Augustine’s Confessions and City of God: A Brief Introduction
Augustine of Hippo (A.D. 354 – 430) stands as one of the greatest teachers in the history of Western liberal education. Among the patristics, he provided the most formal and thorough synthesis of classical philosophy and Christian theology. Augustine’s work shaped the intellectual foundations of the Medieval world, influencing its philosophy, theology, and education. Even in our own day, Augustine commands reverence among both Catholics and Protestants, and he is rightly acknowledged as an authoritative and exemplary author and scholar within liberal education. Augustine’s writings are voluminous, but two of his most famous works are Confessions (Confessiones) and City of God (De Civitate Dei). While these two works differ, they contribute to a unified theology, complementing one another through distinct perspectives and structures. What follows is a summary and comparison of the two works, intended to help students and teachers appreciate Augustine’s philosophical and theological method, and to introduce some of the key themes of his work.
Confessions
Likely the most famous of the two works, Confessions is Augustine’s spiritual autobiography. In it, he tells the story of his own life and his conversion to the Catholic faith. As Augustine sees it, however, his story is not primarily about him or his own actions. Rather, it reveals God’s actions and plan of salvation. The opening lines of Confessions form a near-chiastic poem reflecting on God’s entire plan from creation to redemption:
Great are you, O Lord, and exceedingly worthy of praise; your power is immense, and your wisdom beyond reckoning. And so we humans, who are a due part of your creation, long to praise you – we who carry our mortality about with us, carry the evidence of our sin and with it the proof that you thwart the proud. Yet these humans, due part of your creation as they are, still do long to praise you. You stir us so that praising you may bring us joy, because you have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is unquiet until it rests in you (1.1).
Augustine begins with the existence of God as Creator and worthy of worship, and then he shows the fall of mankind into sin and pride. Yet there is hope for mankind’s redemption by God’s grace. God has made us for rest in Him, and He will restore His creation so that we might again praise Him as we were made to. Confessions is Augustine’s account of that cosmic pattern at work in his own life – how he was made by God, fell into pride and sin and wandered from God, but was restored by God’s grace. It is the story of Augustine’s own restlessness and longing that was not satisfied until he found rest in Jesus Christ. It is ‘confession’ in the sense of confessing and admitting his sins and his wanderings, but also in the sense of confessing, proclaiming, and praising the truth that God has shown him. It is a story of departing from one’s spiritual homeland through fall into sin, but of a gracious return home – to God Himself by the gracious work of God Himself.
Confessions can be divided into three major sections. The first is Books 1 – 9, which contain most of the spiritual autobiography told through memories of Augustine’s life. He tells how he was born to a Christian mother and a pagan father, but left any faith he might have had as a child due to the company of bad friends and the immersive influence of a pagan education and culture. He pursued philosophy for nearly nineteen years, migrating through Manichaeism, Academic Skepticism, Neo-Platonism, and ultimately converting to Catholic Christianity.
The next section is Book 10, which stands as a transition point between the first part and the last part. Book 10 explores and reflects on the concept of Augustine’s own memory, since it is memory that made his reflections in Books 1 – 9 possible. He seeks the presence of God evidenced to his own mind through memory, which leads him to then focus on the existence and work of God prior to his own life, consciousness, and existence.
The last section of Confessions (Books 11 – 13) deals with the eternity of God, the existence of God as Trinity, and God’s eternal plan of creation and redemption. These themes are addressed through an in-depth commentary on the first chapters of Genesis. In a way, the last three books parallel the members of the Trinity. Book 11 points to God as the origin of all that is, which parallels Augustine’s argument that the Father is the source of divinity in the godhead. Book 12 points to God’s work in creation by His word, which parallels the Son, since He is the Word by whom God creates. Book 13 talks about the eternal fellowship within the Trinity that precedes our own creation and existence, and we were created to share in that fellowship. Since Augustine considers the Spirit as the bond of love binding the Trinity together in that eternal fellowship, this book parallels the Holy Spirit to an extent.
City of God
The City of God was written primarily as a response to the historical situation when Rome fell to the Visigoths in 410. Augustine responds to pagan criticisms of the Christian faith and outlines a Christian philosophy of God’s redemptive work in human history. He also seeks to reconcile Christianity with the Greco-Roman understanding of philosophy and history. Augustine articulates a cosmic vision based on the concept of two contrasting cities – the City of God and the City of Man. The work’s themes are best understood by outlining its major sections.
