City of God 5.7–5.11

Chapter 7. On choosing a day for marrying a wife or for planting or sowing something in a field.

Who, again, could bear the way they contrive new fates for their actions by choosing days? That man, it seems, was not born to have a wonderful son, but rather to beget a contemptible one, and so, being a learned man, he chose the hour at which to lie with his wife. So he made a fate he did not have, and by his own act something began to be fated that had not been fated at his birth. O singular folly! A day is chosen for marrying a wife; I suppose because, unless it is chosen, one may fall on a bad day and marry unhappily. Where, then, is what the stars already decreed at his birth? Can a man change by choosing a day what has already been fixed for him, and will what he himself fixed in choosing the day not be able to be changed by another power? Then, if only men are subject to the constellations, and not everything under heaven, why do they choose some days as suitable for setting vines or trees or crops, and other days for taming cattle or for putting males to the herds of mares or cows so that they may bear young, and other things of this kind? But if chosen days have power for these things because the position of the stars rules over all earthly bodies and living things according to the differences of moments of time, let them consider how innumerable are the things that are born or arise or begin at one point of time, and have such different outcomes that they convince any boy that these observations are laughable. For who is so senseless as to dare say that all trees, all plants, all beasts, serpents, birds, fishes, and little worms each have different moments of birth one by one? Yet people are accustomed, in order to test the skill of astrologers, to bring them the constellations of dumb animals, whose births they carefully observe at home for this trial; and they prefer to the rest those astrologers who, on examining the constellations, say that it was not a man that was born but a beast. They even dare to say what kind of beast, whether suited for wool-bearing, or for carrying, or for the plow, or for guarding the house. For they are tested even on the fates of dogs, and they give these answers to great shouts of admiration. So foolish are men as to think that when a man is born, all other births are so held back that not even a fly is born with him under the same region of the sky. For if they admit the fly, the reasoning goes on and leads them step by step, by small advances, from flies to camels and elephants. Nor will they notice that, when a day has been chosen for sowing a field, so many grains come into the ground together, sprout together, and when the crop has come up grow green, ripen, and turn golden together; and yet among the ears of the same age and, so to speak, sprung up together, rust kills some, birds ravage others, and men pull up others. How will they say that these had other constellations, when they see them have such different outcomes? Or will they repent of choosing days for these things and deny that they belong to the heavenly decree, and subject only men to the stars, to whom alone on earth God has given free wills? When all this is considered, it is believed with good reason that when astrologers give many astonishingly true answers, this happens by the hidden prompting of spirits that are not good, whose concern is to plant and strengthen in human minds these false and harmful opinions about astral fates; not by any art of noting and examining the horoscope, for there is none.

Chapter 8. On those who call by the name of fate not the position of the stars but the connection of causes depending on the will of God.

But those who call by the name of fate not the arrangement of the stars at the moment when something is conceived or born or begun, but the connection and series of all causes by which everything that happens happens: with them we need not labor and fight much over a controversy about a word, since they ascribe this very order of causes and a certain connection to the will and power of the supreme God, who is believed most rightly and most truly both to know all things before they happen and to leave nothing unordered; from whom are all powers, though the wills of all are not from him. That it is chiefly the will of the supreme God, whose power extends invincibly through all things, that they call fate is proved thus. These verses are, unless I am mistaken, by Annaeus Seneca:

“Lead me, highest father and ruler of the lofty sky, wherever you please; there is no delay in my obeying. Here I am, unwearied. Suppose I will not: I shall follow groaning, and suffer as a bad man what I could have done as a good. The fates lead the willing, drag the unwilling.”

Clearly, in this last verse he called fates what he had called above the will of the highest father; and he says he is ready to obey it, so that he may be led willing and not dragged unwilling, since, of course, “the fates lead the willing, drag the unwilling.” Those Homeric verses too, which Cicero turned into Latin, support this view:

“Such are the minds of men as the light with which father Jupiter himself has lit the lands.”

Not that a poet's opinion would carry authority in this question; but since he says that the Stoics, when they assert the power of fate, are accustomed to use these verses from Homer, the question is not about the opinion of that poet but about that of these philosophers; for by these verses, which they bring into their discussion of fate, what they think fate is is declared most plainly, since they name Jupiter, whom they think the supreme god, on whom they say the connection of the fates depends.

