Augustine’s City of God

In the year 410, the city of Rome, the capital of the Empire, was sacked by Alaric and his army of Goths. It would not be the last time the city was sacked, even in that fifth century. But it was the end of an epoch. It was the end of the ancient order, the end of the pax romana, and in many ways the beginning of the end of old paganism. One of Augustine’s Christian friends—a younger man named Marcellinus—was appointed by Emperor Honorius to oversee the continuing Catholic-Donatist dispute in North Africa where Augustine had now been bishop for over a decade.

As the charge that Christianity was to blame for the sack of Rome began to gather steam, Augustine wrote to Marcellinus what started as a letter, but what became the seminal work of the Christian worldview throughout the Middle Ages. The City of God was first penned in 412 and the finishing touches were added and then published in 415, and then amended more, until finally in 426 we have the version that we read today.

The first ten books deal with a question very relevant for today: What was the real cause of the end of the classical pagan civilization? If we want to summarize Augustine’s argument against the pagan worldview it could be in this threefold manner: (i.) “gods at odds,” or incoherent ultimate reference points; (ii.) “vicious virtues,” or incoherent ethical norms; and (iii.) incoherence proven by history and testified to by their own authors. The true God is contrasted with the false. The Christian revelation and virtues are the light compared to which the best of Greek reflection was the shadow.

The second twelve books give an account of the origin, nature, and destiny of the two cities. It is a historical account, yet one that offers a profound philosophical and theological explanation for all of its phenomena. Augustine cuts from one scene to the other, as it were, from the biblical flow of history to the secular that was occurring at the same time, and back again. Yet underneath is the reality of two princes, two seeds, and two loves that animate the two kingdoms; and these two have been in the ultimate mortal combat since the beginning. This war in the spiritual realm explains all smaller wars in history—those earthly wars are, on the surface, the bubbling up of this spiritual war raging at the depths.

‘Gods at Odds’ (or Incoherent Ultimate Reference Points)

Book I answers the charge in specifics. First, the Roman citizen is reminded of the facts which are still fresh, concerning the humane treatment by the barbarians of those who sought refuge either explicitly in the Name of Christ or else in one of the Christian churches. This was unheard of in times past. What pagan religion ever required or engendered such mercy in the heat of battle? Second, if Christian influence is to be blamed “because it has forbidden them to sacrifice to their gods,” we might ask what sort of gods these are to begin with. It turns out that they could not protect their cities in part because they are sort of things that need men to protect them! Third, the fall of Rome came from within and early on—as Cicero himself already laments four centuries earlier—and is evidenced by the fact that even as civilization slips away the animal passions drive the pagan to the theaters of decadence for a final titillation.

Books II and III argue that the pagan gods have never protected men’s souls or bodies, as all that is wrong with Rome has always been wrong with Rome. He cites the comments of their own authors to make the point, principally Cicero who writes just before the coming of Christ. Most interestingly he points to Virgil, who offered himself as the Roman answer to Homer, and how in his Aeneid, reversed the flow of the Iliad and Odyssey, making his Aeneas bring glory from Troy to the Italian peninsula. But what glory did he bring with him but his gods—and so Augustine breaks in, “And ought prudent men to have entrusted the defense of Rome to these conquered gods?”1 From this perspective Rome was made of the stuff of Troy’s fallen debris.

Augustine next attacks in Book IV the incoherence of the pagan religion itself, frequently citing Marcus Varro, that there is actually the knowledge of one God, quickly called Jupiter (from Jove), quickly paired with a sister-spouse, Juno, then just as quickly divided into a seeming infinity of friends and foes based upon all of the diverse things in nature. So the appeal is: What does Rome gain by worshiping parts of an ultimate thing; and what would she lose if she worshiped the one true whole God? They “have set diverse gods over diverse parts of the world,”2 and in their books we find, “accounts of the lusts, cares, and angers of the gods.”3 This highlights the importance of understanding both the classical attribute of divine simplicity and the classical doctrine of the Trinity, and how they go together. 

To summarize all of this, the pagan gods were what Francis Schaeffer called amplified humanity.4 In other words, what Feuerbach and Freud argued about the biblical conception of God is actually the case here, where man has projected into the heavens his frightened “bits and pieces” thinking. The difference, though, is that the historical process is reversed. Instead of e pluribus unum (from many one), it’s actually from one shattered into many. Schaeffer commented on this basic worldview problem of having many ultimate reference points:

“Like the Greeks, the Romans had no infinite god. This being so, they had no sufficient reference point intellectually; that is, they did not have anything big enough or permanent enough to which to relate either their thinking or their living.”5

And the solutions of Cicero and Seneca, namely of Jupiter as the “world soul” or each deity as a “part” of the one Deity—none of this helps at all.

