If you want to sound like you know Augustine’s political theology but don’t want to spend more than half an hour digging through it, all you need to do is quote his “what are states but robber bands?” analysis:

Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, “What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor.”

This, like 90% of City of God, is nothing but accusing pagan states of lacking justice — only Christianity allowed for true justice in Augustine’s thought. By stating that pagan states, like the Roman republic/empire, had lacked justice altogether, Augustine was taking a shot at the extremely powerful civic religion that caused a number of (mostly male) Roman aristocrats to oppose Christianity. Is this how this statement is ever interpreted? No, of course not: the Augustinian superstars over at the libertarian Von Mises Institute have another reading:

Even though Augustine did not seem to follow through with his damning critique of the State, which aligns very well with Murray Rothbard’s description of the State as “a gang of thieves writ large,” he still argued clearly that the State was not a moral institution in and of itself. Dyson concludes therefore,

the State, then, is a result of sin and an expression of sin. Like sickness, death and all the tribulations of this world, it is an outcome or product of the Fall. More strictly, it is a result of the change wrought in human nature and on the human will by the Fall. The State is not, as it had been for Plato and Aristotle, a natural part of human life or a natural forum for the development and expression of the human character and potential. It is an unnatural supervention upon the created order.***

This should be a sobering reminder to Christian statists who so uncritically accord the State some semblance of moral authority. It makes no sense to combat sin with an inherently flawed institution that is itself borne of sin. We must look beyond the mystical aura the State has hidden itself behind and realize that the “emperor” has no clothes. Religious zeal devoid of knowledge of the truth is damaging and costly.

You’re getting this, right? The argument goes: because Augustine observed the state was one of many results of the Fall, it’s inherently amoral and we should be careful not to impute positive moral purpose into it. I wonder what else Augustine would identify as being a result of the Fall?

By what right does every man possess what he possesses? Is it not by human right? For by divine right ‘the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.’ God has made the rich and poor of one clay: the same earth supports the rich and poor alike. By human right, however, someone says, ‘this estate is mine, this house is mine, this slave is mine. By human right, therefore: that is, by right of the emperors. Why? Because God has distributed mankind these very human rights through the emperors and kings of this world…But, you say, what is the emperor to me? It is by a right derived from him that you possess the land. Otherwise, if you take away rights created by emperors, who will dare to say, ‘that estate is mine, or that slave is mine, or this house is mine’? Do not say, ‘what is the King to me?’ What are your possessions to you, then? or it is by rights derived from kings that possessions are enjoyed. If, therefore, you have said, ‘what is the king to me?’ do not say that your possessions are yours; because, in dong so, you are referring to precisely those human rights by which men enjoy their possessions.

Uh-oh! Now libertarianism begins to look a bit strange, as the unjust (that is, post-Fall) distribution of property is the direct result of state intervention. Two things are going on here: firstly, before the Fall there was no private property distribution, as the earth simply belonged to God and humanity in its goodness was content to share use of it in common; secondly, in the post-Fall proprietary world, the state adjudicates the ownership of private property to maintain order.

In the libertarian read of Augustine, you therefore have this story: both the state and private property are the result of sin, but we should only be suspicious of the state, not property, and should in fact see the protection of one artifact of sin (property) as the sole positive office of another artifact of sin (the state). What!

In the non-libertarian read of Augustine, you have this story: both the state and private property are the result of the Fall, but both can be used remedially to maintain peace and order in the saeculum, and we should therefore focus on shaping them to serve the common good. Ironically, this is what RW Dyson, who the von Mises person cites in a very limited fashion, actually argues in The Pilgrim City:

“No earthly state is just in the fullest or most proper sense of the term: no state, that is, embodies an undisturbed and perfect harmony grounded in the love and worship of God. But to the extent that they make possible for their citizens a comparativey safe and orderly existence in a world disordered and made perilous by sin, states can at least achieve an approximation of justice. We might call this approximate justice earthly or temporal or human…Earthly justice is flawed and incomplete, but justice flawed and incomplete is still better than no justice at all. To the extent that it is capable of achieving at least some degree of order and security, the state has a positive contribution to make to moral life.”

Both the state and property therefore have positive moral contributions to make to human society insofar as they support the common good. It’s impossible to squeeze a libertarian conclusion, in which the purpose of the state is simply to support pre-existing rights to private property, out of Augustine’s political theology, so I find it totally bizarre the von Mises folks are poking around with him. They’re quite correct states can’t combat sin, but by that suspicion they also indict private property, which is sort of the core of their ethos, and in doing so raise the question: so what are these things for? Which in the Augustinian frame will not yield an answer they want to hear.

This isn’t the end of Dyson’s quote. Here’s the end of it: “…created order; it has been called into being by the fact that man’s naturally sociable and co-operative disposition has been denatured and made selfish by sin. Even those heroes of Rome’s past whose exploits are held up as examples of astounding fortitude and courage have been inspired by a selfish longing for renown or by misguided loyalty to gods and institutions which are not worthy objects of devotion.” Dyson is right, and my reading agrees with his: Augustine’s critique in the robber-band set-up is not the state per se but certain iterations of pagan states.