Chapter 9. On the foreknowledge of God and the free will of man, against Cicero's definition.

Cicero tries to refute these men in such a way that he thinks he can do nothing against them unless he takes away divination. And he tries to take it away by denying that there is any knowledge of the future, and contends with all his might that there is none at all, either in man or in God, and no prediction of events. So he both denies the foreknowledge of God and tries to overthrow all prophecy, though it is clearer than daylight, by empty arguments, and by setting against himself certain oracles which can easily be refuted; and yet he does not even refute them. In refuting the conjectures of the astrologers, however, his speech reigns supreme, because they are truly such that they destroy and refute themselves. But those who set up even starry fates are much more tolerable than this man who takes away the foreknowledge of the future. For to confess that God exists and to deny that he foreknows the future is the most obvious madness. When he himself saw this, he also attempted what is written, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God,’” but not in his own person. For he saw how odious and troublesome it would be, and so he made Cotta argue on this subject against the Stoics in his books On the Nature of the Gods, and preferred to give his verdict for Lucilius Balbus, to whom he gave the defense of the Stoic side, rather than for Cotta, who contends that there is no divine nature. But in his books On Divination he attacks the foreknowledge of the future quite openly in his own person. He seems to do all this so as not to admit that fate exists and so lose free will. For he thinks that once knowledge of the future is granted, fate follows so necessarily that it cannot be denied at all. But however the most tortuous debates and disputations of the philosophers may stand, we, as we confess the supreme and true God, so also confess his will, supreme power, and foreknowledge; and we do not fear that we do not do by our will what we do by our will, because he whose foreknowledge cannot be deceived foreknew that we would do it. This is what Cicero feared, so that he attacked foreknowledge; and the Stoics, so that they said that not all things happen by necessity, though they contended that all things happen by fate. What was it, then, that Cicero feared in the foreknowledge of the future, that he strove to undermine it by a detestable argument? Evidently this: if all future things are foreknown, they will come in the order in which they were foreknown to come; and if they will come in this order, the order of things is certain to God who foreknows it; and if the order of things is certain, the order of causes is certain, for nothing can happen which some efficient cause has not preceded; but if the order of causes by which everything that happens happens is certain, then, he says, all things that happen happen by fate. If this is so, nothing is in our power and there is no choice of the will; and if we grant this, he says, all human life is overturned: laws are given in vain, rebukes, praises, blame, and exhortations are applied in vain, and there is no justice in the rewards appointed for the good and the punishments for the evil. So, lest these consequences follow, unworthy, absurd, and ruinous to human affairs, he will not have foreknowledge of the future; and he forces the religious mind into this strait, that it must choose one of two: either that something is in our will, or that there is foreknowledge of the future, since he thinks both cannot be, but if one is established the other is removed: if we choose foreknowledge of the future, the choice of the will is removed; if we choose the choice of the will, foreknowledge of the future is removed. So he, as a great and learned man who took the greatest and most skilled thought for human life, chose of these two the free choice of the will; and to confirm it he denied the foreknowledge of the future; and so, while wishing to make men free, he made them sacrilegious. The religious mind, however, chooses both, confesses both, and confirms both by the faith of piety. “How?” he says. “For if there is foreknowledge of the future, all those connected steps follow until one comes to this, that nothing is in our will. And again, if anything is in our will, by going back through the same steps one comes to this, that there is no foreknowledge of the future.” For one goes back through them all thus: if there is choice of the will, not all things happen by fate; if not all things happen by fate, there is no certain order of all causes; if there is no certain order of causes, neither is there a certain order of things for God who foreknows, since they cannot happen except by preceding and efficient causes; if the order of things is not certain for God who foreknows, not all things come as he foreknew they would come; and if not all things come as they were foreknown by him to come, then, he says, there is not in God foreknowledge of all future things. Against these sacrilegious and impious attempts we say both that God knows all things before they happen, and that we do by our will whatever we feel and know is done by us only because we will it. But we do not say that all things happen by fate; rather we say that nothing happens by fate, since we show that the name of fate, where it is usually used by speakers, that is, of the arrangement of the stars when someone is conceived or born, means nothing, because the thing itself is asserted to no purpose. The order of causes, however, in which the will of God has the greatest power, we neither deny nor call by the word fate, unless perhaps we understand fatum as derived from fari, that is, from speaking. For we cannot deny that it is written in the holy Scriptures: “God has spoken once; these two things I have heard: that power belongs to God, and to you, O Lord, mercy, who render to each according to his works.” For when it is said, “He has spoken once,” it is understood that he spoke immovably, that is, unchangeably, just as he knows unchangeably all things that will be and that he himself will do. On this reasoning, then, we could call it fate from fari, were it not that this name is already usually understood of something else, toward which we do not want human hearts to be inclined. But it does not follow that, if the order of all causes is certain to God, nothing is therefore in the choice of our will. For our wills themselves are in the order of causes, which is certain to God and contained in his foreknowledge, since human wills too are the causes of human works. And so he who foreknew all the causes of things could certainly not be ignorant of our wills among those causes, which he foreknew to be the causes of our works. For even what Cicero himself concedes, that nothing happens unless an efficient cause precedes, is enough to refute him in this question. For what does it help him to say that nothing indeed happens without a cause, but that not every cause is fatal, since there is a chance cause, a natural cause, a voluntary cause? It is enough that he confesses that everything that happens happens only by a preceding cause. For we say that those causes that are called chance, from which fortune also took its name, are not nonexistent but hidden, and we attribute them either to the will of the true God or to that of any spirits whatever; and the natural causes themselves we by no means separate from the will of him who is the author and founder of all nature. Voluntary causes, again, belong either to God or to angels or to men or to any animals, if indeed those motions of souls lacking reason by which they do certain things according to their nature, when they seek or avoid something, are to be called wills. I speak of the wills of angels, whether good ones, whom we call angels of God, or evil ones, whom we call angels of the devil or demons; and likewise of men, both good and evil. And from this it is gathered that there are no efficient causes of all that happens except voluntary ones, that is, of that nature which is the spirit of life. For this air or wind is also called spirit; but since it is a body, it is not the spirit of life. The spirit of life, then, which gives life to all things and is the creator of every body and every created spirit, is God himself, the uncreated spirit. In his will is the supreme power, which helps the good wills of created spirits, judges the evil ones, orders them all, and gives powers to some and not to others. For as he is the creator of all natures, so he is the giver of all powers, but not of wills. For evil wills are not from him, since they are against nature, which is from him. Bodies, therefore, are rather subject to wills: some to ours, that is, to those of all mortal living things, and more to men's than to beasts'; some to the wills of angels; but all are above all subject to the will of God, to whom all wills too are subject, since they have no power except what he grants. So the cause of things that makes and is not made is God; other causes both make and are made, as are all created spirits, above all the rational ones. Bodily causes, which are made rather than make, are not to be counted among efficient causes, since they can do only what the wills of spirits do through them. How then does the order of causes, which is certain to God who foreknows it, bring it about that nothing is in our will, when our wills have a great place in that very order of causes? Let Cicero contend, then, with those who say that this order of causes is fatal, or rather call it by the name of fate, which we abhor chiefly because of the word, which is not usually understood of anything real. But inasmuch as he denies that the order of all causes is most certain and fully known to the foreknowledge of God, we detest him more than the Stoics do. For either he denies that God exists, which indeed he tried to do by introducing another person in his books On the Nature of the Gods; or, if he confesses that God exists while denying that he foreknows the future, even so he says nothing else than what that fool said in his heart: “There is no God.” For one who does not foreknow all future things is certainly not God. Therefore our wills too have as much power as God willed and foreknew them to have; and so whatever power they have, they have most certainly, and what they are going to do, they themselves will certainly do, because he whose foreknowledge cannot be deceived foreknew that they would have the power and would do it. So if I chose to apply the name of fate to anything, I would rather say that fate is the will of the more powerful over the weaker, who has him in his power, than that the choice of our will is taken away by that order of causes which the Stoics call fate, not in the ordinary way but in their own.

