City of God - Augustine - XIII - Book 7 concluded

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

My summary
In the rest of Book Seven, Augustine continues hammering away at the absurdity and the indecency of the pagan gods.

Further examples are given of the stupidity of multiplying gods: '"Venilia", says Varro, "is the water which comes (venit) to the shore: Salacia is the water which returns to the open sea (salum)."  Why then are there two goddesses?  It is the same water which comes up and then returns.  Here we have again that whimsical lunacy which boils up into a vapour of numerous divinities.'

Augustine also comments on the obscene practices of the worship of foreign gods.  Some of the practices are so shameful that Varro is silent on them and the senate ordered the burning of certain books recounting them.

Finally, even though Augustine has been primarily using logic to discount pagan gods, towards the end of Book Seven he makes clear that it is Christianity that 'has the power to prove that the gods of the nations are unclean demons.'

What grabbed me
There was an interesting comment on the two elements of right worship - that it is directed to the right being and directed with the right means: '...if any element of the world, or any created spirit, even if it is neither unclean nor evil, is worshipped with temple, priest, and sacrifice, which are due only to the true God, that is an evil thing - not evil because the vehicles of the worship are evil, but because such vehicles should be employed only in the worship of him to whom such worship and service are due.  On the other hand, if anyone should maintain that by means of senseless or even monstrous images, by human sacrifices, by the garlanding of genitals, by the commerce of prostitution, by the amputation and mutilation of sexual organs, by the consecration of effeminates, by the celebration of festivals with spectacles of degraded obscenity - if anyone should maintain that by such means he was worshipping the one true God, the creator of every soul and every material thing; then his sin would consist not in worshipping an unworthy object, but in worshipping the proper object of worship by improper means.  As for the man who uses such degraded and infamous means not to worship the true God, the creator of soul and body, but to worship a creature, not necessarily an evil creature but still a creature, whether it be a soul or a material body, or a combination of both, such a man commits a double sin against God; in the first place he worships, in place of God, a being who is other than God; in the second place, his instruments of worship are such as should not be employed in the worship either of God or of any other being.'

Yes, it is sin to do good (e.g. love) in honour of something other than God.  But it is even worse to do evil in honour of another god.

Next week's reading
Begin reading Book Eight, Chapters 1-15.

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