Great book! If you can get through it.

I have always enjoyed St. Augustine. From the confessions to On the Trinity, he is a pleasure to read, and now listen. This book will give the reader, listener, a brief history of the fall of the Roman Empire and then explain how Christians were dealing with that event. Augustine emphasizes the notion that, as a Christian, one should not expect the things of this world to last. He uses the fall of the Roman empire to illustrate this point. Thus, we have the title, City of God. As a Christian one needs to identify them-self with the City of God not the city of man.
As I said earlier, this is a great book; if you can get through it. It is very long. It took me a semester of college to read most of the 'important parts' and about two months to listen to it in its entirety. So I hope all who download this book will push on through because there are many priceless pearls of truth with in the pages of this book.

76 people found this helpful

Sharp thinker; profound topic; still relevant

I prefer listening to this kind of book rather than reading it because I can get through it while driving or walking.

As a Catholic priest, I would naturally be sympathetic to the argument of the author, but as a human being, I am always concerned with an author's learning, logic, honesty, and openness. I think St. Augustine rates high in all these categories. Even if one would not agree with him in a given instance, I think most people would at least say he had good reasons for his opinion, expressed them well, and did not needlessly minimize the opinions of others. I would in fact think of this work as something of a model for "ecumenical dialogue."

I would rate the narrator of this book as "born for this kind of presentation." His English accent adds class to the reading. In fact, I may tackle his narration of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire one of these days.

Finally, compared to the translation we have in our house library, I would consider this translation more elegant, clearer, and much more acceptable to the modern ear.

58 people found this helpful

obviously a classic, horribly read

I love St. Augustine, I picked up this audiobook to listen to at work and knew it'd be taxing, but the only issue I have is how the reader just goes on and on, running sentences together, and placing pauses at the wrong places with his fairly monotone droning voice.

I do appreciate the effort to being this book to audio form, and cannot imagine how much effort would have to go into it, but I just wish it was done better. I unfortunately cannot suggest this book to others for this reason

10 people found this helpful

Worth the purchase

What made the experience of listening to The City of God the most enjoyable?

The narrator did a fine job, I thought.

What did you like best about this story?

This question doesn't really apply to this work.

Which character – as performed by Bernard Mayes – was your favorite?

This question doesn't really apply to this work.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

This would take a couple of decades to properly digest. One could literally listen for just a few moments at any particular section and spend a day or two pondering the implications.

Any additional comments?

Enjoyable

7 people found this helpful

Production review

I won't go into a review of St Augustine's epic work itself. The other reviews here do a fine job of that. But those that give the performance 5 stars are ... well let's just say they should be commended for their Christian charity. I wouldn't expect a work this long to be incredibly well performed, but this is just plain substandard. It's listenable, but that's about it. Frankly it's below the standard I've come to expect from Audible.

10 people found this helpful

An amzing work of Christian scholarship.

Augustine demonstrates his theory that Christianity is based on faith and not man's thinking yet is fully rational. While much of his apologetics deal with Roman gods and beliefs, they are an outstanding example of how we can reason our faith to the shame of scoffers.
I felt the narrator a bit stuffy, though. While his voice gave a sense of antiquity, I thought his reading style a bit tedious. To his credit, Augustine does use Pauline sentence structure (quite long and difficult sentences) and it is a monstrously long book.

4 people found this helpful

Terrible Recording

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

There is background noise in this recording which makes it very difficult for the listener to follow the reader.

3 people found this helpful

Long, exhaustive, surprisingly biblically shallow

Disclaimer: could not finish, I made it like 20 hours in and it wore me down.

This book is much less about Christianity than it is an exhaustive berating of polytheists for how stupid they are to believe in such gods. Painfully detailed in its discussions of Roman polytheistic theology and Roman history it is actually, in my opinion, a very good textbook on said religion.

As for Christianity, discussion is brief and practical discussion is far briefer still. Augustine's theology so far consists of a body soul duality in which the body is evil and contains all of one's evil desires while the soul is the heavenly part the purification of which is where all good things in human nature come from. The atonement of the soul of course comes from the death of Jesus, but also through suffering imparted by God which purifies the soul of the body's pollution.

He barely spends any time discussing scripture, and I suspect that he may have done a better job building the City of God if he had spent less time explaining to polytheists why they are wrong and more more effort on developing intimacy with God's text and God's people. Furthermore, if he had been a little less anti-Semitic and had spent more time in the old testament he may have developed a more nuanced view of what to do with the flesh part of a human being.

Still, we had to come from somewhere, and i can't be too hard on Augustine, he wasn't the one who made all of the disastrous choices that sent Christianity down the path it went down during the second and third centuries, he's a product of those choices, and was doing the best with where God put him.

2 people found this helpful

Truly a blessing - a worthwhile listen!

A wonderful gift of God to His church, City of God still speaks through the ages to we in the modern era. Several of the books in the middle of this work can be a bit tedious for those unfamiliar with Roman antiquity, but much of great historical value and context can be gleaned by those willing to listen. Certainly Augustine's vision of the eternal conflict between the city of this world and the city of God gives great insight for today. The narrator also does a great job!

2 people found this helpful

The Great Theologian

Clearly a great theologian of the early Church, Augustine defends the faith against the Pagan attacks and promotes the timeless Biblical truths.

2 people found this helpful