The City of God (11-22) (Vol. I/7)

by Augustine of Hippo, Bonifaceb02 Ramsey (Editor), William Babcock (Translation)

Along with his Confessions , The City of God is undoubtedly St. Augustine's most influential work. Following Augustine's critique of the Roman religious, political, and intellectual tradition in Books 1-10, Books 11-22 set out his great vision of the origins, the histories, and the ultimate destinies of the two the earthly city, rooted in love of self as expressed in the pride and lust for domination that shatter human society, and the heavenly city, rooted in love of God as expressed in the humility and yearning for the supreme good that unite humanity in a just social order. For all those who are interested in the greatest classics of Christian antiquity, The City of God is indispensable. This long-awaited translation by William Babcock is published in two volumes, with an introduction and annotation that make Augustine's monumental work approachable. The INDEX for Books 1-22 (both volumes of The City of God ) is contained in this volume.

Genres: Theology, Philosophy, Christianity, Classics, Religion, History

640 pages, Hardcover

First published December 31, 1955

About the author

Early church father and philosopher Saint Augustine served from 396 as the bishop of Hippo in present-day Algeria and through such writings as the autobiographical Confessions in 397 and the voluminous City of God from 413 to 426 profoundly influenced Christianity, argued against Manichaeism and Donatism, and helped to establish the doctrine of original sin.

An Augustinian follows the principles and doctrines of Saint Augustine.

People also know Aurelius Augustinus in English of Regius (Annaba). From the Africa province of the Roman Empire, people generally consider this Latin theologian of the greatest thinkers of all times. He very developed the west. According to Jerome, a contemporary, Augustine renewed "the ancient Faith."

The Neo-Platonism of Plotinus afterward heavily weighed his years. After conversion and his baptism in 387, Augustine developed his own approach to theology and accommodated a variety of methods and different perspectives. He believed in the indispensable grace to human freedom and framed the concept of just war. When the Western Roman Empire started to disintegrate from the material earth, Augustine developed the concept of the distinct Catholic spirituality in a book of the same name. He thought the medieval worldview. Augustine closely identified with the community that worshiped the Trinity. The Catholics and the Anglican communion revere this preeminent doctor. Many Protestants, especially Calvinists, consider his due teaching on salvation and divine grace of the theology of the Reformation. The Eastern Orthodox also consider him. He carries the additional title of blessed. The Orthodox call him "Blessed Augustine" or "Saint Augustine the Blessed."

Santo Agostinho

Reviews

[Chandler Kelley]

This book is incredible. It covers such a wide array of theological, philosophical, cultural, political, and other topics, weaving them together in fine fashion. I need to re-read at some point because this is such a dense work that requires long thought deep contemplation to fully appreciate. I read it in parts for two classes but did not spend adequate time to really digest a lot of what Augustine has written here.

[Colby]

What could I possibly say?

This is a masterful tome of Christian theology which meanders through philosophy, aesthetics, rhetoric, pagan theology, exegesis, hermeneutics, text criticism, church history, and much more. It is impossible to overstate its importance in church history—not to mention world history.

From the first book, there is a driving plot which works its way through world history, constantly resetting the timelines, adjusting them, plotting civilization on civilization. It is a work which takes learnedness and scripture seriously. Yet the consummation of all the work is XXII.30: the inexplicable bliss of eternal delight in God.

"And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
- T.S. Eliot

To have finished such a work is an accomplishment, a crown jewel of my seminary experience.

[Zack Clemmons]

I already believe in God. Augustine helps me believe in theology.

[Anthony Smitha]

Masterwork, but you must read it slowly

Take the time to work through the book. It’s excellent. Augustine was a smart dude, and this work reflects the depths of his knowledge and his love for his fellow men, but most of all for his desire for everyone to come to know and love God better.

The book is written for his time, but it is still relevant for today.

[Jon Coutts]

Finished Easter Sunday 2023. Books 16-18 are a slog, and one wishes for a longer Book 19, but it's easy to see why this has had such a lasting impact. I found allegations of Augustinian imperialism unwarranted, but his view of hell unconvincing.

[Peter Bradley]

Theology Matters - The City of God (Books 11 - 22) by Saint Augustine
Peter S Bradley
Sep 12, 2026
The City of God (Books 11 – 20) by St. Augustine




While reading the second half of The City of God, two features of the text occurred to me.

First, the book undoubtedly served as a source for Catholic doctrine. Something must have served the question-and-answer format of basic Christianity before Augustine, but he packs his text with so much theological and other material that it understandably served as a primary text for a millennium. It is a kind of precursor to the systematic theologies that emerged later.[1] This point is clearer in the second half of the City of God, where Augustine takes up topics ranging from the fall of the angels and the fall of man to the Incarnation, salvation, and damnation.

