Read City of God (Penguin Classics) Online
Authors: Saint Augustine
Whereas salvation in the
City of God
is represented by citizenship in a city (
ciuitas
) – an image explicitly taken from the Scriptures – it is in the earliest formulations represented as arriving in harbour (
portus
), or at the fatherland (
patria
), or being on the way (
uia
). These images are, of course, borrowed from the stock in trade of philosophy, particularly Platonic philosophy, in its eschatological aspects. Other variants used by Augustine at this time are the ‘land of desire’, the ‘land of happiness’, the ‘happy land’ and the ‘shining home’.
The first few pages of Augustine’s first extant work, the
Contra Academicos
(
Against the Academics
), written after his conversion in 386, speak of the ‘harbour’ of wisdom, to which Providence, making
use of misfortune, brings us. Special emphasis is laid upon the irrelevance and instability of temporal prosperity. Here Augustine alludes directly not only to the apparent misfortunes of the friend to whom the book is addressed, but to his own: prosperity had almost entrapped him, but he had been compelled by illness to give up his profession and betake himself to philosophy, which, as the work makes clear, means philosophy subject to the authority of Christ. One can suppose that Augustine’s views, on the irrelevance of prosperity and the use made by Providence of misfortune, might be applied by him to the Empire as much as to mankind in general or himself and his friend.
The image of the harbour is used again in the first five sections of the
De Beata Vita
(
On Happiness
), composed at the same time as the previous work. The major image here, however, is the ‘land of desire’. There are two ‘ways’ to this land, both across a sea. One is the way of reason, which, possible only for the few, brings men to the harbour of philosophy, which is the harbour of the land of desire. The other way is the way of Providence which uses the storms of adversity to bring men, resist and wander in ignorance and folly as they may, to the same harbour. Those who are apparently most successful in life have need of the greatest storms. Some are brought to sanity, however, by the reading of books written by the learned and the wise. And some make their way to the ‘fatherland’ partly by their own use of reason, and partly by providential adversity.
One great hazard threatens all who approach the harbour – a high mountain in front of the harbour itself. It is so enticing that it lures to it not only those approaching the harbour, but even some that have already been in the harbour. The people living on this mountain are full of conceit, and fear that others might share their glory; hence they impress on those approaching the difficulty, because of submerged rocks, of joining them and are happy to advise them how they can get to the land of desire. In this way they are themselves destroyed within sight of the ‘shining home’.
Finally – a most important point – the harbour is wide, and one may still fail to put ashore and so not achieve one’s goal.
There are significant anticipations of the
City of God
here. The term ‘citizen’ is used, and the phrase ‘on pilgrimage from their fatherland’ is one characteristically applied in the later work to the citizens of the heavenly city in their life on earth. The illusions of prosperity and the transcendent role of Providence in its use of adversity are here fully emphasized. Of particular significance, however, is the special
mention of the envious and the proud, who help others to safety, but are themselves destroyed within sight of the fatherland. This, of course, must refer especially to certain Neoplatonists, who approached Christianity, helped others to become Christians, but rejected Christianity themselves. It is to be noted that not all mankind reaches the harbour, and those who are there may still be lost: so too might Christians fail to persevere.
What is of special interest for us here is Augustine’s explicit relation of this theme and image to the circumstances of his own life at the time. Here indeed he gives a summary autobiography, parallel to that given in the
Contra Academicos
(
Bk II, 4f
.), and later to be expanded in the
Confessions
. It is clear that the theme, as set out in the
De Beata Vita
, is inspired by his own life: the providential use of illness, the effect of reading certain books (a very precise detail that he repeats and applies without hesitation to other men), his own part use of reason and part guidance by Providence, the illusions of prosperity, and the help of the proud Neoplatonists, who did not benefit from their own wisdom.
In short we have here the opportunity of seeing how the theme of the
City of God
is constructed from the details of his own conversion. To put it another way, the
City of God
is the application of the
Confessions
to the history of mankind. The inspiration of Augustine’s themes is in his life.
