Outline of Moreland's Kingdom Triangle

1. Recover the Christian Mind
1. Naturalism as intellectual stronghold
2. Thick and thin worlds
1. “possible world”  : philosophical jargon for the way things could have been.
2. Thin and thick possible worlds
1. Thin world:  world with no objective value.
1. Nothing is as important enough to rise above custom.
2. If there is no objective meaning and value, then there is no drama.
2. Thick worlds
3. Tearing down intellectual strongholds (2 Cor. 10:3-5).
4. Naturalism defined
1. view of knowledge:  whatever exists should be knowable by third-person scientific means.  Only scientific related knowledge counts
2. In the beginning was the particles
5. Problems for naturalism
1. Consciousness: if you start with matter and simply rearrange it, you will only come up with more complex arrangements of brute matter.
2. Secondary qualities” naturalism can account for primary qualities, but not secondary ones like color, taste, texture.
3. Normative properties: naturalism can only tell us what, not should or ought.
4. The human will:  the will is immaterial and responsible for actions.  Why are alcoholics not responsible for their actions but pedophiles are?  A naturalist cannot answer that.
5. Intrinsic value:  
3. Postmodernism:
1. Scientism has eroded the ability to make transcendent judgments.
2. Identifies pomo as a form of cultural relativism about reality, truth, reason (77; possibility problematic).
1. Knowledge is a social construction.
3. Postmodern tenets
1. denial of objective knowledge and reason.
1. psychological objectivity not the same as rational objectivity.
2. Denial of correspondence theory of truth
1. CTT holds to a correspondence relation between truth-bearer (propositions) and truth maker (facts).
2. Those who reject CTT hold to it in order to reject it.
3. Confusion between metaphysical and epistemic notions of truth.
1. metaphysical (correct): absolute truth is same as objective. People discover truth, not create it.  Conforms to laws of logic
2. Postmodernists think absolute truth grounded in Cartesian anxiety.   However, a claim to truth says nothing about my inner, psychological state.
4. Problems for postmodernism
4. From Drama to Deadness
1. Shift from Knowledge to Fideism
2. From human flourishing to satisfaction and desire
1. The ancient “good” life was constituted by intellectual and moral virtue.
2. presupposes the availability of real, nonempircal knowledge.
3. From Duty and Virtue to Minimalist ethics (m.e.)
1. m.e. = do whatever you want as long as you don’t harm others
2. severs the connection between rationality and moral truth.
4. From Classic Freedom to Contemporary Freedom
1. Classical freedom meant the power to do what one ought to do. Presupposes availability of relevant knowledge.
2. Contemporary freedom
5. Classic Tolerance to Contemporary Tolerance
2. Recovery of Knowledge
1. Overview of knowledge: ability to represent things as they are.
1. Knowledge by acquaintance (direct intuition)
2. propositional knowledge (Moreland calls this justified true belief)
3. Know-how (wisdom, skill)
2. Certainty, Confidence, and Simple Knowing
1. Knowledge does not require certainty (and this moves the discussion closer to Plantinga)
1. One’s degree of knowledge can grow over time
2. You can know something without knowing how you know it.
1. problem of the criterion: if we don’t know how we know things, how can we know anything at all?
1. skepticism: bites the bullet.  No knowledge
2. Methodism: starts with a criterion that does not itself count as knowledge.  But this leads to an infinite regress.
3. Particularism: we just know many things without knowing how we know them.  It can respond to skepticism by asking the skeptic for a reasonfor his skepticism.
3. Three Kinds of Knowledge
1. knowledge by acquaintance.  rational awareness.  Humans have the ability to be aware of stuff that aren’t empirically verifiable.
2. Propositional knowledge: I must believe something is true and have adequate grounds for it.
3. Know How
3. Renovation of the Soul (virtue ethics)
1. False self: the self we present to others in order to make the world safe for us (141).
1. Individualistic
2. Infantile
3. Narcissistic
4. The empty self is passive
2. Growing in Christian art of self-denial
1. Classical happiness as virtue-life “Christianized” as eternal life.
1. Less dependent on external circumstances like “pleasure-seeking.”
2. Allows one to become an increasingly unified person.
3. Fostering Spiritual Disciplines
1. Habit, Character, Body, Flesh (Romans 12:1-3)
2. Warning and Dangers.  Moreland recommends some good writers (Dallas Willard) and some dangerous ones (Richard Foster), though to be fair he does offer his own warning (157).
4. Restore the Kingdom’s Power
1. Chapter is mainly anecdotal.  
2. The gospel of the kingdom: the reign and rule of God available in Jesus Christ
1. God has power over demons, darkness, and disease.
3. Jesus’s ministry of the Holy Spirit
1. Dependant on the Spirit’s Power (Luke 4:14)
2. Moreland doesn’t mention it, but this is the Reformed doctrine of the unionis theologia.
4. Abandonment of Cessationism

