City of God - Augustine - XI - Book 6

Required reading
City of God by Augustine (available from Amazon or free on the internet, here for example) - Read all of Book 6.

My summary
In Book Six Augustine seeks to show how the Roman gods cannot grant eternal life.

Most of the Book interacts with the work of the Roman scholar Marcus Varro. 

Varro divided theology into three groups:
(i) mythical (theology of the poets);
(ii) physical (theology of the philosophers);
(iii) civil (theology of the general public). 

Augustine primarily attacks both mythical and civil theology by showing that they are basically the same and neither grants eternal life: 'I believe that I have sufficiently shown that both the theology of the city and the theology of the theatre belong to one division, namely, "civil" theology.  Hence, since they are both alike in their indecency, their absurdity, their unworthiness, their falsity, heaven forbid that any man of genuine religion should hope for life eternal from either of them.'

What grabbed me
There was an excellent illustration of the blindness of sinful humans.  Varro was acknowledged as a great scholar yet his reason for giving precedence to human matters before divine matters in his writings was that 'human communities first came into existence and divine institutions are afterwards established by them..."divine matters were established by men: "The painter exists before the picture, the builder before the building: similarly, human communities precede their institutions.'

To think that man establishes divine matters is completely ridiculous.  No wonder the Romans began worshipping humans as gods and assigning human attributes to gods. 

Yes, Varro, the painter exists before the picture, but the painter is not man and the picture is not God.  The painter is God and the picture is man.

Next week's reading
Begin reading Book Seven by reading Chapters 1-16.

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