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Augustine and Contemporary Political Theory: Toward an Augustinian Republicanism

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Augustine in a Time of Crisis

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Abstract

Augustine’s political thought has witnessed a renaissance in recent years as political theorists and theologians have appropriated Augustinian insights for their constructive and critical purposes. This chapter surveys the three most influential varieties of political Augustinianism within contemporary political theory, including the realism of Reinhold Niebuhr and Herbert Deane; the liberalism of Robert Markus, Paul Weithman, and Eric Gregory; and the communitarianism of John Milbank and Stanley Hauerwas. It also identifies a fourth and emerging strand—republicanism—that might be better equipped to diagnose and address the crises of our age.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This chapter is adapted from Michael Lamb, “Augustine and Political Theory,” in T&T Clark Handbook of Political Theology, edited by Rubén Rosario Rodríguez (New York: T&T Clark, 2020), pp. 89–116. Reproduced with permission of T&T Clark.

  2. 2.

    On Augustine’s influence, see Karla Pollmann, ed., The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine , 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); and Allan D. Fitzgerald, ed., Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999). On Augustine’s contemporary reception, see Michael J. S. Bruno, Political Augustinianism: Modern Interpretations of Augustine’s Political Thought (New York: Fortress Press, 2014).

  3. 3.

    See, for example, Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans, ed. and trans. R. W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 1. Pref., V.12–14, XIV.13, XIV.27–8, XIX.5–8, XIX.12, XXII.22–3. Hereafter “COG.”

  4. 4.

    For an overview, see Bruno, Political Augustinianism, pp. 63–117.

  5. 5.

    Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), p. 33.

  6. 6.

    Reinhold Niebuhr, “Augustine’s Political Realism,” in The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses, ed. Robert McAfee Brown (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), p. 124.

  7. 7.

    Ibid., pp. 124–6.

  8. 8.

    Ibid., pp. 127.

  9. 9.

    Herbert A. Deane, The Political and Social Ideas of St. Augustine (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), pp. xiii, 230, 241.

  10. 10.

    Ibid., pp. 13–77, 56, 234–6; cf. pp. 46, 50, 59–60, 117, 144.

  11. 11.

    Ibid., pp. 56, 59.

  12. 12.

    See ibid., pp. 66, 116–17, 143.

  13. 13.

    Ibid., pp. 117, 140–1, 102.

  14. 14.

    Ibid., pp. 117, 152.

  15. 15.

    Ibid., pp. 151–2, 240.

  16. 16.

    Ibid., pp. 221–3, 240–3.

  17. 17.

    Jean Bethke Elshtain, Augustine and the Limits of Politics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), p. 19. Cf. Michael Lamb, “Between Presumption and Despair: Augustine’s Hope for the Commonwealth,” American Political Science Review 112.4 (November 2018): 1036–49; and Michael Lamb, “Beyond Pessimism: A Structure of Encouragement in Augustine’s City of God,” Review of Politics 80.4 (Fall 2018): 591–624.

  18. 18.

    Elshtain, Augustine and the Limits of Politics, esp. pp. 19–47, 89–118; cf. Jean Bethke Elshtain, “Augustine,” in The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology, ed. Peter Scott and William T. Cavanaugh (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 35–47.

  19. 19.

    John von Heyking, Augustine and Politics as Longing in the World (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001), esp. pp. 1–50.

  20. 20.

    Eric Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), pp. 319–62; Charles Mathewes, A Theology of Public Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 74–142; Sarah Stewart-Kroeker, “Resisting Idolatry and Instrumentalization in Loving the Neighbour: The Significance of the Pilgrimage Motif for Augustine’s Usus-Fruitio Distinction,” Studies in Christian Ethics 27.2 (2014): 202–21; Joseph Clair, Discerning the Good in the Letters and Sermons of Augustine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 75–106. Cf. John Bowlin, “Augustine Counting Virtues,” Augustinian Studies 41.1 (2010): 277–300; and Luke Bretherton, Christianity and Contemporary Politics: The Conditions and Possibilities of Faithful Witness (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), pp. 3–6, 71–125.

  21. 21.

    Lamb, “Between Presumption and Despair,” and Michael Lamb, “A Commonwealth of Hope: Reimagining Augustine’s Political Thought,” unpublished manuscript.

