We shall need to apply our mind with far greater intensity to the present question than was required in solving and explaining the questions handled in the preceding books; for it is not with ordinary men, but with philosophers that we must discuss the theology which they call natural. For it is not like the fabulous, that is, the theatrical; nor the civil, that is, the urban theology: the one displays the crimes of the gods, while the other reveals their criminal desires, which show them to be malign demons rather than gods. It is, we say, with philosophers that we have to discuss this theology, — men whose very name, if translated into Latin, signifies those who profess the love of wisdom. Now, if wisdom is God, who made all things, as is attested by the divine authority and truth, then the philosopher is a lover of God.⁠a But since the thing itself, which is called by this name, does not exist in all who glory in the name — for it does not follow, of course, that all who are called philosophers are lovers of true wisdom — we must select, from among those whose opinions we have been able to learn by reading, some with whom we may fittingly take up this question. For I have not undertaken in this work to refute all the vain opinions of the philosophers, but only those that concern theology, which Greek word we understand to mean an account or explanation of the divine nature. Nor, again, have I undertaken to refute all the vain theological opinions of all the philosophers, but only those of them who, while agreeing that there is a divine nature, and that this divine nature is concerned with human affairs, nevertheless deny that the worship of the one unchangeable God is sufficient for obtaining a blessed life after death, as well as at the present time; and hold that, in order to obtain that life, many gods, created, indeed, and appointed to their separate spheres by that one God, are to be worshipped. These approach nearer to the truth than even Varro; for, while he saw no difficulty in extending natural theology in its entirety even to the world and the soul of the world, these acknowledge God as existing above all that is of the nature of soul, and as the Creator not only of this visible world, which is often called heaven and earth, but also of every soul whatever, and as Him who gives blessedness to the rational soul — of which kind is the human soul — by participation in His own unchangeable and incorporeal light. No one who has even a slight knowledge of these things fails to know of the Platonic philosophers, who derive their name from their master Plato. About this Plato, then, I will briefly state what I consider necessary to the present question, mentioning beforehand those who preceded him in time in the same field of learning.