City of God 11.10–11.21

Chapter 10. Of the simple and unchangeable Trinity of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, one God, in whom quality and substance are not different.

There is, then, a good which alone is simple and for that reason alone unchangeable, and this is God. By this good all goods were created, but not simple ones, and therefore changeable. Created, I say, that is, made, not begotten. For what is begotten of the simple good is equally simple, and is the same as that of which it is begotten; these two we call the Father and the Son; and both of these with their Spirit are one God; which Spirit of the Father and the Son is called the Holy Spirit in the sacred writings, by a certain proper sense of this name. He is other than the Father and the Son, because he is neither the Father nor the Son; but I said “other” [alius], not “another thing” [aliud], because he too is equally simple and equally the unchangeable and coeternal good. And this Trinity is one God; nor is it therefore not simple because it is a Trinity. For we do not call this nature of the good simple because the Father alone is in it, or the Son alone, or the Holy Spirit alone, or because there is only this trinity of names without the subsistence of persons, as the Sabellian heretics thought; but it is called simple because it is what it has, except that each person is spoken of relatively to another. For the Father certainly has the Son, and yet he is not himself the Son. In what is said of it with respect to itself, then, not to another, it is what it has: as it is said to be living with respect to itself, by having life, and it is itself that life. For this reason a nature is called simple to which it does not belong to have anything which it could lose, or in which the one having is different from what it has, as a vessel has some liquid, or a body a color, or the air light or heat, or a soul wisdom. For none of these is what it has: the vessel is not the liquid, nor the body the color, nor the air light or heat, nor the soul wisdom. Hence it is that they can also be deprived of the things they have and be turned and changed into other states or qualities, so that a vessel is emptied of the liquid with which it is full, a body loses its color, the air grows dark or cold, and the soul grows foolish. But even if a body is incorruptible, such as is promised to the saints in the resurrection, it has indeed the quality of incorruption itself, which cannot be lost; but while the bodily substance remains, it is not the same thing as incorruption. For incorruption is whole in each part of the body, not greater in one place and less in another; for no part is more incorrupt than another; but the body itself is greater in the whole than in a part; and when one part in it is larger and another smaller, the one that is larger is not more incorrupt than the smaller. So the body, which is not wholly itself everywhere, is one thing, and incorruption, which is wholly everywhere in it, is another, because every part of an incorruptible body, however unequal to the others, is equally incorrupt. For example, because a finger is smaller than the whole hand, the hand is not therefore more incorruptible than the finger. So, though hand and finger are unequal, the incorruptibility of hand and finger is equal. And therefore, although incorruptibility is inseparable from an incorruptible body, yet the substance by which it is called a body is one thing, and its quality by which it is called incorruptible is another. And so even here it is not what it has. The soul itself, too, even if it is always wise, as it will be when it is freed forever, will yet be wise by participation in the unchangeable wisdom, which is not what the soul is. For even if the air is never forsaken by the light poured into it, it is not therefore any less true that the air is one thing and the light by which it is lit another. I do not say this as if the soul were air, as some thought who could not conceive an incorporeal nature. But these things have, even in great unlikeness, a certain likeness to those, so that it is not unfittingly said that the incorporeal soul is enlightened by the incorporeal light of the simple wisdom of God as the body of the air is enlightened by bodily light; and as the air grows dark when forsaken by this light (for what are called the darkness of any bodily places is nothing but air lacking light), so the soul grows dark when deprived of the light of wisdom.

According to this, then, those things are called simple which are principally and truly divine, because in them quality and substance are not different, nor are they divine or wise or blessed by participation in other things. It is true that in the holy Scriptures the Spirit of wisdom is called “manifold,” because it has many things in itself; but what it has, it also is, and all these it is as one. For there are not many wisdoms but one, in which are certain treasures of intelligible things, infinite and yet finite to it, in which are all the invisible and unchangeable reasons of things, even of the visible and changeable things which were made through it. For God did not make anything unknowingly, which cannot rightly be said even of any human craftsman; further, if he made all things knowingly, he certainly made what he knew. From this something strikes the mind which is wonderful yet true: that this world could not be known to us if it did not exist, but could not exist if it were not known to God.

Chapter 11. Whether we should believe that those spirits who did not stand in the truth also shared in that happiness which the holy angels have always had from their beginning.

