The City of God, Volume 1Dent, 1945 Augustine presents the four essential elements of his philosophy in The City of God: the church, the state, the City of Heaven, and the City of the World. The church is divinely established and leads humankind to eternal goodness, which is God. The state adheres to the virtues of politics and of the mind, formulating a political community. Both of these societies are visible and seek to do good. Mirroring these are two invisible societies: the City of Heaven, for those predestined for salvation, and the City of the World, for those given eternal damnation. This grand design allows Augustine to elaborate his theory of justice, which he says issues from the proper and just sharing of those things necessary for life, just as God freely distributes air, water, and light. Humankind must therefore pursue the City of Heaven to maintain a proper sense of order, which in turn leads to true peace. |
Table des matières
That the cruel effects following the losses of war did | 8 |
Of the death that may befall the immortal soul and of the bodys | 13 |
Of the end of this transitory life whether it be long or short | 14 |
Whether the rapes that the holy virgins suffered against their | 20 |
Of the violent lust of the soldiers executed upon the bodies | 21 |
Of the quality of mans first offence | 29 |
The change of human estates ordered by Gods unsearchable | 32 |
That such as complain of the Christian times desire nothing | 34 |
Why the worshippers of Janus made him two faces and | 202 |
Of certain stars that the pagans called their gods | 208 |
Of earths surnames and significations which though they | 215 |
Of those who do not believe that men of old time lived so long | 216 |
Of the destruction of Nineveh which the Hebrew prefixes | 217 |
That Varros doctrine of theology hangeth in no way together | 219 |
The Churchs increase uncertain because of the commingling | 223 |
The excellency of the Platonists above the rest in logic | 231 |
Of the obscenities used in these sacrifices offered unto the mother | 44 |
Of the philosophers that held corporal death not to be penal | 49 |
That the Romans in abridging that liberty which the poets | 50 |
What the History of Sallust reports of the Romans con | 57 |
Of the sons of flesh and the sons of promise | 60 |
That the Roman gods never respected whether the city were | 64 |
How powerfully the devils incite men to villainies by laying | 69 |
The reason why Cain was the first of mankind that ever built | 80 |
Whether it be credible that the gods procured the peace that | 82 |
of Gods anger without passion or change | 89 |
Of the first Roman consuls how the one expelled the other | 92 |
Whether Adams or Noahs sons begot any monstrous kinds | 105 |
A comparison of the Goths corruptions with the calamities | 108 |
That the Hebrew tongue so called afterward of Heber was | 111 |
Whether happy and wise men should account it as part of their | 114 |
Of the covetousness of Ninus who made the first war upon | 116 |
How Abraham overthrew the enemies of the Sodomites freed | 120 |
Of the multitude of gods which the pagan doctors avouch to | 122 |
Of the shame that accompanies copulation as well in harlotry | 123 |
Of a goddess called Fortuna Muliebris | 128 |
Of the worship of one God only whose name although they | 134 |
Whether the Romans diligence in this worship of those | 136 |
prefiguring the perpetual | 144 |
Rebeccas womb | 147 |
Of the election of days of marriage of planting and of sowing | 149 |
Promises made unto David concerning his son not fulfilled | 159 |
Of ambition which being a vice is notwithstanding herein | 161 |
Of Davids endeavours in composing the Psalms | 165 |
The difference between the desire of glory and the desire | 168 |
The state and truth of a Christian emperors felicity | 174 |
Of the last prophets of the Jews about the time that Christ | 176 |
What may be thought of Varros opinion of the gods who deals | 180 |
Of Apis the Argive king called Serapis in Egypt and there | 182 |
The coherence and similitude between the fabulous divinity | 187 |
Senecas opinion of the Jews | 194 |
Rome founded at the time of the Assyrian monarchys fall | 195 |
Of such as held three kinds of reasonable souls in the gods | 237 |
What Apuleius the Platonist held concerning the qualities | 239 |
The renouncing of the worship of those spirits against | 245 |
Of the just law of sovereignty | 249 |
The scope of the aforesaid disputation and what is remaining | 254 |
That the doubtful doctrine of the new Academy opposes | 256 |
Of the vain obscenity of the Cynics | 258 |
Apuleius definition of the gods of heaven spirits of air | 260 |
Of the three contraries whereby the Platonists distinguish | 262 |
Against the opinion that earthly bodies cannot be made | 263 |
That unto that beatitude that consists in participation of | 268 |
What the first resurrection is and what the second | 271 |
The opinion of Plotinus the Platonist concerning the supernal | 275 |
17 | 280 |
Of unlawful arts concerning the devils worship whereof | 282 |
Of theurgy that falsely promises to cleanse the mind by | 283 |
Whether in this question of beatitude we must trust those | 289 |
From whence the saints have their power against the devils | 295 |
81 | 299 |
What persuasions blinded Porphyry from knowing Christ | 302 |
Of the universal way of the souls freedom which Porphyry | 308 |
What we must think of Gods resting the seventh day after | 318 |
He abode not in the truth | 325 |
Of Gods eternal unchanging will and knowledge wherein | 329 |
Of the image of the Trinity which is in some sort in every | 335 |
Of the two different societies of angels not unfitly termed | 341 |
Of lifeless and reasonless natures whose order differs not from | 347 |
Of the falseness of that history that says the world has continued | 353 |
How we must understand that God promised man life eternal | 360 |
Of the state of the first man and mankind in | 366 |
346 | |
216 | |
78 | |
78 | |
66 | |
49 | |