Travis Kroeker ( Journal of Religious Ethics , 2005) argues that Yoder is closer to Augustine than his dismissal of Augustine as a “Constantinianism” implies:

“Augustine’s theological corpus is nothing if not exegetical and historical, though, of course, it is also true that Augustine freely appropriates the ‘gold and silver and clothing’ of the pagan philosophers (and especially the Platonists) in order to put to use those resources in the service of the caritas of the messianic body ( On Christian Doctrine II, 40–42). In doing so, however, Augustine simply practices the hermeneutical approach advocated also by Yoder in his depiction of ‘diaspora ethics,’ namely that, like exilic and diaspora Jews, Christians are called to live out their identity in a condition of ‘cosmopolitan homelessness’ . . .

“Like Yoder, Augustine in City of God XIX, 26, articulates the mission of the ‘people of God’ as a pilgrim people with an appeal to the prophetic word of Jeremiah 29:7 to the people being taken into exile: ’ . . . he bade them, by divine command, to go obediently into Babylon, thereby serving God even by their patient endurance; and he himself admonished them to pray for Babylon, because ‘in its peace is your peace,’ the temporal peace shared for the time being by good and wicked alike’ . . . Such an appeal does not hold up the virtues of the Babylonians or the Romans for their own sake or ascribe to them some independent religious or moral status, but rather uses them in the service of another end (the end of true peace) by referring them to the ultimate messianic peace of God. Insofar as the virtues (or any other useful conceptual or cultural categories) are treated as being self-sufficient possessions without reference to the ultimate Good who bestows them as gifts, they become vices that undermine temporal peace. This is no less true for people in the church than it is for people in the pagan world. It is for this reason that the ‘prayer of the whole City of God during its pilgrimage on earth . . . cries out to God with the voice of all its members: ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us’ (XIX, 27; cf. XXII, 23).”

Of course, they are not the same, and Kroeker isolates one difference in Augustine’s acceptance of the “necessity” of certain evils for the sake of the concord of the earthly city. This is rooted partly in different accounts of sin: Yoder “seems less willing to concede the ambiguity and the punitive character of diversity and the continuing struggle for earthly peace for Christians. That is, he displays greater confidence in the agency of the church to maintain a visible messianic witness in the earthly city without attention to those internal conflicts generated by temptations of visibility (visible virtue, visible goodness, visible “results”) that so plagued Augustine’s ecclesial awareness. For Augustine, the fact that the net of the visible church comprises both the elect and the reprobate who swim together without separation (XVIII, 49) would be true whether or not that church baptizes infants in a ‘state church’ or baptizes adults in a ‘believers’ church.’ Yoder’s principle of voluntariety has too sanguine a vision of the human will and its ongoing conflicts with fallen desires.”

Kroeker is also critical of Yoder’s “caricature” of Augustine’s political theology. Specifically, while Yoder recognizes that Augustine contrasts the two cities, he says that this is not the biblical contrast between the just and peaceful city of God and the violent and idolatrous city of man, but a neo-Platonic distinction between an ideal heavenly realm beyond history and a finite temporal realm. Kroeker shows fairly easily that this doesn’t work. In his discussion of David’s exemplary kingship, for instance, Augsutine emphasizes that David is true king when he is seeking forgiveness, and that his kingship functions prophetically to point to the royal Messiah: For Augustine, “This is not a process of trans-historical idealism to be spiritually realized only in transcendent eternity; it is a process that is worked out historically via those who imitate the form of the servant that radically refers all virtue to God’s goodness.”