Read City of God (Penguin Classics) Online
Authors: Saint Augustine
8.
How God’s rest on the seventh day is to be understood
When ‘God rested on the seventh day from all his works, and sanctified that day’, this is not to be understood in any childish way, as if God had toiled at his work, seeing that ‘he spoke and they were made’
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by a word which was intelligible and eternal, not vocal and temporal. No, the ‘rest of God’ means the rest of those who find their rest in him, just as ‘the joy of a house’ means the joy of those who rejoice in that house – even if it is not the house itself but something else which is responsible for the joy. How much more appropriate it would be if in fact the house itself were to make the inhabitants glad by reason of its beauty. In that case the house would be called joyful not by the figure of speech in which the container stands for the contents (as in ‘the theatre applauds’, when it is the audience that applauds, or ‘the pastures are lowing’, when it is the cattle that are
calling) but by the figure in which the efficient cause stands for the effect – as in ‘a glad letter’, meaning a letter which makes the readers glad.
And so it is most appropriate that when God is said, on the authority of the prophetic narrative, to have ‘rested’, what is meant is the rest of those who find their rest in him, and to whom he gives rest. The prophecy promises this to men also, for it speaks to men, and was in fact written for men’s benefit. It promises them that they also, after the good works which God performs in them and through them, will have eternal rest in him, if they have already in some measure drawn near to him already in this life, through faith. For this promise is prefigured also by the Sabbath cessation from work in God’s ancient people, in obedience to the instructions of the Law. But I think that I must discuss this more fully in its own place.
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9.
The scriptural evidence about angels
I have undertaken to treat of the origin of the Holy City, and I have decided that I must first deal with the subject of the holy angels. They form the greater part of that City, and the more blessed part, in that they have never been on pilgrimage in a strange land; and I shall be at pains to explain, with God’s aid, the information given on this subject in the inspired testimonies of Scripture, as far as shall seem sufficient. When the sacred writings tell of the making of the world, there is no explicit statement about whether the angels were created, or in what order they were created. But if they were not passed over in the narrative, they were referred to either under the name of ‘heaven’, when it is said that ‘in the beginning God created heaven and earth’, or, more probably, under the name of the ‘light’, about which I have been speaking.
I do not think that the angels were passed over, for this reason: that the Scripture says that God rested on the seventh day from all the works that he had done, while the whole book starts with the statement, ‘In the beginning God made heaven and earth.’ He began with heaven and earth, and the earth itself, which he made first, was, according to the next statement in Scripture, ‘invisible and disordered’ and, because light had not yet been created, ‘darkness was over the abyss’, that is, over a kind of confused and indistinct mass of land and water – since there must needs be darkness where light does not exist; then all things were set in order by God’s creative act, all the things
which, in the narrative, were completed in the course of the six days. How, then, could the angels have been passed over, as though they were not among those works, from which God rested on the seventh day?
Now although the fact that angels are a work of God is not passed over in this narrative, it is not explicitly stated: but in other places the holy Scripture testifies to the fact with the utmost clarity. For the hymn of the three men in the furnace starts with the words, ‘Bless the Lord, all you works of the Lord’;
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and in the enumeration of his works the angels are included. And in one of the psalms there are these verses:
Praise the Lord from the heavens, praise him in the heights. Praise him, all his angels: praise him, all his powers. Praise him, sun and moon: praise him, all stars and light. Praise him heaven of heavens; and the waters which are above the heavens, let them praise the Lord. For he spoke, and things were made: he gave the command, and they were created.
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Will anyone now venture to suppose that the angels were created after all those things which were enumerated in the six days? However, if anyone is silly enough for this, he is refuted by another passage in Scripture, of equal authority, where God says, ‘When the stars were made, all my angels praised me with a loud voice.’
