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.
The Knowledge of God and the Mediator
True knowledge of God is not attainable through mere contemplation of the mutable creation. The mind must pass beyond all changeable things to the unchangeable Substance, learning that God alone is the Creator of all that is not divine. But this ascent is blocked by vice. The human mind, though naturally rational, is incapacitated from enduring the pure light of God. Therefore, purification by faith is required, and this faith is established by the God-man, Christ Jesus.
Christ is the Mediator between God and men, not merely as teacher but as the very Way and the End. As the Way, He is the path by which the disabled mind is healed; as the End, He is the goal. The necessity of this Mediator arises from the chasm between the unchangeable God and changeable, sinful man. Only a Mediator who is both God and man can effect reconciliation. “Since, if the way lieth between him who goes, and the place whither he goes, there is hope of his reaching it; but if there be no way, or if he know not where it is, what boots it to know whither he should go?” The Incarnation provides that sure and infallible way.
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