Catholic Philosophy

Philosophy and Theology of St. Augustine

The City of God

When Rome was sacked by the Goths in 410, it was only natural that the pagans attributed this calamity to the neglect of the ancient gods. They claimed that as long as the Romans honored Jupiter, Rome remained powerful; but now that the emperors had turned away from Jupiter, he ceased to protect his Romans. This pagan argument demanded a response. The work The City of God, gradually composed between 412 and 427, served as that response from St. Augustine. However, as the writing progressed, it transcended its original intent, unfolding a comprehensive Christian scheme of history—past, present, and future. Augustine's book wielded immense influence throughout the Middle Ages, particularly in the church's struggle against secular rulers.

Like some other remarkable texts, Augustine's work lingers in the memory of those who read it long ago, revealing itself as something greater than it initially appears upon rereading. The book contains much that is scarcely acceptable to modern readers, and its central thesis is somewhat obscured by the layers of Augustine’s era. Yet, the broad concept of the opposition between the city of this world and the City of God remains an inspiring idea for many, capable of being restated in non-theological language even today.

To omit the details in characterizing the book would present Augustine's labor in an unjustifiably favorable light; conversely, focusing solely on the details would risk overlooking what is best and most significant within the text. I shall endeavor to avoid both errors by first providing an overview of the details before proceeding to the central idea as it has evolved throughout history.

The book opens with reflections arising from the fact of Rome's sacking, intended to demonstrate that even worse events occurred in pre-Christian times. Many of the pagans attributing the disaster to Christianity, Augustine states, sought refuge in churches during the sacking of Rome, which the Goths, being Christians, spared. In contrast, during the sacking of Troy, the temple of Juno provided no protection, and the gods did not save the city from destruction. The Romans never spared temples in conquered cities; in this regard, the sacking of Rome was more merciful than many others, a consequence of Christianity.

Christians who suffered during the pillaging have no right to complain for several reasons. While the wicked Goths may have prospered at their expense, they will be punished in the world to come; if every sin were punished here on earth, the Last Judgment would be unnecessary. What the Christians endured will, if they were pious, turn to their benefit, for the saints lose nothing in the loss of temporal goods. It matters not if their bodies lie unburied, for the beasts that devour them will not hinder the resurrection of the flesh.

Augustine then addresses the issue of the pious virgins who were violently defiled during the sacking. Evidently, some believed that these women had lost their crown of virginity without any fault of their own. The saint firmly opposes this view: “It cannot be defiled (by another's lust) if it belongs to another.” Chastity constitutes a virtue of the soul and is not lost through violence but is forfeited through the intention to commit sin, even if that intention remains unfulfilled. Augustine asserts that God permitted such violence because the victims had grown too proud of their chastity. It is a sin to commit suicide to avoid forced defilement; this conclusion leads to a lengthy discussion of the case of Lucretia, who had no right to take her own life. Suicide is always sinful.

In defending virtuous women who have suffered violence, Augustine makes one caveat: they must not experience lustful desire in the process; if they do, they are sinners.

Augustine then turns to the wickedness of the pagan gods. For instance, “the stage plays, lewd spectacles, and vain revelries were not established in Rome by the vices of men but by the decrees of your gods.” It would be better for the Romans to render divine honors to some virtuous man, like Scipio, than to these immoral gods. As for the sacking of Rome, it should not trouble Christians, who have refuge in the “pilgrim city of God.”

In this world, the two cities—the earthly and the heavenly—are intermingled; but in the world to come, the predestined and the reprobate will be separated. In this present life, we are not given to know who, even among our seeming enemies, will ultimately be among the elect.

The most challenging part of this work, according to Augustine, will be refuting the theories of philosophers, with whom Christians agree on many matters, such as the immortality of the soul and the belief that the world was created by God.

Philosophers continued to render divine honors to the pagan gods, and since these gods were evil, the moral teachings of the philosophers did not aid a virtuous life. Augustine does not concede that these gods are mere fables; he believes they indeed exist but are demons. Demons desire shameful stories to be told about them, for they seek to cause harm to humanity. Most Romans are more concerned with the actions of Jupiter than with the teachings of Plato or the thoughts of Cato. “Now compare the humanity of Plato, who banished poets from the state as a warning against the corruption of citizens, with the divinity of the gods, who demanded theatrical games in their honor.”

