The Essential City of God

“Augustine’s City of God is at once perennial and puzzling. It wrestles with fundamental questions that face every generation but was written from and for a context that is now deeply foreign. Gregory W. Lee has created an incredible resource to help readers today and in the future encounter this classic. He has curated the best anthology of City of God that exists, surrounded the primary readings with incredibly helpful notes and commentary, and left room for readers to wrestle with Augustine for themselves.”

“Augustine’s magnum opus, City of God, remains a staple in the Western canon—its importance to historians, philosophers, and theologians matched only by its daunting size and density. The Essential ‘City of God’ provides readers with the tools to approach this incandescent-if-intimidating work with confidence. Amply supported by explanatory footnotes, essays elucidating key themes, and a helpful introduction, this book is bound to become a must-read for Augustine afficionados and newcomers to his oeuvre alike.”

“The brilliance of some classics of Christian theology can be obscured by the authors’ allusions to philosophical schools, works of literature, and historical events that were well-known to the readers of their times but are not to students in the present. For this reason, Augustine’s City of God, a window onto the landscape of the Roman empire in its decline, can be confusing. Fortunately, Gregory W. Lee has provided modern readers with an invaluable guide that will explain Augustine’s social and intellectual context so that readers may see both through and beyond his references to the theological insights that make this text a classic.”

“Augustine calls City of God a ‘great and arduous work.’ It is his magnum opus. But the text’s loftiness comes with lofty demands. Gregory W. Lee is an eminently trustworthy guide whose meticulousness, reliability, and accessibility befit the stature and strenuousness of this remarkable text. His judicious selections combined with his superb introduction, annotations, and essays on vexed topics represent the ideal starting point for engaging this greatest work of one of history’s greatest authors.”

“Augustine is always relevant, and in the twenty-first century even moreso. Gregory W. Lee’s selection of passages from Augustine’s masterpiece, City of God, together with Lee’s own astute commentary on those passages, makes for an exceptional work for students and interested general readers. Highly recommended.”

“Augustine notes that his City of God is the result of ‘great and arduous labor.’ As anyone who has tried to read it knows, that can describe the reader’s experience too. For those daunted by the prospect, Gregory W. Lee has created this intelligently abbreviated edition. Readers can become familiar with the work, then be tempted to read the whole thing next time!”

“Augustine desperately needs not just an editor but a wingman—someone to track his flight as he deep dives into cultural critique, metaphysical speculation, exegetical acrobatics, and otherworldly musings. Gregory W. Lee, one of the best of the new generation of political theologians, offers readers a framework for reading City of God: an introduction to the text and its context within Augustine’s political theology, an outline of the book’s contents, chapter intros, explanatory notes, expository essays.”