Abstract

This is a dissertation on the Christian political thought of Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas. The focus of the study is their respective answers to the following question: "Would there have been civil rule or dominium in the state of innocence?" Augustine and Aquinas are traditionally understood to have given opposing responses to this question. I argue that a clear understanding of these differing responses reveals a more fundamental agreement. My thesis is that neither Augustine nor Aquinas considered the coercion of one human being by another to be an activity proper to human nature as created by God. This is shown by a comparative interpretation of Saint Augustine's exclusion of dominium from the original condition of human nature in De civitate Dei , and Aquinas' inclusion of dominium in the original condition of human nature in Summa Theologiae . The comparison requires that attention be given to the historical complexity of the term dominium and its relation to the concepts of nature and justice. It also requires that the passages under consideration be interpreted in the context of the works from which they are taken