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.
To further clarify the nature of these passions, Augustine reviews the philosophical debate between the Stoics and the Peripatetics (followers of Aristotle) regarding mental emotions. The Stoics argue that the wise man is not subject to these passions, while the Peripatetics believe he experiences them in a moderated form. Augustine, citing the account of Aulus Gellius, suggests that this disagreement is largely verbal rather than real. He recounts the story of a Stoic philosopher who turned pale with fear during a shipwreck. When questioned later, the philosopher explained that while the wise man cannot prevent the initial physical impression of fear, he does not consent to it mentally. Thus, the mind of the wise man remains steadfast in reason, even if the body reacts to danger. Augustine concludes that both schools essentially agree that the rational mind of the wise person is not dominated by vice. In contrast, Apuleius attributes to demons a mind that is tossed about by a hurricane of passions, implying that their highest faculty is enslaved to vice. This makes them intent on deception and seduction rather than capable of guiding men to purity.
Augustine contrasts this demoniacal condition with Christian virtue. He argues that in Christian ethics, the question is not whether a soul experiences passion, but why and toward what end. Anger at wrongdoers to correct them, sadness to relieve the suffering, or fear to preserve life are not condemned when they are obedient to reason and directed toward righteous ends. Even the holy angels, who have no weakness, are described in Scripture with metaphors of anger or pity because their actions resemble those prompted by such emotions in us, though they themselves are entirely undisturbed. The demons, however, are driven by turbulent emotions that make them unstable and untrustworthy. Augustine notes that the Platonists themselves are forced to admit that the poets’ stories of gods fighting with partisan passions are actually true descriptions of demons, not gods. The poets slander the true gods by attributing human distempers to them, but they accurately describe the demons who falsely bear the names of gods.
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