The City of God by Augustine - 4 - Rome's Gods Make No Sense
Book Four
Quote
📝 Therefore the good man, although he is a slave, is free; but the bad man, even if he reigns, is a slave, and that not of one man, but, what is far more grievous, of as many masters as he has vices.
Notes
🔥 So far, Augustine is arguing that Christianity has been unjustly blamed for the fall of Rome. And he continues to develop this argument in this section as well.
🔥 Rome may have been a great empire, but what about the happiness and virtue of its people? Everyone was constantly living with war, bloodshed, and the greed for more power. They were obsessed with material things, and so no matter how much power they had, it was all transitory.
🔥 The Romans had so many different gods in charge of so many different things, "no general oversight was entrusted to any one of them." Even among the greater gods, no one had full dominion over anything. Their whole pantheon is really complicated and confusing, sometimes there are multiple gods for one thing.
🔥 Augustine is basically mocking Rome's gods and their lack of coherence. Jupiter marries Juno, who is also his mother(?). It doesn't make any sense.
🔥 Faith and Virtue are worshiped by the Romans, which leads Augustine to ask, why would you need any other gods? If you serve faith and virtue, that's all you really need.
🔥 The same could be said of their worship of Felicity (happiness). Isn't that the core reason why anyone does anything? Or why anyone pays attention to any god at all? To get happiness? Why not simplify things?
🔥 But of course, the Christian God of Jesus is the only true God. All felicity comes from him, and not just felicity, everything comes from him. He has dominion over everything.
🔥 Even the Romans themselves — Augustine refers to Cicero again — pointed these things out about their gods, and that it would be better to have just one.
🔥 God is supreme over everything. He is the one who grants earthly kingdoms both to the good and the bad, for reasons that are "hidden from us."
Key Takeaways
💬 Slowly but surely, Augustine seems to be developing a kind of philosophy of history. The question about why Rome fell is one that historians today still grapple with. Augustine is tackling it from a very specific angle, defending the charge that it was Christianity's fault, and in turn developing a philosophy of history centered on Christianity and the Christian God as the driver of all of human history. We'll see how he continues to develop this, especially since the thoughts and ways of God are largely hidden from us, as Augustine himself says.