Study Guide
An ordered chapter-preserving outline from Chapter 3: EDITOR’S PREFACE. through Chapter 20: BOOK THIRTEENTH..
Questions to Carry
- How does Chapter 3: EDITOR’S PREFACE. redirect the book’s main pressure?
- How does Chapter 4: BOOK FIRST. redirect the book’s main pressure?
- How does Chapter 5: BOOK SECOND. redirect the book’s main pressure?
- How does Chapter 6: BOOK THIRD. redirect the book’s main pressure?
Short Orientation
The Gothic sack of Rome under King Alaric in 410 precipitated a crisis of meaning that reverberated throughout the Mediterranean world. 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 Their accusations carried renewed bitterness: the empire had abandoned its ancestral gods, and those deities had withdrawn their protection. Augustine recognized in these charges a summons to defend the Christian understanding of divine providence and human history. 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.