On First Principles 1.5.1–1.6.4

After the discussion of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, which we have briefly set out as far as we were able, it follows that we should also say a little about rational natures, their species and orders, and the offices both of the holy and of the evil powers, and also about those who are in some way intermediate between these good and evil ones and are still placed in the contest and struggle. For we find in the holy Scriptures a great many names of certain orders and offices, both of holy beings and of their opposites; we shall first set these out, and then try, as far as we can, to discuss what they mean. There are certain holy angels of God, whom Paul calls ministering spirits, appointed for service for the sake of those who inherit salvation. In the same holy Paul we find, drawn I know not from where, the naming of certain thrones, dominions, principalities and powers; and after listing these, as though perceiving that there are still other rational offices and orders besides those he had mentioned, he says of the Saviour: “who is above every principality and power and virtue and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.” By this he plainly shows that there are certain others besides those he mentioned, which are named in this age, though they were not enumerated by him now and perhaps not understood by anyone else; and that there are others which are not named in this age, but will be named in the age to come.

Next, it must be known that every rational being which departs from the limits and ordinances of reason is without doubt in sin, through transgression of what is right and just. Every rational creature, then, is capable of praise and blame: of praise if, in accordance with the reason it has in itself, it advances to better things; of blame if it departs from the reason and course of what is right; for which reason it is also rightly subject to pains and punishments. And this is to be thought also of the devil himself and of those who are with him and are called his angels. Their titles, however, must also be explained, so that we may know what these beings are of whom we must speak. The name of devil, then, and Satan, and the evil one is indicated in many passages of Scripture, and he is described as the enemy of God. Certain angels of the devil are also named, and also the prince of this world, who, whether he is the devil himself or someone else, has not yet been clearly declared. Certain princes of this world are also said to have a kind of wisdom that will be destroyed; but whether these princes are the same as those principalities against whom we wrestle, or others, does not seem to me easy for anyone to pronounce. After the principalities, powers also are named, against whom we wrestle and the struggle is waged, and also against the princes of this world and the rulers of this darkness; and certain spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places are named by Paul himself. And what are we to say of the evil spirits and unclean demons who are named in the Gospels? Then certain heavenly beings, too, are called by a similar name, but they are said to bow the knee, or to be about to bow it, at the name of Jesus; and also things on earth and under the earth, which Paul enumerates in order. In a place where we are discussing rational natures, it is not fitting to be silent even about ourselves, human beings, who are called a rational animal; nor should we idly pass over the fact that among us human beings too certain different orders are named, when it is said: “The portion of the Lord is his people Jacob, Israel the line of his inheritance.” The other nations are called the portion of the angels, since “when the Most High divided the nations and scattered the sons of Adam, he set the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the angels of God.” And therefore, together with the other rational natures, the account of the human soul too must be examined.

