426 years
Aurelius Augustine (354-430) was a European medieval philosopher, theologian, the main representative of the Latin Fathers of Roman Christianity, a Neo-Platonist, the founder of the philosophy of the Christian Fathers, and the greatest godfather of Christianity. Augustine was born on 13 November 354 in Tagist, North Africa, in present-day Sukh Ahlas, Algeria. At that time, North Africa belonged to the territory of the Roman Empire, under the jurisdiction of the Roman Emperor, and Christianity had received official support and developed there. Augustine's mother was a devout Christian and his father was a pagan, and he himself was not baptized in Christianity after birth. Augustine's family was not prosperous, but he completed the curriculum of three-level education prescribed by the Roman Empire with the support of his parents. From 374 to 386, he taught grammar and rhetoric in Tagiste, Carthage, Rome, and Milan. In his youth he lived in great debauchery, but he was intellectually inquisitive and extremely sharp-minded. The question of good and evil has been the subject of his life's thinking. At the age of 19, he became interested in philosophical problems and immediately converted to Manichaeism and accepted the Manichaean doctrine of the dualism of good and evil, believing that evil originated in some entity, that the human soul came from good, and that the body came from evil. After studying the writings of the Neoplatonic School and under the influence of the Archbishop of Milan, Ambrose, he was baptized by Ambrose at Easter in 387 and officially joined Christianity. After that, he reversed his past debauchery, abandoned his lover and fiancée, and resigned from his teaching position, devoting himself to the cause of the church all his life and living a monastic life of pure heart. He returned to his former home in North Africa in 388. After three years of seclusion in his hometown, he was elected by the local faithful in 391 as a deacon of the Church of Hippo in the province of Numidia, and was promoted to bishop in 396. During his tenure, he devoted great energy to writing, preaching, and organizing activities against heresy, establishing seminaries that attracted bishops from near and far, and his church became the center of the church in North Africa. He witnessed the Vandal invasion in his later years and died on 28 August 430 while the Vandals approached hippo. After the fall of Hippo, Vandal-controlled North Africa broke away from the Roman Empire. But Augustine's writings spread to the Western church and became the spiritual wealth of the Catholic Church and Protestantism after the 16th century.
Augustine wrote a book and expounded doctrine, and was the master of the ideas of the Church Father, and he was canonized by the Church as a great teacher. He wrote a wide variety of works, no less than a hundred. There are mainly "Confessions", "City of God", "On True Religion", "Doctrinal Handbook", "On the Trinity" and so on. The City of God, written in 13 years by Augustine in his later years and completed in 426, is the first tome of theological, political, and legal thought. The book is divided into two parts. The first part, the first 10 volumes, mainly refutes the various accusations of pagans and the arguments of other doctrines that do not conform to Christian thought. The second part, the last 12 volumes, deals with the origins, history, and future of the "City of God" and the "Secular City." The book more comprehensively reflects the status of Augustine's philosophy. The following is an introduction to the main political and legal ideas of the book. Thought, as well as theological political and legal thought, occupies an important position in the history of Western political and legal thought.
Augustine's doctrine of the city of God and the city on earth is not only used to explain historical events, but also contains a complete theological doctrine of the state and society. What Augustine called "civitate" means society. Society, the group of men, is a group of rational beings united by a common agreement on what they love, so in order to know the nature of a group, we need only understand what they love. According to this criterion, two kinds of love form two cities, and those who love themselves and even despise God form the city on earth, and those who love God and even despise themselves form the city in heaven. The former glorifies itself, the latter glorifies God. This is Austin's distinction between the "city of God" and the "city of the mundane" according to ethical standards. In addition, Augustine derived the distinction between "city of God" and "city of the earth" from the definition of the state. He believed that the purpose of the state was to provide the benefits needed for this life, even if we could enjoy the worldly peace of health, security and human friendship in this life. This account of the political and economic functioning of the state is not much different from Aristotle's, but the point is that Augustine gave a completely different theological interpretation of "peace." He believes that all peace is the balance of order. Peace between men is orderly cooperation, family peace is peace between those in power and subordinates, peace between man and God is an order in which faith is subordinated to eternal law, and peace in society is similar cooperation among citizens. The peace of the Holy City is to delight God in a perfect order and harmony, and to rejoice among men among God. He pointed out that "peace on earth," that is, peace in secular society, is all about the use of things, while peace in the city of God is the result of people's joy in God and mutual joy among men. Thus, we can understand Augustine's "city of God" as a group of people's spiritual life, and "secular city" as a group of material life.
Augustine's theological and political-legal doctrines occupy an important place in Western Christian culture as well as in political and legal doctrines. Based on the Bible, he systematically expounded the teachings of Christianity, laid the theoretical foundation for Christian doctrine, and was the most important thinker after Cicero and before Aquinas. His doctrine of the "city of God" and "secular city", developed from later theologians to the doctrine of the supremacy of ecclesiastical power, had an important influence on the political thinking of feudal society in Western Europe. Although his legal ideas were essentially a defense of slavery and slipped in the direction of theological natural law after the Stoics and Cicero, they still lost their significance in the sense of the transmission of Western legal thought. Augustine's writings are an important part of the treasure trove of Western theological, political and legal doctrines.