ePistemologian's Progress

All of this should be read in the context of Colossians 2:8ff.  Therefore, Christian philosophy.   While these aren’t all of the books on the subject I’ve read, nor would I agree with all of the authors now, but this can be seen roughly chronologically.  Obviously, this isn’t every piece of philosophy I have read.  I am leaving out most of the Christian philosophical works (Van Til, Rushdoony, etc).  I know I have read more, but I can’t remember.

Zacharias, Ravi.  Lots of his stuff.  I suppose it’s valuable, though I would rather listen to Ravi than read him. (2002).

Augustine.  Confessions.  Most important Christian piece of philosophy ever written.  Especially the sections on Time.  (2003)

Kierkegaard, Soren.  Works of Love.  I had to read it for a liberal philosophy of religion class.  I wasn’t mature enough at the time to really understand what he was saying.  (2003).

Moreland, J P.  Love your God with all your mind.   Easily the best book on discipleship (though not necessarily Moreland’s intention).  Some of it could be naive culture warriorship, and it is by no means an apologetical answerbook, but still it is a lot of fun. (2003)

Russell, Betrand.  A History of Western Philosophy.  Admittedly, he is  a depraved pagan, but he can write. (2005).

Tarnas, Richard.  The Passion of the Western Mind.  Mostly good survey.  Torpedoes at the end when he gets all hippy-psychosis-womb theory.  (2005).

Wolterstorff, Nicholas.  Reason within the Limits of Religion.  One of the first forays against evidentialism.  Very accessible.  (2006).

Clark, Kelly James.  Return to Reason.  Best introduction to “Reformed Epistemology” (2007).

Wood, Jay.  Epistemology.  Great intro to modern discussions.  Shows how problematic evidentialism is and points to some Reidian-Plantingian alternatives.  (2007).

Plato.  Dialogues.  Most important book written in Western philosophy.  Very crucial for epistemology.  Very bad suggestions for ethics and politics.  (2008)

Boethius.  Consolation of Philosophy.  I think more people hold to his view of God-Time than they realize. I do not.  (2008).

Marx, Karl.  Communist Manifesto.  I read this the same time Obama was running for office.  Coincidence?  (2008).

Moreland, JP and Craig, William Lane.  Philosophical Foundations of a Christian Worldview.  Super hard read.  Took me about ten years to work through it.  I hope your Boolean logic is up to speed.  On the positive, I can’t imagine any book that treats such a wide range of very difficult issues in so succinct a manner.

Heidegger, Martin.  Basic Writings.  Sometimes insightful, often incoherent.  If you begin with being in general instead of the Triune God, you cannot escape Heidegger’s critique (2011).

Zizek, Slavoj. Living in the End Times.  A critical update from a neo-Marxist atheist.  Some brilliant insights on liberal democracy.  However, I did feel a dark presence in the room when I was reading it.  God used Thomas Reid to rescue me from this Hegelianism.  (2011).

Guenon, Rene. Metaphysical Principles, Traditional Doctrines.  Actually very valuable, if for dark and negative reasons.  I commend the desire for traditional society, but Guenon interprets it in chain-of-being/Platonic models.  Unwittingly shows how evil and dangerous the Philosophia Perennis is.  (2012).

Hegel.  Philosophy of Right and Philosophy of History.  I read this during  a tough time in my life.  I eventually had to say no to Hegel because he is basically hermetic darkness. (2012).

Plato. Timeaus.  I liked The Republic better.  Of course, it’s important to know about the Demiurge, who is the same figure in Arian Christology and Masonic Luciferianism.  (2012)

Plantinga, Alvin.  Does God Have a Nature?  I agree with his criticisms of Thomist simplicity.  I fear Plantinga overshoots his target.  (2012).

