Latest / Chapter by Chapter — The Lost Library / Augustine’s Two Cities: The Real Reason Empires Collapse

Transcript

Augustine’s Two Cities: The Real Reason Empires Collapse · Chapter by Chapter — The Lost Library

• 0:00
  Picture this right, The year is 410 AD and the unthinkable has
• 0:07
  just happened. The absolute unthinkable.
• 0:08
  Yeah, Rome, I mean the Eternal City, the unconquered mistress
• 0:11
  of the world for over 1000 years, has just been sacked by
• 0:15
  the Goths. Smoke is rising over the seven
• 0:17
  hills, refugees are fleeing into the countryside, and this
• 0:21
  massive shockwave is just reverberating across the entire
• 0:24
  known world. It is really hard to overstate
• 0:27
  the psychological devastation of that specific moment.
• 0:31
  Like, for the people actually living through it, the fall of
• 0:33
  Rome wasn't just, you know, a political crisis.
• 0:36
  Right. Or just a bad military defeat?
• 0:38
  Exactly. It felt like the end of reality
• 0:40
  itself. People genuinely believed that
• 0:41
  because Rome was falling, the world was literally ending.
• 0:44
  The entire framework of human civilization just seemed to be
• 0:48
  collapsing overnight. And out of the smoking ruins of
• 0:50
  that literal and I guess psychological collapse, we get
• 0:54
  one of the most monumental works of human thought.
• 0:56
  We really do. So our mission for this deep
• 0:58
  dive today is to take San Agustin's foundational text, The
• 1:01
  City of God, and kind of extract his groundbreaking framework for
• 1:06
  how the world actually works. We're going to explore his
• 1:09
  concept of the earthly city versus the City of God.
• 1:12
  Which is just a fascinating split.
• 1:14
  It really is. We want to analyze how humanity
• 1:17
  organizes itself around 2 entirely different systems of
• 1:21
  well meaning, power, identity, and desire.
• 1:25
  You know, temporary earthly values versus eternal ones.
• 1:29
  OK, let's unpack this. Yeah.
• 1:30
  So to even begin to understand the ideas, you have to
• 1:33
  understand the immediate crisis that triggered them, because in
• 1:36
  the aftermath of 410 AD, the surviving pagans in the Roman
• 1:39
  Empire were desperately looking for a scapegoat.
• 1:42
  Right, someone to blame for the fire.
• 1:43
  Exactly. And they pointed their fingers
• 1:45
  squarely at the Christians. I mean, their argument was that
• 1:49
  abandoning the old Roman gods for Christianity was the direct
• 1:52
  literal cause of the disaster. Because they weren't sacrificing
• 1:55
  anymore, right? They believe that because they
• 1:57
  stopped sacrificing to Jupiter and Mars and all the rest, the
• 1:59
  gods had just abandoned Rome to the Barbarians.
• 2:02
  Which, I mean, sounds like a pretty standard historical
• 2:04
  scapegoat situation, right? But reading through the sources,
• 2:07
  Augustine doesn't just play defense here.
• 2:10
  He turns the Pagan argument completely upside down.
• 2:13
  Oh, he completely wrecks it. Yeah, he uses their own
• 2:16
  mythology against them. He does.
• 2:17
  He specifically brings up Virgil's Aeneid, which was, you
• 2:21
  know, essentially the sacred text of Roman identity.
• 2:24
  It was their founding myth, right?
• 2:26
  And he reminds the pagans of the story of Aeneas fleeing the
• 2:29
  burning city of Troy, because in that story Aeneas is depicted
• 2:33
  carrying his household gods away from the flames to safety.
• 2:37
  Which is just. It's so ironic.
• 2:39
  It is, Augustine points out, the glaring flaw in their logic.
• 2:43
  He's like, look, the gods didn't protect the people of Troy.
• 2:46
  The people had to protect the statues of the gods.
• 2:49
  Wait, so they were trusting gods that essentially needed human
• 2:51
  bodyguards? Yes, exactly.
• 2:53
  So Augustine just asks them, how could you ever trust the defense
• 2:57
  of Rome to conquer gods who couldn't even save themselves
• 3:00
  from a house fire that. Completely dismantles the whole
• 3:03
  idea of divine Roman protection. I mean, it's just a devastating,
• 3:07
  logical takedown. It really is.
• 3:09
  But then he pushes even further by highlighting this crazy
• 3:13
  historical anomaly that happened during the actual sack of Rome.
• 3:17
  Oh, right, with the sanctuaries, Yeah.
