City of God 9.20–10.5

Chapter 20. On the quality of the knowledge that makes demons proud.

Yet even the very origin of this name, if we look at the divine books, offers something most worthy of knowing. For daemones (since the word is Greek) are said to be named from knowledge. But the apostle, speaking by the Holy Spirit, says: “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” This is rightly understood in no other way than that knowledge is profitable when love is present, but without love it puffs up, that is, lifts up into the pride of a most empty windiness, as it were. In demons, then, there is knowledge without love; and therefore they are so puffed up, that is, so proud, that they have striven hard to have divine honors and the service of religion, which they know to be due to the true God, paid to themselves, and still strive for it as far as they can and with whom they can. Against the pride of the demons, by which the human race was deservedly possessed, the humility of God which appeared in Christ has great power — how great, the souls of men do not know who are unclean with the swelling of self-exaltation, like demons not in knowledge but in pride.

Chapter 21. In what way the Lord willed to become known to the demons.

The demons themselves know even this, so that they said to that same Lord when he was clothed in the weakness of the flesh: “What have we to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?” It is clear in these words that there was in them both great knowledge and no love. For they dreaded their punishment from him; they did not love the justice in him. He became known to them as much as he willed; and he willed as much as was fitting. But he became known not as to the holy angels, who enjoy his eternity, in that he is the Word of God, by participation in it; but as he had to become known to those who were to be terrified, from whose tyrannical power, as it were, he was going to free those predestined to his kingdom and glory, which is ever true and truly everlasting. He became known to the demons, then, not through that which is eternal life and the unchangeable light that enlightens the devout, by seeing which, through faith in him, hearts are cleansed; but through certain temporal effects of his power and signs of his most hidden presence, which could be more visible to the angelic senses even of malignant spirits than to the weakness of men. Finally, when he judged that these should be suppressed a little and he was hidden somewhat more deeply, the prince of the demons doubted about him and tempted him, trying to find out whether he was the Christ, as far as he himself allowed himself to be tempted, in order to shape the manhood he bore as an example for our imitation. But after that temptation, when angels, as it is written, ministered to him — good and holy angels, and therefore to be feared and dreaded by unclean spirits — it became more and more known to the demons how great he was, so that no one dared to resist his command, although the weakness of the flesh seemed contemptible in him.

Chapter 22. What is the difference between the knowledge of the holy angels and the knowledge of the demons.

To these good angels, then, all the knowledge of bodily and temporal things by which the demons are puffed up is of little worth — not because they are ignorant of such things, but because the love of God, by which they are sanctified, is dear to them. In comparison with his beauty, which is not only incorporeal but also unchangeable and ineffable, and with holy love for which they burn, they despise all things that are beneath it and are not what it is, and themselves among them, so that with all the good that they are, they may enjoy that good from which they are good. And therefore they know even these temporal and changeable things more surely, because they behold their principal causes in the Word of God, through whom the world was made — causes by which some things are approved, some rejected, and all set in order. But the demons do not contemplate the eternal causes of times, the hinges, as it were, in the wisdom of God; but by greater experience of certain signs hidden from us they foresee many more future things than men do; and sometimes they also announce beforehand what they themselves intend to do. In short, these are often deceived, those never at all. For it is one thing to conjecture temporal things from temporal things and changeable from changeable, and to insert into them the temporal and changeable measure of their own will and ability, which is allowed to the demons within a fixed limit; it is another thing to foresee the changes of times in the eternal and unchangeable laws of God, which live in his wisdom, and to know the will of God, which is the most certain and most powerful of all, by participation in his Spirit — which is given to the holy angels by a right discernment. And so they are not only eternal but also happy. And the good by which they are happy is God, by whom they were created. For they enjoy him by unfailing participation and contemplation.

Chapter 23. That the name of gods is falsely ascribed to the gods of the nations, though by the authority of the divine Scriptures it is common to the holy angels and to just men.

