Praeparatio Evangelica 6 part 5/5

We shall state this more clearly as follows: if it is possible for Judas to be an apostle like Peter, it is possible for God to think concerning Judas that he will remain an apostle like Peter; if it is possible for Judas to become a traitor, it is possible for God to know concerning him that he will be a traitor.

And if Judas is going to be a traitor, then God, by his foreknowledge of the two aforementioned possibilities — since it is possible for one of them to be the case — knowing the truth beforehand, will foreknow that Judas will become a traitor; but that concerning which the knowledge exists is itself something that could also have turned out otherwise. And the knowledge of God might say: it is possible for this man to do this, but also the contrary; yet, both being possible, I know that he will do this.

For it is not the case that, just as God might say that it is not possible for this particular man to fly, so likewise, in giving an oracle, let us say, concerning someone, he will say that it is not possible for this man to be sound-minded; for there is absolutely no power in man at all for flying, but there is a power both for being sound-minded and for being unrestrained.

Since both these powers exist, the man who does not attend to admonishing and instructive arguments gives himself over to the worse power; while the one who has sought the truth and has resolved to live according to it gives himself to the better. And this man does not seek the truth, because he inclines toward pleasure; while that man examines these matters, having been drawn by common notions and an exhortatory argument.

And again, this man chooses pleasure, not because he is unable to look it in the face, but because he does not struggle against it; while that man despises it, seeing the unseemliness that so often occurs in it.

That indeed the foreknowledge of God does not impose necessity upon the things it has apprehended, this too shall be said in addition to what has been stated: that in many places of Scripture God commands the prophets to preach repentance, without pretending to know whether those who hear will turn back or persist in their sins — just as it is said in Jeremiah, 'Perhaps they will hear and repent.'

For it is not because God is ignorant whether they will hear or not that he says, 'Perhaps they will hear and repent,' but rather he shows, as it were, that the powers [of choice] are equally balanced by what he says, lest his foreknowledge, if proclaimed beforehand, should cause those who hear to fall away, presenting the appearance of necessity, as though it were not in their power to turn back — and lest this very foreknowledge should thereby become a cause of sins.

Or again, lest for those who, by not knowing the good foreknown, are able to live in virtue through struggling and resisting evil, the foreknowledge should become a cause of slackening, so that they no longer stand firmly against sin, as though what had been foretold would come to pass in any case. For in this way too the foreknowledge of the good that is to be might become, as it were, an obstacle to that very good.

In any case, God, administering all things in the world usefully, has reasonably kept us blind also with regard to the future. For the knowledge of it would have relaxed us from the struggle against evil, and, once it seemed to have been grasped, would have permitted us, without wrestling against sin, to become its subjects all the more quickly.

At the same time it would also conflict with someone's becoming noble and good, if the foreknowledge concerning a certain person had come about, that he would certainly be good. For beyond what we already possess, there is need of still greater vehemence and effort in order to become noble and good; but knowledge grasped beforehand that one will certainly be noble and good undermines the discipline. For this reason it is to our advantage that we know neither whether we shall be good nor whether we shall be wicked.

Since we have said that God has blinded us with regard to the future, consider whether we are able to clarify in this way a certain passage sought from Exodus: 'Who made the hard of hearing and the deaf, the seeing and the blind? Is it not I, the Lord God?' — so that he might be understood to have made the same person both blind and seeing: seeing with respect to things present, but blind with respect to things future. For to expound the matter of the hard of hearing and the deaf is not the task of the present occasion.

That indeed many of the causes of things within our power are for the most part things not within our power, we too shall admit; for if these — I mean the things not in our power — had not occurred, certain of the things in our power would not have been done. Yet certain of the things in our power are done as a consequence of these prior things not in our power, it being possible, on the basis of the very same prior circumstances, to have done other things than those we in fact do.

But if anyone demands that what is within our power be entirely disengaged from everything else, so that we should not choose certain things because of certain circumstances that have befallen us, he has forgotten that he is part of the world and is contained within human society and within his surrounding environment.

I think, then, it has been shown adequately, as in a summary, that the foreknowledge of God is by no means altogether compulsory of the things foreknown. Come, then, let us also strive to show that the stars are in no way productive causes of what happens among men, but signify only.

It is clear that if a certain configuration of the stars should be supposed to be productive of certain things that happen concerning a man — let this be the very question now under inquiry — then the configuration occurring today, let us say, concerning a certain person could not be understood to have produced past events concerning another person, or concerning other persons; for everything that produces is older than the thing produced.

Yet, as far as concerns the teachings of those who profess such arts, it is held that things older than the configuration are foretold concerning men.