• 3:19
  When the Gothic Barbarians breached the city, they
• 3:22
  completely broke the usual merciless rules of ancient
• 3:25
  warfare. They actually spared anyone who
• 3:28
  fled into the Christian churches.
• 3:30
  Wow. Yeah, the basilicas of the
• 3:32
  Apostles became these massive, untouchable sanctuaries.
• 3:35
  Which is a huge departure from how ancient warfare normally
• 3:38
  operated. I mean, usually if a city's
• 3:40
  walls fell, nowhere was safe. Nowhere.
• 3:42
  I mean, in traditional warfare, temples were not safe havens.
• 3:46
  They were prime targets for looting because that's where the
• 3:48
  gold was. Right, right.
• 3:50
  Augustine actually contrasts the sack of Rome with the Greeks
• 3:53
  sacking Troy. In Troy, the Greeks slaughtered
• 3:58
  people right at the altar of Juno's temple.
• 4:01
  So the fact that these bloodthirsty Barbarians suddenly
• 4:04
  showed mercy and specifically respected the name of Christ was
• 4:07
  something the pagans were just conveniently ignoring while they
• 4:09
  complained about being abandoned by Jupiter.
• 4:11
  Yeah, that makes sense. But look, let me play devil's
• 4:14
  advocate here. If you're a person sitting in
• 4:17
  the rubble of 410 AD, you have to be asking a really difficult
• 4:21
  question. Of course, if the Christian God
• 4:24
  is so powerful and the churches of these great sanctuaries, why
• 4:28
  did good pious Christians still suffer?
• 4:31
  Like, why did they lose their homes, their wealth and in some
• 4:35
  cases, you know, their lives? It's the classic problem of
• 4:37
  pain, yeah. Why didn't this all powerful God
• 4:40
  just put a protective force field around the good people?
• 4:43
  Well, Augustine provides a really fascinating kind of
• 4:46
  counterintuitive mechanism for how we should view earthly
• 4:49
  fortunes. He basically explains that God
• 4:52
  intentionally gives both good and bad earthly fortunes to both
• 4:55
  good and bad people. OK, but why?
• 4:57
  To test them to reveal their true underlying character.
• 5:01
  The text uses some incredibly vivid analogies for this.
• 5:05
  There's one about a flail, like the farming tool used to beat
• 5:08
  harvested grain. Yes, that's a great one,
• 5:10
  Augustine writes. And I'm paraphrasing a bit here,
• 5:12
  he says. Under the same flail, the straw
• 5:14
  is beaten small while the grain is cleansed.
• 5:18
  So the violence is the same. The violent action of the flail
• 5:21
  is identical, but the result depends entirely on what is
• 5:25
  being struck. The straw gets crushed and
• 5:27
  destroyed, but the grain is purified and separated.
• 5:31
  Oh, I see. He also uses the analogy of
• 5:33
  stirring. If you stir up a pool of mud, it
• 5:36
  exhales a horrible stench. But if you stir up a sweet
• 5:39
  ointment, it emits this beautiful fragrance.
• 5:42
  Let me push back on this though, because if someone literally
• 5:45
  loses their entire livelihood in a barbarian raid isn't telling
• 5:49
  them hey, you're just being stirred like ointment, isn't
• 5:52
  that a bit of a hollow coping mechanism?
• 5:54
  I mean, it sounds like one at first, right?
• 5:57
  How does that actually help them?
• 5:58
  Well, it sounds like a coping mechanism until you understand
• 6:01
  the mechanics of identity that Augustine is getting at.
• 6:04
  See, the affliction is the exact same for everyone.
• 6:07
  A house burns down, wealth is stolen.
• 6:09
  Right? But for a person who has
• 6:10
  anchored their entire identity to to that material wealth,
• 6:13
  losing it actually destroys them.
• 6:15
  Their full foundation is gone. They're the straw being crushed.
• 6:18
  Exactly. But for the person whose
• 6:20
  identity is anchored in an eternal reality, temporal loss
• 6:24
  doesn't doesn't destroy them because their true treasure
• 6:28
  wasn't in that house to begin with.
• 6:30
  Wow. What's fascinating here is that
• 6:32
  the suffering merely reveals where you have placed your
• 6:35
  ultimate value. So if earthly security is really
• 6:38
  that fragile, what happens to an entire society that just
• 6:42
  decides, hey, physical stuff and human glory are the only things
• 6:46
  that matter? That is exactly what Augustine
• 6:48
  calls the earthly city. OK here.
• 6:50
  We go. It is a society fundamentally
• 6:52
  driven by what he terms the lust of rule, like this insatiable
• 6:56
  desire for domination. It's an entire system organized
• 6:59
  around human glory, earthly peace, and material prosperity
• 7:02
  as the highest possible goods. And reading how the Romans
• 7:05
  operated, they built their entire civilization on the
• 7:08
  currency of human praise. I mean, they were just obsessed.
