On the Road with the Pilgrims of Augustine’s City of GodRobert C. Thornett

July 11, 2005

Preface

If motion has a tendency to catch the eye, I suppose it was the motion of

Augustine’s pilgrims, making their way through a foreign land, which made them catch

mine. The path these travelers would take and the nature of their interactions with those

they would meet were not readily apparent to me on a first reading. Moreover, the fact

that Augustine was able to recall the metaphor of pilgrimage with frequency from

beginning to end of the 1200+ page City of God pointed to its durability over a long haul.

I chose to follow the metaphor of pilgrimage in this paper, bringing it into focus in the

hopes of distinguishing some aspects of the truth in it that makes it so durable.

Introduction: A Sixth Sense

“I will call these two classes and two cities, speaking allegorically. By two cities I mean two societies of human beings, one of which is predestined to reign with God for all eternity, the other doomed to undergo eternal punishment with the Devil.”1

Augustine, City of God

pilgrim2

1 : one who journeys in foreign lands : WAYFARER2 : one who travels to a shrine or holy place as a devotee

The expressions “the lucky few” and “a few good men” have both perhaps

applied to no group more aptly than to Augustine’s pilgrims of the City of God. These

blessed souls are predestined to take a place eventually amongst the angels in the eternal

City of God. In the meantime, they wander the earth “on pilgrimage in this mortal state.”3

In the journey homeward towards their Heavenly city, they intermingle with the

unfortunate masses, the members of the City of Man, who are on no sort of pilgrimage.

These poor souls live lives of futility, ever attempting the impossible, to establish a home

1 St. Augustine, City of God, Penguin Ed. 1972, Trans. Henry Bettenson, (London: Penguin Books) XV, 12 Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, http://www.m-w.com/, 7/12/05 6:00 pm 3 Augustine, City of God, XVIII, 32

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in this world. Whatever pseudo-homes they do build are destined for eventual

destruction; nevertheless, they erect earthly kingdoms, through which the pilgrims of the

City of God must wander.

There are some noteworthy quirks in the basic scenario of this pilgrimage. First,

no one’s citizenship is known, even to themselves, until the Last Judgment. Second,

home is not the starting point but the end. Third, home is a place the travelers have never

been, since man was created “abroad” from earthly dust; the journey cannot be described

either as from home or back home. Finally, the destination, the Heavenly city, is “not of

this world.”4 As a result, the trip requires another sense beyond the earthly senses, and

Augustine asserts the wayfarers walk “by faith, not by sight.”5 Only the pilgrims of the

City of God are endowed with this sixth sense, which Augustine calls “our own special

possession.”6 The City of Man, lacking this special possession, is inevitably lost.

Men in Motion

Unlike the earthly senses, faith does not lead the pilgrim to any place or anything

tangible. Rather, it leads him to a way of life, “a life of righteousness.”7 This way of life,

in turn, results in Heavenly peace, “the perfectly ordered and completely harmonious

fellowship in the enjoyment of God, and of each other in God.”8 This peace cannot be

attained through isolation and inaction; the pilgrim must go out and get it, connecting

with God and with other people. He has “the attainment of [Heavenly] peace in view in

4 ibid, XVIII, 325 ibid, XIX 146 ibid, XIX, 277 ibid, XIX, 178 ibid, XIX, 17

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every good action [he] performs in relation to God, and in relation to a neighbor, since

the life of a city is inevitably a social life.”9

The pilgrim’s life of righteousness, then, is less so withdrawn and passive i.e.

monastic and more so social and active i.e. missionary. Augustine provides two rules for

the social aspect of righteous actions: a) “do no harm to anyone” and b) “help anyone

whenever possible.”10 The active aspects “consist in the forgiveness of sins rather than in

the perfection of virtues.”11 Here, Augustine appears to mean virtue not in the sense of

piety but in the sense of skill. Mastery of skills, so emphasized in modern education, is

not the measure of all things; there is nothing necessarily wrong in it, and it may aid

righteousness, but it is not righteousness in itself. By the active forgiveness of sins,

Augustine refers not only to the pardon of wrongs done to one personally, but to the

active healing of any damage caused by sin. (I will return to this topic further along.)

