This is my first reading of Augustine's City of God, and to try to get a little more of it, I'm going to try blogging a summary and any thoughts I might have for each book. Book I starts off curiously, with Augustine sarcastically pointing out the failure of the Roman gods to save Rome from the recent "catastrophe" of invasion while contrasting the fact that even non-Christian Romans were spared in the Christian basilicas. Why start here?
Augustine is obliquely setting up the central tension of his argument through a classic philosophical question: why do bad things happen to good people (and vice versa)? Why did God shelter Romans who falsely claimed in His name while allowing some Christians to be tortured, raped, or killed? What greater purpose was served by the sack of Rome? Believing in the providence of God, he sees a variety of reasons God may afflict the righteous or show mercy to unbelievers, some more convincing than others, but final explanations are not really the heart of the matter here. The primary question (set up in I.8) is "What use is made of the things thought to be blessings, and of the things reputed evil?" What is the telos of blessings and disasters? This question is worth asking whether we are seeking the end intended by God in His ineffable plan, or merely the best way to interpret and learn from our perception of a situation.
These ultimate ends are crucial to search out, as they orient us on our paths through life. Augustine turns to an examination of Christian concerns: Is burial essential? If not, is it worthwhile? Is one's chastity violated by rape? Is suicide ever justified in the face of others' sin (or one's own)? Here, he is constantly pointing his readers to find their ultimate end in God and the eternal Christian hope. God is concerned with the things of this world, our lives, our struggles, our bodies. Burial, for instance, is a practice worthy of considered thought, because "[a] man's body is no mere adornment, or external convenience; it belongs to his very nature as a man. (I.13)" However, this mortal life is not our chief end; in every beloved detail, it points to something more. God "is concerned with the bodies of the dead, so as to promote faith in the resurrection." Through temporal trials, we should come to be aware of our immoderate love of the things of this world, be convicted of our sin or humbled by our dependence on Heaven, and reorder our hearts towards a greater hope: "what is to be loved is the incorruptible good. (I.10)"
But these trials have not had this effect on the Roman pagans; their reaction to the sack of Rome is to blame the Christians. Even those who were saved by claiming sanctuary in the name of Christ fail to see His saving power at work. In I.30, Augustine exposes the true motivation here: Rome is a decadent society of hedonists, longing to exploit their material prosperity in cheap pleasures without the scolding eye of the Christians looking on. The pagans use the goods of this world for the ends of this world, temporal and fleeting. Their vices were not corrected or mitigated by their recent trials (I.33), and their short-sighted vision allows the pagan spirits to tempt them into deeper and deeper vice (I.32).
And yet, God allowed many Romans to live, some sheltered dishonestly within his own temples. Why? Augustine writes that the Church must extend sanctuary protection even to those hostile to her, for "[she] must bear in mind that among these very enemies are hidden her future citizens (I.35)." Moreover, many claiming Christian allegiance, themselves participants in the sacraments, are not true members of the Church. "In truth, those two cities are interwoven and intermixed in this era, and await separation at the last judgement. (I.35)"
How are we to discern between the two cities? If their intermingled tension is such that we cannot, how should we best orient our paths toward the Heavenly one? What role do the gods of this world play in distracting us from right paths, and how can we trust that the one true and living God is working in the midst of calamity?
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