The City of God

When Rome fell

In August 410 the Visigoths under Alaric entered Rome and plundered it for three days. No foreign enemy had taken the city in nearly eight hundred years, and the shock ran round the Mediterranean. Pagans said Rome had fallen because she had forsaken her gods for Christ, and Christians, too, asked why God had let it happen.

Augustine was then bishop of Hippo, on the African coast; his early life is told in his Confessions, his whole story in Augustine, doctor of grace. He wrote at the urging of Marcellinus, the imperial commissioner who had judged the Donatist case at Carthage in 411, and dedicated the work to "my dearest son Marcellinus" I, preface: "A great work this, and an arduous; but God is my helper" I, preface. Marcellinus was executed in 413, the year it was begun, in the aftermath of a failed revolt. Augustine sent the books out a few at a time until 426 and died in 430 with the Vandals at the walls of Hippo.

Twenty-two books, two cities

In his Retractations Augustine described the plan. The first ten books refute those who worship the many gods, for this life (I–V) or the next (VI–X), above all the philosophers; the last twelve treat "the origin, and progress, and deserved destinies of the two cities" 11.1, four books to each. The name comes from the Psalms, with which Book XI opens:

Glorious things are ascribed to you, O city of God.

Psalm 87:3

A city, ‘civitas’, is a people bound together, not a set of walls, and "there are no more than two kinds of human society, which we may justly call two cities, according to the language of our Scriptures" 14.1.

The library holds chapters from six books that follow the two cities from beginning to end: Book I's preface and plan, Book XI's opening and its image of the Trinity, Book XIV on the two loves, the long meditation on peace in Book XIX, Book XX on the judgment and the thousand years, and the last two chapters of Book XXII. Left out are the Roman history and gods of Books II to X (with Book IV's question what kingdoms without justice are but great robber bands), Books XII and XIII on the angels, man and death, the two cities' course from Cain and Abel to Christ in Books XV to XVIII, Book XXI on eternal punishment and most of Book XXII.

Two loves, and the pilgrims' peace

The sentence every reader remembers closes Book XIV: "two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self" 14.28. In the one the love of ruling rules; in the other "the princes and the subjects serve one another in love" 14.28.

They are not the church and the empire under other names. Their foundations were laid "in the difference that arose among the angels" 11.1, and "these two cities are entangled together in this world, and intermixed until the last judgment effect their separation" 1.35. Among the church's enemies are future citizens, and among those who throng its services are some who will not share the saints' lot.

To live "according to man, not according to God" 14.4 is to seek happiness away from God, where alone it is found: "all sin is a lie" 14.4. The way back is a person. God's Son took our humanity without losing his divinity, "that there might be a way for man to man's God through a God-man" 11.2, the "one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5): "God our end, man our way" 11.2. He is the Mediator of the Confessions 7.18.24. Later in Book XI he finds the Trinity's image in our being, knowing and loving 11.26: love moves the soul as weight moves a body 11.28.

Meanwhile the city of God is a pilgrim. From the first sentence it "lives by faith in this fleeting course of time, and sojourns as a stranger in the midst of the ungodly" I, preface, like Abraham:

For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

Hebrews 11:10

Book XIX asks what the pilgrims' peace is. The city of God holds that "life eternal is the supreme good, death eternal the supreme evil" 19.4, where the philosophers sought happiness in this life and in themselves. Augustine walks through the miseries of home, city and world, from the judge who tortures the innocent because he cannot see consciences 19.6 to the wise man who must "lament the necessity of just wars" 19.7. Happiness lies in hope: "in this hope we were saved" (Romans 8:24). Yet all things seek peace, even war 19.12. "The peace of all things is the tranquillity of order" 19.13, and the peace of the heavenly city "the perfectly ordered and harmonious enjoyment of God, and of one another in God" 19.13.

The pilgrim city obeys the earthly city's laws in "the things necessary for the maintenance of this mortal life" 19.17. It "calls citizens out of all nations, and gathers together a society of pilgrims of all languages" 19.17, keeping their customs where they do not hinder the worship of the one God; only in worship does it dissent, and for that it is persecuted. Augustine says that "as long as the two cities are commingled, we also enjoy the peace of Babylon" 19.26, and recalls Jeremiah:

Seek the prosperity of the city to which I have sent you as exiles. Pray to the LORD on its behalf, for if it prospers, you too will prosper.

