Catholic Thought discussion

Summary

Subchapters
- The Ends of the Two Cities: the Supreme Good and the Supreme Evil
- Varro: Possible Positions on the Supreme Good
- Varro’s Position on the Supreme Good and the Life of Happiness
- The Supreme Good and the Supreme Evil according to the City of God: Eternal Life and Eternal Death
- Happiness, the Supreme Good, Cannot Be Found in This Life
- The Struggle of the Virtues against the Vices: Temperance, Prudence, and Justice
- Fortitude and the Question of Suicide
- The Miseries of Social Life: the Household and the City
- The Miseries of Social Life: the World
- The Miseries of Social Life: the Angels and the Demons
- The Meanings of Peace
- The Universal Desire for Peace
- Peace and Order
- Earthly Peace and Eternal Peace
- Sin and Slavery
- Earthly Peace and the Two Cities
- The Issues of Certainty and Style of Life
- The Definition of a Republic
- Justice and the True God: against Porphyry
- An Alternate Definition of a People
- Earthly Peace and the City of God
- The Supreme Evil: Eternal Misery


The central theme of Book XIX are an extrapolation of how the two cities will culminate. Again Augustine relies on the philosophical writings of Marcus Varro as to what makes a good life, and Augustine argues that the good life is only found in the City of God through the living out of virtue. Ultimately happiness cannot be found in the earthly life. He argues that the City of Man can only culminate into a life of misery. Earthly life for Augustine is nothing more than a trial on which we try to reach a sense of peace. Peace is connected to the ultimate good, which is innate to the City of God. In trying to obtain this peace, what we are really striving for is a “peace in the eternal life.”

These two quotes sum up his thesis:

When we reach this peace, our life will not be mortal but rather fully and definitely alive, and our body will not be the animal body which, so long as it is corrupted, weighs down the soul, but rather the spiritual body, in need of nothing and wholly subject to the will. So long as the heavenly city is on pilgrimage, it has this peace in faith, and by this faith it lives justly when it directs toward the attainment of this peace every good act it performs for God and—since the life of a city is most certainly social—for neighbor.

And

The supreme good of the city of God is, then, eternal and perfect peace, not the peace through which mortal men pass on their way from birth to death but rather the peace in which they remain as immortals and no longer suffer any adversity at all.

Yes, that is what Book XIX is about—worldly wisdom—“the arguments by which mortals have tried to contrive happiness for themselves in the midst of all the unhappiness of this life" for God alone can offer happiness in afterlife.

St. Augustine has a good argument against the Stoics: “I am at a loss to understand how the Stoic philosophers can presume to say that these are not ills, though at the same time they allow the wise man to commit suicide and pass out of this life if they become so grievous that he cannot or ought not to endure them.” (p. 678) Jumping to our twenty first Century we see legality of euthanasia spreading. Active voluntary euthanasia is legal in some eight countries, including USA, passive refusal of treatment/withdrawing of life support in many more and both illegal in three countries of the world. An update in today’s news had it that another European country which is considered 80% Catholic, established a commission to study legalizing it.

I found these two passages to be at the core of Book XIX. First on what the end is of the City of God (eternal life) and how to achieve it (to live rightly through faith).

If, then, we are asked what the city of God would respond when questioned on each of these points, and, first, what view it holds about the ultimate good and evil, its response will be that eternal life is the ultimate good and eternal death the ultimate evil, and that to attain the one and avoid the other we must live rightly. That is why Scripture says, The just person lives by faith (Rom 1:17). For we do not yet see our good, and, as a consequence, we must seek it by believing. Nor is it in our power to live rightly by our own efforts unless we are helped in believing and praying by the one who gave us the very faith by which we believe that we must have his help.

And here he details how to live rightly.

But what is it that we will to achieve when we will to be made perfect by the ultimate good, unless it is precisely that the desires of the flesh should not oppose the spirit and that we should not have this vice in us for the desires of the spirit to oppose? But, since we are unable to achieve this in this present life, no matter how much we may will it, we can at least see to it, with God’s help, that we do not give in to the desires of the flesh that oppose the spirit or allow the spirit to be overcome, and that we are not drawn into committing sin by our own consent. God forbid, then, that we should imagine, so long as we are caught up in this internal warfare, that we have attained the happiness we wish to reach by our victory. And who is so fully wise that he no longer has to engage in any struggle against his fleshly desires?

In short, to not be drawn in to committing sin by our own consent.”