Fragments on Genesis 47–71

[Gen 1:2] … But if anyone stumbles because of human examples, so that he cannot accept that God makes the things that exist without an unbegotten matter lying beneath, since a sculptor cannot make his own work without bronze, nor a carpenter without timber, nor a builder without stones, we must ask him about the power of God: whether God, having willed to bring into being whatever he wishes, his will being neither at a loss nor feeble, is able to bring into being what he wishes. For by the same reasoning by which, according to all who admit Providence, he brings into being by his own word, as he wishes, qualities that did not exist, for the ordering of the universe, by his invisible power and wisdom, by this same reasoning his will is able also to make the substance come to be, as much of it as he needs. For we shall put this difficulty to those who do not wish this to be so: does it not follow for them that God was fortunate, since he found the substance unbegotten? If the unbegotten had not lain ready beneath him, he would have been able to make no work at all, but would have remained no creator, no father, no benefactor, not good, nor anything else that is rightly said of God. And whence came the measuring of the underlying substance to just such an amount, so that it sufficed for the existence of so great a world? For as if

there were some providence older than God, which of necessity will have put matter beneath God, taking care that the art present in him should not be idle for lack of a substance with which he could work and so adorn the world in its great beauty. And whence has it become receptive of every quality that God wishes, unless God himself made it for himself of such amount and such kind as he wished it to have? Granting, then, by way of hypothesis that matter is unbegotten, we shall say this to those who hold it: if, without Providence supplying the substance to God, it came to be of such a kind, then, had Providence been at work, what more would it have done than chance? And if he himself had wished to fashion matter when there was none, what more would his wisdom and divinity have made than what has come into being from the unbegotten? For if it is found that the very same thing would have come about by Providence as came into being without Providence, why should we not, in the case of the world too, set aside the creator and the craftsman? For just as it is absurd to say of the world, so skilfully fashioned, that it came to be such of itself without a wise craftsman, so to say that matter, of such amount and such kind and so yielding to God's craftsman Word, has existed without being begotten is … irrational. To those, however, who offer the comparison that no craftsman makes anything without matter, it must be said that they compare unlike things. For Providence supplies the matter to every craftsman, matter coming from a prior art, either human or divine. These things, then, will suffice for the present against those who, because it is said, “But the earth was invisible and unformed,” suppose that bodily nature is unbegotten.

[Gen 1:14] … the topic of fate: the intertwining of the planets with the signs in the zodiac, from which they think everything on earth happens, both to each human being and perhaps even to irrational animals. Moreover, many of those who are supposed to have believed are distracted by the question whether human affairs are under compulsion and cannot possibly happen otherwise than as the stars bring them about in their various configurations. And it follows for those who teach these things that they wholly abolish what is in our power, and with it praise and blame, and deeds worthy of approval and again deeds worthy of censure. If this is so, the proclaimed judgment of God is gone, and the threats against those who have sinned, that they will be punished, and the honours and blessednesses held out to those who have given themselves to better things; for none of these will any longer happen with reason. And if anyone follows out consistently what he teaches, faith too will be vain, and the coming of Christ achieves nothing, and the whole economy through the law and the prophets, and the labours of apostles to establish the churches of God through Christ; unless indeed, according to those who dare such things, Christ too, under the compulsion of the motion of the stars at his birth,