For they profess, in some such manner, that by taking the hour of this particular man's birth, they can determine how each of the wandering stars stood in relation, either to this degree of the zodiacal sign or to the minutes within it, and which star of the zodiac happened to be upon the eastern horizon, which upon the western, and which at the midheaven, and which at the point opposite the midheaven.

And once they have set down the stars which they suppose to have configured themselves for their purposes as thus arranged at the time of a certain person's birth, at the moment of the delivery of the one they are examining, they inquire not only into future events but also into past ones, and into events prior even to the begetting and conception of the person in question — concerning the father, what sort of man he happens to be, rich or poor, sound in body or maimed, better or worse in character, without property or wealthy, following this occupation or that; and the same likewise concerning the mother and concerning any elder brothers, should there happen to be any.

But let us for the present grant them that they apprehend the truth as to position — a matter concerning which we shall later show that it is not in fact so. Let us then ask those who suppose that human affairs are constrained by necessity through the stars, in what manner today's configuration, such as it is, can have produced things that are older than itself.

For if this is impossible, then, insofar as whatever truth is found concerning things older in time, it is clear that the stars, moving as they do in heaven, did not produce the past events, which occurred before the stars were arranged in that particular configuration. And if this is so, then perhaps one who admits that they speak truly, upon reflecting on what is said concerning future events, will say that they speak truly not by the stars' producing them, but only by their signifying them.

But if someone should assert that the stars do not produce past events, but rather that other configurations were the causes of the origin of those events, while the present configuration has merely signified them, and that future events, however, are made manifest by the present configuration at the time of a given person's birth — let him then set forth the distinction by which it can be shown, from the stars themselves, that certain things have been understood as true because they proceed from producing causes, while other things are true only as proceeding from signifying causes.

Since they are unable to provide this distinction, they will, if they are fair-minded, agree that nothing pertaining to human affairs comes to be from the stars, but rather, as we have said before, is at most only signified by them — just as one might, without deriving past and future events from the stars at all, instead derive them from the mind of God through some prophetic word.

For just as we have already shown that God's knowing what will be done by each person does not in any way harm the argument concerning what is within our power, so too the signs which God has appointed for the purpose of signifying do not hinder what is within our power; rather, in a manner similar to a book containing future events in prophetic form, the whole heaven can, being as it were a book of God, contain the things that are to come.

For this reason, in the Prayer of Joseph, what is said by Jacob can be understood in this way: 'For I read upon the tablets of heaven all that shall befall you and your sons.' And perhaps also the saying that 'the heaven shall be rolled up like a scroll' indicates that the words contained within it, which are signs of things to come, will be brought to completion and, if I may so put it, fulfilled — just as the prophecies are said to have been fulfilled by having come to pass.

And thus the stars, having come into being, will be for signs, according to the voice that says, 'Let them be for signs.' But Jeremiah, turning us back to ourselves and removing the fear attached to the things supposed to be signified — and perhaps also supposed to come from that source — says, 'Be not afraid of the signs of heaven.'

Let us examine also a second argument, how the stars cannot be productive causes but, at most, signifying ones. For from a great many nativities it is possible to derive information about one and the same man — this we say hypothetically, granting that the knowledge of such things can be acquired by men. For instance, concerning a certain person suffering thus-and-so and dying, having fallen among robbers and been slain, one says it is possible to derive this from his own nativity, and, should he happen to have several brothers, also from the nativity of each of them.

For they suppose that the nativity of each — the brother's, and likewise the father's, the mother's, the wife's, and that of his sons, his household servants, and his dearest friends, and perhaps even of the very men who will slay him — contains within it the fact that a brother will die at the hands of robbers.

How then is it possible — even granting them this one point — that a single event, contained within so many nativities, should be produced by the configuration of the stars belonging to this particular nativity rather than to those others? For it is also implausible to assert that the configuration in this particular man's own nativity produced these events, while that in the others' nativities did not produce them but only signified them.

For it is foolish to say that the nativity of all of them contained, as a productive cause in each, the fact that this particular man would be slain — so that in fifty nativities, let us say by hypothesis, the death of this one man would be contained. Nor do I see how they will be able to account for the fact that, of nearly all who are born in Judea, the configuration at birth is such that they undergo circumcision on the eighth day — being cut, wounded, falling into inflammation and injuries, and needing physicians right from their entrance into life — whereas among the Ishmaelites in Arabia, the configuration is such that all are circumcised at the age of thirteen; for this is recorded concerning them.

And again, that certain peoples among the Ethiopians have their kneecaps removed, and the Amazons one of their two breasts. How then do the stars bring about these things for these particular nations? I think that even if we were to pause and consider, we should not be able, even by so pausing, to say anything true about them.

