Okay, I can grok that; and I agree.
Well, I stopped because I thought it might be sen as just too much of a philosophical highjacking of the thread ! Since you ask, however, I would consider Origen to be a useless bureaucrat and Plotinus to be totally uninvolved; couldn't really talk about Porphry....
The more realistic reason why I brought up Augustine was that he was a) heavily involved in the development of Just war theory and b) the equation of regnum with the Will / "Mana" of God, basically setting the stage for the crowning of Charlemagne later on, and the development of the Divine Right of Kings vs. the ME concept of the God King.
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