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 Creation of the World and Time
Augustine takes as his starting point Genesis: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” He argues against two errors: that the world is eternal (and thus uncreated), and the Platonic notion that the world is eternally created (having no temporal beginning but always existing as a created thing). The first error—that the world is without beginning—is dismissed as impious. The very order and beauty of the cosmos testify to a Creator.
The second error is more subtle but equally flawed. Its proponents sought to protect God from the charge of a “new decree” or change of will. Augustine shows this leads to insoluble difficulties regarding the soul. If the soul is co-eternal with God, whence comes its new misery? If its happiness and misery alternate eternally, it can never be truly blessed. Therefore, the world must have a true temporal beginning, simultaneous with the beginning of time itself.
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