Vicious Virtues (or Incoherent Ethical Norms)

“First of all, we would ask why their gods took no steps to improve the morals of their worshipers.”6 He noticed that there are two things you need for moral progress to occur among a people: Where are the pagan prophets? and Where is there a linear eschatology? In other words, you need both a “warner” and a warning of something of ultimate consequence. One could object that Cato and Cicero were their prophets; but with an eternal Law that they weren’t sure about and about eternal realities that they lamented could not be proven. Hell was the loss of the republic.

Jove is depicted as adulterous. Now if this is the father of all the greatest beings, what may we expect of the children and lesser neighbors! The decadent plays were held to be commanded by the gods. The perverted purification ceremonies, especially of the mother goddess, he said, “they could not for the very shame have rehearsed at home in the presence of their own mothers.”7 But the more indecent the ceremonial act, the more it propitiated the deities rather than offended them. Levering summarizes this well:

“The Romans constructed gods in their own worst image, and then they used those gods to justify their vicious behavior while at the same time openly mocking the behavior of the gods.”8

When the Roman objector claims that the philosophers will handle morality, Augustine answers, first, that to hold to a divine religion lower than one’s human speculation is the surrender of the soul—the philosopher lacking both the power of public sanction and the audience with the majority who are illiterate—and, second, that the philosophers are not even yours, Rome, but are for the most part Greek!

If the philosophers had paid attention to their craft they would have recognized that ultimate reference points in nature forces one to worship the most ultimate person thing we can find—namely, the state: “Thou desirest to worship the natural gods; thou art compelled to worship the civil.”9 In this, two of the Forms that are being grasped for are immutability and eternality. What is it that all earthly citizens desire of their civil sphere? One word we can offer is permanence. We can say peace too, but so long as there is a tolerable level of stability that will do. But what do we find in the history of earthly commonwealths? Do we find any that are permanent? Some seem more permanent than others. 

The chief Roman virtue—the one that characterized its civilization—was glory. But, Augustine notes, what this came to mean is nothing other than global dominion over others, and he says that such a kingdom is nothing but a large robbery. Levering draws the contrast between the “glory of liberty,” which characterized the Romans’ noble rise to power, with the later perversion, a “glory of dominion over other peoples.”10 So, Augustine continues, “Glory they most ardently loved: for it they wished to live, for it they did not hesitate to die. Every other desire was repressed by the strength of their passion for that one thing.”11 It became what he called “eagerness for praise” and “the display of their valor.” 

“At that time it was their greatest ambition either to die bravely or to live free; but when liberty was obtained, so great a desire for glory took possession of them, that liberty alone was not enough unless domination also should be sought.”12 In other words, glory-seeking itself is not the problem, Augustine insisted, “For glory, honor, and power are desired alike by the good man and by the ignoble,” yet the false glory-seeker is made by false worship, as the Romans worshiped the gifts of virtue rather than their Giver. For “the glory with the desire of which the Romans burned is the judgment of men thinking well of men.”13 Certain words of Jesus and Paul come to mind here:

“How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” (Jn. 5:44).

And,

“to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life” (Rom. 2:7).

Incoherence Proven by Their Own Authors and by History

Once the logical demolition has occurred, one brings in evidential apologetics to show the truth showing up everywhere. In some ways Rome will suffer the same fate as every merely secular organism. It suffers the fate of cultural entropy, that loss of available intellectual grasping and guarding of truth. Instead, Augustine argued, “opulence gave birth to envy” and “the vice of restless ambition”—these were the political parents of Rome, restless ambition bored with affluence, too lazy anymore to think about those objective elements of law that keep tyranny in its cage. 

Augustine’s own command of Roman history is made plain by tracing it back to the successors of the mythical Romulus, a city found in bloodshed, moving to one false peace after another to appease their guilt. The climax of Roman glory must have been the victory against Carthage in the Punic Wars, and yet where were the gods in protecting the republic at that very moment?

With the enormity and suddenness of the expansion of the Empire there is what one modern sociologist famously called the “Vertical Invasion of the Barbarians,” that mass absorption of humanity not versed in those norms prerequisite for its continued existence. And there were plenty of bloody civil wars: most famously that between Julius Caesar and Pompey, and that between Octavian and Marc Antony, that put to death what was left of the Republic and consequently sentenced Roman civilization to its inevitable demise. All of this was of course before Jesus ever came into the world. 

