City of God 11.22–11.30

Chapter 22. Of those who are displeased with certain things in the universe, well made by the good Creator, and think there is some evil nature.

Yet this cause, that is, God's goodness in creating good things, this cause, I say, so just and fitting, which, when carefully considered and piously reflected upon, ends all the disputes of those who inquire into the origin of the world, certain heretics have not seen. For the needy and fragile mortality of this flesh, which already comes from just punishment, is offended by very many things that do not suit it, such as fire or cold or a wild beast or the like. They do not notice how these things flourish in their own places and natures and are arranged in beautiful order, and how much they contribute, each in its measure, to the beauty of the universe, as to a common commonwealth, or how much convenience they supply to ourselves if we use them fittingly and knowingly; so that poisons themselves, which are deadly when unsuitably used, are turned into wholesome medicines when suitably applied; and how, on the contrary, even those things they delight in, such as food and drink and this light, are felt to be harmful through immoderate and untimely use. Hence divine providence admonishes us not to find fault with things foolishly but to inquire diligently into their usefulness, and where our wit or weakness fails, to believe that it is hidden, as some things were which we could scarcely discover; for the very hiding of their usefulness is either an exercise of humility or a wearing down of pride; since no nature at all is evil, and this name is nothing but the privation of good. But from earthly to heavenly things and from visible to invisible there are some goods better than others, and they are unequal to this end, that all might exist; and God is so great an artificer in great things that he is not less in small ones; and these small things are to be measured not by their own greatness (for they have none) but by the wisdom of the artificer. So in the appearance of the visible human form, if one eyebrow is shaved off, how almost nothing is taken from the body, and how much from its beauty, since that is made up not of bulk but of the evenness and proportion of the members!

Nor indeed is it much to be wondered at that those who think there is some evil nature, arisen and propagated from a certain opposing principle of its own, will not accept this cause of the creation of things, that the good God made good things. They believe rather that he was driven to these works of the world by extreme necessity, to repel the evil that rebelled against him, and that he mixed his own good nature with the evil to restrain and overcome it; and that this nature, most foully polluted and most cruelly captured and oppressed, he scarcely cleanses and frees with great labor; and yet not all of it, but whatever of it could not be purged from that defilement is to become the covering and chain of the conquered and imprisoned enemy. But the Manichees would not be so foolish, or rather so mad, if they believed the nature of God to be, as it is, unchangeable and altogether incorruptible, a nature which nothing can harm; and if with Christian soundness they held that the soul, which could be changed for the worse by the will and corrupted by sin and so deprived of the light of unchangeable truth, is not a part of God nor of that nature which is God's, but created by him and far unequal to its Creator.

Chapter 23. Of the error for which the teaching of Origen is blamed.

But it is much more to be wondered at that some who believe with us that there is one principle of all things, and that no nature which is not what God is can exist except from him as creator, nonetheless have not been willing to believe well and simply this cause of making the world, so good and simple, that the good God made good things, and that after God there should be things which were not what God is, yet good, which only a good God would make. Instead they say that souls, not indeed parts of God but made by God, sinned by departing from the Creator, and by various descents, according to the diversity of their sins, from the heavens down to the earth, deserved various bodies as chains; and that this is the world, and that the cause of making the world was not that good things should be established but that evil ones should be restrained. For this Origen is rightly blamed. For in the books which he calls Peri Archōn, that is, On First Principles, he thought this and wrote this. And here I am more astonished than I can say that a man so learned and practiced in the church's literature did not notice, first, how contrary this was to the intent of this Scripture of such great authority, which, adding to all God's works, “And God saw that it was good,” and when all were finished, “And God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good,” meant no other cause of making the world to be understood than that good things should be made by a good God. Here, if no one had sinned, the world would have been adorned and filled with good natures only; and though sin has occurred, not all things are therefore filled with sins, since by far the greater number of the good in heaven keep the order of their nature; nor has the evil will, because it would not keep the order of nature, therefore escaped the laws of the just God, who orders all things well; since, as a picture with the color black set in its place, so the universe, if one could see it whole, is beautiful even with sinners, although, considered in themselves, their own deformity disfigures them.

