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The City of God is attested by the supreme authority of Holy Scripture, which excels all human writings by its divine origin. Augustine cites the Psalms: “Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God,” and “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God.” These testimonies have instilled in believers a love for this city and desire for its citizenship. Its Founder is the one true God, “the God of gods”—not of false and proud deities who grasp at divine honors from deluded mortals, but of the holy spirits who submit themselves to His sovereign lordship. The citizens of the earthly city, by contrast, prefer their own gods—demons who are enemies of the true God—and live according to self-love and pride.
The foundations of these two cities, Augustine announces, were laid not first in human sin but in the primordial difference that arose among the angels. This angelic division establishes the two archetypal communities whose characteristics will be mirrored in the two human societies descending from them.
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.
The Authority of Canonical Scripture
For truths remote from our senses—especially concerning the origin of the world and the nature of God—we require testimony. Augustine affirms the paramount authority of the canonical Scriptures, composed by the Divine Spirit. Just as we trust eyewitnesses for distant places or past events, we must trust the prophets and apostles who were inspired to record divine revelation. Their authority derives not from human wisdom but from divine origin.
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.
Infinite Space and Time Before Creation
Augustine addresses the speculative question: why did God create a world when He did, and not sooner? He retorts that the same vanity appears if one asks why He placed it where it is and not elsewhere. To imagine infinite time before creation is as meaningless as imagining infinite space outside the world. God is the Lord of time and space, not their subject. The creation was an act of His free, eternal will, not a response to external necessity.
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