Of the two orders of the human race, going forward from the beginning towards their different ends

Many opinions have been held, and many things said and written, of the felicity of Paradise: of Paradise itself, the life there of the first human beings, and their sin and its punishment. In previous books, I too have dealt with these things, speaking either according to what I have read in the Holy Scriptures, or according to my own inferences from them consistent with their authority. If a more detailed treatment were to be sought, this would give rise to a great number and variety of arguments requiring more volumes than we here have either need or time for. I do not have time to dwell on all the questions which may be raised by idle and pedantic persons who are more ready to ask questions than capable of understanding the answers.

I think, however, that I have now dealt sufficiently with the great and most difficult questions concerning the beginning of the world and of the soul and of the human race itself. I divide the human race into two orders. The one consists of those who live according to man, and the other of those who live according to God. Speaking allegorically, I also call these two orders two Cities: that is, two societies of men, one of which is predestined to reign in eternity with God, and the other of which will undergo eternal punishment with the devil.

Of the need to discuss the natural theology with those philosophers who are more distinguished in knowledge than the rest

We now have need of a far greater effort of mind than was necessary in solving and explaining the questions raised in our previous books; for it is not with ordinary men that we are now to discuss the theology which the Romans call natural. This is unlike both the mythical theology and the civil – that is, the theatrical theology and the urban, the one of which displays the crimes of the gods, while the other demonstrates their still more criminal desires. Thus, it is with the philosophers that we must here have converse, whose very name, if it is translated into Latin, attests to their love of wisdom.

Moreover, if God, by Whom all things were made, is wisdom, as the divine authority and truth have shown, then the true philosopher is a lover of God. But the thing itself whose name this is does not reside in all who glory in that name; for it does not follow that those who are called philosophers are lovers of true wisdom. Clearly, then, we must select from all those whose written opinions we have been able to study those with whom this question may be not unworthily discussed. For I have not undertaken this work in order to refute the vain opinions of all the philosophers, but only those whose opinions have to do with theology (which Greek word we understand to signify reason or discourse concerning divinity); and not, indeed, all of those.

This translation has been made from the critical edition of B. Dombart and A. Kalb, published in the Corpus Christianorum series (2 vols., Turnhout, 1955). Despite numerous – and inevitable – misprints, this is the best available edition. I have also from time to time consulted the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum edition of E. Hoffmann (2 vols., Vienna, 1899–1900). In view of the great length of the text, and in keeping with the general principles of the series of which this translation is a part, footnotes have been kept to a minimum. For very extensive annotation, the reader is referred to the edition of J. E. C. Welldon (see Bibliographical Note). No abbreviations have been used which are not standard or self-explanatory.

Of the fall of the first human beings, through which mortality was incurred

Now that we have dealt with the most difficult questions concerning the origin of our world and the beginning of the human race, the proper order of the discussion that we have here undertaken requires that we next discuss the fall of the first man – or, rather, of the first human beings – and the origin and propagation of human death. For God did not make men like the angels: that is, in such a way that, even if they sinned, they could not by any means die. Rather, if they discharged the duty of obedience, the reward of an angelic immortality and a blessed eternity was to follow without the intervention of death; but if they disobeyed, they were to be most justly punished with the sentence of death. But of this also we have already spoken in the preceding book.

Of that death which can befall the soul even though it is to live for ever, and of that to which the body is subject

I see, however, that I must speak somewhat more carefully of the kind of death with which we are here concerned. For although the human soul is truly said to be immortal, it nonetheless also has a certain kind of death of its own. The soul is called immortal, then, because, at least to some extent, it never ceases to live and feel; whereas the body is called mortal because it can be deprived of all life, and cannot, of itself, live at all.

