I was recently prompted by some new accounts to review what St. Augustine thought about military service, the Christian vocation, and prayer. Hence, ep. 189.
Context is helpful and here is a broad view of the letter as a whole.
In a nutshell, Letter 189 belongs to Augustine’s later years, around 417–418. He wrote to Boniface, a senior military officer in Africa battling against the Vandals, later the comes Africae. Augustine says he had already written once, but then a messenger named Faustus arrived and reported that Boniface especially wanted something spiritually useful for his salvation. Augustine therefore sent a second, more direct exhortation.
Bluntly, Boniface is fighting the Vandals in Roman Africa. He wants to quit fighting and join a monastery. Augustine is not amused, as his brevity suggests.
The dense letter is pastoral in purpose. Boniface was a Christian officer, a man of rank, arms, and public responsibility, asking a bishop how to live faithfully in that condition. Augustine writes to Boniface as a pastor. The Bishop of Hippo reduces the Christian life to the twofold commandment of charity, love of God and love of neighbor, and then applies it to military service, discipline, humility, and the right use of force.
The opening shows that the letter is meant as a practical spiritual rule for a busy commander rather than a full theological treatise.
There is also a larger African ecclesiastical and political context. Boniface had already been in contact with Augustine during the Donatist controversy. In Augustine’s earlier Letter 185, Boniface appears as the official charged with enforcing imperial penalties against Donatists. Augustine there explains and defends coercive legislation against schism. That earlier connection helps explain why Boniface would turn to Augustine again. He was operating in a province where religion, public order, coercion, and imperial law were tightly bound together.
A central move in Letter 189 is Augustine’s reordering of Boniface’s horizon. Boniface was a man of command, always in danger of letting urgent worldly business eclipse the final end. Augustine therefore lifts the question above office, reputation, and imperial service to the vision of God and the hope of the heavenly kingdom. A commander who forgets his final end will also misuse his temporal means. Charity is thus given as the governing interior principle broad enough to guide command decisions, violence, prayer, and daily conduct.
Augustine also addresses Boniface’s anxiety about whether a soldier can please God. He answers yes.
Augustine points to David, the centurion praised by Christ, Cornelius, and the soldiers who asked John the Baptist what to do and were told not to extort, not to accuse falsely, and to be content with their wages. He does not tell Boniface to leave military service. He legitimizes Christian service in arms while giving it a moral compass. In Boniface’s case this was immediately relevant, since he already held coercive and defensive responsibilities in Africa.
Augustine then places Boniface’s office within a wider ecclesial division of labor. Some Christians fight invisible enemies by prayer, while Boniface fights visible enemies, the barbarians. In this way he serves the peace of the Church and the Christian people. Yet Augustine sharply defines the ethos of such service: “Peace should be the object of your desire; war should be waged only as a necessity.” Even promises to enemies must be kept, and the defeated or captive are to receive mercy when peace can be secured. Force may be used, but never with hatred or delight in violence.
The letter closes by turning from public duty to private discipline: chastity, sobriety, moderation, detachment from riches, thanksgiving, humility, prayer, and readiness to forgive. Augustine says the letter is more a mirror than a manual, since he had already heard a good report of Boniface. At this stage, before Boniface’s later crises, Augustine was trying to strengthen what seemed a promising Christian military vocation.
With this background in mind, here is an interesting passage from ep. 189.5 about the men in his monastery, that is, those who have abandoned secular employments. Augustine founded a convent for women, one for men, and his own house, a monastery that wound up as seminary for bishops. Here is a key passage, also touching on indifference or even positive support concerning false religions whom he associates with the Devil and fallen angels :
5. They occupy indeed a higher place before God who, abandoning all these secular employments, serve Him with the strictest chastity; but every one, as the apostle says, has his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that (1 Corinthians 7:7). Some, then, in praying for you, fight against your invisible enemies; you, in fighting for them, contend against the barbarians, their visible enemies. Would that one faith existed in all, for then there would be less weary struggling, and the devil with his angels would be more easily conquered; but since it is necessary in this life that the citizens of the kingdom of heaven should be subjected to temptations among erring and impious men, that they may be exercised, and tried as gold in the furnace (Wisdom 3:6) we ought not before the appointed time to desire to live with those alone who are holy and righteous, so that, by patience, we may deserve to receive this blessedness in its proper time.
Did you notice that Augustine tells Boniface that the monks are PRAYING for his success in battle?
It is good idea to delve into Augustine in the midst of current events.
