Read City of God (Penguin Classics) Online
Authors: Saint Augustine
5. Many things
are to be believed
though not
susceptible of
rational
proof
In spite of all this, the unbelievers demand a rational proof from us when we proclaim the miracles of God in the past and his marvellous works that are still to come, which we cannot present to the experience of the unbelievers. And since we cannot supply this rational proof of those matters (for they are beyond the powers of the human mind) the unbelievers assume that our statements are false, whereas they themselves ought to supply a rational explanation of all those amazing phenomena which we observe, or at any rate are able to observe. And if they see that this is beyond man’s capacity, they should admit that the fact that a rational explanation cannot be given for something does not mean that it could not have happened in the past, or that it could not happen in the future, seeing that there are these things in the present which are equally insusceptible of rational explanation.
And so I shall not proceed to give a list of the very many marvels which are not matters of past history, but still are existing in various places; anyone who has the will and the opportunity of going to those places may go to find out whether they are truly reported. I shall mention just a few of them.
We are told that the salt of Agrigentum in Sicily melts when put in the fire as if in water: when put in water it crackles as if in the fire. The Garamantes have a spring so cold in the day that it is un-drinkable, and so hot at night as to be untouchable. There is another remarkable spring, in Epirus; like other springs it extinguishes a lighted torch which is plunged into it: but unlike the other springs, it rekindles an extinguished torch. The asbestos of Arcadia gets its name from the fact that, once kindled, it cannot be put out.
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There is a kind of fig-tree in Egypt whose wood has the unique property of sinking in water instead of floating; and, what is more astonishing, when it has been for some time at the bottom of the water it rises again to appear on the surface, when it ought to have become sodden and so heavier through the weight of water. In the land of Sodom there are apples that grow and come to an appearance of ripeness; but if you test them by biting into them or by pressing them they burst open and disappear into dust and ashes.
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The pyrites stone of Persia, if pressed hard, burns the hand that holds it (that is why it is called ‘the fire stone’, from
pyr
, the Greek for ‘fire’). In Persia there is also another stone, selenite, with a white inner part which waxes and wanes with the moon. In Cappadocia the mares conceive with the wind, but their foals live for only three years at most. Tylon, an island of India, has this superiority over other countries, that none of the trees which grow there is ever stripped of its covering of foliage.
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These and other innumerable marvels are to be found not in the records of things past and done but in the accounts of places in the present world. It would take too long to pursue them all, and I have other business in hand; but the unbelievers should give a rational account of them, if they can, since they refuse to believe the inspired Scriptures. They say that they refuse to believe in the divine inspiration of the Scriptures just because of the incredible statements contained in them, such as the matter on which I am now engaged.
For reason, in their contention, utterly forbids us to suppose that flesh can bum without being consumed; that it can feel pain, and yet not die. Rational thinkers They are, to be sure, of great ability! They can give a rational explanation of all those phenomena universally agreed to be marvellous! Then let them rationalize these few examples which I have quoted; for, without a shadow of doubt, if they had been unaware of their existence, and we had said that they were to happen in the future, they would have been much less ready to believe in them than they are to believe us when we speak about the coming judgement. In fact, would any of them believe us if, instead of saying that there will be living bodies of men which are destined to burn and feel pain for ever, without ever dying, we had said that in a future age there would be salt which fire would cause to dissolve as if in water, whereas water would cause it to crackle as if in fire; or that there would be a spring whose water became so hot in the cool of the night as to be untouchable, and so cold in the heat of the day as to be undrinkable; or that there would be a stone whose heat would burn the hand of anyone who squeezed it, or another stone which when set on fire could not be extinguished by any means; or if we spoke of any of the other wonders which I considered worth mentioning just now, passing over countless other marvels? If we had said that those wonders were to happen in that age which is still to come and if those sceptics had replied, ‘If you want us to believe all this, give us a rational explanation in each case’, we should have admitted our inability to do so, simply because the feeble reasoning powers of mortal minds are defeated by these, as by other similar wonderful works of God. And yet we should have maintained that our rational belief was unshaken, that the Almighty does not act irrationally in cases where the feeble human mind cannot give a rational explanation; and that in many matters, certainly, we are uncertain of God’s will; and yet one thing is utterly certain, that nothing that he wills is impossible for him, for we cannot believe that God is impotent, or that God is a liar. Nevertheless, though those unbelievers cavil at our faith and demand rational explanations, what reply have they when faced with those marvels, for which the human reason can supply no explanation, but which certainly exist and seem to contradict the rational order of nature? If we said that they were to occur in the future, a rational explanation would be demanded from us by the unbelievers just as they demand it for those events which we do assert as destined to happen in the future. Accordingly, since the fact that, in the case of those works of God, the reasoning powers of the human heart and
mind are baffled does not mean that such marvels do not exist, so we must not infer that those future events will not occur simply because the human mind cannot supply a rational explanation of them, any more than of the others.
