City of God 11.31–12.5

Chapter 31. Of the seventh day, in which fullness and rest are set forth.

On the seventh day, that is, the same day repeated seven times, which number is also perfect for another reason, God's rest is set forth, in which sanctification is first mentioned. So God willed to sanctify this day not in any of his works but in his rest, which has no evening; for it is not a creature, so as also, being known one way in the Word of God and another in itself, to produce one knowledge like day and another like evening. Many more things could indeed be said of the perfection of the number seven; but this book is already long, and I fear lest, having found an occasion, I seem to want to show off my little knowledge frivolously rather than usefully. So a measure of moderation and gravity must be kept, lest perhaps, while we talk much of number, we be judged to neglect measure and weight. Let it suffice, then, to point out that three is the first whole odd number and four the first whole even number, and of these two seven is made up. Therefore it is often put for the whole, as in: “The righteous man will fall seven times and rise again,” that is, however often he falls, he will not perish (which is meant to be understood not of iniquities but of tribulations that lead to humility); and: “Seven times a day I will praise you,” which is said elsewhere in another way: “His praise is always in my mouth.” And many passages of this kind are found in the divine writings, in which, as I said, the number seven is commonly put for the whole of anything. For this reason the Holy Spirit is often signified by the same number, of whom the Lord says: “He will teach you all truth.” There is the rest of God, by which rest is had in God. For in the whole, that is, in full perfection, there is rest; but in the part there is toil. Therefore we toil as long as we know in part; “but when that which is perfect has come, that which is in part will be done away.” Hence it is that we search even these Scriptures with toil. But the holy angels, for whose fellowship and assembly we sigh in this most toilsome pilgrimage, as they have eternity of abiding, so they have ease of knowing and happiness of resting. For they help us without difficulty, since in their spiritual movements, pure and free, they do not toil.

Chapter 32. Of the opinion of those who hold that the creation of the angels was earlier than that of the world.

But suppose someone contends and says that the holy angels are not signified in what is written, “Let there be light, and there was light,” but either thinks or teaches that some bodily light was then first made; and that the angels were made earlier, not only before the firmament which, made between the waters and the waters, was called heaven, but before that of which it was said, “In the beginning God made heaven and earth”; and that the words “In the beginning” were not said as if this was made first, since he had made the angels before, but because he made all things in wisdom, which is his Word, and which Scripture itself called the Beginning (as he himself in the Gospel, when the Jews asked him who he was, answered that he was the Beginning). I shall not argue against him in return, especially because I am greatly delighted that the Trinity is commended even at the very beginning of the holy book of Genesis. For when it is said, “In the beginning God made heaven and earth,” so that the Father is understood to have made them in the Son, as the psalm attests, where we read, “How magnified are your works, O Lord! You have made all things in wisdom,” the Holy Spirit too is most fittingly mentioned a little after. For when it had been said what kind of earth God first made, or what mass or matter of the future construction of the world he called by the name of heaven and earth, by adding, “But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was upon the abyss,” straightway, to complete the mention of the Trinity, it says: “And the Spirit of God was borne above the water.” Let each, then, take it as he will; it is so deep that for the exercise of readers it can produce many opinions not at variance with the rule of faith, provided no one doubts that the holy angels in their lofty seats, though not coeternal with God, are yet secure and certain of their everlasting and true happiness. Teaching that his little ones belong to their fellowship, the Lord not only said, “They will be equal to the angels of God,” but also showed what contemplation the angels themselves enjoy, where he says: “See that you do not despise one of these little ones; for I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.”

Chapter 33. Of the two different and unequal societies of angels, which are not unfittingly understood to be called by the names of light and darkness.