Reid, Thomas.  Essays and Inquiry.  A refreshing walk through the Scottish moors.  Dispelled the darkness of Hegel and powerfully showed, contra Anchoretic solipsism today, that God did create me in a way that I can read and understand texts.  (2012).

Rand, Ayn. Anthem.  Probably the most articulate fictional account of Satanism ever penned.  (2012).

Pannenberg, Wolfhart.  Metaphysik und Gottesgedank.  Showed how metaphysics is inescapable, but that doesn’t commit us to substance ontologies.  (2013).

Wolterstorff, Nicholas.  Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology.  Not much on epistemology’s story and the selections on Reid were odd.   Still, a valuable work.  (2013).

Nietzsche, Fr.  Basic Writings.  Sometimes brilliant; often insane.  (2014).

———–.  Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  Proving gnostics cannot write good stories. (2014).

Descartes, Rene. Meditations.  I understand why it is important, but I didn’t like it.  (2014).

Plantinga, Alvin.  Warranted Christian Belief.  A fun and informative read.  Occasionally loses one in the symbolic logic, but excellent on what he covers. (2014).

Wolterstorff, Nicholas.  Divine Discourse.  Speech-act theory.  Some good sections.  (2014).

Plantinga, Alvin.  Warrant and Proper Function and Warrant the Current Debate.  (2015).  Great intro to modern epistemology debates.

Van Til, Evangelicals, and Barth

Below are my initial musings on Karl Barth and American Evangelicalism.

George Harinck gives a fascinating essay on how Dutch and American Neo-Calvinism reacted to Barth. In doing so, he gives new light on Van Til’s own career.

DG Hart has a fun essay on Evangelicalism’s reading of Van Til’s reading of Barth.  Van Til’s attack on Barth, at least the later ones, was a confessional Presbyterian attack.  As such, it was also an attack on Princeton’s modernism.   This put neo-Evangelicalism in a tough position.  For them, if Van Til offered a good critique of Barth and a defense of inerrancy, fine.  If Van Til seemed to be arguing for Presbyterian Confessionalism, then he can take his quarrel elsewhere.  My own concerns with this essay is that I don’t think neo-Evangelicalism was truly enamored with Barth.  Certainly not when Carl Henry led the movement.  Later neo-evangelicals might have been, but by that time the PCUSA (or what would later  become of it post-1967) had already apostasized.  Simply tagging them as “Barthians” isn’t entirely accurate.

Bruce McCormack responds to Van Til’s reading of Barth.  McCormack said Van Til misread Barth’s use of Kant. For Kant, the a priori forms organize our knowledge; they do not determine it (and so it is not true, per Van Til, that a Kantian couldn’t tell the difference from a snowball and an orange).  In fact, Kant held to an empiricism as to the phenomenal world.

The one strength in Van Til’s reading, however, is that Barth did admit that Hans urs von Balthasar’s position was similar to his own.  If this is true, then it is fatal to Barth’s position. Complicating the matter is that Barth seems to say von Balthasar is correct.  I think, however, that Bruce McCormack’s own reading of the two authors (Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology) shows that von Balthasar was wrong, despite Barth’s own views of his own readings.

Jesus's feeding me is special enough

Peter Leithart wrote an article pointing out that high church liturgies seem "magic" and out of touch with the simplicity of what we see in the gospels.  I don't know why Anchorites got upset.  Even if you believe your tradition is the truth, and even if you believe in an ethereal "tradition" (which you admit you can't point to or verify without asserting the consequent), the gospels simply don't have an elaborate service.

I'm not here to defend Leithart.  He's done enough damage to Protestantism, but he has a point.  At the supper Jesus promises to feed me and eat with me.  Why do I need to "spruce it up" with an elaborate ontology?  Is Jesus's Word and Spirit good enough, or not?

Someone could respond, "We worship in an unbroken way for thousands of years."  Perhaps, but that's not how Jesus did the worship service at the Passover.  

OB on justification, a response

They don't like me commenting over there, and I don't want to seem like a bully.  I will interact with a recent article.  

OB writes,

 Justification is accomplished at baptism and maintained through a life of obedience to God and confession of sins.

I disagree, but it is interesting that this is precisely Trent's view--baptism is the instrumental cause of justification.  He then glosses sanctification, adoption, and glorification.  I don't have any real material objections, so moving on. 

