The City of God against the Pagans

Finally made my way all the way through this beauty cover to cover. Life changing.

This comment by Thomas Merton seems appropriate:

“Here is a book that was written over fifteen-hundred years ago by a mystic in North Africa. Yet to those who have ears to hear, it has a great deal to say to many of us who are not mystics, today, in America. ‘The City of God” is a monumental theology of history . . . the autobiography of the Church written by the most Catholic of her saints . . . “The City of God”, for those who can understand it, contains the secret of death and life, war and peace, hell and heaven.”

Book XVII
St. Augustine’s concern in this chapter, or the book as he calls it, is with tracing the prophecies which predicted the coming of Christ from the time of the prophet Samuel (11th Century BC) to king Solomon (c. 970-931, who succeeded king David (c. 1010–970 BC) ), not a great deal of time. After that period of the kings who followed little record survives what may have been said of that event until St. John the Baptist baptized and pointed our Jesus when He was still unknown.

St. Augustine quoted Psalm 45, lines 1-17, at length, Psalms 48 and 87. He told us in Chapter 15 that he already expounded on “what David may have prophesied in the Psalms concerning the Lord Jesus Christ or His Church . . .Let him then who will, or can, read these volumes, and he will find out how many and great things David, at once kind and prophet, has prophesied concerning Christ and His Church, to wit, concerning the King and the city which He has built.”

Book XVIII
St. Augustine tracks the major kingdoms of human history, Assyria, Babylon, Greece, Rome. along with that of Israel. As one kingdom vanishes another appears. Israel (”the promised land”) is in existence seven centuries already when Rome is founded. St. Augustine reads the coming of Jesus Christ in the prophecies of one of the ancient Greek Sibyls. He then references Jewish prophesies that mention Christ’s coming. Prophet Isaiah “prophesied much more than the others did concerning Christ and the Church.” The story of Jonah, the whale, foretold the story of Christ. Judaism was replaced by Christianity. St. Augustine believes citing St. Paul that they will some day be converted to Christianity. Yet we Christians must suffer more persecutions on our pilgrimage to the city of God and practice charity and forgiveness. The Antichrist will come at the end but Jesus will extinguish him.

Book XX Notes
St. Augustine writes about happiness in the time to come after life, judgment and bodily resurrection of both good and evil people. The good will be brought to eternal happiness of both the body and soul while the evil ones will be sent to eternal punishment. Jesus Christ Himself will come from heaven to judge: "The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear shall live"

St. Augustine points that God’s justice is mysterious when we see the suffering and hardships sometimes of good people while sinners live good lives but we should “bear without distress the evils that the good also suffer and not attach much importance to the goods that the evil also acquire.” The Scripture teaches us to live in humility and practice charity. All will all be clarified on judgment day.

St. Augustine advises not to look for signs of the time of the coming of the end and quotes the familiar line that the end will come “like a thief in the night.” In the meantime, so to say, St. Augustine interprets St. John’s vision in the Apocalypse of an angel chaining a dragon, the devil, for a thousand years to prohibit him from "deceiving those nations which belong to Christ." It seems to me that St. Augustine refers to the time from the coming of Christ to the end of the world as the “thousand years.” The devil was very effective in “deceiving” many nations since the time of St. Agustine to now, in the twentieth Century alone. This apparently was not the time yet for the devil to "exert his full power of temptation." I cannot imagine what he would have done during the past Century if he was still chained up in a pit. But that time is coming, says St. Augustine, when "he and his nations will rage with all their powers" (Chapter 8). As the Scripture tells us, we would not know if we were near the end of the world.

Book XXI

St. Augustine gives his vision of Hell after the end of the world reserved for the damned and the devils. He describes it as a state of pain and suffering from which there is no coming back. He considers the nature of the soul’s suffering in the hell fire, repentance that will bring no reprieve. It does not provide any means of curing humans or the fallen angels. There is no coming back.

