57 pages • 1 hour read
Saint AugustineThe City of God
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 426A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Debate
One of the characteristic features of City of God is Augustine’s use of pagan literary sources as debate partners. It would have been simple enough for him to forego such references and just write a treatise against paganism using only his own words and insights, but Augustine felt that his case would be stronger if it interacted with the best ideas of his opponents, as set forward by their best thinkers. As such, he selects leading figures from Latin literature and Neoplatonic philosophy, like Varro and Porphyry, offering expansive explanations of their positions before levelling his critiques. In many cases, he even commends the other writers when he appreciates some of their insights or finds their reasoning particularly strong, as with the Neoplatonic contention that there is a supreme, all-powerful Creator.
By using this literary device, Augustine ensures that he does not fall into the trap of the “straw man fallacy,” in which one attacks an exaggerated position that they imagine the other person to hold, but which is in fact a misunderstanding of that position. By using his opponents’ own sources, Augustine can deal with their arguments on their own terms—a strategy that likely attests to his training as a rhetorician.
Repetition
Another quality of Augustine’s writing is its stylistic use of repetition, specifically the repetition of key words and their varying grammatical forms in the context of a single sentence or two. He does this most commonly when he is waxing eloquent about the nature of God and the joy of eternal life, choosing stylistic constructions that will evoke a sense of wonder and beauty in the reader’s mind. This frequent repetition of related terms is usually also combined with the use of short, rhythmic phrases in the construction of his sentences, making the text sound more like a passionate, lyrical speech than a treatise. Having been trained in rhetoric and practicing a regular course of public speaking in sermons, this mode of expression likely came naturally for Augustine. In using these stylistic features, he is able to achieve an emotional immediacy with his audience.
Comprehensiveness
While certain sections of City of God read like lyrical speeches, other sections read like an encyclopedia, and this is due to an intentional structural choice on Augustine’s part. City of God was written as a defense of the Christian faith, which fits it into a category of similar treatises in early Christianity, in which the author would seek to offer answers to the questions that pagans might ask. In Augustine’s case, his sheer intellectual prowess means that he can imagine endless strings of questions that might be prompted by his discussions, and he wants to provide answers to all of them.
As such, many of the individual books in City of God take on a unique structure, wherein the first part of the book is devoted to an orderly exposition of the main point Augustine is trying to make, and the second part is a miscellaneous collection of answers to all the tangential questions that might arise from his discussion. In organizing City of God in this way, Augustine is able to show the broad scope and impressive depth of the Christian intellectual tradition. His literary structuring of the text to be as comprehensive as possible encourages the reader to consider the arguments for Christianity more seriously, as the Christian tradition appears to have an answer for any question one might ask.
