The City of God as missiology

For the past several weeks, I have been pressing through the first 7 books of Augustine's City of God. While discovering tremendous insight and clarity in places, I have found him profuse in his deconstruction, and even mockery of the polytheism of his time in the Roman world. So I've been enduring it, knowing that there are keen insights tucked within the longs sections mocking false gods and their worship, and that perseverance through his deconstruction of polytheism and the theology of the philosophers would help me to understand his view of the city of God.

Tonight, however, I got a glimpse of just what a treasure this book can be as missiology. Elisabeth found the pages in Window on the World on Hinduism as we got ready for bed, and I read it to her. As I did, I realized that Augustine's overly thorough treatment of the polytheism of his day is not antiquated. His line of reasoning is just as potent for Hindu polytheism as it was for the Greek/Roman sort.

What difference a little bit of perspective makes, and that from a children's book!