  22. 22.

    Lamb, “Beyond Pessimism.”

  23. 23.

    Lamb, “Between Presumption and Despair,” and “A Commonwealth of Hope.”

  24. 24.

    See Lamb, “Between Presumption and Despair,” and “A Commonwealth of Hope.”

  25. 25.

    COG XIV.28.

  26. 26.

    Ibid.

  27. 27.

    Ibid., I.35.

  28. 28.

    Ibid.; cf. XV.22, XVIII.54.

  29. 29.

    See Bruno, Political Augustinianism, pp. 39–62, and Eric Gregory and Joseph Clair, “Augustinianism and Thomisms,” in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Political Theology, ed. Craig Hovey and Elizabeth Phillips (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 180–2.

  30. 30.

    R. A. Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 45–71; Gregory, Politics, p. 77. For overviews, see Gregory, Politics pp. 83–95, and Bruno, Political Augustinianism, pp. 127–34.

  31. 31.

    Markus, Saeculum, p. 101.

  32. 32.

    Ibid., p. 133.

  33. 33.

    See Michael Hollerich, “John Milbank, Augustine, and the Secular,” Augustinian Studies 30.2 (1999): 311–26 at pp. 320–2; Gregory, Politics, pp. 83–95. For a more schematic explanation of Markus’s liberal assumptions, see Michael Lamb, “Augustinian Republicanism,” unpublished manuscript.

  34. 34.

    Markus, Saeculum, p. 173.

  35. 35.

    Ibid., p. 151.

  36. 36.

    COG XIX.24; Markus, Saeculum, pp. 64–71.

  37. 37.

    COG II.21, XIX.21.

  38. 38.

    Markus, Saeculum, p. 65.

  39. 39.

    Ibid., pp. 173–4.

  40. 40.

    Ibid., p. 174.

  41. 41.

    R. A. Markus, Christianity and the Secular (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), pp. 2–3, 49.

  42. 42.

    Ibid., pp. 6–7.

  43. 43.

    See ibid., pp. 7, 49–69, esp. pp. 66–9.

  44. 44.

    Paul J. Weithman, “Toward an Augustinian Liberalism,” in The Augustinian Tradition, ed. Gareth B. Matthews (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999) pp. 304–322.

  45. 45.

    Ibid., p. 308; cf. pp. 309–13.

  46. 46.

    Ibid., pp. 313–14.

  47. 47.

    Ibid.

  48. 48.

    Ibid., pp. 313–16. Weithman (pp. 305, 314, 320 n. 7–8) cites John Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” University of Chicago Law Review 64 (1997): 765–807; and Robert Audi, “The Separation of Church and State and the Obligations of Citizenship,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 18 (1989): 259–96.

  49. 49.

    Weithman, “Augustinian Liberalism,” pp. 318–19.

  50. 50.

    Ibid., pp. 318–19, 321–2 n. 37.

  51. 51.

    Ibid., p. 307.

  52. 52.

    Gregory, Politics, pp. 10, 80–1, 107–25.

  53. 53.

    Ibid., pp. 14–15, 19–22, 38–9, 68–9, 82–95.

  54. 54.

    Ibid., pp. 14–15, 20–2, 35–47, 72–3, 77–81.

  55. 55.

    Edmund Santurri, “Rawlsian Liberalism, Moral Truth, and Augustinian Politics,” Journal of Peace and Justice Studies 8.2 (1997): 1–36.

  56. 56.

    Gregory, Politics, pp. 23, 58–74, 95–125.

  57. 57.

    Ibid., pp. 107–25.

  58. 58.

    Ibid., pp. 149–96.

  59. 59.

    Ibid., pp. 188–96; cf. pp. 12, 18–19.

  60. 60.

    See Markus, Christianity and the Secular, p. 49, and Gregory, Politics, p. 2.

  61. 61.

    See COG XX.5; Augustine, On Christian Teaching, trans. R. P. H. Green (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 1.15.14; Augustine, Letters 156–210, Vol. II/3, trans. Roland Teske, ed. Boniface Ramsey (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2004), Letter 199.11.45.

  62. 62.

    COG XX.9.

  63. 63.

