Tentative Response: Augustine

Where and what is the 'City of God'? What does it have to do with cities like Rome or Athens?

For Augustine, the City of God, otherwise known as the Heavenly City, is an ideal community of Christian believers built around their love of God. I believe that he also calls it the New Jerusalem, which is a city proposed in the Book of Ezekiel that is supposed to be where Jerusalem currently is. The author contrasts this city with the earthly city, which he identifies with Rome and Athens. Where the City of God is characterized by love of God, the earthly city is characterized by self-love, which I talked about a bit in my last post. He proposes that the City of God is more righteous, and even that it is more equipped to reach the “state of peace” that I also spoke about in my last post. According to Augustine, this city “[has] the attainment of that peace in view in every good action it performs in relation to God, and in relation to a neighbor, since the life of a city is inevitably a social life” (19.19). The author also writes that “citizens of the earthly city prefer their own gods to the founder of this Holy City, not knowing that he is the God of gods,” thus associating the earthly city with pagan religions practiced in Athens and pre-Christian Rome (11.1).