That some angels sinned and were thrust down into the lowest parts of this world, which is a kind of prison for them, until their final condemnation to come on the day of judgment, the apostle Peter shows most plainly when he says that God did not spare the angels who sinned, but thrust them into the prisons of the darkness of the underworld and handed them over to be kept for punishment in the judgment. Who then would doubt that God, either by foreknowledge or by act, divided between these and those? And who would deny that those are rightly called light, since even we, still living by faith, still hoping for equality with them and certainly not yet possessing it, have already been called light by the apostle: “For you were once darkness,” he says, “but now you are light in the Lord”? And those who either understand or believe that these deserters are worse than unbelieving men surely see that they are most fittingly called darkness. Therefore, even if another light is to be understood in this passage of this book where we read, “God said, Let there be light, and there was light,” and another darkness is signified in what is written, “God divided between the light and the darkness,” we nevertheless have judged that these two angelic societies are signified by the words light and darkness even in this book called Genesis: the one enjoying God, the other swollen with pride; the one to which it is said, “Worship him, all his angels,” the other whose prince says, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me”; the one ablaze with the holy love of God, the other smoking with the unclean love of its own exaltation; and since, as it is written, “God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble,” the one dwelling in the heavens of heavens, the other cast down from there and raging in this lowest, airy heaven; the one tranquil with luminous piety, the other turbulent with dark desires; the one, at God's bidding, helping mercifully and avenging justly, the other seething with its own arrogance, with the lust to subdue and to harm; the one the servant of God's goodness to help as much as it wills, the other bridled by God's power lest it harm as much as it wills; the one mocking the other, so that it helps against its will by its persecutions, the other envying the one when it gathers in its pilgrims. These two angelic societies, unequal and contrary to each other, the one good by nature and upright in will, the other good by nature but perverse in will, are declared by other, plainer testimonies of the divine Scriptures; and we have judged that they are signified in this book called Genesis too by the words light and darkness. Even if the writer perhaps meant something else in this place, the obscurity of this passage has not been discussed without profit, because, even if we could not track down the intention of the author of this book, we have not departed from the rule of faith, which is sufficiently known to the faithful through other sacred writings of the same authority. For even if it is bodily works of God that are mentioned here, they certainly have some likeness to spiritual ones, according to which the apostle says: “For you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night nor of darkness.” But if the writer also meant this, our effort has reached a more perfect end of the discussion: that the man of God, of such exceptional and divine wisdom, or rather the Spirit of God through him, in recounting the works of God, all of which he said were completed on the sixth day, should by no means be thought to have passed over the angels; whether “In the beginning God made heaven and earth” is written “in the beginning” because he made them first, or, as is more fittingly understood, “in the beginning” because he made them in the only-begotten Word. By these names the whole creation is signified, either the spiritual and the bodily, which is more credible, or the two great parts of the world in which all created things are contained, so that he first set it forth as a whole and then went through its parts according to the mystical number of the days.

Chapter 34. Of the view of some that in the making of the firmament the angels are signified by the name of the separated waters, and of the view of some that the waters were not created.

Some, however, have thought that peoples of angels are in some way signified by the name of the waters, and that this is what was said: “Let there be a firmament between water and water,” so that the angels are understood to be above the firmament, and below either these visible waters, or the multitude of evil angels, or the nations of all men. If this is so, it does not show there where the angels were made, but where they were separated; although some even deny, which is a most perverse and impious vanity, that the waters were made by God, since it is nowhere written, “God said, Let there be waters.” With similar vanity they could say this of the earth too; for nowhere do we read, “God said, Let there be earth.” But, they say, it is written, “In the beginning God made heaven and earth”; there, then, the water too must be understood, for both are included under one name. For “the sea is his,” as we read in the psalm, “and he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.” But those who want the angels to be understood by the name of the waters that are above the heavens are moved by the weights of the elements, and so do not think that the fluid and heavy nature of the waters could be placed in the upper regions of the world. By their own reasoning, if they could make a man themselves, they would not put phlegm, which in Greek is called phlegma and holds, as it were, the place of water among the elements of our body, in the head. For the seat of phlegm is there, most fittingly, certainly, according to God's work, but, according to their conjecture, so absurdly that, if we did not know it and it were likewise written in this book that God put a fluid and cold humor, and therefore a heavy one, in the highest part of the human body above all the others, these weighers of the elements would by no means believe it; and if they were subject to the authority of the same Scripture, they would decide that something else was to be understood by it. But since, if we were to examine and treat carefully each thing written in that divine book about the establishment of the world, much would have to be said and we would have to digress far from the purpose of the work we have undertaken, and since we have now discussed, as much as seemed sufficient, these two different and contrary societies of angels, in which are certain beginnings of the two cities also in human affairs, of which I have decided to speak next, let us at last close this book too.

Chapter 1. Of the one nature of the good and the evil angels.

Before I speak of the creation of man, where the rise of the two cities will appear as far as the race of rational mortals is concerned, as it seems already to have appeared among the angels in the preceding book, I see that I must first say some things about the angels themselves, by which it may be shown, as far as we can, how it is not unfitting or incongruous to speak of a fellowship of men and angels, so that there are rightly said to be not four cities (two, namely, of angels, and as many of men), but rather two, that is, two societies, one made up of the good, the other of the evil, not only angels but also men.

