32. Civ. Dei 11.1 (CCL 48:321–22); trans. Walsh and Monahan, FOTC 14:187–88.
On the City of God 329
(1) The expression "City of God," which I have been using, is justified by that Scripture whose divine authority puts it above the literature of all other people and brings under its sway every type of human genius—and that, not by some casual intellectual reaction, but by a disposition of Divine Providence. For in Scripture we read: "Glorious things are said of you, O city of God" (Ps 86:3); and in another Psalm: "Great is the Lord, and exceedingly to be praised in the city of our God, in His holy mountain, increasing the joy of the whole earth"; and a little later in the same Psalm: "As we have heard, so have we seen, in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God: God has founded it forever" (Ps 47:2, 3, 9); and in another text: "The stream of the river makes the city of God joyful: the most High has sanctified his own tabernacle. God is in its midst; it shall not be moved" (Ps 45:5–6). Through these and similar passages too numerous to quote, we learn of the existence of a City of God whose Founder has inspired us with a love and longing to become its citizens. The inhabitants of the earthly city who prefer their own gods to the Founder of the holy City do not realize that He is the God of gods— though not, of course, of those false, wicked, and proud gods who, because they have been deprived of that unchangeable light which was meant for all, are reduced to a pitiful power and, therefore, are eager for some sort of influence and demand divine honors from their deluded subjects. He is the God of those reverent and holy "gods" who prefer to obey and worship the one God rather than to have many others obeying and worshiping them.31 In the ten preceding books, I have done my best, with the help of our Lord and King, to refute the enemies of this City. Now, however, realizing what is expected of me and recalling what I promised, I shall begin to discuss, as well as I can, the origin, history, and destiny of the respective cities, earthly and heavenly, which, as I have said, are at present inextricably intermingled, one with the other. First, I shall explain how these two cities originated when the angels took opposing sides.32
31. "Those reverent and holy 'gods' . . .": Augustine is emphasizing that obedience makes souls holy and thus god-like. This may seem an odd locution, but it is crucial both exegetically and theologically. In terms of exegesis, Augustine is conscious of and playing on a network of scripture texts that he discusses more elsewhere. Notable is Ps 81:6 (LXX): "I said, 'You are Gods' " (Dixi, dii estis), which Jesus, in Jn 10:34, cites and interprets favorably to mean: "[Scripture] calls them gods to whom the word of God came . . ." These (and a whole host of other texts) would serve as the theological foundation for the classic Orthodox doctrine of deification. On this, see Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition, OECS (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). Augustine himself had, over the course of his career, wrestled with these issues and formulated his own distinctive brand. On this, see Gerald Bonner, "Augustine's Concept of Deification," Journal of Theological Studies 87 (1986): 369–86, reprinted in Church and Faith in the Patristic Tradition: Augustine, Pelagianism, and Early Christian Northumbria (London: Variorum, 1996).
32. Civ. Dei 11.1 (CCL 48:321–22); trans. Walsh and Monahan, FOTC 14:187–88.
The Two Cities in Human History
In Books 11 and 12, Augustine explores the foreshadowing of the two cities in the fall of the angels. In Book 14 he discusses the creation of the world and of Adam and Eve as well as their Fall and its dire consequences for human history. In Book 15, he turns at last to human history, and here gives his classic exposition of the "two cities" theme. From On the City of God, Book 15:
(1) Actually, I think I have said enough on the really great and difficult problems concerning the origin of the world, the soul, and the human race. I divide humanity into two orders. On the one side are those who live according to humankind; on the other, those who live according to God. And I have said that in a deeper sense we may speak of two cities or two human societies, the destiny of the one being an eternal kingdom under God while the doom of the other is eternal punishment along with the devil. Of the final consummation of the two cities, I shall have to speak later. Of the cities' origins in the angels (whose number we do not know) and then in the first two human beings, I have already spoken. For the moment, therefore, I must deal with the course of the history of the two cities from the time when children were born to the first couple until the day when human beings shall beget no more. By the course of their history, as distinguished from their original cause and their final consummation, I mean the whole time of world history in which human beings are born and take the place of those who die and depart.
Now the firstborn of the two parents of the human race was Cain. He belonged to the human city. The next born was Abel, and he was of the City of God. Notice here a parallel between the individual and the larger whole. We all experience as individuals what the Apostle says: "It is not the spiritual that comes first, but the physical, and then the spiritual" (1 Cor 15:46). The fact is that every individual springs from a condemned stock and, because of Adam, must be first evil and carnal, only later to become good and spiritual by the process of rebirth in Christ. So too with the human race as a whole: As soon as human birth and death began the historical course of the two cities, the first to be born was a citizen of this world, and only later came the one who was an alien in the human city but at home in the City of God, one predestined by grace and elected by grace. By grace an alien on earth, by grace he was a citizen of heaven. In and of himself, he sprang from the common clay which was totally under condemnation from the beginning, but which God held in His hands like a potter, to borrow the metaphor which the Apostle so wisely and deliberately uses.33 For God could make "from the same mass one
33. "Like a potter": This imagery from Rom 9 would figure prominently in Augustine's articulation of his views on predestination. See Simpl. 1.2.20; nat. et gr. 5.5; ep. 190.3.12; for the texts, see Chapter 10.