The point reached in the foregoing argument, and what is left of the question to be discussed

Some have held the opinion that there are both good and bad gods. Others, thinking better of the gods, have ascribed so much honour and praise to them that they have not dared to believe that any god is bad. But those who have said that some gods are good and some bad have included the demons under the name ‘gods’; and sometimes, though more rarely, they have called the gods demons. Indeed, they have pointed out that Jupiter himself, whom they wish to say is the king and prince of the rest of the gods, is called a demon by Homer.

But those who assert that all the gods are good, and that they are far superior to those men who are deemed to be good, are with good reason troubled by the deeds of the demons. They cannot deny them, nor can they attribute them to the gods, who they say are all good; and so they are compelled to make a distinction between gods and demons. Thus, whatever rightly displeases them in the depraved deeds of occult spirits, and in the desires through which they manifest their power, they believe to be due to demons, not gods. They believe also that, because no god has dealings with mankind, these same demons are appointed as mediators between men and the gods, to carry our prayers to them and to bring their answers back.

Preface

I am here endeavouring most diligently to uproot and extirpate depraved and ancient opinions which the long-continued error of the human race has implanted deeply and tenaciously in the dark places of the soul; for these opinions are hostile to the truth of godliness. In performing this task, my own small ability is aided by the co-operation of the grace of the true God. Those whose intellects are nimbler and superior, for whom the previous books are sufficient – indeed, more than sufficient – must bear with me patiently and equably for the sake of others, and not deem superfluous what they now feel is not necessary for themselves. For we are here proclaiming a matter of the very first importance: namely, that the true and truly holy Divinity, even though He furnishes us with the help necessary for the frail life that we live now, should nonetheless be sought and worshipped not for the transitory vapour of this mortal life, but for the sake of the blessed life to come, which is nothing less than eternal.

Whether, since it is clear that deity is not to be found in the civil theology, we are to believe that it is to be found among the select gods

This Divinity, or, as we may call it, Deity (for this is a word which our Christian authors do not hesitate to use in order to render more accurately the Greek word theotes) – this Divinity or Deity does not exist in the civil theology as described by Marcus Varro in sixteen books.

Of the age of the prophets

We have learned that, in keeping with the promises made to him by God, it was from the seed of Abraham that the Israelite nation took its origin according to the flesh, while all nations take their origin from him according to faith; and the progress of the City of God through the ages will show how these promises are being fulfilled. Since, therefore, the previous book dealt with the period down to the end of David's reign, we shall now touch on other events which followed that reign, in so far as seems sufficient for the work that we have undertaken.

We come now, therefore, to the period extending from when the holy Samuel began to prophesy, down to the time when the people of Israel were led away captive into Babylon, and then to the point, seventy years later, when, after the return of the Israelites, the house of God was restored according to the prophecy of the holy Jeremiah. The whole of this time is the age of the prophets. We can, of course, without impropriety give the name of prophet to Noah himself, in whose days the whole earth was destroyed by the Flood; and to others also, both before and after him, down to the time when there began to be kings among the people of God.

That all men would have been plunged into an everlasting second death by the sin of the first man, had not God's grace redeemed many

As I have already said in the preceding books, God chose to create the human race from one single man. His purpose in doing this was not only that the human race should be united in fellowship by a natural likeness, but also that men should be bound together by kinship in the unity of concord, linked by the bond of peace. And the individual members of this race would not have been subject to death, had not the first two – one of whom was created from no one, and the other from him – merited it by their disobedience. So great was the sin of those two that human nature was changed by it for the worse; and so bondage to sin and the necessity of death were transmitted to their posterity.

Now the sway of the kingdom of death over men was so complete that all would have been driven headlong, as their due punishment, into that second death to which there is no end, had not some of them been redeemed by the unmerited grace of God. Thus it is that, though there are a great many nations throughout the world, living according to different rites and customs, and distinguished by many different forms of language, arms and dress, there nonetheless exist only two orders, as we may call them, of human society; and, following our Scriptures, we may rightly speak of these as two cities.

