Read City of God (Penguin Classics) Online
Authors: Saint Augustine
For God would never have created a man, let alone an angel, in the foreknowledge of his future evil state, if he had not known at the same time how he would put such creatures to good use, and thus enrich the course of the world history by the kind of antithesis which gives beauty to a poem. ‘Antithesis’ provides the most attractive figures in literary composition: the Latin equivalent is ‘opposition’, or, more accurately, ‘contra-position’. The Apostle Paul makes elegant use of antithesis in developing a passage in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians,
By means of the arms of righteousness on right hand and left; through glory and ignominy, through infamy and high renown; as deceivers and yet truthful; as unknown and well-known; as dying, and here we are, alive; as punished, and yet not put to death; as full of grief, but always joyful; as in poverty, and yet enriching many others; as having nothing, while possessing everything.
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The opposition of such contraries gives an added beauty to speech; and in the same way there is beauty in the composition of the world’s history arising from the antithesis of contraries – a kind of eloquence in events, instead of in words. This point is made very clearly in the book Ecclesiasticus, ‘Good confronts evil, life confronts death: so the sinner confronts the devout. And in this way you should observe all the works of the Most High; two by two; one confronting the other.’
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19.
The meaning of the text; ‘God made a division between light and darkness’
There is something to be gained from the obscurity of the inspired discourses of Scripture. The differing interpretations produce many truths and bring them to the light of knowledge; and the meaning of an obscure passage may be established either by the plain evidence of the facts, or by other passages of less difficulty. Sometimes the variety of suggestions leads to the discovery of the meaning of the writer; sometimes this meaning remains obscure, but the discussion of the difficulties is the occasion for the statement of some other truths. Although this is true, I do not think it would be out of harmony with the ways of God’s working to suggest that, assuming the creation of the first light to refer to the creation of the angels,
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the distinction between the holy and the unclean angels is described in the passage, ‘And God divided the light from the darkness: and God called the light “Day”; and he called the darkness “Night”.’
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It was certainly only God who could have made the distinction; for he alone could foresee that some angels would fall, before that fall happened, and that they would be deprived of the light of truth and would remain in the darkness of their pride.
As for the day and night with which we are so familiar, the light and darkness of this world, God commanded that they should be distinguished by the visible lights of our everyday experience. ‘Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven, to give light on the earth, and to divide the day and the night.’ And a little later, ‘And God made two great lights, the larger light to shine to rule the day, the smaller to shine to rule the night. He also made the stars. And God placed those in the firmament of the sky to give light on the earth and to be in charge of day and night, and to divide light from darkness.
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Between that light (which is the holy fellowship of the angels, shining with the intelligible illumination of truth) and the contrasted darkness (which stands for the depraved minds of the evil angels who have rejected the light of righteousness) God could make the division; for the evil, though in the future, could not be hidden from him. He knew it with certainty, though it was an evil arising not from nature but from choice.
20.
The significance of the statement after that division: ‘And God saw that the light was good
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Now we must not omit to point out that the statement, ‘God said: “Let there be light”; and light was created’, is immediately followed by, ‘And God saw that the light was good.’ This is not said after he had separated the light from the darkness, calling the light ‘Day’ and the darkness ‘Night’ For in that case it might have seemed that he gave a testimony of approval to the darkness as well as the light. But where darkness is blameless, that darkness which is distinguished by the lights of heaven from the light which is seen by our bodily eyes, then the phrase, ‘God saw that it was good’, follows the division, instead of preceding it. ‘God set them in the firmament of the sky, to shine on the earth, to be in charge of day and night, and to separate light and darkness. And God saw that it was good.’ Both the light and the darkness were here approved, because both were sinless. In contrast, when God said, “Let there be light”, and light was created’, then ‘God saw that the light was good.’ After that follows the passage, ‘God divided the light from the darkness: and God called the light “Day”, and the darkness “Night”.’ But this is not followed by, ‘And God saw that it was good.’ The omission was designed to avoid the attachment of the epithet ‘good’ to both, because one of them was evil, not by nature, but through its own fault. Therefore it was only the light which won the Creator’s approval, whereas the darkness of the angels, although it had been a fitting part of the divine plan, was not a fit enough subject for the divine approbation.
21.
The eternal and unchanging knowledge and will of God in his creation
‘God saw that it was good.’ This statement, applied to all his works, can only signify the approval of work done with the true artist’s skill, which here is the Wisdom of God. It is not that God
discovered
that it was good, after it had been made. Far from it. Not one of those works would have been done, if he had not known it beforehand. It could not have come into being if he had not seen it already; and so when he ‘sees that it is good’ he is not discovering that fact, but communicating it. Plato indeed is bold enough to go further, and to say that God was actually delighted when the whole scheme of things was finished, and rejoiced in the created world.
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He was not such a fool as to suppose
that God’s happiness was increased by the novelty of his own creation.
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What he wanted to express was the fact that the finished work met with the artist’s approval, as he had before approved it as something for his art to make. It is not that God’s knowledge varies in any way, that the future, the present, and the past affect that knowledge in three different ways. It is not with God as it is with us. He does not look ahead to the future, look directly at the present, look back to the past. He sees in some other manner, utterly remote from anything we experience or could imagine. He does not see things by turning his attention from one thing to another. He sees all without any kind of change. Things which happen under the condition of time are in the future, not yet in being, or in the present, already existing, or in the past, no longer in being. But God comprehends all these in a stable and eternal present. And with him there is no difference between seeing with the eyes and ‘seeing’ with the mind, for he does not consist of mind and body. Nor is there any difference between his present, past, and future knowledge. His knowledge is not like ours, which has three tenses: present, past, and future. God’s knowledge has no change or variation. ‘With him there is no alteration, or shadow of movement.’
