SAINT AUGUSTINE’S CITY OF GOD AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR THE CONTEMPORARY CHURCH IN NIGERIA

Abstract

The Nigerian nation is in a monumental crisis – a crisis of utter threat to her existence, engendered by incompetent and insensitive leadership challenges, triggering a climate of insecurity, insurgency, terrorism, kidnapping, hunger and malnutrition, squalor and diseases, illiteracy and ethnic rivalry. When the Roman Empire faced a similar or even worse scenario occasioned by the Vandal onslaught that led to the fall of the Empire, people faced a similar situation. Then, Saint Augustine rose up to the challenge and provided answers based on the eternal realities of history as contained in his classical work “City of God.” The Nigerian has, however, not been able to replicate what Saint Augustine did for the ailing Roman Empire by providing succour to the myriads of problems facing the country. This Seminar Paper adopted two approaches in its methodology: the Historical and Phenomenological methodologies. The historical methodology was used to gather the historical evidence, and the phenomenological method was used to analyse it. The research found that though the church in Nigeria has been making some efforts to deal with the multiplicity of problems facing the country, the methods adopted have not yielded the desired results. The paper concludes that the church has fallen short of its divine mandate as a light and salt in the world and, therefore, recommends that the church go back and reevaluate its mission mandate to make it contemporarily relevant and a blessing to the nation.