Politics and the Earthly City in Augustine's by Veronica Roberts Ogle (review)

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• Politics and the Earthly City in Augustine's by Veronica Roberts Ogle
• Naoki Kamimura

Veronica Roberts Ogle Politics and the Earthly City in Augustine's City of God Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020 Pp. x + 201. $99.00.

In her 2020 book, Politics and the Earthly City in Augustine's City of God, Veronica Roberts Ogle critically examines what the "earthly city" means as presented in Augustine's City of God and draws attention to the "psychagogic" function of the rhetoric of the City of God. She argues that the status of "politics" should be determined within a sacramental worldview. She also claims that Augustine expects his readers "to work for an earthly peace understood in light of amor Dei … in light of the needs of concrete human persons" (183).

Augustine's City of God, like other important works in his corpus, is a fascinating text that has addressed us with a "great and arduous task," so to speak, the response to which has always been debated and questioned. Many who have discussed the implications of Augustine's model of two "cities" for our society indicate that Augustine's pessimistic emphasis on politics most aptly expresses his contempt for the political character of our lives. Indeed, Augustinian scholarship in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has been mired in debates over conflicting positions on the status of politics in Augustine's thought. Those who have worked in this area will know well that scholars such as Ernest Fortin, Herbert Deane, Robert Markus, John Milbank, Rowan Williams, Robert Dodaro, Gerald O'Daly, and Gillian Clark have argued over whether Augustine was a political realist, whether he positioned the political sphere as a neutral space, or whether he viewed the political in a pessimistic light. Ogle provides a valuable overview of this sequence of discussions in the Introduction. With the six chapters that follow and a brief conclusion, Ogle's book joins more recent attempts (e.g., those of Eric Gregory, Michael Bruno, Richard Dougherty, Michael Lamb, and Mary Keys) to articulate Augustine's multifaceted view of political philosophy and theology.

After showing the status quaestionis and its correlation with her work in the Introduction, in Chapter One, "The Parodic City," Ogle details how Augustine's "earthly city" is a "counterfeit" or "shadow of the city of God" (41), examining the argument in Books 11–14 of the City of God and presenting amor sui as the destructive logic contained in the earthly city. Chapter Two, "The Sack of Roma Aeterna," reveals Augustine's attempt, based on his psychagogical methods, to [End Page 575] direct the reader's attention beyond the history of the city of Rome to that of the two cities. Chapter Three, "Exposing the Worldviews of Empires, Patriots, and Philosophers," exposes the problematic nature of three false solutions to amor sui—the promise of empire, the promise of political philosophy, and the promise of philosophy as a way of life—by looking at the psychagogical debate from a broader perspective. Chapter Four, "Roman History Retold," exposes the limitations of telling Roman history without distortion. His readers will be urged to shift their attention from their earthly city (patria) to the true, heavenly city. In Chapter Five, "The Sacramental Worldview and Its Antisacramental Distortion," Ogle places the two cities within what she calls Augustine's "sacramental worldview," the vision in which Augustine expects the readers of the City of God will be led to God, their creator. For Augustine, the church is the primary vehicle for liberating them from the earthly city and its superstitions and cultivating amor Dei. In Chapter Six, "The Status of Politics," Ogle, after an interpretation of Augustine's vision of secular life, articulates the role that politics should play in the sacramental worldview. As a pilgrim whose patria lies beyond any actual political community, Christians should participate in their community. In the meantime, they must do so with a humble spirit of service for the sake of amor Dei.

There are, however, a few points I found myself questioning. First, it would be persuasive for the author's reading and helpful in avoiding misunderstandings if she were to provide more clarity about what...