Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/73

 AUGUSTINE 59

Old Testament the precursing shadow, the basis and threshold, of the ecclesiastical theocracy of the new world era which is builded by Christ and in turn is built on Him. Synagogue and Christian Church are associated inseparably, since God willed it so* The new form which the life of mankind must take on is the Church which, building mys- tically on Christ the God-man, is the communion of all who, living in Him and striving toward Him, are elected to and desire salvation* It is an organism through which there courses a supernatural soul; but it is also a union in which no member loses his independent per- sonal significance, because Jesus Christ is the source of the law which governs the life both of the individual soul and of the community. But in order to preach, preserve and carry out this law by which men are to be guided and the world transformed, the Church needs the concrete, visible, active authority whose function it is to restore all things in Christ. This high historical purpose is binding upon the bearer of every authority, even political authority. Jesus said that His Kingdom is not of this world; but He did not say that it is not within the world, or that it would not enter this world even as yeast pervades dough. It was to men who live in the world that He said: what was His Kingdom if not of those who believe in Him?" asked Augustine. "For here His Kingdom shall abide until the end of time, and shall mingle weeds with its wheat until the day of harvest. But the harvest is the end of the world, when the reapers come who are the angels, and weed from His Kingdom all that giveth offense. Yet these things could not happen were his Kingdom not here be- low." The immanent demand of the trancendental (tsternttm in- ternttm) is always that which really keeps both soul and human his- tory ceaselessly active. But if man becomes another being in Chris- tianity, is filled with new wine and sent off toward new horizons, the ancient forms of civic life that antedate Christ cannot but be under- mined. Although he seems in many ways still deeply rooted in an- tique habits of thinking, Augustine struggled to create a new political theology based on the Christian union of soul and world, in which theology all earthly institutions, including the state, would be set forth as agents of the Divine, The Highest Good and Christian salva- tion do not obligate the ecclesiastical state alone, but they must (for
 * Ye are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.*' "For of

60