Two Types of War in Augustine's The City of God

Augustine proposes two types of war in The City of God, the external war between people and the internal war within the soul, according to which he reconstructed the war history of Rome by comparing the performance between barbarians and Romans. He views external wars among people as an expression and inevitable consequence of the internal war, initially creating the topic of the internal just war. Following Aristotle, Augustine deals with his theory of war within the framework of teleology and thus regards the starting point of the two wars as well as their goal as peace. However, he insists that earthly people can never escape from the state of both external war and internal war, and the right thing for them is to wage war in the hope of eternal peace.