City of God 12.6–12.15

Chapter 6. What is the cause of the happiness of the good angels, and what is the cause of the misery of the evil angels.

Accordingly the truest cause of the happiness of the good angels is found to be that they cleave to him who supremely is. But when the cause of the misery of the evil angels is sought, this rightly occurs: that, turned away from him who supremely is, they turned to themselves, who do not supremely exist; and what else is this fault to be called but pride? For “pride is the beginning of all sin.” They would not, then, keep their strength for him; and though they would have been more if they had cleaved to him who supremely is, by preferring themselves to him they preferred what is less. This was the first defect, the first want, and the first fault of that nature which was so created that it did not supremely exist, and yet could enjoy him who supremely is in order to have happiness; and turned away from him it would not indeed be nothing, but would yet be less, and so become wretched.

If, further, the efficient cause of this evil will is sought, none is found. For what makes the will evil, when the will itself makes the evil work? And therefore the evil will is the efficient cause of the evil work, but nothing is the efficient cause of the evil will. For if something is, either it has some will or it has none. If it has, it certainly has either a good will or an evil one. If a good one, who would be so foolish as to say that a good will makes an evil will? For then a good will would be the cause of sin, than which nothing more absurd can be thought. But if the thing which is thought to make the evil will itself also has an evil will, I ask in turn what thing made that will, and so, that there may be some limit to the inquiry, I ask for the cause of the first evil will. For an evil will which an evil will made is not the first, but that is the first which no will made. For if one preceded from which it was made, that one is prior which made the other. If the answer is that nothing made it, and that therefore it has always existed, I ask whether it existed in some nature. For if it existed in none, it did not exist at all; but if in some nature, it vitiated it and corrupted it and was harmful to it, and so deprived it of good. And therefore an evil will could not be in an evil nature, but in a good one, yet a changeable one, which this fault could harm. For if it did not harm it, it certainly was not a fault, and so it must not be called an evil will either. Further, if it harmed it, it certainly harmed it by taking away or diminishing good. An everlasting evil will, then, could not be in that thing in which a natural good had preceded, which the evil will could take away by harming. If, then, it was not everlasting, I ask who made it. It remains to be said that that thing made the evil will in which there was no will. I ask whether this thing is superior, inferior, or equal. But a superior is certainly better; how then is it without will, and not rather possessed of a good will? The same surely holds for an equal. For as long as two are equally of good will, one does not make an evil will in the other. It remains that an inferior thing, which has no will, made the evil will of the angelic nature which first sinned. But even that thing, whatever it is, inferior even down to the lowest earth, since it is a nature and a being, is beyond doubt good, having its own measure and form in its own kind and order. How then is a good thing the efficient cause of an evil will? How, I say, is good the cause of evil? For when the will, forsaking the higher, turns to lower things, it becomes evil, not because that to which it turns is evil, but because the turning itself is perverse. Therefore it was not the lower thing that made the will evil, but the will itself, because it was made, desired the lower thing perversely and inordinately.

For if two men, alike in disposition of mind and body, see the beauty of one body, and at the sight of it one of them is moved to enjoy it unlawfully, while the other remains steadfast in a chaste will, what do we think is the cause why the evil will comes to be in the one and not in the other? What thing made it in him in whom it came to be? Not that bodily beauty; for it did not make it in both, since it met the sight of both alike. Is the flesh of the beholder the cause? Why not also that of the other? Or is it the mind? Why not of both? For we have said that both were alike in disposition of mind and body. Or must it be said that one of them was tempted by the hidden suggestion of an evil spirit, as though he had not consented by his own will to that suggestion and persuasion, whatever it was? It is this consent, then, this evil will which he gave to the evil persuader, that we are asking what thing made in him. For, to remove this obstacle too from the question, if both are tempted by the same temptation, and one yields and consents to it, while the other remains the same as he was, what else appears but that one was unwilling, the other willing, to fall away from chastity? Whence, if not from his own will, where the disposition of body and mind had been the same in both? The same beauty was seen alike by the eyes of both, the same hidden temptation pressed alike upon both; for those, then, who want to know what thing made the evil will proper to one of them, if they look closely, nothing presents itself. For if we say that he himself made it, what was he himself before the evil will but a good nature, whose author is God, who is the unchangeable good? Let him, then, who says that the one who consented to the tempter and persuader, to whom the other did not consent, to make unlawful use of a beautiful body which was present to be seen by both alike, although before that sight and temptation both were alike in mind and body, himself made the evil will for himself, he who was certainly good before the evil will, let him ask why he made it: whether because he is a nature, or because he was made from nothing; and he will find that the evil will begins not from the fact that he is a nature but from the fact that he is a nature made from nothing. For if nature is the cause of the evil will, what else are we forced to say but that evil comes from good and good is the cause of evil? Since indeed an evil will comes from a good nature. And how can it happen that a good nature, though changeable, should do something evil, that is, the evil will itself, before it has an evil will?