He addresses objections of Origen (c. 185-254) who “believed that even the devil himself and his angels after suffering those more severe and prolonged pains which their sins deserved, should be delivered from their torments, and associated with the holy angels.” (p. 788). This would mean that God may change His mind about the eternal punishment of the bad angels. St. Agustine does not think that possible. The Church rejected this as contrary to Scripture.

He addresses other objections to why the punishment should be eternal for sins and not proportioned to the temporal commission of the offences. Objects also to the notion that the saints may be praying to get the damned out of hell. The Church prays for its enemies but only for those in this life hoping to reform them. Praying for souls that will be damned would not only be worthless but odd.

He justifies the punishment for Adam’s original sin. All human beings inherited the terrible punishment because the paradise that God gave to man was so great and good that it merited the enormous punishment by the free will turning away from God and His goodness to man. Adam and Eve’s transgression was very great. That is at the bottom of their disobedience and rebellion, their rejection of God’s gift.

Despite spending the time in contemplating Hell and giving examples from the limited knowledge of the natural world in his time that he relates to bodies living in fire and materials that burn but are not consumed St. Augustine is more interested in telling us how to avoid hell in the future. He does tell us though that our worldly experience is insufficient to know what is possible in God’s creation.

Book XXII

This final book is St. Augustine’s effort to give us some views about blessed City of God after the last judgment. The blessed will be attaining immortality--“what the angels never lost.” He tells us also early in the Book that God does not change His will and become angry with those “to whom he was previously gentle. . .God’s will, like his foreknowledge, is eternal and he has already accomplished everything he has willed, both in heaven and on earth.”

St. Augustine reminds us that foretold the resurrection of bodies to eternity not by theologians but rather by “fishermen out on the sea of this world with the nets of faith, men with no education in the liberal arts.”

He described a number of miracles he witnessed himself in his days in chapter 8 and 9.

St. Augustine estimates the constitution of the resurrected bodies, whether they died healthy or infirm, young or in old age, retaining of gender, reconstituted if destroyed or dissolved.

He takes time to praise God in Chapter 21. In Chapter 29 he makes more attempts at describing what we shall see and know “wherever we turn our eyes but he also acknowledges he does not know what heaven will be like quoting St. Paul’s familiar “peace of God which surpasses all understanding.”

St. Augustine is considered to be one of the greatest Christian thinkers of all time. So it is with hesitation I write this review the way I am doing --- understanding that. But I got to call the shots as I see them.

Definitely a keen intellect and a very learned man. However, as I found to be the case from reading similar tomes from Augustine's contemporaries, Sts. Athanasius and Ambrose -- they tend to be verbose --- with paragraphs that can run on for as much as a page and a half. Also in common, they tend to intellectualize a great deal. Not content to successfully make a great point, but to go at the issue they're arguing against --- or for their own points --- from a dozen different angles. Augustine doesn't just double tap an opponent's errors or inconsistencies --- it seems to be that he'll beat it to death, long after the point's been more than made.

As I'll say again, these are just my impressions -- nothing more. If you're a theologian or philosophy major and you feel differently about them and that I've got this wrong, that's fine.

In the first part of this book, Augustine does battle primarily with polytheism and its adherent Greco-Roman philosophers. These, seeing the now unmistakable signs of the collapse of the Roman Empire, were blaming Christianity for this. So Augustine proceeds from defending Christianity to attacking their own premises, particularly with respect to the even more grotesque contradictions and inconsistencies within the Greco-Roman polytheistic religion. So many of its gods, for example, had absurdly mutually conflicting areas of jurisdiction. For example, he points out the door --- the Romans had a good of entrances, a god of doors --- and even a god of hinges. Then he points out the absurdity of their beliefs in goddesses of luck and of victory --- alongside those of a god of war, Mars, and a supreme god, Jupiter. If the goddess of luck determines our fortunes --- then what need have we of Jupiter --- what's his job then? And of war --- if the goddess of victory determines winners and losers in battle, then what's Mars' job? And he goes on from there to take a wrecking ball to the whole Greco-Roman religio-philosophical construct.

