24 April 2008

Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine, by R. A. Markus.
New York: Cambridge University Press, c1970, 1988. 254pp.

The resourcefulness of this book is breathtaking, as is its scope, and it deserves to be read (if I can be forgiven so frank a display of academic awe) purely for the joy of watching Markus unfold his masterful collation of a great range of Augustinian themes. He admits in the preface that the exploration of St. Augustine’s vision of history sometimes led him to consider “even more distant topics, such as, for instance, Augustine’s views on prophetic inspiration, or on youth and age” (xxi), but never do these “more distant topics” seem at all out of place or overly labored; Markus simply has an eye for the subtle interconnections of the bishop’s immense corpus. The chiefly aerial image of Augustine’s development that he provides, however, is not without its drawbacks. So quickly does the argument move between texts that it is some-times difficult to keep confidence that the author is really speaking in Augustine’s voice, as one might doubt a real estate agent who moves too quickly through a house. But Augustine’s spirit, at least, is easily discernible, if not always his letter—though an appendix containing a close reading of an especially important section from City of God XIX does mitigate this concern somewhat.

The strong thesis Markus forwards in this book has become famous in the nearly four decades since its original publication: against both the ‘Constantinian settlement’ (represented by Eusebius) and the Donatists’ attempt to make a clean social break with the whole ‘world,’ including and especially the Empire, Augustine secularizes the world and the church alike, divesting them of the absolute or final significance which either has only eschatologically. The Roman Empire is not identical with the earthly city, and the Church, though it can be identified with the heavenly city in a special way, remains a corpus permixtum while on pilgrimage here on earth, the tares growing up alongside the wheat until they are sorted out at the final judgment. Indeed, according to Markus, Augustine broke ranks with many of his contemporaries by secularizing history itself: outside the total interpretation given to salvation history in the biblical canon, no his-tory can possess ultimate significance; since the Incarnation and until Christ returns, history is homogeneous, always ambiguous as to the final end of what comes to pass and always a mystery as to where and how God may be working. This, in short, is Augustine’s theology of the saeculum. The saeculum is the age where the two cities always interpenetrate, since neither can exist sociologically in the purity it is ascribed eschatologically.

The implications are many and profound. Before Augustine achieved this understanding—and according to Markus, it was indeed a heroic achievement, though one often misunderstood—it would have been necessary to instruct catechumens not only in the history of Israel but in the history of Christian Rome, since the conversion of the Empire was understood to be bringing about the fulfillment of certain prophecies. His refusal to grant saving significance to the work of the Empire, besides freeing the heavenly city from any debilitating dependence on a fleeting and self-serving historical institution, made it paradoxically possible to see in the ‘state’ more rather than less potential: not burdened by the need to fulfill all prophecy, the state might bolster the Church in its opposition as much as its support (requiring a fortitude that shakes Christians from complacency) and, in either case, exists as one place where members of the either city might work together for temporal peace. (It should be said, as Markus is careful to do, that the idea of the ‘state’ as such was an alien to Augustine, insofar as that idea suggests a clearly discernible social body separate from and over against the general populace. Markus even believes, though rather more arguably, that in the mind of Augustine the ‘state’ crumbles into a collection of individuals engaged in all different sorts of civic work.) And to name just one more consequence of Augustine’s secularization of history: re-quiring less of our current stage in human history and allowing it more ambiguity with respect to its providential purpose is, according to Markus, the move that distanced Augustine from both Eusebius and Donatus. Under Augustine’s mature evaluation, both fell to the temptation prematurely to name and circumscribe the heavenly city, exalting themselves as already the community of eschatological glory.

Markus’s procedure in the book is perfectly straightforward, which is part of what makes his argument so intelligible. In sequence, he discusses Augustine’s secularization of history (chs. 1–2), his secularization of the Roman Empire (chs. 2–3), and his secularization of the church (ch. 5)—which ideas together, he says, constitute Augustine’s theology of the saeculum. The sixth chapter deals with the most obvious possible objection: if Augustine ‘secularized’ the Roman Empire, denying its intrinsic eschatological significance, how could he also have justified Rome’s coercion of Donatists back into the Catholic fold? Markus thinks that in his repudiation of any theology of Christian empire (which did not happen until relatively late in life), Augustine lost an important part of his rationale for religious coercion—so important, in fact, that he would have had to repudiate it if he had fully thought through his theology of the saeculum. Nonetheless, Markus artfully elucidates the supports for the justification that remained in play for Augustine, showing that the issue for him was, in the end, a pastoral one and not a question of the role of the ‘state.’ Indeed, “the fact that he did not think of this problem in terms of the state, but in terms of individual members of the Church who held secular office, disguised from Augustine the acute tension between his consent to coer-cion and the implications of his theology of history and society” (p. 152). In his last chapter (ch. 7), finally, Markus takes leave of the company of historians. He turns instead to a kind of theological exposition of Augustine’s thought on the relation of church to society, abstracted (in a way possible only for theology, not history) from the broader context of his life and work as a bishop. In theology, he says, continuity is found not by repetition but by loyalty to someone’s true doctrinal aims.

This last chapter provides the easiest access to everything wonderful and everything questionable about this book—though I will not do Markus the profound injustice of an overly brief critique, which, even if true, would be inadequate to the creative depth of his proposal. This entire exposition of Augustine’s social thought is justly famous and much discussed, and no short review could hope to say what needs to be said in response. It will suffice merely to indicate, instead, that I think such a response would need to pursue more earnestly than Markus does the outline of Augustine’s ecclesiology. It would need to be said that the church in history is in a special way already identical with the eschatological city of God because it is already organized around that love, the love of God, which will animate and illuminate that city forever. And it would need to be said, conversely, that every other earthly community is much more closely allied to the eschatological earthly city than Markus seems willing to admit, precisely because it is organized around some other love than the love of God—whose only real alternative, for Augustine, is the love of self. But again: whether such concerns be right or not, the debt we owe much to this magnificent work is one not quickly or easily to be repaid. Perhaps in another forty years.

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Tags: Augustine,Book Notes,Political Theology