The Essential City of God: A Reader and Commentary

by Gregory W. Lee

Publisher:

Baker Academic

, 2025

Overview

This one-stop resource offers introductory essays and critical commentary on Augustine’s City of God. The book makes Augustine’s thought accessible, explains his ideas clearly, and prompts further reading.

Augustine is the most influential thinker in Western Christianity, and City of God is arguably his greatest work. However, its length and complexity make its argument difficult to follow, even for specialists.

This one-stop resource offers introductory essays, essential selections from City of God, and critical commentary on the text, enabling readers to study Augustine for themselves. It makes Augustine’s thought accessible, explains his ideas clearly, and prompts further reading.

Constructed and composed with the classroom in mind, this volume introduces Augustine’s text by abridging and explaining the primary source material. These selections focus on Augustine's social and political thought while indicating the larger contours of his work.

This book retrieves ancient wisdom for the modern world, presenting an enduring vision for faithfulness and hope in times of social instability.

Key Features

• Makes Augustine’s thought accessible, explains his ideas clearly, and prompts further reading
• Introduces Augustine’s text by abridging and explaining the primary source material
• Retrieves ancient wisdom for the modern world, presenting an enduring vision for faithfulness and hope in times of social instability

Contents

• Introduction
• History of the Romans
• Book 1: Preface, 1-9, 15-36
• Providence and Suffering
• Pagan Virtue
• “City of God” 1.16-28: Rape of Christian Women
• War
• Book 2: 17-21
• Roman Spectacles
• Book 3: 1, 9-12, 23-31
• Book 4: 1-8, 14-16
• Roman Religion
• Book 5: Preface, 1, 12-20, 24-26
• Book 10: 1-8, 16, 19-20
• Platonists and Platonism
• Angels and Demons
• Eucharist
• Book 12: 22-23, 28
• Book 13: 1-8, 12-15
• Original Sin
• Book 14: 1-15, 28
• Body
• Women
• Evil as Privation
• Book 15: 1-7
• Predestination and the Will
• Book 17: 1-4a, 5-7
• Figurative Interpretation of Scripture
• Book 18: 1-2, 27, 46-51, 54e
• Eusebius’s “Chronicle”
• Jews and Judaism
• Book 19
• Stoics and Stoicism
• Slavery
• Porphyry
• Last Things
• Book 22: 6-7, 29-30
• Appendix: Outline of City of God

Praise for 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.

—James K. A. Smith, professor of philosophy, Calvin University

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.

—Charles Mathewes, University of Virginia

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.

—James Wetzel, professor of philosophy and Augustinian Chair, Villanova University

Product Details

• Title: The Essential City of God: A Reader and Commentary
• Author: Gregory W. Lee
• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Print Publication Date: 2025
• Logos Release Date: 2025
• Pages: 464
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subjects: Augustine, of Hippo, Saint, 354-430. De civitate Dei; Kingdom of God; Apologetics
• ISBNs: 9781540967107, 9781540968357, 9781493447695, 9781493447701, 1540967107, 1540968359, 1493447696, 149344770X
• Resource ID: LLS:SSNTLCTYGRDRCMM
• Resource Type: Commentary
• Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-02T03:31:48Z

About Gregory W. Lee

Gregory W. Lee (Ph.D., Duke University) is assistant professor of theology at Wheaton College. His academic interests focus on the appropriation of early Christian writers for contemporary theological reflection. His forthcoming book, \"Today When You Hear His Voice\": Scripture, the Covenants, and the People of God, explores the dynamics of scriptural authority in Augustine, Calvin and the epistle to the Hebrews. His next major project will focus on Augustine's understanding of ecclesial sin and its implications for church division and the church-world relationship. He and his wife live in the North Lawndale area of Chicago, where they attend Lawndale Christian Community Church.