from the Northern Lights
St. Augustine, the Limits
of Moral Action, and Politics
by John von Heyking
John von Heyking is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Lethbridge. He is an author and editor and has edited Vols 7 and 8 of the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. His biographical notice is found here. The following is taken from his book Augustine and Politics as Longing in the World, which is available here from the Publisher. This excerpt is taken from chapter 4 of the book, "Ordo Amoris and Political Prudence" and appears here with permission. This appears in three parts.
The Compatability of Personal Virtue and Politics
People hope and pray that their nation will enjoy peace, security, and at least a modicum of neighborly flourishing. They are willing to suffer and bear large amounts of corruption and injustice in the body politic until a time comes when measures are required to save the polity, and perhaps even the cause of justice in the world. Unfortunately, people in such dark times generally are least likely and least suited to save their polity; thus hoping for such action is like hoping for nature to act outside its usual course that would allow a corrupt body politic to decompose and die. Saving the cause of justice in the world and preserving political life requires unusually austere virtue. The devil tempted Christ with a kingdom over the world.
Can one preserve political life without losing one's soul by proclaiming oneself Caesar? Augustine is usually seen to think that one cannot preserve one's virtue, or at least that one can keep one's soul only if one follows the absolute rules of engagement as set by Scripture and by the Church. Taking extreme actions in extreme circumstances is forbidden because forbearance and submission purify the soul.
We will try to show that Augustine, though not denying the virtue of forbearance, thought that one can know the right and good, and act upon it, through right-by-nature, and that moral and political reasoning is not restricted to the application of universal rules to all circumstances. His treatment of political reasoning is considered where following the letter of the law would have disastrous consequences in rare extreme circumstances (lying, adultery, and tyrannicide and rebellion). What appear as exceptions to the absolute rule (based either on natural law or on God's commandment) actually fulfill the law's purpose.
Thus, Augustine thought that God's absolute commandments forbidding actions are inverted ways of expressing what human beings naturally desire when they ordinately love God and neighbor. Augustine is never explicit about this, although he provides clues that allow the reader to collect together and interpret discussions about disparate but related topics, such as knowledge of miracles and special divine providence, and understand the totality of their interconnections as his final view. Thus, he forces the reader to practice forbearance by taking a circuitous route that enables him to understand fully Augustine's account of how one can know and obtain the just when it appears that doing so breaks the letter of the law. Augustine told Firmus, his literary agent, that the City of God [De Civitate Dei, abbreviated here CD—ed] was to be read repeatedly (Ep. 231A).
For Augustine, the quality or order of love (ordo amoris) determines virtue: "For though it be good, it may be loved with an evil as well as with a good love: it is loved rightly when it is loved ordinately; evilly, when inordinately" (CD 15.22). As will be shown, ordinate love is not "love and do what you will (ama et fac quod vis)," as Augustine's ethics is sometimes interpreted. Prudence allows one to choose good instead of evil, and to direct one's appetites to the good (CD 19.4; see also 4.21; DLA 1.13.27; DT 12.12.17, 12.14.21, 14.8.11, 14.9.12). Virtue consists in ordinate desire, in knowing and loving rightly.
Political virtue does not require perfect virtue, derived from seeing God directly, but rather on "inferior righteousness," by which one's ordinate love prevents one from sinning:
Forasmuch, however, as an inferior righteousness (iustitia minor) may be said to be competent in this life, whereby the just man lives by faith although absent from the Lord, and, therefore, walking by faith and not yet by sight, it may be without absurdity said, no doubt, in respect of it, that it is free from sin; for it ought not to be attributed to it as a fault, that it is not as yet sufficient for so great a love to God as is due to the final, complete, and perfect condition thereof.
