the confessions of st augustine bishop of hippo

The Earthly City, on the other hand, consists of people who have immersed themselves in the cares and pleasures of the present, passing world. The City of God is marked by people who forgo earthly pleasure to dedicate themselves to the eternal truths of God, now revealed fully in the Christian faith.

The book presents human history as a conflict between what Augustine calls the Earthly City (often colloquially referred to as the City of Man, but never by Augustine) and the City of God, a conflict that is destined to end in victory for the latter. Christianity, he argued, should be concerned with the mystical, heavenly city, the New Jerusalem, rather than with earthly politics. Despite Christianity's designation as the official religion of the Empire, Augustine declared its message to be spiritual rather than political. Augustine's focus was Heaven, a theme of many Christian works of Late Antiquity. Even if the earthly rule of the Empire was imperiled, it was the City of God that would ultimately triumph. He argues that Christianity was not responsible for the Sack of Rome but instead responsible for Rome's success. In response to these accusations, and in order to console Christians, Augustine wrote The City of God as an argument for the truth of Christianity over competing religions and philosophies. The sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 left Romans in a deep state of shock, and many Romans saw it as punishment for abandoning traditional Roman religion in favor of Christianity.

As a work of one of the most influential Church Fathers, The City of God is a cornerstone of Western thought, expounding on many questions of theology, such as the suffering of the righteous, the existence of evil, the conflict between free will and divine omniscience, and the doctrine of original sin. The book was in response to allegations that Christianity brought about the decline of Rome and is considered one of Augustine's most important works, standing alongside The Confessions, The Enchiridion, On Christian Doctrine, and On the Trinity. On the City of God Against the Pagans ( Latin: De civitate Dei contra paganos), often called The City of God, is a book of Christian philosophy written in Latin by Augustine of Hippo in the early 5th century AD.

The confessions of st augustine bishop of hippo