Forgiveness and Politics in Augustine’s City of God

This article helps fill a gap in studies on Augustine’s thought, by focusing on forgiveness—an ethical theme important to the Bishop of Hippo—with particular attention to the role forgiveness plays, or can and should play, in political life. The City of God (De ciuitate dei; ciu.) opens wide vistas for such study. Augustine’s reflections throughout his long work cast light on the many facets of forgiveness and related themes as they enter and impact social and civic life, characterized by our human condition in all its contingency, fallibility, and fallenness, while rooted deeply in divine creation and the goodness of nature, healed and elevated by grace even in this saeculum. The article’s first segment argues that the theme of forgiveness or pardon, pagan and Christian, frames the entire ciu. The second segment studies three exemplars of forgiveness in political life highlighted by Augustine: Julius Caesar, David, and Theodosius. The third section comprises a brief conclusion, observing a parallel Augustine discerns between Virgil’s and Jesus’s teaching. This surprising confluence offers a vision of friendship forged by generous “giving and forgiving” across religious and cultural divides, and thus perhaps a partial foundation for unitas in our “foundationless age.”