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.
This leads Augustine to the heart of his argument: the identification of the true Mediator. He argues that if all men are mortal and miserable, as is probable, they need a mediator who is not only man but also God. This mediator must assume mortality to be assimilated to men, but not continue in mortality, lest he remain miserable. He must possess blessedness to be assimilated to God, but not be so remote as to be inaccessible. Jesus Christ fits this perfectly. He became mortal, assuming the infirmity of flesh without rendering His divinity infirm, and He raised that flesh from death, destroying mortality. By His transient mortality and permanent blessedness, He bridges the gap. Good angels cannot mediate because they are already blessed and immortal, sharing nothing with miserable mortals. Evil demons can mediate in a sense because they are immortal like the gods and miserable like men, but they use this position to separate men from God rather than unite them. Christ, the good Mediator, opposes them. He destroyed their power through the humility of His death and the benignity of His blessedness, cleansing the hearts of the faithful and freeing them from the impure dominion of the demons.
Augustine refutes the Platonic notion that the gods are too pure to have contact with men without being contaminated. He argues that if the supreme God, whom Plato himself struggled to describe, can visit the minds of the wise, why should the lower gods be unable to interact with men? He points to the visible gods—the stars and heavenly bodies—which shine upon the earth and are seen by men without being polluted. If the rays of the sun can touch the earth without defilement, surely God can interact with humanity. The idea that demons are necessary to prevent the pollution of the gods is absurd. If demons are contaminated by men, they cannot cleanse men; if they are not contaminated, they are better than the gods, whom the Platonists claim would be defiled by such contact. Augustine asserts that true divinity cannot be polluted by flesh, as proven by the Incarnation. Therefore, the way to blessedness is not through the aerial demons who are themselves impure, but through the incontaminable God who cleanses us from all pollution.
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