Reading Notes: The City of God, Volume I
The Occasion and Scope of Augustine’s Masterwork
The sack of Rome by the Visigothic king Alaric in 410 precipitated a crisis of meaning that reverberated throughout the Mediterranean world. For eleven centuries the imperial capital had stood as the supreme symbol of temporal permanence; its fall to a foreign army seemed to many an unthinkable rupture in the cosmic order. Pagan observers, witnessing the catastrophe, assigned responsibility to the Christian faith and its rejection of traditional worship. Their accusations carried renewed bitterness: the empire had abandoned its ancestral gods, and those deities had withdrawn their protection. Jerome’s reaction—his voice faltering, sobs interrupting his dictation as he heard the news—captures the psychological devastation that seized even committed Christians. Augustine recognized in these charges a summons to defend the Christian understanding of divine providence and human history, and what began as a response to specific calumnies evolved, over thirteen years of interrupted labor, into a comprehensive theological treatise of twenty-two books—Augustine’s acknowledged masterpiece and the mature work of his later years.
The correspondence surrounding the work’s genesis reveals how personal encounter shaped its scope. Marcellinus, an imperial commissioner sent to Africa to mediate the Donatist controversy, befriended both Augustine and Volusian, the pagan proconsul. Seeking Volusian’s conversion, Marcellinus facilitated an exchange that exposed the real barriers to belief among the Roman elite. Initial objections centered on doctrines such as the Incarnation, but the deeper resistance proved political and social: cultivated Romans could not reconcile Christian humility with imperial grandeur, nor the demands of faith with the interests of the state. This recognition compelled Augustine to expand his reply into a comprehensive account of Christianity’s relation to the ancient order—moral, political, philosophical, and religious.
The work’s enduring appeal lies partly in its encyclopedic character. Between 1467 and the century’s end, twenty editions appeared, roughly one every eighteen months. Augustine’s theological contributions—the doctrines of creation, fall, incarnation, and last things—receive systematic treatment. His metaphysical discussions display remarkable acuity, particularly in his critique of Neoplatonism and his demonstration that Christian faith fulfills rather than contradicts genuine philosophy. The translation history reveals a curious disparity: French readers have long enjoyed excellent versions, most notably Emile Saisset’s masterful rendition. English readers, by contrast, suffered from a singular deficiency. The sole complete translation, produced in the seventeenth century, fails by every standard: inaccurate, obscure, and devoid of the vigor characteristic of its era. The present edition addresses this gap by offering a faithful rendering executed with reverence for its subject.
The structure Augustine devised reflects both apologetic necessity and doctrinal ambition. The first ten books undertake a systematic refutation of pagan claims. The initial five dismantle the argument that polytheistic worship guarantees temporal prosperity, demonstrating that Rome’s calamities stemmed from moral corruption rather than divine abandonment. The subsequent five address the more sophisticated position that traditional religion secures blessedness in the life to come. Having cleared this ground, Augustine devotes the remaining twelve books to constructive exposition. These trace the parallel histories of two communities—the heavenly city and the earthly city—from their origins through their development to their final destinies. The work thus moves from negative critique to positive vision, from answering opponents to establishing the framework within which all history finds its meaning.
The Architecture of Augustine’s Apology
Augustine’s City of God unfolds across twenty-two books in a structure that moves from urgent apologetic defense to constructive theological vision. The first ten books constitute a single sustained refutation, while the final twelve books trace the origins, progress, and destinies of two archetypal communities. Understanding this architecture is essential, for the work is not a collection of discrete arguments but a single complex argument whose early negative portion clears the ground for the positive construction that follows.
The first ten books divide into two symmetrical portions of five books each. The first five address the claim that pagan worship secures temporal prosperity; the second five address the more sophisticated claim that it secures blessedness in the life to come. This symmetry is not accidental. Augustine proceeds from the cruder objection to the more refined one, recognizing that pagans who might be persuaded that Christianity does not cause disasters might still cling to their traditional worship for supernatural assistance.
Book First opens the refutation by defending the clemency shown in Christian churches during the sack. Augustine establishes that the barbarians’ mercy was unprecedented in the history of warfare—a point he proves through extensive citation of Roman historical sources. He then addresses the problem of suffering, arguing that temporal evils fall on righteous and unrighteous alike for providential purposes: to discipline the good, punish the wicked, and teach both not to set their hearts on earthly things. The longest portion of Book First defends Christian women who suffered violation during the sack, establishing the principle that purity resides in the soul’s will, not the body’s integrity, and condemning suicide as a greater sin than the violence endured.
Book Second turns from the immediate occasion to Roman history before Christ, demonstrating that the empire suffered catastrophic moral and physical disasters while its gods received exclusive worship. Augustine’s strategy is to prove that the gods not only failed to prevent corruption but actively promoted it through obscene theatrical rites and demonic influence. The famous syllogism comparing Greek and Roman attitudes toward actors crystallizes this argument: if such gods are to be worshipped, their actors should be honored (Greek premise); but such actors must not be honored (Roman minor); therefore such gods must not be worshipped (Christian conclusion).