Since, then, so many and such great names of orders and offices have been mentioned, under which it is certain that there are substances, we must ask whether God, the founder and creator of all things, made some of them so holy and blessed that they can receive nothing at all of the contrary; and whether he made some such that they could become capable of both virtue and wickedness; or whether we are to think that he made some so that they are wholly incapable of virtue, and others wholly unable to receive wickedness but able only to remain in blessedness, and others such as can receive either. And so that our first inquiry may arise from the names themselves, let us consider whether the holy angels, from the time they have existed, were always holy, are holy and will be holy, and have never received nor been able to receive any occasion of sin. Then let us also consider whether those who are called holy principalities began, as soon as they were created by God, to exercise rule over some who were subject to them, and whether those were created such and made for this, to be subordinate and subject. Likewise also those which are called powers: whether they were created such and for this very purpose, to exercise power, or whether this is a merit and reward of virtue by which they came to that power and dignity. And also those who are called thrones or seats: whether they merited that seat and stability of blessedness at the same time as their substance was brought forth, so that they possess it by the Creator's will alone; or whether in those called dominions their dominion was not added to them for the merit of their progress but given as a privilege of their creation, and is therefore in a certain way inseparable from them and natural. If we accept this, so that the holy angels and holy powers and blessed seats and glorious virtues and magnificent dominions are thought to possess those powers and dignities and glories substantially, it will undoubtedly seem to follow that those named in the contrary offices must be understood in the same way: so that those principalities against whom we wrestle are thought not to have later taken on that purpose of struggling against and resisting all good by turning away from the good through freedom of choice, but to have had it substantially from the moment they existed; and likewise the powers and virtues, and that wickedness in them is not younger and later than their substance. Those also whom he called rulers of the world of darkness and princes are said to derive their ruling and holding of darkness not from perversity of purpose but from the necessity of their creation. The very logic of consequence will compel us to understand the same about the spiritual forces of wickedness, the evil spirits and the unclean demons. But if it seems absurd to understand this so of the evil and opposing powers, as it certainly is absurd, that the cause of their wickedness should be removed from the purpose of their own choice and necessarily ascribed to their creator, how are we not compelled to confess similar things about the good and holy powers also, namely, that the good is not substantial in them, which we have shown to be clearly so only in Christ and in the Holy Spirit, and certainly also in the Father? For the nature of the Trinity has been shown to have nothing composite, such that these things should seem to happen to it as consequences. It remains, therefore, that in every creature it was a result of its own work and its own movements that those powers which appear to hold rule over others, or to exercise power or dominion, were preferred and set over those whom they are said to rule or over whom they exercise power by merit, and not by the privilege of their creation.

But so that we may not seem to assert such great and difficult matters prompted only by the logic of consequence, and to compel our hearers' assent merely by conjectures, let us see whether we can also take some support from the holy Scriptures, by whose authority these things may be established more credibly. First we shall set out what holy Scripture contains about the evil powers; then we shall investigate the others too, as far as the Lord deigns to enlighten us, so that in matters so difficult [readers] may attain what is nearer the truth, or what ought to be held according to the rule of piety. We find, then, in the prophet Ezekiel two prophecies written to the prince of Tyre, the first of which might perhaps seem to someone, before he hears the second as well, to be said of some man who was prince of the Tyrians. So for the present we shall take nothing from that first one; but since the second is most evidently such that it must be understood not at all of a man but of some higher power which fell from higher places and was cast down to lower and worse ones, we shall take our example from it. By it may be most clearly shown that these opposing and evil powers were not founded or created such by nature, but came from better to worse and were turned to the worse; and that those blessed powers, too, are not of such a nature that they cannot receive the contrary if they so will and become negligent and do not guard the blessedness of their state with all care. For if he who is called the prince of Tyre is related to have been among the saints, and to have been spotless, and placed in the paradise of God, and adorned also with a crown of comeliness and beauty, how is one who was such to be thought inferior to any of the saints? For he is described as having himself been a crown of comeliness and beauty and as having walked spotless in the paradise of God; and how can anyone think that such a one was not one of those holy and blessed powers which, being placed in blessedness, must be believed to be endowed with no other honour than this? But let us see at last what the words of the prophecy themselves teach us. “And the word of the Lord came to me,” it says, “saying: Son of man, take up a lament over the prince of Tyre, and say to him: Thus says the Lord God: You were the seal of likeness and a crown of comeliness in the delights of paradise; you were adorned with every good stone or gem, and clothed with sardius and topaz and emerald and carbuncle and sapphire and jasper, set in silver and gold, and agate and amethyst and chrysolite and beryl and onyx; and you filled your treasuries and your storehouses within yourself with gold. From the day you were created with the cherubim, I placed you on the holy mountain of God. You were in the midst of the fiery stones, you were spotless in your days, from the day you were created, until iniquities were found in you; by the multitude of your trading you filled your storehouses with iniquity, and you sinned and were wounded from the mountain of God. And the cherub cast you out from the midst of the fiery stones; and your heart was lifted up in your comeliness; your discipline was corrupted with your beauty. Because of the multitude of your sins I cast you to the earth before kings; I gave you up to be a spectacle and a mockery, because of the multitude of your sins and your iniquities; by your trading you polluted your holy things. And I will bring fire from the midst of you, and it shall devour you, and I will make you ashes and cinders upon the earth in the sight of all who see you; and all who knew you among the nations shall mourn over you. You have become destruction, and you shall not exist any more for ever.” Since these things are said so, who, hearing “You were the seal of likeness and a crown of comeliness in the delights of paradise,” or hearing that “from the time you were created with the cherubim I placed you on the holy mountain of God,” could weaken their meaning so far as to suspect that they were said of some human being or saint, not to speak of the prince of Tyre? Or what fiery stones will he think there are, in the midst of which a human being could live? Or who could be understood to have been spotless from the very day he was created, in whom afterwards at some time iniquities were found, and who is then said to have been cast down to the earth? This certainly signifies that it is said of one who, not being on the earth, was cast down to the earth; and his holy things too are said to have been polluted. These things about the prince of Tyre from the prophet Ezekiel, which refer to an opposing power, we have set out; by them it is most clearly demonstrated that this power was formerly holy and blessed, and fell from that blessedness from the time iniquity was found in it, and was sunk to the earth, and was not such by nature and creation. They think, then, that these things are said of a certain angel who was allotted the office of governing the Tyrian nation, to whom the care of their souls also seems to have been entrusted. But what Tyre, or what souls of Tyrians, we ought to understand, whether this city situated in the regions of the province of Phoenicia or some other of which this one we know on earth is a figure, and whether the souls of the Tyrians are those of this city or of those who belong to that Tyre which is understood spiritually, does not seem to be a question for this place, lest we seem to inquire in passing into matters so great and so hidden, which certainly require a work and labour of their own.

