do their political bidding.
Augustine elsewhere allows more explicitly for rebellion. He treats Cacus, the monster in Virgil’s Aeneid as a political analogy (CD 19.12).39 That this is an analogy of the drama of a rebelling body politic can be seen from the many political terms Augustine uses to describe Cacus’s lonely existence in his kingdom (regnum), his cave. The analogy exemplifies a community in stasis, as images of rebellion and civil war abound in the passage. Cacus’s internal strife symbolizes revolution by a population lacking material necessities for living, and as the result of destroyed political goods such as comity and friendship. Augustine introduces Cacus (whose name is derived from the Greek “evil [kakos]“) to show that even the most savage and unsociable being strives for its own peace:
“[A]ll that he desired was peace unmolested by any man’s violence or fear of it. In a word, he longed to be at peace with his own body; and so far as he succeeded in this, all was well with him.” However, his “mortality” rebelled against its ruler, “and in order to pacify with all possible speed his mortal nature when it rebelled against him through its impoverishment, and incited hunger to wage rebellion and sedition that aimed to sever and eject his soul from his body, he ravished, slew and devoured” (CD 19.12).40
The organizing principle, reason, was ejected by the body’s parts. Augustine adds:
“And yet, cruel and savage though he was, he was providing by his cruelly and savagery for the peace of his life and safety; so if he had been willing to keep the peace with other men as he was content to keep it in his cave and with himself, he would not be called bad or a monster or a semi-man. Or if the ugliness of his body and his belching of murky flames frightened off human companions, perhaps it was not through lust for harm but through the necessity of keeping alive (sed vivendi necessitate) that he was fierce,” (ibid.)
Burnell argues that “the whole sequence of events . . . originates in necessities involved in staying alive (vivendi necessitate).”41 Rebellion is justified and necessary when the people are prevented from securing their mortal needs. As the extreme nature of the example indicates, they would have to be facing massive oppression and flagrant injustices.
Cacus’s mortal problems were actually the result of his being unsociable: “[I]f he had been willing to keep the peace with other men as he was content to keep it in his cave and with himself, he would not be called bad or a monster or a semi-man.” Augustine introduces Cacus as having “no wife to exchange fond words with him, no little children to play with, none to command when they were bigger, no friends to give him the enjoyment of conversation (conloquio) . . . although he gave to none, but took what he chose from anyone he chose whenever he could” (CD 19.12).
Rebellion of the parts against Cacus’s body politic was symptomatic of his deeper rebellion against his social nature that, at the very least, would have helped him to satisfy his mortal needs more efficiently. His lusts, savagery, and desires preceded the hunger of his mortality. This example indicates that Augustine thought rebellion justified and necessary when a tyrant destroys political and social life in such a way that civil friendships and associations are seriously prevented from developing. His description of Cacus also reflects historical examples of revolution where the desperate citizenry finally rebel when they become deprived of their mortal needs after having long suffered the destruction of political life by their rulers.
Just rebellion requires “fear of [a people’s] own numbers and . . . evidence of the ever-present divine aid” (CD 19.17). The first condition indicates that resistance must be sufficiently widespread and must possess the means to constitute a threat. This means that in addition to a just cause, rebellion must have sufficiently widespread support to have an effective claim to represent the common good. Large numbers would constitute a threat to a tyrant’s grip on power.
The paradigmatic case of large numbers of people with divine aid resisting a tyrant is Israel’s situation in Egypt. The “Egyptians marveled at the great increase of that people, and feared it (terrerent)” despite the Egyptians’ policy of killing every male child (CD 16.43; Exod. 1.7). The Israelites fled Egypt rather than rebel, but they nevertheless terrified the Egyptian powers. As with the discussion of martyrdom above, there is little difference between threatening the authority of political power and actively rebelling against it. Conversely, Augustine’s requirement for large numbers indicates that escape from tyranny and then martyrdom are required when small numbers are involved.
Notes
1. Augustine, “On the Spirit and the Letter,” in Anti-Pelagian Writings, 36.65.
2. See Fortin, review of Augustine and the Limits of Politics, by Jean Bethke Elshtain, 367.
3. “Ita quod in aliis personis plerumque flagitium est in divina vel prophetica persona magnae cuiusdam rei signum est.”
