Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 33/87

But when Porphyry says, in the first book on the return of the soul, near the end, that no sect has yet been received which contains the universal way of the soul's liberation—whether from some most true philosophy, or from the customs and discipline of the Indians, or from the initiation of the Chaldeans, or from any other way whatever—and that this same way had not yet been brought to his knowledge by historical acquaintance: he beyond doubt confesses that there is some such way, but that it had not yet come into his knowledge. So whatever he had most studiously learned concerning the liberating of the soul, and seemed to himself or rather to others to know and to hold, was not enough for him. For he felt that there was still lacking to him some most excellent authority which it would behoove him to follow in so great a matter.

But when he says that no sect containing the universal way of the soul's liberation has yet come into his knowledge, even from some most true philosophy: he sufficiently shows, as I judge, either that the philosophy in which he himself philosophized is not the most true, or that such a way is not contained in it. And how can that already be the most true, by which this way is not contained? For what other way is there of the universal liberation of the soul, except that by which all souls are liberated, and through which therefore without it no soul is liberated? But when he adds and says:

'or from the customs and discipline of the Indians, or from the initiation of the Chaldeans, or from any other way whatever'—he testifies with a most manifest voice that this universal way of liberating the soul is contained neither in those things which he had learned from the Indians nor in those which he had learned from the Chaldeans; and he could not be silent that he had taken divine oracles from the Chaldeans, of which he makes constant mention. What then does he mean to be understood as the universal way of liberating the soul, not yet received either from some most true philosophy, or from the teachings of those nations which were regarded as great as it were in divine matters—because among them curiosity prevailed more, both about knowing and worshiping certain angels—and not yet brought to his knowledge by historical acquaintance?

What then is this universal way, except that which is not proper to each nation, but was divinely imparted to be common to all nations? That there is such a way this man, endowed with no mean ability, does not doubt. For he does not believe that divine Providence could have left the human race without this universal way of liberating the soul. For he does not say that it does not exist, but only that this so great a good and so great a help had not yet been received, had not yet been brought to his knowledge; and no wonder.

For at that time Porphyry was among human affairs, when this universal way of liberating the soul—which is none other than the Christian religion—was permitted to be assailed by the worshipers of idols and demons and by earthly kings, for the sake of asserting and consecrating the number of the martyrs, that is, of the witnesses of truth, through whom it might be shown that all bodily evils must be endured for the sake of the faith of piety and the commendation of truth.

Porphyry therefore saw these things, and supposed that through persecutions of this kind that way would quickly perish, and therefore that it was not itself the universal way of liberating the soul—not understanding that this very thing which moved him, and which in his choosing he feared to undergo, pertained rather to its confirmation and more robust commendation. This, then, is the universal way of liberating the soul, that is, the way granted by divine compassion to all nations; and to its knowledge, to whomsoever it has now come and to whomsoever it is to come, it neither ought nor will be lawful to say: 'Why now?' and: 'Why so late?'—since the counsel of Him who sends it is not penetrable by human ingenuity.

This too even this man felt, when he said that this gift of God had not yet been received and had not yet been brought to his knowledge. For he did not judge it to be untrue on that account, because it had not yet been received into his faith or had not yet come into his knowledge. This, I say, is the universal way of liberating those who believe, concerning which faithful Abraham received the divine oracle: 'In thy seed shall all nations be blessed.' He was indeed a Chaldean by nation, but that he might receive such promises and that from him might be propagated a seed disposed through angels in the hand of a Mediator, in whom should be this universal way of liberating the soul—that is, the way given to all nations—he was bidden to depart from his land and from his kindred and from his father's house.

Then he himself, first liberated from the superstitions of the Chaldeans, worshiped by following the one true God, in whom, as He made these promises, he faithfully believed. This is the universal way, of which it is said in the holy prophecy: 'May God have mercy on us and bless us; may He cause His countenance to shine upon us and have mercy on us, that we may know Thy way upon earth, Thy salvation among all nations.' Whence, so long afterward, having taken flesh from the seed of Abraham, the Savior Himself says of Himself: 'I am the way, the truth, and the life.' This is the universal way, of which so long beforehand it was foretold:

'It shall come to pass in the last days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be made manifest, prepared upon the tops of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall come to it, and many peoples shall enter in and shall say: Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will announce to us His way, and we will enter into it. For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.' This way, therefore, is not of one nation, but of all nations; and the law and the word of the Lord did not remain in Zion and Jerusalem, but went forth thence, that it might diffuse itself throughout all things. Whence the Mediator Himself, after His resurrection, said to His trembling disciples: 'It was necessary that the things which are written in the law and the prophets and the psalms concerning Me should be fulfilled.'