Next, Origen and all who think so ought to have seen that, if this opinion were true that the world was made so that souls, according to the deserts of their sins, received bodies as prisons in which to be shut up as punishment, the higher and lighter bodies for those who sinned less, the lower and heavier for those who sinned more, then the demons, than whom nothing is worse, ought to have had earthly bodies, than which nothing is lower and heavier, rather than men, even good men. But as it is, that we might understand that the deserts of souls are not to be weighed by the qualities of bodies, the worst demon received an aerial body, while man, though now evil, of far less and milder malice, and certainly before sin, nonetheless received a body of clay. What can be said more foolish than that, in the case of this sun, so that there might be one in the one world, God the artificer did not consult the beauty of the whole or even the welfare of bodily things, but that this came about rather because one soul had so sinned as to deserve to be enclosed in such a body? And so, if it had happened that not one but two, indeed not two but ten or a hundred, had sinned similarly and equally, this world would have a hundred suns? That this did not happen was not provided for by the wonderful foresight of the maker for the welfare and beauty of bodily things, but came about rather through the so great descent of one sinning soul, so that it alone deserved such a body. Plainly it is not the descent of souls, of which they do not know what they are saying, but of these men themselves, whose thoughts are so far from the truth, that should rightly be restrained.

As to these three things, then, which I commended above, which are to be asked of every creature, who made it, through what he made it, why he made it, so that the answer is “God,” “through the Word,” “because it is good”: whether the Trinity itself, that is, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, is intimated to us by a mystical depth, or whether something occurs that forbids us to take it so in this passage of the Scriptures, is a question requiring long discussion; nor need we be pressed to explain everything in one volume.

Chapter 24. Of the divine Trinity, which has scattered indications of itself throughout all its works.

We believe and hold and faithfully proclaim that the Father begot the Word, that is, the wisdom through which all things were made, the only-begotten Son, one begetting one, eternal begetting coeternal, supremely good begetting one equally good; and that the Holy Spirit is at once the Spirit both of the Father and of the Son, and is himself consubstantial and coeternal with both; and that this whole is both a Trinity because of the distinctness of the persons and one God because of the inseparable divinity, as it is one Almighty because of the inseparable omnipotence; yet so that, when the question is asked of each one singly, the answer is that each of them is both God and almighty; but when of all together, not three gods or three almighties, but one God almighty; so great is the inseparable unity in the three, which willed to be proclaimed in this way. But whether the Holy Spirit of the good Father and the good Son, because he is common to both, can rightly be called the goodness of both, I do not dare to put forward a rash opinion; yet I would more readily dare to call him the holiness of both, not as if a quality of both, but himself also a substance and the third person in the Trinity. What leads me to this as more probable is that, although the Father is spirit and the Son is spirit, and the Father is holy and the Son is holy, yet he himself is properly called the Holy Spirit, as the substantial holiness of both, consubstantial with both. But if divine goodness is nothing other than holiness, then it is surely an understanding of reason, not the boldness of presumption, that in God's works, by a certain hidden manner of speaking by which our attention is exercised, the same Trinity is understood to be intimated to us: who made each creature, through what he made it, and for what he made it. For the Father of the Word is understood as the one who said, “Let it be”; and what was made when he spoke was without doubt made through the Word; and in the words, “God saw that it was good,” it is sufficiently signified that God made what was made by no necessity, by no need of any advantage of his own, but by goodness alone, that is, because it is good; which is said after it was made in order to indicate that the thing made agrees with the goodness for the sake of which it was made. If this goodness is rightly understood as the Holy Spirit, the whole Trinity is intimated to us in its works.

Thence comes the origin, the formation, and the happiness of the holy city which is above in the holy angels. For if it is asked whence it is: God founded it; whence it is wise: it is enlightened by God; whence it is happy: it enjoys God. Subsisting, it is given its measure; contemplating, it is illuminated; cleaving, it is gladdened. It is, it sees, it loves. In God's eternity it flourishes, in God's truth it shines, in God's goodness it rejoices.

Chapter 25. Of the threefold division of all philosophy.

