Augustine on the relationship between the two cities in law.
The motivation of those outside of Christ is always less than the highest good, and thus the reason for Law and the order it brings is merely personal peace in this life to those without a spiritual life. Egoistically speaking, Augustine sees that the non-Christian has as an intent only selfishness, and so though they may receive the Laws of God for practical purposes and their morality might have points of identity with Christian ethics on how a Civil state should be governed, being outside of the grace of God and having their own pleasure and well being as their ultimate goal, in every good law they ordain, they still break the Law. The Law is love, and love of the self the source of every ill of man. As Calvin said it, self denial is the essence of every Christian virtue. But this confusion of proper ends toward merely pragmatic or “proximate” goals is ordained by God, so that there will be some semblance of peace on the Earth during this time when there are two worlds grinding against each other. A city of God and a city of man. We use the same Law but to a different final end.
This next line is very important to understanding Augustine especially as a precursor to all who come after him.
“Consequently, so long as it lives like a captive and a stranger in the earthly city, though it has already received the promise of redemption, and the gift of the Spirit as the earnest of it, it makes no scruple to obey the laws of the earthly city, whereby the things necessary for the maintenance of this mortal life are administered; and thus, as this life is common to both cities, so there is a harmony between them in regard to what belongs to it….” Augustine.
In other words, they live by the same laws.
“This heavenly city, then, while it sojourns on earth, calls citizens out of all nations, and gathers together a society of pilgrims of all languages, not scrupling about diversities in the manners, laws, and institutions whereby earthly peace is secured and maintained, but recognizing that, however various these are, they all tend to one and the same end of earthly peace.” Augustine.
“It therefore is so far from rescinding and abolishing these diversities, that it even preserves and adopts them, so long only as no hindrance to the worship of the one supreme and true God is thus introduced. Even the heavenly city, therefore, while in its state of pilgrimage, avails itself of the peace of earth, and, so far as it can without injuring faith and godliness, desires and maintains a common agreement among men regarding the acquisition of the necessaries of life, and makes this earthly peace bear upon the peace of heaven; for this alone can be truly called and esteemed the peace of the reasonable creatures, consisting as it does in the perfectly ordered and harmonious enjoyment of God and of one another in God.”
“When we shall have reached that peace, this mortal life shall give place to one that is eternal, and our body shall be no more this animal body which by its corruption weighs down the soul, but a spiritual body feeling no want, and in all its members subjected to the will. In its pilgrim state the heavenly city possesses this peace by faith; and by this faith it lives righteously when it refers to the attainment of that peace every good action towards God and man; for the life of the city is a social life.” Augustine.
The life of the city is a social life, both in the City of God and the City of man. And thus both live under one law, one code, one rule, and one Ruler, that being God Himself, but whereas the city of God obeys all things, submits to all things, endures all things, sufferers all things for the ultimate end of reaching their heavenly home, and they do all of these things as a means to a final good, the World uses the same as a means to the end of their own pleasure.
But it being social does not at all imply the social power to create the good, nor the true. The community, the social life is an effect, not the cause of the of the truth of God’s presence and power, both in the act of creation and even now as the ultimate good end of all things.
Christopher Neiswonger