This being so, those spirits whom we call angels were in no way first darkness for any space of time; but as soon as they were made, they were made light. Yet they were not only so created that they might exist in some way and live in some way, but were also enlightened so that they might live wisely and happily. Some angels, turning away from this enlightenment, did not obtain the excellence of the wise and happy life, which beyond doubt is only eternal and is sure and secure of its own eternity; but they have a rational life, although foolish, in such a way that they cannot lose it, even if they wished. But how far they shared in that wisdom before they sinned, who can define? Yet how shall we say that they were equal in their participation in it to those who are truly and fully happy precisely because they are in no way deceived about the eternity of their happiness? For if they had been equal in it, these too would have remained in its eternity, equally happy because equally certain. For as life, however long it lasts, can be truly called life, it cannot truly be called eternal life if it is to have an end; since it is called life only by living, but eternal by having no end. Therefore, although whatever is eternal is not straightway happy (for the fire of punishment too is called eternal), yet if the truly and perfectly happy life is only eternal, theirs was not such a life, since it was to cease at some time and was therefore not eternal, whether they knew it, or, not knowing it, thought otherwise; because if they knew it, fear, and if they did not, error, certainly did not allow them to be happy. But if they were ignorant of it in such a way that they did not rely on false or uncertain things, but were not borne with firm assent to either side, whether their good was everlasting or would at some time end, then this very hesitation about so great a felicity did not have that fullness of the happy life which we believe to be in the holy angels. For we do not narrow the term “happy life” to such a strait meaning as to call God alone happy; and yet he is truly happy in such a way that there can be no greater happiness; and in comparison with him, what, or how great, is the fact that the angels are happy with a certain highest happiness of their own, as great as can be in angels?

Chapter 12. A comparison of the happiness of the righteous who have not yet obtained the reward of the divine promise with that of the first human beings in paradise before sin.

Nor do we think that only they, as far as rational or intellectual creatures are concerned, should be called happy. For who would dare to deny that those first human beings in paradise were happy before sin, although they were uncertain how long their happiness would last, or whether it would be eternal (and it would have been eternal had they not sinned), when today we are not shameless in calling happy those whom we see leading this life justly and piously with the hope of future immortality, without any crime devastating their conscience, and readily obtaining God's mercy for the sins of this weakness? These, though they are certain of the reward of their perseverance, are found uncertain of their perseverance itself. For who among men can know that he will persevere to the end in the practice and advance of righteousness, unless he is made certain by some revelation from him who, by a just and hidden judgment, does not instruct all about this matter, but deceives none? As far, then, as the delight of present good is concerned, the first man in paradise was happier than any righteous man in this mortal weakness; but as far as the hope of the future is concerned, happier is anyone, in whatever torments of the body, to whom it is made plain, not by opinion but by certain truth, that he will have without end the fellowship of the angels, free from all trouble, in participation of the supreme God, than was that man, uncertain of his fall, in the great felicity of paradise.

Chapter 13. Whether all the angels were created in one and the same happiness, so that those who fell could not know that they would fall, and those who stood received foreknowledge of their own perseverance after the ruin of those who fell.

Hence it now readily occurs to anyone that the happiness which an intellectual nature rightly desires results from the joining of two things: that it enjoy the unchangeable good, which is God, without any trouble, and that it neither hesitate with any doubt nor be deceived by any error that it will remain in him forever. That the angels of light have this happiness we believe with pious faith; that the sinful angels, who by their own depravity were deprived of that light, did not have it even before they fell, we infer by logical consequence; yet, if they lived any life before sin, they must certainly be believed to have had some happiness, though not a happiness that foresaw its future. Or, if it seems hard to believe that when the angels were made some were so made that they did not receive foreknowledge either of their perseverance or of their fall, while others were so made that they knew by most certain truth the eternity of their happiness, but rather that all were created from the beginning with equal felicity and remained so until those who are now evil fell by their own will from that light of goodness, then it is beyond doubt much harder to think now that the holy angels are uncertain of their eternal happiness, and are ignorant about themselves of what we have been able to know about them through the holy Scriptures. For what catholic Christian does not know that no new devil will ever come from the good angels, just as this one will never return to the fellowship of the good angels? For the Truth promises in the Gospel to the holy and faithful that they will be equal to the angels of God; and it is also promised them that they will go into eternal life. Further, if we are certain that we shall never fall from that immortal felicity, while they are not certain, then we shall be not equal to them but superior. But since the Truth in no way deceives and we shall be equal to them, they too are certainly sure of their eternal felicity. And since those others were not sure of it (for theirs was not an eternal felicity of which they could be sure, since it was to have an end), it remains that either they were unequal, or, if they were equal, that after the ruin of the others a certain knowledge of their own everlasting felicity was added to the good.