As far as it is given to understand, it is for this reason that the philosophers wanted the discipline of wisdom to be threefold, or rather were able to observe that it is threefold (for they did not themselves arrange that it should be so, but rather discovered that it is so): one part was called physics, another logic, the third ethics (their Latin names, natural, rational, and moral, are now common in the writings of many, and we touched on them briefly in the eighth book). Not that it follows that in these three they thought anything about a trinity in God, although Plato is said to have been the first to discover and commend this division, and to him it seemed that none but God is the author of all natures, the giver of understanding, and the inspirer of the love by which one lives well and happily. But certainly, though different men hold different views about the nature of things, about the method of investigating truth, and about the end of the good to which we ought to refer all that we do, yet all their effort is concerned with these three great and general questions. So, though in each of them there is a manifold disagreement of opinion as to what each follows, yet no one hesitates that there is some cause of nature, some form of knowledge, some sum of life.

There are also three things which are looked for in every human craftsman if he is to accomplish anything: nature, training, and use; nature is to be judged by talent, training by knowledge, use by fruit. I am not unaware that, properly speaking, fruit belongs to the one who enjoys and use to the one who uses; and the difference seems to be this: we are said to enjoy a thing which delights us in itself, not as referred to something else; to use a thing which we seek for the sake of something else. (Hence temporal things are to be used rather than enjoyed, so that we may deserve to enjoy eternal things; not like the perverse, who want to enjoy money but use God, since they do not spend money for God's sake but worship God for money's sake.) Yet in the manner of speaking which custom has more commonly established, we both use fruits and enjoy uses; for the produce of the fields too is now properly called fruits, and we all certainly use it in this temporal life. It is in this customary sense, then, that I have spoken of use among the three things I pointed out as to be looked for in a man, namely nature, training, and use. From these, for the sake of attaining the happy life, the threefold discipline, as I said, was found by the philosophers: natural because of nature, rational because of training, moral because of use. If, then, our nature were from ourselves, we would surely have begotten our own wisdom too, and would not take pains to acquire it by training, that is, by learning from elsewhere; and our love, proceeding from ourselves and referred to ourselves, would suffice for living happily and would need no other good to enjoy. But as it is, since our nature has God as its author in order to exist, beyond doubt we must have him as our teacher in order to know true things, and him also as the giver of inward sweetness in order to be happy.

Chapter 26. Of the image of the supreme Trinity, which is found in a certain way even in the nature of man not yet made blessed.

And we indeed recognize in ourselves an image of God, that is, of that supreme Trinity, though not equal to it, indeed very far removed from it, nor coeternal, and, to say it all more briefly, not of the same substance as God, yet nearer to God in nature than anything else among the things he has made; an image still to be perfected by reformation, so that it may also be most near in likeness. For we both are, and know that we are, and love this being and knowing. And in these three things of which I have spoken no falsehood that looks like truth disturbs us. For we do not touch them, as we do things outside us, by any bodily sense, as we perceive colors by seeing, sounds by hearing, smells by smelling, tastes by tasting, hard and soft things by handling; of these sensible things we also turn over in thought images very like them, no longer bodily, hold them in memory, and are roused by them to desire the things themselves. But without any deceptive imagining of fancies or phantoms, it is most certain to me that I am, and that I know and love this. In these truths I have no fear of the arguments of the Academics, who say: “What if you are deceived?” For if I am deceived, I am. For he who is not cannot be deceived either; and so I am, if I am deceived. Since, then, I am if I am deceived, how am I deceived in believing that I am, when it is certain that I am if I am deceived? Since, therefore, I who was deceived would be, even if I were deceived, beyond doubt I am not deceived in knowing that I am. It follows that I am not deceived either in knowing that I know. For as I know that I am, so I know this too, that I know. And when I love these two, I add to the things I know this same love as a third thing of no less value. For I am not deceived that I love, since I am not deceived in the things I love; though even if they were false, it would be true that I loved false things. For how could I rightly be blamed and rightly forbidden to love false things, if it were false that I loved them? But since they are true and certain, who doubts that, when they are loved, the love of them is itself true and certain? Further, there is no one who does not wish to be, just as there is no one who does not wish to be happy. For how can one be happy if one is nothing?

Chapter 27. Of being and knowledge and the love of both.

