Jonathan Teubner: Imperial and pastoral power: a reconsideration of political Augustinianism

Scholars of political Augustinianism have interpreted Augustine’s ‘Christian emperor’ as someone who exercises pastoral care (e.g., Williams, 1987; Milbank, 1990; Dodaro, 2004). This central historical claim of political Augustinianism is established by eliding Augustine’s counsels to emperors with his own political action. In this short communication, I contest this merging of emperor and bishop, arguing that Augustine counsels the emperor as a pastor but does not extend his pastoral office to the emperor (following Kaufman, 2017). When we compare Augustine’s portrayal of the good emperor (civ. 5.24-6 and 19.14-20; ep. 91 and 138) with Augustine’s own political action (ep.104, 153, 155, and 185), we can see significant cleavage between what Augustine counsels the emperor to do and what Augustine himself does in his pastoral office. In this short communication, I shall specifically focus on the difference between what Augustine finds praiseworthy in Theodosius’s acts of love in civ.5.25 and what Augustine reveals about his own love-driven actions in ep. 185 (De correctione Donatistarum). Is the difference simply a matter of the inevitable shortcoming of power-in-practice, or does it point us to an important distinction between the political office of the emperor and that of the pastor? Moreover, is it the case that the office of pastor is more vulnerable to ‘loving someone to death’ than the office of emperor? In conclusion, I will offer some programmatic suggestions about how we might recast political Augustinianism in light of the distinction between imperial and pastoral power.