jueves, 27 de agosto de 2026

THE CITY OF GOD AND HUMAN PEACE

 

K. Cronick

INTRODUCTION

The objectives of this essay[1]

In this essay I want to begin to explore the cultural problem of peace, and I intend to follow it later with other approaches like the legal dispositions and the existence of international agreements. For now, I will do it from an historical/cultural perspective, mostly with reference to the writings of Saint Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo.

I call the culture of peace a problem because, since the beginning of recorded history, the concept and the practice of power have been closely aligned with conquest and war. There have been, however, three cultural developments to challenge these ideals of war.

First, the teachings of Siddharta Gautama (Buddha, (6th or 5th century BCE) began to influence Far Eastern thought. Buddhism has offered teachings on achieving peace -both spiritually and politically. It teaches compassion and non-violence, and promotes the ideal of community harmony.

Secondly, in the first millennium BCE in what was to become Greece, there were disperse reflections regarding the brutality of war. The poet Homer in the Iliad offered a thoughtful and concerned examination of the motivations and personalities of the participants that took part in the Trojan war. This poem is not a patriotic paean, because the bard sympathizes with the fates of both the Greeks and Trojans. From the beginning of his poem he warned his listeners that it would all end tragically and there would be nothing left. That there would be no winners in the sense of a lasting peace and prosperity.

Still in the context of ancient Greek reflections, some centuries later in Athens, Aristotle considered that military action was a natural means of acquiring merchandises: "War itself is, in a way, a natural means of acquiring [goods...] it is a battle that nature itself has made legitimate" (2017, p. 17-18). But other Greeks mourned its destruction and death. For example, in "The Trojan Women" Euripides (V century B.C./ 2015) lamented the loss of Troy and the sad fate of its women who become the slaves of the conquering Greeks. The author does so by arousing the empathy of the audience when they hear the women’s laments in the voices of the performers in his play. There were other approaches, also, for questioning military heroism. In Aeschylus’ cycle of plays, “The Oresteia”  in 458 B.C.E. (n.d. B) King Agamemnon’s life and legacy were questioned, together with those of his whole family. It was a formidable expression of critical thinking to be able to question a powerful king’s motives and actions in Athens at that time; even though he had been a Spartan, he was one of the founding fathers of Greek identity.

Thirdly, in the first century of the CE, Christianity appeared in Western Culture with its ideals of compassionate love and charity. It formed a community of belief that did not always share a physical territory. As Saint Augustine said, “For the blessedness of a community and of an individual flow from the same source; for a community is nothing else than a harmonious collection of individuals” (City of God, B. 1, Ch. 15, p 50).

In these reflections I will concentrate on the cultural importance of Christian influence, specifically the writings of Saint Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, with regard to Western ethics and power structures. I will examine his thoughts about the tenets of war and the nature of both divine and earthly power structures. I will consider how his writings have influenced historical and existing practices, their effects on the rhetoric of those times, and how they have continued to exist as shadow-values ever since.[2]

It will be necessary first of all to consider how his ideals (and those of early Christianity in general) found a place in the Roman culture of his times.

 

The new cultural mandate: love

With the advent of Christianity, the mandate to love one’s neighbor was compelling, but not entirely new. In the Old Testament it appears as an ethical directive to treat “one’s neighbors” with compassion and respect. In Leviticus (19:18) we find this mandate:

“‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.

The context in which this was formulated was the liberation of the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery and the beginning of the nation of Israel as a social and political entity. It was important for these people to see each other as “neighbors”, that is, people belonging to one cultural heritage. There was a strong need to create a cohesive society based on a sense of justice and community. It is not clear whether this sense of belonging extended beyond their own cultural borders. Later, when King Saul and King David became monarchs, they did engage in some rather brutal wars.

Centuries later the Christian guidelines were wider. In the New Testament, in the Gospel according to Mathew, Jesus is quoted as saying something similar to the Old Testament mandate:

´Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.' (Matthew 22:37-39)

For Christians, the mandate to love one another is equivalent to theological law: “Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law.” (Romans 13:10). And this requirement goes beyond the love one has for one’s own nationals; it extends to one’s enemies as well: “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44).

These were new ways of looking at community and even humanity as a shared experience. Again, this new worldview did not stop wars of extermination or local atrocities even among Christian kingdoms. But it did plant new seeds, and new ways of looking at society.

