St. Thomas and St. Augustine

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 t

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n accordance with these principles and beliefs. Considering the nature of politics in the age of Aquinas it is not surprising that he came down on the side of rule by Kings. According to Aquinas, men in society must be under rulers, and they need someone to direct them towards their end. "It is natural for man to live in association with his fellows." In order to see if this was done in accordance with the requirements of Christianity, Aquinas asked how it is that men can know what is good, assuming the basic precept of the religion that God is good and therefore His works must be good. He believed that man has a natural knowledge of what is necessary to his life only in a general way, using his reason to move from general principles to the knowledge of particular things that are necessary for human life. Based on this kind of reasoning, one could assume that something is done in the right way when it is led to its appropriate end and in the wrong way when it is led to an inappropriate end. The proper end of a group of free men is different from that of a group of slaves, for a free man determines his own actions while a slave is one who belongs to another. Aquinas believed that one ruler works best. However, if a government
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