The first section of City of God is Books 1 – 10 in which Augustine is chiefly responding to pagan critics of Christianity. These critics argued that the rise of the Christian church was to blame for the decline and fall of Rome, either because the church diminished the favor of old gods, or because Christianity undermined the Roman people’s spirit and patriotism. In response to these charges, Augustine asserts that the pagan gods are false gods, and that there are no grounds for believing in or worshiping them. In this light, he maintains that Christianity did not lead to the fall of Rome.
The second half of the work (Books 11 – 22) outlines the Christian understanding of the two cities – the City of God and the City of Man. Augustine explains: “I classify the human race into two branches: the one consists of those who live by human standards, the other of those who live according to God’s will. I also call these two classes the two cities, speaking allegorically. By two cities I mean two societies of human beings, one of which is predestined to reign with God for all eternity, the other doomed to undergo eternal punishment with the Devil” (15.1). With this guiding framework in mind, Augustine traces the origin of the two cities in Books 11 – 22, the development of the two cities in Books 15 – 18, and the final ends of the two cities in Books 19 – 22.
Augustine writes:
We may speak of two cities, or communities, one consisting of the good, angels as well as men, and the other of the evil . . . We must believe that the difference had its origin in their wills and desires, the one sort persisting resolutely in that Good which is common to all – which for them is God Himself – and in his eternity, truth, and love, while the others were delighted rather with their own power, as though they themselves were their own Good (12.1).
Citizenship in these two rival cities is determined by objects of love – love of God for all that He is or love of self and other lesser goods as our supreme good (idolatry). The City of God originates in God’s act of creation, since all that God creates is good. The City of Man, however, originates when Satan falls away from God and leads corrupted angels and mankind to join in his rebellion.
Books 15 – 18 trace the development of the two cities. In these books, we see that all mankind is by nature born into the City of Man since Adam is our federal head: “and so it is that everyone, since he takes his origin from a condemned stock, is inevitably evil and carnal to begin with, by derivation from Adam; but if he is reborn into Christ, and makes progress, he will afterwards be good and spiritual” (15.1). We are born citizens of the City of Man, but by grace God is calling a people back to Himself to form the City of God and restore His creation. Presently, the City of God co-exists alongside the City of Man without visible distinction. The City of Man manifests in many different earthly regimes and political structures, and the City of God does not replace or dismantle these. The City of God is ‘hidden’ as it grows, since it is not a visible kingdom in the same way as the earthly kingdoms that are part of the City of Man. Thus, there is overlapping citizenship for believers – they are first and foremost citizens of the City of God, but they are also citizens of earthly kingdoms and communities. Christians must exist in both cities and serve both cities, though ultimately rendering their highest love to the City of God. Augustine consistently describes the cities as “interwoven, as it were, in this present transitory world, and mingled with one another” (11.1), often referring to the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares (Matthew 13) as the best representation of this reality. He also consistently describes the City of God as a community on pilgrimage because its true satisfaction, resting place, peace, and glory are not yet here on earth: “God’s City lives in this world’s city, as far as its human element is concerned; but it lives there as an alien sojourner” (18.1). The true sifting, sorting, and rewarding of the two cities will not come until the end of time.
Books 19 – 22 deal with the respective ends of the two cities. There will be a final resurrection of all people – the wicked and the righteous – and then God’s judgment will come. The City of Man – the Devil and all those who follow his example of sin and pride – will be punished eternally, whereas the City of God will enjoy God’s bliss in the new creation: “How great will be that felicity, where there will be no evil, where no good will be withheld, where there will be leisure for the praises of God, who will be all in all!” (22.30). The City of God will thus not experience its true realization and perfection until Christ’s return. The respective judgment and paradise of the City of Man and the City of God will be eternal and unending.
Comparison and Reflection
Finally, I want to briefly compare Confessions and City of God and reflect on their similarities and differences. At first glance, the two works appear quite different. Confessions is a personal, introspective, and devotional work – indeed, it is written as a prayer to God. On the other hand, City of God is an encyclopedic compendium dealing with a broad array of themes and topics, but most importantly casting an eternal, providential vision for the church and the relationship between the church and the temporal order. Nevertheless, there is a great deal of overlap between the themes and purpose of both works.