having been born, did and suffered everything, the God and Father of the universe not having given him his wonderful powers, but the stars. And with these godless and impious doctrines it also follows that believers are said to believe in God because they are led by the stars. We would ask them what God intended in making such a world that some in it, being men, suffer the things of women, though they are in no way themselves the cause of their licentiousness; while others, having taken on the condition of wild beasts, because the motion of the universe made them such, since God so ordered the universe, give themselves up to the most savage and utterly inhuman deeds, murders and piracies. And why need we speak of what happens among human beings and of the countless sins they commit, whom the champions of these noble doctrines release from every charge, ascribing to God the cause of everything that is done wickedly and blameworthily? And if some of them, as if defending God, say that the good God is another, who is the source of none of these things, and attach all such things to the creator, first, not even so will they be able to show, as they wish, that he is just; for how, on their view, could the father of so many evils reasonably be called just? Second, we must examine what they will say about themselves: are they subject to the motion of the stars, or have they been set free, so that, though living in this life, they have nothing worked upon them from that source? For if they say that they are subject to the stars, it is plain that the stars granted them to think this, and the creator, through the motion of the universe, will have suggested the doctrine about the God whom they have fashioned higher up, which they do not want. But if they answer that they are outside the creator's laws concerning the stars, then, so that what they say may not be an unproved assertion, let them try to bring us something more compelling, setting forth a difference

between a mind subject to nativity and fate and another free from them; for it is plain to those who know such people that, when asked to give an account, they will be quite unable to give one. In addition to what has been said, prayers too are superfluous, offered in vain. For if it has been compelled that certain things should happen, and the stars bring them about, and nothing can happen apart from their intertwining with one another, we ask God unreasonably to grant us certain things. And why need one lengthen the discussion further, setting forth the impiety of the doctrine of fate, a doctrine worn smooth among the many without examination? What has been said suffices for an outline. But let us remind ourselves from what point we have come to these matters: from examining the words “Let the lights be for signs.” Those who learn true things about anything either, having been eyewitnesses of the events, declare such things soundly, having seen what was undergone and what was done by those who underwent or acted; or they know such things by hearing from those who report them while being in no way the causes of what happened. Let us set aside for now from the discussion the fact that those who acted or suffered can, by narrating what they did or suffered, bring to knowledge of what was done someone who was not present. If, then, the one who is taught, by someone in no way the cause of the events, that such things have happened or will happen to such people, does not distinguish that the one who teaches about something as having happened or as about to happen is by no means the cause of the thing's being such, he will suppose that the one who showed that such things happened or will happen has done or will do the things he teaches about; but plainly he will suppose this wrongly. It is as if someone came upon a prophetic book which foretells what concerns Judas the betrayer and, having learned what would be and seeing it fulfilled, should think the book the cause of this having happened later, because he had learned from the book what Judas would do later; or again should suppose not the book to be the cause, but the one who first wrote it, or the one who worked through him, God, say. But just as, in the case of the prophecies about Judas, the words themselves, when examined, show that God was not the maker of Judas's betrayal, but only revealed, foreknowing them, the things that would be done by Judas's wickedness through his own fault, so if anyone penetrates the doctrine that God foreknows all things, and the things in which he has as it were stamped the words of his own

foreknowledge, he would perceive that neither is the one who foreknows by any means the cause of the things foreknown, nor are the things that received the imprints of the words of the foreknower's foreknowledge. That God knows long beforehand each thing that will come to be is plain, even without Scripture, straight from the notion of God, to anyone who understands what befits the power of God's mind. But if this must also be shown from the Scriptures, the prophecies are full of such examples. So also in the story of Susanna, God knowing all things before they come to be, since she says: “O eternal God, who knows hidden things, who knows all things before they come to be, you know that these men have borne false witness against me.” Most clearly, in the third book of Kingdoms, both the name of one who would reign and his deeds were recorded, prophesied many years before they happened, thus: “And Jeroboam made a feast in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like the feast in the land of Judah, and he went up to the altar in Bethel which he had made, to sacrifice to the heifers which he had made.” Then a little later: “And behold, a man of God came out of Judah by the word of the Lord to Bethel, and Jeroboam was standing at the altar to offer sacrifice. And he cried out against the altar by the word of the Lord, and said: Altar, thus says the Lord: Behold, a son is born to the house of David, Josiah is his name, and he shall sacrifice upon you the priests of the high places who sacrifice upon you, and he shall burn men's bones upon you. And he gave a sign on that day, which the Lord had spoken, saying: Behold, the altar is torn apart, and the fat that is on it shall be poured out.” And a little later it is shown that the altar was indeed torn apart and the fat poured out from the altar, according to the sign which the man had given by the word of the Lord. And in Isaiah, who lived long before the captivity to Babylon, after which captivity Cyrus, king of the Persians, later arose and helped in the building of the temple that took place in the times of Ezra, these things are prophesied about Cyrus by name: “Thus says the Lord God to my anointed, Cyrus, whose right hand I have held, that nations may obey before him; and I will break the strength of kings; I will open doors before him, and gates shall not be shut. I will go before you and level mountains; I will shatter doors of bronze and break bars of iron. And I will give you dark treasures, hidden, unseen, that