The second point is that there is a system. The system is history. The first 10 books of The City of God cover man’s secular history, namely Roman history and the Christian eruption into that history. Books 11 through 20 cover Augustine’s theory of man’s spiritual history from the fall of the angels to the Beatific vision and the eternal damnation of sinners.

Again, the theme of history becomes clear in the later parts of the book, which counterpoint Augustine’s tracing of Rome's history in Books 1 through 10. Clearly, the first part deals mostly with the Earthly City (subtracting the parts about the Church) and the second part deals mostly with the City of God (subtracting, obviously, the parts about the devil and the damned.)

In Book XI, Augustine announces his intent to discuss the formation of the two cities beginning at the level of the angels. One of the first questions he asks is: When were the angels created? Genesis does not mention their creation, but they are clearly present in Genesis; an angel is assigned to guard the entrance to the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve are evicted.

Augustine’s answer is that the reference to the creation of light (or possibly “heaven) on the first day signifies the creation of the angels. This seems like a strained reading, but Augustine justifies it on the ground that the angels are participants in the eternal light, which is itself the wisdom of God, and that they were created prior to the creation of the stars on the fourth day, according to Job 38:7 (LXX).

Augustine also addresses what God was doing before he created the world. His answer is that there was no time to do anything because time involves movement, and there was no movement when existence consisted of only the immutable God.

Augustine also discusses God's “divine simplicity.” This is a point worth watching. Divine simplicity is a key concept in Christian theology. Last night, I finished St. Anselm’s Monologium, written around 1077 AD, where divine simplicity is a core concept.

Augustine addresses the Trinity as a potential complicating factor for divine simplicity:

Now the Spirit is other than the Father and the Son, for it is neither the Father nor the Son. But I said “other,” not “something other,” because it is equally simple and is equally the immutable and co-eternal good. And this Trinity is one God, and the fact that it is a Trinity does not mean that it is not simple. For we do not call the nature of this good simple on the ground that there is in it only the Father, or only the Son, or only the Holy Spirit, nor do we call it simple on the ground that it is a Trinity in name only, without subsisting persons, as the Sabellian heretics supposed.[30] It is called simple, rather, because it is what it has, with the exception of what is said of one person in relation to another. For the Father obviously has the Son and yet is not himself the Son, and the Son has the Father and yet is not himself the Father. He is what he has, therefore, with regard to what is said of him in himself, not what is said of him in relation to another. Thus it is in himself that he is said to be living, because he has life, and he himself is that very life.

The reason why a nature is called simple, then, is that it has nothing that it can lose. Thus, the Trinity is simple because none of the Persons can be divided from each other. This is an easy solution to a convoluted problem.

Book XI also discusses the fall of the angels. Pride and self-deception were the reasons for the fall of Satan:

Instead, he refused to be subject to his creator, and, due to his pride, he rejoiced in his power as if it were his own private possession. As a result, he was both deceived and deceiving. For no one evades the power of the Almighty, and anyone who refuses to hold fast in devout submission to what truly is seeks, in his self-exalting pride, to simulate what is not.

Augustine also affirms that the fallen angels will not rejoin God’s angels.

This raises the question of how and why God created creatures that would fall. Augustine answers that such evil accentuates the good:

18. For God would never have created any human beings, let alone any angels, whose future evil he foreknew, if he had not known equally well how he would put them to use for the good and so adorn the course of the ages, like the most beautiful poem, with antitheses of a sort.[39] Antitheses, as they are called, are among the most elegant ornaments of literary style. In Latin they might be called oppositions or, more precisely, contrapositions, but we do not ordinarily use the term, even though the Latin language—and, indeed, all languages—employs these same ornaments of speech.

When did Satan fall? When God separated the light from darkness. (Gen 1:4-5.)

Book XII discusses the mystery of evil. An evil will is the efficient cause of an evil act, but there is “no efficient cause of an evil will for the evil will is itself not an effect but rather a defect.” Augustine was famous for defining evil as the absence of a good proper to a thing. A buttonhole is not an evil, but a tear in the sleeve is. Both are holes in cloth, but one is proper for a shirt.

Augustine then discusses the origin of mankind. He denies the idea of eternal recurrence because Christ died once for our sins. (Romans 6:9.) He also denies eternal recurrence because it is inconsistent with the doctrine of the eternal blessedness of the saints. The saints in heaven are happy, but if they knew that they would be returned to the world of suffering, they would not be happy nearly as much.