Augustine also goes into history --- showing the many times, long before Christianity, where prominent Romans and Greeks blasphemed the gods --- and got away with it. Or other times when even Rome itself fell, long in the past, to barbarians, notwithstanding their devotion to their various gods and goddesses. By the end of it, he eviscerates polytheism so much so that one's left with an impression that only 2 logically consistent, yet diametrically opposed belief systems remain -- that of a monotheistic belief in a Supreme Being -- or philosophical systems, presumably Greco-Roman, fallen into an abyss of various alternative, contradictory, oft mutually exclusive, explanations for a godless cosmos.

In intellectual rigor, Augustine excels, but, as I'd said, he tends to belabor points greatly --- taking chapters or even books to say what I've read contemporary monastics from his time express in an essay or even an aphorism. Perhaps, with papyrus being extremely costly, they had not the paper to use, but, clearly, this posed no problem for Augustine.

The second half of the book, Augustine then gets to the theme of this book --- that the human race is essentially divided into 2 great cities: the city of the world --- with those who are of the world --- the City of God, those who in this life have chosen to serve God.

He starts from Creation and builds a timeline --- going through the Biblical timeline and, alongside, goes over the development of the great human civilizations contemporary with it: those of Egypt, then Assyria and Babylon, then Rome.

It's a fascinating idea --- but, unfortunately, from my point of view as the reader, he gets bogged down into details --- getting off into long tangents about various things from each timeline, going into things from some event in ancient Roman history, then analyzing it at length. The effect is to weaken the point that he trying to make by watering it down the impact---- and the point he's trying to make is that these are 2 great civilizations --- contrasted with each other, having no commerce with each other --- and as time continues, inevitably in contest with each other for the hearts and souls of mankind.

In the very last part, he addresses heresies or misunderstandings by both pagans and even some supposed Christians about the nature of salvation and of the afterlife. For Evangelicals: let's just say, Augustine was no fan of "Once saved, always saved" --- a belief that evidently was being taught also in the 4th Century during his time, fell out of view, and comparatively only recently gained favor again in some circles.

Here with these issues, Augustine tends to get sidetracked into addressing issues --- brought up by unbelievers from his time --- for which a definite answer cannot definitely known for sure, but which, nevertheless, he proceeds to do anyway. Like, in Heaven, will we be the same height there, we were here --- or will be babies that die show up in Heaven as babies there, or as adults, for example? Here, with Augustine, I think we see what may be a very first divergence of Western Christianity from the Eastern that will eventually lead to what would become the Roman Catholic Church's development of things like "Purgatory", "Limbo", and other rulings of intricate canon law --- the belief that the Church absolutely must have an answer for every question. Whereas, in the Eastern --- which eventually would become known as the "Orthodox", there's more a willingness to admit, "It's a mystery" --- or we don't know --- but simply trust in God that He will do what is just and merciful --- without trying to use the limited human intellect to grasp the eternal and the infinite and unknowable.

St. Augustine had broadened my horizons, and given much to think about. But this book was a real plod to get through. It does deserve its place as one of the great works of Christian writing, but --- forgive me for saying this --- if they'd had editors back then, Augustine might have benefited from one.

Just a selection of questions I now have answers to:

1. Are we to believe that angels mated with women, and that the giants resulted from these unions?
2. How can twins be conceived at the same time and yet one be female and the other male?
3. Is an unjust government the same as a criminal gang?
4. Which philosopher got closer to Christianity? Plato or Aristotle?
5. Are all men saved? What about all Catholics?

1100 pages later, and I am now prepared to defend against heresies associated with each...

Over a thousand pages of almost nonsense, and I remember maybe 3 pages of it. So good.

What else am I going to rate it?

I guess part of what makes a book a theological classic is that it changes the way you think--and City of God is definitely that kind of book. It's a stunning mix of addressing everything from the faults of Platonism to how Christian women should think through the threat of rape (in an empire being pillaged by barbarians) to tracing God's people throughout history to correcting those who think that church participation without faith and faithfulness is sufficient to dealing with practical questions about the nature of resurrection bodies. There's something for everyone.

