Read City of God (Penguin Classics) Online
Authors: Saint Augustine
There was not much substance in that ‘presage’! Terminus did not yield to Jupiter; but he yielded to Hadrian’s decision, to Julian’s rashness, to Jovian’s
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desperate situation. The more intelligent and thoughtful Romans saw this clearly. But they were powerless in the face of the habits of the community, which were tied up with the ceremonies of the demons. They themselves, in fact, although they realized the uselessness of such rites, believed that religious worship should be offered to the order of nature which is organized under the rule and government of the one true God. But such worship is due only to that God; and thus these Romans were, in the words of the Apostle, ‘serving the created order, instead of the Creator, who is blessed for all eternity’.
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It was the help of this true God that was needed – the God who sends men of holiness and true devotion to die for the true religion, so that false religions may be eradicated from the living.
30.
What the pagans, on their own admission, think about their gods
Cicero, an augur himself, laughs at auguries;
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and at men who adjust their plans of action in obedience to the cries of ravens and crows.
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But an Academic philosopher
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like Cicero, who maintains
that everything is uncertain, does not deserve to be treated as an authority in such matters. In the second book of his On
the Nature of the Gods
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Quintus Lucilius Balbus
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is represented as taking part in a discussion; and while he himself advances some superstitions arising from the realm of physical nature – what might be called scientific or philosophical superstititions – he is indignant, for all that, at the erection of images and at fairy tales. ‘Do you see’, he says,
how man’s reason is diverted from scientific knowledge, carefully acquired, and of practical value, towards fictitious and invented gods? And this gives rise to false notions and confused errors, to what amount to old wives’ tales. And we are given information about the appearance of the gods, their age, their clothes, their ornaments; and further, about their genealogy, their marriages, their family connections: everything is translated into the resemblance of human weakness. The gods are represented as swayed by passions: we hear of their lusts and sorrows and bursts of anger. And, according to the stories, they were not exempt from wars and battles: not only, as in Homer,
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when two armies are fighting and various gods support either side; the gods had their own wars, for instance, those against the Titans and the Giants. Those stories are told by fools and believed by fools – a mass of frivolous nonsense.
There you have the admissions of the defenders of the pagan gods! Later on, the speaker asserts that all this belongs to superstition, while his own teaching, in which he apparently follows the Stoics, belongs to religion. ‘It is not only the philosophers’, he says, ‘who have distinguished superstition from religion. Our ancestors drew the same distinction. For those who spent whole days in prayer, and offered sacrifices, so that their children might survive them (
superstites essent
) were called ‘superstitious.’
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One cannot fail to notice that he is trying, through fear of opposing the established customs of the country, to praise the religion of his ancestors, while wishing to disentangle it from superstition. The attempt fails. For if those ancestors gave the name ‘superstitious’ to those who spent whole days in prayer and offered sacrifices, surely the same name applies to those who set up images (which he finds reprehensible) of gods of different ages and with distinctive clothes, and established their genealogies, marriages, and family connections. When all this is criticized as superstition, then those ancestors are immediately implicated as the founders and worshippers of such images. And Cicero himself is implicated since
for all the eloquence with which he strives to extricate himself and free himself from the charge, he did hold that those institutions should be treated with reverence. And he would not have dared even to mutter, in a popular assembly, the opinions resonantly proclaimed by the eloquent speaker in that philosophical debate.
Let us, who are Christians, give thanks to our Lord God (not to heaven and earth, as the philosopher says in his discussion, but to him who made heaven and earth) because, through the sublime humility of Christ, through the preaching of the apostles, through the faith of the martyrs who died for the truth and live with the Truth, our God has overthrown those superstitions, which Balbus, in his stammering way (
balbutiens
), barely succeeded in criticizing; and he has overthrown them by the free servitude of his people, not only in the hearts of true believers but even in the temples of superstitition.
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Varro’s views. He rejected popular superstition, and held that one god should be worshipped, though he did not attain the knowledge of the true God
We regret that Varro classed stage-shows among ‘Divine Matters’, though this was not an expression of his own judgement. For though he assumes a pious role and exhorts men to worship the gods, as he does on many occasions, he acknowledges that he is not following his own judgement in conforming to customs which, as he points out, were established by the Roman state. Now he has no hesitation in admitting that if he had been founding that city at the beginning, he would have consecrated the gods and their names according to the rule of Nature. But he asserts that he is bound, as a member of an ancient people, to maintain the traditional story of their names and surnames as it reached him, and to make it his aim, in his writing and researches, to encourage the common people to honour the gods, not to despise them. In speaking like this he hints, with characteristic astuteness, that he is not revealing all that he knows, for much of that was not only contemptible in his eyes, but also likely to arouse contempt even in the common people if it were divulged. I should rightly be suspected of indulging in conjecture here, if Varro had not openly declared in another place, on the subject of religious rites, that there are many truths which it is not expedient for the general public to know, and, further, many falsehoods which it is good for the people to believe true, and that this is why the Greeks kept their initiation rites veiled in silence and enclosed within walls. Varro here at least reveals
the whole policy of the so-called sages, by whose influence cities and peoples are governed. The malign demons rejoice exceedingly in this deceit, since they control the deluders and the deluded alike. And it is only the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, that frees us from their domination.
The same shrewd and learned author also says that in his view the only people who have apprehended what God is, are those who have believed him to be the soul which governs the universe by motion and reason. In this, Varro did not attain to the whole truth; for God is not a soul, but the author and maker of the soul, as of all else. All the same, if Varro could not free himself from the prejudices of inherited custom, at least he would acknowledge, and teach, that men should worship one God, who governs the universe by motion and reason. And so the only quarrel we should still have with him concerns his assertions that God is a soul, and not, as he really is, the creator of the soul.