Unless perhaps someone says that what the Lord says of the devil in the Gospel, “He was a murderer from the beginning and did not stand in the truth,” is to be taken to mean not only that he was a murderer from the beginning, that is, from the beginning of the human race, since man was certainly made whom he could kill by deceiving him, but also that from the beginning of his own creation he did not stand in the truth, and was therefore never happy with the holy angels, refusing to be subject to his Creator and delighting through pride in his own, as it were private, power, and so false and deceitful, since no one escapes the power of the Almighty, and he who would not hold by pious submission to what truly is, affects by proud self-exaltation to feign what is not. In this way would also be understood what the blessed apostle John says: “The devil sins from the beginning,” that is, from the moment he was created he refused righteousness, which only a will pious and subject to God can have. Whoever agrees with this opinion does not think with those heretics, the Manichees, or any other pests who hold that the devil has from some opposing principle a nature of evil proper to himself. These men are so foolish in their vanity that, although they hold these words of the Gospel as authoritative as we do, they do not notice that the Lord did not say, “He was a stranger to the truth,” but, “He did not stand in the truth,” by which he meant us to understand a fall from the truth; and if he had stood in it, he would have become a partaker of it and would have remained happy with the holy angels.

Chapter 14. By what figure of speech it is said of the devil that he did not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him.

He added a sign, as if we had asked how it is shown that he did not stand in the truth, and says: “Because there is no truth in him.” But it would be in him if he had stood in it. The expression is a less usual one. For it seems to mean: “He did not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him,” as if the cause of his not standing in the truth were that there is no truth in him; whereas rather the cause of there being no truth in him is that he did not stand in the truth. This expression is also in the psalm: “I have cried, because you heard me, O God,” when it seems it should have been said, “You heard me, O God, because I cried.” But having said, “I have cried,” as though he were asked how he could show that he had cried, he shows the fact of his crying from the effect, God's hearing; as if he said, “I show that I cried by this, that you heard me.”

Chapter 15. What we should think of the saying, “The devil sins from the beginning.”

As for what John says of the devil, “The devil sins from the beginning,” they do not understand that, if his nature is such, it is not sin at all. But what answer is given to the prophetic testimonies, whether that of Isaiah, who, under the figure of the prince of Babylon, points to the devil: “How has Lucifer fallen, who rose in the morning!”; or that of Ezekiel: “You were in the delights of God's paradise; you were adorned with every precious stone”? From this it is understood that he was once without sin. For a little later it is said to him more expressly: “You walked in your days without fault.” If these cannot more fittingly be understood otherwise, we must take that saying, “He did not stand in the truth,” to mean that he was in the truth but did not remain in it; and the saying that “the devil sins from the beginning” is to be taken not as from the beginning, from the time he was created, but from the beginning of sin, because sin first came to exist from his pride. Nor is what is written in the book of Job, when the devil is spoken of, “This is the beginning of the Lord's creation, which he made to be mocked by his angels” (with which the psalm also seems to agree, where we read, “This dragon whom you formed to mock him”), to be so understood that we think he was created from the beginning such as to be mocked by the angels, but that he was assigned to this punishment after sin. His beginning, then, is the Lord's creation; for there is no nature, even among the least and lowest little creatures, which he did not establish from whom is every measure, every form, every order, without which nothing can be found or conceived; how much more the angelic creature, which surpasses in the dignity of its nature all the other things that God has made.

Chapter 16. Of the ranks and differences of creatures, which are weighed one way by the use of utility and another by the order of reason.

