I asked for you to read four books for this week of the city of God.

We're going to read these four books this week, and today we'll read through book one,

and then I'm going to kind of give you some background on books two through nine,

but then we'll talk about book 10 tomorrow, and then on Wednesday.

We'll talk about book 15.

It's a kind of takes us deep into Augustine's figural imagination

for thinking about the two cities through the Bible.

And then we'll come to the Locus Classicus Book 19,

which discusses the relationship between the faith and politics.

So today, we're going to look at his first book.

His first book was his opening gambit to the charge.

As you'll see in the first lines of book one, he's writing to my dear Marsalinas.

Anybody know who Marsalinas is?

He's a... Um, anybody know who Marshalinus is? Marshalius?

Uh, he's a, uh, he's a North African, uh, pro-consul of the Roman Empire, um, who is a Christian, Catholic, and he is hearing from many of the Roman elites that, uh, the sack of Rome is really due to Christianity.

That Christianity has made Rome weak.

Now, a little backstory on Rome.

Of course, Rome is a persecuting power for Christians for hundreds of years.

And then, of course, in 325, by Nicaea, we have evidence that Constantine, with the Edict of Milan earlier in 313,

Christianity is a kind of established religion of the empire. By 360, Julian the Apostates, an emperor who is trying to roll things back towards

polytheism to the gods of our ancestors. By the 380s, we have Theodosius, an emperor who is smashing all of

the shrines to the ancestral gods. That's a bit of background. By 410, we have Goss from the north and the south on mass migration patterns.

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