JUSTICE IN ST. AUGUSTINE’S CITY OF GOD Charles C. Nweke & Ignatius N. Onwuatuegwu* Abstract This paper exposes and critically examines St. Augustine’s concept of justice. Informed by the relative need to re-evaluate the concept of justice in relation to the State within the contemporary society, the paper views that most contemporary values are driven by homocentric humanism. Augustine’s masterpiece, City of God (Civitas Dei) the fulcrum of the stated exposé, relates that justice begins with according God His due of worship and service. Compelled by love of God and neighbour, true justice is typical of the city of God, whereas the earthly city propelled by its own kind of love basically lacks justice. For Augustine, commonwealth can derive its meaningfulness only within his context of justice. The paper finds eventually that peace remains the inevitable fruit of Augustine’s justice. Keywords: St. Augustine, Justice, Commonwealth, City of God, State, Peace Introduction Justice in St. Augustine’s philosophy is not the product of his organic rational conception. Instead, he anchored its discourse on an existing concept as well as in the political situation of his time. His major work, City of God, which embodies his idea of justice, was written with the primary purpose of attacking the ancient Roman city with its polytheistic and ‘pagan’ practices. Sabine and Thorson note that “his great book, the City of God, was written to defend Christianity against the pagan charge that it was responsible for the decline of Roman power and particularly for having caused the sack of the city by Alaric in 410.” (1973: 184) No wonder J. Carcopino asserted in his Daily Life in Ancient Rome that “the material characteristics of imperial Rome are full of contradictions.” (1964:1) As regards the City of God, O’Meara observes that “the first ten of its twenty-two books attack in turn the Roman official view that temporal prosperity is dependent upon worship of the many false gods”. (1973:18) The attack issued formally from Augustine’s analysis of the concept of justice and commonwealth from a dialogue in Cicero’s De Republica, as a response to the regard of the Roman city as a republic or state. Augustine argued that the immorality as well as the city’s practices had rendered it unjust and, consequently, Rome could no longer maintain the status of a state. Hence, he states that: If no heed be paid to the one who declared the Roman State a sink of iniquity, and if my opponents, content and it can best endure, are not moved by the shame and ignominy of the other degeneration that floods it, let them note that it