• 7:11
  With they took it to chilling extremes.
• 7:13
  Augustine points to figures like Brutus, one of the famous
• 7:15
  founders of the Roman Republic. Brutus discovered that his own
• 7:19
  sons were conspiring against the state and he personally ordered
• 7:22
  their execution. That is just horrifying.
• 7:24
  He literally sacrificed his own children.
• 7:26
  He did it for the glory of Rome, for human praise, and to cement
• 7:31
  his political legacy. Augustine uses this to show what
• 7:35
  happens when your highest value is a temporary earthly
• 7:38
  institution. You will sacrifice anything,
• 7:41
  even the most permanent fundamental human bonds, for a
• 7:46
  hollow title that history is eventually going to forget
• 7:48
  anyway. So if your only goal is
• 7:50
  domination and glory, how is a society like that any different
• 7:54
  from like an organized crime syndicate?
• 7:57
  That is precisely the question I just didn't ask.
• 7:59
  Seriously. Yeah.
• 8:00
  He argues that without true justice, kingdoms are literally
• 8:03
  just great robberies. And he includes this brilliant
• 8:07
  historical anecdote about Alexander the Great to
• 8:09
  illustrate it well. The pirate story.
• 8:11
  Yes, so captured pirate is brought before Alexander, and
• 8:14
  the Emperor demands to know what the pirate means by keeping
• 8:17
  hostile possession of the sea. Like how dare you terrorize my
• 8:20
  waters and. The pirate's response is
• 8:21
  incredibly bold. It's amazing the pirate looks at
• 8:25
  the most powerful man in the world and basically says because
• 8:29
  I do it with a petty ship I am called a robber whilst thou who
• 8:33
  dust it with a great fleet art styled emperor.
• 8:36
  Man, that is so good. So what does this all mean for
• 8:39
  the earthly city? Basically you strip away the
• 8:42
  togas, the marble columns and the fancy military parades and
• 8:45
  you're just left of the society building a multi $1,000,000
• 8:48
  mansion on a known sinkhole. Yes, a sinkhole.
• 8:51
  Everyone inside is fighting for the master bedroom, you know,
• 8:54
  stepping on each other's necks for a better view, completely
• 8:57
  ignoring the fact that the ground underneath them is
• 8:59
  mathematically guaranteed to collapse.
• 9:01
  It's an organizational structure built entirely on temporary
• 9:05
  vanity. And the Roman gods were the
• 9:06
  ultimate enablers of this sinkhole society.
• 9:09
  How so? Well, they offered no moral
• 9:11
  guidance whatsoever. They patronized theatrical,
• 9:14
  immoral plays. They only promised temporary
• 9:17
  victories and earthly prosperity.
• 9:19
  They were perfectly designed to feed the earthly city's absolute
• 9:22
  worst impulses. OK, so if the earthly city is
• 9:25
  this hollow robbery doomed to collapse, how is a person
• 9:30
  supposed to live? What is the alternative to the
• 9:32
  sinkhole? This brings us to Augustine
• 9:35
  score concept of the City of God.
• 9:37
  The citizens of this city are fundamentally described as
• 9:40
  pilgrims on earth. Like travelers?
• 9:42
  Exactly. A Pilgrim is someone who is just
• 9:45
  passing through. They live in the world, they
• 9:47
  interact with the physical environment, but they do not
• 9:49
  anchor their identity to it. Their ultimate value, like their
• 9:53
  highest good, is eternal life and true justice, which is found
• 9:57
  only in the worship of God. Reading the sources, they
• 9:59
  outline this really specific cycle psychological distinction
• 10:02
  about how these pilgrims interact with material things.
• 10:05
  It comes down to the difference between using something and
• 10:08
  enjoying something. Yeah, this is one of Augustine's
• 10:10
  sharpest insights. I think when he says enjoy, he
• 10:14
  means loving something for its own sake, treating it as your
• 10:17
  ultimate goal or destination. OK.
• 10:19
  Citizens of the earthly city want to enjoy money, status and
• 10:22
  material things. And because they want to enjoy
• 10:24
  those things, they try to use God to get them.
• 10:27
  Oh, I see. Yeah, they pray solely for
• 10:29
  wealth. They offer sacrifices solely for
• 10:32
  a military victory. They essentially treat the
• 10:35
  divine as a vending machine to dispense earthly goods.
• 10:39
  But the citizens of the Heavenly City reverse that entirely.
