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.
From this foundation, Augustine develops a comprehensive understanding of the true and perfect sacrifice. He asserts that a true sacrifice is every work done for the purpose of uniting us to God in holy fellowship, directed toward that supreme good in which alone we can be truly blessed. Every work of mercy shown to others becomes a sacrifice when offered for God’s sake. The human person, consecrated to God and vowed to His service, becomes a sacrifice by dying to the world in order to live for God. The body itself becomes a sacrifice when disciplined by temperance and presented to God as an instrument of righteousness. The soul, offering itself to God and being inflamed by divine love, loses the deformity of earthly desire and is remolded in the image of eternal beauty. The whole redeemed community—the Church universal—becomes the supreme sacrifice offered to God through the great High Priest who offered Himself for us. In the sacrament of the altar, the Church celebrates this sacrifice continually, learning to offer herself through Christ who is both Priest and Victim.
This understanding illuminates the disposition of the holy angels toward human worship. These blessed spirits, who dwell in celestial habitations and rejoice in the communications of their Creator’s fullness, look upon us miserable mortals with compassion and tender regard. They wish us to become immortal and happy, and therefore they do not desire us to sacrifice to themselves, but to Him whose sacrifice they know themselves to be in common with us. For we and they together constitute the one city of God. The human portion sojourns here below, while the angelic aids from above. From that heavenly city, in which God’s will is the intelligible and unchangeable law, the holy Scripture has descended to us by the ministry of angels. In that Scripture it is written that whoever sacrifices to any god other than the Lord alone shall be utterly destroyed. This Scripture, this law, these precepts, have been confirmed by such miracles that it is sufficiently evident to whom these immortal and blessed spirits wish us to sacrifice.
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