Veronica Roberts Ogle: Politics and the Parodic City: Augustine’s Sacramental Vision and its Institutional Implications

This paper explores the political implications of Augustine’s sacramental worldview in De Civitate Dei. Convinced by Augustinian scholarship that reads the institutional Church as a sacramentum, rather than a mere symbol, of the civitas Dei, I explore what this means for politics. While many have conflated politics with the earthly city, I argue that a sacramental interpretation suggests a more complex relationship. That is, once we consider the relationship between the city of God and the institutional Church sacramentally, we begin to see this relationship echoed and, more importantly, distorted in the earthly city's relationship to the political community and its institutions.
I will then defend this reading of the earthly city as the parodic city by exploring how Augustine's De Civitate Dei talks about (1) the two cities, (2) their mutual relationship, and (3) their relationship to the Church and the world. In essence, I will argue that Augustine’s linguistic decisions suggest that what it means for the earthly city to parody the city of God is to re-read its relationship to the visible world through the lens of power and possession.
Ultimately, Augustine thinks that the city of God receives the Church as gift, while the earthly city grasps at the world, illegitimately claiming it for itself, though it is also a gift. Yet, if Augustine suggests that the political world is not the realm of the earthly city by right, he also suggests that its interpretation of political life can, and should, be called into question.