4. “Et non noveram iustitiam veram interiorem non ex consuetudine iudicantem, sed ex lege rectissima dei omnipotentis, qua formarentur mores regionum et dierum pro regionibus et diebus, cum ipsa ubique ac semper esset, non alibi alia nec alias aliter.”
5. Crosson, “Structure and Meaning,” 32.
6. See Rist, Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized, 192-93; Kenneth W. Kemp and Thomas Sullivan, “Speaking Falsely and Telling Lies,” 152; Fortin, “Problem of Goodness,” 186; Sissela Bok, Lying, 31-38, 43-44; and Paul J. Griffiths, “The Gift and the Lie: Augustine on Lying.”
7. Both works are translated in Augustine, Treatises on Various Subjects.
8. Augustine, The Retractions, 1.26.
9. See Augustine, Greatness of the Soul, 31.63. Similarly, he elsewhere characterizes his City of God as prolix (prolixus), which provides him the excuse to focus on the apologetic purposes of the work rather than on the science of number and “appearing to parade (iactare) our little smattering of science (scientiolam) with more levity (leviter) than utility (utitiler)” (CD 11.31).
10. Augustine, The Retractions, 1.26. On the meaning of exercitatio mentis as a spiritual exercise, see Lewis Ayres, “The Christological Context of Augustine’s De Trinitate XIII: Toward Relocating Books VIII-XV,” 114-16; and Robert J. O’Connell, S.J., St. Augustine‘s “Confessions”: The Odyssey of Soul, 15-16
11. Augustine, On Lying, 1.1.
12. He elsewhere contrasts the subtlety of philosophic writing and apologetic writing, which follows a fixed rule (see CD 10.23, 15.7).
13. A. Berger, “Encyclopedic Dictionary,” 605.
14. Augustine, On Lying, 3.3.
15. Ibid., 3.3. Elsewhere, Augustine states: “For, a lie is a false signification told with a desire to deceive. But, that is not a false signification where, even though one thing is signified by another, that which is signified is nevertheless true if rightly understood” (Against Lying, 12.26). Griffiths, “The Gift and the Lie,” 27.
16. Augustine, On Lying, 13.23-24.
17. “|I|lla vero quae ita committuntur in hominem, ut eum faciant immundum, etiam peccatis nostris evitare debeamus; ac per hoc nec peccata dicenda sint, quae propterea fiunt ut ilia immundi-tia devitetur. Quidquid enim ita fit, ut nisi fieret, juste reprehenderetur, non est peccatum. . . . Nullum enim peccatum esset, quidquid propter illa evitanda factum esset. Propter haec igitur evitanda quisquis mentitus fuerit, non peccat” (ibid., 9.15).
18. Augustine, Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, 2.20.69.
19. Augustine, On Lying, 9.16.
20. This rule governs Augustine’s criticism of pagan civil theology, which lies about the gods. See CD 4.27, 6.6, 6.10.[CD as used here stands for De Civitate Dei; in English: The City of God—ed]
21. Augustine, Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, 1.16.50. See Fortin, “Problem of Goodness,” 184-86.
22. This compares with Augustine’s argument that Abraham did not sin by impregnating Hagar, Sarah’s handmaiden: “[I]n using Hagar he had guarded the chastity of Sarah his wife, and had gratified her will and not his own” (CD 16.25).
23. Augustine, Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, 1.12.36.
24. Augustine, Augustine on the Romans: Propositions from the Epistle to the Romans and Unfinished Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 72.1-74.3.
25. See Burnell, “Problem of Service.” He argues that Augustine’s affirmation of the justice of rebellion can be seen in his treatment of Rome’s expulsion of the Tarquins (CD 3.15-16), his allowance for resistance against the revolt led by Spartacus (CD 4.5, 4.15), just war (CD 19.7), and his treatment of Virgil’s monster, Cacus, as apolitical analogy (CD 19.12). This section shows that Augustine’s justification involves fulfilling the moral principle rather than in suspending it, and it extends Burnell’s discussion of the Cacus example to show that rebellion can be rightful to secure social and political goods in addition to material goods.
26. “Quasdam vero exceptiones eadem ipsa divina fecit auctoritas, ut non liceat hominem occidi. Sed his exceptis, quos Deus occidi iubet sive data lege sive ad personam pro tempore expressa iussione (non autem ipse occidit, qui ministerium debet iubenti, sicut adminiculum gladius utenti; et ideo nequaquam contra hoc praeceptum fecerunt, quo dictum est. Non occides, qui Deo auctore bella gesserunt aut personam gerentes publicae potestatis secundum eius leges, hoc est, iustissimae rationis imperium, scleratos morete punierunt).”
