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 turns to consider the miracles by which God has authenticated His revelation, contrasting the true miracles of Scripture with the deceptive marvels of theurgy. He recounts the mighty works recorded in sacred history—the birth of Isaac to aged parents, the destruction of Sodom, the plagues of Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea, the provision of manna in the wilderness, the water from the rock, the brazen serpent lifted up for healing. These miracles were wrought for the purpose of commending the worship of the one true God and prohibiting the worship of false deities. They were accomplished through simple faith and godly confidence, not through the incantations and magical arts that characterize the practice of theurgy.
At this point Augustine introduces a sustained critique of theurgy—the system of ritual practices that certain Platonists, including Porphyry, recommended for the purification of the soul. Theurgy claims to secure divine assistance through prescribed rites and invocations, yet Porphyry himself admitted that these practices cannot purify the intellectual soul, which apprehends truth. At most, theurgy might cleanse the lower “spiritual” part of the soul, but even this limited purification cannot grant immortality or lead the soul back to the Father. Porphyry further acknowledged that theurgic arts involve dealing with powers that envy the soul’s purity—powers that can be bound by the incantations of the wicked and thus prevented from doing good to the righteous. Augustine exposes the absurdity of this position: if these were truly good gods, a well-disposed person seeking purification would surely have more influence with them than an envious person seeking to hinder him. The very fact that theurgic deities can be terrified and constrained by wicked men proves that they are not gods at all but deceiving demons, who transform themselves into angels of light to entangle souls in the worship of many false gods.
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