The Violence of Idolatry and Peaceful Coexistence. The Current Relevance of civ. Dei

Contemporary culture is shot through with a renewed openness to polytheism. This contribution seeks to listen in on a critical interlocution between Augustine and contemporary thought regarding this theme, re-reading according to a coherent continuity the first and second parts of De civitate Dei. The fundamental intent of this re-reading can be laid out in three key theses: a) The first thesis calls upon the anthropological pertinence of faith: unlike atheism, which can be considered a conspicuous variable of modern culture, but historically limited and rather elitist, the true alternative that is continually proposed to us by the Fathers, starting from the Scriptures, and by Augustine in particular, is not between believing and not believing, but between faith and idolatry. b) The second thesis concerns the difference – and therefore the absolute incompatibility – between monotheism and polytheism. In the era of multiculturalism, it seems that religions can only be liberated from the temptation to fundamentalism if they are willing to enter into the pantheon of compatible cults. Actually, hidden behind the drift of polytheism, which crosses through wide sectors of contemporary culture, is an idolatrous pulsion, to which, with Augustine, we could attribute the Weltanschauung of the civitas terrena. c) The third and final thesis concerns the ethical and political implications of this difference; according to Augustine’s teaching, faith in one, transcendent God is an alternative not only to idolatrous faiths, but also to all forms of violence in interpersonal relationships. It is not at all true that a monotheistic faith is an obstacle to all forms of peaceful coexistence, or that in the name of a single system of thought it introduces into the political sphere a factor of rigidity and intolerance. According to Augustine, the exact opposite is true: it is the civitas terrena, drawing its gods from the earth, that seeks an equivocal sacralization and in this way infects the fabric of coexistence with the destabilizing and nihilistic virus of deceit and violence