The image of the way is found first in Augustine in, again, the
Contra Academicos
(
Bk III
, 34). Here we are given the story of two men travelling to the same destination, one of whom has too much and the other too little credulity. At a crossroads they meet a humble shepherd whose directions the one accepts without question and proceeds to follow. The other ridicules such credulity and does not move. By the time an elegant gentleman comes along on horseback he is finding his waiting tedious, and accordingly acts upon the directions given by the elegant gentleman, although he does not accept them as necessarily true and they conflict with those given by the shepherd. In the event he gets lost in the woods and trackless mountains – for the elegant gentleman was an impostor. Meanwhile his companion is resting at his destination.
The source of this image may have been epistemological, but Augustine explicitly refers its use here to the deeds and behaviour of men. Philosophers and those interested in religion had done so before him, and amongst those was one especially well known to him, Porphyry. Porphyry’s search for a universal way to salvation, and
his rejection of Christ as that way, is the high point of the tenth book of the
City of God
and, perhaps, of the work as a whole. Although Augustine’s use of the image of the way is undoubtedly at a later stage influenced by Moses’ leading the Children of Israel to the Promised Land and by the description of the Magi’s return by another way into their own country, his treatment of it in the
Confessions
(
Bk VII, 26f
.) and the
De Trinitate
(
On the Trinity
) (
Bk IV, 13ff
.) is basically the same as here in the
Contra Academicos
and later in the
City of God
(
Bk X, 32
): the contrasting attitudes of the proud and the humble – the simple and credulous on the one hand, and the pretentious impostor on the other. The
Confessions
(
Bk VII, 26f
.) marks the point well:
I should be able to see and understand the difference between presumption and confession, between those who see the goal that they must reach, but cannot see the road by which they are to reach it, and those who see the road to that blessed country which is meant to be no mere vision but our home… It is one thing to descry the land of peace from a wooded hilltop and, unable to find the way to it, struggle on through trackless wastes where traitors and runaways, captained by their prince… lie in wait to attack. It is another thing to follow the high road to that land of peace. (Translation by R. S. Pine-Coffin, Penguin Classics.)
Unlike those in the image of the harbour in the
De Beata Vita
, the Neoplatonists are here represented as seeking direction but being deceived. Both images complete the treatment of them in the
City of God
. The clearest and fullest anticipation is to be found in the
De Vera Religions
(
On True Religion
) (cf. 48ff.) which was begun at the same time as the works we have been discussing, but was not finished until four years later, in 390. Inasmuch as the
City of God
is a discussion of religion, both works share the same topic. The
De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae
(
On the Ways of the Catholic Church
), written in 388–390, has this striking passage on the ‘way’, which is, at the same time, a summary statement of one aspect and much of the contents of the
City
of God:
the way which God built for us in the segregation of the Patriarchs, the bond of the Law, the foretelling of the Prophets, the sacrament of the Man assumed, the testimony of the Apostles, the blood of the martyrs and the entering into possession of the gentiles: let us heed the oracles (of Scripture) and submit our puny reasonings to divine inspiration (I. 11f.).
Here the gradual revelation of the way is emphasized. Finally the
De Catechizandis Rudibus (On Catechizing the Unlearned
), written in 399, speaks plainly of two cities, one the devil’s, the other Christ’s.
What we have tried to stress is that the anticipation of the theme of the
City of
God was not so much dependent upon Alaric’s sack of Rome as rooted in Augustine’s own experience. This will throw light on the theme as it was later set forth. Providence had used adversity to help him, and Providence dominates the life of every man and every Empire. This might be a banal teaching of a philosophical school, but for Augustine it was also a personal realization, and so it tended to colour and affect all his thoughts and all his theories. Implicit in all of this is some regret for that prosperity from which Providence tears us; but there is compensation in the assurance afforded by the fulfilment of prophecies, the miracles of the saints, and the conversion of the multitudes. Even at the temporal level an Empire must benefit from the improved moral character of its citizens, once they had become Christians.
If, then, there is sorrow and regret for the past, there is also joy for the future; and if there is sombre pessimism, there is also hope. The thoughts and images that Augustine uses reflect the experience and life of an artist, the complicated tension of whose anxious spirit reveals to us his large humanity and ardent sensibility.
