Natural Law and Religion

Religion in Rome vs. Religion in the City of God

In Augustine's The City of God against the Pagans, the theologian-philosopher asserts that the true religion should be identifiable by its fruits -- i.e., the products of its practice. He compares the outcomes of the duties of propitiation practiced in the pagan rituals to the more wholesome duties practiced in the Christian religion to show the main difference between Christian and pagan worship. He notes that the former is respectable and the latter unrespectable. The fault of the pagans, he asserts, is located not necessarily in their lack of reason (as Cicero was highly rational and valued the virtue of truth, as shall be shown) but rather in the faith they placed in the false religion. This paper will show how Augustine distinguishes a true religion from a false religion.

The duty to identify that which is "true" or "most true" is described by Cicero early on in "On Duties" as a task that is designated to men who are "extremely good at perceiving...the reason" and who appreciate the matter of "truth" (Cicero 7-8). The discovery of truth is therefore considered a virtue -- a habit of activity that corresponds with individuals who have cultivated their faculty of reason. Cicero was a well-known Roman orator whose reason was deemed impeccable by his fellow men -- yet Augustine in his The City of God against the Pagans decries Cicero's call to the Romans to perform their wicked "duties" of offering propitiation to the gods (in immoral ways that degrade the actor's character and reputation); he goes so far as to state that "this propitiation of such deities was so wholly wanton, impure, immodest, wicked and unclean that the actors who performed it were, by the praiseworthy native virtue of the Romans, excluded from public office, expelled from their tribes, recognized as base and declared infamous" (Augustine 90). Augustine concludes by asserting that "this shameful propitiation of such deities was, I say, inimical and detestable to true religion" (Augustine 90).

Thus, Augustine brings the subject of duty, truth and religious obligation around to the question true religion -- which is the foundation upon which his claim of Christianity's merit ultimately rests: its revelations are true whereas the stories of the pagans and their gods are false. Moreover, the "reasons" supporting the so-called duties that the pagans owe their gods are irrational, whereas there is nothing irrational about the Christian religion or the duties proposed by it, as they correlate with the natural law already imprinted on the soul (the cause of the "natural virtue" of the Romans, identified by Augustine). The Christian religion as true religion thus builds on the qualities of the best qualities of the soul, while the pagan religion of the Romans preys on the lesser qualities and reduces its dutiful practitioners to slaves of the evil spirit and tarnishes their reputation among rational and respectable men.