The Augustinian Imagination: Love, Lust, and Pride in the City of God

Saint Augustine of Hippo is arguably the most influential Christian philosopher and theologian who ever lived. This is not to say he is unique among Christians; several of his writings reaffirmed already prevailing orthodoxy from the first through fourth century church fathers. However, his reading of the Scriptures—especially Saint Paul—his theological anthropology (concerning the human will, heart, and mind), and his vigorous defense of the goodness of corporeality (against the Manicheans) had consequential reverberations throughout the Latin West and become central to the formation of Catholic orthodoxy and held tremendous sway on many of the Reformers, including Calvin, Zwingli, and Luther. While he authored important and equally influential works like Confessions, De Doctrina Christiana (On Christian Doctrine), and De Trinitate (On the Trinity), as well as lesser known but important works like Enchiridion and thousands of sermons and letters, we will primarily examine Augustine’s most consequential work of theology, philosophy, and hermeneutics: The City of God.

AUGUSTINE’S CRITIQUE OF ROME

At over 400,000 words, the City of God is a towering work of Western literature, philosophy, and theology. It is the last great magnum opus of the venerable Latin language which was the native tongue of luminaries like Cicero, Virgil, and Apuleius, and it follows in the footsteps of Tertullian and Lactantius as the culmination of great works of Christian apologia in the Latin language. The work, long as it is, can be broken down into two sections.

The first half of the work is largely a work of cultural criticism. In it, Augustine critiques the “pagan” critics of Christianity, the flaws of Roman culture and religion, and the shortcomings of Greek philosophy (notwithstanding the immense influence of Greek philosophy over Augustine). The second half of the work (commencing with Book XI) is largely a work of systematic biblical theology and exegesis; the second half contains Augustine’s hermeneutical development and thought as he explores the Old Testament from a Christological and ecclesiological lens and how the “city of God” stands against—though intertwined with—the “city of man.” The second half also includes scattered fragments of ruminations on political theology, reflections on philosophical concepts like space and time, angels and demons, and comparative historiography.

Late Antique Cultural Criticism

What prompted the writing of City of God was the Visigoth sack of Rome in 410 A.D. The Visigoth king/chief Alaric, and his tribe, were servants of the Roman state at the time. Rome had largely begun to employ mercenaries (the “barbarians”) for their military service, but harsh economic and financial conditions meant that Roman authorities did not always pay their mercenary forces.

Alaric served in the Roman army until feeling betrayed after the Battle of Frigidus, during a period of civil war between the eastern and western halves of the empire. (It is technically inaccurate to think of the “Western Empire” and “Eastern Empire” as it was still one unified Roman polity governed by the Tetrarchy then the Diarchy.) Rebuffed despite his services to the empire, Alaric marched on Constantinople but was turned back by the Roman forces. As such, he launched a campaign against the western half of the empire until the Roman-Barbarian general Stilicho stopped him. After Stilicho’s execution by Honorius—Stilicho being half-Vandal was a personal enemy to many native Roman leaders who wanted him gone—Alaric succeeded in his march against Rome to vent his frustrations with being reduced to an instrument of the Roman State. The sack of Rome was a traumatic event for all involved.

In the aftermath of the sack of Rome two things prompted Augustine to respond in what serves as the foundation for his work. First was the non-Christian criticism of Christianity; “pagan” Romans blamed Christianity for the disaster arguing that since Rome abandoned their traditional gods, the old gods allowed the city to be sacked by Alaric and his forces. Second was the shattering of the idea of the imperium Christianum—“Christian Empire”—a popular though never dogmatically sanctioned idea that the Roman Empire as a political institution was to Christianize the world and bring about the Second Coming.

Augustine challenged the first criticism by engaging in the first systematic work of cultural criticism in the Western literary tradition. Responding to the second problem, Augustine developed his influential “allegorical-ecclesiological” hermeneutic to show that God works through his church and not nations of men; whatever good comes from the nations it is to advance the glory of God—God’s work through nations is incidental, his work through his church is eternal.  Augustine’s work is, therefore, thoroughly one of critique. It bequeathed to the Western tradition the notion of “Augustinianism”: A robust and systemic philosophy of criticism directed at the prevailing culture to, in the words of Augustine scholar Ernest Fortin, “unmask [its] vices.” But this criticism isn’t meant to spur a separated Christian nation or community with its own laws. Rather, Augustine’s criticism is aimed at making a healthier, more just, and patriotic society from within through Christianity. Fortin remarks the impetus of Augustine’s political philosophy as such:

If Augustine can be said to have any concerns for politics at all, it is not for its own sake but because of the moral problems that it poses for Christians who, as citizens, are willy-nilly caught up in it. These problems have their common root in the nature of Christianity itself, which is essentially a nonpolitical religion. Unlike Judaism and Islam, the two other great monotheistic religions of the West, it does not call for the formation of a separate community or provide a code of laws by which that community might be governed. It takes it for granted that its followers will continue to live as full-fledged citizens of the political society to which they belong and share its way of life as long as they are not forced to indulge in practices that are directly at odds with their basic beliefs, as were, for example, idolatry and emperor worship.

Augustine wanted faithful Christians to be good and virtuous citizens of the late Roman Empire. However, Augustine warned against conflating the temporal realm of the civil political with the workings of God or the church. In other words, Augustine sought a Christian society but not a Christian state.

Thus, Augustine’s criticism of Christianity’s fashionable pagan critics was how the pagan gods never protected Rome in the first place, how the pagan gods were themselves immoral and incapable of producing virtue among their devotees, and how the pagan gods were simply forces of nature wrongly anthropomorphized (which was even suggested by pagan philosophers). In contrast, he also aimed to show how Christians were the virtuous citizens of the Roman Empire—the very type of ideal citizen who prayed for the emperor, served their neighbor and fellow citizen, sacrificed for the well-being of Rome, and embodied the ideals of the old republic of Cicero. At the same time, Augustine’s developed hermeneutic was aimed against fellow Christians who wanted a Christian “nation” (in the form of a State) to be the instrumental hand of God and salvation in the world. For Augustine, God worked through a church—his chosen covenantal community—which was comprised of many nations, races, and tongues.

In this sense, Augustine’s cultural criticism is not simply aimed at pagan Rome. It is also aimed at Christian imperialists (for a lack of a better term) in between the lines; it is a criticism of the corporate chiliasm of literalist pre-millennialism. He critiques non-Christians as much as he does Christians. Non-Christians for their ignorance; Christians for their misguided hope (which does not mean they were not Christians because of it but could have their faith tested when their expectations didn’t come to fruition). But what is clear from the pages of the City of God is that it is the first work of systematic cultural criticism in the Western intellectual tradition and that is what it began as even though it is now more memorably remembered as the first great work of systematic biblical theology and covenant theology.

