Michael O'Brien's Reviews > City of God

St. Augustine is considered to be one of the greatest Christian thinkers of all time. So it is with hesitation I write this review the way I am doing --- understanding that. But I got to call the shots as I see them.

Definitely a keen intellect and a very learned man. However, as I found to be the case from reading similar tomes from Augustine's contemporaries, Sts. Athanasius and Ambrose -- they tend to be verbose --- with paragraphs that can run on for as much as a page and a half. Also in common, they tend to intellectualize a great deal. Not content to successfully make a great point, but to go at the issue they're arguing against --- or for their own points --- from a dozen different angles. Augustine doesn't just double tap an opponent's errors or inconsistencies --- it seems to be that he'll beat it to death, long after the point's been more than made.

As I'll say again, these are just my impressions -- nothing more. If you're a theologian or philosophy major and you feel differently about them and that I've got this wrong, that's fine.

In the first part of this book, Augustine does battle primarily with polytheism and its adherent Greco-Roman philosophers. These, seeing the now unmistakable signs of the collapse of the Roman Empire, were blaming Christianity for this. So Augustine proceeds from defending Christianity to attacking their own premises, particularly with respect to the even more grotesque contradictions and inconsistencies within the Greco-Roman polytheistic religion. So many of its gods, for example, had absurdly mutually conflicting areas of jurisdiction. For example, he points out the door --- the Romans had a good of entrances, a god of doors --- and even a god of hinges. Then he points out the absurdity of their beliefs in goddesses of luck and of victory --- alongside those of a god of war, Mars, and a supreme god, Jupiter. If the goddess of luck determines our fortunes --- then what need have we of Jupiter --- what's his job then? And of war --- if the goddess of victory determines winners and losers in battle, then what's Mars' job? And he goes on from there to take a wrecking ball to the whole Greco-Roman religio-philosophical construct.

Augustine also goes into history --- showing the many times, long before Christianity, where prominent Romans and Greeks blasphemed the gods --- and got away with it. Or other times when even Rome itself fell, long in the past, to barbarians, notwithstanding their devotion to their various gods and goddesses. By the end of it, he eviscerates polytheism so much so that one's left with an impression that only 2 logically consistent, yet diametrically opposed belief systems remain -- that of a monotheistic belief in a Supreme Being -- or philosophical systems, presumably Greco-Roman, fallen into an abyss of various alternative, contradictory, oft mutually exclusive, explanations for a godless cosmos.

In intellectual rigor, Augustine excels, but, as I'd said, he tends to belabor points greatly --- taking chapters or even books to say what I've read contemporary monastics from his time express in an essay or even an aphorism. Perhaps, with papyrus being extremely costly, they had not the paper to use, but, clearly, this posed no problem for Augustine.

The second half of the book, Augustine then gets to the theme of this book --- that the human race is essentially divided into 2 great cities: the city of the world --- with those who are of the world --- the City of God, those who in this life have chosen to serve God.

He starts from Creation and builds a timeline --- going through the Biblical timeline and, alongside, goes over the development of the great human civilizations contemporary with it: those of Egypt, then Assyria and Babylon, then Rome.

It's a fascinating idea --- but, unfortunately, from my point of view as the reader, he gets bogged down into details --- getting off into long tangents about various things from each timeline, going into things from some event in ancient Roman history, then analyzing it at length. The effect is to weaken the point that he trying to make by watering it down the impact---- and the point he's trying to make is that these are 2 great civilizations --- contrasted with each other, having no commerce with each other --- and as time continues, inevitably in contest with each other for the hearts and souls of mankind.

In the very last part, he addresses heresies or misunderstandings by both pagans and even some supposed Christians about the nature of salvation and of the afterlife. For Evangelicals: let's just say, Augustine was no fan of "Once saved, always saved" --- a belief that evidently was being taught also in the 4th Century during his time, fell out of view, and comparatively only recently gained favor again in some circles.

Here with these issues, Augustine tends to get sidetracked into addressing issues --- brought up by unbelievers from his time --- for which a definite answer cannot definitely known for sure, but which, nevertheless, he proceeds to do anyway. Like, in Heaven, will we be the same height there, we were here --- or will be babies that die show up in Heaven as babies there, or as adults, for example? Here, with Augustine, I think we see what may be a very first divergence of Western Christianity from the Eastern that will eventually lead to what would become the Roman Catholic Church's development of things like "Purgatory", "Limbo", and other rulings of intricate canon law --- the belief that the Church absolutely must have an answer for every question. Whereas, in the Eastern --- which eventually would become known as the "Orthodox", there's more a willingness to admit, "It's a mystery" --- or we don't know --- but simply trust in God that He will do what is just and merciful --- without trying to use the limited human intellect to grasp the eternal and the infinite and unknowable.

St. Augustine had broadened my horizons, and given much to think about. But this book was a real plod to get through. It does deserve its place as one of the great works of Christian writing, but --- forgive me for saying this --- if they'd had editors back then, Augustine might have benefited from one.