you may know that I am the Lord God, who calls your name, the God of Israel. For the sake of my servant Jacob and Israel my chosen I will call you by your name, and I will receive you.” For from these words too it is clearly shown that, because of the people whom Cyrus benefited, God granted him, though he did not know the Hebrews' worship of God, to rule over many nations; and one can learn these things also from the Greeks who recorded the history of the Cyrus who had been prophesied. Further, in Daniel too, when Nebuchadnezzar was then reigning over the Babylonians, the kingdoms that would come after him are shown; they are shown through the image: the rule of the Babylonians being named gold, that of the Persians silver, that of the Macedonians bronze, and that of the Romans iron. And again, in the same prophet, the things concerning Darius, and Alexander, and the four successors of Alexander king of the Macedonians, and Ptolemy who ruled Egypt, the one surnamed Lagus, are prophesied thus: “And behold, a he-goat came from the southwest over the face of the whole earth, and the goat had a horn between its eyes. And it came up to the ram that had the horns, which I saw standing before the Oubal, and it ran at it in the force of its strength. And I saw it reaching the ram, and it was enraged against it, and struck the ram, and shattered both its horns, and the ram had no strength to stand before it; and it threw it to the ground and trampled it, and there was no one to rescue the ram from its hand. And the he-goat of the goats was magnified exceedingly; and when it had grown strong, its great horn was broken, and four other horns came up beneath it toward the four winds of heaven. And out of one of them came one strong horn, and it was magnified greatly toward the south and the west.” And why need we speak of the prophecies about Christ, such as the place of his birth, Bethlehem, and the place of his upbringing, Nazareth, and the withdrawal into Egypt, and the wonders he did, and the manner in which he was betrayed by Judas, who had been called to be an apostle? For all these are signs of God's foreknowledge. But the Saviour himself also says: “When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then you will know that its desolation has come near.” For he foretold what happened later, the end, the razing of Jerusalem. Since, then, it has been shown by us that God foreknows

is one who foreknows, it is not out of place, in order that we may explain how the stars come to be for signs, to say that the stars must be understood to have been ordered to move in such a way, the so-called planets moving contrary to the fixed stars, that those who take signs from the configuration of the stars about everything that happens to each individual and in general may know them: not human beings (for to be able truly to discern from the motion of the stars what concerns each one of those who act or suffer anything whatever is far greater than human capacity), but the powers, who must necessarily know these things for many reasons, as we shall show in what follows as far as we can. But human beings, having understood something from certain observations, or else from the teaching of angels who transgressed their own order and, to the ruin of our race, taught some things about these matters, supposed that the stars from which they think they take the signs are the causes of the things which the word says they signify. About these also we shall at once treat more carefully, as in summary, as far as we can. Let these problems, then, be set forth: how, though God foreknows from eternity what is thought to be done by each, what is in our power is preserved; and in what way the stars are not producers of human affairs but only signifiers; and that human beings cannot have exact knowledge of these things, but the signs are set out for powers greater than human beings. What the reason is for God's having made the signs for the knowledge of the powers will be examined fourth. Let us see, then, the first problem. Fearing it, many of the Greeks, thinking that events are compelled and what is in our power is in no way preserved if God foreknows the future, dared to accept an impious doctrine rather than admit a doctrine which, as they say, is glorious about God but abolishes what is in our power, and with it praise and blame, and the acceptability of the virtues and the blameworthiness of the vices. And they say: “If God knew from eternity that this person would do wrong, and would do these wrongs, and God's knowledge is unerring, then the one foreseen to be such will certainly be unjust, doing these wrongs, and it is impossible that he not do wrong. And if it is impossible that he not do wrong, it has been compelled that he do wrong,