The sack of Rome prompted pagan critics of Christianity to charge that it was the adoption of Christianity which led to Rome’s upheaval and tragic sacking at the hands of Alaric. These critics charged that if Rome had stayed true to their old gods then those gods would have looked over Rome and sparred her from the misery and suffering that befell it at the hands of Alaric and the Visigoths. (It is important to remember that even though the Roman Empire officially declared Nicaean Christianity its State Religion under Emperor Theodosius I during the Edict of Thessalonica in 380 A.D., “paganism” was still the majority “religion” of the Roman Empire during Augustine’s time.)

Augustine, the scholar, historian, and literary critic takes up this challenge straightforwardly by reminding pagan critics that Rome had fallen under tragedy many times before the adoption of Christianity. Rome was sacked by the Gauls in 390 B.C. as Augustine reminds everybody. The Roman military suffered setbacks against its enemies with no help or vengeance from the Roman gods. Moreover, the Roman pantheon was the old Trojan pantheon of gods. And did the household gods of Troy save Troy or prevent its destruction from the hands of the Greeks? Augustine harshly ridicules the pagan romantics that their gods were the defeated gods of Troy, the gods that failed to prevent the Gallic tribes from sacking Rome in the fourth century B.C., and that their gods allowed the Roman Republic to fall into civil war and widespread bloodshed on a repeated basis. The old gods never protected Rome, and a basic knowledge of Rome’s own history would show this. The pagan critics were woefully ignorant of their own history!

Intertwined into Augustine’s response to Christianity’s pagan critics was the question of what was the cause of Rome’s greatness? The pagan critics charged that it was the Roman gods who were responsible for Rome’s greatness.  Augustine examines this argument and thoroughly demolishes it. He shows, painstakingly so, that the Roman gods were hardly moral. While the pagan critics believed the gods were the cause of Rome’s greatness, Augustine’s beloved Roman philosophers—like Cicero—argued that it was the moral virtue of the Romans which was the cause of Rome’s greatness. Augustine wants to believe this but concludes that Rome was not moral and its most moral exemplars, like Scipio, were treated rather harshly precisely because of their moral virtue. In the end Augustine concluded that it was the lust for domination (libido dominandi) that provided Rome’s greatness. We shall now examine each of the three positions from Augustine’s point of view.

Were the Gods the Cause of Rome’s Greatness?

The early books of Augustine’s City of God go into excruciating detail why the gods were not the cause of Rome’s greatness and why the pagans were foolish in thinking the gods would protect them. Augustine begins by recounting the founding of Rome (as told by Virgil) where the Trojan refugees were the founders of Rome. In their journey across the Mediterranean they brought with them the household gods of Troy. In Confessions, Augustine also recounts the numerous inconsistencies of the stories of the Roman gods. In particular, he singles out Jupiter for condemning immorality, yet he indulged in immorality on his own. So, Augustine continues, in the City of God, his criticism of the pagan gods for their immorality and lack of moral virtue as being good models for humans to emulate or imitate.

Virgil and Cicero, two of Augustine’s foremost Roman influences and interlocutors (of sorts) praised Aeneas for his piety. “Pious” Aeneas, in his filial piety, brought with his father and people their household gods. To the Romans this was a major deal because, as Fustel de Coulanges highlighted magnificently in his magnum opus The Ancient City, religion was the founding organizational principle of ancient Athens and Rome. However, the argument of the pagan critics that the old gods would have protected Rome and were the cause of Rome’s greatness is the target of Augustine’s critique—not filial piety (something Catholicism strongly endorses as a fundamental necessity of life and society). There was no “secular” Rome as fantastically imagined by the likes of Edward Gibbon and his modern heirs like Catherine Nixey.

Augustine begins with the obvious. The gods of Troy whom are the gods of Rome did not protect Troy and allowed Troy to be burned to the ground. Should the Romans have haphazardly retained the worship of the gods who abandoned their forefathers in its most desperate hour? The old gods didn’t protect Troy so why would they protect Rome?

More to the point, Augustine then begins with a history lesson for the pagan Romans who have seemingly forgotten their own history in their rush to criticize Christianity. (Orosius, a student of Augustine’s, wrote the highly influential Historiae adversus paganos—History Against the Pagans—detailing the real history of Antiquity which the pagans had become ignorant of and reinforced the notion of Augustinian patriotism premised on love of homeland, moral virtue, and religion.) During Rome’s rise to power the Roman gods did nothing to prevent tragedy, war, exhaustion, famine, civil war, fratricide, and so on. The gods also allowed Rome to be sacked by the Gauls in 390 B.C. long before Christianity was ever practiced, and the old gods remained enthroned in the Roman pantheon with many more followers then than in Augustine’s time. Far from protecting Rome and Roman devotees, the Roman gods seemed to allow their devotees to be expendable casualties in countless wars against the Carthaginians (as Augustine recounts the numerous tragedies of the Punic Wars). Moreover, the pluralist that Augustine was laments upon all the smaller kingdoms and historic towns and villages and their treasures which were lost forever because of the war. The expansion of Rome led to a homogenized world of Romanitas.

Did the Roman gods protect Marcus Regulus (the Roman general and consul who won a great victory over Carthage at the Battle of Cape Ecnomus) from capture and humiliation at the hands of his enemies? Did the Roman gods protect the many Roman towns and villages sacked and burned to the ground by Hannibal during his invasion of Italy? And how did the Romans react during this time of crisis? They conscripted an army of criminals and slaves to save themselves but short of arms the Romans committed sacrilege in ransacking their own temples for weapons and money to support the new army needed for their survival. In times of crisis the Roman gods never protected Rome and the Roman people never leaned on the gods for its survival. The Romans turned to themselves and their tenacity for their survival (and ultimately their greatness).

Beyond the tragedies of war with Carthage and Parthia, the Roman gods did nothing to prevent internal dissent, civil war, famine, and desolation from within. Consulship after consulship was marred by corruption, tyranny, and tragedy. Far from some “glory day” of the past, the past was quite dark, tyrannical, and bloody. Only those who have alienated minds and know little of history glorify a dark and bloody past as if nothing bad ever happened.

What happened to Rome after its glorious founding? It fell into tyranny under Tarquin and his sons. Filicide became a common occurrence in the early days of Rome when the Roman gods were worshipped and numerous games dedicated to them. Tyranny and bloodshed reigned everywhere.

Augustine makes a half-hearted appeal that Roman patriots would not be incensed at his writings. For, as Augustine says, he is writing in the same manner as many of Rome’s own cherished historians and writers did. From Sallust, Livy, and Virgil to Cicero and Lucan, a litany of Roman authors already reflected on the many tragedies and shortcomings of the Roman Republic, early empire, and the shallow “victories” that were very much like defeats considering the bloodshed and carnage unleashed in “victorious wars.”