Chapter 7. That the efficient cause of an evil will is not to be sought.

Let no one, then, seek the efficient cause of an evil will; for it is not efficient but deficient, since the evil will itself is not an effecting but a defecting. For to fall away from that which supremely is to that which is less, this is to begin to have an evil will. Further, to want to find the causes of these defections, since they are, as I said, not efficient but deficient, is as if someone wanted to see darkness or hear silence; yet both are known to us, the one only through the eyes, the other only through the ears, not indeed as a form but as the privation of form. Let no one, then, seek to know from me what I know I do not know, unless perhaps to learn not to know what must be known cannot be known. For things that are known not by their form but by its privation are, if it can be said or understood, in a way known by not knowing, so that they are not known by knowing. For when even the sight of the bodily eye runs over bodily forms, it sees darkness nowhere except where it begins not to see. So too it belongs to no other sense but the ears alone to perceive silence, which yet is perceived in no way except by not hearing. So our mind indeed beholds intelligible forms by understanding; but where they fail, it learns by not knowing. For “who understands his faults?”

Chapter 8. Of the perverse love by which the will falls away from the unchangeable good to a changeable good.

This I know: that the nature of God can never, nowhere, in no part fall away, and that things made from nothing can fall away. Yet these, in so far as they more fully are and do good (for then they do something), have efficient causes; but in so far as they fall away and so do evil (for what then do they do but vain things?), they have deficient causes. Likewise I know that when an evil will arises in anyone, what happens in him would not happen if he did not will it; and therefore just punishment follows defections that are not necessary but voluntary. For the falling away is not to evil things but evilly, that is, not to evil natures, but evilly because contrary to the order of natures, from that which supremely is to that which is less. For avarice is not a fault of gold but of the man who perversely loves gold, forsaking justice, which ought to have been set incomparably above gold; nor is lust a fault of beautiful and pleasant bodies, but of the soul that perversely loves bodily pleasures, neglecting temperance, by which we are fitted to things spiritually more beautiful and incorruptibly more pleasant; nor is boasting a fault of human praise, but of the soul that perversely loves to be praised by men, despising the testimony of conscience; nor is pride a fault of the one who gives power, or of power itself, but of the soul that perversely loves its own power, despising the more just power of one more powerful. And therefore he who perversely loves the good of any nature, even if he obtains it, himself becomes evil in the good, and wretched, deprived of a better good.

Chapter 9. Whether the holy angels have the same one as author of their good will whom they have as creator of their nature, through the Holy Spirit, who pours love into them.

