Augustine of Hippo: City of God

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

Reproduced here are excerpts from Book First, Book Fourteenth, Book Fifteenth, and Book Nineteenth of The City of God. In the brief excerpt from Book First, Augustine dedicates his work to Marcellinus of Carthage, a friend who had died the death of a Christian martyr in 413. He announces that the theme of his work is the “glorious city of God” and that his goal is to provide a “defence against those who prefer their own gods to the Founder of this city.”

In Book Fourteenth, Augustine examines original sin, teaching his readers that original sin led to the carnality and vice of humankind. He begins (in item 4) by announcing that when “man lives according to man, not according to God, he is like the devil.” If God is the “truth,” says Augustine, then all sin is a lie. Citing Paul, the author of the New Testament Letters to the Corinthians, he argues that “the animal man perceiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him.” This distinction between man and God, between the carnal and the spiritual, between the earthly “love of self” and “contempt of God” and contempt for self and love of God, forms the basis of the distinction between the earthly city and the heavenly city of God.

In Book Fifteenth, Augustine begins to outline the growth and progress of the earthly and heavenly cities. To do so, he examines biblical history from the time of Cain, who murdered his brother Abel, to Noah’s Flood. He explains “the conflict and peace of the earthly city,” noting that the earthly city, perhaps like Rome, will not be “everlasting.” Even though some good can be found in the earthly city, “this city is often divided against itself by litigations, wars, quarrels, and such victories as are either life-destroying or short-lived.” In contrast, “the better things of the heavenly city” are “secured by eternal victory and peace never-ending.”

The purpose of Book Nineteenth of The City of God is to review the end of the two cities. Augustine cites the works of philosophers and their futile efforts to find happiness solely in the earthly city. True peace and happiness are to be found only in the city of God, the heavenly city peopled by the followers of Christ. Augustine argues that it is the duty of the Christian to spread his faith and thereby spread the love of God, and he examines the conditions that produce peace and discord between the earthly and heavenly cities. He argues that “the earthly city, which does not live by faith, seeks an earthly peace, and the end it proposes, in the well-ordered concord of civic obedience and rule, is the combination of men’s wills to attain the things which are helpful to this life.” In contrast, “the heavenly city, or rather the part of it which sojourns on earth and lives by faith, makes use of this peace only because it must, until this mortal condition which necessitates it shall pass away.” He concludes by stating that when humankind has reached the peace of the heavenly city, “this mortal life shall give place to one that is eternal, and our body shall be no more this animal body which by its corruption weighs down the soul, but a spiritual body feeling no want, and in all its members subjected to the will.”