The City of God on earth, then, as befits pilgrims, is a city in motion. Its “faith is

put into action by love,”12 helping others and palliating sin where it can. Because their

home is not of this world, the pilgrims remain on the road, not slowing down to attempt

to establish a home here. Of course, because the travelers are mortal in this life, they must

occasionally make a pit stop for a tune-up and refueling, or, as Augustine puts it, “the

adjustment of the body parts in due proportion” and “an adequate supply of pleasures.”13

Even though they enjoy these temporal blessings, they do not tarry any longer than

necessary over them so as to become “taken in…or distracted from [their] course towards

9 ibid, XIX, 1710 ibid, XIX, 1411 ibid, XIX, 2712 ibid, XIX, 1413 ibid, XIX, 14

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God.”14 The wayfarers’ loyalties and affections for the Heavenly city do not permit them

to forget their homeward journey, and they are always ready to move on.

A Vicious Cycle

As mentioned earlier, Augustine maintains that the members of the City of Man

are not endowed with faith, the special gift and sixth sense of the City of God.

Consequently, these unlucky souls are left only with the earthly senses they do have,

which, unfortunately, do not guide them very far. The earthly citizens are taken in by the

allure to these earthly senses of lower, temporal goods. Absent faith, they have nothing to

remind them that such lower goods were not created to be a destination in and of

themselves, but only to be helpful supports in a journey towards the higher good,

Heavenly peace. Thus, the members of the City of Man would seem to slow down,

lingering too long over temporal goods, indulging in them to excess and hence increasing

“the burdens of ‘the corruptible body which weighs heavy on the soul.’”15 As the burdens

get heavier, they would slow the faithless even further; nonetheless, without faith to call

them to a higher journey, they continue pruriently to seek the lower goods. The

establishment of earthly kingdoms, as Augustine posits them, parallels both these

tendencies, in that such kingdoms are a) stationary i.e. slowed to the point of immobility

and b) have only the securing of temporal goods as their aim. Augustine speaks to the

legitimacy of kingdoms of such dubious foundations:

“To help us form our judgment, let us refuse to be fooled by empty bombast, to let the edge of our critical faculties be blunted by high-sounding words like ‘peoples’, ‘realms’, ‘provinces’… Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but gangs of criminals on a large scale? What are criminal gangs but petty kingdoms? A gang is a group of men under the command of a leader, bound by a compact of association, in which the plunder is divided according to an agreed convention.

14 ibid, XIX, 17, from the Bible, Wisdom 9: 1515 ibid, XIX, 17

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If this villainy wins so many recruits from the ranks of the demoralized (my emphasis) that it acquires territory, establishes a base (my emphasis), captures cities and subdues peoples, it then openly arrogates to itself the title of kingdom, which is conferred on it in the eyes of the world, not by the renouncing of aggression but by the attainment of impunity.”16

As such kingdoms subdue more and more peoples, the obstacles to motion in the City of

Man would seem only to increase, until the original aim of the citizens, the securing of

lower goods, is threatened. The result would be territorial wars. Augustine describes such

wars fought between those who value only lower goods:

“If the higher goods are neglected…and those other goods are so desired as to be considered the only goods, or are loved more than the goods which are believed to be higher, the inevitable consequence is fresh misery, and an increase of the wretchedness already there.”17

The City of Man, then, is trapped in a vicious cycle, pinned down by its own

prurience and made more wretched by ill-intentioned conflicts.

Proceeding With Caution

It is in the City of Man, however, that the pilgrims of the City of God must live. It

appears that, from Augustine’s vantage point, the earthly kingdoms have a monopoly on

the lower goods which the travelers need as supports; the City of God on earth is thus

forced to lead “what we may call a life of captivity in this earthly city”18 in order to make

use of these lower goods. It is noteworthy that the citizens of the City of God do not enter

the City of Man by free choice. Whether they would leave if given the chance is not

certain, but clearly they are not on a voluntary mission to save it; in fact, they have no

escape from it as long as they are on earth.

