[.ca] City of God (ISBN 0385029101)

From Amazon.com:
Augustine's City of God, a monumental work of religious lore, philosophy, and history, was written as a kind of literary tombstone for Roman culture. After the sack of Rome, Augustine wrote this book to anatomize the corruption of Romans' pursuit of earthly pleasures: "grasping for praise, open-handed with their money; honest in the pursuit of wealth, they wanted to hoard glory." Augustine contrasts his condemnation of Rome with an exaltation of Christian culture. The glory that Rome failed to attain will only be realized by citizens of the City of God, the Heavenly Jerusalem foreseen in Revelation. Because City of God was written for men of classical learning--custodians of the culture Augustine sought to condemn--it is thick with Ciceronian circumlocutions, and makes many stark contrasts between "Your Virgil" and "Our Scriptures." Even if Augustine's prose strikes modern ears as a bit bombastic, and if his polarized Christian/pagan world is more binary than the one we live in today, his arguments against utopianism and his defense of the richness of Christian culture remain useful and strong. City of God is, as its final words proclaim itself to be, "a giant of a book." --Michael Joseph Gross

A fair alternative for casual study and reading:
This abridged version of St. Augustine's work is great for casual readers who are looking to brush up on their classics or, as in my case, for students who either don't have time to read and decipher the text in its entirety or need help doing so. If you want to truly study "The City of God," you should probably stick with the Modern Library edition (ISBN 0679783199) which provides better explanatory footnotes, one sentence chapter summaries, a collection of commentaries, and a much more comprehensive subject index. This Image abridged version, however, benefits from simpler and more fluid prose. After reading a chapter of the Modern Library edition, I often found myself referring back to this edition to reinforce and/or clarify what I had just read. I also appreciated the better biblical footnotes found in this version. Certainly the existing chapters are condensed and those that the editors have omitted are given brief summaries. Overall, this edition does not take away the essence of Augustine's original but it does make it slightly more digestible to the average reader.

The foundations of Christianity:
Saint Augustine (354 - 430 AD), was born at a time when the Roman Empire was in its nadir, a situation quite antipodal to the heydays of the glorious times of the philosopher emperor Julius Caesar and a few others that, for the glory of Rome, spread the wings of the Roman conquest to the borders of almost all the civilized world, from Britain in the West to the occidental limits of the Persian Empire in the East. The barbarians hordes were already knocking at the gates of Rome and many other important cities and eventually got there invadind Rome trough the auspices of the Germanic barbarian Alaric, who, along with Atila the Hun, was one of the cruelest of his kind. The "Civitatis Dei" was written a few years after the first sack of Rome, a thrilling background to and the starting point of many of Saint Augustine ideas concerning God's attitude toward the city and its citizens. Despite the impending fall of the Western Empire, Christianism was steadily gaining ground as the official religion vis-à-vis Paganinsm, which began to suffer all the burden of (unofficial) persecuted by some Roman emperors. But Paganinsm still had strong adherents in many important places, specially in the Senate, and the purpose of Saint Augustine was to counterpoise the ascending fortunes of Christianity. Augustine, born in the north of Africa in the city of Hippo, was one of the most important theoreticians of Christian doctrine of all times, a great thinker in his own right, who could be compared to great Catholic thinkers as Saint Thomas Aquina and Saint Paul, being one of the true founding fathers of the Catholic tradition and religion along with the Gospel four Evangelists. His written output is impressive, even outstanding, both from the point of view of its quantity as from the point of view of its inner quality. His most important works, written in Latin as usual at the time, are "The City of God" (Civitatis Dei) and "Confessions", the former an impressive book of 1,100+ pages of teachings concerning various aspects of the lives of Christians and pagans in the V century he lived. The book's lenght notwithstanding, it is a very pleasant and easy reading, not losing the elegance it should have in Latin, with all the quotations necessary for the full understanding concerning some allusion of Augustine to the recent or remote history of Rome, ROman and Greek mythology and philosophical citations from authors renowned at the time but almost unknown today. A good introduction to the life and work of Saint Augustine is also provided. TO sum it up, the book is a very good one and an essential reading to anyone interested in the importance of the philosophical thinking before the Middle Ages, most certainly influenced by Plato instead of Aristotle. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Re translation of COG:
Thomas Merton did many great things in his life, but he didn't "translate" the City of God. He wrote the intro for this edition (the Dodds translation). A more up-to-date translation would be that of R.W. Dyson, available at Amazon in PB.

