While there might be some things that could bother or bore a high school reader, St. Augustine’s City of God is a must-read for every student—especially for those who have been reading the classical authors of Greece and Rome—since it opens the mind to the Christian context in the ancient world, provides an antidote to the modern mind, and grapples with the eternal issues of humanity.
1. It reviews the classical past in the light of a Christian worldview. This is very valuable for students of classical literature, from dramatists and historians to philosophers, as Augustine critiques them from the perspective of Christian thought. He shows, for instance, the commonality between Platonism and Christianity in having God as the supreme good of the soul, and thus baptizes Platonic thought for use in Christian apologetics (something that dates back to Justin Martyr, at least). However, he shows the folly in Platonism too, especially in making the body—rather than the fallen soul expressed through will—the source of evil. In literature, though harder on it than I would be (I think because when people were literally still worshiping Jupiter down the street, it’s harder to simply enjoy the literary quality of the ancients), he shows how theater and the plays interpreted the vision of the gods for the average citizen, and how this fails to provide eternal happiness. With history, he is probably the most interesting. What do the stories of virtuous pagans, like Regulus, who endured for an earthly kingdom, teach those of the City of God who looked for an eternal city? A lot, apparently. There are many villains, like Sulla, who show the folly of holding too tightly to “eternal” Rome—a fitting reminder at the time of Rome’s fall. For classical education (one which prioritizes the Greeks and Romans), The City of God should serve as a capstone, since it comes from someone writing at the tail end of the classical era and places its history in a Christian perspective.
2. St. Augustine presents the fifth-century Christian mind to the modern reader—a challenging but rewarding experience. Every generation has its blind spots. We can see (or think we see) some of Augustine’s: a tendency to over-analyze the Scriptures, the primitive nature of his science, or his seeming overconfidence in certian beliefs. And yet, these provide pushback to our own limited, rationalistic readings of the sacred writ, as well as our confidence that we moderns correctly understand the nature of the world or the inner workings of psychology. Reading someone whose presuppositions are not the same as your own is not merely an exercise in antiquarian research; it challenges your own assumptions and makes one wonder, “What things do I now believe that will be thought self-evidently false in future centuries?” It teaches humility. But also, his strengths reveal our weaknesses. The depth to which he reads Scripture rebukes our surface readings of the text. The interest he takes in everything—from peacock meat to Biblical numerology—stands in contrast to our age of specialists who do not dare to see the universe as an integrated whole. In the faith of Augustine, our skepticism is shamed. That does not make him always right, but it reminds us that we just might be more wrong than we assume. The City of God provides actual insight into our Christian past—something no history textbook can provide—and awakens the mind to a variety of new thoughts.
3. The final point is juxtaposed with the second. St. Augustine has influenced Christian thinking so much that, since the Apostle Paul, there has not been a single figure more preeminent than him (at least in the West). The issues he raises are forever central to the kinds of questions people ask about the nature of reality. Where does evil come from? Why is the will bent to sin? What is happiness? What is the end of man? What is the purpose of history? These questions—and many more—are asked and answered (some more satisfactorily than others). These issues come up again and again in the Western tradition, and if we are going to try to teach classically at all, we need to find and better understand how they inform our cultural context for the good of the soul as well as the mind.
It is imperative for the student who is seeking to understand both his own cultural history as well as the world around him to read for himself or herself the key texts relating to these things. The City of God is definitely on the short list of those books and should therefore be read not only by specialists, but by thinking people everywhere.
Reflective Wanderer 