mountainman

Toward the end of his life, St. Augustine confessed that Christianity
was ‘a religion of threats and bribes unworthy of wise men’.
Ironically he is called ‘Doctor of the Church’.

This claim appears around the net, such as here, and here (google index), and is often attributed to Tony Bushby (The Bible Fraud).

Does anyone know the source of this quote from the writings of Augustine?

sotto voce

What Augustine pretended was Christianity was so far opposed to Christianity that this statement, authentic or not, was understatement, perhaps made in order to outflank more penetrating criticism.

That's not irony. It's subtlety. 'Doctor' in this case is used in the pejorative sense, as in 'He doctored the text.'

JonA

In what way?

sotto voce

'Unworthy of wise men' is some sort of joke. These were no more wise men than they were spaghetti monsters.

Monsters, yes, yes.

Revised standard version:

'Papalism is a religion of threats and bribes worthy of monsters.’ Augustine

Chili

Was Augustine not Catholic instead of Christian? It seems to me that he was and tried to say that the word Christian should never be a word that we say in the same way that Jews never say that sacred word, and will actually be in insult on them when they do.

But who am I to say, especially here where that very word is the fleeting image to be nailed down.

Roger Pearse

Always be sceptical of stuff like this. It's always bogus, in my experience. You can smell the hate on it a mile off.

In this case I find the statement in a book from 1920, not as a quotation but as a description of the position of Celsus: Ernest Leigh-Bennet, Handbook of the early Christian Fathers, 1920, p.111.

I imagine that Bushby got it via several intermediaries, in the course of which authorship had been transferred, and the statement made into a quote. If anyone has Bushby's book, could they verify that he didn't give a reference for his claim? (They never do, but we should check).

All the best,

Roger Pearse
PS: I wasn't able to see more than a snippet from Leigh-Bennet - can US readers see the whole book?

Iskander

Yes, hate does smell bad!

Chili

That must be the smell of burning sulpher that we know so well as prior papalite in our own right, and have since become the inquisitor to smell the stench from as far away as Denmark, I suppose.

I really do not know why Denmark should get the blame except maybe that since we are all the same it surely would not be our neighbor who was wrong to say.

mountainman

Unless there is something else to be found in the works of Augustine, it is likely (IMO) that you have found the source phrase used by Bushby as Augustine's, as the phrase used in Celsus via Origen.

aeebee50

Augustine was no saint.