99. Augustine's De Civitate Dei

 The audio recording is available at https://youtu.be/N_i98F09zIg. 

Augustine, like many others of his time, approached the religious and philosophical issues of his era largely through the philosophy of Plato and the Neo-platonic thought of Plotinus. There are various opinions that Augustine adopted and adapted the teachings of Moses from the old scriptures and, in connection, the teachings of Plato, who followed Moses. As a significant figure and teacher in both the Western and Eastern Church apparatus, Augustine, in his utopian work De Civitate Dei (The City of God), explains that there exists both a current Church and one that will be realized in the final days. Augustine does not clarify whether the same members will be part of both churches, nor does he explain how the two churches differ or resemble each other. Note: The concept of a heavenly city appears in other cultures, such as Ta-ching in China, Brahma-pura in India, and Ogdoad in Egypt. It is important to remember that Augustine wrote this work partly to ensure the survival of the Roman Empire, at least ideologically through the new Christianity, as it seemed to be collapsing. Augustine manipulatively believes that God destined the Roman Empire to bring peace to the world, so that the world could fall under Christ’s dominion.

In De Civitate Dei, the same divine laws govern everywhere, by which the city can be seen as the sole homeland for Christians. In modern terms, the heavenly city, country, or homeland is where the people of the One’s house live, regardless of gender, nationality, language, or skin colour, and it has nothing to do with the Roman Empire or any other empire. Projecting Augustine’s aims to our own time, consider how many works have been written supporting the idea of the American empire's global power. Augustine is correct in stating that the construction of this virtual city/country began with creation and continues today. We should add that the continuous building of this city means that Christianity, co-existed with creation, must always be realized by the Christian person, placed at the intersection of the horizontal plane of life and the vertical plane of existence.

The task of the Christian person, therefore, is to ensure the continuity of Christianity. Thus, Christianity is not, as we conceive it today, two thousand years old. De Civitate Dei is the virtual homeland of this eternal Christianity. There is no "old" or "new" Christianity; there is only one Christianity. It follows that every person is born Christian, and if later they become enslaved to some religion or ideology, it is up to them—specifically, to their sleepwalking state or their awakening. Similarly, it is up to them to return to the One and Only, the source. The pagan and the non-pagan, the Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist are all Christians, because every religion or way of life, whether Eastern or Western is anticipated by the creation of the universal man. This is confirmed by the various sacred texts, where the creation of humanity is described in similar terms.

Thus, the universal history of humanity is simply the on-going construction of this city or country, regardless of the century, the country of birth, skin colour, or language. Here, the story is not about worldly revolutions, wars, or the rise and fall of empires, but about whether the person has responded to the invitation to return to the One or not. In this city, country, or homeland, everyone who has made themselves worthy of the return is at home with the One. It should also be noted that not everyone is capable of building this city, and there are those who destroy it instead. They are the unworthy, senseless materialists, the irresponsible capitalists, communists, and tourists with a high individual "I" who live parasitically, taking from the world without contributing anything, leaving only waste behind and entrusting its removal to others. They destroy the sacredness of nature and treat other created beings as slaves to gain profit for themselves. There are many on this site.

On the other side are the builders with universal consciousness and "I," the true and normal people. They are the chosen ones of the One and Only, those expected for salvation, who have made themselves worthy of that election, and thus belong to the kingdom of heaven. In earlier centuries, there were more of them than today, in this age of material comfort and spiritual nihilism. If creation is continuous and those chosen by the One help in this creation, then it can be stated that in the 20th and 21st centuries, the strength of creation, the circulation of love, has weakened significantly compared to earlier centuries. If creation continues to weaken, it is likely that it will eventually cease, leading to a new apocalypse, a new beginning. The opposite of the heavenly city is the earthly Babel, the city of confusion, where truth and falsehood coexist in constant conflict and fighting. Today, the globalized Babel dominates the earth, controlled by the invisible powers behind the scenes, their apparatus, and the built authorities.

The missionary ideology of the so-called Christian Roman Empire also claimed that non-Christians, in this sense, the pagans, are unhappy, and that embracing Christianity would bring happiness to them. In other words, the pagans had to be made happy through conquest, specifically through violence. Today's backstage powers attempt to achieve happiness by sinking into materialism, by massification. In the Middle Ages, power expanded through conquest disguised as missionary work, acquiring material wealth, such as in the American continent, where the conquerors carried the cross in one hand and the sword in the other, sending to the afterlife those who did not want to convert. In both cases, Christianity's superiority over the conquered pagans was emphasized. Augustine rather morbidly describes the sacking of Rome by the Goths, which he thought should not be seen as a tragedy. If Christians were killed, they would soon reach heaven. If pagans were killed, they would also reach heaven, just a bit later. The wise thing, he says, is for a person to bow to God's will and accept what has happened.