Augustine in His Own Words
On the City of God 319 ornaments" and that "just as antithesis lends beauty to literary style, so in the antitheses of history one finds a rhetoric not of words but of facts that give it beauty."16 The way Augustine pits the earthly city against the heavenly reminds me of those master photographers, like Ansel Adams, who prefer shooting in black-and-white. When such photographers balance light and dark with a discerning eye, they unveil to us the world's subtle shades of gray. Augustine's City of God is a similar study in black-and-white, an effort to capture and lay bare both the fine-grained textures and the broad contours of this world's grayness over against and within the frame of the dazzling light of God.
Background Texts
Catechizing Pagans
Around 403, Deogratias, a deacon from Carthage, wrote Augustine, seeking advice on what to say to pagans interested in joining the Church. Augustine responded with a minor masterpiece, On Catechizing Beginners (De catechizandis rudibus). He offered Deogratias advice on many matters and appended to the treatise two sample addresses illustrating what a catechist might say to a pagan inquirer. In one address, Augustine suggests that one survey the Bible by describing human history as a winding tale of two cities, Babylon and Jerusalem. From On Catechizing Beginners: (19.31) And so there are two cities, one of the wicked, the other of the saints, cities that existed from the beginnings of the human race and so on down to the end of the ages. Now they are mixed together physically, in terms of bodies, but are separate in terms of wills, and on Judgment Day, will be separated in body as well. All those human beings who are lovers of pride and of dominating worldly things with empty vanity and flashy arrogance and all those spirits who love such things and strive for glory by subjugating people are bound together as a single society. And even if they often fight one another over these things, still they will be tossed, by the weight of their desires, into the same depths, bound to one another by the similarity of the ways they live and the punishments they deserve. On the other hand, all those human beings and all those spirits, all who humbly search for God's glory, and not their own (Jn 7:18), and follow along after Him in piety, also belong to a single society. Still God is incredibly merciful and patient with
16. Civ. Dei 11.18 (CCL 48:337); my trans. ungodly human beings and gives them opportunity for repentance and correction (Rom 2:4). . . .
(20.36) And so through the many and varied signs of things to come—it would be too long to spell them out completely, things we now see fulfilled in the Church—the [Jewish] people were led forth into the Promised Land, where in the flux of history and flesh, they reigned in accord with their yearnings. Nevertheless, that earthly kingdom was an image of the spiritual kingdom. There Jerusalem was founded, that most famous city of God, which in its bondage served as a symbol of the free city which is called the heavenly Jerusalem (Heb 12:22)—the word "Jerusalem" is Hebrew and means "vision of peace." Its citizens comprise all people made holy—all who have lived, who live now, and who shall in the future—and all spirits made holy, whichever ones in the highest regions of heaven obey God with deep devotion and do not imitate the godless pride of the devil and his angels. The King of this City is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, who reigns over the highest angels, the Word who became flesh that He might rule as well over human beings, those who will reign together with Him in eternal peace. As a prefiguring of this King in the earthly kingdom of the people of Israel, there stood out especially King David, of whose seed, according to the flesh (Rom 1:3), our most true King, the Lord Jesus Christ, was to come, the One "who is above all things, God blessed through all ages" (Rom 9:5). Many things done in that Promised Land were symbolic of the future Christ and the Church, and these you will be able to learn about gradually from the holy books.
(21.37) Then, after several generations, there appeared another figure, another symbol, one very much at the heart of things. For that city [of Jerusalem] was captured, and a large part of it was led off into Babylon. Now just as Jerusalem is symbolic of the city and society of the saints, so Babylon is symbolic of the city and society of the wicked, because the name is said to mean "confusion." About these two cities, I spoke a little earlier, of the way they move down through the ages all mixed together, from the beginnings of the human race to the end of the ages, separated ultimately at the Last Judgment. Thus the Lord ordered, through Jeremiah, the prophet of that time, that the captive city of Jerusalem and its people be led off into Babylon in bondage (Jer 21:1–10). And there appeared some kings of Babylon, under whom the [Chosen People] were in bondage, kings who, struck by certain dazzling events due to the [Jewish] people's presence, came to recognize and worship (and order others to worship) the one true God, the founder of everything in creation. Also, the people were ordered both to pray for those who held them captive and to hope, within these kings' peace, for peace, that they may go about begetting children and building homes and planting gardens and vine-