I learned a lot. What struck me the most was how careful an exegete he is, critiquing his opponents for citing Scripture out of context, and paying very close attention to the text. Even when he proposed interpretations that I didn't see, it was typically responding to details in the passage that I hadn't even noticed. So I'm thankful for his example of careful attention to the words of Scripture.

Augustine ends City of God by saying, "It may be too much for some, too little for others. Of both these groups I ask forgiveness. But of those for whom it is enough I make this request: that they do not thank me but join with me in rendering thanks to God. Amen. Amen." I am thankful to God not only for how this brother from 1700 years ago sought to serve the church, but his humility in giving glory to God for the work Augustine has done in order to build up the saints.

I had no idea what I was getting into when I began this book. It sometimes felt like it would never end, but it was a great experience. First, I discovered how early on very basic Christian doctrines were lost. I loved what he says about the trinity. I was fascinated by how he defined demons (man-made gods). I would define a demon as a devil's angel. Also interesting to me was Augustine's take on the God of Israel's name being the conjugated Hebrew verb "to be" rendered "I am that I am." To me, this seems a very obvious way of showing that He is the only God who actually, in fact, exists - the only God who is not "the workmanship of man's hands" as it were.

There is an awful lot of time wasted on incredibly menial an irrelevant questions - like whether God can count infinite numbers - whether He knows they exist (Really? Why?). Then there were bits I found very entertaining, like Augustine's insistence that woman is weaker than man, and it was she who succumbed to temptation because Adam was too strong, and Solomon was too strong - he had to be led into temptation by his wives - or that Aaron wouldn't have made the golden calf without Miriam's making the decision first. Most convenient and amusing, I thought.

However, there were also really beautiful and profound parts:

"Pride is the beginning of sin. And what is pride but the craving for undue exaltation? And this is undue exaltation - when the soul abandons Him to whom it ought to cleave as its end, and becomes a kind of end to itself."

Also "...Though good and bad men suffer alike, we must not suppose that there is no difference between the men themselves, because there is no difference in what they both suffer. For even in the likeness of the sufferings, there remains an unlikeness in the sufferers; and though exposed to the same anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing. For as the same fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke; and under the same flail the straw is beaten small, while the grain is cleansed; and as the lees are not mixed with the oil, though squeezed out of the vat by the same pressure, so the same violence of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns, ruins, exterminates the wicked." (Very similar metaphor in Isaiah 28 - the parable of the Lord, the Farmer) He continues to say that "...So material a difference does it make, not what ills are suffered, but what kind of man suffers them." Beautiful!

Also, "No sin is committed save by that desire or will by which we desire that it be well with us and shrink from it being ill with us. That therefore is a lie which we do in order that it may be well with us, but which makes us more miserable than we were. And why is this, but because the source of man's happiness lies only in God, whom he abandons when he sins." I really liked these nuggets.

Augustine seems to spend a lot of time trying to prove points that I feel are completely irrelevant – e.g. is it possible for a human body to burn eternally in fire and not be consumed? He goes on to explain that because there is a specimen of worm that not only lives in a hot spring, but nowhere else, a body could last eternity in fire and not be consumed. Who cares about this stuff? And why does it matter? And why is it for us to figure out? The mechanics of how God does things – those are the things I feel are much better left to faith.

Remarkable. It seems that much of Christian theology and philosophy is echoed in Augustine’s work. I thoroughly enjoyed how he dismantles the faulty reasoning of writers like Varro and Apuleius. An interesting feature is how he explored numerology in several parts. I suspect this was a common practice at that time. Indeed, he adopts some allegorical interpretations, though with caution, but his dive into numbers and their meanings often left me puzzled. On a positive note, I don't believe there's any doctrine that the church holds today that Augustine didn’t address. His philosophical mind is impressive. However, I appreciated him even more when he elaborated on scripture to support his reasoning. The book also contains a wonderful exposition of Hannah’s song.