 

The culture of war and despotism before and after Augustine

The exercise of power throughout the millenniums has often implied brutal repressions. From the conquest of Troy by the Greeks, to the destruction of Thebes by Alexander the Great, to the siege of Carthage by the Romans, winning warriors have looted, destroyed, and enslaved their enemies.

Saint Augustine’s message was different: he opens his “City of God” with the Christian idea that mercy should be extended to one’s enemies, and all people should be sheltered from violence, even military violence.

It had already happened that conquering armies had respected the lives of the vanquished, although not because of a belief in charity. The motives were more related to the monetary and economic benefits that defeated populations could have. Refugees could be useful for dominant kingdoms: their populations could be incorporated into the local workforce, the farming population, and even into the army as foot soldiers.

With the advent of Christianity there was a brand-new, comprehensive value being transmitted through a religious ideal: this innovative value was universal love, which was being preached by this recently organized religion. It was not related to either a new model of citizenship or to economic benefits. It was an abstract ethical standard. Augustine observes how innovative this new morality was, and he challenges his readers to find even one example of similar behavior before Christian times:


[…There is not even] one instance in which, when a city had been taken by foreigners, the victors spared those who were found to have fled for sanctuary to the temples of their gods;  or one instance in which a barbarian general gave orders that none should be put to the sword who had been found in this or that temple (City of God, B1, Ch.2, p. 23).

 

This happened -for the first time, in Augustine’s appreciation, during the capture of Rome by the Goths in the fifth century, when the invaders spared the Roman refugees in Christian temples. I will refer to this below.

The Christians have not always lived up to their ideal. One of the first and most famous infractions of their own principle happened when they burned the remnants of the Library at Alexandria together with its curators. It is believed the main library had ben already destroyed -unintentionally- by a fire set by Julius Cesar in 48 CE to facilitate his escape from the city. Later, the “sister library” of the city, housed in a pagan temple called Serapeum, was burned on purpose by Christian fanatics.

This happened In the year 391 CE. The motives were both fanatical and political: in 380 CE, when the emperor Theodosius I had declared that Christianity would be the official religion of the Roman Empire, he ordered the destruction of the remaining pagan temples. Following this order Theophilus, the bishop of Alexandria, led an attack on the Serapeum. “His frenzied followers ran amok in the temple, destroying and plundering. When the destruction was complete, Theophilus ordered a church to be built on the site” (Abbadi, 2026).

 In a related incident in 415 a group of Christians killed the philosopher Hypatia who was associated with the Neoplatonic school of philosophy at Alexandria. She was accused of heresy. Both the hoards that did the killing and the leader who ordered it were Christians, and the motives were related to the eradication of heresy. But there were other probable political motives as well, such as: a) her friendship with the traditional aristocracy of Alexandria, and b) her anger with Theophilus because of the destruction and plunder of the library at Serapeum before in the year 391.

After the Romans, with the appearance of the Christian kingdoms and empires in Europe, there were wars either between Christian kings, o with organized Christian armies that fought kingdoms that worshipped other dogmas, as happened during the Crusades. Sometimes different Christian cults attempted to destroy each other, as in the "Huguenot Wars" in France, or the “Thirty-years War” that affected the Holy Roman Empire in the XVII century. Again, Christianity chose to ignore its central values of love and mercy, even though their churches were full of paintings and allusions to the love predicated by Christ and of images of the Virgin, often tenderly holding her baby, or exhibiting a red heart on her breast. 

This sociopolitical complexity continues today. The chief declared religions of modern Europe and the American states are Christian, and nevertheless, wars are waged with the declared purpose of exterminating each side’s enemies.

In this essay I will try to examine the emergence of Christian love as an historical achievement by reviewing some of Augustine’s writings.

 

SAINT AUGUSTINE


Saint Augustine embraced Christianity in the year 386 of the CE, shortly after Theodosius I declared Christianity to be the only acceptable religion for the Roman Empire in the year 380.  In 395 he became full Bishop at Hippo and remained in that position until his death in 430. It was a traumatic time for the Romans that still worshiped their Pantheon of traditional gods. The Eternal City had changed and a belief structure that had lasted centuries had collapsed.

In the year 410, during his tenure as the bishop of Hippo, the “barbarian” Goths under Alaric their king, were invading Rome, and the Roman citizens were panicked, looking for shelter wherever they might find it. The Christian churches were open to these refugees, even when the victims did not share their beliefs. And the invaders, some of whom were also Christian -including Aleric himself-, respected these places.