and it is impossible for him to do anything other than what God knew. And if it is impossible for him to do anything else, and no one who fails to do the impossible is blameworthy, we blame the unjust in vain.” And from the unjust man and his wrongs they pass on to the other sins as well; then, from the opposite side, to the deeds thought to be right; and they say it follows from God's having foreknown the future that what is in our power cannot be preserved. To them it must be said that God, … at the beginning of the making of the world, nothing happening without a cause, passes over in his mind each thing that will be, seeing that, since this has happened, this follows; and if this, the consequent, happens, this follows, and when that has come about, this will be; and having so passed through to the end of events, he knows what will be, without being in every case the cause of the occurrence of each of the things known. For just as, if someone sees a person rash through ignorance, and through his rashness setting foot recklessly on a slippery road, and perceives that he will slip and fall, he does not become the cause of that man's slip; so we must understand that God, having foreseen what each person will be like, also sees the causes of his being such, and that he will commit these sins or do these right deeds. And if we must say it, foreknowledge is not the cause of what happens (for God does not lay hold of the one foreknown as going to sin

when he sins); but we shall say something more paradoxical, yet true: that what will be is the cause of the foreknowledge about it being such as it is. For it does not happen because it has been known; rather, it has been known because it was going to happen. But a distinction is needed. If someone interprets “it will certainly be” as meaning that what is foreknown must happen by necessity, we do not grant it to him; for we shall not say that, because it was foreknown that Judas would become a betrayer, it was entirely necessary that Judas become a betrayer. At any rate, in the prophecies about Judas reproaches and accusations against Judas are recorded, setting before everyone his blameworthiness. But blame would not attach to him if he was a betrayer of necessity and it was not possible for him to become like the other apostles. See whether this is not shown by the texts we shall cite, which run thus: “Let there be none to pity his orphans, because he did not remember to show mercy, and he persecuted a poor and needy man, and one pierced in heart, to put him to death. And he loved cursing, and it shall come to him; and he did not desire blessing, and it shall be far from him.” But if someone interprets “it will certainly be” as meaning that these things will be, yet it was possible for them to happen otherwise, this we grant as true. For it is not possible for God to lie; but it is possible, concerning things that may happen and may not happen, to think both that they will happen and that they will not. We shall say this more clearly thus. If it is possible for Judas to be an apostle like Peter, it is possible for God to think concerning Judas that he will remain an apostle like Peter. If it is possible for Judas to become a betrayer, it is possible for God to think concerning him that he will be a betrayer. And if Judas will be a betrayer, God, by his foreknowledge of the two alternatives just stated, one of which may come to be, foreknowing the true one, will foreknow that Judas will become a betrayer; yet what the knowledge is about could also happen otherwise. And God's knowledge might say: “It is possible for this man to do this, but also the opposite; and both being possible, I know that he will do this.” For it is not as God would say, “It is not possible for this man to fly,” that he would,

