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 his detailed critique with Janus, whom Varro identifies as the world. If beginnings belong to Janus and ends to Terminus, the division fails. Do not all things that begin in the world also end in it? The separation of these powers is logically incoherent. The two-faced image is interpreted as representing the human palate with its two openings—the mouth and the gullet—a comparison Augustine finds absurd. When Janus is depicted with four faces, this is said to represent the four quarters of the world. But if Janus is the world and the world has four quarters, the two-faced image is false; if the two-faced image is true because the world can be understood as east and west, then calling him “double” when he has four faces is inconsistent. No soul escapes this vanity except the one that hears the truth saying, “I am the door.”
Jupiter is defined as the god holding power over the causes by which anything comes into being. Varro argues that Janus governs first things, Jupiter highest things, and therefore Jupiter is king, for highest things excel in dignity though first things precede in time. Augustine dismantles this: efficient causes are always prior to what they produce, so Jupiter, governing causes, is prior to Janus, governing beginnings. Moreover, if Jupiter is the god of causes, it is shocking sacrilege to attribute to him the base and criminal acts found in the myths. It would be better to assign those crimes to a fiction than to the ruler of the world.
If Janus is the world and Jupiter is also the world, why are they two gods with separate temples, altars, rites, and images? If the distinction rests on the different natures of beginnings and causes, does one man with two offices become two men? Augustine illustrates from Jupiter’s many surnames—Victor, Invictus, Opitulus, Impulsor, Stator, Centumpeda, Supinalis, Tigillus, Almus, Ruminus—that diverse powers do not require multiple gods. The functions of causes and beginnings are closer to each other than the functions of Tigillus (holding the world together) and Ruminus (giving suck to animals), yet the latter did not necessitate two gods. Augustine mocks the surname Pecunia (Money), arguing that to call the king of gods by the name of that which no wise man has desired is base and contemptible.
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