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That shows that angels already existed when the stars were made. Now the stars were created on the fourth day. Are we then to say that the angels were made on the third day? Most certainly not. For it is quite plain what was made on that day; the land was separated from the waters, and each of the two elements took on its characteristic and distinct appearance; and the dry land produced all that has its roots in it. On the second day, then? No, indeed. For then the firmament was made between the upper and lower waters, and was called ‘heaven’; this is the firmament in which the stars were made on the fourth day. The obvious conclusion is that if the angels are among the works of God of those days, they are that light which received the name of ‘day’. And the unity of that day is underlined by its not being called ‘the first day’, but ‘one day’. Thus the second day, and the third, and the rest are not different days; the same ‘one day’ was repeated to complete the number of six or seven, to represent the seven stages of knowledge, the six stages comprehending the created works, and the seventh stage embracing God’s rest.
For when God said, ‘Let there be light’, and light was created, then,
if we are right in interpreting this as including the creation of the angels, they immediately become partakers of the eternal light, which is the unchanging Wisdom of God, the agent of God’s whole creation; and this Wisdom we call the only begotten Son of God. Thus the angels, illuminated by that light by which they were created, themselves became light, and are called ‘day’, by participation in the changeless light and day, which is the Word of God, through whom they themselves and all other things were made. This is ‘the true light, which illuminates every man as he comes into this world’;
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and this light illuminates every pure angel, so that he is not light in himself, but in God. If an angel turns away from God he becomes impure: and such are all those who are called ‘impure spirits’. They are no longer ‘light in the Lord’;
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they have become in themselves darkness, deprived of participation in the eternal light. For evil is not a positive substance: the loss of good has been given the name of ‘evil’.
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10.
In the Trinity quality and substance are the same
There is then one sole Good, which is simple, and therefore unchangeable; and that is God. By this Good all good things were created; but they are not simple, and for that reason they are changeable. They are, I say,
created
, that is to say, they are made, not begotten. For what is begotten by the simple Good is itself equally simple, identical in nature with its begetter: and these two, the begetter and the begotten, we call the Father and the Son; and these two, with their Spirit, are one God; and this Spirit is called, in holy Scripture, the ‘Holy Spirit’ of the Father and the Son, ‘Holy’ being used with special significance, as a kind of proper name. Now the Spirit is other than the Father and the Son, since he is not the Father or the Son; but I said ‘other’, not ‘another thing’, because this Good also is equally simple, equally changeless, and co-eternal. This Trinity is one God; the fact that it is a Trinity does not mean that it is not simple. For when we speak of this Good as being by nature simple, we do not mean that it consists solely of the Father, or solely of the Son, or solely of the Holy Spirit, or that there is really only a nominal Trinity, without subsistent Persons; that is the notion of the Sabellian heretics.
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What is
meant by ‘simple’ is that its being is identical with its attributes, apart from the relation in which each person is said to stand to each other. For the Father of course has the Son; and yet he himself is not the Son; and the Son has the Father; and yet he himself is not the Father. But when each is regarded in himself, not in relation to the other, his being is identical with his attributes. Thus each in himself is said to be living, because he
has
life; and at the same time he himself is life.
The reason why a nature is called simple is that it cannot lose any attribute it possesses, that there is no difference between what it is and what it
has
, as there is, for example, between a vessel and the liquid it contains, a body and its colour, the atmosphere and its light or heat, the soul and its wisdom. None of these is what it contains; the vessel is not the liquid, nor the body the colour, nor the atmosphere the light or heat; nor is the soul the same as its wisdom. Hence things of this sort may be deprived of what they have, and adopt other qualities and different attributes; the full vessel may be emptied of its liquid, the body lose its colour, the atmosphere become dark or cold, the soul become stupid. And even if a body is incorruptible, such a body as is promised to the saints at the resurrection, still, although this quality of incorruptibility is something which cannot be lost, the body is not identical with this incorruptibility, since the corporal substance remains. For this quality is entire in all the different parts of the body; it does not differ in intensity from one part to another, no part is more incorruptible than any other; although some parts of the body are bigger than others, they are not more incorruptible. Thus the body, which is not in each of its parts the entire body, is different from its incorruptibility, which is everywhere entire, because each part of the incorruptible body is equally incorruptible, in spite of inequality in other respects. For example, a finger is smaller than the whole hand: but that does not mean that the hand is more incorruptible than a finger; hand and finger may be unequal, but their incorruptibility is the same.