Rome has always been abominable and unjust, from the time of the abduction of the Sabine women. Many chapters are devoted to denouncing the sins of Roman imperialism. It is untrue that Rome did not suffer calamities before Christianity became the state religion; the disasters it endured from the Gauls and civil wars were no less, and perhaps greater, than those it suffered from the Goths. Astrology is not only wicked but also false; this can be proven by the differing fortunes of twins with identical horoscopes. The Stoic conception of Fate (which was linked to astrology) is a fallacy, for angels and humans possess free will. While God is foreknowledge of our sins, we sin not due to his foreknowledge. It is erroneous to think that virtue brings misfortune, even in this present world: Christian emperors, when they adhered to the path of virtue, were happy, even if they were not fortunate, and both Constantine and Theodosius were additionally fortunate; on the other hand, the Jewish kingdom existed as long as the Jews upheld true religion.

Augustine offers a sympathetic portrayal of Plato, whom he ranks above all other philosophers. All others must yield to him, “who, devoted to the body, saw in nature the corporeal principles”: some in water, like Thales; some in air, like Anaximenes; some in fire, like the Stoics; some in atoms, like Epicurus. All of them were materialists; Plato, however, rejected materialism. Plato understood that God is not a corporeal being but that all existence in the world derives its being from God and from something immutable. Plato was correct when he asserted that sensory perception is not the source of truth. Platonists stand far above other philosophers in logic and ethics and are closest to Christianity. “Plotinus is renowned as the best of all, at least in the times nearest to us, for having understood Plato.” As for Aristotle, he fell short of Plato but far surpassed all others. However, both Plato and Aristotle contended that all gods are good and deserve to receive divine honors.

In opposing the Stoics, who condemned all passions, Augustine asserts that the passions that stir the souls of Christians may lead them toward virtue; anger or compassion per se should not be condemned, but rather one must ascertain the cause that evokes these passions.

The Platonists held a correct view of God but erred concerning the gods. They also misguidedly rejected the doctrine of incarnation. Throughout many pages, St. Augustine discusses the issue of Neoplatonism in relation to angels and demons. Angels can be both good and evil, but demons are always wicked. The knowledge of temporal matters tarnishes the angels (even though they possess it). In agreement with Plato, St. Augustine asserts that the sensory world is inferior to the eternal realm.

The eleventh book opens with a description of the nature of the City of God. The City of God is a community of the chosen. Knowledge of God is attained only through Christ. There are things that can be understood through reason (philosophers engage in this), but concerning anything distant from our inner sense of religious knowledge, we must rely on Sacred Scripture. We should not seek to comprehend how time and space existed before the creation of the world: before creation, there was no time, and where there is no world, there is no space.

All that is blessed is eternal, but not all that is eternal is blessed; for instance, hell and Satan. God foresaw the sins of the devils, but He also knew that they would be used for the improvement of the Universe as a whole—an analogous role to the antithesis in rhetoric.

Origen errs in believing that bodies were given to souls as a form of punishment. If this were the case, then evil souls would receive evil bodies; however, demons, even the worst among them, possess airy bodies, which are better than ours. The reason the world was created in six days is that the number six is perfect (that is, equal to the sum of its factors). Angels are both good and evil, yet even the evil angels do not possess any essence contrary to God. God's enemies oppose Him not by nature but by will. An evil will has a non-productive, destructive cause; it is not an augmentation but a diminishment.

The world has not yet existed for six thousand years. History does not know of a cycle, as some philosophers believe, "for Christ died once for our sins." If our first parents had not sinned, they would have been immortal; but they sinned, and thus all their descendants are mortal. The result of eating the apple was not only natural death but also eternal death, that is, a curse.

Porphyry is mistaken in refusing to acknowledge that the saints will dwell in heaven clothed in bodies. The saints will possess bodies with better properties than Adam's before the Fall: spiritual (yet such that flesh does not become spirit) and weightless. Men will have male bodies, women will have female bodies, and those who died in infancy will be resurrected with the bodies of adults.

Adam's sins would have plunged all humanity into eternal death (that is, a curse) if many had not been saved from it by God's grace. The impulse to sin arises from the soul, not from the flesh. Platonists and Manichaeans are mistaken in attributing the origin of sin to the nature of the flesh, although the Platonists are more tolerant than the Manichaeans. The punishment to which all humanity has been subjected for Adam's sin was just, for through this sin, man, who could have become spiritual even in flesh, became fleshly and of spirit.

This leads to an extensive and meticulous examination of the problem of sexual lust, which is part of the retribution inflicted upon us for Adam's sin. This examination is highly significant, as it reveals the psychology of asceticism; therefore, we cannot overlook this topic, although the saint himself acknowledges that it offends modesty. The theory he presents is as follows.

