What more can be said that hasn’t been said about one of the most important and well known theological works ever? For me, it was a refreshing look at Scripture from an ancient source, which has reinvigorated my interest in reading theology; something a more recent
monograph is likely not to do. Lastly, Papists have no special claim over Augustine as is very obvious from reading him. His musings and thinking are hugely influential on the Protestant Reformation, and resounds throughout the ages to Evangelical Protestants today. Thank God for men like Bishop Augustine of Hippo. May he rest in glory.

not hard to read but does take bit to read the book

FIRST READING: OMG, I FINISHED!

SECOND READING: Worth absorbing every seven years. He addresses a lot of issues we don't struggle with, but perhaps some of that is BECAUSE of the foundational grace God expressed through patriarchs like Augustine. I certainly found applicable insights even if the presenting issues of the 21st century are somewhat different. His passion comes through, as does his erudition. Extra star. Maybe in 2028 I will give City of God the fifth star I'm sure it deserves. This was just based on my reading experience, asking whether he held my attention for as long as he asked for it. Goodness, he asked for it for a long time.

I recently read Diarmaid MacCulloch's excellent book on the Reformation (Reformation: Europe's House Divided, 1490-1700). In this book I learned, among other things, about the importance of Saint Augustine as the founding father (at least ideologically) of the Western Church and about the influence of Augustine's theological ideas in the events that divided the Western Church in the sixteenth century. Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, as well as the Catholic Church fell back on Saint Augustine to promote their religious cause. This fact alone proves how ambivalent Augustine is in his theology (more about that later in this review). I became interested in the ideas of this fifth century Bishop of Hippo so I decided to read his two most famous works: Confessions and City of God. Because the City of God is the most impressive (a little bit too much...) with 1100+ pages, I decided to swallow the bitter pill first, and after that read his more accessible (and shorter) Confessions. I'm finally finished!

The book itself - even though it spans the above mentioned 1100+ pages - can be summarized rather well. It consists of two parts; with part two of the City of God divided further into three major parts. Part 1 is a critique of pagan religions, especially the Romans; part 2 is a Christian theological examination of (1) the origin, (2) the development and (3) the predicted ends of the City of God (the Church) and the City of Earth (the Roman Empire)

In part 1, Augustine examines the Greek and Roman theological concepts: the nature and the implications of the Roman gods. Basically, Augustine uses 450+ pages to criticize the Roman gods as superstitions and myths, and he does this by using a whole bag of rhetorical tricks (Augustine was a rhetorician in his younger days) and committing dozens of fallacies in the process (for example, begging the question, arguing from ignorance, selectively picking sources, etc.). It seems he couldn't muster the respect for the Roman religious ideas and he often ridicules the Roman believers (for instance, when he ridicules the Greek and Roman tradition of portraying gods in theatre plays). In his more emphatic moments, Augustine tries to argue that the pagan gods are demons, explaining how the Romans fell victim to the Devil (Antichrist). Part 1 is one long tirade against pagan religions - nothing more, nothing less.

(One of the things that I found remarkable is that Augustine seems to arbitrarily limit himself to a handful of pagan sources; with Varro, Cicero, Virgil, Homer as the most important ones. When dealing with the diversity of the philosophical schools - platonists, stoic, epicurean, sceptic, neo-platonists, etc. - he doesn't really offer representative accounts but seems to pick the parts of these schools that suit his purpose best [i.e. to portray these schools as delusional paths].)

Part 2 is the more interesting, albeit more long-winded and at times ridiculously incoherent, part of City of God. In the first part, Augustine explains how the City of God originated. God created the world, created man (and after that woman - from the rib of man), punished the first human beings for their sins and made sure all posterity will suffer for this original sin by becoming mortal. This supposedly wasn't enough for this vengeful God, since he made sure that humans would feel the irresistable urge to procreate (i.e. to have sexual intercourse), and at the same time making sure women would suffer horrible pains when giving birth to children. Man was somewhat more lucky - but of course man was victim of woman's deception, so it's only logical to punish woman more severely - and has to feel pain (literally blood, sweat and tears), by working hard on the field to produce food and material.

After this, Augustine traces the descendants of Adam and Eve up to Noah. Humanity is so sinful that God decided to wipe them all from the face of the Earth - the first genocide in history? - by creating the Deluge. The flood killed off all human beings and all living things on Earth, except the chosen Noah and his family, and the animals that were selectively picked on God's command to survive.

