57 pages • 1 hour read
Saint AugustineThe City of God
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 426A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Books 11-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2
Book 11 Summary
With Book 11, Augustine moves to Part 2 of City of God, in which he promises to trace out the histories of the earthly city and the city of God from their beginnings, following “the rise, the development, and the destined ends of the two cities” (430). He grounds his presentation on the premise that God is the creator of all things, as established both by the Bible and by the concurrence of many Greco-Roman philosophers. He contends for a philosophical view of the universe’s creation in which time and space were created together, such that one cannot speak of “time” before the universe nor of “space” beyond it.
In reviewing the biblical creation narrative of Genesis 1, Augustine begins with the creation of the angelic beings as implicit in the opening line of Genesis, which speaks of God creating the heavens. He argues that some of the angels fell away from God’s goodness by rebelling in the very beginning, and thus the roots of the earthly city begin with the rebellion of the fallen angels. This leads him to consider the causes of their rebellion, and if it implies that evil had a source in God’s good creation. Augustine finds such a position untenable, since evil is a privation of the good and thus cannot spring from the good.
Further, he asserts that evil arises as an act of free will, thus originating in the fallen angels’ freely-ordered actions: “Evil is contrary to nature […] The Devil, who was good as God created, became bad by his own choice” (448-49, emphasis added). Augustine closes the book with a reflection on the Trinity and the way that trinitarian theology has left an imprint on human nature, in the fact that we exist (reflecting God the Father, the ground of all being), that we know that we exist (reflecting the Son, the Word of God), and that we are happy that we exist (reflecting the Holy Spirit, the giver of joy).
Book 12 Summary
Augustine continues his reflection on theological and philosophical ideas related to the creation of the world, focusing in greater depth on the question of why evil exists. He argues that existence is a supreme good, being rooted in the fact that God simply is (i.e., he exists as the sole necessary being from which all other existences derive), and that evil, being a privation of the good, simply does not exist in an ontological sense. Thus evil cannot be rooted in God’s nature, but is instead attributable to the wrong choices made by angelic beings who fell away from God.
Augustine also deals with various theories concerning the age of the universe, rejecting the cyclical views of endless time that were common among some philosophers. He posits the apparent biblical chronology of a period of about 6000 years since the creation of humanity, while also suggesting that the precise length of time fades to irrelevance when compared to the vastness of God’s infinite existence. Augustine begins his examination of the creation of humanity, whom he views as a unique creature designed to reflect aspects both of angelic and earthly creation, describing human nature as “as a kind of mean between angels and beasts, so that if he submitted to his Creator […], he should pass over into the fellowship of the angels […]; but if he used his free will in arrogance and disobedience, and thus offended God, his Lord, he should live like the beasts” (502).
Book 13 Summary
Following his argument from Book 12, Augustine now considers other aspects of the creation of humanity as reflected in the stories of Genesis 1-3. Here Augustine takes the biblical penalty for humanity’s sin—death—and interprets it not only as physical mortality, but also as the introduction of a deformed spiritual condition. This deformed spiritual condition is now inherited as a natural consequence of human reproduction and, because it represents a fall from our former freedom to choose the good in communion with God, it binds us to a condition in which we are powerless to escape our own sinfulness. Augustine’s articulation of this theological insight, usually referred to as the doctrine of “original sin,” would become foundational in Western Christianity’s understanding of sin and salvation.
Augustine also considers a number of tangential issues concerning the topics of death and immortality, arguing that the punishment incurred by humanity includes both the death of the soul (in its loss of communion with God) and the death of the body (physical mortality), to be followed by what biblical tradition calls “the second death,” which refers to punishment for sin in the life to come. Augustine offers a long defense of the Christian idea of physical resurrection as part of the promise of salvation in Christ, a position in conflict with the Neoplatonic idea of a purely spiritual existence in the life to come. Using passages from the Bible, Augustine argues that the promise of an embodied existence in the life to come not only accords with what God has revealed, but with our created constitution as human beings.
Book 14 Summary
Having painted a gloomy portrait of the condition and destiny of humanity in its fallen, sinful state, Augustine now claims that God has offered a way of rescue by his grace. This divergence in the possible outcomes of human destiny—continuance in sin’s effects or redemption by God’s grace—results in the creation of two different societies throughout the world: the earthly city and the city of God.