Inside the earthly city, the wayfarers’ inherently social, active nature necessarily

forces them into frequent contact with sin, exposing their earthly senses, “the inlets of

16 ibid, IV, 3-417 ibid, XV, 418 ibid, XIX, 17

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sin,”19 to temptation. The pilgrims will not withdraw into passivity and hiding; yet, they

must take “the most prudent precautions”20 as they move, for everywhere the traps of

temptation lay set:

Oh, the hourly dangers that we poor sinners here below walk in! Every sense is a snare, every member a snare, every creature a snare, every mercy a snare, and every duty a snare to us. We can scarce open our eyes but we are in danger; if we behold those above us, we are in danger of envy; if those below us, we are in danger of contempt; if we see sumptuous buildings, pleasant habitations, honor and riches, we are in danger to be drawn away with covetous desires; if the rags and beggary of others, we are in danger of self-applauding thoughts and unmercifulness. If we see beauty it is a bait to lust; if deformity, to loathing and disdain.21

As they are mortal, the travelers are far from immune to these vices. Through

forgiveness, however, they “are restored to health.”22 By this, Augustine does not seem to

mean that the act of forgiving is directly self-healing. Rather, by forgiving and moving

on, instead of multiplying one transgression by another, the travelers avoid fomenting

existing discord to a point at which “no one will be able to see God.”23 The aim, then, is

damage control; it is certainly not the reformation of society. The best one can hope for is

to maintain a sufficiently salutary atmosphere to prevent those capable of seeing God, the

pilgrims, from being pulled down by the undertow of conflict.

Righteous actions, then, in the form of forgiveness, support those who can already

see God by keeping them upright and their line of sight clear, but they cannot bring the

City of Man out of the darkness into which it has fallen. Conversion from without is out

of the question; only God, “with his inward grace”24 which “helps in wonderful and secret

ways,”25 can bring about a “changed mind…that brings a greater tranquility, here and

now.”26 Without “the Holy Spirit…at work internally, …no preaching of the truth is of 19 ibid, XIX, 1720 ibid, XX, 821 ibid, VII, 1222 ibid, XV, 623 ibid, XV, 624 ibid, XV, 625 ibid, XV, 626 ibid, XV, 6

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any help to man.”27 This could mean that the pilgrims, despite their outgoing, healing

nature, are not missionaries; or, it may mean that the duty of missionaries should not be

to convert, as is it often conceived, but only to stem the flow of conflict due to sin where

possible.

This aspect of Augustine’s thought is disconcerting, not because God must be at

work internally in order to bring about salvation, but because God chooses to work in

some and not in others. Of course, Augustine prevents this from being grounds for

discrimination by adding that no one but God knows who is blessed and who is not. But it

is still difficult to accept, perhaps more spiritually than rationally, that, if sin is illness, as

Augustine often refers to it, the City of Man is beyond recovery, a lost cause. Augustine

offers a gloomy metaphorical view of this state of affairs:

The Church on earth is a mere hospital; which way ever we go we hear complaining; and into what corner soever we cast our eyes we behold objects of pity and grief; some groaning under a dark understanding, some under a senseless heart, some languishing under unfruitful weakness, and some bleeding for miscarriages and wilfulness, and some in such a lethargy that they are past complaining; some crying out of their pining poverty; some groaning under pains and infirmities; and some bewailing a whole catalogue of calamities, especially in days of common sufferings when nothing appears to our sight but ruin; families ruined; congregations ruined; sumptuous structures ruined; cities ruined; country ruined; court ruined; kingdom ruined; who weeps not, when all these bleed?28

Healing, then, not revolution, is necessary, for the earthly city is more worthy of pity than

of anger. The travelers must therefore be “vessels of mercy” rather than “vessels of

wrath.” 29 For Augustine, decay, not affluence, is the norm, making the goal of a perfect

society unthinkable. A partial remedy is enough for pilgrims to hope for, and is possible

only through “patient endurance,”30 proceeding with caution so as not to permit the

ubiquitous cries of anguish in this world to cause them to forget their homeward journey.

27 ibid, XV, 628 ibid, VII, 1529 ibid, XV, 630 ibid, XIX, 17

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