The City of God (De Civitate Dei)

Saint Augustine of Hippo · c. 426 AD

Ante-Nicene Fathers (Roberts–Donaldson), Roberts, Donaldson, and Coxe (eds.), Ante-Nicene Fathers, Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1885–1887; digitized by CCEL.

Bishop of Hippo Regius in North Africa; the most influential theologian of the Latin West. Author of the Confessions (the first sustained spiritual autobiography in Christian literature), the City of God (the foundational Latin theology of history), On the Trinity, the exegetical Tractates on John, hundreds of letters, and the polemical works against the Manichaeans, Donatists, and Pelagians. Venerated as a saint in the Orthodox Church (commemorated 15 June). His Augustinian theology of original sin, predestination, and the procession of the Holy Spirit developed in directions the East did not follow; later Western controversies (Pelagian, Filioque, Reformation soteriology) are intelligible only against the background of his speculative works. His pastoral and exegetical writings are widely esteemed without qualification.

Contents

1. Translator’s Preface(1 chapter)
2. Augustin censures the pagans, who attributed the calamities of the world, and especially the recent sack of Rome by the Goths, to the Christian religion, and its prohibition of the worship of the gods(38 chapters)
3. A review of the calamities suffered by the Romans before the time of Christ, showing that their gods had plunged them into corruption and vice(30 chapters)
4. The external calamities of Rome(32 chapters)
5. That empire was given to Rome not by the gods, but by the One True God(35 chapters)
6. Of fate, freewill, and God’s prescience, and of the source of the virtues of the ancient Romans(28 chapters)
7. Of Varro’s threefold division of theology, and of the inability of the gods to contribute anything to the happiness of the future life(14 chapters)
8. Of the ‘select gods’ of the civil theology, and that eternal life is not obtained by worshipping them(37 chapters)
9. Some account of the Socratic and Platonic philosophy, and a refutation of the doctrine of Apuleius that the demons should be worshipped as mediators between gods and men(28 chapters)
10. Of those who allege a distinction among demons, some being good and others evil(24 chapters)
11. Porphyry’s doctrine of redemption(33 chapters)
12. Augustin passes to the second part of the work, in which the origin, progress, and destinies of the earthly and heavenly cities are discussed.—Speculations regarding the creation of the world(35 chapters)
13. Of the creation of angels and men, and of the origin of evil(28 chapters)
14. That death is penal, and had its origin in Adam’s sin(25 chapters)
15. Of the punishment and results of man’s first sin, and of the propagation of man without lust(29 chapters)
16. The progress of the earthly and heavenly cities traced by the sacred history(28 chapters)
17. The history of the city of God from Noah to the time of the kings of Israel(44 chapters)
18. The history of the city of God from Noah to the time of the kings of Israel(25 chapters)
19. A parallel history of the earthly and heavenly cities from the time of Abraham to the end of the world(55 chapters)
20. A review of the philosophical opinions regarding the Supreme Good, and a comparison of these opinions with the Christian belief regarding happiness(29 chapters)
21. Of the last judgment, and the declarations regarding it in the Old and New Testaments(31 chapters)
22. Of the eternal punishment of the wicked in hell, and of the various objections urged against it(28 chapters)
23. Of the eternal happiness of the saints, the resurrection of the body, and the miracles of the early Church(31 chapters)