City of God by St. Augustine Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of City of God
Book Review: City of God.
Summary: 5 Stars
City of God is a Beautifully written book,A Response to Pagans at the time who blamed much of the disasters and invasions on Christianity.(History tends to repeat itself)The book as well as Saint Augustine's Arguments for the Church are as Relevant today as they were when he first started writing the first book of this massive work in 410.The book is a Classic. It's more than an Apologetic work,It's a Historic and philosophic book.A Must Read!Book Review: City of Rad
Summary: 5 Stars
I expected City of God to read like any faithful Baedeker would; charming descriptions of quaint, exotic inhabitants; fanastically woven descriptions of alluring locales; perhaps even a tip on where to take in some fine cuisine. To this end, my expecations were most pleasantly vindicated. If you want to know how to make the most out of your holiday to the City of God, I recommend giving more than a careful perusal to this fine tome.Book Review: Two societies. Analysis, exegesis, history, philosophy. . .
Summary: 4 Stars
With an eye to bypassing some of Augustine's many redundancies and digressions, the Image/Doubleday edition -- "abridged for modern readers" -- is nonetheless a major commitment for the reader. Augustine began writing The City of God at age 59 and worked on it, off and on, for much of the next 14 years. The impetus for the beginning of this vast work (and its recurring focus) was the charge of Pagans (polytheists) that Christianity was responsible for the decay and demise of the Roman Empire. The charge put forward the claim that the prosperity and social stability of the state was dependant upon polytheistic worship. In response, Augustine arrays several lines of argument, rebutting the assumed 'goodness' of the Pagan state, as such, and detailing the ethical/moral and logical failings of Paganism. Augustine displays tremendous scholarship, employing the writings of Paganism's greatest historians and philosophers in his case against their religious claims. The result is a giant literary, philosophical, historical, theological and exegetical work. In this abridged edition, some redundant and digressive texts are omitted with notes indicating this and summarizing their content. The integrity of the book and chapter divisions is retained.
Against the 'city', i.e., society, of many gods, there is but one alternate society, this Augustine calls The City of God, adopting the expression found in several of King David's psalms. Not only is the society of many gods the society of polytheists, it is also the "city" of pantheists, atheistic materialists and philosophical Cynics. In the case of the Cynics and atheists, these false gods are the myriad gods of self, indeed, at least as many gods (selves) as there are believers in them. Thus there are two "cities", two loves, two ways to understand the big questions of existence, two destinations. Says Augustine:
"The one City began with the love of God; the other had its beginnings in the love of self." XIV:13. "The city of man seeks the praise of men, whereas the height of glory for the other is to hear God in the witness of conscience. The one lifts up its head in its own boasting; the other says to God: 'Thou art my glory, thou liftest up my head.' (Psalm 3.4) In the city of the world both the rulers themselves and the people they dominate are dominated by the lust for domination; whereas in the City of God all citizens serve one another in charity. . ." XIV:28.
Among the many philosophical (and historical) passages of interest are Augustine's general recountings of the history and development of Italian and Ionian philosophy, in Book VIII, particularly as regards ethics, theology, physics and cosmography.
For the reader whose serious interest is Christian theology and scriptural exegetics, Augustine needs no introduction. It would be fair to describe him as the most influential human voice of the Christian faith, post New Testament. I'll sketch my 'take' on his views in just three areas of interpretation on which there were conflicting views within the Christianity of late antiquity and which are yet disputed 1600 years later. These being (1) interpreting the Genesis creation account, (2) the balancing of determinism or 'predestination' with freedom of the will, and (3) the doctrine of 'hell'.
