Catholic Thought discussion

Subchapters
- The Issue: Are the Gods to be Worshipped for the Sake of Eternal Life?
- Varro and His Work on Roman Religion
- Varro’s Three Types of Theology
- The Intertwining of Mythical and Civic Theologies
- The Natural Interpretation of Sacred Rites
- Seneca’s Boldness and Varro’s Timidity
- Seneca on the Jews
- Neither the Mythical nor the Civic Theology Holds the Promise of Eternal Life

I'll summarize the chapter as soon as I read it. ;) It doesn't look too long, so should only be a day or so. In the meanwhile, you can discuss if you like.

At the start of Book VI, Augustine succinctly summarizes the what constitutes Part 1, that is, Books I through V. From the Babcock translation:

Preface. In the five preceding books I believe that I have provided an adequate argument against those who suppose that many false gods are to be venerated and worshiped for the sake of benefits in this mortal life and in earthly matters. They worship their gods with the rites and service that the Greeks call latreia, which in fact is due only to the one true God. But Christian truth shows that these gods are either useless images or unclean spirits and baneful demons or, at any rate, mere created beings and not the creator.

What that doesn’t say is how Augustine demonstrates his points through Roman history. Perhaps to Augustine Roman history was second nature and he didn’t feel obligated to refer to it here, but it is important to keep in mind that Augustine demonstrates the inadequacy of those gods as reflected in the development of Roman history, and, indeed, in the Roman people themselves. The failure of Romans throughout their history to live up to the ideals of virtue can be linked to the lack of the true God and the fiendishness of the spirits associated with the pagan deities.

That should be a quick refresher as a starting point to returning to the book. Sorry I didn't post that earlier.

Section 2, constituting Books VI through X, Augustine will turn his attention to Roman philosophy and how it too has failed to provide the Roman people the foundational elements of virtue, and how it too does not lead to eternal happiness and therefore salvation. The five books of Section 2 will be our read for the next few weeks and comprise our second return to this ongoing long read.

Book VI still deals with the pagan gods, but now Augustine develops the philosophy of Roman philosopher, Marcus Terentius Varro, and how his pagan theology fails instruct on what leads men to salvation. Augustine will show how Varro’s three forms of theology, mythic (pertaining to stories of the gods) natural (pertaining to the nature of the gods), and civic (pertaining the relationship of humanity to the gods). Augustine I think gets to the heart of his issue with Varro’s philosophy with this:

Varro himself states that he wrote first about human matters and only then about divine matters, because cities came into existence first, and then these rites were instituted by them. The true religion, however, was not instituted by any earthly city; instead, clearly, the true religion itself instituted the heavenly city. And it is the true God, the giver of eternal life, who inspires and teaches true religion to his true worshipers.

For Augustine this shows the falseness of the pagan gods. A true God exists apriori to earthly matters, and that because these rites are not revealed from a divine entity, they are man-made and therefore false. True rites handed down from a true God exist prior to the establishment of human activity. The rites are not developed from the bottom up but are handed from the top down. I think that’s what Augustine is saying.

That sums up this chapter well, Manny. I was puzzled why St. Augustine spent so much time on Roman gods and on Marcus Varro (116-27 BC). Varro must still have been that important in St. Augustine’s world or at least to him. He mentions his name more than one hundred times in “City of God.” He even calls him in the first lines of this chapter “O Marcus Varro! Thou art the most acute and without doubt, the most learned, but still a man, not God. St. Augustine explains at this point, what Varro feared. It was “to offend the most corrupt opinions of the populace, and their customs in public superstitions, which thou thyself, when thou considerest them on all sides, perceives, and all our literature loudly pronounce to be abhorrent from the nature of the gods as the frailty of the human mind supposes to exist in the elements of the world.”

I wondered also how far did St. Augustine envisioned that we would be reading his “City of God?” sixteen centuries later when Varro and these gods would be completely forgotten and only footnote in history to anyone interested. St. Augustine tells us Varro wrote forty-one books. It seems only one and fragments of others survive.

Galicius wrote: "I wondered also how far did St. Augustine envisioned that we would be reading his “City of God?” sixteen centuries later when Varro and these gods would be completely forgotten and only footnote in history to anyone interested. St. Augustine tells us Varro wrote forty-one books. It seems only one and fragments of others survive."

I had not heard of Varro, or at least that I could remember, until reading City of God. But I have read up on him and I think I understand. Remember that City of God was written as a response to the demise of the Roman empire and the claim that Christianity was at fault for the demise. So Augustine feels compelled to explore the the legitamcy of both the pagan and Christian religions and contrast them. After reading about Varro I understand why Augustine chose him. He is the top Roman apologist of the pagan religion. To engage and rebut Varro is like a Protestant or a Muslim engaging and rebutting Thomas Aquinas. Augustine is taking on the top guy. Here is what he says of Varro:

Varro was, then, a man of singular and preeminent erudition. Terentianus puts it succinctly in an elegant line of verse: “Varro, a man of the highest learning on any subject at all.” [9] Varro read so much that we marvel that he had any time to write, and he wrote so much that we can hardly believe that anyone was able to read it all.