Next, in the second part, Saint Augustine examines how the City of God proceeded from the times of Noah up to the birth of Christ. Basically, this whole second part is one huge examination of the Jewish old testament. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc. The exodus from Egypt under Moses and later on Joshua; the subsequent creation of Israel; the period of the judges; the decline of Israel under the rule of the kings; the splitting apart of Israel and Judea; the Babilonian captivity; the return home; the jews killing Christ and being destroyed and dispersed by the Romans; etc.

Augustine examines every major Biblical theme in detail: quoting endless passages and interpreting all the stories of both testaments. He seems obsessed by tracing the prophecies through time and connecting all of the prophecies to the coming of Christ and Christ's prediction of the final judgement in the end times. Once one is some hundred pages into this second part of part 2 of City of God, the main theme becomes clear and the long chapters on all the prophecies - and how they all support the Christian religion - become rather dull and hard to digest.

In the thrid and last part of part 2 of City of God, Augustine then tries to close his story. He explains how both the City of God and the City of Earth will come to their respective endings in the end times. Jesus will come back to Earth and will seperate the good (the followers of the Church) from the bad (the followers of Earthly lives). The good will be resurrected in heaven to exist for eternity in peace and quiet - gone are all the earthly lusts and appetites. But the bad, God has something different in mind for them: they will die a second death, in the sense that after their bodies die, they will be resurrected (bodily!) in Hell and be punished forever.

The absurdity and obsession of Agustine's world view becomes clear when he tries to explain how the fact that a peacock's flesh will not deteriorate, or the fact that a salamander cannot die, prove that a second death for the wicked is physically possible. Or take Augustine's argument that when Jacob purportedly poured oil on a stone this is to be taken as a hidden meaning of great significance - clearly point to Christ's later message, since 'Christ' has the same derivation as 'chrism', which means anointing. Hence, Jacob pouring oil over a stone proves the truth of Christianity. Throughout the City of God, Augustine uses these types of ridiculous arguments to prove that the Christian religion is true.

To a neutral observer it is clear that what Augustine does is re-interpreting - and very loosely and sloppy, at that - each and every deatil in the Old Testament books to prove some later fact (i.e. the resurrection of Christ and John the Evangelist's subsequent prophecy of the end times). In his arguments against pagan gods, Augustine seems to apply logical rigour; when evaluating his own pre-conceived notions, he seems to forget his own earlier critical standards. This makes the City of God a highly hypocritical undertaking - one truly wonders how the most intelligent minds in history have fallen prey to such obvious biased views. When concluding that the pagan religions (especially the Greek and Roman gods) are full of concocted myths - for example, important historical figures taking the shapes of gods over time (the stories seem to get more fancy with each passing generation) - he should take the logical step and conclude that his own religious views are full of the same absurdities and ridiculousness.

One of the quirks of Augustine seems that he seems to forget ethical standards in his obsessive quest to prove the truth of Christianity. He sees every human disasters as positive sign of God and he tries to conceal the ethical problems involved. So when Abraham binds his son, Isaac, to the stake and wants to slith his throat, Augustine takes this as a symbolic act, full of significant meaning. And when Lot's wife, on her escape from Sodom - which God destroys completely, as punishment for wicked sexual acts - looks back at the city, and hence breaks God's commandment ("Do not look back!"), she is immediately turned into a pillar of salt. Augustine claims she serves as a kind of seasoning for the faithful - one wonders if the pun is intended...

The whole of City of God can be summarized in a few sentences. Augustine sees his Roman contemporary world as deeply corrupt and hedonistic (he seems to be obsessed with sex). This is the Earthly City - the community of unbelievers who don't follow God's commandments. This society has developed historically, since God created the world, in line with the City of God, which is the community of true believers. The unbelievers and believers have been mixed on purpose - God's purpose - to test the faith of the believers. Augustine traces the historical progress of both Cities by studying the Old and New Testaments. He discovers a historical line of prophecies that all confirm the coming and resurrection of Christ and he interprets all the Earthly Kingdoms - the Babylonians, the Persians, the Assyrians, etc. - as one continuous test of the Christian faith. In Augustine's view, his contemporary Roman world was the epitome of the Earthly City - created by the Devil/Antichrist - and heralding the end times: 1000 years of living under the rule of Christ, his apostles and the angels - ending with an epic struggle of three years and six months (??) of Christ/God versus Antichrist/Devil. If you don't believe this, you will be picked by Christ, on his return to Earth, to eternally burn in Hell; if you do believe this, you will be picked by Christ to eternally exist in peace and quiet in Heaven. The ultimate goal for the believer is to enter a peaceful state of mind that will last for eternity. In other words: all your desires and pains will leave your existence and you will exist in this state of satisfied apathy forever. I can't explain this huge book more concisely than this...