Then He opened their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures, and said to them, that it behoved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.

This, therefore, is the universal way of liberating the soul, which the holy angels and the holy prophets first signified, among the few men who, where they could, found the grace of God, and especially in the Hebrew nation—whose very commonwealth was in a certain manner consecrated to the prophecy and foretelling of the city of God that was to be gathered out of all nations—and which they foretold both by tabernacle and temple and priesthood and sacrifices, and by certain manifest utterances, but for the most part by mystical ones:

but present in the flesh, the Mediator Himself and His blessed apostles, now revealing the grace of the new testament, indicated more openly those things which had been somewhat more obscurely signified in former times, according to the distribution of the ages of the human race, as it pleased God in His wisdom to ordain—with signs of marvelous divine works, of which I have already set down a few above, bearing witness.

For not only did angelic visions appear and the words of heavenly ministers alone sound forth, but also—through men acting by the word of God in simple piety—unclean spirits were driven out of the bodies and senses of men, vices and languors of the body were healed, the wild animals of land and waters, the birds of the air, the trees, the elements, the stars obeyed the divine commands, the infernal regions gave way, the dead came back to life: excepting the proper and singular miracles of the Savior Himself, especially of His nativity and resurrection, of which in the one He demonstrated only the mystery of His mother's virginity, while in the other He demonstrated the example also of those who are to rise again at the end.

This way cleanses the whole man, and prepares the mortal for immortality in all the parts of which he consists. For that no other purgation might be sought for that part which Porphyry calls intellectual, another for that which he calls spiritual, and yet another for the body itself: therefore the most truthful and most powerful Cleanser and Savior took up the whole. Apart from this way, which—partly when these future things were being foretold, partly when they are announced as done—was never lacking to the human race, no one has been liberated, no one is liberated, no one will be liberated. But as for Porphyry's saying that the universal way of liberating the soul had not yet been brought to his knowledge by historical acquaintance:

What can be found more illustrious than this history, which has obtained authority over the whole world by so lofty an eminence, or more trustworthy, in which past events are so narrated that things to come are also foretold — many of which we see fulfilled, so that from these we may without doubt hope that those which remain will be fulfilled? For neither Porphyry nor any of the Platonists is able to despise, even on this Way, the divination and prediction of, as it were, earthly matters belonging to this mortal life — a thing which they rightly do in the case of other soothsayings and the divinations of whatever modes or arts. For they deny that such things are to be reckoned the work of great men or of great worth, and rightly so.

For such predictions are made either through a foreknowledge of lower causes — as in the art of medicine very many future conditions of health are foreseen by certain antecedent signs — or unclean demons announce beforehand their own appointed deeds, over which they claim for themselves a certain right, both in leading the minds and lusts of the wicked toward whatever deeds suit them, and in the lowest matter of human frailty. Not such things did holy men, walking in that universal Way of the liberation of souls, take care to prophesy as though they were great, although even these did not escape them and were often foretold by them to win belief in those things which could not be conveyed to mortal senses nor brought to proof with swift ease.

But there were other things truly great and divine, which, so far as it was granted that the will of God be known, they announced as future.