Per "works" he notes,

(Paul) the “works of the Torah” such as circumcision, kosher regulations, and the myriad of other ordinances of the Law of Moses

Here is the problem with that statement.  When Paul mentions works of Torah in Galatians 3:10 he references Deuteronomy 27.26.  When we go read Dt 27.26 Moses mentions all kinds of sins, mainly "moral" ones and not so much ceremonial ones.

Per theosis he notes,

 attaining to the fulness of the divine nature and conformity to the image of Christ

But I can prove that when you get them to really qualify this statement, they don't mean that.  Surely they don't mean a 1:1 identity with the divine nature?

As to the claim that justification is accomplished at baptism, we have no proof.  Further, what we don't see in this post is any understanding that Scripture uses justification in "law-court" language.

Dt 25:1. Judge pronounces a judgment. He does not effect a character change. Condemnation is the opposite of justify. A sentence of condemnation does not effect an evil character change. Thus, if sentence of condemnation is judicial act, so is justification 

On leaving the Facebook Covenanter Group

Okay, I admit this doesn't have the same existential or rhetorical import of Luther's 95 theses, but it might prove interesting, nonetheless.

The Covenanter Theonomist group on Facebook actually had a lot going for it.  Unlike Reconstructionists groups, they cared for the church (so to speak) and had a modicum of self-reflection.  I did notice a number of unhealthy habits, though.

1. Inventing Kinism:  One of the most overblown debates in the Reformed world is kinism.  I don't want to get into defining it.   The troubling phenomenon, though, is that groups associated with theonomy often attract kinists.  I wonder why that is.  These guys look for Kinists to create so they can talk about how evil slavery and the South is.   Their definition of kinism also happens to include every human society until 1789.  I am not endorsing kinism, mind you, but I am equally wary of over-reacting to such an extent that you are a Jacobin from the French Revolution.
2. Speaking of which, the Covenanters, which were usually a Northern Christian denomination in the United States, love to praise Lincoln and John Brown and attack the South (see here for the most devastating deconstruction of American Covenanter thought).  It's sort of myopic and disturbing.  They brag about how they opposed man-stealing while never reflecting on how Roman Christian slave-owners in the New Testament might have acquired slaves (hint: it had to do with empire and conquest).  They even boast about denying communion to Southern Slave owners (though this was probably a moot point, since the RCNA really wasn't operative in the South, and the Scottish ecclesial tradition probably didn't have Communion that often, anyway).  This is going beyond Scripture is is "getting holier than Jesus."
3. Will a Covenanter movement ever "get off the ground?"  No.  With a few exceptions, Covenanter denominations are almost always the results of schisms from the larger Reformed world.  They are intellectually isolated (this isn't a value judgment; it's a historical observation) and really haven't contributed much to Reformed theology in the last 300 years beyond some monographs on the Mediatorial Reign of Christ, which is staple Reformed thought, anyway.
4. One of the reasons they won't get off the ground is that they are self-legally obligated to support a magistrate who upholds the Solemn League and Covenant.  I'll let you reflect on that possibility for a while.  (although they didn't have a problem joining with Lincoln to attack their fellow Celtic brothers in the South; evidently the Constitution wasn't that bad then).

The above are some of the reasons I left the group. Below is a more sustained reflection on the self-limitations of Covenanter thought.

There is much good in the Covenanter tradition, and this post will pain many (myself most of all).  But if they want an intellectual (Or even better, political) future then they need to own up to some challenges.  I honor and admire Richard Cameron and Alexander Peden (hey, they received extra-scriptural prophecy.  Anybody want to take up that one?).  I do not think, however, that the entire Covenanting tradition was able to hold the strings together.  And that’s not just my take on it. I think Moore argues the same thing (Our Covenant Heritage). These challenges are not simply my making up because people started slandering Christ’s elders in his church on Facebook (like Stonewall Jackson).  They point to deeper issues.

While the problems in the Covenanter tradition can easily point back to the Battle of Bothwell Bridge (cf Maurice Grant’s biographies of both Cameron and Cargill; excellent reads), I was alerted to some of the tensions by T. Harris.  Again, I am writing this so Covenanters can work out the difficulties now instead of having to make hard and fast choices on the field of battle later.   You can be angry with me, but I am your best friend.

