Robert Dodaro’s take on Christ and the Just Society in the Thought of Augustine confirms Bowlin’s criticisms of Markus. Late in his book, Dodaro summarizes Augustine’s correspondence with Macedonius, vicar of Africa, written in 413/14. Starting from an appeal for clemency for someone on death row, the letters turn into an early “mirror of magistrates.” Dodaro summarizes:

Augustine “explains how the virtues of faith and hope transform the way in which civic virtues like fortitude and justice are understood in the earthly city, by harmonizing them with the way they are understood in the heavenly city. He describes in detail how this transformation occurs through hope . . . .

“First, he defines hope as the virtue which sustains Christians in their endurance of the trials associated with this temporal life, such as illness, poverty, and war. Hope, he says, aids believers together with faith by teaching them that the happiness they seek for themselves cannot be found in this life, but must be longed for in the life to come, on the basis of trust in God’s promises . . . . the Christian statesman must govern prudently and justice while recognizing what the virtue of hope teaches: that he not conceive of his primary aim to foster happiness in this earthly life as an end in itself. Were he to do so, he would risk elevating the pursuit of temporal benefits, such as health, wealth, and liberty above the pursuit of eternal goods, such as happiness and life in God, which transcend death. Hope therefore redirects the aim of civic virtues away from an exclusive concern with acquiring property and security in the earthly city to the pursuit of the happiness that belongs to the heavenly city.”

Unless civic virtues are infused with theological virtues, then “the statesman will pursue a form of peace and prosperity for the earthly city which does not have the love of God as the supreme good.” This is a crucial point: For Augustine (as Dodaro explains him), even the “natural” city has to be subordinated to the “supernatural” end of the heavenly city, and the statesman is to organize and oversee his realm so as to direct it to achieve that end. Even the “natural” virtues have to be redirected and redefined in the light of the heavenly city: “justice seeks equity among social classes, as when wealth is redistributed from the rich to the poor. But in the heavenly city . . . human beings feel no need or desire other than for God. So in the heavenly city, justice ensures that nothing deprives its citizens of adhering to God.” This is the true nature of justice and statesmen should “rule the earthly city” in a way that harmonizes “secular virtue with true virtue.”

Augustine doesn’t want the ruler to “neglect the pursuit of temporal social benefits for their subjects” but “their expectations about the substance and peace should change. For this reason, Augustine subordinates the true virtues in the earthly city to true piety, by which he means the love through which the soul adheres to God . . . . Augustine is confident that as long as the statesman’s desire to govern with true piety leads him to understand the aims of civic virtues in harmony with the love of God, and provided that he receives with humility the grace that Christ bestows on him, his virtues gradually increase in strength while they also converge in the love of God.” As Christ mediates wisdom and strength of will to ignorant and weak sinners, they will begin to discern the truth and have the courage to act well.

Augustine certainly does not mean these instructions as not a rubber stamp of state interests. One can imagine, for instance, Augustine or an Augustinian statesman concluding that prosecuting a certain war would be damaging to the eternal welfare of citizens, despite the fact that it would promote earthly advantage. If really practiced (and has it ever been?), an Augustinian Christian politics would place stringent restraints on civil power and would reduce it to a fairly radical level of modesty and humility.