Of those adversities which are the only kind of evils that the wicked fear, yet which the world always suffered while it worshipped the gods

Enough has now been said, I suppose, of those moral and spiritual evils which are especially to be shunned, to show that the false gods of the Romans did nothing to help the people who worshipped them to avoid oppression by the weight of such ills. On the contrary, they caused them to be oppressed by them in ever greater measure. Now, I see, I must speak of the only kind of evils which our adversaries are unwilling to endure: that is, famine, disease, war, pillage, captivity, slaughter and the similar things which we have already mentioned in the first book. For evil men regard as evils only those things which do not make men evil. They do not blush to praise good things yet to remain evil themselves even among the good things that they praise. It vexes them more to have a bad house than a bad life, as if the greatest good for a man were to have everything good but himself.

Even when the Romans worshipped them freely, however, their gods did not prevent the occurrence of those material ills which are all that they dread. For at various times and in different places before the advent of our Redeemer, the human race was consumed by innumerable and, in not a few cases, incredible disasters.

Of the limit which must be set to necessary refutation

With the weakness of understanding common to all mankind, men everywhere presume to resist the clear evidence of truth. If they were to submit that weakness to wholesome doctrine as to a medicine, it would, with divine aid, be healed by the intercession of faith and godliness. Then, men of right understanding would have no need to confute each and every error of vain opinion by engaging in lengthy discussion. They would need merely to express their understanding in words of sufficient clarity. As it is, however, the souls of the foolish suffer ever more severely, and ever more abominably, from this malady. Thus, even after the debt of truth has been paid as fully as one man can to another, they still defend their own unreasonable beliefs as though they were the very stuff of truth. They do this either because they are too blind to discern what is plain, or because they are entirely obstinate in their resolve not to accept even what they do discern. Often, therefore, there arises a need to speak at great length even of matters which are already clear. It is as though we were presenting them not for the inspection of men who will look at them, but as it were for an examination by touch by men whose eyes are closed.

Of the events down to the time of the Saviour, as discussed in the previous seventeen books

I promised that, with the help of God's grace, I would first refute the enemies of the City of God, who favour their own gods above Christ, the founder of that City, and cruelly envy the Christians with a hatred pernicious above all to themselves; and this I did in the first ten books. Next, I undertook to write of the origin, progress and proper ends of the two cities, one of which, the City of God, dwells in the other, the city of this world, as far as the race of men is concerned, but as a pilgrim. But the promise to which I have just referred was threefold; and in the four books following the tenth I gave a digest of the origin of both these cities. Then, in one book, which was the fifteenth of this work, I dealt with their progress from the first man down to the Flood; and, next, our narrative pursued the course of the two cities down to the time of Abraham. It seems, however, that, from father Abraham down to the time of the kings of Israel, where we brought the sixteenth book to an end, and from then down to the coming of the Saviour in the flesh, which we reached at the end of the seventeenth book, my pen has dealt only with the City of God.

That, according to Varro, the various opinions concerning the Supreme Good might give rise to 288 different philosophical sects

I see that I must next discuss the proper ends of these two cities, the earthly and the Heavenly. First, then, let me expound, as fully as the plan of this work permits, the arguments advanced by mortals in their efforts to create happiness for themselves in the midst of the unhappiness of this life. I shall do this in order to make clear the difference between their vain beliefs and the hope which God gives us: a hope which will be fulfilled in the true blessedness which He will bestow upon us. And I shall do it not only by calling upon divine authority, but also, for the sake of unbelievers, by making as much use of reason as possible.

Now the philosophers have devised a great multitude of different arguments concerning the supreme ends of good and evil. They have devoted the greatest possible attention to this question in the attempt to discover what makes a man happy. For our Final Good is that for the sake of which other things are to be desired, while it is itself to be desired for its own sake; and the Final Evil is that for which other things are to be avoided, while it is itself to be avoided on its own account.

