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.
He examines the supposed necessity of this mediation: the claim that ethereal gods, concerned with human affairs, are ignorant of terrestrial things due to distance and require aerial demons to bring them intelligence. Augustine calls this a detestable error. If gods can perceive minds without the hindrance of bodies, they do not need messengers. If they rely on bodily indices, they could be deceived by demons. If the divinity cannot be deceived, it cannot be ignorant of human actions. Augustine presents a dilemma regarding what the demons tell the gods. Do they conceal their own lust for theatrical plays while reporting Plato’s prohibition of them? Do they conceal both? Do they report both? Or do they conceal Plato’s defense of the gods while reporting their own wickedness? Augustine argues that any of these alternatives leads to impious conclusions about the gods. If the gods know the truth but still permit the demons to act as mediators, they are complicit in evil; if they are ignorant, they are not truly gods. Therefore, none of these alternatives can be chosen, and the opinion that demons act as messengers must be rejected entirely.
Instead, Augustine asserts that demons are spirits eager to inflict harm, alien from righteousness, swollen with pride, and subtle in deceit. They dwell in the air as in a prison, cast down from the height of heaven for their transgression. They are not superior to men, who excel them through piety and the hope of the true God. Demons tyrannize over unworthy men, persuading them of their divinity through lying signs, or feigning to be messengers when they cannot persuade men they are gods.
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