“First, however, I would like briefly to consider this question: what reason or sense is there in wanting to boast of the size and expanse of an empire when you cannot show that its people are happy.” [Augustine, City of God 4.3]
Augustine’s entire canon consists of biting off more than he can chew. He doesn’t seem to mind stepping up to look at the concept of Empire through the nation of Rome and to it’s stately face criticizing it’s function and telos. Rome is boasting of it’s size and victory while it’s citizens are not happy.
There is a gap, a discrepancy that Augustine is content to direct attention to. Rome, the empire is compared to glass as the passage thrusts forward
“Or why boast of an empire if its people always dwell in the midst of the disasters of war and the spilling of blood — the blood of fellow-citizens or the blood of foreign enemies, but, in either case, human blood — and always live under the dark shadow of fear and in the lust for blood? Any joy they have may be compared to the fragile brilliance of glass: there is always the terrible fear that it will suddenly be shattered.” (4:3).
It is the contrast, the paradox called out here that makes empire brittle. Rome shines it’s glory but is hiding it’s bloodlust. That pulling creates a beautiful fragility to a nation. Something nice to look at but dangerous to live in. As Augustine pulls this thread, questioning an entire empire, he asks questions about justice: “remove justice, then, and what are kingdoms but large gangs of robbers?” (4:4).
The descriptions used to talk about something that no one generally talks about are unflattering. Purposefully so. The City of God is building a countervailing influence in order to balance the reality of Rome. They are a human institution that shines in public areas and bleeds in private ones. Where there is no fear of removing justice in order to maintain and grow as an empire. But in doing so they never get beyond the slight of a gang of robbers. For all their boasting Augustine sees through the gilding.
And he does so because he is shifting attention. He tells the reader about the danger of boasting in anything less than God and then shifts the conversation to Rome’s plethora of gods.
We see Rome not as an empire but as the Empire and then as Augustine shifts from the nation to the gods He shows us how small both nation and idols are. Even though they are the engine and fuel for dominance and identity they cannot compare to the height and depth and breadth of God Himself.
Let us Christians, therefore, give thanks to the Lord our God — not to heaven and earth, as Cicero argues, but to the One who made heaven and earth. For He, through the supreme humility of Christ, through the preaching of the apostles, and through the faith of the martyrs who died for the truth and now live with the truth, has overthrown the superstitions which Balbus, as if stammering,117 barely begins to denounce. He has overthrown these superstitions by the free service of his people, overthrowing them not only in the hearts of the religious but also in the very temples of the superstitious. (4:30).
The question we keep seeing Augustine ask and will see him dig even deeper in the coming books is, “how is everything working for you?” Society has built lives and beliefs based on how they think things should work, or how people had hoped that things would work. But in example after example, the author detangling and creating space between belief and object of belief.
He asks how is Empire really working for you? He ask how your belief system is currently working for you? Book four covers our trust for the structure around us and the belief in us. We take years learning to build trust and to develop cultural understanding and Augustine is taking a sledge hammer to all of it. Whatever we have build that is not built on the foundation of Christ cannot stand.
Everyone appoints a single doorkeeper for his house, and, because the doorkeeper is a man, that is quite enough. But the Romans appointed three gods for the task: Forculus for the doors, Cardea for the hinges, and Limentinus for the threshold.27 Forculus, no doubt, was simply incapable of guarding the hinges and threshold at the same time as the door! (4:8).
Why does Augustine sometimes use blunt tools that smash and at the same time use fine surgical instruments that cut? It’s all to heal but the tool he uses seems to reflect the strength of the buttresses of trust we have built.
The question we keep seeing Augustine ask and will see him dig even deeper in the coming books is, “how is everything working for you?”
The nature of our motivation consists of and depends on whatever is guiding it. If we are moving forward we need to understand how it is we are doing so. What we trust and the culture in which we find ourselves are guiding principles. And they are primary motivations. Charles Taylor in A Secular Age writes, “everything depends on what guides it.” (Pg 253). Augustine is bringing all those mostly silent sometimes hidden motivations to the front to force us to deal with them. He is causing us to see them for what they are and for the strength they carry so we, the reader, can respond faithfully.
Augustine is still putting those mighty and lesser than objects in front of us, often still using blunt tools meant to make a lot of noise. Because then we can’t ignore it. As Christians we are supposed to be asking questions of trust in our lives? What are we trusting that surrounds us more than God? What do we believe will bring us salvation that is less than the grace of God?
We need to be willing to make noise and ask large questions about things bigger than us. Because those will always ask us to trust more and will continually stand in the way of trusting most.