As Augustine ends the third book, he remarks that it is the most ignorant of arguments to suggest that Rome’s greatness is attributable to the Roman gods. The Roman gods did nothing to stop the destruction of Troy when they were the patron gods worshipped by the Trojan ancestors of Rome. Moreover, once settled in Rome, these gods did nothing to prevent a myriad of disasters that befell Rome when they were enthroned in the pantheon and worshipped. For Augustine, the pagan critics of Christianity all share something in common: Not only are they ignorant of Christianity, but they are also ignorant of their own history!

While Augustine’s critique of the immorality of the gods came out most clearly in the third book, his criticism doesn’t end there. He continues, when it is relevant and suits him, to continue his critique of how anyone could have attained virtue by imitating the wicked gods of the pagan pantheon. “But whoever have pretended as to Jupiter’s rape of Ganymede, a very beautiful boy, that king Tantalus committed the crime, and the fable ascribed to Jupiter; or as to his impregnating Danae as a golden shower, that it means that the women’s virtue was corrupted by gold: whether these things were really done or only fabled in those days, or were really done by others and falsely ascribed to Jupiter, it is impossible to tell how much wickedness must have been taken for granted in men’s hearts that they should be thought able to listen to such lies with patience.”

There is also an overture in irony in Augustine’s criticism of the old gods of Rome. In discussing Cato, Cicero, and Scipio in the first half of book II, Augustine sees as the old guard of Roman statesmen and philosophers, in their struggle to prevent degeneracy through full worship of the gods and embrace of the degeneracy of the comics and other playwrights, this is when Rome was most virtuous (though still lacking in proper virtue as all fallen polities are). “This is the true Roman spirit, this is worthy of a state jealous of its reputation,” Augustine remarks men like Cato the Elder, the Younger, Scipio, and Cicero were true Romans, Rome’s old virtue—to the extent that it had any—was not in being handed over to the gods but in being prevented by the nomos of earthly fortitude and the frail cardinal virtues, buttressing against the fall into the degeneracy which came in being handed over to the immoral gods. When that line of men died out, and Rome was completely handed over to their immoral gods, there was nothing left to stop the fall into total degeneracy. Thus, Augustine concludes, from the very rites, rituals, and mythopoetic theologies of Rome the Roman gods were not the cause of greatness. Only the most shallow and ignorant of persons could believe, let alone assert, that.

The Roman philosopher Cicero was the Plato and Aristotle of Rome. He was the foremost orator of his day and an important political philosopher who was cherished among Christians (and Augustine). Augustine even credits the writings of Cicero to helping him believe in God in Confessions. However, the warm remarks he gives to Cicero in Confessions and in his other writings are not contained in City of God. Rather, Augustine takes up the challenge to criticize his Roman mentor and colleague whom he had a life-long relationship with.

Was Rome’s Greatness Because of Moral Virtue?

To start, it is important to know that Augustine is not criticizing Cicero’s philosophical disposition and his beliefs in the abstract sense. Augustine strongly concurs with Cicero that individual virtue, justice, and traditional morality are integral to the health of any society. Rather, he criticizes Cicero’s substance and especially Cicero’s inability to realize that the lofty substances he proclaimed never existed. Furthermore, in a fitting display of irony, Augustine also leans heavily on Cicero not to reject Cicero, but to utilize Cicero as his voice against Christianity’s critics—believing that an esteemed and venerated Roman author like Cicero who condemned the licentious immorality of the Romans would be heard more openly to non-Christian Romans than Augustine would be on account of his professed Christianity.

Therefore, Augustine’s criticism of Cicero and other Roman philosophers was because Augustine found them contradicting themselves and to show the callous and hollow Roman critics that their most esteemed writers and thinkers can be used against them. For example, Cicero believed the Roman Republic to be just, virtuous, and united in a sense of right and right. Yet, in his same writings, he laments the immorality, lack of virtue, and deprivation of justice in Rome as the cause for its instability and coming collapse in civil war. What gives? Augustine believes that the Roman philosophers, as lofty and ideal they were (and right in their ideals), but deceived themselves in believing in an imaginary Rome that never really existed. As such, Augustine’s criticism of Cicero (in particular) is addressing Cicero’s claim that morality and virtue is what made Rome great—at least in the past, though now, in the present of Cicero’s time (before Augustine’s time), the moral degeneracy of the Romans had led to a republic in name only.

Augustine concurs with the litany of ancient Roman writers and philosophers that moral virtue is necessary for the health of any republic. Despite the agreement among the philosophers of the importance of moral fortitude and virtue, the Roman gods didn’t seem to care. If morality and truth were so important, why did the Romans worship gods that were immoral and tricksters? The gods, Augustine argues from the Roman myths, did not care about human morality and did nothing to avenge the most egregious of moral affronts.

The Rape of the Sabine women? The gods did nothing. The fratricide of Remus by Romulus? The gods did nothing; they neither stopped Romulus nor avenged Remus. Junius Brutus’ murder of his own sons? The gods rewarded him with the throne of Rome after he deposed Lucius Tarquinius Superbus. Though a “patriot” for overthrowing the monarchy and establishing the republic, Brutus was hardly a moral character who killed many of his own personal rivals (including his sons as already mentioned). Moreover, most of the old Roman kings die in a brutal and grizzly manner.

Despite such affronts to morality, virtue, and justice, Cicero affirms justice as the cornerstone of all political life. The Roman Republic, far from resembling a virtuous and just polity, was more like a band of brigands and thieves. A kingdom or republic without justice is nothing more than a petty criminal gang. And a criminal gangland Rome was, with consuls deposed, murdered, and political rivalry leading to civil war between the patricians and plebeians and finally exhausting itself in a new tyranny with the ascent of Caesarism.

Furthermore, Rome did not reward the virtuous. Scipio, perhaps the most virtuous of the Roman politicians and generals from the republican era, was a pious devotee of the Roman gods. Most importantly, he was the savior of Rome and Italy—the conqueror of Carthage who secured for Rome its future against her greatest rival. And how was Scipio repaid for his dedicated service to Rome, his saving of his beloved country, his life and piety reflective of the greatest patriot—the man whom was the ideal Roman by every account of idealized Roman patriotism and piety?—he was exiled by his political rivals! Scipio, the most moral and upstanding Roman, died alone in a small villa despite his life of service to his country. So much for caring about virtue and patriotic service. Cicero may have been virtuous, but he, too, like Scipio, died an outcast and enemy of Rome and was put to death for standing up for the republic which existed only in his mind and not in reality.

Here is an important thing to remember about Augustine, as alluded to by Ernest Fortin: Augustine agreed wholeheartedly with the ideals of patriotism, filial piety, moral character and virtue—in other words, he saw himself as the ideal Roman. He thought that Christians, if they embodied the fulness of their faith, would make ideal Romans too. Augustine wanted Romans to be more Roman and to see Christians not as the enemies of Roman ideals but the true reflective imitators of Roman ideals; those ideals held up by luminaries like Cicero. Rome was, in Augustine’s ironic outlook, not Roman enough. If Romans wanted to be good and true Romans, they should see Christianity as the medium by which their hopes would be fulfilled.