Doesn’t that sound like Thomas Aquinas? I think we would have heard more of Varro in our times if more of his work had survived. Apparently a good deal has been lost. But if Augustine marvels at Varro’s voluminous reading and writing, he does not pay him much respect. He goes on to ridicule:

But if this man, with all his talent and all his learning, had set out to attack and destroy the so-called divine matters of which he wrote, and had argued that they all belonged not to religion but to sheer superstition, I wonder whether, even then, he would have written down so many things that deserve to be laughed at, condemned, and despised. The truth is, however, that he worshiped those gods and was fully convinced that they ought to be worshiped. He even says, in this very work, that he is afraid the gods may perish, due not to any enemy invasion but to the sheer indifference of the citizens. And he even claims that, in rescuing them from this disaster, and in securing and preserving a place for them in the memory of good men by means of his books, he is performing a more useful service than did Metellus, who is said to have rescued the sacred emblems of Vesta from the fire,[10] or Aeneas, who is said to have saved his household gods from the fall of Troy.[11] But he still presents to the world, for all to read, things that wise men and fools alike would rightly consider abhorrent and utterly hostile to true religion. What, then, should we make of this, except that a man of the greatest acumen and learning (although not set free by the Holy Spirit), who felt obliged to submit to the laws and customs of his city, still decided, under the guise of commending religion, not to keep silent about the things that troubled him?

It does strike me that Augustine was prone to ad hominem attacks, which I don’t think add to his argument. On the one hand he says of Varro he was a man of great “acumen and learning” and on the other he says he wrote so much that “deserves to be laughed at, condemned, and despised.”

Manny wrote: "Galicius wrote: "I wondered also how far did St. Augustine envisioned that we would be reading his “City of God?” sixteen centuries later when Varro and these gods would be completely forgotten and..."

Yes, Varro was the authority on Roman antiquity especially as it ties in with their religion. St. Augustine’s many references to him not only shows it but unwittingly preserved Varro’s writings. Varro supported the civic theology for political purpose as valid and useful. I am curious if St. Augustine will tell us if Varro believed any of it but did not publicly disclose it.

Manny wrote: "Book VI still deals with the pagan gods, but now Augustine develops the philosophy of Roman philosopher, Marcus Terentius Varro, and how his pagan theology fails instruct on what leads men to salva..."

Finally catching up, a little...
What Augustine is not stating here, probably because it was common knowledge, is that the pagan gods were all tied to a place or geography and in addition these imparted citizenship. So when a person traveled, he wasn't asked from which town or country are you, but which gods do you worship. Even the Hebrew God was tied in the ancient world to Palestine.
When you look at worship in the home, every family had their house gods. When a woman married and entered the home of her husband's family, she gave up the hearth gods of her family and adopted the gods of her new family.
In public life, contracts and agreements were sealed by offering sacrifice to each other's gods.
In Rome as a cosmopolitan city where folks from around the empire congregated, a myriad of gods were continuously worshiped, petitioned and appeased. Since pretty much everyone operated on very much the same principle, this didn't cause too much trouble. The Hebrews were a little weird, but they had no idea on how to handle the Christians. How do you interact in private and public life with folks who do not reciprocate offering sacrifices to your gods on top of the very perplexing concept of a geography-less God? Where do they have their citizenship?

I still have to catch up on some of the earlier chapters, but does Augustine talk about salvation before this one? If I recall correctly, neither the Greek nor the Roman belief systems had a developed concept of the after-life, let alone salvation.

To me the chapter was best summed up in these sentences:

Moreover, how can he give eternal life who cannot give happiness? For we mean by eternal life that life where there is endless happiness.

These pagan gods behaved in often abominable ways, and men had to petition and cajole for favors. That's a perpetual servile relationship and not exactly fertile ground for happiness. The concept of salvation imparts man with innate dignity, -- the idea that God wants to share eternity with us boggles the mind -- and when dignity is restored and upheld, man is free to enter into a reciprocal and loving relationship with God.

Kerstin wrote: " If I recall correctly, neither the Greek nor the Roman belief systems had a developed concept of the after-life, let alone salvation."

Sorry, just re-reading all these chapters/notes... Was this ever confirmed/discussed further?; "...neither Greek nor Roman belief systems had a developed concept of the after-life/salvation?"

Meaning, although they viewed the 'gods' as 'otherworldly'; that was not something open or available to them? Although assisted by the 'otherworldly gods', capriciously at that, this world was all that there was for them?