It was historically unheard of. Augustin described these efforts to save the Roman citizens, pagan or Christian. He distinguished between the city of God and the earthly cities, and said that the latter should emulate divine regency by assuming divine goals. Later when the traditional Romans would complain about Christian dominance, he reminded them that they had been saved from the invaders by the churches and cloisters that had taken them in and protected them. Later, when the pagan Romans were complaining about the loss of their Eternal City and their old culture, he admonished them:


For to this earthly city belong the enemies against whom I have to defend the city of God. Many of them, indeed, being reclaimed from their ungodly error, have become sufficiently creditable citizens of this city; but many are so inflamed with hatred against it, and are so ungrateful to its Redeemer for His signal benefits, as to forget that they would now be unable to utter a single word to its prejudice, had they not found in its sacred places, as they fled from the enemy’s steel, that life in which they now boast themselves. Are not those very Romans, who were spared by the barbarians through their respect for Christ, become enemies to the name of Christ? The reliquaries of the martyrs and the churches of the apostles bear witness to this; for in the sack of the city they were open sanctuary for all who fled to them, whether Christian or Pagan. To their very threshold the blood-thirsty enemy raged; there his murderous fury owned a limit. Thither did such of the enemy as had any pity convey those to whom they had given quarter, lest any less mercifully disposed might fall upon them (City of God, B.1, Ch. 1, p.21).

 

The City of God

Augustine cites numerous Old Testament references to a City of God to show how the Hebrews were aware of its existence even before the birth of Christ. It was based on love as its main tenet.

From these and similar testimonies, all of which it were tedious to cite, we have learned that there is a city of God, and its Founder has inspired us with a love which makes us covet its citizenship (City of God, B. 10, Ch. 12, p. 568).

 But Augustine was raised in the context of the Roman culture and loved the city as it always had been. He lamented its conquest. Like most of his Christian compatriots he did not see the Gothic conquest as a liberation. After all, Rome was already a Christian city. He admired the long tradition of Roman government and culture. He developed the idea that there might be two simultaneous cities, one in which there are customs, laws, physical constructions, economies, and political organizations, and another, the City of God that spiritually hovers over these artifacts, products and ruins.

If the old social system was crumbling away, in its place he saw the creation of a pure Christendom. In this spiritual city there are profounder views of history. For him it was possible from this perspective to understand how the community of God’s people has coexisted with the world’s kingdoms. He considers that in this spiritual city there exists a superior morality. He attributed the antagonism of these two grand communities, that is, the earthly city and God’s city, to the fall of the angels. For Augustine the city of God is an attempt to produce a valid philosophy of history and to develop the spiritual idea of the Kingdom of God under both the Jewish and Christian interpretations, in contrast with the declining kingdoms of this world.

This conception was profoundly comforting in rapidly changing world.

The City of God is, in his conception immaterial, but contains angels. It was an extension of the Christian God himself, although He was composed of three parts, a trinity.

Augustine is arguably a one-self trinitarian. For him, the one God is the Trinity. And this one God is almost always addressed and described using singular personal pronouns. He is an object of our love, as much as our neighbors and ourselves, and he […] is a simple, timeless, and perfect self, a subject of complete knowledge, who freely creates all other things, and who exists in a truer or deeper way. (Augustine, Trinity, 227 [VII.3.9]; cf. City 425 [X.24], 462 [XI.10]) One must say “three persons”, but for Augustine these are not three selves (Tuggy, 2025).

 Augustine tells how God’s will became known to earthly people in their earthly cities. It was dictated, as it were, by God Himself, and, after having passed through the minds of his profits, apostles, and saints, it was written down in sacred texts:

This Mediator, having spoken what He judged sufficient first by the prophets, then by His own lips, and afterwards by the apostles, has besides produced the Scripture which is called canonical, which has paramount authority, and to which we yield assent in all matters of which we ought not to be ignorant, and yet cannot know of ourselves (City of God, B 11, Ch 3, p. 572).

 Thus, accepting heaven’s complexities, and the intricacies of God’s own nature, the main distinction for Augustine is between the City of God, and the earthly cities each with its own characteristics and people. This distinction eased the transition from Rome’s traditional identity to a Christian one.   

Wickedness

Augustine devotes continued reflections to the topic of sin.Those who sin are transgressors and Christians should, he said, reject their acts, but not the sinners themselves. It was a new way of defining the "other".  But it is a logical and ecclesiastical problem, because God created everybody, even the sinners. And He also dictated that there should be universal love among all mankind.