It is necessary to recognize that physical union in marriage is not sinful, provided that the purpose of marriage is the begetting of offspring. Yet even in marriage, a pious person should desire that his members serve the reproduction of progeny without any lust. Even in marriage, as evidenced by the desire for secrecy, people are ashamed of physical union, for "what is decent by nature is performed in such a way that it is accompanied by shame due to punishment." The Cynics contended that people should not know shame; Diogenes rejected shame, wishing to resemble dogs in all things; but even he, after a single attempt, abandoned this extreme form of shamelessness. The object of shame in lust is that it is not restrained or governed by will. Adam and Eve, before their Fall, could have engaged in physical union without lust (although they did not avail themselves of this possibility). Masters of physical arts, practicing their craft, move their hands without any lust; so too could Adam, had he only kept away from the tree, perform his masculine duty without the anxieties it now requires. In this case, procreative members, like all other parts of the body, would obey the will. The necessity for lust in sexual union arose as a punishment for Adam's sin; had Adam not sinned, union would have been separated from pleasure. What has been presented above constitutes St. Augustine's theory regarding the relationships between the sexes, from which I have omitted only certain physiological details, very prudently left by the translator in the shameful obscurity of the Latin original.

From the foregoing, it is evident what compels the ascetic to feel aversion towards sexual life: he believes that it is not restrained or governed by will. According to the ascetic, virtue demands complete dominion of the will over the body, but with such dominion, the sexual act is impossible. Therefore, the sexual act appears incompatible with a perfect, virtuous life.

Since the Fall, the world has always been divided into two cities, one of which will reign eternally with God, while the other will remain in eternal torment with Satan. Cain belongs to the city of the devil; Abel, to the City of God. By grace and through predestination, Abel was a stranger on earth and a citizen in heaven. The patriarchs belonged to the City of God. The examination of Methuselah's death leads St. Augustine to a contentious question regarding the comparison of the "Translation of the Seventy" and the Vulgate. The date of Methuselah's death given in the "Translation of the Seventy" leads to the conclusion that Methuselah survived the Flood and lived another fourteen years, which could not be the case, as he was not in the Ark. The Vulgate, following ancient Hebrew manuscripts, provides a date indicating that Methuselah died in the very year of the Flood. St. Augustine asserts that the truth in this matter must side with St. Jerome and the ancient Hebrew manuscripts. Some claimed that the Jews, out of malice towards Christians, deliberately falsified the ancient Hebrew manuscripts; St. Augustine rejects this assumption. On the other hand, the "Translation of the Seventy" must be acknowledged as inspired. One conclusion remains: the scribes of Ptolemy made errors when copying the "Translation of the Seventy." Speaking of translations of the Old Testament, St. Augustine states: "The Translation of the Seventy is accepted by the Church as if it were the only one and is in use among the Greek Christian peoples, many of whom do not even know whether there exists any other. From the Translation of the Seventy, a Latin translation has been made, which is in use in Latin churches. Even in our time, there lived presbyter Jerome, a most learned man, skilled in all three languages, who translated the Sacred Scriptures into Latin not from Greek, but from Hebrew. Yet, although the Jews acknowledge his scholarly translation as correct and the Translation of the Seventy as faulty in many places, the churches of Christ believe that no one should be preferred over the authority of so many people, chosen for this task by the then High Priest." St. Augustine accepts the tradition that although the seventy translators worked separately from one another, their words exhibited remarkable agreement, and he sees in this evidence of the inspiration of the "Translation of the Seventy." However, the ancient Hebrew text is also inspired. This conclusion leaves the question of the authority of Jerome's translation unresolved. Perhaps St. Augustine would have taken a firmer stance in favor of Jerome if the two saints had not quarreled over the question of adaptive tendencies in the behavior of St. Peter.

St. Augustine provides a synchronization of sacred and secular history. We learn that Aeneas arrived in Italy at the time when Abdon was the judge in Israel, and the last persecution will come from the Antichrist, but when this will be is unknown.

After a magnificent chapter directed against judicial torture, St. Augustine engages in polemics with the new Academics, who deemed everything questionable. “The City of God resolutely dismisses such doubt as madness; for it possesses knowledge of matters accessible to understanding and reason... the most certain.” We must believe in the truth of Holy Scripture. St. Augustine further clarifies that there can be no true virtues where true religion does not exist. Pagan virtue is defiled by service to "evil and unclean demons." What would be virtue in a Christian becomes vice in a pagan. “Thus, the very virtues that he seems to possess, through which he commands his body and vices to adopt or maintain a particular direction, if he does not relate them to God, are more likely to be vices than virtues.” Those who do not belong to this community (the Church) will suffer eternal torment. “When such a clash occurs in the present life, either suffering prevails, and death takes away the sensation of pain; or nature prevails, and the sensation of pain is removed through healing. But there, suffering will remain to torment; and nature will continue to exist to feel suffering; and both will not cease so that punishment does not cease.”