Jeremiah 29:7

By Cicero's definition, which requires justice, "there never was a Roman republic" 19.21, for Rome denied God his due. So Augustine offers another: "a people is an assemblage of reasonable beings bound together by a common agreement as to the objects of their love" 19.24. To know any people, look at what they love. Even the pilgrims' righteousness is unfinished, consisting "rather in the remission of sins than in the perfecting of virtues" 19.27, and the whole city prays, "forgive us our debts" (Matthew 6:12). Protestants often hear in this righteousness received by grace; Catholics note the faith that "worketh by love" 19.27 and read it as forgiveness and healing together.

The book has shaped Western thought about church and state. Some medieval writers took the city of God for the visible church and the earthly city for secular power, and set popes above kings. The Catholic Church teaches that the church is the kingdom of Christ present in mystery, its seed and beginning on earth. Many scholars hear the two cities behind Luther's two kingdoms, though for Luther sword and gospel are both God's rule, and Calvin honoured civil government as a Christian calling. Augustine's grieving acceptance of just war passed into Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed and Anglican teaching, while Anabaptists hold that the sword lies outside the perfection of Christ Schleitheim Confession.

Judgment, and the end without end

Now we cannot see why the good suffer and the wicked prosper, but "it is not concealed from pious minds that what is concealed is just" 20.2. Until the judgment there are two resurrections, of souls now and of bodies at the end: "The one is the resurrection of mercy, the other of judgment" 20.6. Augustine finds both in Jesus' words:

Truly, truly, I tell you, the hour is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.

John 5:25

So he reads Revelation 20. He had once hoped for a Sabbath of a thousand years after six thousand years of history, "for I myself, too, once held this opinion" 20.7, a harmless hope if its joys were spiritual, but its expected banquets "can be believed only by the carnal" 20.7. Satan is bound like the strong man (Matthew 12:29), so that he cannot seduce the nations from which the church is gathered 20.8. The thousand years run from Christ's first coming to the end, and the saints reign with him now: "Therefore the Church even now is the kingdom of Christ, and the kingdom of heaven" 20.9.

The Catholic and Orthodox churches, most Lutherans and many Reformed hold this reading today as amillennialism. Many Puritans and later evangelicals held a postmillennial hope that the gospel would fill the world before Christ's return. Many evangelicals today are premillennial, reading the first resurrection as bodily and the reign as on earth after Christ comes, as Papias, Justin and Irenaeus did Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.36. All confess his bodily return, the resurrection and the judgment; see Christ’s return and the millennium.

The last two chapters look at what Augustine does not yet see: "I do not say what I see, but I say what I believe" 22.29.

Now we see but a dim reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

1 Corinthians 13:12

He leaves open whether risen eyes will see God, but expects to see him everywhere, in one another and in the new heavens and earth. God himself will be the reward, "seen without end, loved without cloy, praised without weariness" 22.30. The first freedom was to be able not to sin; the last "shall not be able to sin" 22.30, a gift and not our nature. After six ages of history comes the Sabbath without evening, "For we shall ourselves be the seventh day" 22.30, and beyond it the eighth, the Lord's day of the resurrection: "There we shall rest and see, see and love, love and praise. This is what shall be in the end without end" 22.30.

Reading it well

The City of God is an apology for educated pagans and shaken Christians, arguing on their ground with Virgil, Cicero, Varro and the Platonists, who "in many points agree with ourselves" 1.36. It is long and wanders; if you are new to it, begin at 14.28 and go on to Book XIX.

It is no blueprint for church and state. The church is Christ's kingdom now, yet tares grow in it with the wheat, and God alone knows where the two cities divide (later theology spoke of the visible and invisible church). The book asks less which side we are on than what we love.

Some pages are hard. God made man to rule "not man over man, but man over the beasts", and slavery is "the result of sin" 19.15; yet Augustine counsels slaves to serve faithfully and does not call for their freedom. Later Christians who fought slavery appealed to that same truth of creation (see Does the Bible approve of slavery?). He calls virtues with no reference to God "rather vices than virtues" 19.25 for their pride, though ‘the virtues of the pagans are splendid vices’ is a later summary, not his phrase. The second death of the wicked 19.28 he held with most of the church; see Resurrection, judgment and the new creation.

The English is Marcus Dods's of 1871: weal is well-being, the quick are the living, the laver of regeneration is baptism, cloy is surfeit, and the saints' "conversation is in heaven" 20.9 means their citizenship.

He ends by asking those who think he has said too much or too little to forgive him, and the rest to join him in giving thanks 22.30. Rome had fallen; his city had not, and its citizens still confess, "here we do not have a permanent city, but we are looking for the city that is to come" (Hebrews 13:14).