But for Augustine, such explanations must always be tentative. He can
conjecture about God’s reasons for giving power to Rome, but his considered
view seems to be, as he says in the quoted passage, that the reasons history
unfolds as it does are “hidden from us.”
Justified violence
Even if no political society can be the City of God, should not the Christian ruler
try to approximate it in his realm? Despite the difficulty of discerning God’s
action in history, is it not likely that God raised up Christian rulers for precisely