h; however, City of God is not only an essay in political organization but also a moral journey from pre-Christian ignorance to a community distinguished by the collective experience of grace and the preeminence of the persuasive/coercive moral authority of the Church. Augustine's elaboration the "classical account" of the formation of political/social organizations is suffused with "the insight of Christian pessimism" (Paolucci xiii), particularly toward the structure of civil society that is secular or pagan (the Roman state) rather than divinely sanctioned (the city of God).
Writing in the fourth century A.D., Augustine disposes of the difficulty posed by the historical failure of the city of God to arrive in the earliest years of Christianity; persecutions suffered by the early Christians are attributed to the residue of earthly-kingdom evil and the profoundly unjust Roman republic and empire. As regards the failure of Christian states to avoid the misery of barbarian conquest, he cites "that divine providence which is wont to reform the depraved manners of men by chastisement, and which exercises with similar afflictions the righteous and praiseworthy" (Augustine, Political 46). More intractable for Augustine is the problem of evil, for the leap of faith in the ultimate good that reason cannot quite grasp does not quite escape the problem of evil, which is the quagmire of history. Augustine's articulation of the problem ties together the goodness of God, the presence of evil, the nature of reality, and man's free will.
Where is evil, then, and whence and how crept it hither? What is its root, and what its seed? Or hath it no being? Why then fear we and avoid what is not? Or if we fear it idly, then is that very fear evil whereby the soul is thus idly goaded and racked. Yea, and so much a greater evil, as we have nothing to fear, and yet do fear (Augustine, in Fremantle 42).
In Augustine's view, evil is nonexistent, or if i...