First, Confessions deals with Augustine’s journey away from God and God’s work to restore him by grace. City of God deals with the fall of mankind and creation into sin, but also God’s redemption of His creation by grace. Both works depict man’s falling away from God into sin and the return to God made possible by the grace of God in Christ. Both works also emphasize the nature of evil and idolatry. Evil is a corruption and perversion of the good, not an original created substance. In City of God, Augustine writes: “There is no such entity in nature as ‘evil’; ‘evil is merely a name for the privation of good” (11.22). In Confessions, he likewise writes, “Destruction is obviously harmful, yet it can do harm only by diminishing the good . . . Everything that exists is good, then; and so evil, the source of which I was seeking, cannot be a substance . . .” (7.18). Consequently, idolatry is a corruption of what we ought to love – it is loving a lesser good (most often ourselves) in place of the Supreme Good. In City of God, Augustine writes that “a man is self-complacent when he deserts that changeless Good in which, rather than in himself, he ought to have found his satisfaction” (14.13). In Confessions, when describing his own personal sins and idolatry, he reflects: “Sin gains entrance through these and similar good things when we turn to them with immoderate desire, since they are the lowest kind of good and we thereby turn away from the better and the higher: from you yourself, O Lord our God . . .” (2.10). Thus, when we love and pursue as our Highest Good things which were made to be lesser goods, we fall into sin and idolatry. Sin is self-harm, a scattering of who we are meant to be, and it exiles us from God and even ourselves.
Both Confessions and City of God emphasize the priority of God’s grace – He always acts first, and He acts graciously towards people who do not deserve it. Augustine witnessed this personally, as he details in Confessions: “Through [Jesus Christ] you sought us when we were not seeking you, but you sought us that we might begin to seek you” (11.4). In City of God, Augustine paints this picture on a grander scale for all of God’s work in redemptive history: “God makes both ‘vessels of wrath destined for dishonour’, and also ‘vessels of mercy designed for honour’, as if out of a single lump consigned to well-merited condemnation. To the former he gives their due, by way of punishment; on the latter he bestows the undeserved gift of grace . . . and [the human will] can also turn from evil to do good – but this can only be with the divine assistance” (15.21). Only by God’s grace can lost human beings return to God; apart from His grace, all will perish in blindness, corruption, and slavery to sin.
Finally, God’s grace restores the created nature and restores creation to its original design and purpose. In Confessions, Augustine traces God’s work of redemption in his own life, whereas in City of God, he reflects on God’s work to redeem the entire cosmos. Augustine prays in Confessions: “By continence the scattered elements of the self are collected and brought back into the unity from which we have slid away into dispersion; for anyone who loves something else along with you, but does not love it for your sake, loves you less” (10.40). God’s grace restored Augustine to the wholeness and rightly ordered loves for which he was made and without which he could not be satisfied. We were made to rest in God, and God’s plan of restoration brings us back to that rest and peace. In the close of his Confessions, Augustine prays that God would bring the promised rest: “Give us peace, Lord God, for you have given us all else; give us the peace that is repose, the peace of the Sabbath, and the peace that knows no evening” (13.50). Similarly, Augustine longs for God’s peace in City of God : “That will truly be the greatest of Sabbaths; a Sabbath that has no evening . . . But now restored by him and perfected by his greater grace we shall be still and at leisure for eternity, seeing that he is God, and being filled by him when he will be all in all” (22.30). At the present moment, we do not yet see this perfection of God’s redemption in us or in the church. This is why Augustine describes his own ongoing struggles with sin in Confessions and describes the church as a ‘mixed’ community in City of God. We await and long for our perfection and rest in God. Yet we have confident hope because we know that God cannot fail to complete the redemptive, gracious purpose of His eternal will.
References
Augustine. The Confessions. Translated by Maria Boulding, O.S.B.. Edited by David Vincent Meconi, S.J. Ignatius Critical Editions. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012.
Augustine. The City of God. Translated by Henry Bettenson. New York: Penguin Books, 1972.