Augustine affirms the creation of the human race from Adam and Eve because it shows how God prizes “unity among many.”

Book XIII takes up the meaning of death and the status of the body. Death has four meanings: “the death of the soul, when God abandons the soul; the death of the body, when the soul abandons the body; the death of the whole person, soul and body; and the second or final death of eternal punishment. All of these deaths count as punishment for sin”.

Augustine discusses the death of saints, affirming “baptism of blood.”

Augustine argues against the philosophers who counted the separation of the soul from the body as a blessing. These philosophers believed the body weighed down the soul. However, even the Platonists agreed that the gods were content with their eternal bodies. Quoting Wisdom 9:15, Augustine argued that the “corruptible body weighs down the soul.” This turns into a discussion of the qualities of the resurrected body:

22. Thus, the bodies that the righteous will have in the resurrection will need no tree to protect them from dying of disease or of advanced old age, nor will they need any other bodily foods to ward off the distress of hunger and thirst. They will be endowed with the secure and wholly inviolable gift of immortality, and so they will not eat unless they wish to do so; that is, eating will be a possibility but not a necessity for them.

Book XIV continues Augustine’s focus on the body. The two cities are divided by the fact that one lives “according to the flesh,” seeking to indulge bodily desires. The other lives “according to the spirit” and makes God their end. The latter do not thereby become Stoics indifferent to pleasures of the body. The Stoic idea of passionlessness, or apatheia, should be rejected because it is inhuman. Christians ought to feel love and joy.

These disparate loves define the two cities:

Two Loves Have Made Two Cities 28. Two loves, then, have made two cities.[124] Love of self, even to the point of contempt for God, made the earthly city, and love of God, even to the point of contempt for self, made the heavenly city.

In Book XIV, Augustine engages in his famous discussion of sex before the Fall. At that time, Adam's reason perfectly controlled the lower members. Adam could will when he had an erection, and he would choose to have sex for the purpose of procreation. Passion would not overtake him like he was a character in a Romance or Porn flick.

Some have overegged this particular pudding by arguing that Augustine was prescribing the love life of robots. I don’t see that. Augustine does not say that Adam would not have enjoyed sex; rather, he says that Adam would not have been a slave to his sex drive.

This is the book where Augustine quirkily discusses various amazing physical abilities that people have. His argument is that since we know people can do amazing things with their body through training and self-control, the idea of controlling the sex drive is not that much of a stretch in a being with preternatural grace. I think it also gives Augustine a chance to show off what a raconteur he can be with this passage:

We know, too, that the natural abilities of some people are very different from those of others, and are remarkable for their very rarity. They can at will do things with their bodies that others cannot do at all, and that they can hardly believe when they hear about them.[120] There are people who can move their ears, either one at a time or both together. There are people who, without moving their head, can bring their whole scalp, the part covered with hair, down toward their forehead and pull it back again at will. There are people who can swallow an astonishing number and variety of objects and then, with a slight contraction of the diaphragm, bring up any object they choose in perfect condition, as if from a bag. Some people imitate and express the voices of birds and beasts and other human beings so perfectly that, unless they are seen, it is completely impossible to tell the difference. Some produce at will such melodic sounds from their backside, without any stench at all, that they appear to be singing from that part. I myself know a man who used to perspire at will, and some people are known to weep at will and shed a flood of tears.

My picture is of Augustine winking at people as he tells stories about the man who could fart like a bagpipe.

Books XV, XVI, and XVII trace biblical history from Adam through the flood, through David, to the birth of Christ. This involves detailed analysis of the biblical text. Anyone with a question about these texts should consult Augustine.

XVIII involves more history. In this book, Augustine attempts to coordinate biblical history with secular history. This is a harder task than it might appear since various histories ran in a hermetically sealed state for the most part. Obviously, there are points of overlap, such as Alexander’s invasion of the Near East, but there is a lot of time running between such synchronizing historical events.

Augustine also takes up one of my hobbyhorses, the authoritative status of the Septuagint (“LXX”). He affirms the canonical status of the deuterocanonical books:

After this, from the rebuilding of the Temple down to Aristobulus, it was not kings who ruled over the Jews but princes, and the record of their dates is not found in the Sacred Scriptures that are called canonical but in others, including the Books of the Maccabees. The Church counts these books as canonical—even though the Jews do not—because they tell of the extreme and miraculous sufferings of certain martyrs who, even before Christ came in the flesh, battled to the death for the sake of God’s law and endured the most severe and terrible evils.