However, Augustine is forced to conclude from his knowledge of Roman history that moral virtue was not the cause of Rome’s greatness, that moral virtue was something Romans cared little about despite speaking so highly of it, and that Rome was never “united under a common sense of right and wrong” as Cicero believed in his great political tract The Republic. Instead, as Augustine acknowledges—somewhat painfully—the virtuous republic eulogized by Scipio through Cicero’s pen never existed. Justice could not be found in Rome because Rome’s ruler was not Christ, in whom, and only in whom, true justice is dispensed and found. Rome’s ruler was the empty self, the vacuous heart, the will to domination, power, and glory through domination and power.

What was the Cause of Rome’s “Greatness” if not the Gods or Moral Virtue?

Instead of the gods or moral virtue being the cause of Rome’s greatness, Augustine goes to great lengths to highlight how Rome’s empire was forged through the lust for domination. Rome’s lust for greatness via control is what the city of man is all about. The city of man cannot share in glory, cannot share the wealth of the world, and cannot share the abundance of the world to others. Rather, the city of man relentlessly seeks domination and believes (wrongly) that domination will bring the security and happiness that men, by nature, seek.

Augustine is remembered as one of the foremost philosophers of the human condition. His outlook over the world and life is remembered as being a tragic or pessimistic account of man—though this is somewhat oversimplified and misleading. As a proponent of human nature, Augustine affirmed that man was a rational animal who sought to live by his nature (Truth) which moved him toward want of peace and happiness. However, because of the reality of the Fall of Man for Augustine—which we shall explore in the second half of this examination of The City of God—man’s disordered nature leads him to seek peace and happiness through the lust for domination. Rome, and man, is fallen; the city of man is wounded.

This basic anthropology is something all readers need to know when coming to understand Augustine’s answer to “what made Rome Great.” And on the topic, Rome wasn’t all that great from Augustine’s perspective. Rome was a wounded city, a wounded society, a wounded people calling for peace, justice, and happiness, but never attaining the peace, justice, and happiness that it sought (as should be clear just from reading Book III).

What made Rome “great”? It was nothing short of man’s fallen nature, the libido dominandi, which Rome had embodied in fullness. It was, as previously mentioned, the will to domination, power, and glory which made Rome “great.” Lust for glory, lust for power, lust for domination made Rome “great.”

In examining the history of Numa, the king who succeeded Romulus in Roman mythological-history and credited with the establishment of the important religious functions of ancient Rome, Augustine concludes that it was not Numa’s piety to the gods (and thus the gods) which was responsible for Rome’s greatness but Rome’s domineering ethos. Augustine does praise Numa’s reign of relative peace as this is what all humans seek but reminds pagan Romans that the gods and their rites were not yet established until Numa established them in a period of peace that existed prior to their establishment. The irony being that after Numa established the Roman pantheon the period of preceding peace and prosperity ended, and Rome descended into continuous wars.

Rome’s march to “greatness” begins with the conquest of the Latins by Aeneas who slays Turnus and conquers his people. After Numa, Rome’s peaceful establishment (forged by war according to the Aeneid) ends when Rome goes to war with the Albans. Great misery falls upon both people, but the Albans are eventually conquered, the first city-state to fall to Rome’s eventual rise to empire. This is ironic, as Augustine states, because the Albans entrusted their protection to the same gods as Rome; they were brothers and sisters from Troy who settled beyond Rome after Aeneas’ death and worshipped the same gods and inherited the same tradition and yet a symbolic fratricide occurred between the two cities. “Alba, the kingdom of Alcanius and the third abode of the Trojan gods, was overthrown by her daughter-city. And the making of one people out of two by the remnants that survived the war was the pitiable coagulation of all the blood which had already been poured out by both sides.” Once again, we see Augustine’s pluralism on full display in between the lines; he laments the conquest and destruction of a particular people and their absorption into a new homogeneity represented by Rome.

After Rome’s war with Alba cements Rome’s central domination Rome encounters the Etruscans and falls under Etruscan domination until the Etruscan kings are overthrown in bloodshed (the episode of the Rape of Lucretia recounted in Book I). There Augustine lamented that Lucretia committed suicide for having done nothing wrong but fall under the predatory lusts of one of Tarquin’s sons. The Romans celebrated her suicide as a reflection of Roman virtue and purity; having been defiled she was no longer an object of affection to Roman men so she killed herself. Her rape and suicide led to the downfall of the Etruscan kingship and Rome eventually conquers the Etruscans adding to their dominion.

Then comes the titanic struggle with Carthage. The Punic Wars, which Augustine also examined from the perspective of whether the gods were to be credited for Rome’s victory, was won because of Rome’s lust for domination. In the battle between two civilizations, two empires, and two peoples who could not coexist with each other, the exhaustion of this struggle was Rome’s near annihilation. Though the Romans eventually emerged victorious they were badly bloodied and suffered numerous tragedies. Her heroes from the war (like Scipio) were exiled and died alone. But the conquest of Carthage brought about the transformation of Rome from a modest Latin city-state (among other Latin city-states) to the dominate power of the Mediterranean. It was not the gods but Rome’s lust for conquest and glory through war which brought about her “greatness” and power.

Invariably, Augustine concludes the obvious: Rome’s empire was because of centuries of war, her lust for domination, and her craven soul deprived of its true wants (peace and happiness). This is ironic, in the traditional sense of the word, because Rome’s “greatness” comes through everything she despises: war rather than peace, immorality rather than moral virtue, and fratricide rather than filial piety. Christianity, by contrast, is the supreme religion for the Roman heart—for it is Christianity that seeks peace instead of war, moral virtue and inner transformation rather than immoral lusts, and filial piety rather than fratricide and filicide. From the perspective of Augustinian irony, Rome’s greatness was consummated by becoming everything the Romans claimed to deplore. Rome’s greatness was through the lust to dominate. God, moreover, granted the Romans what they wanted—earthly success, at the expense of their souls. Augustine’s critique of Rome is the first and most systematic deconstruction of political mythology, ideology, and imperialism in the western intellectual tradition.

THE CITY OF MAN

The second half of City of God (Books XI through XXII) deal with the origins and ends of the two cities. Here Augustine shifts from his cultural criticism to a more exegetical, historical, and theological focus. Augustine begins to develop his allegorical hermeneutic of the church in these chapters, reflects on human history as contained in the Bible and from the Roman historians, and develops his own political philosophy premised on limited government, non-harm, and mutual assistance.