Given that there are so many current ways of foreknowledge, I do not know how men have run aground on the position that, while divination by birds and divination by sacrifice do not contain the productive cause but only signify — and likewise the inspection of entrails — they nevertheless do not say the same of the art of nativities.

For if a thing is foreknown — granting also, for the sake of argument, that it is truly known — and if it comes to pass from that very source from which the knowledge is derived, why should the events that happen come from the stars any more than from the birds? And why more from the birds than from the entrails of the sacrificed victims? And why more from the entrails of the sacrificed victims than from shooting stars? These considerations, then, will suffice for the present toward the refutation of the claim that the stars are productive causes of human affairs.

But that point which we had granted — since it did no harm to the argument — namely that men are capable of apprehending the celestial configurations, both the signs themselves and the things of which they are signs, let us now examine whether this is in fact true.

Those, then, who are skilled in these matters say that one who is going to apprehend truly the facts of the science of nativities must know not only in which of the twelve signs a given star is found, but also in which degree of that sign, and in which sixtieth part of the degree; while the more precise among them add also in which sixtieth part of that sixtieth. And they say this must be done for each of the wandering stars [planets], examining its relation to the fixed stars.

Again, moreover, they say, it will be necessary to observe, with respect to the eastern horizon, not only which sign was upon it, but also the degree, and the sixtieth part of the degree — whether the first or the second sixtieth.

How, then, since an hour, roughly speaking, comprises half of a zodiacal sign, can anyone determine the sixtieth part, without possessing the precise measure for the subdivision of the hours — so as, for example, to know that a certain person was born in the fourth hour, plus a half of an hour, plus a fourth, an eighth, a sixteenth, and a thirty-second of an hour?

For they say that the things signified differ greatly on account of ignorance not merely of the whole hour but of its fractional part as well. Thus, for instance, in the case of twins being born, the interval between them is often but a mere fraction of an hour, and yet many discrepancies occur in the things that befall them and in what they do, on account, as those men say, of the relation of the stars — and because the part of the sign near the horizon is not accurately apprehended even by those who suppose they have precisely observed the hour.

For no one can say that the interval between the birth of this person and that of the other amounts to a thirtieth part of an hour. But let this point too be granted to them, so far as concerns the apprehension of the hour. Now there is a demonstration in circulation which shows that the zodiacal circle, in the same manner as the wandering stars, moves from west to east one degree in a hundred years, and that this, over a long span of time, alters the position of the signs, so that the intelligible sign is one thing, and the visible configuration, as it were, another. And they say that the effects are found not from the visible configuration but from the intelligible sign — a thing not altogether possible to apprehend.

But let this too be granted, that the intelligible sign can be apprehended, or that the true position can be derived from the sensible sign. Yet as regards what they themselves call the 'blending' of the influences found in these various configurations, they themselves will admit that they are not able to preserve it fully in every case — the thing signified, say the worse influence, being dimmed by this one, because it is overlooked [aspected] by that better one, and being dimmed to this or that degree. And again, often, when the dimming of the worse influence, which would otherwise be hindered by the aspect of the better, is itself impeded because some other star is configured in such-and-such a way, it turns out to be signified as bad after all.

And I think that anyone who pauses to consider these matters closely will despair of any apprehension concerning them — a knowledge which is by no means available to men, but which, if it exists at all, extends only as far as mere signification.

But if anyone has had experience of these matters, he will know all the more that, in this business of conjecture, both those who speak of it and those who have written about it fail more often than they succeed, contrary to what is commonly supposed. Isaiah, indeed, as one who knows that these things cannot be discovered by men, says to the daughter of the Chaldeans — who above all peoples profess these arts — 'Let the astrologers of heaven stand up now and save you; let them announce to you what shall come upon you.' By these words we are taught that even those most devoted to the study of such things are unable to foretell what the Lord has determined to bring upon each nation.

So much, then, from the man we have mentioned. But indeed, this whole discourse of ours is drawn together into two chief conclusions: first, that those who are believed to give oracles in each city are not gods; and second, that they are not even good daemons, but on the contrary are certain deceivers and impostors and cheats, who, for the ruin and perversion of true piety, have put forward, to the deception of mankind, both their other errors and in particular the doctrine of fate.

From this fate none of the men of all the ages, save Jesus our Savior, has delivered the whole human race; and it is therefore fitting that at the outset of the Preparation for the Gospel all these present matters have been treated with such care, so that we might learn by the very facts from what forebears we sprang, and by what manner of deception they were formerly held fast, and from how great and how deep a darkness we ourselves, and the whole life of mankind together with us, have lifted up our heads — having found, by the saving teaching of the Gospel alone, the cure for our blindness and godlessness, from the long and age-old working of the demons.