City of God by Augustine (available from Amazon or free on the internet, here for example)
Today we finally come to the close of the City of God.
Augustine continues to defend the physical resurrection of the body from pagan philosophers (e.g. Porphyry, Plato) who do not believe in a bodily resurrection.
Then Augustine moves to discuss what the eternal life of Christians will look like, including how they will see God with their physical and spiritual eyes and that they will still have free will.
I liked Augustine's description of the free will of Christians in heaven: 'In the Heavenly City then, there will be freedom of will. It will be one and the same freedom in all, and indivisible in the separate individuals. It will be freed from all evil and filled with all good, enjoying unfailingly the delight of eternal joys, forgetting all offences, forgetting all punishments. Yet it will not forget its own liberation, nor be ungrateful to its liberator.'
Now that is free will!
One sentence final verdict
Augustine's City of God classifies all men into two cities (Christian or non-Christian) and teaches us about where the cities came from, what they are now doing and where they are going - it is a truly monumental work defending the City of God as the one true city and demonstrating the impoverished state of the City of Man.
Start Charnock's 'Attributes of God' by commencing Chapter 1 (The existence of God) and reading up to the paragraph beginning 'The things in the world declare the existence of a God. 1, In their production; 2, harmony; 3, preservation...'
Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.
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