For Christ, indeed, who was to come in the flesh, and the things which in Him were made so clear and perfect and were fulfilled in His name — the repentance of men and the conversion of wills to God, the remission of sins, the grace of righteousness, the faith of the godly, and throughout the whole world the multitude of those believing in the true Godhead, the overthrow of the worship of idols and of demons and the testing by temptations, the purifying of those who make progress and their deliverance from all evil, the day of judgment, the resurrection of the dead, the eternal damnation of the fellowship of the impious, and the eternal kingdom of the most glorious City of God enjoying His presence immortally — these were foretold and promised in the Scriptures of this Way;

of which we behold so many fulfilled that with upright piety we trust that the rest will come to pass. As for the rectitude of this Way, leading even to the seeing of God and to cleaving to Him for ever, in the truth of the Holy Scriptures by which it is proclaimed and affirmed — whoever do not believe, and therefore do not understand, may assail it, but they cannot overthrow it. Wherefore in these ten books, although we have done less than the expectation of some about us looked for, yet, according to the zeal of certain ones, so far as the true God and Lord has deigned to help us, we have given satisfaction by refuting the objections of the impious, who set their own gods before the Founder of the holy City, of which we have undertaken to discourse.

Of these ten books, the first five were written against those who think the gods are to be worshipped for the sake of the goods of this life; the latter five against those who suppose that the worship of the gods is to be maintained for the sake of the life that is to be after death. Therefore next, as I promised in the first book, I shall set forth, so far as I shall be divinely helped, what I judge ought to be said concerning the rise, the course, and the appointed ends of the two cities, which in this age we have said to be intertwined and mingled with one another. BOOK XI. CHAPTER I. Of that part of the work in which the beginnings and ends of the two cities, that is, the heavenly and the earthly, begin to be shown.

We speak of the City of God, to which that Scripture bears witness which, not by the chance movements of minds, but plainly by the disposition of the supreme Providence, has, surpassing by its divine authority all the literatures of all the nations, subjected to itself every kind of human genius. For there it is written: Glorious things are spoken of thee, O City of God; and in another psalm it is read: Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in His holy mountain, spreading the rejoicings of the whole earth; and a little after in the same psalm: As we have heard, so also have we seen, in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God; God hath founded it for ever; likewise in another:

There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the City of God; the Most High hath sanctified His tabernacle. God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved. By these and like testimonies — to recount which all would be too long — we have learned that there is a certain City of God, whose citizens we long to be with that love which its Founder has inspired in us. To this Founder of the holy City the citizens of the earthly city prefer their own gods, not knowing that He is the God of gods — not of false gods, that is, of impious and proud ones, who, deprived of His unchangeable light common to all, and thereby reduced to a certain needy power, in a manner pursue their own private powers and seek divine honors from their deceived subjects;

but He is the God of the godly and holy gods, who delight rather to subject themselves to the One than to subject many to themselves, and rather to worship God than to be worshipped in God's stead. But to the enemies of this holy City we have replied in the foregoing ten books, as far as we could, with the help of our Lord and King.

But now, recognizing what is awaited of me, and not unmindful of my debt, I shall undertake — relying everywhere on the aid of that same Lord and King of ours — to discourse, so far as I am able, of the rise, the course, and the appointed ends of the two cities, namely the earthly and the heavenly, which, as I said, are in this present age in a certain way intertwined and mingled together. And first I shall tell how the beginnings of these two cities preceded in the diversity of the angels. CHAPTER II. Of the knowing of God, to whose knowledge no man attains except through the Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus.

It is a great thing, and exceedingly rare, by the effort of the mind to transcend the whole bodily and incorporeal creation, found upon consideration to be mutable, and to attain to the unchangeable substance of God, and there to learn from Him Himself that all nature which is not what He is was not made by any but Himself. For thus God speaks with man not through any bodily creature, sounding in bodily ears so that aerial spaces are beaten between the speaker and the hearer, nor through a spiritual creature of that kind which is shaped with likenesses of bodies, as in dreams or in some other such manner (for even thus He speaks as it were to bodily ears, because He speaks as it were through a body and as it were with an interval of bodily spaces interposed;

for such visions are very like bodies); but He speaks by the truth itself, if anyone be fit to hear with the mind, not with the body. For He speaks to that part of man which in man is better than the rest of which man consists, and than which God Himself alone is better. For since man is most rightly understood — or, if this cannot be, at least is believed — to have been made in the image of God, surely it is by that part of himself that he is nearer to the higher God, by which he surpasses his lower parts, which he has in common even with the beasts.

