This paper examines Augustine's argument in The City of God against the Pagans for distinguishing true religion from false religion. Using Cicero's On Duties as a foil, Augustine evaluates both religious traditions by their fruits — the moral and social outcomes of their respective practices. The paper shows that Augustine faults pagan Roman religion not for its practitioners' lack of reason, but for its false foundations, which produced immoral duties incompatible with natural law and public virtue. By contrast, Augustine presents Christianity as the true religion because its obligations align with natural virtue, support public discipline, and correspond with the moral law already imprinted on the human soul.
In Augustine's The City of God against the Pagans, the theologian-philosopher asserts that the true religion should be identifiable by its fruits — that is, by the products of its practice. He compares the outcomes of the duties of propitiation practiced in pagan rituals to the more wholesome duties practiced in the Christian religion, in order to show the essential difference between Christian and pagan worship. He notes that the former is respectable and the latter unrespectable. The fault of the pagans, he argues, lies not necessarily in their lack of reason — as Cicero was highly rational and valued the virtue of truth, as will be shown — but rather in the faith they placed in a false religion. This paper examines how Augustine distinguishes a true religion from a false one.
The duty to identify that which is "true" or "most true" is described by Cicero early in On Duties as a task 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 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).
Augustine brings the subjects of duty, truth, and religious obligation together around the question of true religion — which is the foundation upon which his claim of Christianity's merit ultimately rests. His argument is that Christian 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 it proposes, as they correlate with the natural law already imprinted on the soul — the very cause of the "natural virtue" of the Romans that Augustine himself identifies.
The Roman religion, by contrast, preys on the lesser qualities of the soul and reduces its dutiful practitioners to slaves of the evil spirit, tarnishing their reputation among rational and respectable men. The Christian religion as true religion thus builds upon the best qualities of the soul, while pagan religion undermines them.
Augustine's contention is that the "wholesomeness" of the Christian religion does nothing to undermine public discipline, as Cicero's propitiation of Mother Flora did in Rome. On the contrary, the duties of the Christian support, bolster, and strengthen public discipline because they are in accord with natural virtue and do not in any way promote immorality as part of religious observance. While Cicero is lauded by Augustine as a good man, his shortcomings in matters of religious sense and public discipline are exposed on the very grounds of duty, truth, and religious obligation.
These three — duty, truth, and religious obligation — should correlate with one another in any genuine religion. The fact that they do not in the pagan religion, as Augustine points out, is an argument for why that religion is untrue. The fact that they do correlate in Christianity is an argument for why the Christian religion is the true religion: it corresponds fully with the natural law.
"Christian duties align with natural law and soul"
Cicero. On Duties. UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Print.
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