City of God 14.11–14.19

Chapter 11. Of the fall of the first man, in which a nature well founded was vitiated and cannot be restored except by its author.

But since God foreknew all things and therefore could not be ignorant that man would sin, we must assert the holy city according to what he foreknew and ordained, not according to what could not come to our knowledge because it was not in God's ordaining. For man could not by his sin disturb the divine counsel, as if he forced God to change what he had decreed; since God by foreknowing anticipated both, that is, both how evil man, whom he himself created good, would become, and what good he himself would even so make from him. For even if God is said to change his decrees (whence, by a figurative expression, God is even read in the Scriptures to have repented), it is said in relation to what man had expected or the order of natural causes carried, not in relation to what the Almighty had foreknown he would do.

God made man, then, as it is written, upright, and therefore of good will. For he would not be upright if he did not have a good will. The good will, then, is the work of God; for man was made by him with it. But the first evil will, since it preceded all evil works in man, was rather a kind of falling away from the work of God to its own works than any work; and therefore the works were evil because they were according to itself, not according to God; so that the will itself, or man himself in so far as he was of evil will, was like an evil tree of those works as of evil fruits. Further, the evil will, though it is not according to nature but contrary to nature, because it is a fault, yet belongs to that nature whose fault it is, since it cannot exist except in a nature; but in that nature which the Creator created from nothing, not that which he begot from himself, as he begot the Word, through whom all things were made; because, though God fashioned man from the dust of the earth, that earth and all earthly matter are altogether from nothing, and he gave the body a soul made from nothing when man was made. So far are evils overcome by goods that, although they are allowed to exist to show how the most provident justice of the Creator can make good use even of them, yet goods can exist without evils, as God himself, true and supreme, and every heavenly creature, invisible and visible, above this murky air; but evils cannot exist without goods, since the natures in which they are, in so far as they are natures, are certainly good. Further, evil is removed not by taking away some nature that had been added, or any part of it, but by healing and correcting the nature that had been vitiated and depraved. The choice of the will, then, is truly free when it is not the slave of faults and sins. Such it was given by God; and, lost by its own fault, it cannot be restored except by him by whom it could be given. Hence the Truth says: “If the Son sets you free, then you will be truly free.” This is the same as if he said, “If the Son saves you, then you will be truly saved.” For he is liberator for the same reason that he is savior.

Man, then, lived according to God in a paradise both bodily and spiritual. For there was not a bodily paradise for the goods of the body and not a spiritual one for those of the mind; nor was there a spiritual one for man to enjoy through the inner senses and not a bodily one for him to enjoy through the outer. There was plainly both, for both purposes. But after that proud angel, and therefore envious, turned by that same pride from God to himself, and, choosing with a kind of tyrannical arrogance to rejoice in subjects rather than to be a subject, fell from the spiritual paradise (of his fall and that of his companions, who from angels of God became his angels, I have argued sufficiently, as far as I could, in the eleventh and twelfth books of this work), seeking with evil-counseling cunning to creep into man's mind, whom he certainly envied for standing, since he himself had fallen, he chose in the bodily paradise, where with those two human beings, male and female, the other land animals too dwelt, subject and harmless, the serpent, an animal slippery and moving in winding coils, suited to his work, through which to speak. And having subjected it to himself by spiritual wickedness through his angelic presence and more excellent nature, and misusing it as an instrument, he spoke deceitfully with the woman, beginning, that is, with the lower part of that human couple, so as to come by degrees to the whole; not thinking that the man was easily credulous or could be deceived by erring himself, but only by yielding to another's error. For just as Aaron did not consent to the erring people's making of an idol by being persuaded, but yielded under constraint; and as it is not credible that Solomon thought by error that idols should be served, but that he was driven to those sacrileges by the blandishments of women: so it is to be believed that that man, one with one, human with human, spouse with spouse, did not transgress God's law because he believed his woman as though she spoke the truth, being deceived, but that he obeyed her out of the bond of fellowship. For the apostle said not in vain, “Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived,” except because she accepted what the serpent said to her as though it were true, while he was unwilling to be separated from his only companion, even in a fellowship of sin; nor is he less guilty on that account, if he sinned knowingly and wittingly. Hence the apostle does not say, “He did not sin,” but, “He was not deceived”; for he certainly shows that he sinned where he says, “Through one man sin entered into the world,” and a little later more plainly, “In the likeness,” he says, “of the transgression of Adam.” He wanted those to be understood as deceived who do not think that what they do is sin; but he knew. Otherwise how will it be true that “Adam was not deceived”? But, inexperienced in divine severity, he could be mistaken in thinking what he had committed was pardonable. And so he was not deceived in the way the woman was deceived; but he was mistaken as to how that would be judged which he was going to say: “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me, and I ate.” Why say more? Though they were not both deceived by believing, yet both were caught by sinning and entangled in the snares of the devil.

