The City of God

In the first two major sections of Part 1 of City of God, Augustine focused on the historical and theological aspects of his argument against Roman paganism. Here, in the third major section, he moves to the philosophical aspects of the argument.

He continues his rhetorical strategy of choosing great writers of the past as his debate partners, now moving from Varro to Socrates, Plato, the Stoics, Apuleius, and Porphyry. Augustine’s engagement with the philosophical tradition is notable, because Christianity had exhibited divergent tendencies in this regard over its previous three centuries. Some of the early Christian writers tended to keep secular philosophy at arm’s length, as expressed in the famous quote from Tertullian, a third-century church father: “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” Others, however, like Origen and Clement of Alexandria, found engagement with philosophy to be fruitful and worthwhile, and some early Christians even considered Socrates and Plato to have been guided by God’s own wisdom.

Augustine’s contribution to this dialogue within Christianity is important, as it forged an openhanded but critical acceptance of philosophical dialogue within Christian theology. Augustine engages with the philosophers on their own terms but always assesses their ideas by comparison with the Christian tradition, critiquing them at times but also acknowledging when their intellectual systems offer ideas of value to the Christian. His synthesis of Neoplatonic thought as a conceptual assistant to Christian theology would assist the flowering of the medieval worldview, as represented in the later works of Christian philosophers like Boethius.

Augustine’s continued thematic focus in this section is on The Folly of Pagan Religion. The philosophical tradition in Greco-Roman culture was not purely secular; it was deeply entwined with religious thought. Philosophers saw religion as deeply interconnected with their discipline, since it touched on all three of the classic philosophical areas of metaphysics (the question of how things really are, which relates to the existence or nonexistence of the gods), epistemology (how we know what we know, which relates to the claims of divine revelation), and ethics (how we ought to live, which relates to the moral teachings of religious piety). As such, many thinkers in the Greco-Roman tradition embraced a philosophized form of paganism as a retreat from the excesses of “mythical theology” and “civil theology,” which Augustine had previously criticized. In this more philosophical brand of pagan theology, there was often an acknowledgement of a single, all-powerful Creator God who was supreme above all others. Despite this conclusion, however, most pagan philosophers did not find it necessary to forego the worship of lesser pagan gods. Although Augustine finds much to commend in pagan philosophy, particularly in the ideas of the Platonists, he critiques the philosophical version of Roman religion as not going far enough in forgoing the abandonment of the pagan gods.

The motif of virtue also appears again, since virtue was one of the most prominent areas of reflection in Greco-Roman philosophy. Whereas some philosophical schools saw the attainment of virtue as the highest good, Augustine views it as a necessary good, but not the highest good. Rather, the supreme good is eternal life in relationship with God, the source of all happiness, and virtue is what prepares us for that experience. Rather than blindly trying to use reason to curb the emotional passions, as the Stoics urge their followers to do, Augustine urges his readers to submit their emotional states to God, allowing God’s guidance to shape us toward ever greater virtue.