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- As a work of one of the most influential Church Fathers, The City of God is a cornerstone of Western thought, expounding on many questions of theology, such as the suffering of the righteous, the existence of evil, the conflict between free will and divine omniscience, and the doctrine of original sin.
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The City of God, philosophical treatise vindicating Christianity, written by the medieval philosopher St. Augustine as De civitate Dei contra paganos (Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans) about 413–426 ce.
Jul 10, 2023 · How has The City of God impacted Western Civilization? The City of God rippled spilled into Christian thought and teaching for the next 600 years. Augustine’s view of Human Nature and Free will dominated the Western World and impacted other important theologians.
The City of God is a philosophical work that explores the nature of human existence, with a particular focus on the relationship between the earthly city and the heavenly city. Augustine argues that the earthly city is characterized by a love of self and a desire for power, wealth, and pleasure.
So Augustine tried to shore up the faith of his flock with a book he called The City of God. Written more than 15 centuries ago, it is now an undisputed classic.
- Occasion and Intention
- Pagan Political Theology
- Christianity and Caesar Before Augustine
- True Civil Life
- The Question of Political Augustinianism
- Is Man by Nature Political?
- Analytical Division of The Text
- Notes
The sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 shook the Roman world to its foundations. Although Rome was no longer the residence even of the Western Emperor, nevertheless she was the symbol of the civilized world. To many Romans this catastrophe seemed to be a refutation of Christianity. Clearly, the Christian God was unable or unwilling to protect the...
In the Greek city-states the worship of the gods was deeply interwoven with social and political life. Political authority was as religious as it was political, because, as Ittai Gradel puts it, the dichotomy “was unknown to, or at least irrelevant to, traditional Graeco-Roman worship.” Historians have recognized this as far back as Numa Denis Fust...
Roman officials looked with suspicion on the movement of the Christians, whose founder had been a criminal executed by a Roman governor, and whose adherents were initially found mostly among the lower classes. Pliny the Younger, in his correspondence with the Emperor Trajan, writes that his custom when persons are accused of being Christian is to a...
The main theme of The City of God is that the true “city,” the complete community, in which the highest end of human life is attained, is not the ancient free πόλις, but rather the community of those who love God. The true eternal city that will grant peace and unity to the world is not Rome, but rather the community of Christ. This community is hi...
The City of God was a key influence on medieval theories of the relation of the two powers, and particularly on the development of theories of the plenitude of power of the pope. It tended to be interpreted in a very particular way. The City of God came to be more and more identified with the visible Church and the pope as its visible head. And sin...
Now, Arquillière thought that political Augustinianism was a bad thing. Augustine, he argues, did not distinguish sufficiently between nature and grace, and therefore his later followers were able to absorb the legitimate natural-law institution of political power into the Church. Only the re-discovery of Aristotle in the 13th century would enable ...
Augustine himself gives us a detailed account of the structure of The City of God in his Retractions, which I quote at length: And in a letter to Firmus he writes: Those passages, together with internal evidence in The City of God itself give us the following general division of the text: Part One: Books 1 – 10: Against those who believe happiness ...
See: Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), ch. 25. Augustine, Civ. Dei, I, praef.; Sancti Aurelii Augustini episcopi De civitate Dei libri XXII., ed. B. Dombart and A. Kalb, Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana, 5th ed. (Stuttgart-Leipzig: Teubner, 1993), 2 vols.;The City...
Nov 5, 2013 · Augustine was Christianity’s first great political thinker. His seminal work, The City of God (full title: De Civitate Dei contra Paganos = The City of God against the Pagans), as Greg Forster writes, is ”the first real masterpiece of Christian political thought.
Feb 10, 2024 · The City of God, as articulated by Augustine, represents the celestial realm where divine principles of righteousness, virtue, and the love of God reign supreme. It embodies the eternal and unchanging truths that transcend the temporal confines of human existence.