The two cities are based on their loves. The city of man is based on the love of self while the city of God is based on the love of God and others. The two cities are also intertwined and intermixed in the plane of the saeculum (the current age) and won’t be untangled until the end of the world and the Last Judgement. As Augustine will endeavor to show, the city of man is only rooted in the world and will end with the world. The city of God has two roots, one in the world and one in eternity where the root in the world will eventually reunite with the root in eternity; the city of God exists both in time and outside time, in the world and outside the world, on earth and in heaven.

“We see then that the two cities were created by two kinds of love: the earthly city was created by self-love reaching the point of contempt of God, the Heavenly City by the love of God carried as far contempt of self.  In fact, the earthly city glories in itself, the Heavenly City glories in the Lord. The former looks for glory from men, the latter finds its highest glory in God, the witness of good conscience.” These two cities, founded on two different loves, are “are entangled together in this world, and intermixed until the last judgement effect their separation.” As such, they conflict with each other in the world and through history. Augustine sees dialectical conflict as the norm of earthly life, which is what prevents peace which properly only exists in Heaven.

In a scandalous reading of the Old and New Testament, at least to dispensationalist Protestants, Augustine charts the two cities even into the seed of Israel. There is an Israel of the spirit which becomes the people of the Promise and, after Christ, the church, and there is an Israel of the flesh which is unfaithful Israel in the Old Testament (the whore and harlot in biblical language and imagery) and remains unfaithful Israel after the crucifixion of Christ. To make his case, he starts with the Apostle Paul in Galatians 4:

There was indeed on earth, so long as it was needed, a symbol and foreshadowing image of this city, which served the purpose of reminding men that such a city was to be rather than of making it present; and this image was itself called the holy city, as a symbol of the future city, though not itself the reality. Of this city which served as an image, and of that free city it typified, Paul writes to the Galatians in these terms: “Tell me, you that desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law? For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bond maid, the other by a free woman. But he who was of the bond woman was born after the flesh, but he of the free woman was by promise. Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which genders to bondage, which is Hagar. For this Hagar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answers to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. For it is written, Rejoice, you barren that bear not; break forth and cry, you that travail not, for the desolate has many more children than she which has an husband. Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now. Nevertheless, what says the Scripture? Cast out the bond woman and her son: for the son of the bond woman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman. And we, brethren, are not children of the bond woman, but of the free, in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.” This interpretation of the passage, handed down to us with apostolic authority, shows how we ought to understand the Scriptures of the two covenants — the old and the new. One portion of the earthly city became an image of the heavenly city, not having a significance of its own, but signifying another city, and therefore serving, or being in bondage. For it was founded not for its own sake, but to prefigure another city; and this shadow of a city was also itself foreshadowed by another preceding figure. For Sarah’s handmaid Hagar, and her son, were an image of this image. And as the shadows were to pass away when the full light came, Sarah, the free woman, who prefigured the free city.

There are two earthly cities, or, more accurately from a theological perspective, apostate Jerusalem is also part of the city of man but is made particularly prominent in its contrast with the heavenly Jerusalem (which prefigures and constitutes the city of God) and is the spiritual Sodom and fornicator prophesied about by the prophets of Old. Israel is conflicted with itself, between the spiritual and carnal that emanated from the Fall of Adam and Eve in Cain’s murdering of Abel, “Thus the founder of the earthly city was a fratricide.” The earthly city is not everlasting, it has a lifespan, and it is torn upon itself.

Conflict is the result, for Augustine, of the fallen reality of the world each attempting to exercise the lust for domination against the other. Fear motivates this concern and only through the eradication of the other can this anxiety be assuaged:

But the earthly city, which shall not be everlasting…is often divided against itself by litigations, wars, quarrels, and such victories as are either life-destroying or short-lived…If when it has conquered, it is inflated with pride, its victory is life-destroying; but if it turns its thoughts upon the common casualties of our mortal condition, and is rather anxious concerning the disasters that may befall it than elated with the success already achieved, this victory, though of a higher kind, is still only short-lived; for it cannot abidingly rule over those whom it has victorious subjugated.

What drives the city of man is the love of self which manifests itself in the conceit of pride. Self-absorption and the inability to share is what drives the city of man onward to its doom. Moreover, the city of man seeks totalizing control over everything because only in this total control can that anxiety over security be assuaged. This, however, will fail. Moreover, this pursuit of domination not only causes damage to those who embark on such endeavors, it brings exhaustive and incalculable damage to those whom the war for universal security is waged. Apart from his famous definition of the city of man at the close of the fourteenth book, Augustine also provides a very clear definition of the city of man at the beginning of the eighteenth book, “The society of mortals [the city of man] spread abroad through the earth everywhere, and in the most diverse places, although bound together by a certain fellowship of our common nature [i.e., mortality], is yet for the most part divided against itself, and the strongest oppress the others, because all follow after their own interests and lusts.”

Augustine latches on to two stories to see this truth about the city of man: Romulus and Remus (from Roman history) and Cain and Abel (from biblical history). He reads both stories as archetypal of the libido dominandi and the sad and depraved condition of the city of man. As Cain and his son are the founders of the first cities according to the biblical narrative, and as Romulus murders Remus in the Roman narrative, Augustine can’t help but see parallels between the two.

Cain and Romulus both share a brother whom they cannot share glory with (Abel and Remus respectively). Cain and Romulus both murder their brother in the sin of fratricide out of their own lusts for domination. But unlike Remus, Abel is archetypal of the Heavenly City where his murdered Roman counterpart was the unfortunate victim of man’s lust for domination in the earthly city divided against itself.

In reading the biblical account alongside the Roman tale of the founding of its city, Augustine employs his ecclesiological readings of the Genesis narrative to make his point. He rests on the meaning of names to make his point. Cain, as Augustine argues, means “possession” or “control” and his son, Enoch, means “dedication.” Augustine sees the two as intertwined as father and son. Thus, the earthly city according to the author of Genesis invokes the names of its founders as meaning dedicated to control. The city of man literally lusts for domination in all things—this is the meaning of Cain and Enoch being the founders of the first cities in the Genesis narrative. It is a perpetual representation of the first sin in the Garden in lusting for control of something earthly.

And this symbolic truth is replayed, Augustine poignantly notes, in Rome’s founding. It is true of the traditional story of Romulus and Remus. It is equally true in the story of Aeneas where he slaughters Turnus and takes his bride-to-be (Lavinia) to be the founder of that race of Romans whose walls stand high and stretch afar. The murder of Remus by Romulus highlights the tensions of earthly society, the conflict between men, and the conflict between cities; something that Rome knows all too well (refer to Augustine’s criticism of Roman immorality and how their “greatness” came from war and conquest). But the murder of Abel by Cain represents the conflictual tension between the city of God (symbolized by Abel) and the earthly city (symbolized by Cain). Of course, this tension between heaven and earth—with heaven wanting to redeem the earth but the earth shunning heaven—played itself out in the crucifixion of the incarnate Son of God. In fact, the story of Cain and Abel is a prophetic prefiguration of Christ’s crucifixion according to Augustine. So, the city of man not only wars with itself, it also wars with the city of God in its bid for control over the earth which leads to endless bloodshed, litigations, and quarrels.

