Augustinian one of Civitas terrena there is a striking contrast. Guido Fassò believes instead that this antinomy fails if we reflect that St. Augustine is an authentically Christian thinker, and if we recognize that the doctrine of natural law is not authentically Christian. The experience of the development of ethical rationalism in the interpretation of Christianity given by Pelagius would have put an end to all this uncertainty. After the year 411, St. Augustine would have embraced without further hesitation his voluntaristic positions. According to Francesco Cavalla, from the idea of Civitas Dei cannot be inferred a table of values and norms pre-established to legal and political experience. Finally, examining in depth the Augustinian theme of order, Maurizio Manzin notes that for St. Augustine “ordo [est] justitia Dei”, that is the original action which assigns to everyone according to his good or evil. For Augustine, the perspicuity of the universal is not the product of a purely reflective act of reason, but rather the awareness of the presence of a unifying sense among the misfortunes of the multiplicity. In conclusion, the image of St. Augustine as a natural law theorist , at least in the modern traditional sense (which is rationalistic and mathematical), does not stand because of his epistemological foundations just exposed.