It follows that although incorruptibility is a quality inseparable from an incorruptible body, the substance in virtue of which it is called a body is other than the quality from which it derives the epithet incorruptible. And so even in this case,
being
and
attribute
are not the same. Further, the soul itself, even though it may be always wise – as it will be, when it is set free for all eternity – will be wise through participation in the changeless Wisdom, which is other than itself. For even if the atmosphere were never bereft of the light which is shed on it, there would still be the difference between its being and
the light by which it is illuminated. (Now I do not mean by this to give the impression that the soul is air,
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as has been the notion of some thinkers, who could not conceive of an immaterial substance. But there is a certain similarity between the two, in spite of a great disparity, which makes it quite appropriate to speak of the illumination of the immaterial soul by the immaterial light of the simple Wisdom of God, in terms of the illumination of the material atmosphere by the material light. For the darkness of the atmosphere is due to loss of light – for when we talk of the darkness of any locality in the material world we are in fact referring to atmosphere deprived of light – and so we naturally speak of the ‘darkening’ of the soul when it is deprived of the light of Wisdom.)
Accordingly, the epithet ‘simple’ applies to things which are in the fullest and truest sense divine, because in them there is no difference between substance and quality, and their divinity, wisdom and blessedness is not acquired by participation in that of others. On the other hand, it is said in the holy Scriptures that the Spirit of Wisdom is ‘multiple’,
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in that it has many qualities in itself; but the Spirit’s being is identical with its qualities, and all those qualities are one Person. For there are not many wisdoms, but one Wisdom, the storehouse, we may say, of things intelligible, of the riches which are infinite and yet confined to that Wisdom. And in that storehouse are contained all the invisible and unchanging causes of things visible and changing, which were created by the operation of Wisdom. Now God created nothing in ignorance, in fact the same could be truly said of any human craftsman. Then it is evident that if God created knowingly, he created things which he already knew. This suggests a thought which is surprising, but true; that this world could not be known to us, if it did not exist, whereas it could not have existed, if it had not been known to God.
11.
Did the apostate spirits share the bliss of the holy angels at the beginning
?
If this is so, the spirits whom we call angels can never have been darkness during any period in the past; as soon as they were created, they were made light. Yet they were not created merely to exist and live in any sort of way; they were given illumination so as to live in
wisdom and bliss. But there were some angels who turned away from this illumination, and so did not attain to the excellence of a life of wisdom and bliss, which must of necessity be eternal, and certainly assured of its eternity. These angels have a life of reason, though not of wisdom, and they cannot lose this, even if they wish. Who can say with certainty how far they were partakers of that Wisdom, before their fall? How can we say that they were on an equality with those angels who truly enjoy the fullness of bliss, because they are thoroughly assured of the eternity of their blessedness? How can we say this, when if they had had an equal share in that Wisdom those fallen spirits would have continued in that eternity, equally blessed, because equally assured of bliss? For life, however long it may last, cannot truly be called eternal, if it is going to have an end. It is called life because of the fact of living, but the epithet ‘eternal’ is given by reason of its having no end. For this reason, although it is not true that everything eternal is necessarily blessed (for the fire of punishment is said to be eternal), nevertheless, if life cannot be truly and completely blessed unless it is eternal, then the life of those spirits was not of this kind, since it was destined to come to an end, and therefore could not be eternal. And so their life could not be truly blessed, whether they knew that it must end, or in their ignorance imagined otherwise. In neither case could they enjoy felicity because fear would prevent it, if they knew their end, while if they did not know it, bliss would not be compatible with error. And if their ignorance meant that they placed no trust in deception and uncertainties, but hovered uncertainly between the expectation of an end to their good and the hope of its eternity, without reaching a firm conviction, that situation would preclude the full enjoyment of bliss which we believe to be the lot of the holy angels. For we do not confine the word ‘beatitude’ within such narrow limits of connotation as to ascribe it only to God, although he is so truly blessed that no greater beatitude is possible. In comparison with the beatitude of God, what is the quality or extent of the bliss of the angels, though they reach the summit of the felicity which is possible to angels?