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12 - Augustine of Hippo

from Part II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 June 2019

By
Brian Gronewoller
Edited by
Philip L. Reynolds
Philip L. Reynolds
Affiliation:
Emory University, Atlanta
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Summary

This chapter presents four aspects of Augustine of Hippo’s understanding of both law and politics in four separate movements. The first movement argues that Augustine held that there were at least four species of law: (1) the eternal law, which is God; (2) the natural law, which is a “notion” of the eternal law “impressed” on human beings, and thus an aspect of the innate image of God; (3) the temporal law, wherein particular laws change over time and vary according to circumstance, and which includes what we should call civil or secular law (and Thomas Aquinas will characterize both as “human law” and as “positive law”); (4) divine law: a term that sometimes refers narrowly to the Mosaic law but can also express a broader concept of any laws passed down by God. The second movement presents Augustine’s two-cities model of history, which he used to explicate the relationship between the Christian religion and the secular government. The third presents Augustine’s thoughts on the Christian use of government-sponsored coercion, especially during the Donatist Controversy. The final movement outlines his theory of the just war.

Keywords

Augustine, eternal law, natural law, temporal law, politics, government, Donatists, Two Cities, just war, justice
Type
Chapter
Information
Great Christian Jurists and Legal Collections in the First Millennium , pp. 266 - 282
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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References

Further Reading

Atkins, E. M., and Dodaro, Robert (eds.). Augustine, Political Writings. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. [See the editorial introduction, xi–xxvii.]Google Scholar
Brown, Peter R. L. Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. New edition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Brown, Peter R. L. “St. Augustine’s Attitude to Religious Coercion.” Journal of Roman Studies 54.1/2 (1964): 107–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fitzgerald, Allan D. et al. (eds.). Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999.Google Scholar
Langan, John. “The Elements of St. Augustine’s Just War Theory.” The Journal of Religious Ethics 12.1 (1984): 19–38.Google Scholar
Lenski, Noel E. “Evidence for the Audientia episcopalis in the New Letters of Augustine.” In Mathisen, R. W. (ed.), Law, Society, and Authority in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 83–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Markus, R. A. Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine. Revised edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Markus, R. A. “Saint Augustine’s Views on the ‘Just War.’” In Sheils, W. J. (ed.), The Church and War: Papers Read at the Twenty-First Summer Meeting and the Twenty-Second Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, Studies in Church History 20 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), 1–13.Google Scholar
McGuckin, John A. The Ascent of Christian Law: Patristic and Byzantine Formulations of a New Civilization. Yonkers: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2012. [See ch. 6 (pp. 127–66), “A Theology of Politics and Law in the Latin West: St. Augustine of Hippo.”]Google Scholar
O’Donovan, Oliver. “Augustine’s City of God XIX and Western Political Thought.” Dionysius 16 (1987): 89–110.Google Scholar
O’Donovan, Oliver, and O’Donovan, Joan Lockwood. “Augustine of Hippo.” In O’Donovan, Oliver and O’Donovan, Joan Lockwood (eds.), From Irenaeus to Grotius: A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought, 100–1625 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 104–63.Google Scholar
TeSelle, Eugene. “Toward an Augustinian Politics.” Journal of Religious Ethics 16.1 (1988): 87–108.Google Scholar

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