Being itself is so pleasant by a certain natural force that for no other reason do even those who are wretched not wish to perish, and when they feel that they are wretched, they wish not themselves to be removed from the world but rather their wretchedness. Take even those who both seem most wretched to themselves and plainly are so, and who are judged wretched not only by the wise, because they are foolish, but also by those who think themselves happy, because they are poor and beggars: if someone were to give them an immortality in which even their wretchedness would not die, on the terms that, if they did not wish to be always in the same wretchedness, they would be nothing and nowhere but would perish utterly, they would certainly leap for joy and would choose to be forever thus rather than not to be at all. Their well-known feeling is a witness to this. For why do they fear to die and prefer to live in that misery rather than end it by death, unless it is quite plain how nature shuns not being? And so, when they know that they are going to die, they long for this mercy to be shown them as a great benefit, that they may live somewhat longer in the same misery and die later. Beyond doubt, then, they show with what thankfulness they would receive immortality, even one that would not put an end to their begging. What of all the animals, even the irrational ones, to whom it is not given to think of these things, from huge serpents to tiny worms? Do they not show, by every movement they can, that they wish to exist and therefore flee destruction? What of shrubs and all bushes, which have no sense to avoid harm by visible motion? Do they not, in order to send the tip of their crown safely into the air, fix another part, the root, in the earth, to draw nourishment from it, and so in a way preserve their being? Finally, bodies themselves, which have not only no sense but not even any seminal life, either leap upward or descend downward or are balanced in the middle, so as to preserve their being where they can exist according to their nature.

And how much knowing is loved and how human nature does not wish to be deceived may be understood from this, that everyone of sound mind would rather grieve than be glad in madness. This great and wonderful power belongs to no mortal living creature except man, although some of them have a far sharper sense of sight than we for beholding this light; but they cannot reach that incorporeal light by which our mind is in some way irradiated, so that we can judge rightly of all these things. For in so far as we receive it, in so far can we do this. Yet in the senses of irrational animals there is, if in no way knowledge, at least a certain likeness of knowledge; but the other bodily things are called sensible not because they sense but because they are sensed. Among these, what is like the senses in shrubs is that they are nourished and reproduce. Yet both these and all bodily things have their causes hidden in nature; but they offer their forms, by which the structure of this visible world is beautiful, to the senses to be perceived, so that, in place of the knowing which they cannot do, they seem as it were to wish to be known. But we so take them in by the bodily sense that we do not judge of them by the bodily sense. For we have another sense, of the inner man, far more excellent than this, by which we perceive just and unjust things: the just by an intelligible form, the unjust by its privation. To the working of this sense no keenness of the pupil, no opening of the ear, no nostrils, no taste in the throat, no bodily touch contributes. There I am certain both that I am and that I know this; and I love these things and am likewise certain that I love them.

Chapter 28. Whether we ought also to love the very love by which we love both being and knowing, so as to come nearer to the image of the divine Trinity.

But about those two, being and knowing, how much they are loved in us, and how a certain likeness of them, though different, is found also in the other things that are below us, we have said enough, as far as the plan of this work seemed to require. But about the love by which they are loved, whether this love itself is loved, nothing has been said. It is loved, however; and we prove it from this, that in men who are loved more rightly, it is love itself that is loved more. For he is not rightly called a good man who knows what is good, but who loves it. Why then do we not perceive in ourselves too that we love the very love by which we love whatever good we love? For there is also a love by which what ought not to be loved is loved; and whoever loves that love by which what ought to be loved is loved hates this other love in himself. For both can exist in one man; and this is good for a man, that as the love by which we live well advances, the love by which we live badly may fail, until our whole life is healed to perfection and changed into good. For if we were cattle, we would love the carnal life and what accords with its sense, and this would be our sufficient good, and when it was well with us in this respect we would seek nothing else. Likewise, if we were trees, we could indeed love nothing by a sentient movement, yet we would seem as it were to seek that by which we might be more fertile and bear fruit more abundantly. If we were stones, or waves, or wind, or flame, or anything of that kind, without any sense or life, we would still not lack a kind of seeking of our own places and order. For the movements of weights are, as it were, the loves of bodies, whether they strive downward by heaviness or upward by lightness. For a body is carried by its weight, as the soul by its love, wherever it is carried.

