The City of God
Augustine of Hippo Vernon J. Bourke Étienne Gilson Gerald G. Walsh Demetrius B. Zema Grace Monahan Daniel J. Honan
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✓ The City of God || ✓ PDF Download by ↠ Augustine of Hippo Vernon J. Bourke Étienne Gilson Gerald G. Walsh Demetrius B. Zema Grace Monahan Daniel J. Honan


  • Title: The City of God
  • Author: Augustine of Hippo Vernon J. Bourke Étienne Gilson Gerald G. Walsh Demetrius B. Zema Grace Monahan Daniel J. Honan
  • ISBN: null
  • Page: 436
  • Format: Paperback

    • No book except the Bible itself had a greater influence on the Middle Ages than The City of God As medieval Europe was the cradle of modern Western society, this work is vital for understanding our world how it came into being Augustine may be the most influential Christian thinker after Paul This is his masterpiece, a vast synthesis of religious secular knNo book except the Bible itself had a greater influence on the Middle Ages than The City of God As medieval Europe was the cradle of modern Western society, this work is vital for understanding our world how it came into being Augustine may be the most influential Christian thinker after Paul This is his masterpiece, a vast synthesis of religious secular knowledge It began as a reply to the charge that Christian other worldliness was causing the decline of the Roman Empire Augustine produced a wealth of evidence to prove that paganism bore within itself the seeds of its own destruction Then he proceeded to his larger theme, a cosmic interpretation of history in terms of the struggle between good evil the City of God in conflict with the Earthly City or the City of the Devil This, the first serious attempt at a philosophy of history, was to have incalculable influence in forming the Western mind.The City of God contained 22 books, filling 3 regular sized volumes Augustine censures the pagans, who attributed the calamities of the world especially the sack of Rome by the Goths to the Christian religion its prohibition of the worship of the gods Review of the calamities suffered by the Romans before the time of Christ, showing that their gods had plunged them into corruption viceExternal calamities of Rome That empire was given to Rome not by the gods, but by the one true godOf fate, freewill, God s prescience of the source of the virtues of the ancient Romans Of Varro s 3fold division of theology, of the inability of the gods to contribute anything to the happiness of the future lifeOf the select gods of the civil theology, that eternal life is not obtained by worshipping them Some account of the Socratic Platonic philosophy a refutation of the doctrine of Apuleius that the demons should be worshipped as mediators between gods menOf those who allege a distinction among demons, some being good others evil Porphyry s doctrine of redemption Augustine passes to the 2nd part of the work, in which the origin, progress destinies of the earthly heavenly cities are discussedSpeculations regarding the creation of the world Of the creation of angels men, of the origin of evilThat death is penal had its origin in Adam s sin Of the punishment results of man s first sin, of the propagation of man w out lust Progress of the earthly heavenly cities traced by the sacred history History of the city of God from Noah to the time of the kings of Israel History of the city of God from the times of the prophets to Christ Parallel history of the earthly heavenly cities from the time of Abraham to the end of the world Review of the philosophical opinions regarding the supreme good, a comparison of these opinions with the Christian belief regarding happiness Of the last judgment, the declarations regarding it in the Old New Testaments Of the eternal punishment of the wicked in hell of the various objections urged against it Of eternal happiness of the saints, the resurrection of the body the miracles of the early church
    Augustine of Hippo Vernon J. Bourke Étienne Gilson Gerald G. Walsh Demetrius B. Zema Grace Monahan Daniel J. Honan
    Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis, in English Augustine of Hippo, also known as St Augustine, St Austin, was bishop of Hippo Regius present day Annaba, Algeria He was a Latin philosopher and theologian from the Africa Province of the Roman Empire and is generally considered as one of the greatest Christian thinkers of all times His writings were very influential in the development of Western Christianity According to his contemporary Jerome, Augustine established anew the ancient Faith In his early years he was heavily influenced by Manichaeism and afterward by the Neo Platonism of Plotinus After his conversion to Christianity and his baptism in 387, Augustine developed his own approach to philosophy and theology, accommodating a variety of methods and different perspectives He believed that the grace of Christ was indispensable to human freedom, and he framed the concepts of original sin and just war When the Western Roman Empire was starting to disintegrate, Augustine developed the concept of the Catholic Church as a spiritual City of God in a book of the same name , distinct from the material Earthly City His thoughts profoundly influenced the medieval worldview Augustine s City of God was closely identified with the Church, the community that worshiped the Trinity In the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, he is a saint and pre eminent Doctor of the Church Many Protestants, especially Calvinists, consider him to be one of the theological fathers of the Protestant Reformation due to his teaching on salvation and divine grace In the Eastern Orthodox Church he is also considered a saint He carries the additional title of Blessed Among the Orthodox, he is called Blessed Augustine or St Augustine the Blessed.


    Commentaires:

    Bud Smith
    ok, this is my one brag book. anybody who gets through this (unabridged only), gets to go to heaven, no questions asked.
