James Wetzel: The Alternative Uses of Peace: Perplexities of the Household (domus) in City of God19.17

Augustine begins ciu. 19.17, a crucial chapter for coming to any understanding of his political theology, with a contrast between two kinds of household: one lives by faith, and the other does not.The faithful household values eternal goods over temporal ones, but makes use of the latter in order to lessen the burden of corruptible flesh. Meanwhile the faithless household is busy looking for glory in evanescent things—an impossible elevation of the flesh. I plan to explore two issues in this essay, whose basic form will be a close reading of 19.17.One is whether the two households—faithful and unfaithful—share in any substantial way a common conception of earthly peace.The other concerns the apparent ease of Augustine’s shift from talk of households to talk of cities. Is the conceptual transition really so unproblematic?