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The City of God

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The City of God was completed 13 years after Augustine began to write it in 413 A.D. It was written slowly and became a much different work than that which Augustine set out to create. Three years after the fall of the Roman Empire, Augustine set out to prove that Christianity was not to blame for Rome's collapse as some had charged. Almost half of The City of God was dedicated to this original purpose. Luckily for readers today, as well as then, by book eleven he turns his attention to the two cities and almost entirely dropped his original theme which has been a dead issue for some time. The two cities Augustine applies his brilliant mind to for the remainder of the work is that of The World and of God. Beginning in book eleven, Augustine traces the history of each city from a Christian perspective in a highly contemplative and truly beautiful manner. However, he seems to never miss an opportunity to correct any contrary philosophies along the way. He eventually makes his way to his ideas, based primarily on the writings of the apostles Paul and John, about the final realities of each city, as well as the consequences for their respective citizens.

The City of God would probably not be considered light reading by most, but if one can complete it while trying to digest as much as they can, it is certainly worth it. This is one of those works which is probably understood a little differently each time it is read. One helpful disclaimer offered by Thomas Merton is that if one is unfamiliar with Augustine and his writing, they would be best served to first read Augustine's Confessions (Penguin Classics) prior to tackling The City of God. It really is good advice.

In about three centuries since its inception Christianity had grown from a marginal Jewish sect on the eastern coast of Mediterranean to the official religion of the Roman Empire, thus eclipsing a millennium of unbroken pagan religion and culture. However, the paganism didn't disappear and continued to exert important influence on the public and intellectual life. Christianity, on the other hand, found itself facing new challenges as a dominant social force and it was unaccustomed to such status. The uneasy relation between the Christian authorities and the secular imperial authorities further complicated the matters. In today's language, the issues of separation of "church and stare" were coming into focus. Furthermore, the empire was in a decline and within two centuries the western part of it would finally dissolve. All of these developments forced Christian thinkers to rethink the place of Christianity within the world history, and come up with a coherent and meaningful view on these matters. By far the most influential of such attempts was St. Augustine's "City of God", an extensive and detailed treatise.

"City of God" is broadly divided into two parts. The first ten chapters are polemical and they address various pagan intellectual and religious issues. The second part of the book consists of twelve chapters that broadly deal with what St. Augustine perceived to be the origins of the City of God and its contrast and comparison with the Earthly City. One of the main points that St. Augustine promulgated was that the two cities, although they may overlap and sometimes reinforce each other, remain distinct and will likely be so until the final Parousia.

"City of God" is a monumental work of theology and philosophy that took St. Augustine many years to complete. This is not a book that can be read over a weekend, or even over the course of a week or two. Its intricate arguments and ideas that might be unfamiliar to modern readers require a careful and methodical perusal. The first part of the book was very interesting to me for several reasons. The pagan theological and cultural practices that it addressed are largely alien and unfamiliar to the modern readers, at least on the surface. This part of the book gave me a fresh insight into the external forces that had shaped Christianity in its early stages, mostly as a foil against which to present Christian religious and ethical norms. However, despite the appearance, many of the pagan attitudes and norms have never truly gone away, but have only metamorphosed into different cultural practices. In other words - the more things change the more they remain the same. Today's Christians don't have to reinvent the wheel: many arguments in favor of the culture-defying aspects of Christianity can be directly borrowed from the early Church fathers, such as St. Augustine.

If you decide to embark on the journey of reading this theological masterpiece I would recommend doing so as a form of devotional reading. Theology can be a devotionally fulfilling activity, and reading a book like this one over a long period of time can help you appreciate and understand its main themes and messages. I would particularly recommend this book to anyone who wants to think deeply and systematically about the nature of Christian vocation in the World and its relation to our ultimate abode, the City of God.

Having already read (and loved) some of Saint Augustine's other work, I had a feeling I'd really enjoy this one. It is, after all, considered one of the most influential and famous works in the entire history of literature. Even so, I was surprised by just how much I personally enjoyed it.

It's not enough for me to say that this book is totally, faithfully Catholic from start to finish, or to say that its reasoning is ironclad and compelling. All of that is true, of course, but honestly, what I found most amazing about this book were two things.

First, Augustine chooses his terms much more carefully in this book than he did in "Confessions," which is good. It helps to avoid confusion and ambiguity. He's still not quite as precise in his wording as Saint Thomas Aquinas, but he is precise enough that almost anyone who wants to understand his words can, with a little effort. The major obstacle to english-language theology is that so many words in english have numerous definitions, and can be interpreted in far too many different ways. So, using very common words can lead people to draw false conclusions about what the theologian may be saying. Almost never does that happen with this masterpiece.