Varro says also that the ancient Romans worshipped the gods for a hundred and seventy years without any images. ‘If that habit had been continued,’ he says, ‘the worship of the gods would have been conducted with greater purity.’ Among the evidence for this opinion he cites the Jewish people. And he has no hesitation in concluding this passage with the assertion that those who first set up images of the gods for the people were responsible for the abolition of reverent fear in their communities and for the increase of error. He had the sense to realize that it was easy to despise the gods because of the insensibility of their images. Notice that Varro speaks of ‘increase of error’ not ‘communication of error’. He evidently intends it to be inferred that error already existed, even without the images. And then when he says that ‘the people who apprehended what God is were those who believe in him as the soul which governs the universe by motion and reason’, and when he holds that ‘the worship of the gods would have been conducted with greater purity’ without images, one cannot fail to see how nearly he approaches to the truth. If he had had the strength to resist the power of long-established error he would assuredly have decided that the one God, whom he believed to be governor of the universe, should be worshipped without an image. And since he found himself so close to the truth, it may be that the mutability of the soul might have counselled him to the conclusion that the true God is an immutable nature, the creator of the soul, as of all else.
This being so, it follows that when such men as Varro have included
in their writings all this ludicrous nonsense about the gods, they have done so because they were compelled to reveal them by the hidden working of the will of God, not because they were trying to persuade men of their truth. When we have taken our evidence from these books, we did so to refute those who refuse to see the strength and malignity of the demonic power from which we are set free by the unique sacrifice of that holy blood that was shed for us, and by the gift of the spirit which has been imparted to us.
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For what apparent advantage the rulers of nations wished false religions to continue among their subject peoples
Varro says also, on the subject of the generations of the gods, that people in general are more inclined to listen to poets than to scientists, and that is why his ancestors, that is the ancient Romans, attributed sex and generation to the gods and arranged marriages for them.
We need not seek further for the reason for such beliefs than the interest of the self-styled experts and savants in misleading the people in matters of religion. In such matters they made it their business not only to worship the demons but also to imitate them; for the demons’ greatest desire is to deceive. The demons can only get control of men when they; have deluded and deceived them; in the same way the leaders of men (who werejiot men of integrity, but the human counterparts of the demons) taught men as true, under the name of religion, things they knew to be false. By this means they bound them tighter, as it were, to the citizen community, so that they might bring them under control and keep them there by the same technique. What chance had a weak and ignorant individual of escaping from the combined deceits of the statesmen and the demons?
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The times of all kings and kingdoms have been ordained by the counsel and power of the true God
It is therefore this God, the author and giver of felicity, who, being the one true God, gives earthly dominion both to good men and to evil. And he does this not at random or, as one may say, fortuitously, because he is God, not Fortune. Rather he gives in accordance with the order of events in history, an order completely hidden from us, but perfectly known to God himself. Yet God is not bound in subjection to this order of events; he is himself in control, as the master of events, and arranges the order of things as a governor. As for felicity, he grants
that only to the good. Men may have this happiness – or not have it – when they are slaves, or when they are rulers. But it can only be enjoyed in its fullness in that life where no one is any longer a slave. The reason why God gives worldly dominions both to the good and the evil is this: to prevent any of his worshippers who are still infants in respect of moral progress from yearning for such gifts from him as if they were of any importance.
This is the sacrament, the hidden meaning, of the Old Testament, where the New Testament lay concealed. In the Old Testament the promises and gifts are of earthly things; but even then men of spiritual perception realized, although they did not yet proclaim the fact for all to hear, that by those temporal goods eternity was signified; they understood also what were the gifts of God which constituted true felicity.
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The kingdom of the Jews, established by the One true God, and preserved as long as they continued in the true religion
So those earthly blessings – the sole objects of breathless desire for those who can imagine nothing better – are dependent on the power of the one God, not on that of the many false gods, whom the Romans formerly believed they ought to worship. And it was so that this might be recognized that God increased his people in Egypt, starting with a very small number, and freed them from Egypt by means of miraculous signs. It was not Lucina whom those Israelite women invoked when God himself saved their new-born children from the hands of the Egyptian persecutors who intended to destroy them. God’s purpose was that the children should be marvellously multiplied and that race unbelievably increased. Those children took the breast without the aid of goddess Rumina; they needed no Cunina in their cradles; they took food and drink without Educa and Potina;
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they were reared without assistance from all those gods of childhood, married without the gods of marriage, they needed no cult of Priapus for the consummation of their marriages. Without the invocation of Neptune the sea divided and opened up a way for their crossing and brought its waters together to overwhelm their enemies in pursuit. When they received the manna from heaven they did not consecrate any goddess called Mannia, nor did they worship the Nymphs and the
Lymphs when the rock was struck and poured out water to quench their thirst. They waged war without any frenzied rites of Mars and Bellona; and if, when they won their battles, victory was with them, that meant for them a gift not of a goddess, but of their God. They did not have to thank Segetia for their crops, Bubona for their oxen, Mellona for honey, Pomona for fruits.
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In fact, the Israelites received from the one true God all the blessings for which the Romans thought it necessary to pray to all the host of false gods, and they received them in a far happier manner. And if they had not sinned against God by turning aside to the worship of strange gods and of idols, seduced by impious superstition as if by magic arts, if they had not finally sinned by putting Christ to death, they would have continued in possession of the same realm, a realm exceeding others in happiness, if not in extent. If today they are dispersed over almost all the world, amongst almost all the nations, this is part of the providence of the one true God, whose purpose is that when in any place the images of the false gods are overthrown, with their altars, sacred groves, and temples, and when their sacrifices are forbidden, it may be proved that this was prophesied long ago; so that when this is read of in our Christian Scriptures there may be no ground for believing it a Christian invention.