This article is about the work by St. Augustine. For the movie, see City of God (movie)
The City of God (LatinDe Civitate Dei) is a text written by St. Augustine that deals with issues concerning God, martyrdom, the Jews, and other Christian philosophies.
The City of God was written by Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in North Africa, to explain Christianity's relationship to competing religions and philosophies, and to the Roman government with which it was increasingly intertwined. Despite Christianity's designation as the official religion of the empire, Augustine declared its message to be spiritual rather than political. Christianity, he argued, should be concerned with the mystical, heavenly City of Jerusalem rather than with earthly politics. His theology supported the sepeation of Church and State that came to characterize western Europe fourteen centuries later, after the French Revolution. From the World's History by Howard Spodek
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Full text (http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/npnf102/cache/npnf102.html3)
The City of God is marked by people who forego earthly pleasure and dedicate their lives to the promotion of Christian values.
The two cities are not meant to represent any actual places or organisations, though Augustine clearly thought that the Christian Church was at the heart of the City of God.
But let this city bear in mind, that among her enemies lie hid those who are destined to be fellow-citizens, that she may not think it a fruitless labor to bear what they inflict as enemies until they become confessors of the faith.
The City of God we speak of is the same to which testimony is borne by that Scripture, which excels all the writings of all nations by its divine authority, and has brought under its influence all kinds of minds, and this not by a casual intellectual movement, but obviously by an express providential arrangement.
God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved." From these and similar testimonies, all of which it were tedious to cite, we have learned that there is a city of God, and its Founder has inspired us with a love which makes us covet its citizenship.
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