Analoge guder i et digitalt rum – en kommentar til Augustins De Civitate Dei

Abstract

Augustine’s denunciation of the Roman gods takes up a lot of space in his great work De Civitate Dei. The issue is anything but simple. Augustine’s primary concern, namely, to confirm faith in the one, true God (unus et verus deus), is hampered by the analogical relations between the human and the divine, characteristic of the Roman imperial cult and thus implicating the common notion of deus. In order to secure the digital cut between the world of humans and the realm of its creator, Augustine targets the heathen gods as imaginary inventions, on the one hand, yet as real but immoral demons, on the other. Nonetheless, it is the analogical relation between the human and the divine, which goes to form a part of the belief in Christ as the human incarnation of God.