Augustine on the Reign of Prosperity

The decline of Rome, like America, is seen in its obsession with material comforts and the attempt to banish the themes of struggle.

The following was translated and condensed from Augustine’s City of God, as found in an essay by the great Catholic historian Christoper Dawson called “St. Augustine and His Age.” The essay itself was the opening contribution to the fantastic anthology A Monument to Saint Augustine.

Dawson notes of Augustine that he saw in the cult of decaying Rome an Antichrist that was not symbolized in Apollo, but in Belial, “the prince of this world.” That is, at the time of Rome’s final spiritual degradation it was not the worship of the old gods that animated the Roman spirit, but the worship of the petty luxuries, the meaningless comforts, the numbing titillations that reflected an obsession with the temporal “achievements” of a anti-culture drunk in its final materialism.

The blame placed by the Pagans on the Christians for the collapse of their world was far less a religiously pious commitment to the old gods over against the Christ, and far more to do with their loss of material progress; as the empire fell into disarray, there was a reversion back to the reality of the human condition, what Richard Weaver referred to as the reoccurring “theme of human frailty.”

It is not merely the worship of false gods that undermined the Roman way of life, but the addiction to living as gods; of presuming that nature had finally been conquered, and that man was now to be wholly immersed in the cult of comfortable living. A truly post-heroic condition. Augustine ridicules this popular disposition in the following.

They do not trouble about the moral degradation of the Empire; all that they ask is that it should be prosperous and secure. ‘What concerns us,’ they say, ‘is that everyone should be able to increase his wealth so that he can afford a lavish expenditure and can keep the weaker in subjection. Let the poor serve the rich for the sake of their bellies and so that they can live in idleness under their protection, and let the rich use the poor as dependents and to enhance their prestige.’

While one can see in this a familiar criticism of the corruption of the financial upper classes, we also might notice a spirit that then, as now, ran deep into the bourgeois mentality: a compulsion for both material prosperity and, especially, security. That is, the denial of the reality threats, tragedy, and woe that characterize human life. The moral degradation is secondary to the temporal aspects of the Empire of Prosperity.

Augustine continues in the words of the decaying Roman spirit:

Let there be plenty of public prostitutes for whosoever wants them, above all for those who cannot afford to keep mistresses of their own. Let there be gorgeous palaces and sumptuous banquets, where anybody can play and drink and gorge himself and be dissipated by day or night, as much as he pleases or is able. Let the noise of dancing be everywhere, and let the theaters resound with lewd merriment and with every kind of cruel and vicious pleasure.

Here we might emphasize, not the relevance of the morally bankrupt American elite, but the inner desires of the middle classes. For they exist in constant reflection of that ruinous elite that drive the themes of our age. It is too easy to see in these words a critique of the Paris Hiltons of our time.

We ought to generalize the critique. We should recognize that it is a driving characteristic of our age to carry an expectation of prosperity in life and the constant satisfaction of every desire; this is the glory of the Western Capitalist system. It is our material prosperity, more than anything else, that drives our boasting of the superiority of Western ideals and the triumph over Western liberal democracy over the unenlightened old Europe, or even the once Communist East. Our increasing capacity to consume, our readiness to lavish amusements on ourselves, our inability to focus on the metaphysical tragedy of our age. These are features of the suburban churchgoer.

Material prosperity is the post-Christian religion.

We too seek the worship of Belial.

Let the man who dislikes these pleasures be regarded as a public enemy, and if he tries to interfere with them, let the mob be free to hound him to death. But as for the rulers who devote themselves to giving the people a good time, let them be treated as gods and worshipped accordingly. Only let them take care that neither war nor plague nor any other calamity may interfere with this reign of prosperity.

Here is expressed not a criticism of the self-conscious moral subjectivists and the New Atheist movement, but of those who refuse to see the reality of American decline and wish instead to believe that America (and the West) can be made Great Again with a renewed commitment to lower taxes, less business regulations, and revamped productive output. Here is expressed a mockery not merely of the radically Leftist college student, but just as easily those who have, without realizing the revolutionary roots of such a spirit, absorbed the true spirit of modernity.

It is the prophet that preaches of the fleeting nature of material abundance that is to be excommunicated; it is the man who defines greatness in terms of the metaphysical, of the spiritual, who is to be mocked, ridiculed, and tarnished for not celebrating the achievements of science and technology as the physical monuments to human triumph.

The reign of prosperity is a feature not of civilizational birth and vitality, but of cultural decline and spiritual malaise.

In the words of Weaver: “Culture consists, in truth, of many little things, but they are not armrests and soft beds and extravagant bathing facilities. These, after all, cater to sensation, and, because culture is of the imagination, the man of culture is to a degree living out of this world.”