Monumental:
Although I am normally a quick reader, it has taken me about six months to finish The City of God. At times I was frustrated, and believed that the book was imbued with a generative power, and grew longer the further I read. And yet I am a little sad to have finished it, for no matter what was going on in my life, like Scripture, the City of God had relevance. How to summarize such a monumental work? First of all, I do not concur with the dimishment of the early parts of the work. While Books 1 through X are indeed more clearly tied to the dissolving Roman world, it is extremely helpful for us to get our minds into a time when pagans were more than countercultural "post-Christian" teenage losers. Augustine's vivid arguments against the pagan "theology" are incisive. More notably, they bring into focus a world that was both ultra-rational in the Platonic/Aristotilean tradition, and "superstitious" in its belief in household gods, demons, curses, and magic. That both a very advanced science and such beliefs could coexist is a lesson to us in our secularized, smug modern world. The temporal proximity of Augustine to Christ and the Apostles brings another level of clarity. While Augustine emphasized that "none shall know the day nor hour," it is clear that there is an apocolyptic undercurrent in the Christian society he inhabits. The urgency of Christian life seems to me to have diminished. Particularly striking are Augustine's arguments against those "tender-hearted Christians" who hold various levels of Salvation for even the most depraved. In our world of ecumenical outreach, guitar-Mass hippy communalism, Augustine's defense of the limited Salvation is a necessary wake-up call. Certainly there are moments of "how many angels on the head of a pin," which I suppose Augustine inspired in latter theologians. The various discussions of the form, age, and physical condition of post-Resurrected faithful seems unworthy of discussion. And yet he was writing in direct argument against contemporaries. This, at least, is fascinating; that anti-Christians of Augustine's day tried to build a rational case against particular aspects of Christian doctrine, rather than against the underlying thesis of Christ. The more history you know, the more mythology you have read, and the better acquainted with Scripture you are, the more you will get out of The City of God. But such things are not necessary. Augustine is a patient writer (as exemplified by the vast scope of this and other works). He walks his readers painstakingly through each subject. I must agree with other reviewers that the last two Books are worthy to stand alone, treating of hell, purgatory, and heaven. As vivid and daunting as the discussion of hell is, so is the beatific vision inspiring and easing. Augustine above all knows the value of true peace - the peace of Christ. And he knows too well the limits of the City of Man in attaining this peace. That he has indeed "tasted and seen" is wonderfully clear, and he inspires and encourages his readers to share in that faith and hope which motivate his life. There are so many details of note: from the Christ-prophetic visions of Greek sybils to the independent trinitarian philosophy of Plato. Such details are commonplace to Augustine, but we have forgotten them. Truly, The City of God must be reckoned among the necessities of catechismic formation, mostly for Roman Catholics, but if certain later prejudices can be ignored, for all Christians as well. I would caution Jewish readers that Augustine makes no bones about the deicide and subsequent temporal punishment that he believes the Jews endure, until their conversion with the Last Judgement. As to pagans and heretics of all stripes, you've met your match in Augustine... he outwitted you 1500 years ago. Lest I be as prolix as Augustine himself, I will conclude by referencing the great spiritual help that this book provides. Particularly in modern times, though American Christians (and even American Catholics) are notably free from persecution, the City of Man calls us ever more away from Truth. Augustine's book helps us walk, not on the path of our own disordered priorities, but toward that greater and infinite blessedness we have been promised in Christ.

Augustine: A man of thought and of God:
The City of God is a work for both the scholar and the Christian; it pours light, not only on the struggle between the early Church, but also on the bases of the faith and Augustine's belief's concerning God, man, heaven, hell, angels, law, sexual behaviour, and the practise of the faith. Laid out in articles within chapters, this excellent translation of Augustine's monumental work flows from sentence to sentence, giving each word and phrase the flavor of the original. It draws from both Augustine's lively prose and his spontaneous poetic sense which is always built upon his prodigous knowledge of scripture. For the academic, the student, the priest, or the fellow-man; this is a work worth reading and cherishing. St. Augustine, bishop of Hippo around Carthage, was not always the revered father of the Church as we know him today. First, a liberal youth, then a believer in and defender of the Manicheans, and finally a staunch catholic, he searched for truth wherever he could. Here, in his City, he lays out the difference between the world of faith and the world of mammon, i.e., those who live by worldly standards and those who live as if they were not true citizens of this world but only pilgrims on their way to the great city. The book is a beautiful exegesis on the scriptures, a treatise on many theological points, and a manual of moral guidelines. St. Augustine addresses the world and ideas of his time, and yet his work remains timeless, for the same truths apply today.