Augustine of Hippo's 'City of God': A Philosophical Masterpiece

Kornelius Lumbanbatu: Condition is quite good. Could have been better, however.

United States on Dec 05, 2023

Nirmal: Happy to have this blessed work .It's a faith builder ☺️💞

India on Apr 13, 2023

Sascha Heß: Kein außerbiblischer Heiliger hat schöner geschrieben als der Hl. Augustinus. Üppiges Werk, das den gesamten(!) »Gottesstaat« (De civitate Dei) enthält.

Germany on Aug 27, 2022

Alisson Brandemarte Moreira: An irreplaceable classic. It's a huge book, but I'm sure it'll be worth reading it some day in the future.

Brazil on Feb 08, 2021

Amazon Customer: Actually I'm reading it alongside a translation of another language. I feel compelled to thank everyone worked on this masterpiece, from the translator(s) to the operator(s) monitored the print out of it. Without mentioning the other language or translation, let me tell you that this translation is very accurate, precise and you can tell if you have a chance to compare it to other ones that Marcus Dods, did not only translated it, but first he did very well absorbed the message of it. So very much I feel while reading his translation that he not only understands what the sentence or the paragraph or even the whole chapter is talking about, but rather does he feel what Saint Augustine wanted to say here. I'm so blessed to live this experience live, to see such big difference between different translations of the same great book. Great job Marcus Dods had done here. Thanks to Modern Liberary too for their great old-fashion 1993 hardcover copy. I do definitely recommend it.

Canada on Jul 10, 2020

Paul Krause: Augustine’s City of God is classic of Western literature, theology, philosophy, and cultural criticism. It is a work that, alone, is almost half of Aristotle’s surviving corpus (and Augustine’s surviving corpus is the largest corpus of any Western author, and there are plenty of works of Augustine’s that have been lost to us).

The City of God, as most know, was written in the aftermath of the Sack of Rome by Alaric and the Visigoths. This sent shock waves throughout the Roman Empire – hitting Christians and Pagans alike. What we often forget too is that, while Christianity had been made the official state religion of the Roman Empire by Emperor Theodosius, “Paganism” still outnumbered Roman Christianity. Part of Augustine’s response was to counsel Christians whose faith was shaken by the events and traumatic experiences. The other part was Augustine’s response to the pagan critics – ensuring that the City of God would stand as one of the most comprehensive, and systematic, works of cultural criticism ever penned by a human.

People in the English-speaking world, thanks to the Protestant Reformation, should re-read Augustine without the mediation of...

United States on Apr 01, 2018

R. S. Stanier: Augustine’s monumental work was written between 413 and 427AD. It was at a critical point in the Church’s history: Christianity was now the official religion of the Roman empire, but soon after Constantine’s conversion, things were going wrong for the Empire: Rome was sacked in 410.
Was the conversion to Christianity to blame?
City of God is in part Augustine’s response to this crisis, and requires him to tread a fine line. On the one hand, he wants to dismiss the argument that Christianity was bad for the empire, and that paganism should be encouraged again to bring back Rome’s glory days; on the other hand, he does not want to align the truth of the Christian faith with the success of an earthly empire.
What he does is to establish that there are two great cities: the earthly city, and the heavenly city: the latter is the City of God. The City of God is eternal in the sense that it will last forever, but is still now in the process of being populated. At the final judgement, those abiding in the city of God will be those raised at the last day; others will be sent to the fires of hell: and, for Augustine, this is not a metaphor, but a reality as Book 23 makes...

United Kingdom on Apr 20, 2017

john: "The necessity of shunning prolixity forbids my setting down all things." So writes St. Augustine in the "City of God" book 12, chapter 14.

The great saint - perhaps having long held back his answer to sundry pagan attacks - erupts in a volcano of words, and as much as any single theologian, very nearly has set down all things in defense of the Church.

The focus of the first part of the work (chapters 1 through 10) is primarily on responding to the claim that Christianity is to blame for the sack of Rome by Alaric in 410. He provides many examples of Rome being cursed before the spread of Christianity, and many examples of it being blessed after Christianity - not least of which the mercy shown by the Visigoths to Christians seeking asylum in churches throughout the city: nearly all were left unmolested, while pagan temples were toppled. St. Augustine also points out the inconsistencies and logical errors in pagan writers and philosophers like Porphyry, Cicero, Varro, Seneca, Lucan, and others.

In the second part of the work, St. Augustine puts forth his theology of two cities, the city of God and the earthly city (I don't believe Augustine ever uses the term...

United States on Jul 01, 2011