Autor: Nicoleta MIHAILESCU          

Editura:  CUGETAREA

Cod ISSN: 1221-4876, pp. 148-162

Abstract:

Every form of a terrenial imperium has proved to confirm the painful reality of what Mircea Eliade called ,,the terror of history”. The only possible way to transcend both the terror and the relativity of civitas terrena is, as Blessed Augustine put it, to become a citizen of the divine city, a city which includes, equally, the actual and the potential Church. The method of obtaining this celestial citizenship is the inner look, and the Christian faith. His work, The City of God is a theodicy, and a philosophical and theological utopia as well. The true and the final victory over those who live in the city of vanity – who form the so-called massa perditiones – will come at the end of time, and of this visible world. Characterized by a cruel manifestation of hybris and of an irrational will of power, the terrestrial city is meant, even from its beginning – the crime of Cain - to self-destruction and to eternal separation from God. The augustinian idea of the two cities had been assumed and developed in the protestant, catholic and orthodox space, with different accents concerning their nature and finalities. However, the city depicted by Augustine is neither a theocracy, nor a chiliastic imperium, but a description of the Christian way of life, and a prefiguration of the promised city of God.

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