If the Platonists prefer to call these beings gods rather than demons, and to count them among those whom their founder and teacher Plato writes were created as gods by the supreme God, let them say what they like; for we need not labor over a controversy about words with them. For if they say that they are immortal, yet made by the supreme God, and happy not through themselves but by cleaving to him by whom they were made, they say what we say, whatever name they call them by. That this is the opinion of the Platonists, whether of all or of the better ones, can be found in their writings. And as to the name itself — that they call this kind of immortal and happy creature gods — there is almost no disagreement between us, because in our sacred writings too we read: “The God of gods, the Lord, has spoken”; and elsewhere: “Give praise to the God of gods”; and elsewhere: “A great king above all gods.” But where it is written, “He is terrible above all gods,” why it was said is shown next. For it follows: “For all the gods of the nations are demons, but the Lord made the heavens.” So he said “above all gods,” but those of the nations, that is, those whom the nations hold as gods, which are demons; therefore “terrible,” and under this terror they said to the Lord, “Have you come to destroy us?” But where it is said, “the God of gods,” it cannot be understood as the god of demons; and far be it that “a great king above all gods” should be said to mean a great king above all demons. But the same Scripture also calls men among the people of God gods: “I have said,” it says, “you are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High.” So he who is called the God of gods can be understood to be the God of these gods, and he who is called a great king above all gods the great king above these gods. Yet when we are asked: if men have been called gods because they are among the people of God, whom God addresses through angels or men, how much more worthy of this name are the immortals who enjoy that happiness to which men desire to come by worshipping God? What shall we answer except that it is not without reason that in the holy Scriptures men are more expressly called gods than those immortal and happy beings, to whom we are promised to be equal in the resurrection — namely, lest unbelieving weakness should dare, because of their excellence, to set up any of them as a god for us? This is easy to avoid in the case of a man. And men among the people of God had to be called gods more plainly, so that they might be sure and confident that he is their God who is called the God of gods; because, even though those immortal and happy beings in heaven may be called gods, they have not been called gods of gods, that is, gods of the men established among the people of God, to whom it was said, “I have said, you are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High.” Hence the apostle says: “Though there are those who are called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we in him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and we through him.” We need not argue much, then, about the name, since the thing itself is so clear as to be free from any scruple of doubt. But as to what we say — that angels were sent from the number of those immortal and happy beings to announce the will of God to men — this does not please them, because they believe that this ministry is carried out not through those whom they call gods, that is, the immortal and happy, but through demons, whom they dare to call only immortal, not also happy; or at least immortal and happy in such a way that they are good demons, not gods placed on high and removed from human contact. Though this may seem a controversy about a name, yet the name of demons is so detestable that we ought in every way to keep it away from the holy angels. Now, then, let this book be closed in such a way that we know that immortal and happy beings, whatever they are called, who were nevertheless made and created, are not mediators for bringing wretched mortals to immortal happiness, since they are separated from them by both differences. But those who are in the middle, having immortality in common with those above and misery with those below, since they are wretched through the guilt of their malice, can envy us the happiness which they do not have rather than provide it. Hence the friends of demons have nothing worth offering us why we should worship as helpers those whom we ought rather to avoid as deceivers. But as for those whom they think good, and therefore not only immortal but also happy, and to be worshipped under the name of gods with rites and sacrifices for the sake of obtaining a happy life after death — whatever they are, and whatever name they deserve — that they do not want anyone to be worshipped by such religious service except the one God, by whom they were created and by participation in whom they are happy, we shall, with his help, discuss more carefully in the following book.

Chapter 1. That even the Platonists have defined true happiness, whether for angels or for men, as given by the one God; but that it must be asked whether those whom they think should be worshipped for this very reason wish sacrifice to be offered only to the one God, or to themselves as well.

