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 next addresses the horrors of death and the denial of burial. He argues that death is not an evil for the righteous, for it ushers them into a better life. The length of life is ultimately indifferent, for once life has ended, the longest and the shortest are brought to the same condition. What matters is not how one dies but into what state death ushers the soul. The denial of burial, though it appears a great indignity to human eyes, does not harm the dead, for they have no sensation. Christ declared that we should not fear those who kill the body but cannot harm the soul, and after death the body feels nothing. The psalmist’s lament over the unburied dead was meant to display the cruelty of the perpetrators, not the misery of the victims. The funeral rites and the care of the tomb are for the comfort of the living, not the benefit of the dead. Yet Christians ought not to despise the bodies of the departed, for they were the instruments of good works and will be raised again at the resurrection. The patriarchs gave commandment regarding their burial, Tobit was commended for burying the dead, and Christ himself approved the woman who anointed him for his burial. These acts of piety are pleasing to God because they express faith in the resurrection.
Regarding captivity, Augustine offers the consolation that God is present with his people even in bondage. Daniel and the three youths were captives, yet God did not abandon them. The prophet Jonah, in the belly of the sea-monster, was not forsaken. How much less will God abandon his people in the hands of human enemies, even barbarians? Augustine contrasts the Christian captive with the pagan hero Regulus. This Roman general, captured by the Carthaginians, was sent to Rome under oath to negotiate a prisoner exchange. He advised the senate against the exchange and then, bound by his oath to the gods, returned to Carthage to be tortured to death in a manner of fiendish ingenuity. The pagans celebrate his virtue, yet his fate demonstrates that the gods do not secure temporal happiness for their worshippers. If the gods could not protect their most faithful devotee, what ground have the pagans to blame Christianity for the calamities of Rome? The Christian captive, who looks for a heavenly country, is in a far better state than Regulus, who was bound by an oath to false deities.
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