The origins of the city of man, then, is in the lineage of men born after the Fall of Adam and Eve who exist outside the promise of the covenant and the gift of grace and faith. Cain is not only representative of the city of man but a child outside the promise—something repeated with Esau and Jacob, “Of these two first parents of the human race, then, Cain was first-born, and he belonged to the city of men.” This follows with his son, Enoch, and even with Hagar and Ishmael, Esau, Nadab and Abihu, “fleshly (or earthly) Israel” (the Israel not of faith), and so on; “Now this name [Israel] was given him by the angle who wrestled with him on the way back from Mesopotamia, and who was most evidently a type of Christ. For when Jacob overcame him, doubtless with his own consent, that the mystery might be represented, it signified Christ’s passion, in which the Jews are seen overcoming Him. And yet he besought a blessing from the very angel he had overcome; and so the imposition of this name was the blessing. For Israel means seeing God, which will at last be the reward of all the saints.”

This people, whom we might call the people of the flesh as opposed to the people of the promise and the spirit, are born outside of God’s promise but not outside of his providence and sovereignty. What God gives to them, as long or short as they live, is given to them by God’s mercy as the wages of sin is death—and death they shall when whatever imperfect felicity that they enjoy in their earthly life comes to an end. Staying with Augustine’s ecclesiological and typological hermeneutic, he notes on the death of Jacob (Israel) in Egypt represents the death of fleshly under sin (represented by Egypt) but the true saints of the Promise enter the Promised Land under Joshua who is a type of Christ while Moses, though a great prophet but representing the Law, was unable because the Law does not bring salvation and the Law is not the true Promise which Paul was speaking of between the earthly and heavenly Jerusalems.

Augustine continues his critique of the city of man on other accounts, separating from the city of man which is fleshly Jerusalem to the city of man which is reflective of the earth more generally. He notes how the philosophers have identified man’s social nature as a reason for association in the city for his social animus will bring happiness when consummated. He then criticizes how the earthly city is often a-social and people have few relationships (if any) in the city that they call “home.” The Heavenly City, by contrast, truly is the center of what the heart desires. The city of God is founded on the social lives of the saints, the communion of believers who live in a community in their earthly city but also a community in the church, the city of God has true justice—dispensing to each their just due (akin to Aristotle)—and is the only place where justice truly reigns, and it is the Heavenly City where filial piety, patriotism, and household honor truly exists. As with the Roman critics of Christianity not seeing Christianity as actually embodying everything they claimed to desire and embody, so too does the earthly city fail to see the Heavenly City as the full fruition of its natural desires.

The city of man, as Augustine notes, is founded in the world. It is founded in the world of opinions and falsity—self-deception and sin. As such, the city of man, despite the temporal goods it does offer—and that we should work to preserve and enjoy—descends to hell through history time and again. The key force the moves the city of man is the lust for domination—the misdirected love of the self; that to make the self happy and secure entails the subjugation of others in service of the self. To win “glory” in the earthly city is to utilize others to sing your praises and honor you by force.

In a dazzling reading of earthly history, Augustine shows how the history of the city of man is tragedy after tragedy. It is one long, painful, and teary-eyed spectacle of domination, pillage, and rape from Troy, to Rome, to Athens, to Babylon. The real tragedy is that out of this lust for domination and destruction came the ideas of “greatness” and “glory” in nothing but death. Women are raped constantly—as seen in the pitiable tale of Lucretia. Children are butchered left and right. Men are taken captive and treated as cattle. Physical power, that lust for control, is all that moves the city of man.

Whatever glimpses of goodness and charity the city of man has, it cannot sustain. The city of man is but a shallow and corrupt reflection of the heavenly city because its founders—sinful men of the world—are interested only in themselves. The city of man is founded on the love of self which cuts people off from one another; it is a city whose relationships are built on the ethic of domination. The ultimate end of the city of man is separation from God, which is a separation from love and relationships first and foremost, and so ends apart from God and God’s love: Damnation. This manifests through the ethos of domination which cuts off the city of man from that original relationality with God, others, and the world. The ethos of domination which enslaves the city of man is what pushes the city of man to endless struggle, backstabbing, and conflict. To achieve the corrupted form of “peace” the city of man seeks, it must subjugate all others to itself through a coerced peace; in other words, a peace brought about by domination which will never last.

We find in Augustine a two-layered understanding of the city of man. There is the city of man within Israel, the Israel of the Law and earthly promises which is unfaithful and moved by idolatry and lustful passions of its own; and there is the city of man of sin, born outside of the Promise, and not even under the Law, and this city is brutal and enslaved by the lust to dominate. As Augustine explained with Cain and Enoch, who found the first cities in Genesis, the city of man is dedicated to the lust for possession. This lust for possession, conceived in sin, and realized in acts of violence (fratricide), causes the earthly city to be rife with conflict. The city of man “is yet for the most part divided against itself, and the strongest oppress the others, because all follow after their own interests and lusts.”

THE CITY OF GOD

Where the city of man is founded on the love of self (pride) to the point of contempt of God, the city of God is found on the love of God—and by extension, others—to the point of contempt of self. The city of God is also about enlargement; for it is the truly universal city spread throughout the world which claims and names its members from the beginning of time. The city of God does not transgress or eliminate the nations, rather, all the nations have representatives who belong to the city of God. This furthers the Augustinian vision of unity in diversity; unity in plurality—like how there is a single (whole) body with many constitutive parts.

Augustine traces the city of God back to the creation of the cosmos. Its first representatives are, of course, Adam and Eve. Then there is Abel, Seth, and Enos. Then there is Noah and his blessed sons Shem (“Christ in the flesh”) and Jepheth (“enlargement,” foreshadowing the enlargement of Israel to include the Gentiles who are the descendants of Jepheth). And in reading the Flood narrative, Augustine takes the ecclesiological view that the “Church” is represented by the Ark. That is, only those who are in the church are saved from God’s cleansing (outside of the church there is no salvation); God’s cleansing judgment which destroys the wickedness of sin and allows for righteous living is symbolized in the Deluge, which is an embodiment of the sacrament of baptism. God purified the world through water and sealed his covenant with the Spirit (the Dove).

More impressively, Augustine interprets the significance of the meaning of the names of the many biblical characters to make his point. Just as Cain and Enoch mean control and dedication and being the founders of cities in the Genesis account entailing that the city of man is dedicated to the lust for control, the typological representatives of the city of God bring the promises of hope and salvation as seen through their names.

