1. Early Christian Thought Augustine’s City of God
Foster Chamberlin
November 26, 2018
HUM 101- Cultural Encounters

2. Class Outline Background on Christianity Christianity and Rome
Judaism
Jesus
Paul
Christianity and Rome
Biographical Background on Augustine
City of God
Explaining Rome’s fall
Arguing against the pagans
Neo-Platonic and other Greco- Roman influences
The two cities
Answering the theodicy question
Resignifying the Adam + Eve story
God’s grace, faith and salvation

3. Judaism The Torah and the Tanakh The covenants The Mosaic Law
Judea under the Romans
The Ten Commandments
You shall have no other gods before me
You shall not make for yourself a graven image
You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy
Honor your father and your mother
You shall not kill
You shall not commit adultery
You shall not steal
You shall not bear false witness
You shall not covet… anything that is your neighbor’s (paraphrase of Exodus 20:3-17)

4. Judaism The Torah and the Tanakh The covenants The Mosaic Law
Judea under the Romans
Hammurabi’s Code
196. “If a man destroys the eye of another, his own eye shall be destroyed.”
200. “If a man has made the tooth of another to fall out, one of his own teeth shall be knocked out.”
The Torah
“You shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.” (Exodus 21:23-24)

5. Jesus Resignifies the Torah
“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil. But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matthew 5:38-39)
“A lawyer, asked him a question, to test him. ‘Teacher, which is the great[est] commandment in the law?’ And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great[est] and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.’” (Matthew 22:35-40)

6. Saul/Paul

7. Paul’s Travels

8. Paul’s Death

9. Constantine (r )

10. Late Roman Empire Timeline
Reign of Diocletian
Reign of Constantine
312 Constantine’s conversion
313 Edict of Milan
325 Council of Nicaea
380 Edict of Thessalonica
410 Sack of Rome

11. Augustine of Hippo 354 birth 375 converts to Manichaeism
383 founds rhetoric school in Rome and experiments with Neo- Platonism
384 moves to Rome
386 converts to Christianity
396 becomes Bishop of Hippo
410 sack of Rome
writes City of God
430 dies

12. Fun with Theodicy God is good God created everything
Everything is good?
Evil exists
God created all that exists
God created evil?

13. Augustine of Hippo 354 birth 375 converts to Manichaeism
383 founds rhetoric school in Rome and experiments with Neo- Platonism
384 moves to Rome
386 converts to Christianity
396 becomes Bishop of Hippo
410 sack of Rome
writes City of God
430 dies

14. City of God as an Argument against Paganism
“For God’s providence constantly uses war to correct and chasten the corrupt morals of mankind” (6)
“The benefits are unmistakable; those enemies would not today be able to utter a word against the City if, when fleeing from the sword of their enemy, they had not found, in the City’s holy places, the safety on which they now congratulate themselves.” (6)

15. A New Take on Citizenship
“Although there are many great peoples throughout the world... There is, in fact, one city of men who choose to live by the standard of the flesh, another of those who choose to live by the standard of the spirit.” (58)
“Those two cities are interwoven and intermixed in this era, and await separation at the last judgement.” (46)

16. Original Sin as a Reading of the Adam + Eve Story
“How fortunate, then, were the first human beings! They were not distressed by any agitations of the mind, nor pained by any disorders of the body.” (567)
“This race would not have been destined for death... had not the two first human beings... incurred death as the reward of disobedience: and so heinous was their sin that man’s nature suffered a change for the worse; and bondage to sin and inevitable death was the legacy handed on to their posterity.” (58)

17. God as the Good, Sin as Falsehood
“Man has undoubtedly the will to be happy… Hence we can say with meaning that every sin is a falsehood. For sin only happens by an act of will; and our will is for our own welfare, or for the avoidance of misfortune. And hence the falsehood: we commit sin to promote our welfare, and it results instead in our misfortune.” ( )

18. Free Will, Faith and Grace
“God gave it [the will] that true freedom, and now that it has been lost, through its own fault, it can be restored only by him who had the power to give it at the beginning.” (569)
“But God’s instructions demanded obedience, and obedience is in a way the mother and guardian of all the other virtues in a rational creature, seeing that the rational creation has been so made that it is to man’s advantage to be in subjection to God, and it is calamitous for him to act according to his own will, and not to obey the will of his Creator.” (571)
“Now the reign of death has held mankind in such utter subjection that they would all be driven headlong into that that second death, which has no ending, as their well-deserved punishment, if some were not rescued from it by the undeserved grace of God.” (58)

19. Review: Resignification
The Torah
Jesus
Paul
Constantine
Augustine
Mesopotamian traditions
The Torah
Jesus’s death
Christianity and Rome
Rome
Pagan values
The Adam and Eve story