Chapter 12. Of the nature of the sin committed by the first human beings.

But if anyone is troubled why human nature is not changed by other sins as it was changed by that transgression of the first two human beings, so that it became subject to so great a corruption as we see and feel, and through it to death, and was disturbed and tossed about by so many and so great and so mutually contrary affections, such as it certainly was not in paradise before sin, even though it was in an animal body; if anyone is troubled by this, as I said, he must not think that what was committed was light and small because it was done concerning food, food not evil or harmful except because it was forbidden; for God would not create and plant anything evil in that place of so great happiness. But obedience was commended in the command, which virtue in a rational creature is in a way the mother and guardian of all virtues; since it was so made that it is profitable to it to be subject, but ruinous to do its own will and not the will of him by whom it was created. This command, then, not to eat of one kind of food, where so great an abundance of others lay at hand, so light to observe, so brief to keep in memory, especially when desire did not yet resist the will, which came afterward from the punishment of the transgression, was violated with an injustice the greater as it could have been kept with an easier observance.

Chapter 13. That in Adam's transgression an evil will preceded the evil work.

They began to be evil in secret, so as to slip into open disobedience. For no one would come to an evil work unless an evil will had gone before. And what could be the beginning of an evil will but pride? For “pride is the beginning of all sin.” And what is pride but the craving for a perverse exaltation? For it is a perverse exaltation to forsake the principle to which the mind ought to cleave and to become and be, in a way, a principle to oneself. This happens when it is too pleased with itself. And it is so pleased with itself when it falls away from that unchangeable good which ought to have pleased it more than it pleased itself. This falling away is voluntary; for if the will had remained steadfast in the love of the higher, unchangeable good, by which it was enlightened to see and kindled to love, it would not have turned away from it to please itself, and from this grown dark and cold, so that either she would believe the serpent had spoken the truth, or he would set his wife's will above God's command and think he was a pardonable transgressor of the precept if he did not forsake the companion of his life even in the fellowship of sin. The evil work, then, that is, that transgression of eating the forbidden food, was done only by those who were already evil. For that evil fruit would not have come except from an evil tree. But that the tree was evil came about contrary to nature, because it would certainly not have happened except by a fault of the will, which is contrary to nature. But only a nature made from nothing could be depraved by a fault. And so, that it is a nature, it has from being made by God; but that it falls away from what it is, from being made from nothing. Nor did man fall away so as to be nothing at all, but so as, turned toward himself, to be less than he was when he cleaved to him who supremely is. To forsake God, then, and be in oneself, that is, to please oneself, is not yet to be nothing, but to draw near to nothing. Hence the proud, according to the holy Scriptures, are called by another name, self-pleasers.

For it is good to have the heart lifted up, yet not to oneself, which belongs to pride, but to the Lord, which belongs to obedience, which can only be of the humble. There is, then, something in humility which in a wonderful way lifts the heart up, and something in exaltation which casts the heart down. This indeed seems a kind of contradiction, that exaltation should be downward and humility upward. But godly humility makes one subject to what is higher; and nothing is higher than God; and therefore humility, which makes one subject to God, exalts. But exaltation, which is in fault, by that very fact spurns subjection and falls from him than whom nothing is higher, and thereby will be lower; and there comes to pass what is written: “You cast them down when they were being lifted up.” For it does not say, “when they had been lifted up,” as if they were first lifted up and afterward cast down; but when they were being lifted up, then they were cast down. For to be lifted up is itself already to be cast down. Therefore, since now in the city of God, and to the city of God on pilgrimage in this age, humility is most highly commended, and is most highly proclaimed in its king, who is Christ, and the contrary fault of exaltation is taught by the sacred writings to rule most in his adversary, who is the devil: this is surely the great difference by which the two cities of which we speak are distinguished, the one a society of godly men, the other of the ungodly, each with the angels that belong to it, in whom there went before, on the one side, the love of God, on the other, the love of self.

