The City of Man Burns: Augustine and the Kingdom of Justice

What are kingdoms without justice? They’re just gangs of bandits.
–Augustine, City of God (Book IV, Ch 4, pub. 426)

The Christian owns preposterous privileges by virtue of union with Christ: an eschatological inheritance. The power of the Spirit. Fellowship in the body of Christ. These are the sweetest things there are, gifts so great only eternity can contain them.

Christians are members of the City of God, as Augustine framed it. It was on this realm that he set his sights, longing as he did to see his faith translate into sight. Yet Augustine did not pastor in heaven. He pastored in Hippo. He lived in the City of Man, a realm dominated by sin. In tones echoing the apostle Paul, Augustine called believers to remain engaged with their context. His focus was not triumphalistic. He wished for the church to live well in the world. In terms echoing the book of Jeremiah, he desired for Christians to seek the peace of the earthly city. So he wrote in The City of God amidst the decline of Rome:

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… (Book XIX, Ch 17)

Augustine’s focus on “agreement” and “peace” and “justice” (in the opening quotation) instructs the modern church in its mission. We must bring the gifts given to the City of God to the City of Man (Augustine’s famous descriptors of the church and the world, respectively). We must work as we can and within reasonable bounds for the good of our neighbor. We cannot abandon a lost world, lost communities, lost neighborhoods. Christians seek to promote virtue and wisdom, all so that others will see the distinctiveness of Christ, and crave it. Without promoters of justice, the world will flood with bandits.

These insights speak to the situation of the modern Christian, specifically the American kind. Our country is transitioning–the word of the year–from a Judeo-Christian republic to a progressive one. The Enlightenment may have won after all–it’s just 200 years late by the French calendar. We confront in our time genuine culture change, even cultural revolution. Abortion spills infant blood; the family suffers redefinition, with children suffering most; religious liberty, the core of historic American identity, faces grave peril.

Times like these place members of the City of God in increasingly tricky spots. We wish to emulate Augustine; we do not want to confuse our fundamental citizenship. We care far more about the heavenly kingdom than earthly kingdoms. But we cannot forget the City of Man. We know that love of our neighbor is the second greatest commandment. So Christ taught us. He also called us to be “salt and light” (Matt. 5:13). These are familiar concepts, but not safe ones. They explode like a bombshell on the quietude of our isolary evangelicalism.

The evangelical conscience is fired by Christ. Jesus did not die for the church to hide out. Jesus died for the church to swarm the world in love. This primarily means gospel proclamation, passionate and winsome, led by an army of pastor-theologians whose banner is Christ. But it means more, too. It means that we bring gospel ethics to bear on the public square.

The public square needs this witness. It needs our involvement. This is true principially, but it is also true contemporarily. In the next eight years, experts predict that no less than four seats will open up on the U. S. Supreme Court. Our next president will have the chance to appoint the judges who will, God willing, strike down Roe v. Wade. This reality alone should make every Christian sit up straight and pay attention to politics. Millions of babies’ lives are at stake.

Beyond the presidency, the next several years of American public life will either witness the increasing momentum of sexual progressivism or the strengthening the natural family. The rising tide of non-discrimination ordinances related to homosexuality and transgender orientation imperil religious groups and threaten public liberty. An immigration crisis demands presidential attention to both the rule of law and a means of citizenship. Overseas, surging Islamic terrorism and opportunistic communism necessitate both conviction and diplomatic shrewdness.

In sum, the circumstances that foretell our peril also constitute our promise. This is a time of great instability. The moment is ripe for either terrible leaders or great ones. The Center for Public Theology holds no electoral sway, and we have not been tasked with organizing super-delegates. But in 2016, we are deeply aware of the need to do our part to equip the people of God to engage the city of man. We cannot withdraw. We cannot isolate ourselves. We cannot abandon our neighbor, the one the Lord has called us to love.

The church is perhaps more than ever aware of her weakness today. On every side, it seems like there are greater needs than we can even ascertain, let alone meet. We read the headlines and wish in a moment of surging frustration that we could undo the evil that stretches around us. If we are honest, at times we feel like things are irreversibly bad. Hope can almost totally go out in our hearts. The days are evil, too evil.

In such times, we need to remember the past. The city of man has always burned. Satan asked Adam to set it aflame, and Adam did, so many years ago. Since that time, mankind has suffered, and suffered most terribly from an internal sickness: sin. The problem we most face is not at our borders, or in global hotspots, but in our own hearts.

Every Christian must wage war against the flesh (Col. 3:1-11). When this battle is joined, and when grace is coursing through our veins, bringing health to feeble bodies, then we are ready to venture out into the city of man. We find ourselves, like Augustine, in a fallen world. We cannot undo the great thread of evil all around us. But we can, by divine aid, seek to bring truth and love and hope to bear on this world.

As we begin our work at the Center for Public Theology, we do so with this kind of mission squarely in view. We seek to provide theological equipping for Christians who smell smoke and do not run from it, but run to it. The city of man burns. Gangs of bandits roam the land, as Augustine said. But the city of God is here, and God has gone before us. As we traverse kingdoms without justice, we walk in the power of Christ, citizens of the very kingdom of justice itself, a reign that will never end, and that cannot be defeated.