Books Third and Fourth extend this historical indictment, cataloguing Troy’s destruction, Rome’s founding crimes, and the disasters of the republic. Augustine particularly emphasizes the civil wars, arguing that Roman citizens inflicted upon one another cruelties that exceeded anything foreign enemies had done. The gods not only failed to prevent these catastrophes but, as Augustine argues in Book Fourth, cannot be credited with Rome’s greatness either. The empire arose through violence and ambition, not piety, and its extent was matched by the Assyrian empire whose gods Rome did not worship. Augustine’s famous definition emerges here: a kingdom without justice is nothing but a great robbery—a principle that deflates the glory of conquest by reframing empire as large-scale crime sanctioned by impunity.
Book Fifth addresses the astrological objection—perhaps Rome’s fortune was determined by the stars rather than by any gods. Augustine’s refutation centers on the phenomenon of twins, whose similar stellar configurations at birth produce radically different lives. He also reconciles divine foreknowledge with human free will, arguing that God foreknows our wills as causes without thereby compelling them. The book concludes with a nuanced discussion of Roman virtues: Augustine acknowledges that the Romans possessed real virtues directed toward earthly glory, and that God rewarded these with temporal empire, but distinguishes this limited goodness from the true virtue that seeks the glory of God. The examples of Constantine and especially Theodosius illustrate how Christian emperors may possess both temporal success and genuine piety.
The Transition to Eternal Life
Book Sixth marks a crucial transition. Having refuted worship for temporal advantages, Augustine announces that the next five books will address worship for eternal blessedness. He adopts Varro’s tripartite division of theology—mythical, natural, and civil—as his analytical framework and begins to demonstrate that neither the poets’ fables nor the state’s rites can secure the life to come. This is where the argument becomes most technically demanding, for Augustine must engage with sophisticated philosophical opponents while demonstrating that even their highest insights remain inadequate.
Book Seventh examines the select gods of civil theology, showing through detailed analysis of Varro’s Divine Antiquities that these deities are assigned the most trivial functions while obscure gods perform superior tasks. If Vitumnus gives life and Sentinus gives sensation—gifts immeasurably greater than those of the select gods—how can selection be based on merit rather than fame? Augustine traces the entire system to demonic origin: Numa Pompilius learned the true causes of the sacred rites through hydromancy, consulting spirits who appeared in water, and the Roman senate judged these causes so abominable that they burned the books rather than allow their contents to become known.
Book Eighth introduces the natural theology of the philosophers, selecting the Platonists as Augustine’s primary interlocutors because their system comes nearest to Christian truth regarding the nature of God. Augustine surveys the philosophical schools—Pythagoras, Thales, Socrates, Plato—showing how each contributed to the gradual discovery of divine truth. The Platonists alone perceived that God is incorporeal, unchangeable, and the source of all truth and blessedness. Yet they fatally err in maintaining that worship must be rendered to a multitude of created gods.
Books Ninth and Tenth complete the refutation by examining the nature of demons and the meaning of true worship. Augustine argues that demons are not the benign mediators between gods and men that Platonist philosophy supposed, but wicked spirits enslaved by passion who delight in human degradation. The argument proceeds by analyzing Apuleius’s own definition of demons as “passive in soul”—subject to perturbations that disqualify them from blessedness. Christ alone is the true Mediator, who reconciles humanity to God through His incarnation and sacrifice. The tenth book culminates in the definition of true worship: the service due to God alone (latria), which consists not in material sacrifice but in the spiritual offering of a contrite heart and a life oriented toward the supreme good.
Augustine further distinguishes authentic spiritual miracles from the deceptive theurgic arts practiced by certain Platonists. Theurgy claims to secure divine assistance through prescribed rites, yet Porphyry himself admitted that these practices cannot purify the intellectual soul. The comparison between true miracles—which authenticate exclusive worship of the one God—and demonic marvels—which seduce souls toward polytheistic worship—reinforces Christ as the universal path to salvation. Porphyry’s confession that no universal way of the soul’s deliverance had yet been received from any philosophy or religion becomes the occasion for Augustine’s affirmation that such a way exists: it is the grace of Christ, proclaimed to all nations, purifying the whole human person for immortality.
The Positive Vision: Two Cities from Angels to Judgment
Book Eleventh begins the constructive portion of the work. Augustine announces that the foundations of the two cities were laid not in human history but in the angelic fall—the primordial choice by which some angels turned from God in pride while others remained steadfast in love. This angelic origin is crucial: it establishes that the division between the two cities is not external but internal, rooted in the orientation of the will toward self or toward God.
The theological exposition that follows ranges across creation, time, the nature of the Trinity, and the destiny of rational beings. Augustine addresses why the world was created in time rather than eternally, arguing that any finite duration is as nothing compared to the infinite eternity during which God might have chosen to create. He develops the doctrine that the first three days of Genesis, before the creation of the sun, signify the angelic knowledge of creation—the “evening” representing contemplation of creatures in themselves, the “morning” representing contemplation of the same creatures in the Word of God.
