City of God - Augustine - XV - Book 8 concluded

Required reading
City of God by Augustine (available from Amazon or free on the internet, here for example) - Finish reading Book Eight, Chapters 16-27.

My summary
Now Augustine continues his critique of demon worship: 'Apuleius is at great pains to persuade us that the demons are situated midway between gods and men to serve in some way as messengers and go-betweens, to carry our petitions to the gods and to convey to us the gods' assistance.  We must realize that they are in reality spirits whose only desire is to do harm, who are completely alien from any kind of justice, swollen with arrogance, livid with envy, and full of crafty deception...men far surpass them, in spite of having terrestrial bodies, by virtue of the reverent attitude of mind which leads them to choose God fro their support.'

He then moves on to critique idols and finally the worship of dead men as gods.

What grabbed me
It was interesting to see Augustine distinguish between the worship of men as gods and the veneration of Christian martyrs: '...we Christians do not assign to the martyrs temples, priests, ceremonies and sacrifices.  They are not gods for us; their God is our God.  We certainly honour the memory of our martyrs, as holy men of God, who have contended for the truth as far as the death of their bodies, so that the true religion might be made known and fiction and falsehood convicted...we offer thanks to the true God for their victories, and by renewing their memory we encourage ourselves to emulate their crowns and palms of victory, calling upon God to help us. Thus all the acts of reverence which the devout perform at the shrines of the martyrs are acts of respect to their memory.  They are not ceremonies or sacrifices offered to the dead as to gods.'

Martyrs are important to remember as they do inspire commitment to Jesus, but we do not worship them. 

We really should read Foxe's Book of Martyrs in the club shouldn't we?

Next week's reading
Read Book Nine.

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