6. Not all marvels
are natural: many are devised
by
man’s ingenuity, many
by the
craft of demons
At this point, it may be, our opponents will answer, ‘Of course, all those marvels have no reality: we do not believe a word of them. The tales about them, and the records of them, are all lies.’ And they may go on to add their arguments, and say, ‘If those tales are to be believed, then you should also believe the story, told in the same source, that there was, and still is, a shrine of Venus, with a lampstand in it, and in the lampstand a lamp which burns under the open sky so steadily that no storm of wind or rain could ever put it out;
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and hence, like the stone you mentioned, it is called the
Lychnos asbestos
.‘the inextinguishable lamp’. It is quite possible that they will make this objection, and their purpose will be to confront us with a dilemma: if we say that this story is not to be believed, we shall weaken the authority of the records of marvels we quoted, whereas if we admit its credibility, we shall be supporting the power of the pagan gods. But, as I said in the eighteenth book of this work,
13
we are not obliged to believe everything contained in the historical records of the pagans, since their chroniclers, as Varro declares, seem to be at pains to differ from one another – apparently of set purpose! But we are free to believe, if we so choose, those reports which are not in conflict with the books which, as we have no doubt, we are obliged to believe. Now in the matter of these marvels we may content ourselves with those which we can find in our own experience and those for which there is no difficulty in finding adequate evidence. These should be sufficient for our purpose, to persuade the unbelievers of those events which are to come. As for this shrine of Venus and its ‘inextinguishable lamp’, not only does it fail to constrict us in our argument; it actually opens up a wider field for us. For we can add to that inextinguishable lamp a host of other marvels of human and of magical origin – that is, miracles of the demon’s black arts performed by men, and miracles performed by the demons themselves. If we choose to deny the reality of
these, we shall ourselves be in conflict with the truth of the sacred books in which we believe. Thus either human ingenuity has devised in that inextinguishable lamp some contrivance based on the asbestos stone; or else it was contrived by magic art to give men something to marvel at in that shrine; or perhaps some demon presented himself there under the name of Venus with such effect that this prodigy was displayed to the public there and continued there for so many years. For the demons are enticed to take up their abodes by the action of created beings, created not by them, but by God; they are attracted by a wide variety of baits, proportionate to the wide variety of demons, not by food, as animals are enticed, but as spirits they are allured by tokens – designed to suit their different tastes – in the shape of various kinds of stones, plants, pieces of wood, animals, spells and ceremonies.
The demons, for their part, seek to ensure that they will be so enticed by men; and they do this by first misleading human beings by their subtle cleverness, either by breathing a secret poison into their hearts, or even by appearing to them in the deceptive guise of friends, making a few of them disciples of their own, and teachers of very many others. For it would be impossible for men to discover, without previous instruction from the demons themselves, the different likes and aversions of the various demons, the names by which they are to be invoked or compelled to do man’s will. Hence comes the first appearance of the magic arts and their practitioners. But their most effective hold upon the hearts of mortals (and it is in the possession of them that they especially glory) is gained when they transform themselves into angels of light.
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We see then that their activities are very numerous, and the more we acknowledge the marvel of them the more careful we should be to avoid them. And yet those activities actually prove a help to us towards the achievement of our present task. For if the foul demons have such power, how much greater is the power of the holy angels, and how much greater than all of them is the power of God, who has given even the angels themselves the ability to work such great miracles.
Thus God’s created beings can, by the use of human arts, effect so many marvels, which they call
mêchanêmata
(contrivances), of a nature so astounding that those unfamiliar with them would suppose them to be the works of God himself. That is how in one of the temples an image of iron hung suspended in mid-air between two
loadstones of the required size, fastened, one in the floor, the other in the roof, suggesting to those who did not know what was above and beneath the image that it hung there by an exercise of divine power;
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and we have already said that something of this sort may have been effected by some craftsman in the case of the well-known ‘Lamp of Venus’ by the use of the asbestos stone. And it seems that the demons can raise the operations of the magicians (our Scriptures call them ‘sorcerers’ and ‘enchanters’) to such a pitch of efficiency that Virgil, that famous poet, thought himself to be in harmony with the general sense of mankind when he wrote these lines about a woman who was a great mistress of that kind of art:
She promises with spells to soothe man’s mind,
If she so will, or to inflict harsh sorrow;
To stop the flow of rivers, turn the stars
Back on their course. She will arouse the spirits
That haunt the night; and you will feel the earth
Groaning beneath your feet, and from the mountains
Behold the trees descending to the plain.
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Now, if all this be true, how much more has God the power to achieve things incredible to the unbeliever but easy to his omnipotence, seeing that he himself endowed stones and other substances with their wonderful properties, and that he it is who bestowed on man the wit to employ those properties in marvellous ways, and gave to the angels a nature with powers surpassing those of all living creatures on earth. And all this he did with a power whose wonder exceeds all wonders taken together, with a wisdom shown in the wonders he performs, in those which he orders, in those which he permits; and the use he makes of his creation is as wonderful as the act of creation itself.
7.