The Roman philosophers and civic commentators support Augustine’s thesis. According to Cicero, a society that features suicidal art has already blown away its soul: “The lewdness of comedy could never have been suffered by audiences, unless the customs of society had previously sanctioned the same lewdness.”14 Moreover, Cicero said of the origin, “But Homer invented these things, and transferred things human to the gods; I would rather transfer things divine to us.”15

There is a Gospel Call Throughout

Throughout the first ten books, Augustine exalts the sovereignty of God, so as to set suffering in its place and to engender despair on all traitors, and Augustine pleas with the Roman reader to “come, join with us.” So between God and the gospel, the author must begin to paint a third picture, and that is really his main picture, his thesis, his big idea. He begins to bring definition to what he means by the City of God:

“a city surpassingly glorious, whether we view it as it still lives by faith in this fleeting course of time, as sojourns as a stranger in the midst of the ungodly, or as it shall dwell in the fixed stability of its eternal seat, which it now with patience waits for, expecting until ‘righteousness shall return unto judgment,’ and obtain, by virtue of its excellence, final victory and perfect peace.”16

“In truth, these two cities are entangled together in this world, and intermixed until the last judgment effect their separation.”17 He wants the reader to understand that the Christian is not claiming, nor resting his hope in, some temporal changing of the guard due to anything superior in us. For the same God who gave us Constantine, turned to give us Julian the Apostate. 

The shame that the Romans ought to feel for their disgusting religion also forms a backdrop of repentance:

This, rather, is a religion worthy of your desires, O admirable Roman race…This rather covet, this distinguish from that foul vanity and crafty malice of the devils…For of popular glory you have had your share; but by the secret providence of God, the true religion was not offered to your choice. Awake, it is now day…[to] this country of ours…which country we invite you, and exhort you to add yourselves to the number of the citizens of this city, which also has a sanctuary of its own for the true remission of sins.18

On the flip side of the Roman shame exposed, what has the Christian lost? Even the Christians murdered, pillaged, or raped, in the barbarian invasion? Ultimately nothing that lasts forever, and “these are the wealth of Christians.”19

Augustine’s doctrine of God is foreshadowed as he makes a total Providence the backdrop to settle any question people may have about why such horrors are happening to Christians as well as pagans, or why the irrational social order lasted so much longer than the so-called “Christian order.” Augustine’s first response to this objection is to dismiss the alternatives of chance, Fate, or Stoic determinism. Here is where Augustine’s realism, appealing to an Infinite-Personal God, explains what Plato could not—not only real unity to the whole, but a sufficient cause. All things that are effects must be participating in the life of One who is the living God.

“Wherefore, when the kingdoms of the East had been illustrious for a long time, it pleased God that there should also arise a Western empire, which, though later in time, should be more illustrious in extent and greatness.”20 With that rise in temporal greatness came the sort of virtues necessary to be great. God ordained them all for purposes that were more than temporal. And they have received their reward:

“But the reward of the saints is far different, who even here endured reproaches for that city of God which is hateful to the lovers of this world. That city is eternal. There none are born, for none die. There is true and full felicity—not a goddess, but a gift of God. Thence we receive the pledge of faith, whilst on our pilgrimage we sigh for its beauty.”21

In tones of those words of Jesus in Luke 13, about concrete examples of untimely death, No—but unless you repent. So here Augustine says to his Roman reader: “And that you are alive is due to God, who spares you that you may be admonished to repent and reform your lives.”22

Augustine would surely say to us today—to those who insist that Christianity has nothing to say and to those who demand predictable specificity in what Christianity has to say—Yes, God is ordering all of the events going on right now, for a multiplicity of reasons: (a) judgment against sin; (b) mercy in extending the time to repent; (c) purification of his church; and (d) display of his glory through his church. 

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1. Augustine, City of God, I.3

2. City of God, IV.10

3. City of God, IV.30

4. Francis Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? (Westchester, IL: Crossway, 1976), 21.

5.  Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? 21.

6. City of God, II.4

7. City of God, II.4

8. Matthew Levering, The Theology of Augustine: An Introductory Guide to His Most Important Works (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), 115.

9. City of God, VI.6

10. Levering, The Theology of Augustine, 118.

11. City of God, V.12

12. City of God, V.12

13. City of God, V.12

14. Cicero, quoted in City of God, II.9

15. Cicero, quoted in City of God, IV.26

16. City of God, I.1

17. City of God, I.1

18. City of God, II.29

19. City of God, I.10

20. City of God, V.13

21. City of God, V.16

22. City of God, I.34