It is one thing to fail at present in attaining to the fulness of love, and another thing to be swayed by no lust . . . . Only let us see to it that we so constitute the soul of man in this corruptible body, that, although it has not yet swallowed up and consumed the motions of earthly lust in that super-eminent perfection of the love of God, it nevertheless, in that inferior righteousness . . . gives no consent to the aforesaid lust for the purpose of effecting any unlawful thing.1
Such "inferior righteousness" is not saintly or perfect virtue, but it is still justice because it rejects sin and is anchored by the love of God. This affirmation of justice in worldly activity compares with Augustine's observations that political and other worldly goods are good in their own way, as seen in the first two chapters. As will be seen, Augustine acknowledges that the rare statesman can avoid the Caesarian temptation of consenting to the unlawful lusts in political activity, and, indeed, in performing acts otherwise regarded as unjust. All can be tempted to become Caesar, and most will succumb to such temptation, which helps to explain why Augustine's rhetoric is so antipolitical. However, Augustine's theory of virtue allows for a few to reject the temptation. As his language of "inferior righteousness" or minor justice (iustitia minor) indicates, Augustine's political rationality does not allow expediency to guide action.2
Even though it is "inferior righteousness," Augustine's understanding of judgment necessitates that he requires a higher achievement of righteousness than a natural-law ethic and certainly higher than an ethic based on expediency. He argues that wisdom and ordinate love help to determine one's capacity to judge:
So far as freedom of judgment is concerned, then, the reason of a considerate human being is far different from the necessity of one who is in need, or the desire of the pleasure-seeker. For reason considers what value a thing has in itself, as part of the order of nature, whereas necessity considers how to obtain what will meet its need. Reason considers what appears to be true according to the light of the mind, whereas pleasure looks for whatever agreeable thing will gratify the body's senses. (CD 11.16; see also DT 3.3.8, 12.2.2, 13.13.17)
Practical wisdom exercised through an understanding of right-by-nature does not provide a more easygoing ethic than natural law ethics. On the contrary, it requires the disciplining of the mind and the desires to be directed to their proper objects so one will know and desire to use and enjoy one's proper objects in the right way. Augustine observes that, since the human mind is mutable, judgment improves as one's mind is exercised: "The judgment of the more talented (ingeniosior) will be better than that of the slow-witted (tardior); that of the skilled (peritior) than that of the unskilled (inperitior); that of the more experienced (exercitatior) than that of the less exercised (minus exercitatus); and, as the same person grows more proficient, so does his judgment become better than it was formerly" (CD 8.6).
Augustine elsewhere links this wisdom and experience to his teaching of practical rationality when he points out that something that appears wicked according to convention and natural law may not be wicked if the person performing the act is guided by right desire: "[W]hat is generally speaking wicked in other people is the sign of something great in one who is divine or a prophet" (DDC 3.44).3 Citing biblical examples, Augustine argues that some people can act in ways that are otherwise wicked, but that such people are virtuous on account of their right desire and wisdom. Although the previous quotation is taken from his early On Christian Teaching, his treatment of biblical examples in his later City of God reflects the same view.
Such virtue enables one to perceive the principles underlying the multiplicity of various manifestations of justice in the world. Augustine states that his carnal ways of thinking prevented him from understanding how the universally valid end of loving God and neighbor could find expression in a diversity of laws and customs: "Nor did I know that true and inward righteousness which judges not according to custom but according to the most righteous law of Almighty God. By that law, mores of different places and times are shaped as is best for those places and times; itself in the mean time being the same always and everywhere; not another thing in another place, nor otherwise upon another occasion" (Conf. 3.7; see also Ep. 138.4).4 The just is constant and changes according to circumstance, and Augustine thought that knowledge of that depends on intellectual and moral virtue.
