Augustine has no illusions about innocence. But his activism does not bear the burden of bringing about the kingdom. His clear-eyed recognition of the perdurance of evil—in his own heart as much as anywhere—generates a politics of hope rather than Pelagian revolution. The naturalization—and idolization—of politics generates its own injustices. For Augustine, citizenship in the city of God means laboring as an ambassador of the way things ought to be, hoping to bend the way things are to follow the arc of justice, of shalom. Politics is one of the ways we respond to the reality of evil, so long
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