Reflections on the City of God, So Far, Part 1

Before I start any (real) writing, I should introduce myself shortly. I am a seminary student in Miami, I am a Reformed Christian, and I am a Cuban male with a girlfriend far nicer than me. It is with this background that any sane person would want to read St. Augustine's "The City of God".

Okay, well there's more.

I'm also unemployed and unsatisfied with the state of American politics. In fact I'm unsatisfied with the state of American evangelicalism to the point where I refuse to call myself an evangelical, no matter how many times a person might try to inform me otherwise. Indeed, I am a Reformed Christian, which means I think I'm right all the time. It also gives me a +3 in irritability.

Though in all seriousness, when one is down on their luck, a person tends to think about "higher" things. In my case, as somebody that has a degree in history, their first instinct is to see what a dead person has written about "higher things", especially since the result of said dead person's work has been paradigm shifting for Western civilization.

In other words, a little wisdom never hurt anybody.

I should note that the City of God has two main divisions. The first ten books are concerned with "Why Paganism is Wrong and Why it's Stupid to Put Your Hopes and Dreams in Pagan Thought And in Fact You Should Stop Looking to Rome for Your Salvation".

The second part, the next twelve books, can be argued as "This is the Story of Christianity and How it Fulfills All Your Hopes and Dreams Unwittingly and PS Paganism Is Still Dumb".

Granted, that's not how Augustine of Hippo wrote it, but it gets the point across.

And seeing that I just entered the second part of Augustine's 1,000 page tome, I'll focus on what I've learned about the world from Augustine, so far.

1) Slut Shaming is Bad

Our culture, or at least the people around me, seems to think that calling a woman a slut is bad. I would agree with that. Though, I do think that women's issues are given more attention than they should, if only because I fee the press is trying to use identity politics to take away my money.

But my general irritability aside, there is a very real issue with sexual abuse in the Church. If you doubt me, one only needs to think about the Sovereign Grace scandal or the Catholic Church. Or if you just want to talk about abuse in general, one only needs to look at Mars Hill Church in Seattle or one of our wonderful local megachurches that care about witnessing to the kingdom of God.

(That last part was sarcasm)

But in all seriousness. It's been my experience that the Church doesn't know how to deal with sexual politics. So imagine my surprise when I read what Augustine wrote about a bunch of women who were raped by barbarians:

"Let us rather draw this conclusion, that while the sanctity of the soul remains even when the boy is violated, the body is lost when the sanctity of the soul is violated, though the body itself remain intact. And therefore a woman who has been violate by the sin of another, and without any consent of her own, has no cause to put herself to death; much less has she cause to commit suicide in order to avoid such violation, for in that case she commits certain homicide to prevent a crime which is uncertain as yet, and her own". - Book 1, Chapter 19

At the very least, any accounts of Augustine being a misogynist should be tempered. And at most, the Church has a lot to learn from this quote, at the very least, that a woman doesn't need guilt and shame to be burdened upon her. In fact, Augustine is trying to remove it by telling the woman that she has no need to kill herself because she is still pure, no matter what her body tells her.

2) God is Sovereign Because We Need a Will

If it hasn't been drilled into your head already, I am a Calvinist. This means that I have a strong view of the doctrine of predestination. Saying that, people seem to think the doctrine of predestination implies that we don't have a will. Other people seem to use the doctrine of predestination without understanding why it exists: to bring comfort to those who have faith that God loves them.

But St. Augustine? Well he does something that we can learn from. God's exhaustive sovereignty establishes our will, because

"In His supreme will resides the power which acts on the wills of all created spirits, helping the good, judging the evil, controlling all, granting power to some, not granting it to others." - Book 5, Chapter 9

He goes on to say that He does not give evil wills, because the Good cannot cause evil. In this sense, the origin of evil is a mystery, and perhaps it's good enough to know that God is sovereign and cares for me.

It should also be noted that the options for God's sovereignty weren't plentiful in the ancient world, according to Augustine. It was either Fate did everything and we have no will, or God had no will and we had a will. One made us animals, the other makes God not God. Augustine really tried, you must admit.

At the very least, I think it lays the ground work for the argument from the Unmoved Mover.

I feel like I've written too much. I have three more things to write about regarding the first half of the City of God. So, I'll leave you with the two things I wrote and my introduction. With that,

-SJG