One of the difficulties in handling such knowledge is that Augustine had to explain God's special revelations and particular providence to his readers. How can the love of God and neighbor be constant if God demands different ways of expressing them? Not only their manifestations but also their very principles appear to change. According to the guiding interpretive principle, explicated in the examples below, Augustine regarded special revelations and particular providence as explicable in terms of natural causation. That is, God's revelations do not contradict the political and moral precepts that would derive from a kind of natural theology, such as the one Augustine saw in the Platonists, even though such a theology would not necessarily on its own obtain the same kind of insight that is gained by God's revelation. Frederick Crosson explains how Augustine relates the miraculous events in his own life in terms of natural causation:
No event in the Confessions is brought about by a situation inexplicable in terms of natural causes. Nature is a self-enclosed whole, not independent in its being from God but a whole whose course is adequately explainable in terms of immanent natural causes. Even the telling of the extraordinary event of hearing in a child's voice in the garden, the overtone of a divine command never questions that the voice comes from children playing next door.5
According to this view, divine agency, such as God's mysterious command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (which Augustine treats as an exception to the injunction against killing, as seen below), does not suspend or overturn the order of nature. For Augustine, the insights that direct such action derive from a wisdom of the whole on which the hierarchy of human ends depends. Thus, action based on knowledge of right-by-nature is, for Augustine as for Aristotle, a way of translating the right, which is eternal, into the realm of changing circumstance.
We now turn to three examples of moral and political reasoning in which Augustine theorizes in terms consistent with right-by-nature: lying, adultery, and rebellion. He is generally considered to prohibit all three, but evidence shows that "inferior righteousness" permits them under certain conditions.
Moral Reasoning in Extreme Circumstances
1. Lying
Augustine's general rejection of speaking falsehoods is based on the biblical injunction.6 He justifies prudent action in extreme circumstances by arguing that such action appears as lying but in fact effects the principle of loving God and neighbor and attempting to educate one's neighbor to do the same.
Several texts support this argument. The main texts are On Lying (written 395 a.d.) and the later Against Lying (written 419 A.D.).7 The former is a general treatise, whereas the latter is a response to Spanish priests who wished to infiltrate the heretical Priscillianists in order to convert them to orthodoxy. Augustine argues in the later treatise that lying in all cases, especially in matters of faith, is prohibited because it prevents people, such as the Priscillianists, from taking Christianity seriously. The prohibition against lying is made clear, as would be expected for a treatise intended to diffuse a potentially dangerous situation in which priests thought they could lie to promote Christianity. This greater clarity in the latter text is often taken to represent Augustine's mature view.
However, Augustine's own view on the matter is that the earlier On Lying is "obscure, prolix, and troublesome (obscurus et anfractuosus et omnio molestus)."8 In The Retractions, he states that he prefers his later Against Lying because it is an overt attack on lying, meant to correct the Spanish priests, whereas On Lying is more theoretical. This indicates he distinguished the two works in terms of style and subtlety, not in content. One of the terms he uses to describe On Lying is anfractuosus, a term he also uses to describe the twists and turns of dramatic dialogues, such as those he wrote.9 He also characterizes the work as an exercitatio mentis, a spiritual exercise meant to train one for intellectual and moral virtue.10
His view that On Lying is theoretical and prolix does not mean that it was immature, but, rather, indicates that its character is more that of a subtle philosophic dialogue than a direct, dogmatic work. This subtlety is signaled at the beginning of On Lying:
I shall treat this question so carefully as to seem to be seeking truth myself along with my questioners. Whether I shall succeed in this quest the treatise itself will indicate sufficiently to the attentive reader, even though I assert nothing rashly. The problem is involved; because of certain profound and intricate issues, its solution often eludes the comprehension of the one probing it, so that what has been ascertained at one moment escapes one, at another moment reappears and is once more apprehended. In the end, however, it will, like a carefully laid snare, seize upon our mind. If there is error in this presentation, I think that, since truth frees one from all error and lack of truth enmeshes one in all error, it is better to err by an excessive regard for truth and by an equally emphatic rejection of falsehood."
This passage indicates that nothing is asserted rashly, or even directly, in this treatise, and that Augustine's ideas will be clear only to the attentive reader, for whom the truth will "seize upon our mind." Inattentive readers will fail to come to this conclusion, and for them, the nature of lying will have to be presented with error "by an excessive regard for truth and by an equally emphatic rejection of falsehood."12 Augustine's discussion leans toward expressing the truth as if it were lawlike in order that, if he should err, he should err toward expressing what is generally true.