That the contrary desires of the good and evil angels arose not from different natures and principles, since God, the good author and founder of all substances, created both, but from wills and desires, it is not lawful to doubt. For some steadfastly remain in the good common to all, which is God himself for them, and in his eternity, truth, and love; others, delighted rather with their own power, as if they were their own good to themselves, slipped away from the higher good common to all, the source of happiness, to goods of their own; and having the arrogance of self-exaltation in place of the loftiest eternity, the cunning of vanity in place of the most certain truth, the zeal of factions in place of undivided love, they became proud, deceitful, and envious. The cause of the happiness of the one, then, is to cleave to God; so the cause of the misery of the other is to be understood as the contrary, which is not to cleave to God. Therefore, if, when it is asked why the one are happy, the right answer is, “Because they cleave to God,” and when it is asked why the others are wretched, the right answer is, “Because they do not cleave to God,” then there is no good for a rational or intellectual creature by which it may be happy except God. So, although not every creature can be happy (for beasts, trees, stones, and the like do not attain or receive this gift), yet the creature that can be happy cannot be so of itself, since it was created from nothing, but from him by whom it was created. For it is happy by attaining him, wretched by losing him. But he who is happy not by another good but by himself cannot be wretched, because he cannot lose himself.

We say, then, that there is no unchangeable good except the one, true, happy God; and that the things he made are indeed good, because they are from him, yet changeable, because they were made not from him but from nothing. Although, then, they are not supreme goods, since God is a greater good, yet those changeable goods are great which can cleave, in order to be happy, to the unchangeable good, which is so much their good that without it they must be wretched. Nor are the other things in this whole creation better because they cannot be wretched; for neither must we say that the other members of our body are better than the eyes because they cannot be blind. But as a sentient nature is better even when it feels pain than a stone which can in no way feel pain, so a rational nature is more excellent even when wretched than one which lacks reason or sense and therefore is not liable to misery. This being so, for this nature, which was created in such excellence that, though it is itself changeable, it yet attains happiness by cleaving to the unchangeable good, that is, the supreme God, and does not satisfy its need unless it is happy, and nothing but God suffices to satisfy it, not to cleave to him is certainly a fault. But every fault harms nature and is therefore contrary to nature. The one nature, then, differs from the one that cleaves to God not by nature but by fault; and yet by this very fault the nature itself is shown to be very great and highly praiseworthy. For when the fault of anything is rightly blamed, its nature is beyond doubt praised. For the right blame of a fault is that by it a praiseworthy nature is disgraced. As, then, when blindness is called a fault of the eyes, it is shown that sight belongs to the nature of the eyes, and when deafness is called a fault of the ears, it is shown that hearing belongs to their nature, so, when the fault of the angelic creature by which it does not cleave to God is spoken of, it is thereby most plainly declared that it befits its nature to cleave to God. And how great a praise it is to cleave to God, so as to live for him, be wise from him, rejoice in him, and enjoy so great a good without death, without error, without trouble, who can worthily think or say? Therefore, even by the fault of the evil angels, by which they do not cleave to God, since every fault harms nature, it is plainly enough shown that God created their nature so good that it is harmful to it not to be with God.

Chapter 2. That no being is contrary to God, since what seems wholly different from him who supremely and always is, is that which is not.

Let this be said so that no one, when we speak of the apostate angels, may suppose that they could have had another nature, as if from another principle, and that God is not the author of their nature. Everyone will be free of the impiety of this error the more readily and easily the more clearly he can understand what God said through an angel when he was sending Moses to the children of Israel: “I am who am.” For since God is the supreme being, that is, he supremely is, and is therefore unchangeable, he gave being to the things he created from nothing, but not supreme being, as he himself is; and to some he gave being more fully, to others less, and so ordered the natures of beings by degrees. (For as wisdom [sapientia] is named from being wise [sapere], so being [essentia] is named from to be [esse]; a new word indeed, which the ancient authors of the Latin language did not use, but already in use in our times, so that our language too should not lack what the Greeks call ousia; for this word was rendered word for word so as to say essentia.) And therefore to that nature which supremely is, by whose making all things that are exist, there is no contrary nature except that which is not. For to what is, not being is contrary. And therefore to God, that is, to the supreme being and the author of all beings of whatever kind, no being is contrary.

Chapter 3. Of the enemies of God, who are so not by nature but by a contrary will, which, harming themselves, harms a good nature; for a fault that does no harm is not a fault.

