Augustine in His Own Words
was founded as a great city, once a Christian emperor founded it, lost its oldtime false gods. Yet it grew, and it's still growing, and still stands. As long as God wills, it'll stand. Now, just because I say this, I'm not promising eternity even for that city. Carthage stands in the name of Christ, but in the old days Caelestis was overthrown because she wasn't heavenly, but earthly. . . .
(13) But our people were there [in Rome] too, and they were afflicted. But they knew how to say: "I will bless the Lord at all times" (Ps 33:2). They were afflicted in terms of the earthly kingdom, but they did not lose the kingdom of heaven. Instead, they were made better for it through tribulation's tough exercises. And if they did not blaspheme in their terrible sufferings, they came out of the kiln as fire-hardened jars and filled up with the Lord's blessing. These blasphemers, on the other hand, are following after earthly things, longing for earthly things, pinning their hope on earthly things, even though—whether they want or not—they lose all that stuff. What's left? Where will they stay? Nothing on the outside, nothing on the inside, empty coffers, emptier consciences. Where will they find rest? Where salvation? Where hope? Let them come, therefore, and stop blaspheming and learn to adore [God]. Let these stinging scorpions be gobbled up by the Hen. Let them be ingested and converted into her body. Let them, on earth, be trained; let them, in heaven, be crowned.21
Objections of Pagan Aristocrats
Augustine alludes repeatedly to pagan nay-sayers who blamed Rome's sack on Christianity. Who were they? One group was a circle of highly educated aristocrats who gravitated around a senator named Volusianus. This group came to Augustine's attention through his friend Flavius Marcellinus, the imperial commissioner who had overseen the resolution of the Donatist controversy. These pagan aristocrats objected to Christianity on various grounds. They dismissed Jesus' miracles as small stuff compared to celebrated pagan miracle-workers, and they regarded the Incarnation as so much nonsense. One politically sensitive objection was that Christian ethics was not only a bizarre foreign import, but was plainly destructive of the militarism required to maintain an empire. They were wary of voicing objections too publicly and passed on their concerns to Augustine via Marcellinus. In this passage Marcellinus stresses that Augustine's response will make the rounds and should therefore be "a brilliant solution." From Flavius Marcellinus, preserved as Letter 136 in Augustine's corpus:
21. S. 105.9–13 (PL 38:622–25); my trans.
On the City of God 325
(1) The receipt of your Reverence's letter made such an impression on the man [Volusianus], who was being drawn away from adherence to the faith by the influence of many—and there are plenty of them in this city—that, as he admitted himself, he would not have recoiled from the length of such a letter if he could have confided to your Beatitude every doubting thought he had. And, to the extent that you yourself will deign to agree, he has earnestly asked to have certain difficulties solved for him in that cultured and exact language of yours and that shining splendor of Roman eloquence. The question has become a much-discussed one, and the cleverness of those who defame the dispensation of the Lord's Incarnation is quite well known in this group. Because I trust that whatever you write in answer will be profitable to many in this group, I approach you as a petitioner, asking you to be so kind as to answer that point carefully, in which they falsely maintain that the Lord did no more than other men were able to do, and they bring up for our benefit their Apollonius22 and Apuleius23 and other men adept in magic who, according to their claim, worked greater miracles.
(2) But that above-mentioned illustrious man said in the presence of several people that there were many questions which could fitly be added to this one, as I said before, except that he, on his side, had some regard for epistolary brevity. But he did not pass them over in silence, even though he would not write them, for he said that, even if an explanation of the Lord's Incarnation were given him today, it would still be hard to make plain to him why this God, who is established as the God of the Old Testament, should delight in new sacrifices, having rejected ancient ones. He insisted that a thing cannot be corrected unless it was proved to have been wrongly done before, or at least, that what was rightly done once should never be changed. He said it was wrong to change right things, largely because such useless action could ascribe fickleness to God, and he added that His preaching and doctrine were not adaptable to the customs of the state. This, indeed, is said by many, such, for instance, as His teaching that we should not return evil for evil to anyone; that we should turn the other cheek when anyone strikes us (Mt 5:39); that we should let go our cloak when anyone takes our coat (Mt 5:40); and, when anyone forces us to go with him, we should go twice as far (Mt 5:41); all of which he says is contrary to the laws of the state. For who could allow anything to be taken from him by an enemy, or who would not wish to return evil, as the law of war allows, to the ravager of a Roman province? Your Reverence understands what can be said about the rest. Thus, he believes, even if he
22. "Apollonius": Apollonius of Tyana (late 1st cent.) was a neo-Pythagorean philosopher; his biographer, Philostratus (late 2nd cent.), portrays him as a sage, miracle worker, and exorcist. See John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 2:576–81.
23. "Apuleius": Apuleius of Madauros (active, 150s), a North African philosopher and novelist, best known for his Metamorphoses (also known as The Golden Ass [Asinus Aureus]); see Tim Whitmarsh, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Latin Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Augustine discusses Apuleius's On the God of Socrates (De deo Socratis) in civ. Dei 8.14–22 and 9.8–16 and discusses Metamorphoses in civ. Dei 18.18. Augustine also contrasts Jesus' miracles with the magic attributed to Apuleius in ep. 102.32, 137.13, and 138.18–19.