    Roy Lotz
    Once on the beach at Utica, I saw with my own eyes—and there were others to bear me witness—a human molar tooth so big that it could have been cut up, I think, into a hundred pieces each as big as one of our modern teeth.I’m trying to think of books that might be equal to this one in importance to Western history: Plato’s Republic? the works of Aristotle? Euclid’s Elements? Homer’s epics? There aren’t many. This book arguably set the tone for the entire Middle Ages that followed. I [...]
    Briana
    UhI only had to read half of this for school. But it was still really long. Imagine you're in a math class. And the teacher says, "Now we're going to learn about numbers: one plus one is two, two plus two is four, etc." And you think, "Yeah. Okay. I get that." Then all of a sudden, while your mind wanders around, the teacher says, "So now that you've got that, let's talk about calculus." And then your brain explodes from the jump that it just made.This is sort of how City of God treated me. Augu [...]
    Brian Eshleman
    OMG, I FINISHED!
    Chris Comis
    One of the best books ever written. Augustine wrote this just as Rome was coming to an end. Part of the impetus was to show that the City of God was not confined to the Roman Empire, but would outlast any earthly empire. The amount of detail he poured into describing the pagan culture of his time was also amazing. Also, he offers some fascinating theological insights towards the end of the book.If you want to understand Western Christendom, you really have to read this book from cover to cover.
    Jill
    I had no idea what I was getting into when I began this book. It sometimes felt like it would never end, but it was a great experience. First, I discovered how early on very basic Christian doctrines were lost. I loved what he says about the trinity. I was fascinated by how he defined demons (man-made gods). I would define a demon as a devil's angel. Also interesting to me was Augustine's take on the God of Israel's name being the conjugated Hebrew verb "to be" rendered "I am that I am." To me, [...]
    David Boyce
    Evolution was a religious Idea. Back in 410 Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in North Africa was the first to describe evolution by natural selection. "We see a constant succession, as some things pass away and others arise, as the weaker succumb to the stronger, and those that are overwhelmed change into the qualities of their conquerors; and thus we have a pattern of a world of continual transience."This book is a tremendous work. At 1090 pages long it is a vast collection of religious musings and t [...]
    Joshua Nomen-Mutatio
    Could not finish it. Don't care to. It's a rather lengthy and often times boring read. I got enough of the gist by making it about halfway through and then skipping around through the rest. His unsurprising righteous indignation about the truth and beauty of 4th century Christian doctrine and the falsity and demoralizing nature of "paganism" makes me want to run for the bathroom. But when I look upon it as a book written by a man whose mind would've been blown by the mere revelation that the Ear [...]
    Rob Roy
    This is a monumental work of theology. Written just after the sacking of Rome, it starts by answering how God could allow a Christian city to fall. This proceeds with a detailed attack on paganism, and a defense of Christianity. He belabors these points, but then goes on to a treatise on Christian theology which sets a decided uncompromising tone. He endorses the predestination arguments later made by Calvin, and shows a narrow moral view. What you get is an excellent view of the early Christian [...]
    Lance Kinzer
    What is there to say about perhaps the greatest book ever written, other than Thanks be to God.
    James M.
    This book weighs in at over 1,000 pages - 22 books in the original. Fortunately for the reader, St. Augustine frequently wanders from his main theme, for many pages at a time, providing fascinating explorations of why the number 11 symbolises sin (short answer: it transgresses the perfect 10 of the Decalogue); of how the Ark of Noah is an allegory of Christ; of the creation and fall of the angels, and of much, much more. These questions are digressions, but they do help to make the book palatabl [...]
    John
    One of the great classics in all of Christian--no, check that--human history, The City of God presents two contrasting groups of people, or to use the imagery of the book, two contrasting cities: the earthly and the heavenly. Everyone in the world falls into either one city or the other, and Augustine painstakingly lays out their origins, their history, and their destiny.This fifth century book was the classic Christian book throughout the church's history until the individualism of the Enlighte [...]
    Erik Graff
    Ironically, I switched my major at Grinnell College from history to religion because of this book. We had just read Thucydides in the Historiography class, the last course required to complete the major, when Professor Kintner assigned De civitate Dei. That weekend, openig the tome and beginning to read, I decided it was simply too much. Augustine seemed to be psychotic polemics, not history. Being a junior and having accumulated a lot of religion credits almost by chance, I determined a switch [...]
    James Violand
    This is one of my favorite works. Yeah, I know you're skeptical, but here me out. I've begun my quest to read the basic works of western man beginning with Gilgamesh and in sequence reading through to the present. It's a lifelong ambition. I've read most of the ancient works of some repute, including Roman histories from Greek and Roman historians. When I arrived at 411 AD, I picked up The City of God. Shortly after the first sack of Rome, Augustine wrote it not as an apology for the claim that [...]
    Isaac
    I don't really know how to review something like this in a format that I've used primarily for rating fiction, but I'll give it a shot. The three stars are not meant as some kind of snobbish modern judgment on The City of God but my attempt to balance its theological and historical significance with the difficulty and not infrequent irrelevancy of the material. Augustine was adept at philosophy and rhetoric, keen in his exegetical analysis, and thorough in his argumentation, but many of the topi [...]
