Gerald Boersma: Fons Iustitiae: Augustine’s Account of Justice in De civitate dei

Few issues in Augustinian studies have received as much attention as the question of Augustine’s valuation of earthly politics. Can any civitas terrena qualify as an authentic instantiation of a populus according to De civitate dei? (Robert Marcus, Oliver O’Donovan, Rowan Williams, Robert Dodaro, and John Milbank have been central players in this conversation over the past forty years.) In civ. 2.21, Augustine draws on Cicero’s definition of a res publica to deny that Rome (or any earthly regime) ever qualified as a genuine commonwealth. If justice is to give to each his due, there can be no justice and hence no commonwealth where God is not known and worshiped. In Book XIX Augustine proposes an alternate definition of a res publica (or populus) as a multitude united by common agreement on the objects of their love. Under this definition, Rome does qualify as a res publica. Many attempts have been made to harmonize these competing definitions of populus (2.21 with 19.24). An important (and overlooked) touchstone is Augustine’s remark that earthly justice flows from the “font of justice” (civ. 19.21). Augustine also uses this locution when discussing justice elsewhere in his corpus. Drawing on my earlier work regarding Augustine’s philosophic sources, I suggest that attention to the participatory, Platonic character of Augustine’s conception of earthly justice as the overflow of the “font of justice” helps resolve the central quandary of De civitate dei regarding the possibility of a genuine populus in the civitas terrena.