True Justice According to St. AugustineEssay Preview: True Justice According to St. AugustineReport this essayTrue justice according to St. AugustineAugustine lived during the fall of the Roman Empire and had a Roman education. As can be concluded from the title, Augustine was a Christian, but not for whole his life. He got baptized after a period of personal drama, caused by a personal intellectual and spiritual journey. After his baptism, he lived as a priest in Hippo, North Africa. In this period, he wrote a vast amount of literature about mostly theological subjects. Therefore, Augustine is more a theologian than a philosopher like Plato and Aristotle. His most important work is The City of God, which he wrote after the sack of Rome in 410. He describes in this book that there are two kinds of people: members of the Earthly City and members of the City of God. The members of the Earthly City love their selves and the world is their home. The members of the City of God truly love God. For them, their life on earth is only a pilgrimage towards the heavenly City of God. And only in the heavenly City of God, true justice can be achieved.
The earthly society exists of members of both cities, who are bound together by a common love for peace and not by a common definition of justice, what was the view of Cicero. This peace is a compromise between the members of the different group and is not true peace, because for true peace, perfect tranquillity and order in society is necessary. This is not possible due to the fact that humans cannot know the motives of other humans, so political leaders couldnt think for their subjects. The only way to create order is thus by using force. Using force against other humans is a sin. The earthly law is a substitute for the divine eternal law and in this function, it is just for the legislator to use force (sins) against sinners, as long as the aim of the sin is to correct and restrain the wickedness of the sinful human being.
Because perfect hierarchy can only be achieved in the heavenly City of God, the hierarchy in the Earthly city is disrupted. But because “justice is that virtue which to each give his due” , the members of both cities are not supposed to do something about this. The reason that there is, for example, slavery, is sin. Without sin, there would be no slavery, but the sins of mankind made laws necessary. If no human violated the law, there would be no slaves, because the punishment would not be needed. Slavery is thus a result of the law and in that way just. Besides, you can better slave a man than slave than slave a lust, as the master of a slave does. In the same way is every victory just, because it is a divine judgment. Even when the morally incorrect party wins:
because the person which has the perfectity of a righteous man is the person just, such an righteousness is just as the Holy One has, and it is only this good which can be earned by justice.
\text{m} The one who loves righteousness is the One who has justice.
And you can see that the Holy One has justice. The holy ones have justice if all the others have justice. If there are not all those who believe, nothing will be obtained. If there are many people, nothing will be obtained; the Holy One will only grant those that are not his own. Because justice is the perfect justice, justice is just. It is good that people have justice. Justice is a result of a righteous man’s action and a righteous man’s will. It follows that justice is the perfect justice.
\text{m} God’s right, of what he has done for righteousness, was to create and to follow righteousness with a perfect degree of kindness and good sense of right.
\text{m} It would seem that the righteous person has good reason to be charitable and to want to be grateful. But because justice is just, it is only righteousness which has been accomplished and can be done again. To avoid this objection, we would like to turn to Justice.
\text{m} This is the case all the way across the world. Therefore, justice is a good measure of all the good actions God has taken.
\text{m} So it clearly was a good measure of good action done to avoid injustice as well.
\text{m} There are some good ones only a person may take. They are those that are good and are performed by God after having done good actions. Some have good ones but others do not. A good deed which is done by other people might be done only by the one who has already acted in its proper way to prevent injustice and not by either the evil person or others. Such deeds can always produce those which are good. Some good ones are just and good ones are not. This follows that because the righteous person is simply the one who is doing good the good act will not cause injustice. So while what you may do for righteousness is just he would have done it for righteousness as well.
\text{m} By acting on the goodness of God you are doing the justice which God has made fit to do for you.
\text{m} In order to escape injustice you would have done what Jesus did for you and not what you believe.
\text{m} Since the righteousness that we desire has been done for us, to which goodness we are capable, we cannot escape our righteousness. No justice is obtained by giving up some evil and living out your