Seth, one of the three named sons of Adam, means “resurrection” or “anointed.” Seth’s son, Enos, means “son of the resurrection” or “son of the anointed.” For Enos is the son, the heir, the inheritor, of the resurrected man of truth and life. Abel, in contrast, was a prefiguration of Christ; a type of Christ. For Abel was a Shepherd tending the flock (like how Christ is conceived as the Shepherd of the Lost Sheep of Israel). Abel was a godly and pious figure put to death by the distorted lusts of Cain (like how Christ is put to death by the city of man whom Cain is a prefiguration). It is through Abel’s death that the next seed of humanity, Seth, is born. Seth was born after Cain murdered Abel. Therefore, Abel’s sacrifice brings about the “resurrection” of man represented by the birth of Seth—who is the archetypal prefiguration of resurrected humanity.

This line of resurrected or anointed men continues with the birth of Enos who is a “son of the resurrection” (Augustine offers an innovative, if at times inaccurate, reading of Hebraic names). The converse is true in the city of man where Cain’s son, Enoch, is a son of the city of death. It is also important, as Augustine notes, that it is from the line of Seth that Noah descends, and from Noah his sons, principally Shem, from which Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob descend, leading up to Christ come the New Testament—with Shem’s name foreshadowing the incarnation and Jepheth’s name foreshadowing the enlargement to the Gentiles. It is here Augustine develops from Saint Paul the more codified and systematic doctrine of “predestination” and the covenantal Elect and how the Gentiles are inheritors to the promises of Abraham by reading the unbroken genealogy in an allegorical and ecclesiological light.

Augustine’s hermeneutic of the city of God is rooted in his ecclesiological hermeneutic. God has always worked through his church, not nations or races of men as some contemporary dispensationalists claim. In fact, the dispensationalist rupture with the ecclesiological tradition is what leads to “chosen nation” mythologies like the Anglo-Saxonism or British Israelism of the British Empire or the “City on the Hill” of the United States. God’s chosen people is his church which is the bridegroom of Christ (again prefigured going back to the first humans, Adam and Eve). Israel is the church in Augustine’s eyes, and the church was always destined to enlarge to include the Gentiles as foreshadowed by the Old Testament promises. The church is, and has always been, the fulfillment of the promises made to Israel—and that church is composed of men and women from all nations and races.

The city of God moves through the world and world history with God always present with it. In discussing the story of Noah’s Ark, Augustine writes, “[T]his is certainly a figure of the city of God sojourning in this world; that is to say, of the church, which is rescued by the wood on which hung the Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” The structure of the Ark is like the structure of the church, the walls that protect men from the city of man. The wood by which it was made is a prefiguration of the wood of the Cross on which Jesus was slain. Those who survived the Deluge did so twofold: They were in the church (represented by their being inside the Ark) and by the Cross (represented by the wood of the ark).

The story of the Ark is the story of the pilgrim church on earth and through history much like how the story of the Exodus is the story of the pilgrim church on earth and through history. Now Augustine does not deny the historicity of these Old Testament events, but he doesn’t dwell exhaustively on their literality; instead, he focuses on the “allegorical” readings which foreshadow, prefigure, and tell, the history of the church and of God’s Elect through time and history. The Ark’s journey is the church’s journey, and its landing on the mountain is its arrival in heaven.

The story of Abraham and Isaac is also a prefiguration of Christ, Salvation, and the church. Importantly, Abraham is rooted back to Shem (Christ in the Flesh) which is why it is from Abraham’s seed that Israel, the Chosen People married to Christ’s Body, descend or are grafted into. Isaac, in Augustine’s reading, is a symbolic type of Christ who, in being led up to the mountain to sacrificed, prefigures the sacrifice of Christ:

In order, then, that the children of the promise may be the seed of Abraham, they are called in Isaac, that is, are gathered together in Christ by the call of grace… And on this account Isaac also himself carried to the place of sacrifice the wood on which he was to be offered up, just as the Lord Himself carried His own cross. Finally, since Isaac was not to be slain, after his father was forbidden to smite him, who was that ram by the offering of which that sacrifice was completed with typical blood? For when Abraham saw him, he was caught by the horns in a thicket. What, then, did he represent but Jesus, who, before He was offered up, was crowned with thorns by the Jews?

Additionally, Augustine notes that Isaac’s name means laughter in Hebrew. Laughter is a symbolic representation of joy, of happiness. This is important too given that Isaac, as a prefiguration of Christ, a type of Christ, whose name means laughter, implies that—through archetypal typology—Isaac as a Type of Christ shows how only in Christ true joy (revealed by the pleasant laughter of Abraham and Sarah) is consummated.

The Exodus is equally understood in much the same way. The church in Egypt is human bondage to sin (slavery, represented by the Egyptians). The church in the desert is the human struggle against sin and temptations which prevent the pilgrim from arriving in the Promised Land (think of all the rebellions and idolatrous behavior of the Israelites in the Desert). The church arriving in the Promised Land is its successful pilgrimage to the heavenly Jerusalem. Egypt is slavery to the lusts of the world. The journey through the desert is the pilgrimage of the church and the faithful Christian and all the troubles that come with it (including internal rebellion and strife). The crossing of the Jordan River, another prefiguration of baptism, is the new life in Heaven. Christ is also prefigured in the story, “when the people had entered the desert, on the fiftieth day after the passover was celebrated by the offering up of a lamb, which is so completely a type of Christ, foretelling that through His sacrificial passion He should go from this world to the Father (for pascha in, the Hebrew tongue means transit), that when the new covenant was revealed, after Christ our passover was offered up, the Holy Spirit came from heaven on the fiftieth day; and He is called in the gospel the Finger of God, because He recalls to our remembrance the things done before by way of types, and because the tables of that law are said to have been written by the finger of God.”

So just as there is a line of men who exist in the genealogy of the city of man, there is a line of men who exist in the genealogy of the Covenantal Promises, and this is “spiritual Israel” which includes the Gentiles (as prefigured by Jepheth but also Job and Rahab and others). Therefore, the origin of the city of God is in the covenant promise and stands juxtaposed to the origin of the city of man—and that Covenant Promise foretold to Adam and Eve about the birth of Christ ensures that there is a literal line of descendants who are prefigured as being “in Christ” because it is from that line of Abel, Seth, Enos, Noah, Shem, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Mary and Joseph, that Christ was born. Reading the Old Testament in light of the New, Augustine, reflected on the Apostle Paul’s famous outlining of the two cities in Galatians 4, says, “This interpretation of the passage, handed down to us with apostolic authority, shows how we ought to understand the Scriptures of the two covenants—the old and the new. One portion of the earthly city became an image of the heavenly city.” Earthly and Heavenly Israel, intermixed together, then separated with the coming of the Messiah and children of the promise passed on into the heavenly city, with heavenly citizenship, while the children of the flesh remained tethered to the fleshly city according to the earthly seed without divine grace.