There are a few observations that one should make about the structure of the
City of God
. The first five books deal in the main with the polytheism of Rome, with special reference to Varro. The next five deal mainly with Greek philosophy, more particularly Platonism and especially Apuleius, and the Neoplatonists, Plotinus and Porphyry, with lengthy consideration of the views of the latter. The final twelve books deal in the main with creation, time and eternity as presented in the Bible, which is of Jewish provenance. And here we have the three great focuses of the work: Rome, Greece and Jerusalem. Augustine himself draws attention to this explicitly in one of the dramatic sections of the work (
Bk XIX, 22
):
But it may be asked in reply ‘Who is this God you talk of, and how is it proved that he is the only one to whom the Romans owed obedience, and that they should have worshipped no god besides him?’ It shows extreme blindness to ask, at this time of day, who this God is! He is the same God whose prophets foretold the events we now see happening. He is the God from whom Abraham received
the message, ‘In your descendants all nations will be blessed.’ And this promise was fulfilled in Christ, who sprang from that line by physical descent, as is acknowledged, willy nilly, even by those who have remained hostile to this name. He is the same God whose divine Spirit spoke through the lips of the men whose prophecies I have quoted in my previous books, prophecies fulfilled in the Church which we see diffused throughout the whole world. He is the God whom Varro, the greatest of Roman scholars, identifies with Jupiter; although he did not realize what he was saying. Still, I thought this worth mentioning, simply because a man of such great learning could not judge this God to be non-existent or of no worth, since he believed him to be identical with his supreme god. More important still, he is the god whom Porphyry, the most earned of philosophers, although the fiercest enemy of the Christians, acknowledges to be a great god, even on the evidence of the oracles of those whom he supposes to be gods.
The first sentence in this excerpt indicates Augustine’s overall standpoint in his inquiry: the Roman world. It is not a negative attitude; on the contrary, he is concerned for that world’s future. Rome was to bring together within herself the revelation in the Bible, the wisdom of Greek philosophy, and what was good in her own tradition. Augustine is fully conscious of the fusion of the elements that in fact went to make up the civilization of the West that has endured to this day. In this sense his
City of God
is a Charter of Christendom, and here lies its greatest significance.
Roman speculation on religion, Greek philosophy, the Bible, all pointed to one God: the God of the Hebrews. This God should now be accepted as the God of Rome. The prophecies in their fulfilment, and the Church in its extension, its martyrs, and its miracles, left no possible doubt about this. The aspirations of Hebrews, Greeks and Romans were to be fulfilled in a Christian Rome. The Christian Era, the
tempora Christiana
, was already a reality.
Augustine may have come to these pregnant views through reading or argument; but it is likely that once again his own personal experience influenced him. His was a life led in a Roman environment, based on Roman education, drawing importantly upon Greek philosophy at a time most critical to his development, and resting in the main after his conversion on the Christian Scriptures. His
Confessions
not merely testify to this in contents: in very form they, too, describe a Roman’s background and education (
Bks I
-
VII, 12
), the contribution of Greek philosophy (
Bk VII, 13
–
IX
), and life according to the Christian revelation. In particular the last three books of the
Confessions
cover
in part the same ground as is later covered in the fuller and richer canvas of the last twelve books of the
City of God
.
There are rudimentary traces of the same progress from Rome to Greece to the Scriptures in others of Augustine’s works. The
Contra Academicos
proceeds from Cicero to the ‘school of Plotinus’, but puts the authority of Christ above that again (
Bk III
, 43). The preface to the
De Beata Vita
, with which we have already dealt, implies a similar progression. Its contemporary, the
De Ordine
(
On Order
) in its turn discusses more explicitly (
Bk II, 25–54
) a system of education based on the same lines.
In the pages that follow we shall take our cue from Augustine and consider the
City of God
from the three focuses which he indicates: the attitude to Rome; the attitude to Greek philosophy, (i.e. to Platonism, or more precisely Neoplatonism); and the interpretation of the Bible, in the context of philosophy.