    On Augustine’s eschatology and its implications for politics, see Kristen Deede Johnson, Theology, Political Theory, and Pluralism: Beyond Tolerance and Difference (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 140–173; and Lamb, “A Commonwealth of Hope.”

  64. 64.

    See COG XIX.17.

  65. 65.

    See, for example, Augustine, Letter 87.7–8, Letter 100.1, Letter 153.19, and Letter 220.4, in Political Writings, ed. E. M. Atkins and Robert Dodaro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 141–2, 134–5, 82–3, 220; COG XIX.17; and Robert Dodaro, “Church and State,” in Fitzgerald, ed., Augustine through the Ages p. 182.

  66. 66.

    COG XIX.17.

  67. 67.

    John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 382–442, at pp. 383, 440. For overviews, see Bruno, Political Augustinianism, pp. 140–7; Gregory, Politics, pp. 125–48; and Hollerich, “John Milbank, Augustine, and the Secular.”

  68. 68.

    Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 392.

  69. 69.

    Ibid., p. 404; cf. p. 406.

  70. 70.

    Ibid., p. 410.

  71. 71.

    For Milbank’s analysis of MacIntyre, see ibid., pp. 327–81, esp. pp. 327–33. On his preference for communitarian politics, see John Milbank, interview with Nathan Schneider, “An Orthodox Paradox: An Interview with John Milbank,” The Immanent Frame, March 17, 2010. Accessed online at https://tif.ssrc.org/2010/03/17/orthodox-paradox-an-interview-with-john-milbank/.

  72. 72.

    See Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 392; cf. pp. 382–3.

  73. 73.

    Ibid., p. 392; cf. John Milbank, “An Essay Against Secular Order,” Journal of Religious Ethics 15.2 (1987): 199–224, at 207.

  74. 74.

    Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, pp. 428–9, 440–2; John Milbank, “‘Postmodern Critical Augustinianism’: A Short Summa in Forty-Two Responses to Unasked Questions,” Modern Theology 7.3 (1991): 225–37, at 229.

  75. 75.

    Stanley Hauerwas, After Christendom? How the Church Is to Behave If Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation Are Bad Ideas (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1991), pp. 8–9, 20–2.

  76. 76.

    Ibid., pp. 16, 26–31, 35.

  77. 77.

    Ibid., p. 18; cf. pp. 27–35; Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Social Ethic (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), pp. 72–86.

  78. 78.

    Hauerwas, Community of Character, pp. 73–5, 83–6; After Christendom?, pp. 26–31.

  79. 79.

    Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), pp. 87–95, 96–115; Community of Character, pp. 74, 83–6; cf. After Christendom?, pp. 43–4.

  80. 80.

    Hauerwas, After Christendom?, p. 39.

  81. 81.

    Ibid., p. 19.

  82. 82.

    Ibid., p. 40.

  83. 83.

    Ibid., p. 41.

  84. 84.

    For criticisms of Milbank and Hauerwas, see Gregory, Politics, pp. 125–48; and Jeffrey Stout, Democracy and Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 92–117, 140–61.

  85. 85.

    Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 413.

  86. 86.

    Hauerwas, After Christendom?, p. 18; cf. Community of Character, p. 85.

  87. 87.

    See, for example, Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, pp. 407–8, 411, 441–2; Hauerwas, After Christendom?, pp. 36–8, citing Denny Weaver, “Atonement for the Nonconstantinian Church,” Modern Theology 6 (1990): 307–23; and Hauerwas, Community of Character, p. 74. For analysis, see Stout, Democracy and Tradition, pp. 100–7, 140–61; Gregory, Politics, pp. 125–48, esp. p. 135; and Hans Boersma, “On the Rejection of Boundaries: Radical Orthodoxy’s Appropriation of Augustine,” Pro Ecclesia 15.4 (2006): 418–48.

  88. 88.

    I develop the following analysis in Lamb, “Augustinian Republicanism.”

  89. 89.

    See Quentin Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); and Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

  90. 90.

    Gregory and Clair, “Augustinianism and Thomisms,” pp. 186–90. In his Augustinian “civic liberalism,” Gregory blends aspects of civic republicanism with liberalism (Politics, p. 10).

  91. 91.