The whole problem with Augustine is that he is too obsessed with human sin (i.e. sex). I'm no fan of Freud, but a psychoanalytic analysis of Augustine's book shows a human being who is extremely obsessed by his own sexual appetites, resenting himself for this and trying his best to ignore his passions. The only reasonable way to reduce his cognitive dissonance is to write doctrines on why sex - and why not life in general? - is sinful. Augustine's world view is bleak, gloomy and depressive - it is also toally delusional and other-worldly.

Of course, let's not leave out the deception of witnessing the destruction of an all-powerful Empire that existed for a thousand years, at the hands of the Goths, as well as structural and incidental persecution of Christians by the Roman State as well as some Emperors actively promoting Christianity. An ambivalent personality combined with tumultuous times make for some interesting ideas...

Augustine is so obsessed with sinfulness and the evil of humanity, that he stumbles onto the notion of predestinationWhen God created the world, He knew humanity would sin and hence he ought to punish all of us. But out of His goodness, he selectively picked some of us to escape the eternal burning of skin in Hell, and His choice was made before humanity existed. This means that all of us are already selected for either Heaven or Hell, with the later destination receiving the most of us.

The problem, of course, is that if this is true - which is rather an absurd idea - than why should we be obey God's commands? In other words, if it is already decided if you will burn (or not), why should we become citizens of God's City and not enjoy all the pleasures of the Earthly life? Augustine doesn't seem to see this as a problem - or rather: he doesn't see the problem, at all - since in this huge book he never mentions it, let alone tackles the problem. I now can see much clearer how Luther and Calvin could hold Augustine against the corrupt (at least, according to them) Western Church, while the Catholic Church could hold Augustine against Luther and Calvin.

Either predestination is true and free will (and hence, obeying God's will) flies out the window - and then what's the use of a Church? - or we are free to obey God's will (or not) and the doctrine of predestination flies out of the window. But why not cut the Gordian knot and just see the absurdity of this dilemma to begin with: an omnipotent, all-loving, omniscient perfect Being will not create flawed human beings and subsequently obey them things they cannot comply with anyway. Either God is not all-loving (which the Old Testament clearly seems to prove), or God is not omniscient and/or omnipotent (which the Old Testament also clearly seems to prove). A good God that commits genocides (wiping out all of humanity with the Flood; killing all Egyptian first borns in their cradles; wiping off whole cities and turning any witnesses in pillars of salt; etc.) or orders them (the command to the Jews to destroy all the Caananites and leave no woman, child or cattle alive; etc.) simply is a contradiction in terms. Conclusion: Christianity is just such a human myth and delusion as the Homeric or Virgilian gods were. It is a pity that intellects like Augustine couldn't see the obvious conclusion.

Due to the sheer length and dullness of this book, I cannot really recommend it to anyone. Better watch a summary presentation on YouTube or read some excerpts on internet. As a historical document, the City of God is valuable, though.

If his Confessions was autobiography as philosophy, the first part of Augustine’s magnum opus, City of God, is history as philosophy. As this book progressed beyond the halfway point, however, it digressed into an opaque maze of biblical explanations which I could not appreciate.

As someone who has not (yet) read Roman history, I found the first portion of this book pleasantly interesting. Augustine pretty much goes through the entire history of Rome to look at the (negative) role of the pagan gods throughout that period. One commendable thing here is that Augustine criticises the pagan Roman gods only because their worship and myths involved negative qualities (at least as per Christians) like violence and lust. In other words, his position is not that the Roman gods are not the One True God of My Exclusive Religion, and are therefore demons: a position that, unfortunately, many people take even today. Having read portions of the Old Testament, though, I know that Yahweh is also violent and jealous, much like most other gods of religions that command obeisance. Augustine may be throwing stones at others while residing in a glass house.