Augustine then considers in more detail the composition of human nature, arguing along with the Platonic tradition that the emotions that characterize our inner lives stem not only from our bodily nature but from our souls as well. As such, emotional states interact with our wills, and thus by the use of our wills we can shape our reactions according to God’s standards. This leads to Augustine’s articulation of a principle that later became a famous maxim, “Love the sinner but hate the sin”: “[T]he man who lives by God’s standards […] should not hate the person because of the fault, nor should he love the fault because the person. He should hate the fault, but love the man” (556). Against the position of the Stoics, Augustine suggests that one’s goal ought not to be the quelling of emotional reactions, but rather of the right use of those emotions.
As Augustine had argued in the case of the fallen angels, he also argues that humanity’s fall into sin is not attributable to God, but to our own free choice. In answer to the question of how a will that was created by God to be good in nature could choose evil, Augustine suggests that this is due not only to the nature of the freedom we were granted, but also to the fact that humanity was created “out of nothing,” and so a fall into evil—which is itself a nothingness—is not contrary to human nature in the same way that it would be contrary to God’s eternal nature. Though the punishment of humanity’s sins strikes some as harsh, Augustine argues that the scope of the punishment fits the scope of the infinite good that humanity has rejected by its own choice.
Finally, Augustine deals with some miscellaneous concerns regarding sin and human nature, including his contention that sexuality and marriage are good gifts of God intended for procreation, but that in their rightly ordered state they would not have been subject to the passions of lust and shame.
Books 11-14 Analysis
Whereas Part 1 of City of God argues against the merits of pagan religion, Part 2 represents Augustine’s defense of Christianity, arranged as a side-by-side comparison of the earthly city with the city of God. The first four books of Part 2 represent the opening stages of that comparison, based on the biblical portrayal of the creation accounts.
While the idea of the city as a literary symbol has been sprinkled throughout City of God from the beginning, here Augustine treats it in its first real depth, by addressing the nature of the two “cities” that he proposes to study. The earthly city and the city of God are, in Augustine’s view, the societies made up of all those people throughout history who are either in the camp of those who remain in their sins or those who accept the free grace of God. Beyond all the other divisions of human civilization, there are no more fundamental categories than these two for Augustine: One is either a citizen of the earthly city or the city of God. The roots of both societies go back to the earliest moments of primeval history, when some angelic beings chose to rebel against God while others chose to remain faithful. Humanity’s citizenship was divided between the two cities when sin entered the human race, thus creating a dichotomy between those who remained in sin and those who returned to God.
One of the major themes of City of God, The Causes of Evil and Suffering, finds its first extensive treatment here. Augustine has already touched briefly on it in Book 1, but only to explore the reasons behind the suffering that attended the sack of Rome in 410 CE. In the first four books of Part 2, however, Augustine explores the issue of evil in significant depth. This is a necessary aspect of his defense of Christianity against paganism, because polytheism does not struggle with the philosophical problem of evil in the same way that monotheistic traditions do. In polytheistic systems, evil can be cast as a simple result of tensions and moral differences between the gods themselves. In a monotheistic system, however—especially one like Christianity, which proposes a God who is both supremely good and all-powerful—evil presents a difficult philosophical problem, because the necessity of its existence is unclear.
It appears at first glance like a God of the Christian sort should simply be able to do away with evil if he wanted, or to arrange his creation so evil never arose at all. In response, Augustine offers a two-tiered defense of Christianity relative to the causes of evil, first by suggesting that the premise of the objection is flawed because it regards evil as an ontological reality, when philosophy would suggest that it is not; and second, by attributing evil to the free choices of creatures rather than to the design of the Creator.
The theme of God’s Sovereign Plan in History is also present in these books. Augustine portrays the story of the two cities in the context of a comprehensive historical sweep, starting at the very beginning of time. Despite elements of rebellion and sin in the story, Augustine’s portrayal makes it clear that all of the events that happen remain firmly in God’s control. His suggestion that evil is attributable to the free choices of creatures rather than to God does not cast God’s sovereignty in doubt; as he will argue in upcoming sections of City of God, all of those free choices remain fixed in God’s complete foreknowledge and so remain subject to his sovereignty.