Since, then, there is no natural or, if one may say so, essential efficient cause of an evil will (for from it begins the evil of changeable spirits, by which the good of their nature is lessened and depraved, and nothing makes such a will but the defection by which God is forsaken, and the cause of this defection also is certainly deficient), if we say that there is no efficient cause of a good will either, we must beware lest the good will of the good angels be believed not to have been made but to be coeternal with God. Since, then, they themselves were made, how can it be said that their good will was not made? Further, since it was made, was it made with them, or were they without it at first? But if with them, there is no doubt that it was made by him by whom they too were made; and as soon as they were made, they cleaved to him by whom they were made, with the love with which they were made; and these were separated from the fellowship of the others in this, that they remained in the same good will, while the others were changed by falling away from it, namely by an evil will, in the very fact that they fell away from the good; from which they would not have fallen away had they not willed it. But if the good angels were at first without a good will and made it in themselves without God's working, then they were made better by themselves than by him. Far from it. For what were they without a good will but evil? Or if they were not evil because there was no evil will in them either (for they had not fallen away from a will which they had not yet begun to have), certainly they were not yet such, not yet as good, as they began to be with a good will. But if they could not make themselves better than he had made them, than whom no one makes anything better, then certainly they could not have the good will by which they would be better except by the working help of the Creator. And when their good will brought it about that they turned not to themselves, who were less, but to him who supremely is, and cleaving to him were more, and by participation in him lived wisely and happily, what else is shown but that any good will would have been poor and would have remained in mere desire, had not he who had made a good nature from nothing, capable of himself, made it better by filling it from himself, first making it more eager by stirring it up? For this too must be discussed: if the good angels themselves made the good will in themselves, did they make it by some will or by none? If by none, they certainly did not make it. If by some, was it evil or good? If evil, how could an evil will be the maker of a good will? If good, then they already had it. And who had made this but he who created them with a good will, that is, with the chaste love by which they might cleave to him, at the same time establishing their nature and bestowing grace on them? Hence it must be believed that the holy angels were never without a good will, that is, without the love of God. But those who, though created good, are yet evil (evil by their own will, which a good nature did not make except when it freely fell away from the good, so that the cause of evil is not the good but the falling away from the good), either received less grace of divine love than those who persevered in it, or, if both were created equally good, then, while these fell by an evil will, the others, more fully helped, came to that fullness of happiness from which they became most certain that they would never fall; as we have also discussed in the book before this one.

We must confess, then, with due praise of the Creator, that it belongs not only to holy men but can be said also of the holy angels that “the love of God has been poured out in them through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to them”; and that it is the good not only of men but first and chiefly of angels, as it is written: “But for me it is good to cleave to God.” Those to whom this good is common have a holy fellowship both with him to whom they cleave and among themselves, and are one city of God, and likewise his living sacrifice and his living temple. Of this city, the part which is gathered from mortal men to be joined to the immortal angels, and which now as a mortal pilgrim sojourns on earth, or, in those who have died, rests in the hidden receptacles and abodes of souls, I see that I must now say, as was said of the angels, how it arose by the creating of the same God. For the human race took its beginning from one man, whom God first made, according to the faith of Holy Scripture, which not undeservedly has wonderful authority throughout the world and among all the nations whom, among the other true things it said, it foretold with true divinity would believe it.

Chapter 10. Of the opinion of those who think that the human race, like the world itself, has always existed.

Let us leave aside, then, the conjectures of men who do not know what they are saying about the nature or creation of the human race. For some, as they believed of the world itself, think that there have always been men. Hence Apuleius too says, when describing this kind of living being: “Mortal individually, yet as a whole race everlasting.” And when it is said to them: if the human race has always existed, how does their history speak truly in telling who were the inventors of what things, who first founded the liberal disciplines and the other arts, or by whom this or that region and part of the earth, this or that island, first began to be inhabited? they answer that at certain intervals of time floods and conflagrations lay waste, not indeed all, but most of the lands, so that men are reduced to a small number, from whose offspring the former multitude is restored again; and that thus things are again and again discovered and established as if for the first time, when rather they are restored, having been interrupted and extinguished by those excessive devastations; but that man cannot come into existence at all except from man. But they say what they think, not what they know.

Chapter 11. Of the falsity of that history which assigns many thousands of years to past times.