In his introduction in Book 1, Augustine speaks about how the earthly city — moving in parallel with the city of god — is ruled by its “lust of rule”. To me, this simple line speaks volumes about how nation-states are ultimately the outcome of desire for accumulation. I am not going to go to the extent of finding a Marxist interpretation out of Saint Augustine (of all people), though. Later, in Book 3, he talks about how a kingdom should be sufficient with a “moderate stature”, rather than seeking to be an afflicted giant. An interesting tidbit on self-sufficiency of nations and non-violence/non-expansion.

For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms?

For the good man is neither uplifted with the good things of time, nor broken by its ills; but the wicked man, because he is corrupted by this world’s happiness, feels himself punished by its unhappiness.

^ This quotation has an obvious Stoic influence. And the interesting thing about Augustine is that he is definitely very well-read. He cites Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, the Platonists, Stoics, and Epicureans with ease on philosophical matters, notwithstanding his extensive knowledge of Greco-Roman history.

Augustine believes that the person who “faces the ills of this life” rather than flees is braver. But why? Why face the world at all? For Augustine, there’s no way out: the final judgment is inevitable. But remove god, remove the afterlife, and Augustine’s philosophy crumbles. I won’t go to the extent of doing that, though, because you cannot understand the worth of theologians after removing their theism.

On the ancient belief that god is everywhere and in everyone, Augustine critiques it by arguing - “what more unhappy belief can be entertained than that a part of God is whipped when a boy is whipped?” - Well, stop whipping boys then? Augustine ignores how this kind of belief can create equality by increasing our compassion for the people around us.

In Book 5, Augustine very skilfully reconciles free will with a prescient god. But again, his central assumption is that someone who is not prescient of all future things is not god. The issue here is that Augustine’s central (Christian) assumptions are different from those of the pagan world, which are deliberately illogical. I do not think that you can argue with such different cultures using the logic of theology.

Something I appreciate is Augustine’s appreciation for life as a miracle, which is rare optimism for me (at least from the books I read). He also borrows from Lucretius who shows a similar wonder towards nature —

…the standing miracle of this visible world is little thought of, because always before us, yet, when we arouse ourselves to contemplate it, it is a greater miracle than the rarest and most unheard-of marvels. For man himself is a greater miracle than any miracle done through his instrumentality.

Though his argument here is that because life is a miracle, we shouldn’t doubt the veracity of biblical miracles as well, for both have the same author. But I think miracles are what we’re not used to seeing, and do not logically think as possible. Life does not satisfy either of these conditions, biblical miracles do.

Augustine also assumes that all people prefer a miserable existence over annihilation. We know that this is untrue today, as it has always been. And because Augustine is so life-affirming, he has to be unnecessarily morose about death —

For no sooner do we begin to live in this dying body, than we begin to move ceaselessly towards death.

In Book 14, Augustine reconciles the current negative “burdens” of this “corruptible body” with the positive final judgment when soul is reunited with body. He does this by arguing that its not the body itself that is the problem, but its burdens — desires, pains, et cetera — which will be removed cometh the final judgment. I like this because it accepts the body and doesn’t reject it, while recognising that the faults of the body are rooted in desire alone. Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but I see an affinity with the four noble truths here.

His discussion on the original sin / fall of man is exactly what I was looking for. He connects eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil with lust, shame, needs, and desires.

In the dark solitudes of India also, though some philosophers go naked, and are therefore called gymnosophists, yet they make an exception in the case of these members, and cover them.

The later portion of this book, though, from Book 16 onwards, are footnotes to the Old Testament, of absolutely no interest to non-Christians. I skipped much of this.

Its brevity, therefore, does not clear it of misery; neither ought it to be called happiness because it is a brief misery.

Any star rating is entirely meaningless. This is a ludicrous book, astonishing in scope, and in desperate need of an editor to make sense of it. I simply can't; it's overwhelming. Arid stretches of rhetoric suddenly cough up a fascinating philosophical argument, which then itself belches forth more arid rhetoric, and so on. Augustine takes the ancient pagan beliefs to pieces by showing that they simply can't be rationalized--then immediately forgets the obvious lesson and tries to rationalize Christianity in order to defend it. Who the hell am I to criticize, though?