Those are called enemies of God in the Scriptures who oppose his rule not by nature but by faults, able to harm not him but themselves. For they are enemies by the will to resist, not by the power to injure. For God is unchangeable and in every way incorruptible. Therefore the fault by which those who are called his enemies resist God is an evil not to God but to themselves, and this for no other reason than that it corrupts the good of nature in them. It is not nature, then, that is contrary to God, but fault, because evil is contrary to good. And who would deny that God is supremely good? Fault, then, is contrary to God, as evil to good. Further, the nature which it vitiates is also good; hence it is certainly contrary to this good too; but to God only as evil to good, whereas to the nature which it vitiates it is not only evil but also harmful. For no evils are harmful to God, but to changeable and corruptible natures, which are nonetheless good by the very testimony of their faults. For if they were not good, faults could not harm them. For what do faults do to them by harming them but take away their integrity, beauty, health, strength, and whatever good of nature is usually taken away or diminished by fault? If this is wholly absent, the fault does no harm by taking away no good, and therefore is not a fault either. For to be a fault and not to harm is impossible. From this it follows that, although fault cannot harm the unchangeable good, it can yet harm nothing but a good, since it exists only where it does harm. This can also be put thus: fault can be neither in the supreme good nor except in some good. Goods alone, then, can exist somewhere; evils alone nowhere. For even those natures which have been vitiated from the beginning of an evil will are evil in so far as they are vitiated, but good in so far as they are natures. And when a vitiated nature is under punishment, besides its being a nature, this too is good in it, that it is not unpunished. For this is just, and everything just is beyond doubt good. For no one pays penalties for natural faults, but for voluntary ones. For even a fault which, strengthened by habit or excessive growth, has become ingrained as if by nature, took its beginning from the will. For we are now speaking of the faults of that nature in which there is a mind capable of the intelligible light by which the just is distinguished from the unjust.

Chapter 4. Of the natures of irrational or lifeless things, which in their own kind and order are not out of harmony with the beauty of the universe.

But it is ridiculous to think that the faults of cattle and trees and other changeable and mortal things, which lack understanding or sense or life altogether, by which their dissoluble nature is corrupted, are damnable, since these creatures received by the Creator's will this measure, that by passing away and succeeding one another they should complete the lowest beauty of the seasons, in its own kind befitting the parts of this world. For earthly things were not to be made equal to heavenly, nor ought they to be lacking from the universe because the heavenly are better. When, therefore, in those places where such things belong, some arise as others fail, and the lesser succumb to the greater, and the conquered are changed into the qualities of the conquerors, this is the order of transient things. We do not take delight in the beauty of this order because, woven into a part of it by the condition of our mortality, we cannot perceive the whole, to which the small parts that offend us fit quite aptly and becomingly. Hence we, who are less fit to contemplate it in these things, are most rightly commanded to believe in the providence of the Creator, lest we dare in the vanity of human rashness to find fault with anything in the work of so great an artificer. Yet even the faults of earthly things, which are neither voluntary nor penal, commend, if we consider wisely, the natures themselves (of which there is none at all whose author and founder is not God) by the same reasoning: that in them too what we are displeased to see taken away by fault is what pleases us in the nature. Except that even the natures themselves often displease men when they become harmful to them, as they consider not the natures but their own advantage, like those animals by whose abundance the pride of the Egyptians was scourged. But in this way they could also find fault with the sun, since certain offenders, or those who do not pay their debts, are ordered by judges to be set in the sun. Not by our convenience or inconvenience, then, but considered in itself, nature gives glory to its maker. So also the nature of the eternal fire is without any doubt praiseworthy, although it will be penal for the damned wicked. For what is more beautiful than fire, blazing, vigorous, and shining? What more useful, warming, healing, cooking? Although nothing is more painful than when it burns. The same thing, then, applied in one way, is found destructive, and, used fittingly, most beneficial. For who is equal to setting out in words its uses in the whole world? Nor are those to be heeded who praise the light in fire but find fault with its heat, judging not by the force of its nature but by their own convenience or inconvenience. For they want to see, but not to burn. But they do not notice that this very light, which certainly pleases them too, harms weak eyes by being unsuited to them, and that in that heat which displeases them some animals live healthily by being suited to it.

Chapter 5. That in every form and measure of nature the Creator is to be praised.

All natures, then, since they exist and therefore have their own measure, their own form, and a certain peace with themselves, are certainly good; and when they are where they ought to be by the order of nature, they preserve their being as far as they have received it; and those which have not received everlasting being are changed for the better or the worse according to the use and motion of the things to which they are subject by the Creator's law, tending by divine providence to that end which the plan of governing the universe contains; so that even so great a corruption as brings changeable and mortal natures to destruction does not so make what was cease to be as to prevent what ought to be from following from it in due order. This being so, God, who supremely is, and by whom therefore every being that is not supreme was made (for it ought not to be equal to him, since it was made from nothing, nor could it exist in any way if it had not been made by him), is neither to be blamed for the offense of any faults, and is to be praised in the consideration of all natures.