What are St. Augustine’s views on state, property, war and slavery? Examine.

 State, Property, War and Slavery: Augustine defines a state as a multitude of rational creatures associated in common agreement as to the things which it loves’. The things which it loves, however, can be good or bad. Of itself it is neither just nor moral; it is worldly. This is a consequence of original sin.

Yet, it is for this very reason it is necessary to have a State. For the State to be just and moral it must follow the Christian principles of love of God and of each other for his sake. It is the duty of the Church to imbue the State with these principles. This gives the Church superiority over the State, though no right to interfere in secular matters. It may, however, invoke the power of the State, e.g. to suppress heresy.

Thus were sown the seeds of the medieval Church-State controversy. Augustine agreed strongly with the conventional wisdom of the time, that Christians should be pacifist in their personal lives.  But he routinely argued that this did not apply to the defense of innocents. In essence, the pursuit of peace must include the option of fighting to preserve it in the long term.

Such a war could not be preemptive, but defensive, to restore peace. Thomas Aquinas, centuries later, used the authority of Augustine’s arguments in an attempt to define the conditions under which a war could be just:

• First, war must occur for a good and just purpose rather than for self-gain or as an exercise of power.

• Second, just war must be waged by a properly instituted authority such as the state.

• Third, peace must be a central motive even in the midst of violence.

Augustine’s attitude in regard to slavery, and to private property in the sense of absolute dominion, is nothing new, although the lesson has not yet been learnt by the world. May it not be said that one of the things that men have been slowly learning is that rights of property are not absolute, and that they must give way to the public welfare?

This sense of property, as of absolute dominion, has dominated modern Europe through the Roman Civil Law. Yet the other sense lies behind the Civil Law. It is the presupposition of Jurists like Ulpian and the Stoics. Their teaching pointed ultimately to the end of chattel slavery.

It may point in the same direction in regard to extreme rights of private ownership. The moment you say that ownership is the creation of the law, you imply the power of revising it. The idea that something else, common ownership, is natural, and that legal division is conventional, runs throughout history. 

Augustine argues that the source of right must either be divine constitution or human. Since we hold our property by the law of the State, we must hold to the State’s laws. He does not wish to upset them. This, he says, in reply to the Donatists, in a letter to Vincentius:

“Since every earthly possession can be rightly retained only on the ground either of Divine Right, according to which all things belong to the righteous, or of human right, which is in the jurisdiction of the Kings of the Earth, you are mistaken in calling those things yours which you do not possess as righteous persons, and which you have forfeited by the laws of earthly sovereigns.

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