The City of God is clearly Augustine’s magnum opus. Filling 22 books and 867 pages in the English translation that is in front of me, it is one of the truly classic works of Western thought.[1] Augustine wrote The City of God from 413 to 427. In 410 Alaric and the Visigoths had successfully invaded Rome, and it seemed that Rome was no longer impenetrable.[2] Why was Rome susceptible to defeat? Augustine authored The City of God—in part—to counteract certain persons who wanted to blame Rome’s adoption of the Christian faith for Rome’s defeat. He says:
1. Augustine, The City of God, translated by Marcus Dods (New York: Modern Library, 1950).
2. Rome was not “conquered” by the Visigoths, who withdrew after three days. Nonetheless, it now seemed that Rome was no longer impenetrable.
The glorious city of God is my theme in this work. . . . I have undertaken its defense against those who prefer their own gods to the Founder of this city—a city surpassingly glorious, whether we view it as it still lives by faith in this fleeting course of time, and 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 it obtain, by virtue of its excellence, final victory and perfect peace.[3]
3. City of God I. Preface.
During this period, certain persons were apparently making a number of criticisms about Christianity. In sum, the Christian faith was seen as antithetical to good citizenship in the present. How could someone who saw all persons as fellow image-bearers and saw fellow-Christians as a spiritual “brother” or “sister” give meaningful allegiance to their own particular earthly city? How could someone who believed his true citizenship was to be found in some heavenly city be able to be a good citizen in this city?[4]
4. See Ernest Fortin, “Civitate Dei, De,” in Augustine Through the Ages, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 197.
In response to these and related questions, Augustine writes that he has “things to say in confutation of those who refer the disasters of the Roman republic to our religion, because it prohibits the offering of sacrifices to the gods.” Augustine goes on to state his three objectives in writing:
[1.] For this end I must recount all, or as many as may seem sufficient, of the disasters which befell that city and its subject provinces, before these sacrifices were prohibited; for all these disasters they would doubtless have attributed to us, if at that time our religion had shed its light upon them, and had prohibited their sacrifices. [2.] I must then go on to show what social wellbeing the true God, in whose hand are all kingdoms, vouchsafed to grant to them that their empire might increase. I must show why He did so, and how their false gods, instead of at all aiding them, greatly injured them by guile and deceit. [3.] And, lastly, I must meet those who, when on this point convinced by irrefragable proofs, endeavor to maintain that they worship the gods, not hoping for the present advantages of this like, but for those which are to be enjoyed after death.[5]
5. City of God I.36.
Augustine addresses the first two objectives—demonstrating that Rome suffered disaster before adopting Christianity and that Rome owed its success to the one true God—in Books 1–10, as he lays out his critique of various pagan arguments against Christianity. Then, in Books 11–22 he tackles the final objective—addressing those who recognize the earthly benefits of Christianity yet continue in paganism— by outlining (at great length!) “the origin, history, and deserved ends of the two cities”—the city of God and the earthly city.[6]
6. City of God X.32.
Augustine’s arguments against the pagans are manifold. At times he uses rather straightforward logical argument and historical analysis. For instance, Rome suffered many attacks and evils before Christianity was the dominant religion. Rome had never been able to truly achieve justice, even before Christianity emerged. Moreover, the Roman gods had logged a long and sordid track record of capriciousness and pettiness and immorality.[7]
7. These arguments are found in Books II and III of The City of God.
Augustine also notes that in many ways Christianity has been good for the city of Rome. Thus, Augustine asserts that when barbarians attacked Rome, many Romans survived because they took refuge in Christian churches, which—Augustine argues—the barbarians refused to attack.[8]
8. City of God I.1.
Augustine also argues (Book IV) that the only reason any city—including Rome—achieves any success or stability of happiness is due to the providential workings of God, and Augustine even argues that a true republic can really only exist where Christ is Lord of that republic.
Augustine is concerned to show in The City of God the nature of the two cities and their interrelationship. While “success” and “failure” in the earthly realm cannot always be directly related to human obedience and disobedience, nonetheless, blessing often does follow obedience. Augustine writes of the “successful” Roman leader, and suggests that his success may have been greater if he had followed the one true God.[9]
9. City of God IV.28.
Ultimately, for Augustine, God sovereignly reigns over all kingdoms: “God can never be believed to have left the kingdoms of men, their dominations and servitudes, outside of the laws of His providence.”[10] Likewise:
10. City of God V.11.
[W]e do not attribute the power of giving kingdoms and empires to any save to the true God, who gives happiness in the kingdom of heaven to the pious alone, but gives kingly power on earth both to the pious and the impious, as it may please Him, whose good pleasure is always just.[11]
11. City of God V.21.
Augustine summarizes his overarching purpose for The City of God as follows:
In truth, these two cities are entangled together in this world, and intermixed until the last judgment effect their separation. I now proceed to speak, as God shall help me, of the rise, progress, and end of these two cities; and what I write, I will write for the glory of the city of God, that, being placed in comparison with the other, it may shine with a brighter luster.[12]
12. City of God I.35.
Two Cities, Two Loves
In Book XI of The City of God, Augustine begins to trace out “the origin, history, and destinies of the two cities, the earthly and the heavenly.”[13] In the opening section of Book XI, Augustine writes these summative words about the two cities:
13. City of God XI. Argument.
I will endeavor to treat of the origin, and progress, and deserved destinies of the two cities (the earthly and the heavenly, to wit), which, as we said, are in this present world commingled, and as it were entangled together. And, first, I will explain how the foundations of these two cities were originally laid, in the difference that arose among the angels.[14]