But because the mind itself, in which reason and intelligence are naturally present, is weakened by certain dark and inveterate vices, not only for cleaving to and enjoying, but even for enduring the unchangeable light, until, renewed and healed from day to day, it becomes capable of so great a felicity, it had first to be imbued and purged by faith. And that it might walk more confidently in faith toward the truth, the Truth itself, God the Son of God, having assumed man — without the consuming of God — established and founded this very faith, that there might be for man a way to man's God through the God-man. For this is the Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus. For it is by this that He is Mediator, by which He is man, and by this also He is the Way.

Since, if between him who strives and that toward which he strives there lies a way in between, there is hope of arriving; but if there be no way, or it be unknown by which one must go, what does it profit to know whither one must go? Now the only way most thoroughly fortified against all errors is that the same one should be both God and man — God, the goal whither one goes; man, the way by which one goes. CHAPTER III. Of the authority of the canonical Scripture, established by the divine Spirit. He, having spoken first through the prophets, then through Himself, afterward through the apostles, as far as He judged sufficient, also established the Scripture which is called canonical, of most eminent authority, in which we have faith concerning those things which it is not expedient to be ignorant of, nor are we fit to know by ourselves.

For if those things can be known by us as witnesses which are not removed from our senses, whether inner or outer (whence also they are called 'present,' because we say they are thus before the senses, as things which are at hand are before the eyes): surely those things which are removed from our senses, since we cannot know them by our own testimony, concerning these we require other witnesses and believe them, from whose senses we believe them not to be, or to have been, removed. As, therefore, concerning visible things which we have not seen, we believe those who have seen them, and so likewise concerning the rest which pertain to each one's bodily sense:

so concerning those things which are perceived by the soul and mind (for this too is most rightly called a 'sense,' whence also the word 'sentence' [sententia] took its name), that is, concerning invisible things which are removed from our inner sense, we ought to believe those who have learned these things, set in order in that incorporeal light, or who behold them abiding. CHAPTER IV. Of the creation of the world, which is neither outside of time, nor ordained by a new counsel of God, as though He afterward willed what He before had not willed. Of all visible things the greatest is the world; of all invisible things the greatest is God. But that the world is, we behold; that God is, we believe. But that God made the world, we more safely believe none than God Himself. Where have we heard Him?

Nowhere, meanwhile, better than in the holy Scriptures, where His prophet said: In the beginning God made heaven and earth. Was that prophet present there when God made heaven and earth? No; but there was the Wisdom of God present, through whom all things were made, which, transferring itself also into holy souls, makes them friends of God and prophets, and within, without noise, recounts to them His works. To them also the angels of God speak, who always behold the face of the Father and announce His will to those to whom they ought. Of these was that prophet one, who said and wrote: In the beginning God made heaven and earth.

He is so fitting a witness, through whom God is to be believed, that by the same Spirit of God, by which he knew these things revealed to him, he also foretold so long beforehand this very faith of ours which was to be. But what pleased the eternal God to make then heaven and earth, which He had not made before? Those who say this, if they wish the world to seem eternal, without any beginning, and therefore not even made by God, are too far turned away from the truth and rave with the deadly disease of impiety.

For setting aside the prophetic utterances, the world itself, by its most orderly changeableness and mobility and by the most beautiful appearance of all visible things, proclaims, in a manner silently, both that it was made, and that it could not have been made except by a God ineffably and invisibly great, and ineffably and invisibly beautiful.

But those who confess that the world was indeed made by God, yet wish it to have not a beginning of time but of its creation, so that in some scarcely intelligible way it has been always made, do indeed say something whereby they seem to defend God, as it were, from a fortuitous rashness, lest it be believed that it suddenly came into His mind to make the world — something which had never come before — and that a new will befell Him, although He is in no respect at all changeable. But I do not see how that reasoning can hold for them in other matters, and most of all in the soul, which, if they contend that it is co-eternal with God, by no means will they be able to explain whence befell it that new misery which never before throughout eternity had been.

