Abstract

In the teaching of the bishop o f Hippo, the city o f God and the earthly city are the areas where good meets evil, where spiritual things meet earthly things. Civitas Dei and civitas terrena are communities which have a “mystical” character from their essence, that is to say, the basics for the unity o f realities creating them is a spiritual reality. However, in order to understand the vision o f the two mystical communities, and to understand their essence, one has to go beyond the commonly used vocabulary and beyond the frames o f so called formal definitions o f the state, community, institution, and try to comprehend these theories in spiritual terms. The issues o f civitas Dei and civitas terrena are understood by St. Augustine in a moralreligious sense, which means that they cannot be encapsulated only in external terms, such as time, place or a membership o f an organisation. The City o f God is a cluster o f all good elements in the society o f humans, which, in its basics, is older than the Church. It comes fromthe fact that the civitas Dei is, as a spiritual category, partially present in all earthly countries, so it is not limited to a particular nation and it did not start from Christ himself. Similarly, the earthly state does not necessarily equal the secular state. Both civitas, as communities of humans, are inseparably blended and intertwined both in the Church and beyond it. This shall remain in this world until the last judgement.