For among the things which in any way exist and are not what God is, by whom they were made, the living are ranked above the non-living, as those which have the power of generating or even of desiring are above those that lack this movement; and among living things the sentient are ranked above the non-sentient, as animals above trees; and among the sentient the intelligent above the unintelligent, as men above cattle; and among the intelligent the immortal above the mortal, as angels above men. But they are ranked so by the order of nature; there is, however, another and different mode of valuing, according to the use each of us has for a thing, by which it happens that we prefer certain things without sensation to certain sentient beings; so much so that, if it were in our power, we would wish to remove them altogether from the nature of things, whether not knowing what place they have in it, or, even if we know it, putting them after our own convenience. For who would not rather have bread in his house than mice, money than fleas? But what wonder, when even in the valuation of men themselves, whose nature is surely of such great dignity, a horse is often bought at a higher price than a slave, a jewel than a maidservant? Thus in freedom of judgment the reason of one who considers differs greatly from the need of one who lacks or the pleasure of one who desires: reason weighs what each thing is worth in itself in the ranks of things, while need considers what it seeks for the sake of what; reason looks for what appears true to the light of the mind, pleasure for what agreeably charms the bodily senses. But among rational natures a certain weight, as it were, of will and love has so much force that, though by the order of nature angels are ranked above men, yet by the law of justice good men are ranked above evil angels.

Chapter 17. That the fault of wickedness is not nature but contrary to nature, and that its cause in sinning is not the Creator but the will.

It is on account of his nature, then, not his wickedness, that we rightly understand the saying, “This is the beginning of the Lord's creation.” For without doubt, where there is the fault of wickedness, an unvitiated nature came first. And fault is so contrary to nature that it can only harm nature. It would not be a fault, then, to depart from God, unless it rather befitted the nature whose fault it is to be with God. Therefore even an evil will is a great witness to a good nature. But God, as he is the supremely good creator of good natures, so is he the most just ruler of evil wills, so that, while they make evil use of good natures, he makes good use even of evil wills. So he brought it about that the devil, good by God's creation, evil by his own will, being ranked among the lower things, should be mocked by his angels; that is, that his temptations should benefit the saints whom he desires them to harm. And since God, when he created him, was certainly not unaware of his future malignity, and foresaw what good he himself would bring out of his evil, the psalm therefore says: “This dragon whom you formed to mock him,” so that it may be understood that in the very act of forming him, good though he was by God's goodness, he had already prepared by his foreknowledge how he would use him even when evil.

Chapter 18. Of the beauty of the universe, which by God's ordering is made more splendid even by the opposition of contraries.

For God would not create any one, I do not say of the angels, but even of men, whom he foreknew would be evil, unless he equally knew to what uses of the good he would turn them, and so adorn the order of the ages like a most beautiful poem, set off also with antitheses, as it were. For what are called antitheses are among the most becoming ornaments of speech; in Latin they might be called opposita, or, more expressively, contraposita. This word is not in customary use among us, although Latin speech also uses these same ornaments of style, indeed the languages of all nations do. With these antitheses the apostle Paul too, in the second letter to the Corinthians, sweetly unfolds that passage where he says: “By the weapons of righteousness on the right hand and the left: through glory and dishonor, through ill report and good report; as deceivers and yet true; as unknown and yet known; as dying, and behold, we live; as chastened and not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and possessing all things.” As, then, these contraries set against contraries give beauty to speech, so the beauty of the world is composed by the opposition of contraries, by a kind of eloquence not of words but of things. This is set down most plainly in the book Ecclesiasticus, thus: “Against evil is good, and against death life; so against the godly the sinner. And so look upon all the works of the Most High, two and two, one against one.”

Chapter 19. What we should think of the words, “God divided between the light and the darkness.”

Although the obscurity of the divine word is useful even in this, that it gives birth to many true opinions and brings them into the light of knowledge, as one understands it one way and another another (yet so that what is understood in an obscure passage is supported either by the witness of evident facts or by other passages that are not at all doubtful; whether, as many things are discussed, one also arrives at what the writer meant, or that remains hidden but, on the occasion of discussing a deep obscurity, certain other true things are said), it does not seem to me an opinion out of keeping with the works of God, if the angels are understood to have been created when that first light was made, that a distinction was made between the holy and the unclean angels where it is said: “And God divided between the light and the darkness; and God called the light day and the darkness he called night.” For he alone could distinguish these who was able, even before they fell, to foreknow that they would fall and, deprived of the light of truth, would remain in dark pride. For between this day and night so well known to us, that is, between this light and this darkness, he commanded the lights of heaven, so familiar to our senses, to divide: “Let there be lights,” he says, “in the firmament of heaven, to shine upon the earth and to divide between the day and the night”; and a little later: “And God made,” it says, “two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night, and the stars; and God set them in the firmament of heaven to shine upon the earth and to rule over the day and the night and to divide between the light and the darkness.” But between that light, which is the holy fellowship of the angels, shining intelligibly with the illumination of truth, and the darkness opposed to it, that is, the foulest minds of the evil angels turned away from the light of righteousness, he alone could divide from whom even a future evil, not of nature but of will, could not be hidden or uncertain.