The devil, then, would not have caught man in the manifest and open sin, where what God had forbidden to be done was done, unless man had already begun to please himself. For this is why he was also delighted by what was said: “You will be like gods.” They could have been this better by cleaving to the supreme and true principle through obedience, not by being their own principle through pride. For created gods are gods not by their own truth but by participation in the true God. But by seeking more one becomes less, when, choosing to be sufficient to oneself, one falls away from him who is truly sufficient. That evil, then, by which man, pleasing himself as if he were himself light, is turned away from that light which, if it pleased him, would make him light too, that evil, I say, went before in secret, so that this evil which was committed in the open might follow. For what is written is true: “Before a fall the heart is exalted, and before glory it is humbled.” That fall which happens in secret precedes the fall which happens openly, while the former is not thought to be a fall. For who thinks exaltation a fall, though there is already there the falling away by which the Most High has been forsaken? But who does not see that it is a fall when there is an evident and undoubted transgression of the command? For this reason God forbade that which, once it was committed, could be defended by no pretense of righteousness. And I dare to say that it is useful for the proud to fall into some open and manifest sin, so that they may be displeased with themselves, who had already fallen by pleasing themselves. For Peter was more healthily displeased with himself when he wept than pleased with himself when he presumed. The sacred psalm too says this: “Fill their faces with shame, and they will seek your name, O Lord”; that is, that you may please them as they seek your name, who had pleased themselves by seeking their own.

Chapter 14. Of the pride of the transgressor, which was worse than the transgression itself.

But worse and more damnable is the pride by which a refuge of excuse is sought even in manifest sins; as with those first human beings, of whom she said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate,” and he said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.” Nowhere here is there the sound of a plea for pardon, nowhere an entreaty for healing. For although these do not deny what they committed, as Cain did, yet pride still seeks to refer to another what it did wrongly: the woman's pride to the serpent, the man's pride to the woman. But where there is an open transgression of a divine command, this is an accusation rather than a true excuse. For they did not fail to do it because the woman committed it at the serpent's persuasion and the man at the woman's offering, as if anything were to be preferred to God, whether to be believed or to be yielded to.

Chapter 15. Of the justice of the retribution which the first human beings received for their disobedience.

Since, then, God was despised when he commanded, he who had created them, who had made them in his own image, who had set them over the other animals, who had placed them in paradise, who had supplied them with abundance of all things and of well-being, who had burdened them with commands neither many nor great nor difficult, but had supported them in the wholesomeness of obedience with a single one, very brief and very light, by which he reminded that creature, for whom free service was profitable, that he was Lord: a just condemnation followed, and such a condemnation that man, who by keeping the command would have been spiritual even in the flesh, became carnal even in mind; and he who in his pride had pleased himself was, by God's justice, given over to himself; yet not so as to be in every way in his own power, but, at odds with himself too, he led, under him to whom he consented by sinning, instead of the freedom he desired, a hard and wretched slavery; dead in spirit by his own will, and destined to die in body against his will; a deserter of eternal life, condemned also to eternal death, unless grace should set him free. Whoever thinks such a condemnation either excessive or unjust certainly does not know how to measure how great was the iniquity in sinning where there was so great an ease of not sinning. For as Abraham's great obedience is not undeservedly proclaimed, because a most difficult thing was commanded, to kill his son, so in paradise the disobedience was the greater as what was commanded was of no difficulty. And as the obedience of the second man is the more to be proclaimed in that he became obedient to death, so the disobedience of the first man is the more detestable in that he became disobedient to death. For where a great punishment of disobedience has been set forth and an easy thing commanded by the Creator, who can sufficiently explain how great an evil it is not to obey in an easy matter, both the command of so great a power and so great a terrifying punishment?

In short, to say it briefly, in the punishment of that sin what was the retribution for disobedience but disobedience? For what other misery of man is there but his own disobedience against himself, so that, because he would not what he could, he wills what he cannot? For in paradise, even if he could not do all things before sin, yet whatever he could not do he did not will, and therefore he could do all that he willed; but now, as we recognize in his stock and as divine Scripture testifies, “Man has become like vanity.” For who can count how many things he wills that he cannot do, while he himself does not obey himself, that is, while his very mind, and his flesh which is lower, do not obey his will? For against his will the mind is very often disturbed and the flesh feels pain, grows old, and dies, and whatever else we suffer which we would not suffer against our will if our nature obeyed our will in every way and in all its parts. But, it is said, the flesh suffers something by which it is not allowed to serve. What does it matter from where, so long as, by the justice of God our ruler, whom we would not serve as subjects, our flesh, which had been subject, is troublesome to us by not serving, although we, by not serving God, could be troublesome to ourselves, not to him? For he does not need our service as we need the service of the body; and therefore what we receive is our punishment, not his that we did.

