Augustine’s view of Christianity’s role in history should simply be rejecting the society and turn to God. Why? Because what was the point of following the ways of this world if we would all die anyways. It made sense to Augustine that the fact that people were trying so hard for something that can’t be acknowledged in the after life.
By society he meant the Roman Empire. He was living in the times where the Romans were the ones to rule. Those who weren’t christians served the romans and seeked to them for protection. They served the emperor as their God and lived normal lives with normal daily things to do just as any other person. Some of these non christians may strive to live a virtuous lifestyle while others live without peace and perhaps argue a lot with their families. While christians live a virtuous life and keep peace with their families, as well as serve their.
With God earthly things don’t matter to christians. For they understood that none of that would be important should they enter in the God’s kingdom. You may be famous in the eyes of man, but not in the eyes of God. Or you could be famous in the eyes of God, but that would mean being unpopular amongst people. Christians should also not rebel against the government for they should respect them and remain humble during any situation.
Another best known form of christian law is the ten commandments and there are still traces of this in law today. And these principles are still taught and used in the world today so as the world back then. Augustine used this law to tell people about justice, how we should act and live. There was this one thing where people didn’t understand. The subject ‘Fear of God’ was a puzzle for them because they couldn’t understand was he to be feared, are you supposed to fear him or something? By them I mean the non believers. What’s meant by fear is that we should obey God’s word and if you don’t just sin, but mocking others will make God put his full wrath on you. Fearing God is basically fearing his judgement and wrath that will be put upon you on judgement day. To avoid that just be faithful, loyal, and most importantly having that close relationship with him.
The kingdom of God, compared to that of man, was the basis for his book “The City of God”. In his book, he describes how God’s “city” is infinitely more important than anything else in this life, as it will endure forever, even after all of our worldly “cities”. In this sense, Augustine believed that Christianity transformed history completely, and that history and the world we live in today is temporary while God stays as immortal.
Augustine believed that Christianity would be persecuted one way or another. This life time or any other timeline. No matter what and where there’s always something people have to say about Christianity that confuses them constantly. They have something to say regardless if its good or bad.
Thanks for reading this essay, I hope you liked it. I’ll be posting more soon. Have a great rest of your day!
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