• 10:42
  Right. They use the things of this
• 10:44
  world to sustain themselves on their journey, but they only
• 10:46
  truly enjoy God. God is the end goal, not the
• 10:50
  means to an end. OK, let me give a modern example
• 10:52
  to see if I have the mechanics of this right.
• 10:54
  Sure, go for it. It's kind of like the difference
• 10:56
  between using a car to get to a beautiful destination versus
• 11:00
  sitting in your driveway worshipping the car itself and
• 11:03
  never actually going anywhere. The car is really useful, but
• 11:06
  it's a terrible ultimate destination.
• 11:08
  That captures the dynamic perfectly.
• 11:10
  The earthly city worships the vehicle.
• 11:12
  The City of God uses the vehicle to travel home.
• 11:15
  But wait, if the earthly city is this corrupt, doomed structure,
• 11:19
  why don't the citizens of the city of God just leave?
• 11:23
  What do you mean? Like why not move to a commune,
• 11:25
  stop paying taxes, and completely check out a society?
• 11:29
  Just let the sinkhole collapse on its own.
• 11:30
  It's a logical question, especially in 410 AD when
• 11:34
  society was literally burning down around them.
• 11:37
  But Augustine strongly argues against isolation.
• 11:40
  Really. Yeah.
• 11:42
  He explains that the two cities were inextricably commingled and
• 11:45
  entangled in this world. They are woven together until
• 11:49
  the end of human history. The citizens of the City of God
• 11:52
  don't physically leave. They still participate in
• 11:55
  society. So they still go to work.
• 11:57
  They hold jobs, they raise families, they endure the flaws
• 12:01
  of the earthly city right alongside everyone else.
• 12:04
  So they can even hold political office like they can be mayors
• 12:08
  or governors. Absolutely.
• 12:10
  Augustine points out that if they're given political power,
• 12:12
  they use it, but they use it differently.
• 12:14
  Oh so. Well, he cites Christian
• 12:17
  emperors who use their authority not to aggrandize their own
• 12:20
  glory, but to maintain peace and execute true justice.
• 12:24
  The crucial difference isn't in where they live or what jobs
• 12:27
  they hold, it's in where their hearts are tied.
• 12:29
  Their ultimate loyalties are anchored to an eternal reality,
• 12:33
  so they aren't corrupted by the temporary power they wield.
• 12:36
  So where does this profound split even come from?
• 12:39
  Are human beings just randomly born into one of two camps?
• 12:43
  Because we have to look at the absolute origin of these two
• 12:46
  cities, and the sources trace this cosmic divide back to an
• 12:50
  environment before human history even began.
• 12:53
  It goes way back. Yeah, it actually started with
• 12:55
  the angels. It did.
• 12:57
  The blueprint for these two cities was drawn in the angelic
• 13:00
  realm, and to understand how it happened, we have to look at the
• 13:03
  mechanics of the will. Augustine introduces A
• 13:06
  philosophical concept here that completely shifted how people
• 13:10
  thought about good and bad. He argued that evil is not a
• 13:13
  physical substance. It is not a thing you can hold
• 13:16
  in your hand. Wait, if evil isn't a physical
• 13:19
  thing, what is it? Just an absence.
• 13:21
  He describes it as a defection of the will A.
• 13:23
  Defection, yeah. A corruption of something that
• 13:26
  was originally good. A turning away from the highest
• 13:29
  good toward a lesser good. The text calls it misdirected
• 13:32
  love, which I find fascinating. Here's where it gets really
• 13:36
  interesting. Think about greed, right?
• 13:38
  Avarice isn't the fault of the gold.
• 13:40
  No, not at all. The gold is just a metal.
• 13:42
  It's completely neutral. The evil is the fault of the
• 13:47
  human being who chooses to love the gold more than they love
• 13:50
  justice or other people. Exactly.
• 13:52
  The object isn't the problem. The priority is the problem.
• 13:56
  And this is the exact mechanism that split the angelic realm.
• 13:59
  Really. Yeah.
• 14:00
  All the angels were created good, but the bad angels fell
• 14:03
  because they suffered this defection of the will.
• 14:06
  They became enamored with their own power and beauty.
• 14:09
  They looked inward at themselves instead of outward at God.
• 14:13
  That pride, that misdirected love of self, became the
• 14:16
  foundational sin of the earthly city.
• 14:18
  While the good angels did the opposite.
• 14:20
  Yes, the good angels cleave to God in humility.
• 14:23
  They recognize that their light and power came from an eternal
• 14:26
  source outside themselves. That humility formed the
• 14:29
  absolute foundation of the city of God.