And since no one is evil by nature, but whoever is evil is evil by vice, he who lives according to God ought to cherish towards evil men a perfect hatred, so that he shall neither hate the man because of his vice, nor love the vice because of the man, but hate the vice and love the man 8City of God, B.14, Ch. 6, p. 741).  

 

Furthermore, in a world created perfectly by a perfect God, how is sin to be explained? In Augustine’s writings, indeed in all of Christian literature, free will is a problem. God created all things, including wickedness, the fallen angels, the unbelievers, and even the Devil himself.

"This leviathan whom Thou hast made to be a sport therein," that we may see that, even while God in His goodness created him good, He yet had already foreseen and arranged how He would make use of him when he became wicked (City of God, B 11, Ch17, p. 596, Augustine is quoting Psalm 104:26).

 This is a problem because if God has even created the sinners, and those who ignore His mandates for love and mercy, how can these sinners be responsible for their acts? They have no real free will if part of their creation included the capacity for sin. Sin is not a blemish on the beauty of God’s creation, it is a “shadow” in a beautiful painting (City of God, B. 11., Ch 23, p. 605).

Nevertheless, Augustine holds on to the idea of human will; God can be defied, even by creatures of His own creation. Evil has “deficient causes” even though it is part of the expression of free will which was a divine creation. Evil will be punished:

This I do know, that the nature of God can never, nowhere, nowise be defective, and that natures made of nothing can. […,] but in so far as they are defective in being, and consequently do evil (for then what is their work but vanity?) they have deficient causes. And I know likewise, that the will could not become evil, were it unwilling to become so; and therefore its failings are. justly punished, being not necessary, but voluntary. (City of God, B. 12, Ch. 8, p. 642).

 “Goodness” must be tested. Evil in Augustine is considered part of a natural process of constant recreation, and free will becomes a sort of an antibody against infection, or an evolutionary process that leads to perfection. This is an interesting idea; it is the acceptance of a process of cultural change, an optimistic view of the future. It is also appropriate in a world of rapid change such as Augustine and his fellow Christians were experiencing in Rome after its abandonment of the ancient Parthenon of Greek and Roman deities, and the invasion of the Goths.

It is He who gave to this intellectual nature free-will of such a kind, that if he wished to forsake God, i.e., his blessedness, misery should forthwith result. It is He who, when He foreknew that certain angels would in their pride desire to suffice for their own blessedness, and would forsake their great good, did not deprive them of this power, deeming it to be more befitting His power and goodness to bring good out of evil than to prevent the evil from coming into existence (B 22, Ch1 1, p. 1301).

Christian charity in government and times of war

Love, or charity, and its synonyms in the Augustine’s writings are demanded of those who rule a Christian nation. The despot does not rule, he benefits his own “pride” and avarice.

He who resolves to love God, and to love his neighbor as himself, not according to man but according to God, is on account of this love said to be of a good will; and this is in Scripture more commonly called charity, but it is also, even in the same books, called love. For the apostle says that the man to be elected as a ruler of the people must be a lover of good (City of God, B. 14,  Ch. 7, p. 742).

 The two kinds of rulers, the self-serving one, and the godly, loving one, represent the two cities, in the sense that the one that obeys the dictates of God does not love to power; he extends divine love toward his subjects as a relationship and even as a policy. He rules as though he would like to imitate the divine city. The worldly lover of power exists only on Earth.

In the one, the prince sand the nations it subdues are ruled by the love of ruling; in the other, the princes and the subjects serve one another in love, the latter obeying, while the former take thought for all. The one delights in its own strength, represented in the persons of its rulers; the other says to its God (City of God, B. 14, Ch. 28, p. 788).

 Augustine also decried the traditional culture of cruelty in war. He made a special point of condemning Greek practices, and he even mentions Cesar’s treatment of his vanquished foes as part of a deplorable “Universal Custom of an Enemy When Sacking a City” (City of God, B.1, Ch. 5, p. 30). He mentioned how Marcus Marcellus, before conquering Syracuse, lamented what he knew was going to be “it’s coming ruin […] before he spilled its blood” (ibid, p. 31). In this account we can see a growing discrepancy between the ideals of war and its practice, even in (pagan) Roman times.

