What Hath Christianity To Do with Politics? (Part 2): Augustine and the Roman Empire
A truly good political leader, [Augustine] argues, is one who views himself as a repentant sinner and who prefers to see God praised instead of himself. Similarly, a truly good citizen is one who refuses to flatter his political leaders or treat them as gods. Thus, both political leaders and citizens should lean heavily on God’s grace if they wish to cultivate true political virtue and true patriotism.
The early church forged its thinking about politics from Scripture and in the context of a decadent pagan Roman Empire. It grappled with how best to further the Christian mission in such a context. Should it withdraw from the political sphere, given its persecuted minority status within the empire? Conversely, should it expend the majority of its energies to political activism? Or, is it best to make a third way between these two extreme ends of the “religion and politics” spectrum?
As the early church grappled with this tangle of questions, it began to form some conclusions. Those conclusions found their fruition in the writings of Augustine of Hippo, especially from his book, City of God. Thus, given the fact that Bible-believing Americans inhabit a minority position in our own increasingly pagan nation, it is helpful for us to reflect on Augustin’s conclusions.
Augustine’s writings are the last flowering of the ancient period and the first blossoming of the medieval era. During this transitional era, Augustine wrote often about politics and public life. Early on, he embraced a Platonic view in which society was hierarchically ordered and in which individuals could attain “the good” through their own moral striving. Eventually, and especially in the wake of the Pelagian controversy, he rejected this view and revised his view of politics. No longer was social order meant to embody an overarching cosmic order, thus leading the good citizen on an ascent to the good life. Instead, it was meant, more minimally, to minimize disruptive forces and keep society from disintegrating. His mature political theology stressed the havoc that sin and idolatry wreaks on the individual and on society. Fallen individuals are possessed of inordinate love—they worship created goods rather than the God who created those goods. Moreover, the individual idolatries of a society coalesce at the political level to corrupt and misdirect the political realm.
Indeed, the backdrop for Augustine’s most significant treatment of politics—City of God—is not only the sacking of Rome but also Augustine’s emphasis on depravity and corresponding rejection of the Pelagian view. In the aftermath of Rome’s sacking, certain pagan intellectuals blamed Rome’s fall on its adoption of Christianity and its subsequent rejection of the Roman religion, politics, and philosophy. In City of God, Augustine responded to the religious objection by arguing that the Roman gods were immoral and even laughable; not even the famous historian of religion, Marcus Varro, believed in their divinity. He responded to the political objection by showing that Rome’s boasting about its political justice was a mask for its real love which was raw power and domination. Third, he responded to the philosophical objection by arguing that Rome’s philosophers, brilliant as they were, were inhibited by their pride from believing in Christ’s incarnation and resurrection, and thus were incapable of understanding the deepest truths of the world. Thus, if Roman society wished to be healthy politically, it should more fully embrace Christ and more fully reject the pagan founding narrative along with its gods and philosophies. In embracing Christ rather than idols, a person becomes a member of the eternal city of God rather than the city of man, and thus engages in the political realm with his affection set on God rather than on idols.
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Jesus is Here
When we let God be God, our life is better. It’s when we forget his omnipresence—and his other attributes—that we start attempting to control our own lives, and then everything goes to shambles. But here’s the remarkable thing. With Jesus being omnipresent that doesn’t mean he’s only watching you from a distance or just “keeping an eye on you.” No. He is both transcendent and personal to us. He is imminent. He is near.
“Jesus keeps me safe,” Jovi, my oldest daughter, quietly said as I tucked her in the other night.
“Yes, he will always keep you safe,” I said, while hugging her.
“He is not here,” Jovi responded.
It was in that moment I knew I could send a sense of reassurance into Jovi’s toddler-sized heart. She is only 2.5 years old, so I understand she can only process so much. But I knew she remembers things well.
“Oh, sweetie,” I said, “Jesus is here. He is with you, with me. He is everywhere.”
She replied, “Jesus is here.”
To ensure she knew my point even more, I replied, “I know you can’t see Jesus, but I promise He is here. He is always with you.”
The next day my wife told me as she was putting her down for a nap, Jovi randomly said, “Jesus is here.”
Let the heart melting begin.
I knew I didn’t need to explain the mysterious intricacies of the omnipresence of Jesus—how can he be everywhere at once? But I knew the fact that he is with her would calm her for the night and, better yet, she’d remember it. And she did.