Secondly, I found that the writings of this book reveal a clarity of thought and a very healthy world view on the part of the author, which I found very encouraging. It's amazing how much you can learn about an author just from a study of their work, and it made me smile when Augustine spoke of human minds, hands, mouths, erectness of posture and so forth, describing man as the protagonist of the physical world, rather than a wretched thing that just wants to destroy everything else. We get the opposite, and far less accurate view so often in modern culture, that even a short testimony to the contrary is a breath of fresh air.

Augustine's perspective on the world was a perspective on the world that he lived in (around the year 400,) but his explanations are clear enough, and his descriptions thorough enough that I never felt lost while reading about it. In fact, if anything, I think Saint Augustine has helped me to learn a bit more about the days of ancient Rome. I'll just add that to my list of things about this book that I was absolutely thrilled by.

Because Augustine's The City of God has been a companion for so many years, it's neither an adjunct nor an extension, but part of me, of my mind.

Whenever I read a book and feel disappointed by it'as for example: The Dante Club, by Matthew Pearl'I quickly pick up The City and read a few pages. My faith in good writing is then restored. Besides the wisdom one finds in his book (Augustine being a rhetorician), one finds sentences that flow and gurgle in a crystal stream of sheer magic.

That is not to say that it is a perfect book, for it contains some gross generalizations and prejudices as when he inveighs against Jews: "Indeed, a similar sign appeared when the Lord was crucified by the cruel and impious Jews."

To make his case (a defense of the charge that the Christian church caused the sack of Rome), Augustine deploys an arsenal of rhetorical weapons. And knowing he was writing a huge book, he made the writing athletic, quite acrobatic I'd say--never boring. To wit: "For evil has no nature of its own. Rather, it is the absence of good which has received name 'evil.'" Or,

How much more honourable a thing is to believe that which was taught by holy and truthful angels; uttered by prophets inspired by the Spirit of God; proclaimed by Him Who was foretold as the coming Saviour by the messengers who went before Him; and preached by the apostles whom He sent forth, and who filled the whole world with His Gospel!

Why is The Dante Club boring? Because it is narrated with the pattern subject-verb-complement throughout. How long can a reader take of this annoying pattern before he puts the book down?

Well, while I only read 24 pages before I put The Dante Club book down never to pick it up again, I will go on reading The City'its 1,200 pages'a lifetime.
The writing techniques I employ in this article are all explained in Mary Duffy's writing manual:

www.sentence openers.com

One of the greatest books on theology in the history of christianity, but I would recommend to those who are able that you consult the Latin, Italian or Spanish versions on the text, some of the vital concepts in the book got lost in its translation to English.

It seems to be a book on Systematic Theology, explained in complicated language not easily understood for the average reader of the 21st century. I was hoping for more explanation of Augustine's Theology of the righteousness of God that one receives through faith in the work that Jesus did on the Cross. It did contain that to an extent, but not as much as I hoped for.

So obviously this guy is full of himself, because he takes this pseudo-Latin pen name for himself, "Augustine." Based on that, you know right away the book is going to be bad, but it didn't really prepare me for how bad.

The author appears to be a fan of Josh McDowell, since he uses all of McDowell's terrible arguments: appeal to prophecy, expecting his readers to be impressed by the Bible's "consistency," and insisting that if you don't believe the Bible you can't believe any history.

If anything he manages to make his versions of the argument even worse than McDowell's--the interpretations of the Bible's "prophecies" are even more strained than usual. But the one that really gets me is the appeal to the consistency of the Bible. Nowadays the Bible's contradictions are so well known that I thought McDowell was the only apologist stupid enough to use that argument, but apparently we've got a second one.

That's not all there is to the book. It's an extremely long, rambling mess, that I'm not sure how to review it properly, but one other thing stood out: the part in the beginning where he argues that other religions are wrong because other people's gods don't protect them from misfortune. And then insists that bad things happening to Christians aren't evidence against Christianity at all. There's nothing like a halfway convincing argument for these claims--it doesn't seem to cross the author's mind at all that some people might think him a tad inconsistent.

This is wrapped up with some of the most stupidly offensive "solutions" to the problem of evil I've ever read, including some really ugly comments about rape victims. And... that's all I'm going to say about that part, since I feel icky just thinking about it. Some people are definitely going to want to avoid this book for that reason.

With that warning in place, though, this book is a prime selection for connoisseurs of terrible Christian apologetics. Read it in the right mindset, it's a hoot. At least if you enjoy discovering just how awful it's possible for a book to be.