Chapter 10. Whether any necessity rules over the wills of men.

So neither is that necessity to be feared, for fear of which the Stoics labored to distinguish the causes of things, withdrawing some from necessity and subjecting others, and among those they wished to be under necessity they also placed our wills, lest they should not be free if they were subject to necessity. For if we are to call necessity that which is not in our power, but brings about what it can even if we are unwilling, like the necessity of death, it is clear that our wills, by which we live rightly or wrongly, are not under such a necessity. For we do many things which, if we were unwilling, we would certainly not do. To this belongs first of all willing itself; for if we will, it is; if we do not will, it is not; for we would not will if we were unwilling. But if necessity is defined as that according to which we say it is necessary that something be so or happen so, I do not know why we should fear that it takes away the freedom of our will. For we do not put the life of God and the foreknowledge of God under necessity if we say that it is necessary that God always live and foreknow all things; just as his power is not diminished when it is said that he cannot die or be deceived. For he cannot do this in such a way that, if he could, he would certainly be of lesser power. He is rightly called almighty, though he cannot die or be deceived. For he is called almighty by doing what he wills, not by suffering what he does not will; if this happened to him he would by no means be almighty. So there are certain things he cannot do precisely because he is almighty. So also when we say that it is necessary that when we will, we will by free choice, we certainly speak the truth, and we do not thereby subject free choice itself to the necessity that takes away freedom. Our wills, then, are ours, and they themselves do whatever we do by willing, which would not happen if we were unwilling. And whatever anyone suffers against his will by the will of other men, even so it is will that has power, though not his will but another man's; yet the power is God's. For if there were only a will, and it could not do what it willed, it would be hindered by a more powerful will; and even so the will would be nothing but a will, and would be not another's but his who willed, even if he could not carry out what he willed. So whatever a man suffers against his own will he ought not to attribute to the wills of men or angels or any created spirit, but rather to the will of him who gives power to those who will. It is not true, then, that nothing is in our will because God foreknew what would be in our will. For he who foreknew this did not foreknow nothing. And if he who foreknew what would be in our will foreknew not nothing but something, then certainly, even with him foreknowing, something is in our will. Therefore we are in no way compelled either to keep the foreknowledge of God and take away the choice of the will, or to keep the choice of the will and deny (which is impious) that God foreknows the future; but we embrace both, we confess both faithfully and truly: the one that we may believe rightly, the other that we may live rightly. And one lives badly if one does not believe rightly about God. So far be it from us to deny his foreknowledge in order to will freely, since it is by his help that we are or shall be free. Therefore laws, rebukes, exhortations, praises, and blame are not in vain, because he foreknew that they too would be, and they have great power, as much as he foreknew they would have; and prayers have power to obtain the things he foreknew he would grant to those who pray; and rewards have justly been appointed for good deeds and punishments for sins. For a man does not sin because God foreknew that he would sin; on the contrary, it is beyond doubt that he himself sins when he sins, because he whose foreknowledge cannot be deceived foreknew that not fate, not fortune, not anything else, but he himself would sin. If he is unwilling, he certainly does not sin; but if he is unwilling to sin, God foreknew this too.

Chapter 11. On the universal providence of God, by whose laws all things are held together.

Therefore the supreme and true God, with his Word and the Holy Spirit, which three are one, one God almighty, creator and maker of every soul and every body; by participation in whom all are happy who are happy in truth and not in vanity; who made man a rational animal of soul and body; who, when he sinned, neither let him go unpunished nor abandoned him without mercy; who gave to good and evil being in common with stones, seminal life in common with trees, sensitive life in common with beasts, intellectual life in common with the angels alone; from whom is every mode, every form, every order; from whom is measure, number, weight; from whom is whatever exists by nature, of whatever kind, of whatever worth; from whom are the seeds of forms, the forms of seeds, the movements of seeds and forms; who gave to flesh its origin, beauty, health, fruitfulness in propagation, arrangement of members, and the soundness of their harmony; who gave to the irrational soul memory, sense, and appetite, and to the rational soul in addition mind, understanding, and will; who has not left heaven and earth, nor angel and man, nor even the inward parts of the smallest and most contemptible animal, nor the feather of a bird, nor the little flower of a plant, nor the leaf of a tree, without a harmony of its parts and a kind of peace: this God can in no way be believed to have wished the kingdoms of men, their dominions and their servitudes, to be outside the laws of his providence.