1.  The Hatred of the South

This is myopic and almost unhealthy.   Modern covenanting talks about how evil the South is and never once tries to work through the sticky issues of how best to help freed slaves.   Or slaves who didn’t want to be freed.  As evil as slavery might have been, simply throwing the blacks out on the street only it makes it worse.   The slave-owners (and many slaves) knew this.

And it really comes back to the question:  is the relation between master and slave sinful?  This is a very specific question.  This is why Freshman atheists have a field day with us.  But I know the response:  buying stolen property, especially human property, is sinful.  Perhaps it is, but didn’t Paul know this when he outlined healthy parameters for both masters and slaves?  How do you think the ancient Romans got slaves in the first place?  Democratic vote?  They were often prisoners of war, babies of raped women, and worse.  And does Paul say, in good John Brown fashion, “Rise up slaves and kill your masters” (though to be fair John Brown actually killed white Northerners)?

Northern Covenanters love to boast on how they “deny communion to man-stealers.”    Harris notes in response,

Athenagoras, defending the church against the pagan charge of cannibalism said, “moreover, we have slaves: some of us more, some fewer. We cannot hide anything from them; yet not one of them has made up such tall stories against us.” (Early Church Fathers, ed. C.C. Richardson, p. 338). But Alexander McLeod says to the slaveholder, “you cannot be in the church,” (p. 25) and this posture was eventually ratified by the entire covenanter church. On this point, their righteousness exceeded even that of our Lord and the apostles. And that is heady stuff.

Am I saying we should have slaves today?  Of course not.  But we need to seriously think through these issues instead of giving non-answers like “Christianity provided for civilization to move forward without slavery.”  To which I say, “early Medieval Russia.”

2.  The strange love-affair with Lincoln

This is odd, too.  Lincoln really didn’t care for Christianity and he routinely made darkie jokes.   He was the biggest white supremacist of the 19th century.  He ran on the platform, in essence, that he would not free a single slave.  My Covenanter friends–you are being deceived.

Someone could respond, “You’re just angry that the South lost.”  Perhaps, perhaps not.  That brings up another point

3.  Consistently outmaneuvered politically and militarily

Why is it that the Covenanters who have such a heroic (and rightly earned) reputation for godly resistance during the Killing  Times have routinely been outmaneuvered in the public square?  I’ll give three examples: Bothwell Bridge, Cromwell, and The War Between the States.

Bothwell

The Covenanters had already proved themselves at Drumclog.  Further, Bothwell Bridge forced the Royalists into a chokepoint.   While the ultimate cause for the covenanters defeat was lack of artillery and ammo, the outcome was in the air for a while.   The problem was whether to allow Indulged parties to participate.  Granted, the Indulged sinned and were under God’s judgment.  Cameron and others were right to resist elsewhere, but Bothwell was not an ecclesiastical act.  It was a military one.   Indulged ammunition wasn’t sinful per se.

Cromwell

Covenanters call Cromwell the Usurper.   It is somewhat ironic given that these Covenanters had fought a war of defiance (rightly so) against the very same king.  I have to ask, though, precisely what did you expect when rallying behind the (well-known) debauched papal pervert Charles II?  Granted, he vowed the covenants.  Granted, he should have owned up to them.   Still, anyone could have seen how this was going to end.

How else was Cromwell to interpret this?   He knew the Covenanters were militarily capable, so he is seeing an armed host rallying behind the dynasty against which both had recently fought a war.  But even then, the Covenanters could have held him off and forced a peace.   Their actions at Dunbar as as unbelievable as they are inexplicable.  They had the advantage of both place and time.  Ignoring that, they decided to meet Cromwell on equal footing.  In response, Cromwell executed one of the most perfect maneuvers in military history (that was still studied and practiced in the 20th century by America, England, and Germany) and in effect subdued Scotland.

To make it worse, Grant notes that Cromwell’s subjugation of Scotland allowed the kirk to flourish spiritually.  Ye shall know them by their fruits.  Interpreting Providence is dangerous, but this might mean that the Covenanters didn't even deserve political independence.

Lincoln (again)

I must quote Harris in detail for full affect.