It is the settled opinion of all who can use reason in any way that all men wish to be happy. But who are happy, or how they become so, is a question on which, as the weakness of mortals inquires, many great controversies have arisen, in which philosophers have spent their zeal and their leisure; to bring these forward and discuss them would be long and unnecessary. For if the reader recalls what we did in the eighth book in choosing the philosophers with whom to treat this question of the happy life that is to come after death, whether we can reach it by serving with religion and rites the one true God, who is also the maker of the gods, or very many gods, he does not expect the same things to be repeated here, especially since, if he has perhaps forgotten, he can help his memory by rereading. We chose the Platonists, deservedly the most noble of all philosophers, because they were able to perceive that the human soul, though immortal and rational or intellectual, cannot be happy except by participation in the light of that God by whom both it and the world were made; so they deny that anyone will attain what all men seek, that is, the happy life, who does not cleave with the purity of a chaste love to that one supreme good, which is the unchangeable God. But since they too, either yielding to the vanity and error of the peoples or, as the apostle says, becoming futile in their thinking, thought, or wished it to be thought, that many gods should be worshipped, so that some of them even held that divine honors of rites and sacrifices should be paid to demons, to whom we have already replied in no small part: we must now see and discuss, as far as God grants, how we are to believe that the immortal and blessed beings set in the heavenly seats, dominions, principalities, powers, whom these men call gods, and some of whom they call either good demons or, with us, angels, wish religion and piety to be observed by us; that is, to put it more plainly, whether it pleases them that we should perform rites and offer sacrifice, or consecrate some of our possessions or ourselves with religious ceremonies, to them as well, or only to their God, who is also ours. For this is the worship due to divinity or, to speak more precisely, to deity; and to signify it in one word, since no Latin word occurs to me that is suitable enough, I indicate what I mean by a Greek word where necessary. For latreia, wherever it occurs in the holy Scriptures, our translators have rendered “service” [seruitus]. But the service that is due to men, according to which the apostle commands slaves to be subject to their masters, is usually called by another name in Greek; whereas latreia, according to the usage of those who composed the divine oracles for us, always, or so often that it is almost always, means the service that belongs to the worship of God. So if we say only “worship” [cultus], it does not seem to be owed to God alone. For we are said to worship [colere] men too, whom we attend with honor either in remembrance or in their presence. And not only things to which we submit ourselves with religious humility, but some things that are subject to us, are said to be “cultivated” [coli]. For from this word come farmers [agricolae], tenants [coloni], and inhabitants [incolae]; and they call the gods themselves heaven-dwellers [caelicolae] for no other reason than that they “cultivate” heaven, certainly not by venerating it but by inhabiting it, like certain colonists of heaven; not in the sense in which those are called coloni who owe their status to their native soil, for agriculture, under the lordship of the owners, but in the sense in which a great master of Latin eloquence says: “There was an ancient city, held by colonists from Tyre.” For he called them colonists from inhabiting, not from agriculture. Hence also cities founded by greater cities, like swarms of peoples, are called colonies. And so it is entirely true that worship, in a certain proper sense of this word, is owed only to God; but because the worship of other things is also spoken of, the worship owed to God cannot be expressed in Latin by one word. For even the word religion, though it seems to signify more distinctly not any worship at all but the worship of God (which is why our translators have used this word for what is called in Greek thrēskeia), yet because by Latin usage, not only of the unlearned but also of the most learned, religion is said to be shown toward human kinships and relationships by marriage and all ties of obligation, the ambiguity is not avoided by this word when the question concerns the worship of deity, so that we could say with confidence that religion is nothing but the worship of God, since this word seems to be taken, contrary to usage, from its meaning of respect for human relationship. Piety [pietas], too, which the Greeks call eusebeia, is usually understood properly of the worship of God. Yet this is also said to be shown dutifully toward parents. And in common usage this name is often used even of works of mercy; which, I think, came about because God especially commands them to be done and testifies that they please him either as sacrifices or more than sacrifices. From this manner of speaking it has come about that God himself is called pius; whom, of course, the Greeks in no usage of their speech call eusebēs, although their common people also use eusebeia for mercy. Hence in some places of the Scriptures, so that the distinction might appear more certainly, they preferred to say not eusebeia, which is formed from “good worship”, but theosebeia, which is formed from “worship of God”. But we cannot express either of these in one word. That, then, which in Greek is called latreia and in Latin is rendered “service”, but the service by which we worship God; or that which in Greek is called thrēskeia and in Latin religion, but the religion we have toward God; or that which they call eusebeia and we cannot express in one word, but can call the worship of God: this we say is owed only to that God who is the true God and makes his worshippers gods. Whatever immortal and blessed beings there are, then, in the heavenly dwellings, if they do not love us and do not wish us to be happy, they are certainly not to be worshipped. But if they love us and wish us to be happy, they certainly wish us to be happy from the same source from which they are; or are they happy from one source and we from another?

