Love Marks the Time

“The good make use of the world in order to enjoy God; but the evil, in contrast, want to make use of God in order to enjoy the world” (XV,7).

Growing up, I always knew how old my great grandmother was, even if I wasn’t sure about the age of my grandparents or even my parents. She was born in the year 1900, and by the time she was my age she had seen America go to war twice with a great depression in between. She lived in interesting times.

My times haven’t been as interesting as hers, but they seem to be heating up of late, which brought me to read Augustine's City of God. Prompted by the sacking of Rome in the year 410, Augustine set out to write about Rome’s role as a symbol of the world and in some ways lessen the shock of the once mighty empire’s capital being invaded. It took him over fifteen years to finish.

Historians will tell you that what we know of the Roman Empire long fled to Constantinople before the sacking back in Italy, and it endured for nearly another thousand years, although people came up with strange names to sever that empire's ties with Rome's. Augustine, however, will tell you that Rome was rotten from the inside out long before it fled or was sacked. It decayed from within on account of what it loved.

Augustine presents Rome as only the latest version of what he calls the earthly city, a city that loves itself above all and may or may not use and abuse God, his name, and his people in the process. He traces the history of this earthly city alongside biblical history, and as a Christian I found the latter familiar and the former to be an afterthought. I always knew there was history being made outside of Abraham’s pilgrimage or Moses’s time in the wilderness, but it just didn’t seem to matter. And that’s exactly Augustine’s point.

There have always been two cities at work in the world that are organized by the opposite objects of their love. They are for now intermingled here on this dusty ground we call earth until God’s judgment comes. Until then the earthly city will rise up and fall down again and again under different forms and names - but, sadly, its misdirected self-love will never change.

Augustine’s words reminded me of Terrence Mann’s speech in the movie, Field of Dreams: "The one constant through all the years [. . .] has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.” Augustine knew nothing of baseball, but he knew plenty about love - the one constant through all the years. It is love that marks the time. And while America rolls by in Mann's speech, Augustine's perspective reminds me that the world might just one day roll by America.

Augustine claims the divide between the earthly and godly cities goes all the way back to Cain and Abel. Cain followed his own will rather than God’s, while also offering gifts to God. Augustine says such people want to use God to fulfill their misguided desires, instead of healing them. Politically, they want divine help to reign in victory and peace on their terms, the terms of lust for power - for exercising dominion over others. This, of course, goes against the way of Jesus Christ, and his way of loving and caring for others, especially the poor and the weak.

And that’s why as magnificent as the earthly city in the form of Rome, appeared to be, it still got steamrolled in the year 410. Yes, the earthly city seems to always get rebuilt even if only to be erased again. But the City of God and its love marks the time - as long as we remain focused on the object of our love.

I once heard a sermon where the preacher contrasted Christmas to Easter, noting that Christmas is much more popular in the greater culture because a baby Jesus is easier to love than the crucified one. The Jesus of Holy Week is needy. He’s weak. He’s divisive. He’s a troublemaker. He's an enemy of the state. Yet, he also claimed to be the way the truth, and the life. 

I am not sure what I was expecting in reading City of God in 2025. After devoting dozens of hours to it, I know a lot more about ancient philosophy, Roman history, stories of miracles in North Africa, Augustine's obnoxious bias toward males, and his, shall I say, unique understanding of the book of Revelation. Augustine is always a curious person who is enamored by our world and its maker and redeemer. There is a good reason his works have withstood the test of time.

But I also know, after reading his longest book, that no matter what the earthly city is up to in my lifetime, whether it co-opts religion into its project or not, there is no need to worry. I’ll still cling to God. After all, "To persevere in Christ is to persevere in faith in him; and this faith, as the same Apostle defines it, works through love (Gal 5:6); and love, as he himself says elsewhere, does no evil (Rom 13:10) (XXI.25).”

Love marks the time.