That said, I'd much rather read about this book than read it again. Never before have I felt the ancient's wisdom so strongly: this is not a book, this is 22 books, and trying to read it as one is the definition of hubris.

Only an Englishman strives for happiness and as Varro will show as summarized by Augustine there are 288 possible specific philosophies which can possibly actualize our happiness and none of them are going to help us reach our earthly desire for happiness in this plane of existence, and Nietzsche was correct to say that about the English and mock them for their wrong headedness and Augustine gets it too.

Aeneid will flee Troy carrying his father’s body and will carry it with him to found Rome, we bring our past with us as we create our future through our present. Augustine tells his story by using Aeneid, Virgil, Cicero, Cato and a pantheon of other Roman characters and Gods, while bringing Livy’s history to life.

Reading parts of this book was as if I were rereading the fantastic stories of Livy. It doesn’t really matter if the rape of Lucretius never happened, or Brutus killed his two sons for the sake of the Roman republic or not, or if the Sabine women were really raped; what is important is that all Romans know the stories and believe them to be true, and that contributes to making the Romans who they are and it is through that lens and with those beliefs that Augustine formulates his vision.

Cato commits suicide. Augustine will say suicide is always wrong and therefore Cato committed a mortal sin. Dante is more forgiving. Dante is generous to Cato and puts the pagan Cato in purgatory. Augustine has at most hints for a kind of purgatory in his eschaton, but will just say suicide is wrong and unforgivable and is murder and will even state for Cato as well as Judas they will have what is coming to them.

Dante forgives Cato because Cato killed himself for what Dante thought were the right reasons of trying to return Rome to its glory from what Caesar would allow, while Augustine does not forgive Cato since Augustine will never compromise or excuse any breach in protocol towards heavenly perfection. The City of God’s first word is glorious but it does not refer to earthy glory but heavenly glory.

Mercury, messenger of the Gods, also means speech, since he facilitates communications between gods and humans. Those kinds of tidbits are everywhere within this book. Augustine does not want to alienate his pagan audience and he gives the pagan defender Varro (d. 27 BC) a fair summation, a summation of pagan religion that I have never seen better presented. Unfortunately, I’ll never get to read Varro’s pagan analysis in more detail anywhere else since his works on the pagan religion have been lost.

Augustine slips into a lot of magical thinking and has a weird fixation on number-ology and thinks there is magic with certain numbers and argues convincingly to that effect until you realize that is just silly, and he is always willing to accept the fantastic supernatural from the past and from his present. I ignored the voodoo stuff in this book. There’s a lot of that in this book.

I don’t really care whether Jonah was swallowed by a whale, but I do care how he allegorically (typologically) pre-configures Christ. When learning a foreign language as an adult, first you translate word for word, then you learn to think in that language without translating. Jonah was mad because the Ninevites did repent and God did not destroy the city, but the real meaning for all of this gets explained through Augustine’s decoder ring as if one had learned a foreign language and the reader through Augustine connects history with the present and the future kingdom to come, at least all according to Augustine.

Augustine will tell his reader that pathos comes from the Greek for perturbations and the passion that leads to pathos is a perturbation from reason and man is a rational animal and that means when we let our passions rule, we are acting contrary to human nature, and passionate thinking is a perturbation against human nature.

I’ll bet you that Augustine said at least 10 different times that all is vanity and nothing changes under the sun by quoting from Ecclesiastes, The Preacher (my favorite book of the Bible). We are trapped, and happiness is elusive (except for an Englishman), and as with Aeneid we carry the weight of the past with us as we await the future from a present that gets filtered by our own expectations that are shaped by how we felt about the past. Only as we step out of ourselves and see beyond our earthly nature can we begin to feel our real purpose, or when we enter the heavenly kingdom and get to experience our past, present and future as one, at least as according to Augustine.

Augustine has taken all of what was known at his time period and written a book that combines that knowledge such that a student in say about 425 CE could read this book and get the single best encyclopedia of what it meant to be Roman during that time period.