The separation of light from darkness in Genesis Augustine interprets as the primal division between the holy angels and the fallen angels. This separation God alone could effect, foreknowing who would fall and who would stand. The light was approved (“God saw that it was good”), while the darkness was not similarly commended. This distinction underscores that evil, though permitted, is never endorsed by God. The beauty of the universe emerges from this opposition of contraries—the harmony of the whole enhanced by the tension between good and evil, light and darkness, arranged by God’s wisdom like antitheses in eloquent speech.
Augustine discerns hints of the Trinity in the creation narrative. The Father creates through the Word (the Son), while the Holy Spirit represents the goodness of the creation and the bond of love. Thus the threefold question—“who made it? by what means? why?”—points mysteriously to the triune God. This Trinitarian framework extends to human nature: Augustine finds in the human mind a trinity of existence, knowledge, and love. We are certain that we exist, that we know that we exist, and that we love this existence and knowledge. These three are interior, spiritual, and indubitable. This trinity in the soul is a vestige of the divine Trinity, preparing the way for the incarnation of the Son who assumes human nature to restore the divine image.
Book Twelfth continues the analysis of angelic nature, examining the origin of evil in the deficiency of the will rather than in any positive nature. Augustine argues that there is no efficient cause of the evil will; it is a defection, a turning away from the supreme good to lesser goods. The question of why some angels fell while others remained steadfast leads to the affirmation that the holy angels were confirmed in grace from the moment of their creation, while the fallen angels lacked this assurance and thus were never partakers of full blessedness. Vice injures the nature it corrupps but cannot exist without a good nature to corrupt. God uses the evil wills of demons to benefit the good, demonstrating His sovereignty even over rebellion.
The Unity of the Human Race and the Refutation of Cyclical History
Having established the angelic origins of the two cities, Augustine turns to the human creation. A crucial theological and philosophical question presents itself: what is the relationship between the one man from whom all humanity descends and the two cities that his descendants will populate? This inquiry requires Augustine to refute the cyclical theories of history that many pagans embraced and to establish both the single origin of the human race and its theological significance.
Augustine addresses the Platonic notion of eternal cycles of return, a theory suggesting that souls perpetually return to misery in fixed periods. If the soul is finally delivered from misery never to return, this constitutes a unique event that introduces novelty into nature, contradicting the claim that nothing new happens under the sun. The apostle’s statement that “there is no new thing under the sun” refers not to endless repetition of identical events but to the fallen world’s cyclical pattern of generation and corruption. Even if the soul fell into misery by accident or sin, the fact that this new experience was foreseen and provided for by God demonstrates that novelty is compatible with the order of nature. Furthermore, if souls are not new but have existed from eternity to populate the world, there must be an infinite number of them, which contradicts the finite order of nature known by God.
God’s creation of man in time was effected without any change in His will or counsel. He did not make a “new decree” when He chose to create; rather, His eternal and unchangeable design included the temporal beginning of the world. The question of why God did not create sooner is answered by the recognition that no delay can be predicated of eternity. Before the world existed, there was no “time” during which God could be said to delay. The creation was an act of freedom, not of compulsion, and freedom admits of no prior determination that would make one moment rather than another appropriate for its exercise.
God chose to create the human race from one man rather than many, emphasizing the unity of society and the bond of human affection. Unlike animals, which were created in great numbers, man was created singly to commend the unity of society and family affection. The derivation of all humanity from one source binds the race together by common nature and origin. Woman was created from the man’s side to emphasize further this derivation of the whole human race from one source. This unity of origin is not merely physical but theological: Adam contained in himself the seminal principles of all humanity, and in him were laid the foundations of both societies that would arise from his descendants.
God foreknew that man would sin and propagate a mortal race, yet He also foresaw the multitude of the godly who would be saved by grace and united with the angels. The derivation from one man serves to teach the value of unity to this multitude. The solidarity of the human race—both in sin through Adam and in grace through Christ—is grounded in this single origin. What one man lost for all, one Man restores for all; what one man’s disobedience introduced, one Man’s obedience removes.
Augustine addresses the manner of the soul’s creation, distinguishing divine from human artisanship. God’s work is not physical or manual but invisible and powerful; His “hand” is His power, creating from nothing or from existing material without the limitations of human craft. This distinction matters because some philosophers held that lesser gods or angels created mortal things, particularly the human body. Augustine refutes this view: God alone is the Creator of every kind of creature. While angels may aid in production, they are not creators, just as gardeners are not the creators of the fruits they tend.
The Platonic view that the soul is purified by escaping all entanglement with the body leads to absurdity when combined with the teaching that the wicked return to mortal bodies as punishment. If these philosophers maintain that souls are purified by escaping all bodies and that the wicked return to mortal bodies as punishment, then those whom they would have men worship as parents and authors are actually the forgers of fetters and chains. It is therefore absurd to worship as gods those whose work upon us we are exhorted to avoid and escape from.
In the first man, Adam, there was laid the foundation—not evidently to human sight but in God’s foreknowledge—of the two cities or societies: the City of God and the earthly city. All of this is ordered by the secret yet just judgment of God, ensuring that neither His grace is unjust nor His justice cruel, for all the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth.