City of God 22.24–22.28

Chapter 24. On the good things with which the Creator has filled even this life, subject though it is to condemnation.

Now we must consider with what good things, and how many, the goodness of him who governs all that he created has filled this very misery of the human race, in which the justice of the punisher is praised. First, the blessing he had pronounced before sin, saying, “Increase and multiply and fill the earth,” he did not wish to withhold even after sin, and the fruitfulness granted remained in the condemned stock. Nor could the fault of sin, through which the necessity of death too was thrust upon us, take away that wonderful power of seeds, or rather that still more wonderful power by which seeds too are produced, which is implanted in human bodies and in a way woven into them. Both run together in this river, as it were, this torrent of the human race: the evil that is derived from the parent and the good that is given by the Creator. In the original evil there are two things, sin and punishment; in the original good two others, propagation and formation. But as far as our present purpose is concerned, we have already said enough about the evils, one of which, sin, came from our own audacity, and the other, punishment, from the judgment of God. Now I have undertaken to speak of the good things of God which he has conferred, or still confers, even on our flawed and condemned nature.

For in condemning it he did not take away all that he had given, or it would not exist at all; nor did he remove it from his power, even when he subjected it in punishment to the devil, since he did not estrange even the devil himself from his rule; for even the devil's nature subsists because he makes it who supremely is and makes to be whatever in any way is. Of those two goods, then, which we said flow as from a fountain of his goodness even into a nature flawed by sin and condemned to punishment, propagation he bestowed by his blessing in the first works of the world, from which works he rested on the seventh day; but formation belongs to that work of his by which he works until now. For if he withdrew his effective power from things, they could neither advance and run their times in their measured movements nor would they continue at all in what they were created. So God created man in such a way as to add to him a certain fertility by which he might propagate other men, generating along with them also the possibility, not the necessity, of propagating. From such men as he willed, however, God took it away, and they were barren; but he did not take away from the human race what had once been given to the first two spouses by the general blessing. This propagation, then, though it was not taken away by sin, is still not such as it would have been had no one sinned. For since man, placed in honour, after he transgressed was compared to the beasts, he generates in like manner; yet there was not wholly extinguished in him a kind of spark, as it were, of reason, in which he was made to the image of God.

But if formation were not applied to this propagation, it would not advance into the forms and measures of its kind. For if men had not had intercourse and God nonetheless willed to fill the earth with men, as he created one without the union of male and female, so he could create all; but those who have intercourse cannot generate unless he creates. As, then, the apostle says of the spiritual forming by which a man is formed to godliness and righteousness, “Neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the growth,” so here too it can be said: neither he who has intercourse nor he who sows is anything, but God who forms; nor is the mother who carries what is conceived and nourishes the child born anything, but God who gives the growth. For by that very working by which he works until now, he makes seeds unfold their numbers and develop from certain hidden and invisible wrappings into the visible forms of this beauty that we see; he himself makes a living being by coupling and connecting in wonderful ways an incorporeal and a corporeal nature, the one set over, the other set under. This work of his is so great and wonderful that, not only in man, who is a rational animal and therefore more excellent and outstanding than all earthly living things, but in any tiniest fly, it strikes amazement into the mind of one who considers it well and brings forth praise of the Creator.

He, then, gave the human soul a mind, in which reason and understanding lie in a way asleep in the infant, as if they did not exist, to be awakened, that is, and brought out with the advance of age, so that it may be capable of knowledge and learning and fit to perceive truth and love the good. By this capacity it may drink in wisdom and be endowed with virtues by which to fight prudently, courageously, temperately, and justly against errors and the other inborn vices, and to overcome them by desire for nothing but that supreme and unchangeable good. And even if it does not do this, who can worthily express or think how great a good this very capacity for such goods is, divinely established in the rational nature, how wonderful a work of the Almighty? For besides the arts of living well and of arriving at immortal happiness, which are called virtues and are given only by the grace of God which is in Christ to the children of the promise and of the kingdom, have not so many great arts been invented and practised by human genius, some necessary, some for pleasure, that this so excellent power of mind and reason, even in the things it seeks that are superfluous, or indeed dangerous and ruinous, testifies how great a good it has in its nature, from which it could invent, learn, or practise them?

To what wonderful, what astonishing works of clothing and building has human industry attained! What progress it has made in agriculture, in navigation! What it has devised and accomplished in the making of all sorts of vessels, and in the variety of statues and paintings! What things, wonderful to spectators and incredible to hearers, it has contrived to do and show in the theatres! What and how many things it has discovered for capturing, killing, and taming irrational animals! Against men themselves, so many kinds of poisons, of weapons, of engines; and for protecting and restoring mortal health, how many medicines and remedies it has found! For the pleasure of the palate, how many seasonings and stimulants of appetite it has discovered! For indicating and persuading thoughts, what a multitude and variety of signs, in which words and letters hold the chief place! For delighting minds, what ornaments of speech, what abundance of various poems; for soothing the ears, how many musical instruments, what modes of song it has devised! What skill in measurements and numbers, with what sagacity it has grasped the courses and orders of the stars! With how much knowledge of worldly things it has filled itself! Who could express it, especially if we wished not to heap everything together but to dwell on each? Finally, in defending errors and falsehoods themselves, how great have been the geniuses of philosophers and heretics that have shone out, who is able to estimate? For we are speaking now of the nature of the human mind, with which this mortal life is adorned, not of faith and the way of truth, by which that immortal life is gained. Since the founder of so great a nature is certainly the true and supreme God, and he governs all he has made and has supreme power and supreme justice, it would surely never have fallen into these miseries, nor would it, except for those alone who will be freed, be going from them into eternal ones, had not an exceedingly great sin gone before in the first man, from whom the rest sprang.

In the body itself, too, though we share mortality with the beasts and it is found weaker than many of them, how great a goodness of God, how great a providence of so great a Creator appears! Are not the places of the senses and the other members so arranged in it, and the appearance, shape, and stature of the whole body so proportioned, that it shows itself made for the service of a rational soul? For man was not created bent toward the earth, as we see irrational animals are; but the form of his body, erect toward heaven, admonishes him to set his mind on the things that are above. Further, does not the wonderful mobility given to the tongue and the hands, apt and suited for speaking and writing and for performing the works of so many arts and duties, show clearly enough to what kind of soul such a body was joined to serve? And yet, even apart from the needs of work, the proportion of all the parts is so harmonious and answers itself with such beautiful symmetry that you would not know whether utility or beauty was more considered in making it. Certainly we see nothing created in the body for the sake of utility that does not also have a place for beauty. And this would be even plainer to us if we knew the numbers of the measurements by which all its parts are connected and fitted to one another. Human skill could perhaps trace these with effort in the parts that stand out on the surface; but in those that are covered and hidden from our sight, such as the great intricacy of veins, nerves, and inward parts, the secrets of the vital organs, no one can find them. For even if the diligence of physicians called anatomists, with a certain cruelty, has dissected the bodies of the dead, and even of the dying under the hands of those who cut and examined them, and has, inhumanly enough, searched out all that is hidden in human flesh, to learn what should be treated and how and where, yet the numbers I speak of, by which the fitting together, called harmonia in Greek, of the whole body, outside and inside, is constituted as of an instrument, why should I say that no one has been able to find them, when no one has dared to look for them? If they could have been known, then even in the inner organs, which display no beauty, the beauty of the design would so delight us that it would be preferred, by the judgment of the mind that uses the eyes, to every visible form that pleases the eyes.

There are some things placed in the body so as to have only beauty, not use as well, as a man's chest has nipples, and the face a beard, which is shown to be not a defence but a manly ornament by the smooth faces of women, whom, as the weaker, it would surely have been more fitting to protect. If, then, there is no member, among these visible ones at least (about which no one is in doubt), so suited to some work that it is not also beautiful, and there are some which have beauty only and no use, I think it is easily understood that in the creation of the body dignity was preferred to necessity. For necessity will pass away, and the time will come when we shall enjoy one another's beauty alone, without any lust; and this is above all to be referred to the praise of the Creator, to whom it is said in the psalm, “You have put on confession and beauty.”

And the rest of the beauty and usefulness of creation, which divine generosity has granted man to behold and use, though he is cast down and condemned to these toils and miseries, in what words can it be summed up? In the manifold and varied beauty of sky and earth and sea; in the abundance and wonderful appearance of light itself; in sun and moon and stars; in the shade of woods; in the colours and scents of flowers; in the variety and multitude of birds, chattering and brightly coloured; in the manifold forms of so many great living creatures, of which those have more to wonder at which have least bulk (for we are more astonished at the works of little ants and bees than at the immense bodies of whales); in the great spectacle of the sea itself, when it clothes itself in different colours as in garments, and is sometimes green, and that in many shades, sometimes purple, sometimes blue. And how delightfully it is watched even whenever it is stormy, and the pleasure is greater because it soothes the beholder without tossing and shaking the sailor! What of the abundance of food everywhere against hunger? What of the variety of flavours against distaste, poured out by the riches of nature, not sought by the art and toil of cooks? What of the aids in so many things for keeping or recovering health! How welcome the alternation of day and night! How gentle the temperate breezes! How much material in plants and flocks for making clothing! Who could mention everything? If I wished to untie and examine only these things, which I have crowded together as into a heap, like bundles tied up, how much time I should spend on each, since each contains so many things! And all these are consolations of the wretched and condemned, not rewards of the blessed.