    Justin Evans
    Any star rating is entirely meaningless. This is a ludicrous book, astonishing in scope, and in desperate need of an editor to make sense of it. I simply can't; it's overwhelming. Arid stretches of rhetoric suddenly cough up a fascinating philosophical argument, which then itself belches forth more arid rhetoric, and so on. Augustine takes the ancient pagan beliefs to pieces by showing that they simply can't be rationalized--then immediately forgets the obvious lesson and tries to rationalize Ch [...]
    booklady
    Read this back in the 1990's but now I want to reread it. I know I would get a lot more out of it.
    Douglas Wilson
    Excellent. Great.
    Beth
    Huh, this is a lot shorter than I thought it was - it appears to be a lot longer in iBooks. I'll go ahead and finish it, and then I'd like to get one of the longer-but-abridged editions (around 500 p). But I can't buy books right now, so maybe I'll be stuck with the unabridged versionFinished! I'll have a review up in a few days (after I've reviewed March: Book One). I'll start the unabridged version, but I'm thinking I might stop after I finish vol. 1.**update** The editor of this abridged edit [...]
    Amy C.
    Reading this along with a Facebook group. Just through book One now and really enjoying the book and the experience with the reading circle. The group's organizer posts a reading schedule and regular comments with the readings, and other commenters have been so valuable to read. I'm getting so much out of it because of the group. If you're reading it now or want to read it, check out the Reading the City of God group on Facebook.
    Suzannah
    I read The City of God over six months last year in a translation by Henry Bettenson which runs to 1091 pages in my Penguin Classics edition. As Joe Morecraft says, this is a book on everything. I am not going to review it; all I feel that I can do is gesture helplessly in its general direction.Read the rest at my blog, In Which I Read Vintage Novels.
    Pinkyivan
    I did it. Feels good man.
    John
    Augustine is widely considered the most important of the early church fathers. He was born in North Africa in 354 A.D became the Bishop of Hippo and wrote a vast number of works—most notably Confessions, On Christian Doctrine, On the Trinity, and City of God. Augustine’s legacy particularly in the Protestant tradition, cannot be underestimated, as his works left an indelible impression upon the Reformers—a legacy that Protestants still draw upon today. Indeed, the very nature of the argume [...]
    Jon Pentecost
    What else am I going to rate it? I guess part of what makes a book a theological classic is that it changes the way you think--and City of God is definitely that kind of book. It's a stunning mix of addressing everything from the faults of Platonism to how Christian women should think through the threat of rape (in an empire being pillaged by barbarians) to tracing God's people throughout history to correcting those who think that church participation without faith and faithfulness is sufficient [...]
    Andrea Lawrence
    Definitely a must read for every Christian!
    Owlseyes
    (Oporto, 2016, my photo)
    Matt
    I stumbled across Augustine when I was teenager and I remember this being much more profound. Having just reread it cover to cover, I was wholly disappointed. Augustine writes in response to attacks on Christianity for which the decline of the Roman Empire is being increasingly blamed. The first half of the book criticizes, effectively, the irrationality of pagan belief. However, he fails to turn the same clear-eyed analysis to Christianity. In one of the more painfully oblivious passages, Augus [...]
    Maggie W
    I remember reading my first Augustine when I was in 8th grade. We read Confessions, and it was probably my favorite book that year, which is saying a lot since I liked most of the books in 8th grade (we're not counting The Lord of the Rings here, because technically I read that for the first time in 7th grade). This book wasn't quite like Confessions, but I still enjoyed it immensely. This is an incredibly important book. Had it been on my kindle, I probably would have highlighted at least half [...]
    Jeremy
    Okay, from what I read, which certainly wasn't the whole book, there are a few useful ideas here. Augustine does an excellent job (though unintentionally) of showing how religious doctrines do not come about by an organic, bottom up process, but are the products of artificial acts of committees and compilers. And he also shows how large institutions are necessary in order to keep a doctrine going once it gains a modicum of acceptance. But honestly, I found this work overall to be hopelessly reac [...]
    Nemo
    A Masterpiece of Christian ApologeticsSt. Augustine started the book to address a pressing crisis and the practical problem of suffering, and then gradually rose to the height of Christian philosophy and theology that has rarely, if ever, been surpassed since. He gave a sweeping overview of ancient history, the history of the Jewish people intertwined with the history of the worldly empires (Roman and Assyrian), and revealed the main, though hidden, plot in the script of history, i.e the birth, [...]
    • ✓ The City of God || ✓ PDF Download by ↠ Augustine of Hippo Vernon J. Bourke Étienne Gilson Gerald G. Walsh Demetrius B. Zema Grace Monahan Daniel J. Honan
      436 Augustine of Hippo Vernon J. Bourke Étienne Gilson Gerald G. Walsh Demetrius B. Zema Grace Monahan Daniel J. Honan
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      Posted by:Augustine of Hippo Vernon J. Bourke Étienne Gilson Gerald G. Walsh Demetrius B. Zema Grace Monahan Daniel J. Honan
      Published :2019-01-17T20:43:50+00:00