One must distinguish between two resurrections: the resurrection of the soul at death and the resurrection of the body at the Last Judgment. After examining various obscure questions related to the millennial reign and the subsequent actions of Gog and Magog, St. Augustine turns to the text from the second letter to the Thessalonians (2:11-12): “And for this reason God will send them a strong delusion, so that they will believe the lie. Let all be condemned who did not believe the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” Some may find it unjust on the part of the Almighty that He first leads people astray and then punishes them for being deceived; however, St. Augustine finds this entirely just: “Those judged will fall under delusion, and being deceived, they will be condemned. But those judged will fall under delusion by those divine judgments, secretly righteous and rightly secret, by which God has not ceased to judge from the very beginning of the sin of rational creatures.” St. Augustine asserts that God divides people into the elect and the cursed not according to their merits or sins but by His own will. All equally deserve condemnation, and therefore the cursed have no right to complain about their fate. The aforementioned passage from St. Paul demonstrates that, in St. Augustine's view, wicked people are wicked because they are cursed, not cursed because they are wicked.

After the bodies are resurrected, the bodies of the cursed will eternally burn without being destroyed. There is nothing incredible in this; both the salamander and Mount Etna burn in this way. Demons, although immaterial, can burn in material fire. The torments of hell are neither purifying nor will they be alleviated by the intercession of the saints. Origen erred in believing that hell is not eternal. Heretics, as well as sinful Catholics, will be condemned.

The book concludes with a description of a vision in which God in heaven and the eternal bliss of the City of God are revealed to the saint. The brief summary of the contents of “The City of God” may not give the reader a clear understanding of the book’s significance. Its influence stemmed from the idea of the separation of church and state, which clearly implied that the state could become part of the City of God only by submitting to the Church in all religious matters. Since this idea was proclaimed by St. Augustine, it has always been an element of Church doctrine. Throughout the Middle Ages, during the gradual rise of papal power and throughout the conflict between the papacy and the Empire, St. Augustine provided the Western Church with doctrines that served as a theoretical justification for its policies. The Jewish state in the legendary times of the judges and in the historical period after the return from Babylonian captivity was a theocracy; the Christian state must imitate it in this regard. The impotence of emperors and most medieval monarchs allowed the Church to significantly realize the ideal of the City of God. In the East, where the emperor was a powerful ruler, historical development never moved in this direction, and the Church remained significantly more subordinate to the state than it was in the West.

The Reformation, which revived St. Augustine's doctrine of salvation, rejected his theocratic teachings and took a stance of Erastianism; this was mainly driven by practical necessities in the struggle against Catholicism. However, Protestant Erastianism lacked conviction, and those Protestants who showed the greatest zeal in matters of faith remained under the influence of St. Augustine. Part of his doctrine was also adopted by the Anabaptists, the “fifth monarchy” men, and the Quakers, but they placed less emphasis on the Church. St. Augustine adhered to the perspective of predestination while simultaneously insisting on the necessity of baptism for salvation; these two doctrines do not harmonize well, and the representatives of the more radical strands of Protestantism discarded the latter doctrine. Yet their eschatology remained Augustinian.

“The City of God” contains not much that is fundamentally original. Eschatology has Jewish origins and penetrated Christianity mainly through the Apocalypse. The doctrine of predestination and election is Pauline, though in comparison to what we find in the letters of St. Paul, St. Augustine developed it in a much fuller and more logical manner. The idea of the distinction between sacred and secular history is clearly expressed in the Old Testament. St. Augustine's merit lay in uniting these elements and relating them to the history of his own time in such a way that Christians could accept the fact of the collapse of the Western Empire and the subsequent period of chaos without putting their religious beliefs to excessive trial.

The Jewish model of history, past and future, is characterized by features that allow it to resonate powerfully in the hearts of the oppressed and the unfortunate at all times. St. Augustine adapted this model to Christianity, just as Marx did to socialism. To understand Marx psychologically, one might employ the following lexicon:

Yahweh — Dialectical Materialism
Messiah — Marx
Chosen People — Proletariat
Church — Communist Party
Second Coming — Revolution
Hell — Punishment for Capitalists
Millennial Kingdom of Christ — Communist Society.

The terms on the left impart the emotional content of the terms on the right, and it is this emotional content, familiar to those educated in Christian or Jewish traditions, that renders Marx's eschatology worthy of attention. A similar lexicon could be constructed for the Nazis, but their concepts bear a more distinctly Old Testament and less Christian character than those of Marx, and the Nazi messiah resembles not so much Christ as the Maccabees.