Christian, I tell this story to give you—to give me, to give all of us—a reminder. Jesus is here with us. He is not distant, far off, or lost. He is here and cares for us.
Jesus, as the second Person of the Trinity, is not confined to time and space. He is transcendent. He is truly everywhere at once. He is just as much in the future as he is in the present.
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On Letting Your Kids Go
Commend them to the grace of God, trusting in your own heart that God loves them even more than you do and that his plan for them is even better than your own. Pray for them and pray with them as you part and make this your final and ultimate petition before the Lord: nevertheless, not as I will but as you will. Oh, and remember to treat them like adults.
I won’t ever forget the day we dropped Nick at college. We had driven him down to Louisville, Kentucky where he had enrolled in pre-seminary studies at Boyce College. We had helped get his little dorm room all set up. We had dropped by the bookstore and picked up the last of his textbooks. We had attended the orientation meetings and the chapel service. We had huddled together to pray. And now there was just one thing left to do—begin our journey home and leave him behind.
As I drove along Lexington Road and made my way toward I-64, Aileen sat beside me and wept. She did not weep gently. She did not weep in such a way as to have a few tears trickle gently down her cheeks. No, she wept as if her heart had been torn in two. Hours later we arrived home and, as we began to settle in for the evening, I had my own moment of emotion when it came time to lock the doors, for I realized that I was no longer locking all my children in to the safety of our home, but this time locking one of them out.
We adjusted quickly, of course. Nick thrived at Boyce and we took great joy in his joy. How could we lament his absence when he was doing so well, learning so much, and growing so substantially in wisdom and godliness? Two years later we had to do it again when Abby headed down to join him. We found her departure a little bit easier having gone through it once, but also a little bit harder in that it came in the midst of a pandemic that had very nearly closed the border between our countries. In August of this year we will do it all again, Lord willing, when Michaela journeys down to take up her studies there. This time we will be empty-nesters, at least for the duration of the school year.
A friend recently asked for some guidance for parents whose children are leaving home, perhaps to go to school or perhaps to join the military or perhaps just to begin an independent life. “What counsel might you give them” she asked? I thought I’d take a few minutes to consider it. Here’s what I came up with.
First, I would encourage parents to deliberately begin loosening their oversight well before their children leave.
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The Hope We Have in Christ When Work Feels Meaningless
If someone sees their job as Groundhog Day, what encouragement is offered them by seeing their work as an opportunity for sanctification? It can seem like a stretch, but Bacote voiced his confidence on how we can find hope in this idea: “Sanctification is a great lens for our view of work when the job (or dimensions thereof) seems meaningless because our encounter with doldrums brings us face to face with how we think about and pursue life.” Living the same day over and over gives Conners the chance to evaluate his behavior and priorities. Bacote shared that we’re afforded a similar opportunity.
It’s considered the most spiritual film of all-time, the king of “divine comedies”. Watching it on a regular basis is thought to be a key to enduring happiness as it speaks about the importance of life and work.
By “it” I mean Groundhog Day, the 1993 comedy starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, in which, in Charles Murray’s concise synopsis:
An egocentric TV weatherman played by Bill Murray is sent to Punxsutawney, Pa., to cover Groundhog Day. He hates the assignment, disdains the town and its people, and can’t wait to get back to Pittsburgh. But a snowstorm strikes, he’s stuck in Punxsutawney, and when he wakes up the next morning, it is Groundhog Day again. And again and again and again.
When watching the film one weekend, I was struck by a conversation that Murray’s character, Phil Conners, has with another character named Ralph:
Phil: “What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?”
Ralph: “That about sums it up for me.”
“That about sums it up” for a lot of us when we’re at work. We often feel stuck, like none of the work we do matters – to God or anyone else.
We may not live the same day over and over again like Conners. For us, time marches on. But, like Conners, we do wake up each day with the opportunity to grow in grace and maturity.
Though work sometimes feels like Groundhog Day, endlessly meaningless, it’s still an opportunity to grow in sanctification.
Work Is an Arena for Sanctification
I once explored this idea over e-mail with Dr. Vincent Bacote, a professor of theology at Wheaton College and an IFWE guest contributor who has written about work as an arena for sanctification.
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