“Most of its members were enthusiastically for the war and anxious to participate in it as far as they could without violating their principle of dissent from the government.” (p. 58) This despite the fact that Lincoln himself constantly said the war was not about slavery. We now know Lincoln was a pathological liar; the covenanters must have known this in their bones as well, and gave vent to their approval of the “real reason,” concealed by Lincoln. At any rate, it is hard to imagine them getting so excited about a war that was about enforced union. In view of their history, that would be ironic indeed.
However, they exhibited a certain naiveté in two ways which may go part way to explain the madness. At one point, they concocted an oath to propose to the US as a basis for enlisting in the army, an oath that would be consistent with continued resistance to full submission. “I do swear by the living God, that I will be faithful to the United States, and will aid and defend them against the armies of the Confederate States, yielding all due obedience to military orders.” (p. 58) The charming bit here is the notion of defendingagainst the armies of the CSA — armies which were purely defensive, and which would have been glad to disperse and go home, if it weren’t for the invading and marauding union armies. Somehow, they had built up a mythic view of an aggressive South, gobbling up adjacent lands by force of arms.

Covenanting on the Ground

This is open for discussion.  How exactly is National Covenanting going to work today?  Surely it means more than strong-arming congress in rejecting the First Amendment.

Note Bene:  Harris’s quotations are from David M. Carson. Transplanted to America: A Popular History of the American Covenanters to 1871. (Pittsburgh: Crown & Covenant Publications, n/d).

City of Blog Against the Pagans (Book 19)

I read Augustine's City of God ten years ago.  I figured on re-reading, given the current political scene.  I am going to do readings of each book and post them on the blog.  I am going to start with Book 19.

My analysis is from O'Donovan's Bonds of Imperfection.

A thing’s end is its perfection.  The summum bonum is that object for which other objects are sought, but which is sought only for itself.  

“Moral philosophy must be social philosophy.”

Book 2 flashback:  traditional Roman teaching had no inherent tradition of moral teaching.  

res publica:  

true right (ius) implies obedience to the true God; for right-ness (iustitia) “is the virtue that assigns everyone his due, and there can be no rightness when the worship owed to the Creator is offered instead to unclean demons” (53).  

The whole of Book 19 can be summarized along three points:

1. An eschatological claim:  the supreme good is perfect peace (19.11-12)
2. A negative conclusion:  relative to the perfect peace, our life is most unhappy.
3. A qualification of this negative conclusion:  we can have relative happiness if we make our life a means to the summum bonum.

Communis Usus

• each city has its own end.
• Augustine is not saying that the two cities get along together by having a common use of means towards different ends.  The connective phrase ita etiam connects chapter 16 with the first line of chapter 17:  the comparison is between the earthly city and the earthly household

Consensus of Wills

But what of the obvious fact that the Two Cities do seem to “get along” from time to time?  For one, we note that members of the heavenly city use the earthly as a means to an end; whereas the earthly city sees itself as an end.  There is no tertium quid between the two cities, no neutral space.  The agreement can only be on a surface level of means, and only that.

Ius and Iustitia

Augustine notes that “ius” flows from the source of iustitia (19.21).  There can be no iustitia common to the two cities because the earthly city does not deal or participate in the forgiveness of sins (Ep. 140.72; Spirit and the Letter 32.56).  Iustitia, nonetheless, is not at the forefront of Augustine’s concerns.  

If a state does display some virtues but it relates to some object other than God, then it is disorder (19.14-16).  This insight allows Augustine to say that there is some relative order and good in a state, but gives him the space to critique the State. (Interestingly, Augustine has no vision for political programs; sorry, Reconstructionists).  

O’Donovan then outlines a pyramid of ascending orders of peace in the universe (rerum omnium).  I will number them but I can’t reproduce the pyramidal scheme here.  The numbers aren’t of greater importance to lesser, or vice-versa.  Rather, beginning with (1) it is a continual movement outward.

(10) ?

(9)  peace of the heavenly city

(8) peace of the city

(7) peace of the household (19.14-16)

(6) pax hominum (Peace of Rome? or basic Peace between men)

(5) peace with God

(4) Body-soul union

(3) rational soul

(2) irrational passions

1. Body

The relation between peace and order is one of definition.  The peace of any household is the tranquility of order.

Household (Domus)

It is an ordered harmony of giving and receiving commands.  Unlike the City, though, the commands are not given from a desire to dominate, but from compassionate acceptance of responsibility.

Augustine does not try to “transform” society.  It is impossible to read Book 19 or the whole City of God that way.  Rather, he “transvalues” society’s structures (O’Donovan 68).