when giving an oracle about someone, say, declare, “It is not possible for this man to be self-controlled.” For in a human being there is no power at all of flying, but there is a power of being self-controlled and of being licentious. Both these powers being present, the one who does not attend to words that turn him back and instruct him gives himself over to the worse; the one who has sought the truth and wished to live according to it, to the better. One man does not seek the truth because he flows away toward pleasure; another examines it, moved by the common notions and by exhortation. And again, one man chooses pleasure, not because he is unable to resist it, but because he does not struggle; another despises it, seeing the shamefulness often found in it. That God's foreknowledge, however, imposes no necessity on the things it has grasped, besides what has been said, this too shall be said: in many places of the Scriptures God commands the prophets to preach repentance, not pretending to know whether those who hear will turn or will remain in their sins; as in Jeremiah it is said: “Perhaps they will hear and repent.” For God, who is not ignorant whether they will hear or not, says, “Perhaps they will hear and repent,” as if showing from what is said that the powers are equally balanced; so that his foreknowledge, announced beforehand, may not make the hearers despair, presenting an appearance of necessity, as though turning were not in their power, and itself become, as it were, a cause of their sins; or again, so that for those who, from ignorance of the good that is foreknown, are able by struggling and resisting vice to live in virtue, foreknowledge may not become a cause of slackness, since they would no longer stand vigorously against sin, as though what was foretold would certainly happen. For in this way too the foreknowledge of a future good might become a kind of hindrance. God, then, ordering all things in the world for our benefit, has with good reason blinded us toward the future. For knowledge of it would have released us from contending against vice and, by seeming to have been settled, would have led us not to wrestle against sin and so to become subject to it more quickly. At the same time, foreknowledge … concerning someone, that he will certainly be good, would be at war with his becoming noble and good. For besides what we have, there is need of greater vigour and effort to become noble and good; but knowledge grasped beforehand that one will certainly be noble and good would slacken the discipline. Therefore it is to our advantage that we do not know whether we shall be good or wicked.

But since we have said that God has blinded us toward the future, see whether we can clarify in this way a text from Exodus that is in question: “Who made the hard of hearing and the deaf, the seeing and the blind? Is it not I, the Lord God?” That is, he has made the same person both blind and seeing: seeing toward the present, blind toward the future. What concerns the hard of hearing and the deaf it is not the present occasion to explain. That many of the things in our power have very many things not in our power as their causes, we too shall confess: if these had not happened (I mean the things not in our power), certain of the things in our power would not be done. But certain things in our power are done in consequence of these prior things not in our power, while it remains possible, on the same prior circumstances, to do other things besides what we do. But if anyone seeks for what is in our power to be detached from the universe, so that we do not choose these things because certain things have happened to us, he has forgotten that he is a part of the world and is enclosed in the community of human beings and of what surrounds us. I think, then, that it has been shown sufficiently, as in summary, that God's foreknowledge does not compel what is foreknown at all. Come, let us contend also that the stars are in no way producers of what happens among human beings, but only signifiers. It is clear that, if some configuration of the stars were thought to produce some of the things that happen to a human being (for let the argument now be about this), the configuration that occurred today, say, concerning this person cannot be understood to have produced what has happened in the past to another or to others. For everything that produces is prior to what is produced. But according to the teachings of those who profess such things,

things older than the configuration are thought to be foretold about human beings. For they profess, taking in some such way the hour of this person, to grasp where each of the planets stands in the perpendicular, or at which degree of the zodiacal sign, or at which minutes within it; and which star of the zodiac was on the eastern horizon, which on the western, which at mid-heaven, and which at the point opposite mid-heaven. And when they set out the stars which they think were configured thus at the time of so-and-so's birth, at the moment of the delivery of the one they are examining, they investigate not only the future but also the past, and what happened before the birth and the conception of the person concerned: about the father, what sort of man he is, rich or poor, sound in body or maimed, better or worse in character, without property or with much property, having this or that occupation; and the same about the mother and about older brothers, if there happen to be any. But let us for the present suppose that they grasp the truth in this matter, though we shall show later that it is not so. Let us then ask those who suppose that human affairs are compelled by the stars how today's configuration, being such and such, can have produced the older things. For if this is impossible, then, since what concerns the things older than the time is found not to be true … , it is clear that the stars, moving thus in heaven, did not produce the past events that happened before they were so placed. And if this is so, perhaps the one who admits that they speak the truth, attending to what is said about the future, will say that they speak the truth not by the stars' producing but by their signifying only. But if someone says that the stars do not produce the past, but that other configurations were the causes of those events, while the present configuration has only signified them, yet that the future is shown from the present configuration …