I started reading this book about five years ago and stopped it after page 300. I thought, how absurd, I don’t need an argument that astrology is bogus because twins behave differently, and what was all this stuff about Bible citations, and besides I didn’t believe his religious view point whatsoever. Now I realize I was wrong to have stop. His immanent critic of pagan religions is masterful. His defense of his own beliefs could never be immanently refuted. He also has this masterful presentation of the psychology of human beings. In some ways, he precedes Freud in that respect, and just as with Freud one can not overturn psychoanalysis by using the language of psychoanalysis, one can only refute it when one gets out of its tautologies. Augustine’s religious beliefs are irrefutable when looked at with his own assumptions and his masterfully deceptive tautologies, and this time as I was reading the book, I realized it was best just to sit back and enjoy the ride, because Augustine knows how to tell his story while astutely revealing human nature and our predicament, and for him he uses a typography of a heavenly city of God.

I once heard a historian say that Augustine reconciles the theology of Paul of Tarsus with the polity of Cicero and the philosophy of Plotinus. After having read this book, I don’t think it is as true as I once thought it was. Augustine does quote from Cicero a lot, and Plotinus (and even more from Porphyry a student of Plotinus), Augustine actually goes in his own direction differently from Cato and Plotinus and doesn’t really quote from Paul a lot while definitely never contradicting him but never quite seeming to appeal to him any more than he has to.

For those who enjoy re-reading Dante’s Divine Comedy, I would highly recommend reading this book. Augustine contextualizes a lot of the characters that will end up in the Comedy and even his concept of Hell where only those who are there want to be there while they are only vaguely aware of time passing and his concept of Heaven where the past, present and future all happens simultaneously and sin is not present though free will does exist but it is not ever contrary to the will of the divine since the ultimate state of being is reflecting in the divine creator’s presence eternally and experiencing his love reciprocally and sin will be allowed but never practiced because the alternative is never thought of since the person has exactly what they want forever and a day.

A remarkably complex book that is equally entertaining and enjoyable as long as I was willing to see it on its own terms and get past my own prejudices against all religions.

Po vyše roku čítania, bolo by vhodné prečítať si to ešte raz. Tentokrát v latinčine :)

I read this in an abridged version with a foreword by Vernon J. Bourke with my book club. I found it quite intriguing and excellent. Augustine is an author whom I enjoy reading his thorough arguments, not that I fully grasped all his philosophical arguments, nor could articulate many of them but I found myself underlining many passages and contemplating them while going about other tasks.

Often brilliant. Occasionally tedious.

Here are some quotes that stood out to me:

"I am sick of recalling the many acts of revolting injustice which have disturbed the city's history; the powerful classes did their best to subjugate the lower orders, and the lower orders resisted - the leaders of each side motivated more by ambition for victory than by any ideas of equity and morality." Book II, 17

"At the beginning of history the supreme power over races and nations rested with kings, who rose to that summit of authority not by canvassing popular support, but because their moderation was recognized by good men. The peoples were not under the restraint of laws: it was their custom to protect, not to extend, the frontiers of their dominion, and their realms were confined within the limits of their own country." Book IV, p. 141 (quoting Justinus' abbridgement of Trogus Pompeius).

"Do not imagine that is was by force of arms that our ancestors made a great nation out of a small community. If that were true, we should today have a far more glorious nation. In allies, in our own citizens, in armaments, in horses, we have greater resources than they enjoyed. But is was other causes that made them great, causes that with us have ceased to exist: energy in our own land, a rule of justice outside our borders; in forming policy, a mind that is free because not at the mercy of criminal passions. Instead of these we have self-indulgence and greed, public poverty and private opulence. We praise riches: we pursue a course of sloth. No distinction is made between good men and bad: the intrigues of ambition win the prizes due to merit. No wonder, when each of you thinks only of his own private interest; when at home you are slaves to your appetites, and to money and influence in your public life. The consequence is that an attack is being launched on a republic left without defences." Book V, p. 200 (quoting Cato).

"Besides the benefits which God lavishes on good and bad alike in accordance with his government of the natural order, about which I have already said something, he has given us a striking proof of his great love, a proof which is the special privilege of the good. We can, to be sure, never give him adequate thanks for our existence, our life, our sight of sky and earth, or our possession of intelligence and reason, which enable us to search for him who created all these things. But there is more than this. When we were overwhelmed by the load of ours sins, when we had turned away from the contemplation of his light and had been blinded by our love of darkness, that is, of wickedness, even then he did not abandon us. He sent to us his Word, who is his only Son, who was born and who suffered in the flesh which he assumed for our sake - so that we might know the value God placed on mankind, and might be purified from all our sins by that unique sacrifice, and so that, when love has been diffused in our hearts by his Spirit, and when all difficulties have been surmounted, we may come to eternal rest and to the ineffable sweetness of the contemplation of God. In view of all that, what heart or what tongue would claim to be competent to give him thanks?" Book VII, pp. 292-293.

