The City of God: Augustine's Refutation of Volusianus

[Bubba_Switzler]

This is an interpretation of Augustine that I’ve never before encountered:

It is commonly asserted that Augustine wrote The City of God to defend Christianity after the sack of Rome . That is true as far as it goes, but there is more to the story – and the proximate cause that moved Augustine to write the book has a direct bearing on his appropriation of Cicero 's pirate story and the Ciceronian concept of the political community defined by justice rather than power.

The historical record does not indicate that the sack of Rome had much impact on Augustine at first. “There is no sign here of any panic in Augustine or in his flock,” James O’Donnell writes of Augustine’s sermons in the aftermath of the sack. “There is thus little reason to think that The City of God as we have it would ever have been written if things had remained as they stood a year after the sack of Rome : the rhetorical opportunity the calamity offered might have been neglected. But then Augustine was approached privately in ways that set his pen moving with greater ambition.” [6]

What drew Augustine into political thought was not political or military events, but an urgent request from his friend Marcellinus, another leading Christian figure. Marcellinus wrote to Augustine that a mutual acquaintance of theirs – Volusianus, a high Roman official – who had long been undecided about Christianity, was perilously close to openly denouncing the faith because of the sack of Rome . Marcellinus urged Augustine to write an extended refutation of the argument against Christianity that Volusianus was considering.

…

Volusianus was worried that the strict moral rules of Christianity – especially its injunctions of meekness, turning the other cheek and so forth – inculcated political weakness and restricted rulers from doing the harsh, violent things that had to be done to protect the survival of the community. Christianity teaches that Jesus become frail and weak in order to save his people, and commands its followers to imitate him. Naturally it appeared to Christianity’s critics that this was why Rome had became frail and weak after it adopted Christianity. They charged that government could not survive for long if it were run by people whose life’s goal was the imitation of Christ.

lsu.edu/artsci/groups/voegelin/society/2008%20Papers/Greg%20Forster.shtml

[6] www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/jod/augustine/civ.html

Is this novel or common knowledge among historians?