The City of God

With Book 11, Augustine moves to Part 2 of City of God, in which he promises to trace out the histories of the earthly city and the city of God from their beginnings, following “the rise, the development, and the destined ends of the two cities” (430). He grounds his presentation on the premise that God is the creator of all things, as established both by the Bible and by the concurrence of many Greco-Roman philosophers. He contends for a philosophical view of the universe’s creation in which time and space were created together, such that one cannot speak of “time” before the universe nor of “space” beyond it.

In reviewing the biblical creation narrative of Genesis 1, Augustine begins with the creation of the angelic beings as implicit in the opening line of Genesis, which speaks of God creating the heavens. He argues that some of the angels fell away from God’s goodness by rebelling in the very beginning, and thus the roots of the earthly city begin with the rebellion of the fallen angels. This leads him to consider the causes of their rebellion, and if it implies that evil had a source in God’s good creation.