 After Plato and Aristotle, the most influential early philosopher is St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430 C.E.).  In  The City of God against the Pagans, Augustine presents a radically new, Christian vision of human history.  Some humans, God's elect, are predestined for heaven.  The rest of humanity is predestined for damnation.  Those who are saved belong to the “City of God” and those who are damned belong to the “City of man” (426, XV.1).  Augustine rejects cyclical accounts of human affairs for a linear one.  He is especially concerned to repudiate the doctrine of eternal recurrence, which says that events identical in all respects repeat over and over again.  He emphasizes that the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ are unique occurrences (426, XII.14) and compares the history of the elect to an individual life (426, X.14). 