Augustine Answer to Critics in the City of God
Augustine finished the City of God in 429 A. D., a year before his death. He had witnessed the collapse of the Roman civilization in the West for nearly three decades. A leader in the Christian church, he was the Bishop of Hippo, a North African Roman city that fell to barbarians in the same year as his death. In response to Roman military disasters, pagan critics had argued that the shift to Christianity from the traditional state gods in Rome’s Pantheon had demoralized the spirit and energy of the Empire. As a result, barbarian armies were empowered to move into Roman territories—even sacking Rome itself in 410 A.D. Augustine’s treatise defended Christianity, rebutting pagan accusations and creating the very first philosophy of history in Western intellectual tradition. Augustine argued against the critics of his faith that all human empires, which he calls “earthly cities”, contain within themselves the seeds of their own destruction. As an “earthly city” ascends to power, these seeds begin to …show more content…
That defense reflects a philosophical view that defines history as a drama between God and Satan, good and evil. He interprets the fall of Rome as part of this drama. Rome’s decline, in Augustine’s view, is simply Rome’s own doing, its fatal instability brought about by its unrighteous twisting of God’s moral order, an act of rebellion that makes the collapse of any earthly city inevitable. In vain do critics counsel making conciliatory appeals to idols. The Christian faith is the antidote to the gods and vices of the earthly city—an antidote that offers hope to build personal moral character, to sustain a just society, and to find eventual fulfillment of man’s deepest longing--the final end of the conflict and eternal peace realized under God’s rule in the heavenly
Augustine finished the City of God in 429 A. D., a year before his death. He had witnessed the collapse of the Roman civilization in the West for nearly three decades. A leader in the Christian church, he was the Bishop of Hippo, a North African Roman city that fell to barbarians in the same year as his death. In response to Roman military disasters, pagan critics had argued that the shift to Christianity from the traditional state gods in Rome’s Pantheon had demoralized the spirit and energy of the Empire. As a result, barbarian armies were empowered to move into Roman territories—even sacking Rome itself in 410 A.D. Augustine’s treatise defended Christianity, rebutting pagan accusations and creating the very first philosophy of history in Western intellectual tradition. Augustine argued against the critics of his faith that all human empires, which he calls “earthly cities”, contain within themselves the seeds of their own destruction. As an “earthly city” ascends to power, these seeds begin to …show more content…
That defense reflects a philosophical view that defines history as a drama between God and Satan, good and evil. He interprets the fall of Rome as part of this drama. Rome’s decline, in Augustine’s view, is simply Rome’s own doing, its fatal instability brought about by its unrighteous twisting of God’s moral order, an act of rebellion that makes the collapse of any earthly city inevitable. In vain do critics counsel making conciliatory appeals to idols. The Christian faith is the antidote to the gods and vices of the earthly city—an antidote that offers hope to build personal moral character, to sustain a just society, and to find eventual fulfillment of man’s deepest longing--the final end of the conflict and eternal peace realized under God’s rule in the heavenly