Book One of the City of God

The City of God is split up into 22 books and covers history, opinion, theology, discourse, critique, debate, monologue, and even a bit of strategic hyperbole. But all this is excellently woven throughout Augustine’s narrative that oscillates between the earthly and heavenly city. Book 1 sets us up with an understanding of Rome (the earthly city) and begins to share the inspiration to his writing.

Augustine is a slow methodical communicator in the opening chapters of the City of God. He takes his time dismantling the arguments that his counterpart philosophers and historians have set up to prop Rome up under what Augustine states are false arguments. It is his long-form, his patience, and the detail he takes that helps a modern reader appreciate his opening polemic.

This long-form approach in communication is lost in a modern audience where headlines and opinions are the only things that matter. We don’t enter the world of our opponent. We don’t cross our own lines. We draw them, reinforce them, but don’t climb them. That has created factions and fractures relationships and society as a whole.

While Augustine disagrees with his opponents, he takes the time to understand them. He has read them, lived them, thought about wrote about the issues he covers in the City of God. While he disagrees with the City of Man, he is not far from it.

As the city was sacked in 410 by Alaric, Roman criticism began to abound regarding Christians and their monotheism. As Christianity was rising in popularity, it seemed reasonable to blame the new religion on the downfall of Rome. This spark fanned into flame through the City of God.

Book One begins with Augustine commanding the book through it’s first 10 books, discussing how some from Rome escaped the attack and then faulted Christians for that event.

“As a result, many escaped who now deride these Christian times and make Christ responsible for the evils that Rome endured. But they do not make Christ responsible for the good that happened to them — the fact that they themselves are still alive due to the honor in which Christ was held.”

Saint Augustine. The City of God (B. Ramsey, Ed.; W. Babcock, Trans.; Vol. 6, p. 2). New City Press.

The point is made that when Romans took sanctuary in Christian churches the barbarians who attacked the city honored the sanctuary and let the Roman citizens live. Augustine argues that it is because of Christ that people survived. And in return they are trying to make Christ responsible for the sacking.

From this place there follows a narrative meandering, where Augustine polemicizes the reasons the City of Man was in fact sacked and in no uncertain terms, why. The people had used the King of the Universe for their own means in their own ways, attempting to turn the God who cannot be subdivided into smaller and smaller forms.

But his approach is enduring and detailed. He spares no literary expense and expands every dialectical option. And it is in his care for understanding his culture first that we begin to see another option emerge. Augustine is not just stating his way is better than your way he is sharing in great detail why their way doesn’t work. Why it will never work. And from that place, not just a comparison of ideology or faith, but from a technical look at belief and ritual and Rome's inability to sustain either one that we see the Gospel emerge as not just a substitution for the ways of the world but as the only way in the world that will actually work.