I don't really know how to review something like this in a format that I've used primarily for rating fiction, but I'll give it a shot.

The three stars are not meant as some kind of snobbish modern judgment on The City of God but my attempt to balance its theological and historical significance with the difficulty and not infrequent irrelevancy of the material. Augustine was adept at philosophy and rhetoric, keen in his exegetical analysis, and thorough in his argumentation, but many of the topics discussed and many of the frequent digressions, excurses, and flights of fancy are tedious to the modern reader, even a sympathetic one.

A suggestion: If you're interested in the theology of the work, skip the first ten chapters. Seriously. I hate skipping stuff, especially when I'm trying to get through classic works. I plowed through every word of this thing and I assure you -- you don't need to. You won't miss anything. Augustine's arguments against the Roman gods and the ancient Roman worldview(s) are really tough to get into. He spends a great deal of time explaining and then arguing against theories about the world that we would never dream of countenancing, with disproportionate amounts of time devoted to refuting very minor sub-points of philosophical systems.

Things pick up a bit at ch. 11, where some of Augustine's famous emphases emerge, such as the nature of evil as privation of good and the doctrine of original sin. We also get his take on biblical history with a hearty dose of typological interpretation that treads on and across the border with the allegorical not infrequently.

The book is full of intriguing observations and theological insights. The last three chapters deal with final judgment and the eternal state in ways that continue to be influential in contemporary theology. Augustine's eschatology is, I think, a major piece in the development of amillennialism. Perhaps sometime I'll come back here and put in a few of my notes.

Let me conclude for now with a quote that had me laughing out loud. It comes from the section describing the surprising operations of the human body in special cases that hint at how we shall live once our resurrected bodies submit entirely to our redeemed wills.

Some have such command of their bowels, that they can break wind continuously at pleasure, so as to produce the effect of singing (XIV.24).