• “St. Augustine (354–430 AD), often called the father of Christian political thought, sought to defend Christianity after the fall of Rome and laid the foundation for medieval political philosophy.”
• Fall of Rome in 410 AD led pagans to blame Christianity for the empire’s downfall.
• They argued that Christian values like love, forgiveness, peace, mercy, and benevolence weakened Roman strength.
• Augustine, in City of God, defended Christianity against these charges.
• He argued that the true cause of decline was the ‘corruption of human nature’.
• Lust, hunger for power, domination, and greed led to loss of purity and creation of inequality.
• City of God also served as a treatise on state and politics, shaping medieval thought.
• Ernest Barker – Called Augustine the “first great political philosopher of Christianity”, as he integrated faith with political analysis.
• Charles Norris Cochrane – Viewed City of God as a defense of Christianity and a blueprint for understanding the relation between Church and State.
• Popper (indirect contrast) – Criticized Augustine’s Platonic influence, calling it a retreat from rational, open political life to religious authority
• R. W. Dyson – Augustine’s City of God is not just theology but also a classic of political philosophy, marking the shift from Greco-Roman to medieval Christian thought.

Life Sketch

• Born in North Africa, later moved to Rome for studies → became a theologian.
• Fall of Roman Empire (410 AD): Pagans blamed Christianity for Rome’s decline.
• Christianity adopted officially by Roman Empire in 337 AD.
• Augustine sought to defend Christianity against pagan accusations.
• In the Confessions (Book XI), Augustine shows his skill in philosophy shaped by Scripture.
• He introduces the idea of creation ex nihilo (creation out of nothing), rejecting the Greek belief that the world was made from pre-existing matter.
• His theory of time is psychological and subjective—based on memory and expectation—anticipating later thinkers like Kant, while challenging Greek objectivist views of time.
• In City of God (412–427), Augustine responds to pagan claims that Christianity caused Rome’s sack, situating it instead within a Christian philosophy of history.
• He rejects pagan morality, astrology, and Stoic determinism (Fate).
• He praises Christian emperors such as Constantine and Theodosius for combining virtue with fortune, and attributes Jewish endurance to their religious faith.
• Among philosophers, he admires Plato most—for recognizing God as immaterial and the source of being, and for seeing that perception does not equal truth.
• He criticizes the Stoics for condemning all passions, insisting that some, like pity or righteous anger, can serve virtue if rightly directed.
• He acknowledges the Platonists’ insight into God but faults them for denying the Incarnation.
• On spiritual beings: demons are always evil; angels may be good or fallen; the eternal is superior to the sensible world.
• He expands on the City of God, affirming that true knowledge of God comes only through Christ and Scripture.
• Theologically, he explores predestination, original sin, sexual lust as a consequence of the Fall, and the division of humanity into the City of God and the City of the Devil.
• On Scripture, he upholds the authority of the Septuagint but respects the Hebrew text as inspired.
• He correlates sacred (biblical) and secular history to create a unified timeline.
• Against Academic skeptics, he defends the truth of Scripture and insists that only true religion can ground virtue.
• He died during the Vandal siege of Hippo (modern Annaba, Algeria), reciting the Penitential Psalms.

• His death occurred about 20 years after the sack of Rome (410 AD) by Alaric.