27. Augustine’s usage contrasts with that of John of Salisbury who signified the prince as the gerem personam publicam (Policraticus, 4.2). John equates the term with an officeholder, whereas Augustine leaves informal power open as a possibility. It also signifies an officeholder in the writings of Louis the Pious (814-840) and in the Synods of Worms and Paris (829) (see Voegelin, The Middles Ages to Aquinas, vol. 2 of History of Political Ideas, 62, 86).
28. Lendon, Empire of Honour, 16.See Livy, Ab urbe condita, 2.18. Augustine used Livy as a source of Roman history (James J. O’Donnell, “Augustine’s Classical Readings,” 160; see also Hagendahl, Latin Classics, 1:195-206). In general, see Rossiter, Constitutional Dictatorship, 15-28.
29. Mary T. Clark, “Augustine on Person: Divine and Human,” 100-107. For example, Augustine points out that Adam and Eve, each of whom carried their own persons (personam suam quisque portabat), were fully self-conscious of themselves as images of God (DT 12.12.18). See also Augustine, “Reply to Faustus the Manichaean,” in Writings against the Manichaeans and against the Donatists, 23.8.
30. Gaius, The “Institutes” Gaius, ed. Francis de Zulueta, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946-1953), 1.8-9; Justinian, Justinian’s “Institutes,” 1.3. Barry Nicholas, An Introduction to Roman Law, 60. See also A. Berger, “Encyclopedic Dictionary,” 628-29.
31. [CD as used here stands for De Civitate Dei; in English: The City of God—ed] “Quoniam omnia significantia videntur quodam modo earum rerum quas significant sustinere personas.” The term persona is carried over from the theater where it signifies the actors’ masks (CD 6.7). He uses it also to signify proclaiming, to signify the Word of God through various prophets or testimonies (CD 2.2, 2.28, 17.4, 20.20, 21.14, 22.8): Virgil poetically sketching the person of Christ (CD 10.27); the voice of nature proclaiming its truth (CD 18.2); what books generally report (CD 18.8); what pagan sacrilegious songs resound (CD 6.6); and dramatic voice, as when he speaks of Cicero speaking in another’s person (CD 5.9; see also CD 11.15, 17.12, 17.18).
32. “O di immortales! quam magnum est personam in re publica tueri principis!” (Cicero, Philippics 8.29). He also calls them “first men of the city (principes civitatis)” (8.28).
33. “|Q]ui sua dignitate personam populi Romani” (Cicero, De Domo Sua, in Pro Archia. Post Reditum in Senatu. Post Reditum Ad Quirites. De Domo Sua. De Haruspicum Responsis. Pro cm. Plancio, trans. N. H. Watts [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1923], 52.133).
34. Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture, 127.
35. Cicero makes a similar statement in De Officiis concerning the human being dedicated to the public good, although he does not use the term persona: “But those whom nature has endowed with the capacity of administering affairs (rerum gerendarum) should put aside all hesitation, enter the race for public office and take a hand in directing the republic (gerenda res publica)” (1.21.72; see also 1.25.85). Cicero presents Scipio in De Re Publica as the model statesman whose virtue makes his soul the source of justice in the polity (see Walter Nicgorski, “Cicero’s Focus: From the Best Regime to the Model Statesman,” 242-43).
36. A. Berger, “Encyclopedic Dictionary,” 640 (potestas), 494 (imperium), 661 (publicus), 529 (ius gladii) (see also Hp. 153.6.16).
37. For example, see Markus, Saeculum, 70-71. For the opposite view, see Burnell, “Status of Politics,” 20.
38. As seen in Chapter 3, Nero lacked all shame (CD 5.19).
39. Virgil, The Aeneid 8.190-305. See Burnell, “Problem of Service,” 186-88.
40. “|E]t ut suam mortalitatem adversum se ex indigentia rebellantem ac seditionem famis ad dissociandam atque excludendam de corpore animam concitantem quanta posset festinatione pacaret, rapiebat necabat vorabat.”
41. Burnell, “Problem of Service,” 187.
This except is from Augustine and the Politics as Longing in the World (University of Missouri Press, 2001)
Related Posts