Again, from the prophet Isaiah we are taught similar things about another opposing power. For he says: “How has Lucifer fallen from heaven, who rose in the morning! He who sent forth to all the nations has been broken and dashed to the ground. But you said in your mind: I will ascend into heaven; above the stars of heaven I will set my throne; I will sit on a lofty mountain above the lofty mountains that are toward the north; I will ascend above the clouds; I will be like the Most High. But now you shall be sunk into the underworld and into the foundations of the earth. Those who see you shall wonder at you and say: This is the man who provoked the whole earth, who shook kings, who made the whole world a desert, who destroyed cities, and did not release those who were in chains. All the kings of the nations have slept in honour, each in his own house; but you shall be cast out on the mountains like a loathsome corpse, with the many dead who were pierced with swords and went down into the underworld. As a garment clotted and stained with blood will not be clean, so neither shall you be clean, because you have ruined my land and killed my people; you shall not remain for ever, most evil seed. Prepare your sons for slaughter for the sins of your father, lest they rise and possess the earth as an inheritance and fill the earth with wars; and I will rise up against them, says the Lord of hosts, and I will cause their name to perish, and their remnant and their seed.” By these words it is most clearly shown that he fell from heaven who was formerly Lucifer and who rose in the morning. For if, as some think, he was of the nature of darkness, how is he said to have formerly been Lucifer? Or how could he rise in the morning who had nothing of light in himself? The Saviour, too, teaches us about the devil, saying: “Behold, I saw Satan fallen from heaven like lightning.” For he was once light. And our Lord, who is the truth, also compared the power of his own glorious coming to lightning, saying: “For as the lightning shines from the height of heaven to its height, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.” And yet he compares this one too to lightning and says that he fell from heaven, to show by this that he too was once in heaven, and had a place among the saints, and shared in this light in which all the saints share, by which angels become angels of light and the apostles are called by the Lord the light of the world. In this way, then, this one too was once light, before he transgressed and fell to this place, and his glory was turned into dust, which is properly the lot of the impious, as the prophet also says; from this he was also called the prince of this world, that is, of the earthly dwelling. For he exercised rule over those who followed his wickedness, since “this whole world” (and by world I now mean this earthly place) “lies in the evil one,” and in this apostate. That he is an apostate, that is, a runaway, the Lord also says in Job: “You will draw out with a hook the dragon, the apostate,” that is, the runaway. It is certain that the dragon is understood to be the devil himself. If, then, the opposing powers are named and said once to have been spotless, and to be spotless belongs substantially to none except the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, but holiness in every creature is an accidental thing, and what is accidental can also fall away; and if these opposing powers were once spotless and were among those which still remain spotless: by this it is shown that no one is either substantially or naturally spotless, nor substantially polluted. And from this it follows that it lies with us and with our own movements whether we are blessed and holy, or through sloth and negligence turn from blessedness to wickedness and perdition, to such a degree that an excessive progress, so to speak, in wickedness, if someone neglects himself so far, may bring him to the state of becoming what is called an opposing power.