Further, the pains which are called pains of the flesh are pains of the soul in the flesh and from the flesh. For what does the flesh by itself, without the soul, feel pain at or desire? But when the flesh is said to desire or to feel pain, it is either man himself, as we have argued, or some part of the soul which the passion of the flesh affects, either harsh, so as to cause pain, or gentle, so as to cause pleasure. But pain of the flesh is only an offense to the soul from the flesh and a kind of dissent from its passion, just as the pain of the mind, which is called sadness, is a dissent from things that have happened to us against our will. But sadness is usually preceded by fear, which too is in the soul, not in the flesh. But no fear of the flesh, as it were, precedes the pain of the flesh, to be felt in the flesh before the pain. Pleasure, however, is preceded by a certain craving, which is felt in the flesh as its desire, such as hunger and thirst and that which in the genitals is more usually called lust, though this is the general word for every desire. For the ancients defined even anger as nothing else than the lust for revenge; although sometimes a man, where there is no sense of vengeance, is angry even with inanimate things, and in anger dashes down a pen that writes badly or breaks a reed. But even this, though more irrational, is still a kind of lust for revenge, and I know not what, so to speak, shadow of retribution, that those who do evil should suffer evil. There is, then, a lust for revenge, which is called anger; there is a lust for having money, which is called avarice; there is a lust for winning at any cost, which is called obstinacy; there is a lust for glorying, which is called boasting. There are many and various lusts, some of which have their own names, while some do not. For who could easily say what the lust for ruling is called, which nevertheless is very powerful in the minds of tyrants, as civil wars too bear witness?

Chapter 16. Of the evil of lust, whose name fits many faults, but is properly assigned to the motions of obscene heat.

Although, then, there are lusts for many things, yet when lust is spoken of without adding what it is lust for, there usually occurs to the mind hardly anything but that by which the shameful parts of the body are aroused. And this lust claims for itself not only the whole body, nor only from without, but also from within, and moves the whole man, the affection of the mind being joined and mingled with the craving of the flesh, so that there follows that pleasure than which none is greater among the pleasures of the body; so much so that at the very moment of time when its climax is reached, almost all the sharpness and, as it were, the watchfulness of thought is overwhelmed. But what friend of wisdom and of holy joys, living a married life, yet, as the apostle warned, knowing how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor, not in the disease of desire, like the gentiles who do not know God, would not prefer, if he could, to beget children without this lust, so that even in this duty of sowing offspring the members created for this work might serve his mind, as the other members serve, each allotted to its own works, set in motion by the bidding of the will, not stirred by the heat of lust? But not even the lovers of this pleasure themselves are aroused when they will, whether for conjugal intercourse or for the impurities of shameful acts; but sometimes that motion is importunate when no one asks for it, and sometimes it deserts one who longs for it, and while concupiscence burns in the mind, it is cold in the body; and so, in a wonderful way, lust does not serve not only the will to beget but even the lust to wanton; and though for the most part it wholly opposes the mind that restrains it, sometimes it is divided even against itself, and, having stirred the mind, does not follow itself in stirring the body.

Chapter 17. Of the nakedness of the first human beings, which after sin they saw to be shameful and to be ashamed of.

Rightly is there shame above all at this lust, and rightly are those members too, which it moves or does not move by its own, so to speak, right, not in every way at our choice, called shameful, which they were not before man's sin. For, as it is written, “They were naked and were not confounded,” not that their nakedness was unknown to them, but nakedness was not yet shameful, because lust did not yet move those members beyond the choice of the will, and the flesh did not yet, by its own disobedience, in some way bear witness to convict the disobedience of man. For they had not been created blind, as the ignorant crowd thinks; since he saw the animals to which he gave names, and of her we read, “The woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eyes to look at.” Their eyes, then, were open, but they were not opened to this, that is, not attentive, so as to know what was provided them by the garment of grace, when their members did not know how to resist the will. When this grace was withdrawn, so that disobedience might be punished by a penalty in kind, there arose in the motion of the body a certain shameless novelty, from which nakedness became indecent; and it made them attentive and left them confounded. Hence it is that, after they had violated God's command by open transgression, it is written of them: “And the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.” The eyes of both, it says, were opened, not to see, for they saw before too, but to discern between the good they had lost and the evil into which they had fallen. Hence the tree itself too, because it would produce this discernment if it were touched for eating against the prohibition, took its name from this, so as to be called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For when the trouble of disease has been experienced, the pleasantness of health too becomes more evident. They knew, then, that they were naked, stripped, that is, of that grace by which it came about that the nakedness of the body did not confound them, since no law of sin opposed their mind. So they came to know what they would more happily have been ignorant of, if, believing and obeying God, they had not committed what forced them to experience what harm unbelief and disobedience do. Accordingly, confounded by the disobedience of their flesh, as by a penalty bearing witness to their own disobedience, they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves campestria, that is, coverings for the genitals. For some translators have put succinctoria (girdles). Campestria is indeed a Latin word, but it comes from this, that the young men who exercised naked on the campus (field) covered their shameful parts; hence those who are so girded the common people call campestrati. So what lust was disobediently moving against the will condemned for the guilt of disobedience, modesty modestly covered. From this all nations, since they have been begotten from that stock, hold it so ingrained to veil the shameful parts that some barbarians do not have those parts of the body naked even in the baths, but bathe with their coverings on. In the shady solitudes of India too, although certain men philosophize naked, whence they are called gymnosophists, they nevertheless put coverings on their genitals, which they lack on their other members.