In other words, he prescribes the usual required practice, as the general prohibition against lying demands. If we attend to the styles of writing that were common in Augustine's time, we find that this view is consistent with Roman legal practice where the term obscurus, used by Augustine to describe this treatise, referred to obscure expressions of will that are to be interpreted in a way "which seems more likely or which mostly is being practised. "13
His analysis of lying indicates that the final purpose of telling a falsehood is a more important consideration than the performance of the act itself:
He lies, moreover, who holds one opinion in his mind and who gives expression to another through words or any other outward manifestation. For this reason the heart of a liar is said to be double, that is, twofold in its thinking: one part consisting of that knowledge which he knows or thinks to be true, yet does not so express it; the other part consisting of that knowledge which he knows or thinks to be false, yet expresses as true. As a result, it happens that a person who is lying may tell what is untrue, if he thinks that things are as he says, even though, in actuality, what he says may not be true. Likewise, it happens that a person who is actually lying may say what is true, if he believes that what he says is false, yet offers it as true, even if the actual truth be just what he says.14
Lying consists of the double heart (duplex cor) where the speaker represents the truth with the false. The concept of double heart leads him to state: "For, a person is to be judged as lying or not lying according to the intention of his own mind, not according to the truth or falsity of the matter itself . . . . In reality, the fault of the person who tells a lie consists in his desire to deceive in expressing his thought (in enuntiando animo suo fallendi cupiditas)." Lying is sinful because it damages the conformity of the inner and external human being, of inner thought and intention and external deed. Lying is prohibited,therefore, because it damages one's soul, and, as Paul J. Griffiths perceptively notes, lying "is an action that incoherently repudiates the central conditions of its own possibility, which is God's gift."15 
[This is the first of 3 parts. Part 2 will appear next week.]
NOTES
(for fuller citations see the bibliography in Professor von Heyking's book)
1. Augustine, "On the Spirit and the Letter," in Anti-Pelagian Writings, 36.65.
2. See Fortin, review of Augustine and the Limits of Politics, by Jean Bethke Elshtain, 367.
3. "Ita quod in aliis personis plerumque flagitium est in divina vel prophetica persona magnae cuiusdam rei signum est."
4. "Et non noveram iustitiam veram interiorem non ex consuetudine iudicantem, sed ex lege rectissima dei omnipotentis, qua formarentur mores regionum et dierum pro regionibus et diebus, cum ipsa ubique ac semper esset, non alibi alia nec alias aliter."
5. Crosson, "Structure and Meaning," 32.
6. See Rist, Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized, 192-93; Kenneth W. Kemp and Thomas Sullivan, "Speaking Falsely and Telling Lies," 152; Fortin, "Problem of Goodness," 186; Sissela Bok, Lying, 31-38, 43-44; and Paul J. Griffiths, "The Gift and the Lie: Augustine on Lying."
7. Both works are translated in Augustine, Treatises on Various Subjects.
8. Augustine, The Retractions, 1.26.
9. See Augustine, Greatness of the Soul, 31.63. Similarly, he elsewhere characterizes his City of God as prolix (prolixus), which provides him the excuse to focus on the apologetic purposes of the work rather than on the science of number and "appearing to parade (iactare) our little smattering of science (scientiolam) with more levity (leviter) than utility (utitiler)" (CD 11.31).
10. Augustine, The Retractions, 1.26. On the meaning of exercitatio mentis as a spiritual exercise, see Lewis Ayres, "The Christological Context of Augustine's De Trinitate XIII: Toward Relocating Books VIII-XV," 114-16; and Robert J. O'Connell, S.J., St. Augustine's "Confessions": The Odyssey of Soul, 15-16.
11. Augustine, On Lying, 1.1.
12. He elsewhere contrasts the subtlety of philosophic writing and apologetic writing, which follows a fixed rule (see CD 10.23, 15.7).
13. A. Berger, "Encyclopedic Dictionary," 605.
14. Augustine, On Lying, 3.3.
15. Ibid., 3.3. Elsewhere, Augustine states: "For, a lie is a false signification told with a desire to deceive. But, that is not a false signification where, even though one thing is signified by another, that which is signified is nevertheless true if rightly understood" (Against Lying, 12.26). Griffiths, "The Gift and the Lie," 27.
