The City of God

By: Saint Augustine

Narrated by: Bernard Mayes

Written between A.D. 413 and 426, The City of God is one of the great cornerstones in the history of Christian thought, a book which is vital to the understanding of modern Western society. Augustine originally intended it to be an apology for Christianity against the accusation that the Church was responsible for the decline of the Roman Empire, which had occurred just three years earlier. Indeed, Augustine produced a great amount of evidence to prove that paganism was responsible for this event. However, by the time the work was finished, the book had taken on a larger theme: a cosmic interpretation of history in terms of the conflict between good (the City of God) and evil (the Earthly City). Augustine foresees that through the will of God, the people of the City of God will eventually win immortality, and those in the Earthly City, destruction.Public Domain (P)1995 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

wonderful!

that was tremendous - that guy ought to be a saint! and so he is. outstanding narration.

Wonderful work!

Most memorable moments: treatise on happiness, mention of miracles during St. Augustine's time, how he used history and the writings of his opponents while appealing little to the Scriptures in order to refute their charges.

This Work is a Blessing to Me

I am in awe of the knowledge and understanding illustrated by Saint Augustine and his ability to present information in vivid detail to the common man in a manner in which most can comprehend.
The narrator was perfect and, I could easily imagine that I was listening to St Augustine himself.

To the extreme '

This book has so much, it could be experienced numerous times and still enlighten! Virtually every subject is addressed.

One very smart man!

Hours of pleasure, learning and growth. Humanity and struggles same and just as real today. Amazing that one had to handwrite and "publish" all copies back then manually. So, this long set of books was copied often enough to influence many in its day and remained an influence for 100s of years to now.

Masterpiece of Western Literature but...

Saint Augustine was one of the greatest theologians and writers in Church history. The central thesis here is that we can endeavor to live in the City of God (good) or the City of Man (evil). It is also a defense of Christianity against the charge it had anything to do with the fall of the Roman Empire. He goes on, perhaps a bit too much, on the faults of polytheism and the problems with pagan beliefs. His writing style is warm, friendly, and wise. Quite easy to read. However, this particular reading is a bit hard to get through. The sound isn't clear -- there is some background noise -- and the narrator drones a bit, not giving the proper inflections or pauses at the right time for the meaning of the text. It is not terrible, but the other versions available here on Audible are much better to listen to.

City of God

Excellent content mirroring what I had read many years ago. Narration was excellent as well.

Worth the purchase

What made the experience of listening to The City of God the most enjoyable?

The narrator did a fine job, I thought.

What did you like best about this story?

This question doesn't really apply to this work.

Which character – as performed by Bernard Mayes – was your favorite?

This question doesn't really apply to this work.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

This would take a couple of decades to properly digest. One could literally listen for just a few moments at any particular section and spend a day or two pondering the implications.

Any additional comments?

Enjoyable

Well read great timeless classic

City Of God is just as if not more relevant today than when written. St. Augustine speak to today. The reading is excellent.

Augustine's Classic Treatise Defines Christianity

There is arguably no other more important Christian literary work (outside of the gospels, both canonical and apocryphal) than Augustine's classic engagement of the history of Christianity in relation to that of the city of Rome. Imperial Rome represented to Augustine, as it's first imperial host, a model of what the future of Christendom was to become on Earth as humankind was tested and shaped by Christianity over the long centuries and millennia ahead. Augustine's visionary perspective on Rome is more than noteworthy when you consider that Rome is the most influential empire leading up to and culminating in the modernity given birth to by the Rennaisance and thereafter, and that Christianity is likewise perhaps the more influential major world religion today by virtue of its association with not only all European countries but with most English-speaking peoples, also.

Augustine defends Christianity from its historical critics in this work. That said, he is not fighting classical authors in general, but rather embraces the forerunners of Christianity in Socrates, Plato and the thinking tradition of the West. The reader shouldn't forget that Augustine is arguing for more than the justification of Christianity and the ills it also has inevitably been host to through what he would call the mortal imperfection of its historical representatives, but rather for an evolutionary trajectory for humankind, which Christianity and any and all other edifying faiths and philosophies along the way all inevitably point toward: the birth of a New Man (that is, a new kind of human being, with a new kind of spiritualized thinking), of which Jesus of Nazareth prophesied.

Some caveats are warranted, however. While this is an ample document to the testament of early Christianity's literary depth, Augustine, I'm afraid, is a consummately moralizing commentator on a good bit more than the mere critics of Christianity. In the first sections, he criticizes Lucretia pretty unfairly for killing herself under the duress of being raped and publically shamed by the news. In her time and place, the woman was typically both victim and co-conspirator whenever sexual deviant acts are concerned. The woman is typically considered somehow co-responsible for the rape, if not entirely to blame! Hearers today won't likely be able to receive such an even-tempered sexist critique positively, and for very good reason. Not all that glitters here is gold. Augustine, like other monastics of his milieu, and like the majority of males of his time in Rome, is quite unfeeling toward the plight of women in general, often seeing them as little more than the jealously guarded property of their husbands rather than human beings with their own individual dignity and subjectivity to contend with. He deals in likewise harshness with the suicides, those who kill themselves rather than face their own too-dark night of the soul. For many, this will appear very trite and unexcusably unfeeling toward women, and rightly so.