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Nor does his attention pass from one thought to another; all things which he knows are present at the same time to his incorporeal vision. He knows events in time without any temporal acts of knowledge, just as he moves events in time, without any temporal motions in himself. And so he saw that what he had made was good when he saw that it was good that he should make it. In seeing it when he made it he did not duplicate his knowledge, nor did he increase his knowledge in any way; that would imply that his knowledge was less before he made something for him to see. In fact God could not have produced works in such perfection, without having such perfect knowledge that no addition could be made to it as a result of those works.
For this reason, if we were merely being asked, ‘Who made the light?’ it would be enough to answer, ‘God.’ If the question were not just who made the light, but also how he made it, it would be enough to quote the statement, ‘And God said: “Let there be light”: and light was created.’ And thus we know not only that God created the light, but also that he created it through the Word. But there are three things above all which we need to know about a created thing, three things which we should be told: who made it, how he made it, and why he made it. That is why the Scripture says, ‘God said: “Let there
be light”: and light was created. And God saw that the light was good.’ So the answer to our question ‘Who?’ is ‘God.’ To the question ‘How?’ the answer is, ‘He said: “Let it be”; and it was created.’ And to ‘Why?’ we get the reply, ‘It was good.’ There can be no better author than God, no more effective skill than his word, no better cause than that a good product should be created by God, who is good. This was given by Plato as the most valid reason for the creation of the world – that good works should be effected by a good God.
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Plato may have read this passage of Scripture or have learnt of it from those who had read it; or it may be that with the intuition of genius he observed ‘the invisible realities of God’ presented to the mind by means of his creation,
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or learned about them from those who had thus observed them.
22.
The apparent evil in the universe
Thus we find a valid and appropriate explanation of creation in the goodness of God leading to the creation of good. When carefully considered and devoutly meditated it is an explanation which gives a final answer to all queries about the origin of the world. And yet there are heretics who fail to see this, because there are so many things which do not suit the inadequacy and frailty of our mortal flesh, which has already come under deserved punishment, many things which cause distress, like fire, cold, wild animals, and so on. They do not observe the value of those things in their own sphere and in their own nature, their position in the splendour of the providential order and the contribution they make by their own special beauty to the whole material scheme, as to a universal commonwealth. They even fail to see how much those same things contribute to our benefit, if we make wise and appropriate use of them. Even poisons, which are disastrous when improperly used, are turned into wholesome medicines by their proper application. By contrast, things which give pleasure, like food and drink, and even light itself, are experienced as harmful when used without restraint and in improper ways.
Divine providence thus warns us not to indulge in silly complaints about the state of affairs, but to take pains to inquire what useful purposes are served by things. And when we fail to find the answer, either through deficiency of insight or of staying power, we should believe that the purpose is hidden from us, as it was in many cases where we had great difficulty in discovering it. There is a useful purpose
in the obscurity of the purpose; it may serve to exercise our humility or to undermine our pride. There is no such entity in nature as ‘evil’; ‘evil’ is merely a name for the privation of good.
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There is a scale of value stretching from earthly to heavenly realities, from the visible to the invisible; and the inequality between these goods makes possible the existence of them all.
Now God is the great artificer in the great things; but that does not mean that he is an inferior artist in the small. For those small things are not to be measured by their size, which is next to nothing, but by the wisdom of their artificer. Take the case of a man’s visible appearance. An eyebrow is virtually nothing compared with the whole body; but shave it off and what an immense loss to his beauty! For beauty does not depend on mere size, but on the symmetry and proportion of the component parts.
It is surely little cause for wonder that those who imagine that there is some evil in nature, which is derived and produced from a supposed ‘adverse first cause’ of its own, refuse to accept that the reason for the creation of the universe was God’s good purpose to create good. They believe instead that God was compelled to the creation of the vast structure of this universe by the utter necessity of repelling the evil which fought against him, that he had to mingle the nature of his creating, which was good, with the evil, which is to be suppressed and overcome, and that this good nature was thus so foully polluted, so savagely taken captive and oppressed that it was only with the greatest toil that he can cleanse it and set it free. And even then he cannot rescue all of it, and the part which cannot be purified from that defilement is to serve as the prison to enclose the Enemy after his overthrow.
This was the silly talk, or rather the delirious raving, of the Manicheans. They would not have babbled like this if they had believed in the truth, that the nature of God is unchangeable and completely incorruptible, and that nothing can do it harm; and if they had held, according to sound Christian teaching, that the soul, which could change for the worse through free choice, and could be corrupted by sin, is not a part of God, nor of the same nature as God, but is created by him, and is far inferior to its creator.
23.
The mistake of Origen
What is much more remarkable is that there are some who agree with us that there is one ‘First Principle’ of all things, and that God must be
the creator of all things outside himself; and yet they refuse to accept the good and simple belief in the good and simple reason for the making of the world, namely that God in his goodness created good things, and that all things which do not belong to God’s own being, though inferior to God, are nevertheless good, and the creation of God’s goodness. They allege that souls are not indeed parts of God, but were created by him, and that these souls sinned in withdrawing from God. Then by various stages, in proportion to their various sins, they came down to the earth and incurred the penalty of imprisonment in various bodies. Hence this world came into being; and the reason for the world’s creation was to restrain evil, not to establish good.