Since, then, we are men created in the image of our Creator, whose is true eternity, eternal truth, eternal and true love, and who is himself the eternal, true, and beloved Trinity, neither confused nor separated: in the things that are below us, since they too would not exist in any way, nor be held together by any form, nor seek or keep any order, unless they had been made by him who supremely is, who is supremely wise, who is supremely good, let us, running as it were through all the things he has made with wonderful stability, gather up his traces, as it were, more deeply impressed in one place and less in another; but beholding his image in ourselves, let us, like that younger son in the Gospel, come back to ourselves, rise, and return to him from whom we had departed by sinning. There our being will have no death, our knowing no error, our loving no offense. But now, though we hold these three of ours as certain, and do not believe them on the word of other witnesses but perceive them ourselves as present and discern them with the most truthful inner sight, yet, since we cannot know by ourselves how long they will last, or whether they will never fail, and where they will come to if we act badly and where if we act well, we seek or have other witnesses on this; and why there should be no doubt about their trustworthiness is not to be discussed here, but more carefully later. In this book, however, about the city of God that is not a pilgrim in the mortality of this life but is always immortal in the heavens, that is, about the holy angels who cleave to God, who never have been and never will be deserters, and between whom and those who, forsaking the eternal light, became darkness, God, as we have said, first divided, let us with his help go on to explain, as we can, what we have begun.

Chapter 29. Of the knowledge of the holy angels, by which they know the Trinity in its very Godhead, and by which they behold the causes of works in the art of the worker before they see them in the works of the artist themselves.

For those holy angels learn God not through sounding words but through the very presence of the unchangeable truth, that is, his only-begotten Word; and they know the Word himself, and the Father, and their Holy Spirit, and that this is an inseparable Trinity, and that each of the persons in it is substance, and yet that all are not three gods but one God, in such a way that these things are better known to them than we are to ourselves. The creation itself, too, they know better there, that is, in the wisdom of God, as in the art by which it was made, than in the creation itself; and so they know themselves also better there than in themselves, yet in themselves too. For they were made, and are other than he who made them. There, then, they know as in daytime knowledge, but in themselves as in evening knowledge, as we said above. For it makes a great difference whether something is known in the reason according to which it was made or in itself; just as the straightness of lines or the truth of figures is known one way when it is beheld by the understanding, another when it is drawn in the dust; and justice one way in the unchangeable truth, another in the soul of a just man. So then with the rest: as the firmament between the upper and lower waters, which was called heaven; as the gathering of the waters below and the laying bare of the land and the making of plants and trees; as the creation of the sun and moon and stars; as that of the animals from the waters, namely birds and fishes and swimming monsters; as that of all things that walk and creep on the earth and of man himself, who was to excel all things on earth. All these are known by the angels one way in the Word of God, where they have their causes and reasons, that is, according to which they were made, abiding unchangeably, and another way in themselves: by that knowledge more clearly, by this more dimly, as the knowledge of the art and of the works; and yet when these works are referred to the praise and veneration of the Creator himself, it dawns, as it were, like morning in the minds of those who contemplate.

Chapter 30. Of the perfection of the number six, which is the first to be completed by the sum of its parts.

These works are said to have been completed in six days, the same day being repeated six times, because of the perfection of the number six; not because God needed a delay of time, as though he could not create all things at once, which would thereafter complete the times by fitting motions, but because the perfection of the works is signified by the number six. For six is the first number that is completed by its parts, that is, by its sixth, its third, and its half, which are one, two, and three, and these added together make six. And in this consideration of numbers those are to be understood as parts of which it can be said what fraction they are, as a half, a third, a quarter, and so on, named from some number. For example, although in the number nine four is some part of it, it cannot therefore be said what fraction of it it is; but one can, for it is its ninth, and three can, for it is its third. But these two parts of it joined together, the ninth and the third, that is, one and three, are far short of its whole sum, which is nine. Likewise in ten, four is some part of it, but it cannot be said what fraction; but one can, for it is its tenth part. It also has a fifth, which is two, and a half, which is five. But these three parts of it, the tenth, the fifth, and the half, that is, one, two, and five, added together do not make up ten; they are eight. But the parts of the number twelve, added together, exceed it; for it has a twelfth, which is one, a sixth, which is two, a fourth, which is three, a third, which is four, and a half, which is six; but one and two and three and four and six make not twelve but more, namely sixteen. I thought I should mention this briefly to commend the perfection of the number six, which, as I said, is the first to be completed by its own parts brought into a sum; and in it God completed his works. Hence the reason of number is not to be despised; how highly it is to be valued shines out in many passages of the holy Scriptures to those who look carefully. Nor was it said in vain in the praises of God: “You have ordered all things in measure and number and weight.”