As we saw in Chapter I, the earliest intimations of the problem of dirty hands arose from conflicts of value felt within ancient philosophy and culture. But the most urgent – and most problematic – formulation of the problem emerged as the value commitments of ancient politics began to confront the uncompromising new moral claims associated with the Christian religion.

The most influential ancient response to this value conflict – and to the version of the dirty hands problem it engendered – was voiced by the Christian theologian St. Augustine. No stranger to the problematic aspects of power, St. Augustine exercised considerable worldly authority in his role as bishop of the North African diocese of Hippo. Augustine's writings did more than any other philosopher to confront this challenge and to reconcile, so far as he thought possible, the moral values that animated ancient culture and politics with the Christian faith.

In approaching the conflict between ancient culture and early Christianity, Augustine made no attempt to suggest that the claims of ancient politics could compare in significance to what the Christian religion promised; nor did he suggest that the priorities of Roman political and military life could possibly be made to agree with the austerity and meekness of Christ's moral teachings. Instead, Augustine ingeniously based his attempted reconciliation not on a compromise between these two antagonistic value systems, but rather on their metaphorical resemblance.