Fons Iustitiae : Justice in the City of God

This article seeks to account for the nature of human justice in the City of God . I argue that finite justice, for Augustine, is participatory; it always ‘refers’ itself to the font of justice from which it overflows; it is always received by participation in Christ’s justice. This claim implicates both of Augustine’s central adversaries in the City of God , namely, imperial paganism and Pelagianism. Attention to how Augustine weaves the two major polemical antagonists of the City of God , imperial paganism and Pelagianism, into the same cloth reveals a unified claim about justice in the City of God . Both of Augustine’s antagonists are guilty of claiming a self‐referential and self‐manufactured conception of justice. Pagans and Pelagians do not confess justice as a gift received; they instead treat it as something constructed on the tottering foundation of collective or personal virtue. Justice in both cases fails and finds its end in self‐glorification and pride. Finally, I propose that Augustine’s participatory account of justice has implications for a vexed twentieth‐century debate about the City of God , namely the question of what allegiance, responsibilities and loves citizens of the heavenly city ought to have towards the earthly city in which they live as pilgrims.