Augustine wrote that the same spirit who informed the prophets also informed the LXX translators. He is not impressed by inconsistencies between the Hebrew text and the LXX finding ways to make them correspond. He writes:

Because I do not want to go on at length, however, I shall not demonstrate the point by citing the many cases in which the Septuagint supposedly deviates from the truth of the Hebrew text but is actually found, when properly understood, to be in full agreement with it. In my own small way, however, I follow in the footsteps of the apostles: they themselves cited prophetic testimonies from both the Hebrew and the Septuagint,[208] and I, too, think that we should make use of both authorities, for both are one and both are divine.

Augustine sums up the long historical sequence from Book XV through Book XVIII as follows:

Now, however, let us at last bring this book to a close. Up to this point, we have discussed and demonstrated, as far as seemed sufficient, the mortal course of the two cities, the heavenly and the earthly, which are mingled together from start to finish. One of them, the earthly city, has made for itself whatever false gods it wanted, creating them from anything at all, even from human beings, and serving them with sacrifices. The other, the heavenly city, which is on pilgrimage here on earth, does not make up false gods but is itself created by the true God and is itself his true sacrifice. Both alike make use of temporal goods, and both alike are afflicted by temporal evils.[288] But their temporal lives are directed by different faiths, different hopes, and different loves, until at last they are separated by the final judgment and each receives its own end, of which there is no end.

He is now ready to return to theology when he discusses the Final Things.

Book XIX turns to the idea that the Church is a pilgrim on Earth. As such, it needs social stability and must come to a modus vivendi with the states of the Earth. This accommodation is found through a recognition of the “common good.”

The two cities disagree about “happiness.” For Christians, true happiness or felicity is not found in this world since everything in this world will be taken away by fortune or death. (See Boethius.) Christians seek felicity in the next life.

In this discussion, Augustine turns to the issue of suicide, which he does not find to be a virtue. He thinks that it undermines the Stoic’s insistence that they deal with misfortune through patience.

Misery is inherent in this life. Augustine discusses the example of the judge, who, to discharge justice, must torture innocent witnesses in order not to kill an innocent defendant:

He does not count all these grievous evils as sins, for the wise judge does not do these things from any will to inflict harm but rather from the inescapable necessity of ignorance—but also, however, because human society demands it, due to the inescapable necessity of judging. All this certainly shows, therefore, the human misery of which I am speaking, although not any malice on the part of the wise man serving as judge. But, since it is due to the inescapable necessity of ignorance and the inescapable necessity of judging that he tortures the innocent or punishes the innocent, is it not enough for him that he is not counted guilty? Must he also be counted happy? How much more perceptive it would be, how much more worthy of a human being, for him to recognize the human misery laid bare by those necessities, to detest that misery’s grip on him, and, if he is devout in his wisdom, to cry out to God, Deliver me from my necessities (Ps 25:17)!

Augustine argues that man seeks peace. He then turns to political science. Cicero defined Republic as “the common good of a people.” A “people” is a “multitude joined together by common sense for what is right and a community of interest.” A “common sense for what is right” cannot be maintained without justice. Where there is no justice, there is no republic.

This idea necessarily implicates Christianity: “What sort of justice is it, then, that takes a person away from the true God and gives him over to demons?” The Romans served evil and impure demons. (See Ps 98:5) True justice is found elsewhere:

Thus, true justice is found where the one supreme God rules an obedient city, so that there is no sacrifice but to him alone, and where, in consequence, the soul rules the body in all who belong to that city and obey God, and reason faithfully rules the vices in lawful order. Consequently, just as a single just person lives by the faith that works through love,[92] so does the whole company and people of the just.

And:

In this life, therefore, justice is only present in each person when the person is obedient to God’s rule, when the mind rules the body, and when reason rules the vices, even when they fight against its rule by subduing or resisting them.

Book XX deals with the final judgment.

Augustine affirms his classic proposition: no good deed is done without God’s help, and no bad deed is done without God’s permission. People have an obligation to follow God’s commandments in order to conform themselves to the truth.

The balance of Book XX involves Augustine’s analysis of those biblical texts, starting with the New Testament and reading back through the Old Testament, that deal with the final judgment. In this part, he deals with what it means for the devil to be thrown into a pit and what the thousand years means:

The devil is bound, then, for the entire period covered by this book, that is, from the first coming of Christ to the end of the world, which will be his second coming.

And:

What the binding of the devil means, rather, is that he is not permitted to exert his full power of temptation, whether by force or by guile, to deceive people into his own party either by compelling them with violence or by duping them with illusion.

