St. Thomas and St. Augustine On Political Institutions
St. Augustine lived during the fourth and fifth centuries, during the time of the fall of the Roman Empire, just at the moment when Christianity became the state religion of the Empire, but at a time when it was still competing with other religions and was not dominant. St. Thomas Aquinas lived at the height of the Middle Ages, when Christianity in the form of the Catholic Church was dominant throughout Europe. Thus, the two men looked at the world differently when they wrote about the relationship of political institutions and religiously-inspired standards on which to define the justness of society.
"The City of God" was first conceived as an effort to develop the arguments that would reconcile Christianity with the legitimate demands of political life. Augustine lacked interest in politics. "As far as this mortal life is concerned, which is lived out and ended in a few days, it matters little under whose rule a human being marked for death lives, so long as those who govern do not force him to impiety and sin." As Augustine saw it, God distributes earthly kingdoms to the good and the bad alike, so his worshippers will not covet these as "something great." It makes no difference that in this life some human beings should be kings and others subjects since all of them are destined for an afterlife in which there are neither kings nor subjects. This is a view of a man living in a society that is falling apart, who is in search of a way of surviving the fall; for Augustine, this meant a concentration on the individual life in order to find salvation. However, for Augustine, the choice was between civilization and barbarism, and he personally came down on the side of civilization - not because it was inherently good, but rather because it held within it a better chance of defending and attaining the good than the alternative of barbarism.
For Augustine, Christianit...