Preface

It seems to me, then, that, in the five preceding books, I have now argued sufficiently against those who believe that many false gods are to be worshipped for the sake of this mortal life and earthly things. They believe that they are to be worshipped by means of that ritual and service which the Greeks call latreia, and which is due only to the one true God. But Christian truth has shown these gods to be either useless images or unclean spirits and malignant demons: created beings, at any rate, and not the Creator.

But who does not know that neither these five books, nor any other number whatsoever, can be enough to overcome the great stupidity and obstinacy of our adversaries? For it is esteemed the glory of vanity to concede nothing to the force of truth even when he who is dominated by so gross a fault perishes thereby. The disease remains unconquered despite all the industry of the physician, for the patient himself is incurable. There are, however, some who understand and carefully ponder what they read without any – or at least without any great and excessive degree – of the obstinacy of long-held error. These will be more ready to judge that I have done more than was required in the five books now completed than to think that I have discussed the question less thoroughly than necessity demanded.

That the Platonists themselves assert that only the one God can confer blessedness, whether upon angels or men. We must, however, ask whether the spirits who they believe are to be worshipped for the sake of such blessedness require sacrifices to be offered only to the one God or to themselves also

It is the settled opinion of anyone who is in any way capable of using reason that all men wish to be blessed. But whenever men in their weakness ask who is blessed or what makes them so, they raise a great host of controversies upon which the philosophers have exhausted their efforts and spent their leisure. It would take too long, and it is not here necessary, to review such controversies. For the reader will recall what we said in the eighth book, when choosing those philosophers with whom we might discuss the blessed life which is to come after death. There, we asked whether this is to be achieved by paying divine honours to the one true God Who is the Maker of all gods, or by worshipping many. The reader will not expect us to repeat the same arguments here; and, if he has forgotten them, he can in any case read them again in order to refresh his memory.

God is always judging; but it is reasonable to confine our attention in this book to His last judgment

As far as He will grant me power to do so, I shall now speak of the day of God's final judgment and affirm it against the ungodly and the unbelieving. I must begin by laying down, as the foundation of the building, as it were, the evidence of Divine Scripture. Those who do not wish to believe such evidence endeavour to overturn it by means of a false and fallacious process of human hair-splitting. They either contend that what is put forward as evidence from the Holy Scriptures has some other meaning, or they simply deny that it is divinely inspired. But I believe that no mortal man who understands these statements as they were uttered and believes that they were spoken by the supreme and true God through the agency of holy souls will fail to yield and consent to them, whether he openly acknowledges this or not; although it may be, of course, that he is ashamed or afraid to do so because of some fault. It may even be, indeed, that, with a perversity closely allied to madness, he strives with all his might to defend what he knows or believes to be false against what he knows or believes to be true.

St Augustine

Augustine was born at Thagaste in the Roman province of Africa on 13 November 354, to parents of senatorial rank. His mother, Monica, was a Christian; his father Patricius was not, although he was received into the Church shortly before his death. Augustine was brought up as a Christian catechumen; as was commonly the case in the fourth century, however, he was not baptised as a child. His childhood seems to have been full of unhappy experiences, especially in regard to his education; but he writes of his mother with great affection, and is grieved by the memory of the pain which his youthful lapses caused her. In 370, he went to Carthage to study rhetoric. There, he lost touch with Christianity and acquired a mistress, who bore him a son called Adeodatus. As everyone knows, he regards himself as having lived a deplorable life as a young man, although he does not seem to have done much that we should now regard as very shocking. He read Cicero's dialogue called Hortensius (now lost), an exhortation to philosophy which fired his enthusiasm for learning; he was attracted successively to Manichaeism, Scepticism and Neoplatonism; he greatly admired the Enneads of Plotinus. Having taught for some years at Thagaste, Carthage and Rome, he accepted a position as municipal professor of rhetoric at Milan in 384. At Milan, he came under the influence of St Ambrose the bishop, and two Christian friends, Simplicianus and Pontitianus.