An end or consummation seems to be the mark of things perfected and completed. This reminds us at this point that anyone who has conceived the desire to read and understand such matters must bring a mature and trained mind to understanding things so arduous and difficult; lest, if he has had no practice in questions of this kind, they seem to him vain and superfluous; or, if he bears a mind already prejudiced and preoccupied with other views, he think them heretical and contrary to the church's faith, not so much convinced by reason as deciding by the prejudice of his own mind. These things are indeed said by us with great fear and caution, as discussing and examining rather than laying down as certain and defined. For we have indicated above which matters must be settled by clear doctrine, which I think we have done as far as we could when we spoke of the Trinity. But now we are exercising ourselves, as best we can, in the manner of discussion rather than of definition. The end and consummation of the world, then, will come when each one is subjected to punishments according to the merit of his sins, a time which God alone knows, when each will pay what he deserves. We think, indeed, that the goodness of God through his Christ will call back the whole creation to one end, even his enemies being subdued and subjected. For so holy Scripture says: “The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet.” And if what the prophetic word means by this is not clear enough to us, let us learn from the apostle Paul, who says more openly that Christ must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. And if not even this so clear statement of the Apostle has sufficiently taught us what it is for the enemies to be put under his feet, hear him further in what follows: “For all things must be subjected to him.” What, then, is the subjection by which all things must be subjected to Christ? I think it is that very subjection by which we too desire to be subject to him, by which the apostles and all the saints who have followed Christ are subject to him. For the term subjection, by which we are subjected to Christ, indicates the salvation, which is from Christ, of those who are subjected; as David also said: “Shall not my soul be subject to God? For from him is my salvation.”

Looking, then, to such an end, when all enemies will be subjected to Christ, and when the last enemy, death, will be destroyed, and when the kingdom will be handed over to God the Father by Christ, to whom all things are subjected, let us, I say, from such an end of things contemplate their beginnings. For the end is always like the beginning; and therefore, as there is one end of all things, so one beginning of all things must be understood; and as there is one end of many things, so from one beginning come many differences and varieties, which in turn, through the goodness of God, the subjection of Christ and the unity of the Holy Spirit, are called back to one end, which is like the beginning: namely all those who, bending the knee at the name of Jesus, have by this very act declared the signs of their subjection, those of things in heaven, on earth and under the earth, in which three terms the whole universe is indicated; those, that is, who from that one beginning were arranged, each according to his own movements and varieties, in different orders according to merit. For goodness was not present in them substantially, as in God and his Christ and in the Holy Spirit. In this Trinity alone, which is the author of all things, goodness is present substantially; the others have it as accidental and liable to fall away, and they are in blessedness only when they share in holiness and wisdom and in the Godhead itself. But if they neglect and disregard such participation, then, by the fault of their own sloth, one more quickly and another more slowly, one more and another less, each becomes himself the cause of his own slip or fall. And since, as we have said, this slip or fall, by which each one declines from his state, contains very great diversity according to the movements of mind and purpose, so that one declines more lightly, another more gravely, to lower things, herein lies the just judgment of God's providence, that to each one there comes, according to the diversity of his movements, what is deserved by his departure and disturbance. Of those, indeed, who remained in that beginning which we have described as like the end to come, some in the ordering and arrangement of the world are allotted the angelic order, others that of virtues, others of principalities, others of powers, so that they may exercise power over those who need to have a power over their head; others the order of thrones, having the office of judging or ruling those who need this; others dominion, no doubt over servants; all of which divine providence conferred on them according to their merit and the progress by which they had advanced in the participation and imitation of God, by a fair and just judgment. Those, however, who have been moved from their state of first blessedness, yet not moved beyond remedy, have been made subject to be arranged and ruled by the holy and blessed orders we described above; and by their help, reformed by salutary instructions and disciplines, they may return and be restored to the state of their blessedness. From these, I think, as far as I am able to perceive, this order of the human race was established, which in the age to come, or in the ages that follow, when there will be a new heaven and a new earth according to Isaiah, will certainly be restored to that unity which the Lord Jesus promises when he says to God the Father about his disciples: “I do not pray for these only, but also for all who will believe in me through their word, that they all may be one, as I am in you, Father, and you in me, so also they may be one in us”; and again where he says: “that they may be one, as we also are one, I in them and you in me, that they too may be perfected in one.” As the apostle Paul also confirms, saying: “Until we all attain to the unity of the faith, to the perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” And as the same Apostle exhorts us, placed even in the present life in the Church, in which there is certainly a figure of the kingdom to come, to this same likeness of unity, saying: “That you all say the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfected in one and the same mind and in one and the same judgment.”

