Encyclopedia of Philosophy: THE CITY OF GOD AND THE MYSTERY OF GRACE OF AUGUSTINE ?

Thirteen years after the writing of the Confessions, the city of Rome was sacked by invading Goths under Alaric. Pagans blamed this disaster on the Christians’ abolition of the worship of the city’s gods, who had therefore deserted it in its hour of need. In response, Augustine spent thirteen years writing a treatise The  City of God, which set out a Christian analysis of the history of the Roman Empire and of much else in the ancient world.  Augustine contrasts the City of God, symbolized by Jerusalem, with the city of the world, symbolized by Babylon. The inhabitants of Babylon despise God and are motivated by self-love; the inhabitants of Jerusalem, forgetful of self, are moved by love of God. Both cities aim at justice and peace, but they have different conceptions of these common goals. Babylon is not to be identified with the pagan Empire, nor Jerusalem with the Christian Empire. Not everything was wrong in the Empire in pagan days; and Christian Emperors could be sinners too – as Ambrose had shown when he had excluded the Emperor Theodosius from the Church in punishment for a fearsome massacre at Thessalonica in 391.