What, then, are those things, if these are so many, of such a kind, and so great? What will he give to those whom he has predestined to life, who has given these even to those whom he has predestined to death? What good things will he make them receive in that blessed life, for whom in this miserable one he willed that his only-begotten Son should endure such great evils, even to death? Hence the apostle, speaking of those predestined to that kingdom, says, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him give us all things?” When this promise is fulfilled, what shall we be! What kind of people shall we be! What good things shall we receive in that kingdom, since, with Christ dying for us, we have already received such a pledge! What will the spirit of man be, having no vice at all, neither one under which it lies, nor one to which it yields, nor one against which, even laudably, it must fight, perfect in most peaceful virtue! How great, how beautiful, how certain will be the knowledge of all things there, without any error or toil, where the wisdom of God will be drunk from its own fountain, with supreme happiness and without any difficulty! What will the body be, which, subject to the spirit in every way and sufficiently given life by it, will need no nourishment! For it will not be natural but spiritual, having indeed the substance of flesh, but without any fleshly corruption.

Chapter 25. On the obstinacy of certain people who attack the resurrection of the flesh, which the whole world believes, as was foretold.

About the goods of the soul which it will enjoy in supreme blessedness after this life, the renowned philosophers do not disagree with us; it is about the resurrection of the flesh that they contend, and this they deny as far as they can. But the many who believe have left very few who deny it, and have turned with faithful hearts to Christ, who showed in his own resurrection what seems absurd to these people: learned and unlearned, the wise of the world and the unwise. For the world has believed what God foretold, who also foretold that the world would believe this; for he was certainly not compelled by Peter's sorceries to foretell it so long before, with praise of those who would believe. For he is the God before whom, as I have said several times already and am not ashamed to repeat, the deities themselves tremble, as Porphyry acknowledges, and wishes to prove from the oracles of his own gods; whom he praised so highly as to call him both God the Father and King.

Far be it from us, then, to understand what he foretold in the way these people wish, who have not believed with the world what he foretold the world would believe. For why not rather in the way in which the world, foretold so long before as going to believe, believed it, and not as the very few chatter who refused to believe with the world what the world was foretold to believe? For if they say that these things are to be believed in another sense, so as not to insult that God to whom they bear such great testimony by saying that what was written is empty, they do him quite as great an insult, or even a graver one, if they say they are to be understood otherwise, and not as the world believed them, the world that he himself praised as going to believe, promised would believe, and brought to belief. Is it that he cannot make the flesh rise and live for ever? Or is it not to be believed that he will do so because it is evil and unworthy of God? But of his omnipotence, by which he does so many great and incredible things, we have already said much. If they want to find something the Almighty cannot do, they have it: I will say it, he cannot lie. Let us, then, believe what he can do by not believing what he cannot. So, not believing that he can lie, let them believe that he will do what he promised he would do, and let them believe it as the world believed it, which he foretold would believe, praised as going to believe, promised would believe, and has now shown to have believed.

And how do they prove that this is evil? There will be no corruption there, which is the evil of the body. We have already discussed the order of the elements; we have said enough about men's other conjectures; how great the ease of movement will be in an incorruptible body we have shown sufficiently, I think, in the thirteenth book, from the balance of present good health, which is certainly in no way to be compared with that immortality. Let those read the earlier parts of this work who either have not read them or wish to recall what they have read.

Chapter 26. How Porphyry's maxim, by which he thinks that blessed souls must flee every body, is overturned by the view of Plato himself, who says that the supreme God promised the gods that they would never be stripped of their bodies.

“But Porphyry says,” they reply, “that for the soul to be blessed, every body must be fled.” It is no use, then, our saying that the body will be incorruptible, if the soul will not be blessed unless it escapes every body. But I have already argued this in the book mentioned as far as was needed; here I will recall only one point from it. Let Plato, the master of all of them, correct his books and say that their gods, whom he said were enclosed in heavenly bodies, will flee their bodies, that is, will die, in order to be blessed; to whom, nevertheless, the God by whom they were made, so that they might be secure, promised immortality, that is, eternal continuance in the same bodies, not because their nature has this, but because his counsel prevails. There he also overturns their saying that the resurrection of the flesh is not to be believed because it is impossible. For, quite plainly according to the same philosopher, when the unmade God promised immortality to the gods made by him, he said he would do what is impossible. For Plato reports him as speaking thus: “Since you have come into being,” he says, “you cannot be immortal and indissoluble; yet you shall not be dissolved, nor shall any fates of death destroy you, nor shall they be stronger than my counsel, which is a greater bond for your perpetuity than those by which you are bound together.” If those who hear this are not only not absurd but not deaf, they surely do not doubt that, according to Plato, what is impossible was promised to the gods made by the God who made them. For he who says, “You cannot be immortal, but by my will you shall be immortal,” what else does he say than, “You shall be what cannot be, since I make it so”? He, then, will raise flesh incorruptible, immortal, spiritual, who, according to Plato, promised that he would do what is impossible.

