Hello and welcome to Literature and History, Episode 102, an old man's book.

This is the second of two episodes on St. Augustine's City of God, a long treatise written

between 413 and 427. Our previous program took us through the first half of Augustine's

Magnum Opus, which was primarily a long critique of pagan culture and ideology. In this show,

as we read books 11-22, we will explore Augustine's central writings on original sin, innate

depravity, his interpretations of some controversial portions of the Bible, and what he believed

about heaven and hell. The chapters of the City of God that will read today while they are dense

and meandering were the most influential theological writings ever set down by a Christian person after

the first century. Put simply, the closing twelve books of the City of God contain a number of

doctrines that many of us think are in the Bible, but indeed became parts of Catholicism in

later centuries, largely due to Augustine himself. Over the past twenty-five or so shows of our

podcast, we've learned where Christianity came from, how it was set down in the New Testament,

and how it evolved in the centuries afterward. We've learned that while many Christianities

flourished during the first few centuries C.E., it was during the fourth century that the

religion captivated the minds and hearts of Roman leaders, just as its doctrines hardened

through ecclesiastical councils and the work of clergymen who attended them. Augustine was central

to this process of hardening and codification. Never want to throw up his hands and say,

I don't know, throughout the City of God, Augustine attempts to answer questions by skeptical

pagans and errant churchmen alike, building an all-encompassing theological system for posterity

and leaving virtually no topic untouched and no biblical verse uninterpreted.

The long stretch of the City of God that we're going to look at today makes for pretty challenging

reading. The title of this episode, again episode 102 and Old Man's book, comes from a description

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