(1) Although he devotes the matter more specific attention in other of his writings than he does here, Augustine finds a literal interpretation if Genesis 1-2 to give rise to paradoxes and conflicts within the text that make a literal interpretation unworkable. His understanding is sometimes called 'literary', as opposed to 'literal'. Rather than being an abrupt history, the account is understood as being essentially an introduction, a theological primer, presenting a literary exposition of God's primordial separateness, non-dependence, intimacy with the created ('hovering') and ultimate sovereignty 'over' it (Gen. 1:1-2), in other words, a framework for understanding the nature of God's relationship to his creation. In more recent times, those who hold for the so-called "framework" understanding have claimed this "non-literal" view; for an earlier but similar exegesis, read Philo (c.20BC-50AD). For Augustine, the physical and temporal facts of creation are a mystery known only to God (see Job 38ff). While he does not place the creation of man temporally six solar days after the original act of divine creation ("As for these 'days,' it is difficult, perhaps impossible to think -- let alone to explain in words -- what they mean"), he does use the genealogies of the Pentateuch to roughly estimate a time for the creation of the first man in God's image (Adam). He spends some effort examining inconsistent points in various genealogical accounts (both within and between the Septuagint and the Hebrew) but concludes that this is no significant difficulty as the genealogies are intended to establish lineages (e.g., for the patriarchs) and not to establish complete temporal histories. They are accurate for the purpose intended, inaccurate only if their intent is not recognized.
(2) Today, many Christians who hold the strong 'Calvinist' view of "predestination", claim Augustine as a proponent of this view. While many succinct statements will appear to support this claim, we should understand such statements within their given contexts. In this regard, Augustine is no denier of the freedom of the human will or the omnibenevolence of God. Although he does use the term 'predestine,' he would certainly agree with Anselm that the meaning of the word when applied to the omniscient God is simply not the same as our understanding of the concept for which we appropriate the word. Augustine's wrestlings with the thorny openness/determinism question, as regards the human will, is not as `cut and dried' as the `Calvinist' often insists! Wesleyans and other so-called 'Arminians' can look to Augustine too, and will understand him in a broader and more contextual manner than the strict Calvinist can permit himself.
(3) While I personally find no major difficulty in Augustine's approach to the two doctrinal issues considered above, I disagree with his doctrine of Hell. For Augustine, Hell is relentless, eternal, sensory, bodily torture, wherein one is, in his words, "pounded by perpetual pain." He tries to engage the opposing view of 'hell' being, in St Paul's words, "eternal destruction," but here he fails (Book XXI). It seems clear enough to me that Hades' chamber of pain and torture was adopted from Paganism and not scripture. The two texts that are often held to support Augustine's view are better understood as literary than literal. Either the 'worm that turns forever' and the "smoke of their torment" that ascends forever are metaphors (they obviously are), or the "second death" and the "eternal destruction" are metaphors (they do not have that sense). When commissioning His disciples, in a direct statement Christ himself calls "hell" the ultimate destruction of the soul (Matt. 10:28). I think it is evident that a large number of Christians, including Augustine, have on this issue chosen the wrong verses as metaphorical ('literary' as opposed to 'literal'), and the wrong verses as literal. The opposite of eternal life is eternal not-life, an eternal punishment to be sure, but not eternal torture, which, after all, would require eternal life and not its contrary. Augustine errs because he sees divine justice as necessarily trumping divine mercy, a view that cannot be well argued from New Testament scripture ("God IS love"; 1 John 4:8/16; and "Mercy triumphs over judgment", James 2:13). [Yes, I am a so-called 'annihilationist', many religious traditions stand against this understanding, many religious traditions are wrong.] Christians have been disagreeing on these issues for a long time, and obviously some readers will disagree with me.
In Book XXII, concluding this great work, Augustine speculatively considers the nature of an eternal life reconciled finally and completely with God. Here, the text simply soars. Of course there is much more of interest in this expansive volume -- its historical importance, or one of Augustine's famous treatments of the physics of 'time' (Book XI), for example, than I can touch on here. "Thus, it is the love of study that seeks a holy leisure; and only the compulsion of charity that shoulders necessary activity."
Book Review: Unworthy printing of a most worthy version
Summary: 5 Stars
This is not the most attractive edition of St. Augustine's monumental City of God but it is worth getting anyway for the introduction by Etienne Gilson. The translation is quite good and, though it is somewhat abridged, this doesn't pose too great a problem as Bourke has inserted into the text a brief description of the material that he cut out so you can go to an unabridged edition if you choose.
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