Augustine in His Own Words
crammed and the temples deserted, and the human race being called away from desiring temporal and fleeting goods and running towards desiring hope of eternal life and spiritual and intelligible goods, they would perhaps have said (at least if they were really the men they are remembered to be): "These things are what we did not dare to persuade people of, and we gave in to what people were used to rather than bringing them over to our faith and our outlook."
(4.7) So if these men could live their lives over again with us, they would see to whose authority people could easily turn for advice, and with a change of just a few words and sentiments, they would become Christians as many Platonists of recent times have done.61
The Old Man and the New Man
In City of God, begun more than two decades later, Augustine would read world history as a winding epic tale of two cities, the City of God and the human city, bound together here and now, but separated finally at the Last Judgment. In On True Religion, Augustine sketches an early formulation using Paul's terminology of "the old man" and "the new man." From On True Religion:
(26.48) After the labors of youth, peace in some measure is granted to old age. But from old age health deteriorates and fades, as one becomes more and more subject to weaknesses and diseases, leading to death. This is human life lived in the body, bound up with lusts for time-bound things. This is called "the old man" (Rom 6:6), or "the exterior" and "the earthly" (1 Cor 15:47), even if he obtains what the crowd calls "happiness," in a well-ordered earthly city, ruled either by kings or emperors or laws or all of them together. . . .
(26.49) A certain number live this way from this life's sunrise to its sunset. But a certain number begin this way, as is necessary, but are reborn interiorly and, with their spiritual strength and with an increase of wisdom, destroy and put to death other parts of "the old man" and bind him to the celestial laws, until after this visible death all will be restored. This is called "the new man" (Eph 4:24), or "the inner" and "the heavenly" (1 Cor 15:48–49), who is proportioned not by years, but by progress in a sort of spiritual equiva-
61. De vera religione 3.3–4.7 (BA 8:24–34); my trans. Augustine continued to commend Platonism, but became more critical, e.g., in civ. Dei, Books 8 and 10. See Frederick Van Fleteren, "Plato, Platonism," AugEncy, 651–54. On shifts in the scholarly assessment, see Robert Crouse, "Pacis Mutatis Verbis: St. Augustine's Platonism," in Augustine and His Critics, ed. Robert Dodaro and George Lawless (New York: Routledge, 2000), 37–50.