Book Review
City
of God
by St. Augustine
Abridged version from Translation by
Gerald G. Walsh, Demetrius B. Zema, and Grace Monahan
Edited by Vernon J. Bourke
Image Books, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, NY, 1958
Background:
He was the son of a Christian mother and a pagan father from a Roman
province in North Africa. During his twenties he sought religious
guidance in the Manichee cult for nine years. He was converted to
Christianity through the prayers of his mother and the preaching of St.
Ambrose and was consecrated biship of Hippo in 395 AD. He was biship
for 35 years. When the city of Rome was attacked and ravaged by the
Goths in 410 AD a rumor was started blaiming Christianity for the weakness
of the Roman Empire. A Roman official, Marcellinus,in Norht Africa
asked St. Augustine to refute this argument. This prompted St. Augustine
to write City of God. The City of God is a primary source for the
study of paganism as well as Christian thought.
PART I
Yet, if they only had sense, they would see that the hardships and
cruelties they suffered from the enemy camy from that Divine Providence
wo makes use of war to reform the corrupt lives of men
These men, I say, hold Christ responsible for the evils which they deservedly
suffer for their wicked lives. They have not the slightest appreciation
of the fact, that, when they deserved to be punished, they were spared
for Christ's sake.
A good man is neither puffed up by fleeting success nor broken by adversity;
whereas, a bad man is chastised by failure of this sort because he is corrupted
by success.
For, in the same fire, gold gleams and straw smokes; under the same
flail the stalk is crushed and the grain threshed; the lees are not mistaken
for oi8l because they have issued from the same press. So too,
the tide of trouble will test, purify and improve the good, but beat, crush
and wash away the wicked.
In like manner, the City of God itself, so long as it is a wayfarer
on earth , harbors within its ranks a number of those who, though externally
associated in the common bond of the sacraments, will not be associated
in the eternal felicity of the saints. Some there are who, covertly
or overtly, join the enemy in abusing the God whom they have promised to
serve. They are seen flocking sometiimes to the theaters with the
godless, and at other times to the churches with us.
However great and good you natural gifts may be, it takes true piety
to make them pure perfect; with impiety, they merely end in loss and pain.
Choos now your course, not to seek glory in yourself, but to find it infallibly
in the true God.
Glorious behond compare is the heavenly city. There, victory is
truth, dignity is holiness, peace is hapiness, life is eternity. . . .
Wherefore, if you long to reach that blessed country, shun the company
of demons. Gods who are propitiated by infamous rites are unworthy
of the worhsip od decent men.
On this earth, therefore, rule by good men is a blessing bestowed, not
so much on thenmselves as upon mankind. But the rule of wicked men
brings greater harm to themselves, since they ruin their own souls by the
greater ease with which they can do wrong. . . . Whatever injury wicked
men inflict oupon good men is to be regarded, not as a penalty for wrong-doing,
but as a test for their virtues. Thus, a good man, thoug a slave,
is free, but a wicked mand, though a king, is a slave.
We accept both . . . foreknowledge as a part of our faith; free choice,
as a condition of responsible living. It is hard to live right if
one's faith in God is wrong. . . . So, too prayers are useful . . . For
no one sins becaus God foreknew that he would sin. In fact, the very
reason why a man is undoubtedly responsible for his own sin, when he sins,
is because he whos forknowledge cannot be deceived foresaw, not the man's
fate or fortune or what not, but the man himself would be respnsible for
his own sin. No man sins unless it is his chiose ot sin; and his
choice to sin, that too, God foresaw.
This supreme and true God -- with His Word and Holy Spirit which are
one with Him -- this one omnipotent God is the creator and maker of every
soul and every body. . . . He made man a rational animal, composed of sould
and body. He pernmitted man to sin -- but not with impunity -- and
He pursued him with His mercy. . . . He let men share generative life in
common with the trees, and the life of the sneses with the beasts of the
fields, but the life of intelligence only with the angels. God is
the Author of all measure, form and order . . .
Thus, any signs of veneration paid by pious people at the tombs of martyrs
are mere tributes to their memory, not sacred ceremonies nor sacrifices
offered to the dead, as to gods.
. . . visible sacrifices are mere symbols of invisible sacrificejust
as truly as audible words are mere signs of realities . . . visible sacrifice
should be offered to no one but Him to whom we ourselves, in our hearts,
should be the invisible sacrifice.
There is not Creator higher than God, no art more efficacious than the
Word of God, no better reason why something good should be created than
that the god who creates is good.
Death comes to the soul when God abandons it, just as death comes to
the body when the soul departs. There is also a total death for man,
a death of body and soul.
The soul takes its life from God when it lives holily, for the reason
that it cannot live holily unless God is the cause of its good works. .
. Life in the bodies of the impious is not the life of their souls, but
simply the life of their bodies.
The Law, when defied through the love of evil, produces sinners; death
when suffered through love of truth produces martyrs.
God had two purposes in deriving all men from one man. His
first purpose was to give unity to the human race by the likeness of nature.
His second purpose was to bind mankind by the bond of peace, through blood
relationship.
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