In his writings Augustine makes a point of contrasting, on one hand, the Greek treatment of the conquered Trojans, and the pre-Christian Roman rules of war, to the way all the Romans were respected in the Christian temples during the invasion by the Goths. The big change was due to Christian doctrine: Augustine says “That the cruelties which occurred in the sack of Rome were in accordance with the custom of war, whereas the acts of clemency resulted from the influence of Christ’s name” (ibid, B. 1, Ch. 7. p.33).

But there is a paradox: men must forgive each other and show mercy. But God punishes, even the righteous among his flock by inflicting disasters on everyone. Augustine attributes all men’s hardships to God’s punishment for their eventual “wickedness”.

First of all, they must humbly consider those very sins which have provoked God to fill the world with such terrible disasters; for although they be far from the excesses of wicked, immoral, and ungodly men, yet they do not judge themselves so clean removed from all faults as to be too good to suffer for these even temporal ills. For every man, however laudably he lives, yet yields in some points to the lust of the flesh. Though he do not fall into gross enormity of wickedness, and abandoned viciousness, and abominable profanity, .yet he slips into some sins, either rarely or so much the more frequently as the sins seem of less account (ibid, Ch. 9, p. 36).

 Augustine even thinks that “good” men are at fault when they do not denounce the sins of other men. It is also blameful to value wealth more than virtue. On the other hand, men carry their faithfulness with them even when they have been made captive, even “He who did not abandon the prophet in the belly of a monster” (ibid, B.1, Ch 16, p.48). Likewise, women captives are not dishonored when they have been sexually abused:

[…] that the virtue which makes the life good has its throne in the soul, and thence rules the members of the body, which becomes holy in virtue of the holiness of the will; and that while the will remains firm and unshaken, nothing that another person does with the body, or upon the body, is any fault of the person who suffers it […] (Ibid, B.1, Ch 16. p.51).


The rape of the Sabine women

In Chapter 17, book 2 of the City of God, Augustine opens himself to an onslaught of possible criticism from any modern reader. Moral appreciations have changed since he wrote, and it is unfair to appraise his views from the vantage point of the twenty-first century. Nevertheless, and following his own appreciation, that it is wrong not to question error, it becomes obligatory to comment on his comprehension of the rape of the Sabine women.

Until the beginning of the twentieth century, that is, until very recently, women had few rights. The choice of their husbands was their fathers’ responsibility, and later their places of residence, their economic situation, and many other things were decided by their husbands. Thus, to look back at the beginnings of the Roman empire with modern eyes is risky. Nevertheless, it is impossible to discuss the Rape of the Sabine women with historical impartiality.

The abduction of Sabine women occurred recently after the founding of Rome in the eighth century (BCE) when Romulus became worried that his mostly-male population would not be able to sustain the city for more than one generation. They made overtures to the surrounding regions in search of wives with whom they could establish families. The Romans were not successful in their negotiations, including with the Sabines, who populated a neighboring area. The Sabines refused to allow their women to marry the Romans.

The Romans planned a subterfuge to solve their problem; they announced a festival of games to attract people from all the nearby towns. During these games they had a plan to abduct the Sabine women and fight off their men. They carried out this plan and took a number of women by force. Then the Sabine men went to war to avenge this insult. The battle was vicious, and many Sabine men were killed.

The abducted Sabine women threw themselves into the center of the battle. They implored both their fathers and their new husbands to stop fighting, and to allow the marriages to continue. The men ended the battle, and finally agreed to unite both communities into one nation. The Sabine Titus Tatius jointly ruled with the Roman Romulus for some five years, and the nation maintained its unity after Tatius's death.

Augustine has strong, male-biased, and imperial judgement of this event. He suggests that maybe the Sabines were wrong to deny the Roman request for their daughters in marriage. He even suggests that war might have been a more honorable response for the Romans than abduction. He, of course, has no concern for the women’s own opinions. He asks:

If the Sabines were wrong to deny their daughters when the Romans asked for them, was it not a greater wrong in the Romans to carry them off after that denial? The Romans might more justly have waged war against the neighboring nation for having refused their daughters in marriage when they first sought them, than for having demanded them back when they had stolen them (Ibid, B. 2, Ch. 17, p. 111).

 The problem boils down to what is more blameworthy -war or rape? If Augustine has already condemned war, this is clearly wrong. If rape is also wrong, then it becomes a choice between two evils, which a morally untenable solution.