Chapter 18. Of the shame of sexual intercourse, not only illicit but also conjugal.

As for the act itself which is performed by such lust, not only in all acts of sexual immorality, where hiding places are sought to escape human judgment, but also in the use of harlots, which the earthly city has made a lawful shamefulness, although what is done there is punished by no law of that city, yet even a permitted and unpunished lust avoids the public gaze; and by a natural modesty the brothels themselves have provided privacy, and unchastity found it easier to do without the chains of prohibition than shamelessness to remove the hiding places of that foulness. But even the shameful themselves call this shameful, of which, though they are lovers of it, they do not dare to be displayers. What of conjugal intercourse, which takes place, according to the prescriptions of the marriage contract, for the sake of begetting children? Does it not too, though it is lawful and honorable, seek a bedroom removed from witnesses? Does it not send outside all the servants, and even the groomsmen themselves and whoever any relationship had allowed to enter, before the husband even begins to caress his wife? And since, as even a certain very great author of Roman eloquence says, all right actions wish to be placed in the light, that is, seek to be known, this right action so seeks to be known that it nevertheless blushes to be seen. For who does not know what spouses do with each other so that children may be begotten? Since, indeed, wives are married with such great ceremony in order that it may be done; and yet when that is done from which children are born, not even the children themselves, if any have already been born of it, are allowed to become witnesses. For thus this right action seeks the light of minds for knowledge of itself, yet flees that of eyes. Whence is this, unless because what is fitting by nature is so carried out that what is shameful accompanies it by way of punishment?

Chapter 19. That the parts of anger and lust, which are moved so viciously in man that they must be restrained by the reins of wisdom, did not exist in that health of nature before sin.

Hence it is that even those philosophers who came nearer to the truth confessed that anger and lust are vicious parts of the soul, because they are moved in a disturbed and disordered way even toward things which wisdom forbids to be done, and therefore need a governing mind and reason. This third part of the soul they say is placed as in a kind of citadel to rule these, so that, with it commanding and these serving, justice may be preserved in man from every part of the soul. These parts, then, which they admit are vicious even in a wise and temperate man, so that the mind must rein them in and call them back by checking and restraining them from those things to which they are unjustly moved, and allow them toward those that are granted by the law of wisdom (as anger for exercising just correction, as lust for the duty of propagating offspring): these parts, I say, were not vicious in paradise before sin. For they were not moved toward anything contrary to a right will, so that it would be necessary to hold them back as with the governing reins of reason. For that they are now so moved, and are moderated by those who live temperately, justly, and piously, sometimes more easily, sometimes with more difficulty, yet by restraining and resisting, is certainly not health from nature but sickness from guilt. And why is it that modesty does not hide the works of anger and of other affections in any words and deeds as it hides the works of lust, which are done by the genital members, unless because in the others it is not the affections themselves that move the members of the body, but the will, when it has consented to them, which altogether rules in their use? For whoever utters a word in anger or even strikes someone could not do this unless tongue and hand were moved, as it were, at the command of the will; and these members are moved by the same will even when there is no anger. But lust has so enslaved the genital parts of the body to its own jurisdiction, as it were, that they cannot be moved if it is absent, and unless it has risen of its own accord or when aroused. This is what shames; this is what, blushing, avoids the eyes of onlookers; and a man will more readily bear a crowd of spectators when he is unjustly angry with a man than the gaze of a single one even when he justly unites with his wife.