Chapter 2. What the Platonist Plotinus thought about illumination from above.

But we have no conflict on this question with these more excellent philosophers. For they saw, and committed to their writings in many ways and very fully, that those beings are made happy from the same source as we are, by a certain intelligible light shining upon them, which is God to them and is other than they are, by which they are illuminated so that they shine, and by participation in which they subsist perfect and happy. Plotinus often and at length asserts, explaining the meaning of Plato, that not even that soul which they believe to be the soul of the universe is happy from any other source than ours is, and that this source is a light which it is not itself, but by which it was created and by whose intelligible illumination it shines intelligibly. He also gives an illustration of those incorporeal things from these visible and vast heavenly bodies, as though that light were the sun and the soul the moon; for they think the moon is lit by the sun shining upon it. So that great Platonist says that the rational soul, or rather what should be called intellectual, of which kind he understands the souls of the immortal and blessed also to be, whom he does not doubt dwell in the heavenly seats, has no nature above it except that of God, who made the world and by whom the soul itself was made; and that the happy life and the light of understanding the truth are given to those beings above from no other source than that from which they are given to us. In this he agrees with the Gospel, where we read: “There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came for testimony, to bear testimony about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear testimony about the light. That was the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world.” In this distinction it is shown clearly enough that the rational or intellectual soul, such as was in John, cannot be a light to itself, but shines by participation in another, true light. This John himself confesses, where, bearing testimony to him, he says: “We have all received of his fullness.”

Chapter 3. On the true worship of God, from which the Platonists, though they understood the Creator of the universe, went astray by worshipping angels, whether good or evil, with divine honor.

This being so, if the Platonists, or any others who have thought these things, knowing God, had glorified him as God and given thanks, and had not become futile in their thinking, nor become partly the authors of the errors of the peoples and partly afraid to resist them, they would surely confess that for those immortal and blessed beings and for us mortal and wretched ones, so that we may be immortal and blessed, the one God of gods must be worshipped, who is both ours and theirs. To him we owe the service that is called latreia in Greek, whether in various sacraments or in ourselves. For we are all together his temple and each of us his temples, because he deigns to dwell both in the concord of all and in each one; not greater in all than in each, since he is neither stretched out by bulk nor diminished by division. When it is lifted up to him, our heart is his altar; we appease him with his Only-begotten as priest; we slay bloody victims to him when we fight even to blood for his truth; we burn the sweetest incense to him when we are aflame in his sight with pious and holy love; we vow and render to him his gifts in us, and ourselves; we dedicate and consecrate to him the memory of his benefits with solemn feasts and appointed days, lest ungrateful forgetfulness creep in with the rolling of the times; we sacrifice to him a victim of humility and praise on the altar of the heart, with the fire of fervent charity. To see him, as he can be seen, and to cleave to him, we are cleansed from every stain of sins and evil desires and consecrated in his name. For he is the fountain of our happiness, he the end of all our desire. Choosing him [eligentes], or rather choosing him again [religentes] (for we had lost him by neglect [neglegentes]), choosing him again, then, from which religion is said to be named, we tend toward him by love, so that by reaching him we may rest, happy because made perfect by that end. For our good, about whose end there is great dispute among philosophers, is nothing else than to cleave to him, by whose embrace alone, if one may say so, an incorporeal one, the intellectual soul is filled and made fruitful with true virtues. This good we are commanded to love with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our strength; to this good we ought both to be led by those who love us and to lead those whom we love. So those two commandments are fulfilled on which the whole law and the prophets depend: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” For in order that man might know how to love himself, an end was set for him to which he should refer all that he did, that he might be happy; for one who loves himself wishes nothing else than to be happy. And this end is to cleave to God. So when one who already knows how to love himself is commanded to love his neighbor as himself, what else is he commanded but to commend to him, as far as he can, the love of God? This is the worship of God, this true religion, this right piety, this the service owed to God alone. Whatever immortal power, then, endowed with whatever virtue, if it loves us as itself, wishes us to be subject, that we may be happy, to him to whom it too is subject and happy. If, then, it does not worship God, it is wretched, because it is deprived of God; but if it worships God, it does not wish to be worshipped in place of God. Rather it supports and favors with all the strength of its love that divine sentence in which it is written: “He who sacrifices to gods shall be rooted out, except to the Lord alone.”