14. City of God XI.1.
What are the two “cities”? The answer is a little more complicated than is first supposed, for the definitions can shift a bit throughout The City of God, as well as throughout Augustine’s other writings. At times the “earthly city” denotes the typical affairs of this temporal realm: politics, for example.[15] At other times, the “heavenly city” represents Christians, while the “earthly city” often means something like the lost/unsaved/reprobate.[16]
15. This is the meaning in Exposition on the Psalms 61 (verse 8).
16. City of God XIV.1.
The two cities are intermingled in the present, and will be until the final judgment.[17]
The two cities have their origin—ultimately—in Adam himself. For at first there was only the city of God, and no earthly city—for the earthly city only truly comes into being with sin. At the very end of Book XIV of The City of God, Augustine gives perhaps the clearest summary of how the two cities are most centrally rooted in two loves: either (1) love of self or (2) love of God.[18] Augustine can also speak of the two cities as (1) the redeemed who trust Christ and (2) the lost who will never trust Christ. He says, “The [human] race we have distributed into two parts, the one consisting of those who live according to man, the other of those who live according to God. And these we also mystically call the two cities, or the two communities of men, of which the one is predestined to reign eternally with God, and the other to suffer eternal punishment with the devil.”[19] All of history can be understood in terms of the origin, growth, and end of these two cities: “For this whole time or world-age, in which the dying give place and those who are born succeed, is the career of these two cities concerning which we treat.”[20]
17. Expositions on the Psalms 61 (verse 5).
18. City of God XIV.28.
19. City of God XV.1.
20. City of God XV.1.
Augustine consistently teaches that the earthly city comes to end, while the heavenly city does not. Thus, the earthly city “shall not be everlasting . . . when it has been committed to the extreme penalty.”[21]
Ultimately, the true founder of the earthly city is Cain, who founds the earthly city in slaying his brother.[22] There are thus two lines—one proceeding from Cain (the earthly city) and one proceeding from Seth (the heavenly city), and these two lines constitute the two cities.[23] Adam is then the father of these “two lines, proceeding from two fathers, Cain and Seth, and in those sons of theirs whom it behooved to register, the tokens of the two cities began to appear more distinctly.”[24]
21. City of God XV.4.
22. City of God XV.5–8.
23. City of God XV.8.
24. City of God XV.17.
The two cities run parallel courses throughout history, and “both cities, in their course amid mankind, certainly experienced chequered times together just as from the beginning.”[25] The members of the two cities are compared to different fish that swim together in the sea: “There are many reprobate mingled with the good, and both are gathered together by the gospel as in a drag net; and in this world, as in a sea, both swim enclosed without distinction in the net, until it is brought ashore, when the wicked must be separated from the good, that is the good, as in His temple, God may be all in all.”[26]
The “two cities,” then, can be understood as one way of simply tracing out the history of redemption. To call Augustine’s The City of God a “philosophy of history” may be true enough, but it may be better to see this key work as Augustine’s way of tracing out the history of redemption. This in fact may be the best way to think about a “philosophy of history.” That is, instead of thinking of “history” (in an almost “neutral” or “secular” sense), and then thinking of God’s actions in history as a supplement to “neutral” or “secular” history, it is probably better to think of all of history as encompassed within the more fundamental story of the history of redemption—which Augustine traces out in terms of the two cities.[27]
25. City of God XVIII.1.
26. City of God XVIII.49.
27. For a very helpful way of getting into these kinds of issues, one might turn to Cornelius Van Til, Common Grace and the Gospel, revised edition, ed. K. Scott Oliphint (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 2015).
The End of the City of God
Augustine teaches that the end or final destiny of the city of God is eternal blessedness. Augustine spends a large portion of the last book of The City of God (Book XXII) dealing with this state of blessedness. Key to this final state is, of course, the resurrection. In the resurrection, all of the inhabitants of the city of God will be raised up and transformed such that there is no deformity, and that all is in perfect proportion. Indeed, Augustine writes:
Anything misshapen will be set right; anything smaller than is fitting will be supplemented from resources known to the creator; and anything larger than is fitting will be removed, but with the integrity of the material preserved.[28]
28. City of God XXII.19.
In the future city of God there shall be an “eternal blessedness,” and Augustine makes the provocative suggestion that we will make “great and marvelous discoveries,” and these discoveries shall “kindle rational minds in praise of the great Artificer,” and there shall be “the enjoyment of a beauty which appeals to the reason.” Rather than play reason and beauty against each other (as is sometimes done today), the beauty we see and experience in the city of God in the future shall actually “appeal” to reason.[29] This future knowledge “shall be perfected when we shall be perfectly at rest, and shall perfectly know that He is God.”[30]
29. City of God XXII.30.
30. City of God XXII.30.
In this future state it is most certainly the case that free will is not lacking. Rather, “[The human will] will, on the contrary, be all the more truly free, because set free from delight in sinning to take unfailing delight in not sinning.”[31]
31. City of God XXII.30.
Augustine’s City of God is long, and it takes some diligence to plow through it. But as Christians walk as pilgrims to the city of God, there are few better guides which will help us navigate Christian faithfulness in our day than the Bishop of Hippo and his magnum opus. Take, read; take, read.
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Editor’s Note: This essay has been adapted from Bradley G. Green’s book, Augustine of Hippo: His Life and Impact (Ross-Shire, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2020).
