The City of God stands as Augustine's masterwork of theological defense and construction, written over thirteen years in response to accusations that Christianity brought ruin upon Rome. This first volume contains the first ten books of sustained refutation—demolishing pagan claims that traditional worship secured either temporal prosperity or eternal happiness—followed by the beginning of his positive vision in Books Eleven through Thirteen, where he traces the origin of two societal orders to the primordial division among the angels. What emerges is not merely an apology for Christianity but a philosophy of history that subordinate the fate of empires to the hidden providence of the one true God, whose sovereignty extends from creation through the fall to the final judgment.
Refutation of Origen’s View on Creation
Augustine refutes Origen, who held that the world was created as a prison-house for fallen souls, whose bodies correspond to their sins. This contradicts Scripture’s declaration that creation was “very good.” Moreover, Origen’s view leads to absurdities: if bodies are punishments, the devil, being most wicked, should have the grossest body, yet he has an ethereal one. The world’s beauty testifies to a Creator who made all things good.
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