The City of God stands as Augustine's masterwork of theological defense and construction, written over thirteen years in response to accusations that Christianity brought ruin upon Rome. This first volume contains the first ten books of sustained refutation—demolishing pagan claims that traditional worship secured either temporal prosperity or eternal happiness—followed by the beginning of his positive vision in Books Eleven through Thirteen, where he traces the origin of two societal orders to the primordial division among the angels. What emerges is not merely an apology for Christianity but a philosophy of history that subordinate the fate of empires to the hidden providence of the one true God, whose sovereignty extends from creation through the fall to the final judgment.
The earth goddesses present further confusion. The earth is Tellus, but also Juno, Mater Magna, Ceres, Proserpine, Vesta, Tellumo, Altor, and Rusor. Varro attempts to reduce these to one goddess with many names, yet they are worshipped as many. The Galli, mutilated priests of the Great Mother, practice a cruel abomination. Porphyry’s interpretation—that Atys signifies flowers that fall before fruit appears—fails, for the genitalia do not fall naturally but are torn away, resulting in sterility. The Great Mother’s rites surpass even Jupiter’s licentiousness in cruelty, for they mutilate men rather than merely dishonoring them.
Augustine condemns the entire physical theology. Even if these gods were parts of the world, worshipping the world or its parts is not worshipping the true God. If one worships the true God with obscene rites, one sins in the mode of worship; if one worships a creature with such rites, one sins doubly. Varro’s attempt to refer these gods to natural reasons fails because the rites themselves are so foul that no natural reason can justify them. The whole civil theology is occupied in inventing means for attracting wicked and impure spirits, who visit senseless images and take possession of stupid hearts.
The true origin, Augustine argues, is demonic. He recounts the story of Numa Pompilius, who wrote books containing the true causes of the sacred rites. When these books were discovered by a ploughman on the Janiculum and brought to the praetor, the senate, having read the causes, ordered them burned. They preferred the error arising from ignorance to the disturbance that knowledge would cause. Numa had learned these rites through hydromancy—necromancy—consulting demons who appeared in the water. The demons taught him foul rites, and the causes were so abominable that the senate, despite their reverence for ancestral tradition, could not bear to have them known.
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