Why do they still cry out that what God has promised, what the world has believed on God's promise, the world that was itself promised as going to believe, is impossible, when we cry out that God will do it, who even according to Plato does impossible things? So, for souls to be blessed, it is not every body that must be fled, but an incorruptible body that must be received. And in what incorruptible body will they more fittingly rejoice than in that in which, when it was corruptible, they groaned? For so there will not be in them that dire desire which Virgil took from Plato, where he says, “and they may begin to wish to return into bodies again”; so, I say, they will not have the desire to return to bodies, when they have with them the bodies to which they desire to return, and have them in such a way that they will never not have them, never lay them down by any death even for the briefest time.

Chapter 27. On the contrary maxims of Plato and Porphyry, in which, if each had yielded to the other, neither would have strayed from the truth.

Plato and Porphyry each said certain things which, if they could have shared them with one another, might perhaps have made them Christians. Plato said that souls cannot exist for ever without bodies. That is why he said that even the souls of the wise will return to bodies after however long a time. Porphyry, on the other hand, said that the thoroughly purified soul, when it has returned to the Father, will never return to the evils of this world. So if Plato had granted Porphyry what he saw truly, that even the thoroughly purified souls of the righteous and wise will return to human bodies; and if Porphyry in turn had granted Plato what he saw truly, that holy souls will never return to the miseries of a corruptible body; so that each did not say only his one thing but both said both: I think they would have seen that it followed that souls both return to bodies and receive such bodies as they may live in blessedly and immortally. For according to Plato even holy souls will return to human bodies; according to Porphyry holy souls will not return to the evils of this world. Let Porphyry, then, say with Plato, “They will return to bodies”; let Plato say with Porphyry, “They will not return to evils”; and they will agree that they return to bodies in which they suffer no evils. And these will be none other than those which God promises, who will make blessed souls live for ever with their own eternal flesh. For this, I think, both would readily grant us: that, admitting that the souls of the saints will return to immortal bodies, they would allow them to return to their own bodies, in which they endured the evils of this age, in which they worshipped God piously and faithfully so as to be free of these evils.

Chapter 28. What Plato, or Labeo, or even Varro could have contributed to the true faith in the resurrection, if their opinions had come together into one view.

Some of our people, who love Plato for his most splendid style and for some things he truly perceived, say that he held something like our view even about the resurrection of the dead. Tullius touches on this in his books On the Republic in such a way as to assert that Plato meant to play rather than to say that it was true. For Plato introduces a man who came back to life and told certain things that agreed with Platonic teachings. Labeo too says that two men died on one day and met each other at a certain crossroads, and then were ordered to go back to their bodies, and agreed between them to live as friends, and so it happened until they died later. But these authors told of a resurrection of the body such as that of those we know to have risen and been restored to this life, but not in such a way that they would not die again.

Marcus Varro, however, sets down something more wonderful in the books he wrote On the Race of the Roman People, whose very words I thought I should give. “Certain casters of nativities,” he says, “have written that there is in the rebirth of men what the Greeks call palingenesia; they have written that this is accomplished in four hundred and forty years, so that the same body and the same soul, which were once joined in a man, return again into union.” This Varro, or those casters of nativities, whoever they were (for he did not give the names of those whose opinion he recorded), said something which, though false (for once souls have returned to the same bodies they wore, they will never leave them afterwards), nevertheless overthrows and destroys many of the arguments for that impossibility with which these people chatter against us. For those who hold or held this view did not think it impossible that corpses dissolved into the air, into dust, into ashes, into liquids, into the bodies of beasts that ate them, or even of men themselves, should return again to what they were.

Therefore Plato and Porphyry, or rather whoever loves them and is still alive, if they agree with us that holy souls will return to bodies, as Plato says, and yet will not return to any evils, as Porphyry says, so that it follows from these what the Christian faith preaches, that they will receive such bodies as they may live in happily for ever without any evil, let them also take from Varro that they return to the same bodies in which they were before, and for them the whole question of the resurrection of the flesh to eternity will be solved.