    John von Heyking, “Disarming, Simple, and Sweet: Augustine’s Republican Rhetoric,” in Talking Democracy: Historical Perspectives on Rhetoric and Democracy, ed. Benedetto Fontana, Cary J. Nederman, and Gary Remer (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 2004) pp. 163–186; and von Heyking, Augustine and Politics, pp. 1–109.

  92. 92.

    Charles Mathewes, “Augustinian Christian Republican Citizenship,” in Political Theology for a Plural Age, ed. Michael Jon Kessler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 218–249.

  93. 93.

    Paul Cornish, “Augustine’s Contribution to the Republican Tradition,” European Journal of Political Theory 9.2 (2010): 133–48.

  94. 94.

    Ibid., pp. 133–4, 144.

  95. 95.

    Ibid., p. 144. However, Cornish frequently equates “coercion” with “slavery” or “domination” in ways that obscure the fact that political rule can be coercive without be dominating (pp. 137–8, 143). See Michael Lamb, “Augustine and Republican Liberty: Contextualizing Coercion,” Augustinian Studies 48.1–2 (2017): 119–59, at pp. 142–6.

  96. 96.

    Cornish, “Augustine’s Contribution,” pp. 144–5; cf. pp. 141–2.

  97. 97.

    Ibid., p. 145; cf. pp. 142–4.

  98. 98.

    Ibid., p. 145.

  99. 99.

    Lamb, “Augustine and Republican Liberty.”

  100. 100.

    Ibid., pp. 142–6.

  101. 101.

    Augustine, On the Free Choice of the Will, ed. and trans. Peter King (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), I.15.32.

  102. 102.

    Lamb, “Augustine and Republican Liberty,” pp. 147–9.

  103. 103.

    Ibid., pp. 133–7, 149–51.

  104. 104.

    Ibid., pp. 151–5.

  105. 105.

    Weithman, “Augustinian Liberalism,” pp. 317–18.

  106. 106.

    Stout, Democracy and Tradition, pp. 63–91.

  107. 107.

    Lamb, “Between Presumption and Despair,” pp. 1044–5.

  108. 108.

    COG XIX.14, alluding to Cicero, On Duties, ed. M. T. Griffin and E. M. Atkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 1.31.

  109. 109.

    See Lamb, “Between Presumption and Despair,” pp. 1044–5.

  110. 110.

    COG XIX.3; cf. COG XIX.13, XIX.16. On concord and civic friendship, see Elshtain, Augustine and the Limits of Politics, pp. 38–9, 96–7; Elshtain, “Augustine,” pp. 38–44; von Heyking, Augustine and Politics, pp. 77–89; von Heyking, “Disarming, Simple, and Sweet,” pp. 182–4; Gregory, Politics, pp. 350–62; and Lamb, “Between Presumption and Despair,” pp. 1044–5.

  111. 111.

    I am currently working on a book to address such questions. On “historical” versus “rational reconstruction,” see Richard Rorty, “The Historiography of Philosophy: Four Genres,” in Philosophy in History, ed. Richard Rorty, J. B. Schneewind, and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 49–75. For this distinction applied to interpretations of Augustine, see Gregory, Politics, p. 2.

  112. 112.

    Lamb, “Augustinian Republicanism.”

  113. 113.

    See Joseph Clair, “The New Republicanism without Religion?” Political Theology 19.5 (2018): 397–420.

  114. 114.

    Lamb, “Augustinian Republicanism.”

  115. 115.

    I am grateful to the editors for including this chapter in the volume; to Eric Gregory, Bolek Kabala, David Meconi, Rubén Rosario Rodríguez, and Cameron Silverglate for helpful feedback; to William Morgan for careful research assistance; and to Wake Forest University for valuable research support.

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  1. Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, USA

    Michael Lamb

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  1. Department of Political Science, Tarleton State University, Stephenville, TX, USA

    Boleslaw Z. Kabala

  2. Department of Political Science, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX, USA

    Ashleen Menchaca-Bagnulo

  3. St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Nathan Pinkoski

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Lamb, M. (2021). Augustine and Contemporary Political Theory: Toward an Augustinian Republicanism. In: Kabala, B.Z., Menchaca-Bagnulo, A., Pinkoski, N. (eds) Augustine in a Time of Crisis. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61485-0_15

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