They are also deceived by certain most lying writings which they claim contain many thousands of years in the history of the times, whereas from the sacred writings we reckon that not yet six thousand years have been completed since the creation of man. So, not to argue at length how the vanity of those writings, in which far more thousands of years are recorded, may be refuted, and how no fit authority for this matter is found in them: that letter of Alexander the Great to his mother Olympias, in which he conveyed the account of a certain Egyptian priest, which the priest produced from writings held sacred among them, contains also kingdoms which Greek history too knows. Among these, the kingdom of the Assyrians in that same letter of Alexander exceeds five thousand years; but in Greek history it has about thirteen hundred from the reign of Belus himself, whom that Egyptian too places at the beginning of the same kingdom. And the empire of the Persians and Macedonians down to Alexander himself, to whom he was speaking, he reckoned at more than eight thousand years, whereas among the Greeks four hundred and eighty-five are found for the Macedonians down to the death of Alexander, and two hundred and thirty-three are reckoned for the Persians until they were ended by Alexander's own victory. These numbers of years are thus far smaller than those of the Egyptians, and would not equal them even if they were counted three times over. For the Egyptians are said once to have had years so short that they ended every four months; hence the fuller and truer year, such as both we and they have now, would comprise three of their ancient years. But not even so, as I have said, does Greek history agree with the Egyptian in the number of its times. And therefore faith is to be given rather to the Greek, because it does not exceed the true number of years contained in our writings, which are truly sacred. Further, if this letter of Alexander, which became very widely known, is far removed in its spans of time from probable truth, how much less are those writings to be believed which, full of fabulous and pretended antiquities, they have wished to set up against the authority of the most famous and divine books, which foretold that the whole world would believe them, and which the whole world, as they foretold, has believed; and which show that they told the truth about things past by the things they foretold of the future, which are being fulfilled with such great truth.

Chapter 12. Of those who think that this world is indeed not everlasting, but hold either that there are innumerable worlds or that one and the same world is always born and dissolved at a fixed completion of ages.

Others, who do not think this world everlasting, whether they suppose that there is not this one only but innumerable worlds, or that there is indeed only one but that it rises and perishes innumerable times at fixed intervals of ages, must admit that the human race first came into existence without men to beget them. For these cannot think, as those do who hold that floods and conflagrations do not reach absolutely the whole earth and therefore contend that a few men always remain from whom the former multitude is restored, that when the world perishes some part of mankind is left in the world; but as they think that the world itself is reborn from its own matter, so they think that in it the human race springs from its elements, and then a progeny of mortals from parents, as with the other animals.

Chapter 13. What answer is to be given to those who object that the first creation of man was late.

What we answered, when the question turned on the origin of the world, to those who will not believe that it did not always exist but began to be, as even Plato most plainly confesses (though some believe he thought the contrary of what he says), I would answer also about the first creation of man, on account of those who are similarly troubled why man was not created through innumerable and infinite past ages, and was created so late that it is less than six thousand years since he began to exist, as is found in the sacred writings. For if the shortness of the time offends them, because so few years seem to them to have passed since man was made, as we read in our authorities, let them consider that nothing is long in which there is some last point, and that all the spaces of the ages, being defined, if compared with endless eternity, must be reckoned not small but nothing. And so, if not five or six, but sixty thousand or six hundred thousand, or sixty times or six hundred times or six hundred thousand times as many years were said to have passed since God made man, or if this sum were multiplied again by the same amount as many times, until we had no longer any name of a number, it could similarly be asked why he did not make him earlier. For God's abstention from creating man, stretching back eternally without beginning, is so great that, if any number of times, however great and unspeakable, is compared with it, which is yet closed by an end and bounded by a fixed span, it ought not even to seem as great as if we compared the smallest drop of water to the whole sea, even all that the ocean flows around. For of these two, one is very small and the other incomparably great, but both are finite; but that span of time which proceeds from some beginning and is bounded by some end, however great its extent, compared with that which has no beginning, I do not know whether it should be reckoned as very small or rather as nothing. For if from the end even the briefest moments are taken away one by one, the number, however huge, so that it finds no name, will decrease, and going backward (as if you were to take away a man's days from the one in which he now lives back to the one on which he was born) the subtraction will at some time be brought to the beginning. But if, in a span that began from no starting point, you subtract backward, I do not say single small moments, or quantities of hours or days or months or years, but spans as great as that sum of years comprises which no reckoner can now name, which is nonetheless used up by the subtraction of moments one by one; and if these so great spans are subtracted not once and again and more often, but always: what happens, what is achieved, when one never reaches a beginning, which does not exist at all? Therefore what we now ask after five thousand years and a little more, our descendants too might ask with the same curiosity after six hundred thousand times as many years, if this mortality of men, rising and setting, and this unskilled weakness were to last so long. Those who were before us, in the very times close to man's creation, could have raised this question. Finally, the first man himself, the day after or even on the same day on which he was made, could have asked why he was not made before; and whenever he had been made before, this dispute about the beginning of temporal things would have found no other force then than now, or even later.

