How Dawson Read The City of God

Abstract

TO EXAMINE HOW THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY English historian Chris-topher read Augustine's City of God brings to fore-ground problem of method, since one must ask whether any apparent influences came directly from City of God or were de-rived from other sources. Augustine and had several texts in common-the letters of Paul, for instance-and it is likely that took ideas from many scholars who were influenced by Augustine. Nevertheless, what I intend to do in this article is to consider ways in which developed themes treated in City of God to illuminate modern issues while trying to indicate evidence of direct influence where possible. As Dawson's biographer Bradley Birzer writes, Dawson admitted that nearly of his ideas were 'an attempt to reinterpret and reapply Augustinian theory of history.' (1) And in his private notes calls City of God the urgent work of greatest father on most important sub-ject. (2) Knowing how read that work is therefore central to grasping significance of his own writings. basis for this article will be two of Dawson's essays, The Dy-ing and The City of published together as St. Augus-tine and His Age in Dawson's coauthored Monument to Augustine (1931). Using these two essays as an outline, this article will com-prise, first, a comparison of Augustine's view of his age with Daw-son's perspective on twentieth century presented in Progress and Religion (1929); and second, a comparison of Augustine's response to sack of Rome in City of God with Dawson's response to World Wars I and II in Judgment of Nations (1943). In this second section, I will refer to Dawson's own copies of City of God, which contain his original markings and annotations. found in City of God a vision of history as birthing process of a universal spiritual society that transcends time and that is created by charity, which alone unites humanity's religious and social instincts. I. Augustine's Age: The Dying Augustine's writing of City of God prompted by sack of Rome by Alaric and Visigoths in 410 A.D. this particular catastrophe only one episode in a collapse of Roman civilization spanning several centuries in both directions. That collapse in part due to economics. As points out in Progress and Religion, Rome an agrarian state from beginning: The foundation of her power and of her very existence peasant-soldier citizen. (3) While possessing no culture of their own, these peasant-soldiers adopted Greek ideal of paideia, which sought to produce a higher type of man through a process of intellectual and moral education. (4) And, although Rome had only negligible contributions to make to content of Greek thought, holding itself slightly aloof from speculative character of Greek philosophy, it far surpassed Greek mind in its ability to organize materials of world to embody its cultural principles. Roman attitude is summed up nicely by Quintilian: if Greeks bear away palm for moral precepts, Rome can produce more striking examples of moral performance. (5) Indeed, great agrarian republic produced some outstanding cases of classical pagan virtue. One thinks for example of Marcus Regulus, of whom Augustine writes in City of God that he was so conscientious in his worship of gods that he kept his vow to return to captivity in Carthage where he put to a torturous death. (6) But with conquest of writes Dawson, all this changed.7 At end of PunicWars and destruc-tion of republic's habitual enemy, Carthage, Rome found itself master of whole of Mediterranean, and rural Latin so-ciety transformed into an Empire. A progressive degeneration and transformation of characteristic Roman types took place. …