Chapter 20. Of the words said after the separation of the light and the darkness, “And God saw the light, that it was good.”

Nor, finally, must we pass over in silence that, where God said, “Let there be light, and there was light,” it is immediately added, “And God saw the light, that it was good”; not after he separated between the light and the darkness and called the light day and the darkness night, lest he should seem to have given the testimony of his approval to such darkness together with the light. For where the darkness is blameless, between which and this light visible to our eyes the lights of heaven divide, it is added not before but after: “And God saw that it was good.” “He set them,” it says, “in the firmament of heaven to shine upon the earth and to rule over the day and the night and to separate between the light and the darkness. And God saw that it was good.” Both pleased him, because both are without sin. But where God said, “Let there be light, and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good,” and afterward it is added, “And God separated between the light and the darkness; and God called the light day and the darkness he called night,” it is not added in this place, “And God saw that it was good,” lest both should be called good, when one of them was evil, by its own fault, not by nature. And so there the light alone pleased the Creator; but the angelic darkness, though it was to be given its place in the order, was not to be approved.

Chapter 21. Of the eternal and unchangeable knowledge and will of God, by which all the things he made always pleased him to be made just as they were made.

For what else is to be understood in what is said throughout, “God saw that it was good,” but the approval of the work as made according to the art, which is the wisdom of God? But God is so far from having learned that it was good only when it was made, that none of these things would have been made had it been unknown to him. When, then, he sees that it is good, which would certainly not have been made had he not seen it before it was made, he teaches that it is good; he does not learn it. Plato indeed dared to say more, namely that God was elated with joy when the universe was completed. In this he too was not so foolish as to think God was made happier by the newness of his work; but he wished to show in this way that the work, once made, pleased its maker, as it had pleased him in his art that it should be made. Not that God's knowledge varies in any way, so that things which are not yet, things which now are, and things which have been make different impressions in it; for he does not, as we do, look forward to what is future, look at what is present, or look back at what is past, but in some other way, far and deeply different from the habit of our thoughts. For he sees, not by passing in thought from this to that, but altogether unchangeably; so that those things which come about in time, the future which are not yet, the present which now are, and the past which are no longer, he comprehends all in a stable and everlasting presence; nor in one way with the eyes and another with the mind, for he does not consist of soul and body; nor in one way now, another before, and another afterward; since his knowledge, unlike ours, is not changed by the variation of three times, present, past, and future, “with whom there is no change nor shadow of turning.” For his attention does not pass from thought to thought; in his incorporeal gaze all that he knows is present at once; for he knows times with no temporal notions of his own, just as he moves temporal things with no temporal motions of his own. There, then, he saw that what he made was good, where he saw that it was good in order to make it; nor, because he saw it made, did he double his knowledge or increase it in any part, as though he had been of less knowledge before he made what he saw; he who would not work so perfectly except with a knowledge so perfect that nothing from his works could be added to it.

Therefore, if we only had to be told who made the light, it would be enough to say, “God made the light”; but if not only who made it but also through what, it would suffice to state it thus: “And God said, Let there be light, and there was light,” so that we might know not only that God made light but also that he made it through the Word. But because three things above all that we must know about a creature had to be made known to us, who made it, through what he made it, and why he made it, it says: “God said, Let there be light, and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good.” If, then, we ask who made it, it is God; if through what, he said, “Let there be,” and it was; if why he made it, “because it is good.” No author is more excellent than God, no art more effective than the Word of God, no cause better than that something good should be created by the good. Plato too says that this is the most just cause of making the world, that good works should be made by a good God; whether he read these things, or perhaps learned them from those who had read them, or whether with his most penetrating mind he beheld the invisible things of God understood through the things that are made, or learned them from those who had beheld them.