Chapter 14. Of the revolution of ages, at the fixed end of which some philosophers believed that all things always return to the same order and the same form.

The philosophers of this world have thought that they could and should solve this controversy in no other way than by introducing cycles of times, in which they asserted that the same things have always been renewed and repeated in the nature of things, and that so the revolutions of coming and passing ages will go on hereafter without ceasing; whether these cycles take place while the world continues, or whether the world, rising and perishing at fixed intervals, always presents the same things, past and future, as if new. From this mockery they cannot free even the immortal soul, even when it has attained wisdom; it goes without ceasing to a false happiness and without ceasing returns to a true misery. For how is that true happiness of whose eternity one is never confident, while the soul either, most ignorantly, does not know in the truth of the misery to come, or, most unhappily, dreads it in its happiness? But if it passes from these miseries to happiness never to return to them again, then something new happens in time which has no end in time. Why not, then, the world too? Why not also man, made in the world? So that those false cycles, discovered by false and deceitful wise men, may be avoided in sound doctrine by the path of the straight way.

For some want that saying which we read in the book of Solomon called Ecclesiastes, “What is it that has been? The same that will be. And what is it that has been done? The same that will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun. Who will speak and say, Behold, this is new? It has already been in the ages that were before us,” to be understood as said of these cycles returning to the same things and recalling all things to the same. But he said it either of the things of which he was speaking above, that is, of generations going and coming, of the circuits of the sun, of the flowing of torrents; or certainly of the kinds of all things that arise and perish. For there were men before us, there are men with us, and there will be men after us; and so with all living things and trees. Even monsters, which are born unusual, though they differ from one another and some are reported to have occurred only once, yet in so far as they are, generally speaking, marvels and monsters, certainly have been and will be; and it is nothing recent and new that a monster should be born under the sun. Some, however, have understood these words as though that wise man meant it to be understood that all things had already been made in God's predestination, and therefore that there is nothing recent under the sun. But far be it from right faith to believe that by these words of Solomon those cycles are meant by which they think the same revolutions of times and temporal things are repeated, so that, for example, just as in this age the philosopher Plato taught his pupils in the city of Athens and in the school called the Academy, so through innumerable ages past, at very long but fixed intervals, the same Plato and the same city and the same school and the same pupils have been repeated and are to be repeated through innumerable ages to come. Far be it, I say, that we should believe this. For Christ died once for our sins; and rising from the dead he dies no more, and death will no more have dominion over him; and after the resurrection we shall be always with the Lord, to whom we now say what the sacred psalm admonishes: “You, O Lord, will keep us and preserve us from this generation and forever.” And what follows, I think, fits these men well enough: “The wicked will walk in a circle”; not because their life will return through the cycles they imagine, but because such is now the way of their error, that is, their false teaching.

Chapter 15. Of the creation of the human race in time, which God established neither by a new counsel nor by a changeable will.

What wonder is it, then, if, wandering in these cycles, they find neither entrance nor exit? For they know neither from what beginning the human race and this mortality of ours began nor with what end it will close, since they cannot penetrate the depth of God, by which, though he himself is eternal and without beginning, he nonetheless began times from some beginning, and made man in time, whom he had never made before, yet not by a new and sudden counsel but by an unchangeable and eternal one. Who could track out this untrackable depth and search out this unsearchable one, according to which God, not by a changeable will, founded in time temporal man, before whom no man ever existed, and multiplied the human race from one? For the psalm itself, when it had first said, “You, O Lord, will keep us and preserve us from this generation and forever,” and had then struck back at those in whose foolish and impious teaching no eternity of the soul's deliverance and happiness is preserved, immediately adding, “The wicked will walk in a circle,” as if it were said to it: “What then do you believe, think, understand? Must it be thought that it suddenly pleased God to make man, whom he had never made before through an infinite past eternity, God to whom nothing new can happen, in whom there is nothing changeable?”, at once answered, speaking to God himself: “According to your depth you have multiplied the sons of men.” Let men, it says, think what they think, and hold and argue what pleases them: “According to your depth,” which no man can know, “you have multiplied the sons of men.” For it is very deep both that he always existed, and that he willed to make man for the first time at some time, whom he had never made before, and yet did not change his counsel and will.