This is not only ecclesiological hermeneutics, but it is also Christological hermeneutics. For Christ appears all over the Hebrew Bible according to Augustine. He is the Spoken Word of creation in Genesis 1. He prefigured and represented by Abel in Genesis 4. He is also contained in the persons of Seth and Enos after Cain’s murdering of Abel. Christ is present in the Ark when Noah survives the Flood. And so on. Books XVI-XIX go into greater detail this unfolding of Divine History. The “allegorical” is synonymous with the “ecclesiological” and Christological reading because Christ is always the Head of the church.

Essential to the character of the city of God is its filial and relational, and loving, nature. The city of God, as it marches through history, is a family—and a family dedicated to love and unity. There is, despite their first sin and fall, Adam and Eve. By contrast, Cain, who is typological of the city of man, is broken from his family. He murders his brother and, in isolation from his parents (Adam and Eve) sets out a course for a new path (dedicated to self and the desires of the self which manifests in the libido dominandi). The city of God, from Adam and Eve, to Seth and Enos, to Noah and his sons, Abraham and Sarah, to Mary and Joseph, right up to the present, is a place where family, relationships, and the loving gift of self to others (“to the point of contempt of the self”) holds sway. Again, by contrast, the city of man is ripped apart from family and relationships: Cain, Ham, Ishmael, etc.

It would, here, be unbefitting of me not to mention the important doctrine of the mixed church (corpus permixtum) which Augustine also develops in the City of God. Earlier battles with the Donatists, schismatics, put Augustine on the side of catholicity—the view that the universal body will include saints and sinners. This he takes from the Old Testament and New Testament teachings.

In the Old Testament “Israel,” which is the people of the city of God, included an unfaithful “fleshly” side: Cain, Esau, Ham, Ishmael, etc. So there was a spiritual Israel and a fleshly Israel in the visible (or earthly) covenant but not the eternal (or spiritual) covenant. Christ’s statements of separating wheats from tares, of spiritually guarded virgins and spiritually unguarded virgins, Augustine took to mean, along with Christ’s statement in Matthew about those who come to him and he turns away, that there exists in the visible church—which is the realized instantiation of fleshly Israel to—reprobate and elect. Just as with Rebecca there was Jacob and Esau. Among the Israelite peoples, there were Nadab and Abihu, Korah and his faction, and so on. Augustine, in his clearest depiction of the mixed church, says, “In this wicked world, in these evil days, when the Church measures her future loftiness by her present humility, and is exercised by goading fears, tormenting sorrows, disquieting labours, and dangerous temptations, when she soberly rejoices, rejoicing only in hope, there are many reprobate mingled with the good, and both are gathered together by the gospel as in a drag net.” When that net opens on the shore—the Last Judgement—the separation of the wheats and tares occurs; the good and bad are separated with the children of the promise welcomed into that heavenly city which awaits them (cf. Ga. 4:21-30), and, following the Psalms, especially Psalm 89, the Bride of Christ, that is the heavenly city, though she will sin and be reproached, “but my mercy will I not take away from him.” Therefore, the mixed church was itself prefigured in the Old Testament by the visible people Israel who had in its ranks saints and sinners.

The city of God is always in the hand of God. The city of man exists outside of God’s grace though never outside of his providence and sovereignty. As Augustine says, “Both, indeed, were of Abraham’s seed; but the one was begotten by natural law, the other was given by gracious promise. In the one birth, human action is revealed; in the other, a divine kindness comes to light.” Those born outside of the gracious promise and entanglement (enlargement) are sons and daughters of the flesh, born entirely of the civitas terrena and given over to their wanton lusts which is what drives fallen history onward (or downward). Those born to the church, those luminaries of the city of God, struggle as they must, die even as they will, are eternal citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem. For that is the telos of the city of God: Union with God. Hence, the city of God pilgrimaging through the history of the saeculum to arrive in union with God at the eschaton. “How great shall be that felicity, which shall be tainted with no evil, which shall lack no good, and which shall afford leisure for the praises of God, who shall be all in all!”

Augustine’s systematic treatment of the two cities in the second half of City of God is, arguably, the first systematic biblical theology attempted in the Christian tradition. Before him there were attempts at establishing hermeneutical principles to reading Scripture, there were commentaries on individual books and key stories, defense of practices of the faith, etc., but never was there—with the exception of Lactantius’ Divine Institutes (ca. 310 A.D.)—such a systematic attempt to chart the origins and ends of the two cities from within the Bible. Thus, Augustine’s systematic theology is also a theology of history. Because his was the first systematic biblical theology, Augustine’s legacy has been enormous in the church’s self-understanding; many read the Bible and understand the church through his eyes even if unconsciously because of the inherited conditioning.

The city of God, for Augustine, in following Paul and through the New Testament revealing what was hidden, or prefigured, in the Old, is the spiritual Bride of Christ who is faithful to the end and receives the unconditional blessing and love of God. The city of God is the Israel of faith, that enlarged city that has the Gentiles in it, and the pilgrim city passing from earthly Jerusalem to the Jerusalem above. It is the city of the Promises. And those promises are realized in the Heavenly Jerusalem under the eternal King who is Christ and not the Earthly Jerusalem on sandy rocks and hills.

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Augustine’s City of God is no ordinary book. It is a monumental work of truly epic proportions. It stands unrivaled in the history of western literature, a literature that encompasses psychological inquiry, theology, philosophy, politics, and what we now call postmodernism, de-mythology, and deconstruction. Augustine systematically de-mythologizes and deconstructs the Roman ideology of Romanitas. Within the so-called “splendid vices” (a term that Augustine never used but scholars have retroactively called) of the Romans also lay the seeds of their own earthly demise: their love (really, lust) of glory which suppressed other vices was itself a vice, and the lust for glory eventually ruptured the Roman Republic and sped it down the pathway of tyranny and betrayal.

To escape this hellish dog-eat-dog world, a place even worse than the savage city of Thrasymachus in Plato’s Republic, the city of God exists for love to manifest itself in the world. This love is not a love for glory, which is properly understood as a lust for glory from Augustine’s eyes, but the love and service of God through the love and service of neighbors. The love that Augustine sees as salvific is a renunciation of the self, a renunciation of pride—for in pride the highway to hell, lust, is paved.

The afterlife of this outlook has become part of western, especially American, cultural immortality. The escape from a life of crime, destitution, of “civilization” and a rebirth in love—the beloved who is often implied to be a prospective spouse—saves individuals from their path descending to damnation and destruction. Rebirth and freedom are found not in a political life but in a loving relationship with a beloved.

In the love of others the salvation of souls on earth is found. Love, for Augustine, offers us the escape from the tyranny of the civitas terrenna, the earthly city, the city of man in all its domineering ethos—lust, pride, and the pursuit of “glory.” Where love is, God is. Where God is, the city of God is found. And from Augustine’s eyes, where that love which is always Divine is found comes from eternity, a Grace that preexisted from before the creation, existing, ultimately, only in God to which all are united with in love providing that sanctification and redemption from the city of man.

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