Reading Augustine at a Time of Chaos — Russell Hittinger

The Morningside Institute

In August 410 Alaric, King of the Goths, entered Rome with his army, and proceeded to carry out a rather impressive version of a “sack”: murder, mayhem, theft, and desecration of churches and consecrated virgins. St. Augustine, then the bishop of Hippo Regius in North Africa, soon received a large number of refugees, both pagan and Christian. These refugees grumbled that Christianity failed to protect the City. After all, what are gods good for if they cannot guarantee the temporal safety and prosperity of Rome? Four months later, Augustine preached a sermon outlining the true lessons of this catastrophe. Within the next year he wrote the first of twenty-two books of the City of God, which is a blueprint for the main moral and spiritual lessons of disaster. Indeed, Book I represents one of the most profound themes of the entire work: Human history is a trial and test of the just and the unjust. The trial is best understood in a comparison of two heroes, one biblical and the other worldly. Namely, Job and Cato.

Francis Russell Hittinger is the Warren Chair of Catholic Studies and Research Professor of Law at the University of Tulsa. He is on the governing council of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas and a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. He has been on the faculties of Catholic University of America and Fordham University, and has served as a visiting professor at Princeton University and New York University. This lecture was given at the Morningside Institute on October 27, 2021. The Morningside Institute brings scholars and students together to examine human life beyond the classroom and consider its deepest questions through the life of New York City. For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.