• 14:32
  To really grasp the environment where all of this plays out, we
• 14:35
  have to look at how Augustine tackles the concept of time
• 14:38
  itself, because he doesn't just treat time as a clock ticking in
• 14:41
  the background. Oh, his concept of time is mind
• 14:43
  bending. He argues a massive cosmological
• 14:46
  point. God didn't create the universe
• 14:49
  in time. He created time along with the
• 14:51
  universe. Which is a staggering
• 14:53
  intellectual leap for the 5th century.
• 14:56
  I mean, Augustine realized that time requires motion.
• 14:59
  It requires change, passing from the future to the present to the
• 15:02
  past. Because God is completely
• 15:05
  unchangeable. God exists outside of time
• 15:07
  entirely in what August and called unchangeable eternity.
• 15:11
  So there was no before creation. There wasn't some endless
• 15:15
  waiting period where God was just idle looking at his watch
• 15:18
  until he decided to make the. Universe precisely because time
• 15:21
  itself is a property of the physical universe.
• 15:23
  Asking what God was doing before creation is a nonsensical
• 15:27
  question. There was no then when there was
• 15:29
  no time. God encompasses all of time
• 15:31
  simultaneously. OK, so if we connect this to the
• 15:35
  bigger picture, how does that physics concept actually impact
• 15:38
  the people living in these two cities?
• 15:40
  It completely dictates their relationship to existence
• 15:43
  itself. Because the city of God is
• 15:45
  anchored in an eternal God, it operates on an eternal timeline.
• 15:49
  Its citizens are resting in a reality that doesn't decay.
• 15:52
  But the earthly city is entirely trapped within the physical
• 15:56
  universe, which means it is trapped by passing time.
• 16:00
  So if your entire identity is built on things that time
• 16:03
  destroys, poise, you know, your wealth, your youth, your
• 16:05
  political status, then time is your ultimate enemy.
• 16:08
  It is a terrifying countdown. Augustine bluntly observes that
• 16:12
  from the very moment we are born, we begin to die.
• 16:15
  Every single day we live is a day deducted from our total.
• 16:18
  That's grim, but true. For the earthly city, the
• 16:21
  passage of time is a relentless March toward the loss of
• 16:24
  absolutely everything they love. Because when time runs out, the
• 16:28
  mansion on the sinkhole finally collapses.
• 16:30
  But for the city of God, time running out just means the
• 16:33
  pilgrimage is over. It means finally arriving home.
• 16:36
  Exactly. It forces a total re evaluation
• 16:39
  of what we consider as a success or a disaster when you view
• 16:42
  human behavior through this lens.
• 16:43
  The frantic climbing, the anxiety, anxiety, the desperate
• 16:46
  need for control, it all makes perfect sense.
• 16:48
  It's the natural behavior of someone who knows they're
• 16:51
  running out of time. Think about your own life for a
• 16:53
  second. Whether you're navigating a high
• 16:55
  stakes boardroom, scrolling through a chaotic news cycle, or
• 16:58
  just trying to figure out what matters in your day-to-day
• 17:01
  routine, this framework from 1600 years ago is just
• 17:05
  incredibly relevant today. It really is.
• 17:08
  We are all choosing every single day which city we belong to, and
• 17:11
  we choose it by what we love. Are we organizing our lives
• 17:15
  around human glory, temporary control, and the exhausting,
• 17:19
  anxiety inducing climb for status?
• 17:22
  Or are we organizing our lives around eternal truth, humility,
• 17:26
  and a justice that outlasts empires?
• 17:29
  The profound take away here is that you aren't just swept along
• 17:32
  by the tides of history. What you prioritize
• 17:35
  fundamentally shapes the reality you inhabit.
• 17:38
  I want to leave you with one final thought to Mull over.
• 17:40
  Before Augustine wrote this text, the ancient world largely
• 17:43
  viewed history as a cycle. They thought existence was just
• 17:46
  an endless repetitive loop of rising and falling empires where
• 17:49
  nothing truly new ever happened. Just a treadmill.
• 17:52
  Right, But by proving that time itself was a created thing with
• 17:55
  a definitive beginning, Augustine shatter that cyclical
• 17:58
  view. He proved that history is a
• 18:01
  straight line moving toward a specific destination.
• 18:04
  New things can happen. Your choices actually matter in
• 18:07
  the grand scope of eternity. So if the earthly city is
• 18:10
  defined by the absolute terror of running out of time, and the
• 18:13
  city of God was defined by resting securely in eternity,
• 18:16
  ask yourself, the next time you frantically check your watch or
• 18:19
  obsess over your professional legacy, which city's passport
• 18:22
  are you currently carrying?