"For the specific gravity of a body is, in a manner, its love, whether a body tends downwards by reason of its heaviness or strives upwards because of its lightness. A material body is borne along by its weight in a particular direction, as a soul is by its love." Book XI, chapter 28, p. 463

"Consequently, in those areas of the universe where such creatures have their proper being, we see a constant succession, as some things pass away and others arise, as the weaker succumb to the stronger, and those that are overwhelmed change into the qualities of their conquerors; and thus we have a pattern of a world of continual transience. We, for our part, can see no beauty in this pattern to give us delight; and the reason is that we are involved in a section of it, under our condition of mortality, and so we cannot observe the whole design, in which these small parts, which are to us so disagreeable, fit together to make a scheme of ordered beauty. Hence the right course for us, when faced with things in which we are ill-equipped to contemplate God's providential design, is to obey the command to believe in the Creator's providence. We must not, in the rashness of human folly, allow ourselves to find fault, in any particular, with the work of that great Artificer who created all things." Book XII, p. 475.

"Arrogant as they are, they think that by their own righteousness, not God's, they can please God, who is 'the God of all knowledge' and therefore also the judge of men's inner thoughts; for in them he sees men's imaginations, knowing them to be futile, if they are only men's, and do not come from him." Book XVII, p. 719.

"Hence a 'bishop' who has set his heart on a position of eminence rather than an opportunity for service should realize that he is no bishop. So then, no one is debarred from devoting himself to the pursuit of truth, for that involves a praiseworthy kind of leisure. But high position, although without it a people cannot be ruled, is not in itself a respectable object of ambition, even if that position be held and exercised in a manner worthy of respect. We see then that it is love of truth that looks for sanctified leisure, while it is the compulsion of love that undertakes righteous engagement in affairs. If this latter burden is not imposed on us, we should employ our freedom from business in the quest for truth and in its contemplation, while if it is laid upon us, it is to be undertaken because of the compulsion of love." Book XIX, p. 881.

"... when the child arrives at years of discretion, when he can now understand the commandments and can be subject to the rule of the Law, then he must take up the struggle against evil impulses, and fight vigorously, to avoid being led into sins which will bring damnation. And if those impulses have not yet grown strong and their victory has not become habitual, then they are more easily overcome, and they yield to the victor; but if they have grown accustomed to conquest and command, victory over them is difficult, and costs great hardship. And this warfare is not waged with genuinely whole-hearted purpose, unless the motive is the love of true righteousness, which comes through faith in Christ. For if the Law is there with its commands, but the Spirit with its help is absent, the very prohibition of the sin increases the craving for sin, and when that craving wins the day, the guilt of transgression is added to the evil impulses. Not infrequently, to be sure, the obvious vices are overcome by vices so masked that they are reputed virtues; and the king of those is pride, an exalted self-satisfaction which brings a disastrous fall." Book XXI, pp. 993-4.

"Evil men do many things contrary to the will of God; but so great is his wisdom, and so great his power, that all things which seem to oppose his will tend towards those results or ends which he himself has foreknown as good and just." Book XXII, p. 1023.

Took almost a year to read, but worth it.

Okay, from what I read, which certainly wasn't the whole book, there are a few useful ideas here. Augustine does an excellent job (though unintentionally) of showing how religious doctrines do not come about by an organic, bottom up process, but are the products of artificial acts of committees and compilers. And he also shows how large institutions are necessary in order to keep a doctrine going once it gains a modicum of acceptance. But honestly, I found this work overall to be hopelessly reactionary (to be fair, it is a defense and does not claim to be anything else), but his arguments are piss-poor and he cherry picks evidence in a manner which comes across as being childish and willful. It definitely gave me a better understanding of why Christianity is such a fragmented belief system. Any religion which claims unfocused crap like this as being "foundational" is going to have huge problems down the road. Throughout all of the sections I read, I kept getting the feeling that on some level, Augustine really didn't seem to have the energy or the will to make something this ambitious work. I guess if your obsessed with early church history then it might be bearable. Otherwise, look elsewhere.