Medieval Political Ideas

For nearly a thousand years before him, Christians had thought of Christ’s Kingdom in Platonic terms drawn from Augustine of Hippo, which tended to devalue the world of experience in favor of usually unattainable spiritual visions. Yet Augustine provided Christians with the key categories “City of God” / “City of Man,” as well as an advanced theology of God’s providence operating in history. When Christians recovered the full political works of Aristotle in the late 12th to early 13th centuries, a revolution in how they thought about Christ’s kingship over the day-to-day world of political orders occurred. This sparked a centuries-long debate between basically Augustinian principles and basically Aristotelian ones, resulting in tremendous intellectual and societal ferment. Though all this may sound rather academic, it is actually one of the most practical subjects that Christian students can engage, as it grounds them in the history of Christian political thought and offers them profound categories of thought and action with which to engage our own culture.

Course Objectives:

1. To become acquainted with Christian political thought as found in Augustine of Hippo
2. To gain understanding of Aristotle’s impact on Christian political thinking
3. To practice and refine the skills of close analytical reading of a smaller amount of text as both a way to better interpret texts in general and as preparation for such study requirements on the college level

Texts:

• Augustine, Political Writings - ISBN-10: 0872202100
• Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State - ISBN-10: 0802067018
• Nederman, Cary, Readings in Medieval Political Theory - ISBN-10: 087220488X