ABSTRACT

This chapter seeks to determine what worldly rule means to Augustine of Hippo in the work De civitate Dei. It discusses the conceptual thought forming forces that are at play in his attempt to integrate polytheistic and monotheistic, heathen and Christian ‘states’ into God’s plan and to provide a comprehensive framework in which politically organised communities can be compared. In the De civitate Dei, Augustine looks at worldly ‘states’ from an eschatological point of view; all worldly ‘states’ are planned and controlled by the Christian God. The Christian Roman empire and emperors are much less criticised than the pagan Roman ‘state’; in fact, they are mainly praised. Augustine presents the polytheistic Assyrians in the East as the typos and the polytheistic/pre-Christian Romans in the West as the antitypos. In comparison with the Assyrians, Augustine believes that the Romans faced the bigger challenge and did the better job in terms of the military subjection of other races.