The holiness of all life

               Augustine developed an ethic of respect for life, considering all life to be divine. He said that “trampling” life is a desecration of God himself: “whatever one may trample, he must trample a part of God, and in slaying any living creature, a part of God must be slaughtered? (Ibid, B. 4,  Ch. 12, p. 216).

 The ideal state

Agustine offers a musical metaphor for his idea of the ideal state. He has lamented what he considers a licentious and corrupt state in Rome, almost from its beginnings. But he imagines the possibility of a State that might be described in this way:

As among the different sounds which proceed from lyres, flutes, and the human voice, there must be maintained a certain harmony which a cultivated ear cannot endure to hear disturbed or jarring, but which may be elicited in full and absolute concord by the modulation even of voices very unlike one another; so, where reason is allowed to modulate the diverse elements of the state, there is obtained a perfect concord from the upper, lower, and middle classes as from various sounds; and what musicians call harmony in singing, is concord in matters of state (Ibid, B. 2, Ch. 21, p. 119).

 He is imagining a republic in which different classes and kinds of people interact peacefully. It would be an ideal earthly city. But reverence to God is the supreme value: it must be a sacrifice of a person’s individual will, given voluntarily to the Christian God. Even “mercy”, an ethical value of a worldly, civic, interpersonal nature, only has value in reference to the dictates of Christian morality.


Thus a true sacrifice is every work which is done that we may be united to God in holy fellowship, and which has a reference to that supreme good and end in which alone we can be truly blessed. And therefore even the mercy we show to men, if it is not shown for God’s sake, is not a sacrifice. For, though made or offered by man, sacrifice is a divine thing, as those who called it sacrifice meant to indicate (Ibid, B. 10, Ch.6. p.514).

 Augustine distinguishes the physical world from the spiritual world, even the body from the soul of each person. The spiritual world is totally distinct from the physical one, but when a person’s spirit follows the Christian example given by the City of God, it serves that City:

If, then, the body, which, being inferior, the soul uses as a servant or instrument, is a sacrifice when it is used rightly, and with reference to God, how much more does the soul itself become a sacrifice when it offers itself to God, in order that, being inflamed by the fire of His love, it may receive of His beauty and become pleasing to Him, losing the shape of earthly desire […] (Ibid, B. 10, Ch.6, p. 514).

CLOSING THOUGHTS

In this essay I have reviewed some of the philosophical and religious questions that were being posed in Rome in the fourth and fifth centuries after its conversion to Christianity and after the invasion of the Goths. They included: a) the historical antecedents for respecting peace, b) the mandate to love “one’s neighbor” and even one’s enemies, c) the relationship between the exercise of power and charity, d) Augustine’s idea of the city of God and the Roman transition to Christianity, and e) the contradiction between the perfection of creation and free will.

I have called the Christian values of shared love and charity “shadow values”. Since they were introduced by Biblical sources and philosophers and by clerics like Augustine, they have never been completely forgotten.  Even so, they have seldom been practiced. They were important in the thinking of some of the protestant reformists and for the enlightenment writers. They reappeared in the ideology of human rights proponents, and in the twentieth century they were certainly present in the founding charters of both the European Union (officially established on 1st of November, 1993), and the United Nations (June 26, 1945). The preamble of the United Nations’ Charter begins with these words:

WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom, AND FOR THESE ENDS to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors, and to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples… (n.d.).

 Both charters have been respected in the sense that they continue to be political and cultural resources for all of humanity. Slavery was abolished legally by the United Nations on December, 2, 1949, although it still practiced illegally in many places.

But the tendency to solve both domestic and international difficulties by means of armed repression and war continues. Many community and non-governmental organizations promote peace, wellbeing, community understanding, even in the face of declared repression. Those who denounce abuses have many outlets to do so, even though this often involves personal risk.

We can say that the slow elimination of the violence of war and tyranny has been, and is a social mandate with a long history. It has never been abandoned, even when it has been ignored.

 

 

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[1] There are certain clarifications I must make from the beginning: a) the quotes to Augustin’s City of God employ the three identifiers: a) the book citied, the chapter and the page numbers that appear on the left margin of the copy I have employed; the citings appear as B, Ch, and p, each with its appropriate number; b) I have not cited all the Internet sources I have used to obtain the dates of the events I have described. They usually have been obtained through Google questions. c) I often refer to human beings as “men”; I recognize that this is a problem, but my sources, being classical and medieval, do so, and I am following their texts.  

[2] I call the “shadow-values” because they have seldom been salient, and they have had little influence the generation of political policy.

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