It must be known, however, that some who fell from that one beginning of which we spoke above have given themselves up to such unworthiness and wickedness that they have been judged unworthy of this instruction or training by which the human race in the flesh is instructed and trained with the help of the heavenly powers; on the contrary, they are even the adversaries and opponents of those who are being trained and instructed. Hence all this life of mortals has its contests and struggles, since those who have fallen without any regard from a better state, who are called the devil and his angels, and the other orders of wickedness which the Apostle named among the opposing powers, struggle and fight against us. Now whether any of these orders that act under the rule of the devil and obey his wickedness will at some time in the ages to come be able to be converted to goodness, because there is in them the faculty of free choice, or whether a persistent and inveterate wickedness is turned by habit into a kind of nature, you yourself who read must judge: whether this part will be utterly at odds with that final unity and harmony, both in these temporal ages which are seen and in those which are not seen and are eternal. Meanwhile, however, both in these temporal ages which are seen and in those which are not seen and are eternal, all these beings are arranged according to order, reason, measure and the worth of their merits: so that some in the first, others in the second, and some even in the last times, through greater and heavier punishments, long ones endured, so to speak, for many ages, are renewed and restored by harsher corrections, first by the instructions of angels, then also by the powers of higher ranks; and so, advanced step by step to higher things, they reach those things that are invisible and eternal, having passed through, in a kind of course of instruction, each of the offices of the heavenly powers. From this, I think, the logic of the matter itself seems to show that each rational nature can, passing from one order to another, go through each to all and from all to each, while each one undergoes various movements of progress or decline according to its own movements and efforts, by the faculty of free choice.

Since Paul says that some things are visible and temporal, and others besides these invisible and eternal, we ask how these things that are seen are temporal: whether because there will be nothing at all after these in all those periods of the age to come in which that dispersion and division of the one beginning is restored to one and the same end and likeness; or because the outward form of the things seen passes away, though their substance is not wholly destroyed. And Paul seems to confirm what we said second, when he says, “For the form of this world is passing away.” David too seems to show the same when he says: “The heavens will perish, but you will remain; and they will all grow old like a garment, and like a cloak you will change them, and like a garment they will be changed.” For if the heavens will be changed, what is changed certainly does not perish; and if the form of the world passes away, it is not a total extermination or destruction of the material substance that is indicated, but a certain change of quality and transformation of form. Isaiah too, when he says in prophecy that there will be a new heaven and a new earth, undoubtedly suggests a similar understanding. For the renewal of heaven and earth, the transformation of the form of this world, and the change of the heavens will undoubtedly be prepared for those who, walking by that way which we showed above, are making for that end of blessedness to which even the enemies themselves are said to be subjected, the end in which God is said to be all in all. If anyone thinks that at this end material, that is, bodily, nature will perish entirely, I can in no way conceive how so many and so great substances could live and subsist without bodies, since it is proper to the nature of God alone, that is, of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, to be understood to subsist without material substance and without any association of bodily addition. Another will perhaps say that at that end all bodily substance will be so pure and cleansed that it can be thought of as like the ether and of a kind of heavenly purity and clearness. But how the matter will be, God alone knows for certain, and any who are his friends through Christ and the Holy Spirit.