City of God

Introduction

The City of God (Latin De Civitate Dei contra Paganos) is Augustine's largest single work, composed in twenty-two books over thirteen years (413–426 CE) in response to the sack of Rome by Alaric's Visigoths in 410 CE. It is the foundational text of Western political theology and one of the most influential single works in shaping medieval and early modern European thought about history, politics, and the relation between religious and secular authority.

The work's organizing thought is the doctrine of the two cities: human history is the unfolding of two intermingled communities, the civitas Dei (city of God, oriented to the love of God) and the civitas terrena (earthly city, oriented to the love of self). The two cities are not identical with the church and the state; they are spiritual communities running through and across institutional boundaries. History is the working out of their interaction; the eschaton is their final separation.

Form, length, date, language

The City of God is a single work in twenty-two books, totaling approximately 350,000 words in Latin — by far the longest of Augustine's writings. It was composed in stages: Books I–III were completed by 413; the work was finished in 426, three years before Augustine's death. The original language is Latin in Augustine's mature style: more measured than the Confessions, more polemical in the early books, deeply argued throughout.

Why it was written

The immediate occasion was the sack of Rome on August 24, 410 CE. The Visigothic conquest of the city — the first sacking of Rome in nearly 800 years — was a traumatic event for the Roman world. Pagan critics blamed Christianity: the empire had abandoned the gods who had made it great, and the disaster was the gods' response. Augustine's City of God is, in its first ten books, a sustained refutation of this charge. The pagan gods had not protected Rome from earlier calamities; the abandonment of the gods cannot account for the recent disaster; the proper philosophical framework for understanding history is theological, not political.

The larger project, developed across the remaining twelve books, is the construction of a Christian philosophy of history. Why does history have the shape it has? What is the role of the various political orders within the larger divine plan? What is the proper relation between citizenship in any particular polity and citizenship in the larger spiritual community of those oriented to God? The answers Augustine develops shaped Western political theology for over a millennium.

Structure and argument

The work divides into two major parts.

Part I (Books I–X): The critique of paganism. The first ten books are sustained polemic against pagan critics of Christianity and pagan religion generally. Books I–V refute the charge that abandoning the pagan gods caused Rome's misfortune (historical argument from earlier calamities; the gods did not protect against them either). Books VI–X address the philosophical defense of pagan religion, especially the variant held by educated readers (the gods are not literally as depicted in mythology but serve some philosophical or social function). Augustine argues that even the philosophically reformed paganism cannot ground human flourishing or address the genuine spiritual needs of human life.

Part II (Books XI–XXII): The two cities through history. The remaining twelve books develop the positive theology. Books XI–XIV treat the origin of the two cities: in the angelic realm, in the creation and fall of humanity, in the inheritance of original sin. Books XV–XVIII trace the development of the two cities through biblical and secular history, from Cain and Abel through the patriarchs, the prophets, the Greek philosophers, the Roman republic, and into Augustine's own time. Books XIX–XXII treat the eschatological end of the two cities: the death and resurrection of the body, the final judgment, the nature of eternal punishment and beatitude.

Book XIX has been particularly influential in Western political theology. It treats the question of whether the earthly city can be properly called a commonwealth (res publica) and concludes, against Cicero, that the pagan Roman state was not in the strict sense a res publica because it lacked true justice. Only a community ordered to God can fully satisfy the criteria of political community.

Key passages

• I.preface — the famous opening, distinguishing the two cities and announcing the work's plan.
• II.21 — the argument against Cicero's account of the Roman res publica.
• IV.4 — Without justice, what are kingdoms but great robberies? The famous pirate-and-emperor analogy.
• VIII–X — the engagement with Platonism, especially the discussions of Plotinus and Porphyry.
• XIV.28 — Two loves built two cities: the love of self even to the contempt of God, and the love of God even to the contempt of self. The defining single sentence of the work's political theology.
• XIX.4–17 — the analysis of peace as the proper end of every human community and the impossibility of perfect peace in the earthly city.
• XIX.21 — the redefinition of res publica.
• XXII.30 — the closing vision of the eternal Sabbath.

Reception history

The City of God shaped Western political theology more substantially than any other single work for over a thousand years. The medieval doctrine of the two swords (spiritual and temporal authority), the theory of just war, the structure of medieval political theology, the Reformation engagement with the relation between church and state — each developed in substantial dialogue with the City of God.

The Carolingian renaissance treated Augustine as the foundational political theologian; Charlemagne reportedly had the City of God read to him at meals. The medieval university curriculum included it as standard reading. Aquinas engages it extensively. The Reformation made the work newly central: Luther and Calvin both drew on it heavily for their political theologies.

The modern reception has been variegated. The Enlightenment was generally hostile (Voltaire's mockery of Augustine's interpretations of history is representative). The nineteenth century produced both serious scholarly engagement (the great German Augustine scholarship) and ideological appropriations (Catholic political theology, especially in the Civiltà Cattolica tradition). The twentieth century saw the work re-engaged by political theologians (Reinhold Niebuhr's Christian Realism draws on it) and by Hannah Arendt (especially in The Human Condition and her writings on Augustine).

Contemporary engagement

Major recent scholarly work includes R.W. Dyson's translation and edition (Cambridge, 1998), Henry Bettenson's Penguin translation (1972), Gerard O'Daly's Augustine's City of God: A Reader's Guide (1999), the Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine (Toom, ed., 2013), and the relevant chapters in the Cambridge Companion to Augustine. Active scholarly disputes concern the unity of the twenty-two books, the relationship between Augustine's political theology and contemporary liberal political theory, the interpretation of Book XIX's account of res publica, and the role of the City of God in shaping Western just war theory.

Further reading

• Augustine — the author
• Christian Theology — the tradition
• Confessions — the companion work
• Republic — the Platonic political work the City of God engages
• Justice — the central concept of the political analysis
• Aquinas — the great medieval inheritor

The foundational text of Western political theology. The most influential single work on the relation between religious and political authority in pre-modern Europe.