City of God - Augustine - VI - Book 3 concluded

Required reading
City of God by Augustine (available from Amazon or free on the internet, here for example) - Finish reading Book 3 (Chapters 17-31).

My summary
In today's reading Augustine basically recounts the terrible disasters that occurred in Rome before Christianity was adopted - wars, famines, plagues, fires, floods and freezing winters. 

Therefore Augustine makes the point that you cannot blame God for the current disaster: 'The kind of folly which we have to suffer, and to which we are forced to reply, would certainly blame each and all of those calamities on the Christian religion, if they had witnessed them in the Christian era.  And yet, as it is, they do not attribute the blame to their gods; in fact they demand the restoration of the worship of those gods, to escape the lighter afflictions of these days, although the worshippers in days of old were not spared those heavier catastrophes.'

What grabbed me
Augustine's heavy condemnation against Roman gods for not saving their worshippers raises a sticky problem, does that then mean if they worshipped Christ they would be protected? 

Now while Augustine hasn't dealt directly with this problem, I liked how an answer was hinted at in today's reading.  Basically that the problem with Roman gods is that they promise reward in this life: 'We are told that the reason for the worship of those gods, the reason why their worship is demanded, is to safeguard men's felicity in respect of things perishable and impermanent.'

Whereas the worship of Christ is primarily about eternal reward: 'If the people of Saguntum [a Roman city besieged by Hannibal] had been Christians, and had suffered any such calamity for the faith of the gospel, it would not have destroyed itself by sword and fire; but it would have suffered destruction for the gospel faith, and it would have suffered in the hope based on its faith in Christ, the hope not of a reward of a brief space of time, but of an endless eternity.'

Being a Christian does not mean you are protected from disaster.  But it does mean you will be protected from disaster in the next life.

Next week's reading
Begin Book 4 (Chapters 1-16)

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.