According to Augustine:

This binding of the devil not only took place at the time when the Church began to spread out beyond the land of Judea and into more and more nations; it is still in effect and will remain in effect until the end of the world, when he is to be released.

Entire Protestant sects stand or fall on these issues.

The devil will be released for three years and six months according to Revelation 3:6.

The thousand-year reign of Christ is the Church, which is the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of heaven.

Augustine acknowledges that this part of Christianity is not perspicacious. He writes:

Prophetic speech loves to ming

[Michael Kenan Baldwin]

I've been reading this over the past 8 months together slowly and discussing every couple of weeks with a friend. I took Thomas Merton's advice and read Books 11-22 first before returning to Books 1-10, and I think it was definitely the right decision for a first, slow read through. I had no idea of the breadth of subjects and topics that Augustine covers in this work, including biblical overview and commentary, political theory, theology of other religions and demonology, angelology, apologetics, death & martyrdom, moral philosophy, eschatology. It really is unsummarisable.

[Kat]

Finishing Books 11–22 of The City of God feels a bit like climbing a mountain that occasionally contains caves of hidden treasure, but has a lot of stuff only interesting to an historian.

The opening stretch of this second half is undeniably heavy going. Augustine turns his attention to the nature of God, time, eternity, and creation with such relentless thoroughness that even he seems to catch himself writing and he effectively admits, “I should probably stop before this looks like intellectual an showing off of his knowledge.”

Annoyingly in these books Augustine flattens a far more complex pagan religious landscape and morality into a single explanatory model. Pagan gods who may have begun as personifications of natural forces or abstract principles are ignored and treated as if they belong to the same category as historical rulers elevated to divine status (in fact he treats deified humans as the origin of nearly all gods). Still, his broader aim is to subordinate all pagan belief under a Christian historical framework, and this remains clear if sometimes a little unpersuasively argued.

in the final, eschatological books, Augustine defends against critics who don’t quite seem to understand the idea of omnipotence while also trying to give a Christian reader a vague notion of the afterlife. And so he ends up having to answer a multitude of objections, unimaginable to any apologetics dialogue in the 21st century. (“How can scattered ashes be reconstituted?” “What will bodies look like—fat, thin, complete?”) feel almost quaint today. Their very existence reflects a world in which belief in an all-powerful God was alien, and debate operated within a shared philosophical framework where an omnipotent god had as much validity as any other idea of what constitutes the nature of a god.

This makes parts of Augustine’s apologetic feel less urgent to a modern reader, even if they remain historically curious, because it’s simply not an argument anyone is having nowadays.

In spite of all this, his deeper insights still cut through, especially when he reframes the problem of evil, or when he explains divine immutability with the vivid illustration of the effects of the sun appearing harsh only to damaged eyes but delightful to healthy eyes. And in his treatment of the final judgment he grapples with something timeless: the scandal of a temporal world where the wicked prosper and the good suffer, which is to be resolved only in the final unveiling, when “the manifest wretchedness of the wicked and the manifest happiness of the good” will at last be made clear.

All in all, I actually found books 1-10 more interesting,l and enjoyable, but this is still worth reading. Especially if you’ve already read the first half as he does try to tie it all together.

[Kezscribe]

Augustine penned it as Rome was crumbling apart, yet his words have far-reaching implications. He doesn't merely defend Christianity; he exposes the constant battle at the centre of human existence. There are two cities: the City of Man, based on pride and ambition, and the City of God, where true peace can be found. This wasn't the politics I knew—petty, performative, and tedious. Augustine pushes us to look beyond it and question where our hearts truly reside. Am i truly seeking the City of God, or am I still clinging to Babylon's ruins?

[Tom Rogstad]

I read this for my theology reading group at my church. Since we were actually discussing an abridgement, I didn't read quite the whole thing but I intend to. It's a wonderful work in an incredible translation. (I have many other editions to compare it to.)

[Jacob]

Augustine is a little long-winded sometimes, but his insights into Scripture, theology, history, philosophy, psychology, and every other field of human inquiry are worth any amount of effort or time.

[Caleb Rolling]

Holy moly. There’s a good reason we’re still reading City of God. Truly epic.

[Josh Kannard]

Phenomenal. Giving thanks not to Augustine, but with him, to God. Amen. Amen.

[Linnea Kroeger]

Spent two and a half years reading this with friends. St. Augustine is the bomb.

[Lukas Stock]

Magisterial, and actually worthy of that description. It’s a challenge but reading through the entire work carefully is crucial for seeing what Augustine is doing. There is a lifetime of gold to be dug up in this work. Fantastic, and a true gift this translation is to the church.