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.
Augustine begins this seventh book by establishing both the pastoral necessity and the eternal stakes of his argument. He requests patience from readers whose sharper minds have already found the previous books sufficient, asking them to tolerate his extended labors for the sake of those still entangled in ancient errors. The task before him is nothing less than the eradication of depraved opinions that centuries of human error have fixed deeply in unenlightened minds. He frames his work as a humble cooperation with divine grace, depending entirely on the help of the true God. What is at stake is the commendation of the true divinity to human beings—not for the sake of temporal advantages, however necessary these may be, but for the sake of eternal life alone, which alone is blessed.
Having demonstrated in the sixth book that the civil theology—the established state worship with its multitude of deities—cannot confer eternal life, Augustine now turns to examine whether the so-called “select gods” might prove more worthy of worship for this supreme end. These select gods constitute a smaller, elite group that Varro distinguished in his final book from the larger crowd of deities. Augustine carefully distances himself from Tertullian’s witty dismissal that selecting gods is like selecting onions, with the rejected ones pronounced bad. Selection itself, Augustine grants, does not necessarily condemn those not chosen. Military recruits are selected, and from these, others are selected for higher service. Overseers are elected in the church without rejecting the rest of the faithful. Corner stones are chosen without rejecting the other stones. The question, therefore, is not whether selection is legitimate, but what these select gods are and why they appear to have been singled out.
Varro identifies twenty select gods: Janus, Jupiter, Saturn, Genius, Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Vulcan, Neptune, Sol, Orcus, Father Liber, Tellus, Ceres, Juno, Luna, Diana, Minerva, Venus, and Vesta—twelve male and eight female. Augustine immediately poses the critical question: were these deities chosen because they hold higher administrative spheres in the cosmos, or simply because they became better known and received more popular worship? If the former, they should not be found among the plebeian crowd of gods assigned to minute and trifling functions. Augustine then demonstrates, through a devastating examination of the reproductive process, that the select gods are engaged in the most menial tasks while obscure deities perform far superior functions.
The original text of this work is in the public domain. This page focuses on a guided summary article, reading notes, selected quotes, and visual learning materials for educational purposes.