Chapter 4. That sacrifice is owed to the one true God alone.

For, to say nothing now of other things belonging to the service of religion by which God is worshipped, certainly there is no man who would dare to say that sacrifice is owed except to God. Many things, indeed, have been taken over from divine worship to be paid as honors to men, whether from excessive humility or from pernicious flattery; yet in such a way that those to whom they were paid were held to be men, who are said to be worthy of worship and veneration, and, if much more is added, even of adoration. But who ever thought that sacrifice should be offered except to one whom he knew, or thought, or pretended to be a god? And how ancient the worship of God in sacrificing is, those two brothers Cain and Abel show well enough, the elder of whom God rejected in his sacrifice, while he looked with favor on that of the younger.

Chapter 5. On the sacrifices which God does not require, but willed to be offered to signify the things he does require.

Who is so foolish as to think that the things offered in sacrifices are necessary to God for any uses? Since the divine Scripture testifies to this in many places, not to be long, it will suffice to recall that brief saying from the psalm: “I said to the Lord, ‘You are my God, for you have no need of my goods.’” We must believe, then, that God has no need not only of cattle or of any other corruptible and earthly thing, but not even of man's righteousness itself; and that all the right worship of God profits man, not God. For no one would say he had done a service to a fountain by drinking from it, or to the light by seeing. Nor is the fact that other sacrifices were made by the ancient fathers in victims of cattle, which God's people now read of but do not perform, to be understood otherwise than that those things signified the things that are done in us, to the end that we may cleave to God and seek the same end for our neighbor. A visible sacrifice, then, is the sacrament, that is, the sacred sign, of an invisible sacrifice. So that penitent in the prophet, or the prophet himself, seeking to have God propitious to his sins, says: “If you had wished sacrifice, I would surely have given it; you will not delight in burnt offerings. The sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit; a contrite and humbled heart God will not despise.” Let us observe how, where he said that God does not wish sacrifice, there he showed that God does wish sacrifice. He does not wish, then, the sacrifice of a slaughtered beast, but he wishes the sacrifice of a contrite heart. By the one that he said God does not wish is signified the one that he added God does wish. So he said that God does not wish those sacrifices in the sense in which fools believe he wishes them, as if for his own pleasure. For if he had not willed that the sacrifices he wishes (of which this is one: a heart contrite and humbled by the grief of repentance) should be signified by those sacrifices which he was thought to desire as delightful to himself, he would certainly not have given commands about offering them in the old law. And so they had to be changed at a fitting and fixed time, lest they be believed to be desirable to God himself, or at least acceptable in us, rather than the things signified by them. Hence also in another place of another psalm: “If I were hungry,” he says, “I would not tell you; for the world is mine and all its fullness. Shall I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?” As if he said: “Surely, if they were necessary to me, I would not ask you for things I have in my power.” Then, adding what those things signify, he says: “Offer to God the sacrifice of praise, and pay your vows to the Most High, and call on me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver you, and you will glorify me.” Likewise in another prophet: “With what,” he says, “shall I lay hold of the Lord, shall I take hold of my God on high? Shall I lay hold of him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams or with ten thousands of fat goats? Shall I give my firstborn for my impiety, the fruit of my womb for the sin of my soul? Has it been told you, O man, what is good? Or what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love mercy and to be ready to walk with the Lord your God?” And in the words of this prophet both things are distinguished, and it is made clear enough that God does not require for their own sake those sacrifices by which are signified these sacrifices that God does require. In the letter entitled To the Hebrews it says: “Do not forget to do good and to share; for with such sacrifices God is pleased.” And so where it is written, “I desire mercy rather than sacrifice,” we must understand nothing else than that one sacrifice is preferred to another; since what everyone calls sacrifice is a sign of the true sacrifice. Now mercy is the true sacrifice; hence it was said, as I mentioned a little earlier: “For with such sacrifices God is pleased.” Whatever, then, we read of as divinely commanded in many ways about sacrifices in the ministry of the tabernacle or the temple refers, by signifying, to the love of God and of neighbor. For on these two commandments, as it is written, the whole law and the prophets depend.