This authoritative English-language commentary discusses Books 1-5, in which Augustine argued that Rome suffered worse disasters before Christianity was known; that empire depends on injustice; and that everything depends on the will of the true God, not on the many gods of Roman tradition.

The City of God is the most influential of Augustine's works, which played a decisive role in the formation of the Christian West. This book is the first comprehensive modern guide to it in any language. The City of God's scope embodies cosmology, psychology, political thought, anti-pagan polemic, Christian apologetic, theory of history, biblical interpretation, and apocalyptic themes. This book is, therefore, at once about a single masterpiece and at the same time surveys Augustine's developing views through the whole range of his thought. The book is written in the form of a detailed running commentary on each part of the work. Further chapters elucidate the early fifth-century political, social, historical, and literary background, the work's sources, and its place in Augustine's writings.The book should prove of value to Augustine's wide readership among students of late antiquity, theologians, philosophers, medievalists, Renaissance scholars, and historians of art and iconography.

City of God, composed in the early fifth century, is one of the great classics of western culture. Augustine was a teacher of rhetoric before he was bishop of Hippo on the coast of North Africa. In Books 6-10 he used all his skill to argue against those who think that many gods should be worshipped for blessings in the life to come.

Masterfully explains Augustine's major work The City of God book by book through engagement with theology, history and political science.

For Augustine, the pre-Fall Paradise was a life of tranquil love and joy. The post-Fall world is marked by loss of control over our bodies and emotions. But whatexactly happened in the Fall, and why? How does desire relate to man's disobedience, and is there any sense in which we can recover what Adam and Eve havelost?In treating City 14 as an integral whole, this study explores Augustine's critiquesof the Manichean and Platonist positions that the body is bad or evil, and discusseshis biblical doctrine of emotions in light of the two-cities theme. The entirestudy concerns topics germane to the paradisal situation: the theme of the PrimalFall and the will being 'spontaneous', the exploration of the disobedience ofthe genitals in all forms of sex, including married life, and the workings of Adamand Eve's hypothetical sexual experience in the pre-Fall world.