The omnipotence of the Creator is the ground of belief in marvels
Then why should not God have power to make the bodies of the dead rise again, and the bodies of the damned to suffer torment in the everlasting fire, since he made the world so full of innumerable marvels in the sky, on the earth, in the air, and in the water – although the world itself is beyond doubt a marvel greater and more wonderful than all the wonders with which it is filled? But these rationalists with whom, or rather against whom, we are now engaged, also believe in the existence of God, by whom the world was made; and
they believe in gods created by him, through whose agency he governs the world; and either they do not deny or else they go further and openly proclaim that there are powers in the universe which effect marvels, whether produced spontaneously or obtained by the performance of some kind of rite or ceremony, or even achieved by magic arts.
And yet, when we put before them an instance of some wonderful property displayed by other substances which are neither rational living creatures nor spirits endowed with any kind of reason (the kind of thing of which I have mentioned a few instances), then their usual reply is, ‘This is the force of nature; this is their natural quality; these are the special properties of their natural substances.’ This, then, is the complete rational explanation! This explains why flame makes the salt of Agrigentum fluid, while water makes it crackle –because that is its nature! And yet this appears to be in. fact contrary to nature; for nature has given to salt the property of dissolving in water, and to fire, and not to water, the property of drying. ‘Ah yes’, they say, ‘but it is the natural property of this particular salt to display these contrary effects.’ Very good. Then this is the rational explanation offered in the case of the spring of Garamantum, where the same source is cold in the daytime and boiling hot at night, both properties causing distress to those who touch; and it applies also to that other spring which is cold to the touch and, like other springs, extinguishes a burning torch, and yet, unlike other springs, and miraculously, it also rekindles the torch it has put out; and to the asbestos stone, which has no fire of its own, and yet, when it has received fire, blazes so fiercely with a fire not its own that it cannot be quenched; and to other marvels besides which it would be tedious to go over. Although they may seem to display an inherent property which is unexampled and contrary to nature, the only rational explanation that is offered is, ‘That is their nature’! A good short answer, to be sure! A sufficient reason, indeed!
But since God is the author of all natures, why do they object to our supplying a stronger reason? For when they refuse to believe something, alleging its impossibility, and demand that we supply a rational explanation, we reply that the explanation is the will of Almighty God. For God is certainly called ‘Almighty’ for one reason only; that he has the power to do whatever he wills, and he has the power to create so many things which would be reckoned obviously impossible, if they were not displayed to our senses or else reported by witnesses who have always proved reliable; and this applies not only
to phenomena very unfamiliar to us but even to the most familiar instances I have quoted. As for the accounts which have no supporting evidence beyond the statements of the authors of the books in which we read them, and which are written by authors not instructed by divine inspiration and therefore susceptible, perhaps, to human delusion, it is open to anyone to withhold belief from them, and no one can justly be blamed for so doing.
For myself, indeed, I do not wish all the instances I have quoted to be believed without question; I myself do not believe them all implicitly, in the sense of having no doubt at all in my mind, apart from those of which I have had personal experience, or which can easily be put to the proof by anyone at all. Examples of these are: the fact that lime grows hot in water, and remains cold in oil; that the loadstone by some insensible power of suction attracts iron, though it will not stir a straw; that the flesh of a peacock does not putrefy, whereas Plato’s body decayed; that chaff is cool, in the sense that it keeps snow from melting, and warm, in the sense that it brings apples to ripeness; that a bright fire bakes stones to a shining whiteness appropriate to its own brilliance, while it bums most things to a dusky hue quite contrary to that brilliance. There is a similar paradox in the fact that dark stains are spread from shining oil, and likewise dark lines are imprinted by gleaming silver, and That in some substances blazing fire effects a reversal of their qualities: beautiful woods become unsightly, durable timber becomes brittle, and timber liable to rot is made resistant to decay.
I have personal knowledge of these facts, some of which are known to all, others to most people; and there are a great many other such facts which it would be tedious to insert in this book. However, with regard to the instances I quoted from my reading and not from my own experience, I have not been able to find any reliable witnesses to establish the truth of these stories, except for the report about the spring in which burning torches are extinguished and then relit, and the account of the apples of Sodom, which look ripe on the outside but inside are full of smoke. In fact in the case of that spring I have not found any witnesses to declare that they have seen it in Epirus, but I have encountered people who know a similar fountain in Gaul, not far from Grenoble. The apples of Sodom, on the other hand, are attested not only in literary sources worthy of credence, but also by many who talk of them from personal experience; and so I cannot doubt the truth of the report.
As for the other stories, my position is that I have decided that I
should neither affirm nor deny their truth; but I have quoted them along with the others for the very reason that I have read them in authorities from the side of our antagonists. My purpose here is to demonstrate the kind of marvels recorded in profusion in pagan literature and generally believed by our opponents, although no rational explanation is offered, whereas the same people cannot bring themselves to believe us, even though rational grounds are produced, when we say that Almighty God is to perform an act which lies outside their experience and contravenes the evidence of their senses. For what better reason or more valid ground could be given in such matters than when the assertion that the Almighty can achieve this result and the statement that he is going to achieve it is supported by the written evidence that he has foretold this achievement, evidence contained in books in which he foretold many other acts which he is proved to have performed? He will certainly effect what are supposed to be impossibilities, because he has foretold that he will do so; for in the past he has fulfilled his promises and has thus ensured belief in things that passed belief, even from nations that refused belief.