For if they say that its misery and blessedness have always alternated, they must necessarily say that they will also always alternate; whence this absurdity will follow them, that even when it is called blessed, in this very case it is not blessed, if it foresees its future misery and disgrace; but if it does not foresee, nor reckon that it will be base and miserable, but ever thinks itself blessed, then by a false opinion it is blessed — than which nothing more foolish can be said. But if they think that throughout the infinite ages past the soul's misery has always alternated with blessedness, but that now, henceforth, when it has been set free, it will not return to misery, none the less are they convicted that it was never truly blessed, but begins henceforth to be blessed with a certain new and not deceptive blessedness;

and thereby they will confess that something new befalls it, and that something great and excellent, which throughout eternity past had never befallen. And if they deny that God had the cause of this newness in His eternal counsel, they will at the same time deny that He is the Author of its blessedness, which belongs to unspeakable impiety; but if they say that He too by a new counsel devised that henceforth the soul should be eternally blessed, how will they show Him to be free from that mutability which displeases even them? Further, if they confess that it was created in time, yet will never thereafter perish, like a number — that it has a beginning but has no end — and therefore, having once experienced miseries, if it has been freed from them, will never afterward be miserable:

they will surely not doubt that this comes to pass while the immutability of God's counsel remains. So therefore let them also believe that the world could be made in time, nor yet on that account did God change His eternal counsel and will in making it. CHAPTER V. That we are no more to think of infinite spaces of time before the world than of infinite spaces of place outside the world, since, just as there are no times before it, so there are no places outside it. Next it is to be seen that these men, who agree that God is the Founder of the world and yet ask what we answer concerning the world's time, should answer what they themselves answer concerning the world's place. For it is asked why it was made then rather than before, just as it can be asked why it is here, where it is, rather than elsewhere.

For if they imagine infinite spaces of time before the world, in which it does not seem to them that God could have ceased from work, let them similarly imagine outside the world infinite spaces of places, in which, if anyone say that the Omnipotent could not have been idle, will it not follow that they are compelled to dream of innumerable worlds with Epicurus (with this difference only, that he asserts those worlds to be born and dissolved by the fortuitous movements of atoms, whereas these men will say that they were made by the work of God), if they are unwilling that He should be idle throughout the boundless immensity of places lying open on every side outside the world, and unwilling that those same worlds, as they hold even of this one, can by any cause be dissolved?

For we are dealing with those who, together with us, hold that God is incorporeal and the Creator of all natures which are not what He is; but others it is too unworthy to admit to this discussion of religion, especially because among those who think that the service of sacred rites is to be rendered to many gods, these men have surpassed the rest of the philosophers in nobility and authority, for no other reason than that, although by a long interval, yet they are nearer than the rest to the truth.

Or will they perhaps say that the substance of God — which they neither enclose nor delimit nor extend by place, but confess, as is worthy to think of God, to be present whole everywhere by an incorporeal presence — is absent from those so great spaces of places outside the world, and is occupied in one place only, and, in comparison with that infinity, in so tiny a place, in which the world is? I do not suppose they will advance into such vain talk. Since, therefore, they say that there is one world, of vast bodily mass indeed, yet finite and determined by its own place, and made by the working of God: what they answer concerning the infinite places outside the world — why God should cease from work in them — let them answer this to themselves concerning the infinite times before the world, why in them God should have ceased from work.

And just as it does not follow that God, by chance rather than by divine reason, established the world in no other place but this in which it is — since, with infinite places lying open equally everywhere, this one could not be chosen by any more excellent merit, although no human being can comprehend that same divine reason by which it was done — so it does not follow that we should suppose anything fortuitous to have befallen God, in that He founded the world at that time rather than at an earlier one, since the earlier times had equally passed away through infinite space backward, and there had been no difference whereby one time should be preferred to another in the choosing.

But if they say that the thoughts of men are empty, by which they imagine infinite places, since there is no place except the world, they are answered in this manner: that men think emptily of the past times of God's idleness, since there is no time before the world. CHAPTER VI. That the creation of the world and of times has one and the same beginning, and that the one is not anticipated by the other. For if eternity and time are rightly distinguished — that time is not without some moveable changeableness, while in eternity there is no change:

who does not see that times would not have been unless a creature were made which by some motion should change something — and that, as one thing and another of this motion and change, which cannot exist together, gives place and follows in succession, in shorter or longer intervals of delay, time would ensue? Since therefore God, in whose eternity there is no change at all, is the Creator and Orderer of times, I do not see how it can be said that He created the world after spaces of times, unless it be said that before the world there was already some creature, by whose movements the times might run.