Works (City of God, On the Trinity, etc.) 26 part 1/3

Let those who wish believe that I would rather labor by reading than by dictating things to be read. But those who are unwilling to believe this, yet both can and will make trial of it — let them furnish something that may be answered by my reading, whether to my own inquiries or to the questionings of others which, for the sake of the office I bear in the service of Christ and for the zeal wherewith I burn to have our faith fortified against the error of carnal and animal men, I must needs endure; and let them see how easily I would refrain from this toil, and with how great joy I could keep my pen idle.

But if the things we might read on these matters, sufficiently set forth in the Latin tongue, either do not exist, or are not found, or at least can be found by us only with difficulty; and if we have not so great a command of the Greek language that we should in any way prove fit for reading and understanding books on such subjects — of which kind of literature I do not doubt that, from the few things translated for us, all that we can usefully seek is contained; and if I cannot resist the brethren, by the right whereby I have been made their servant, when they entreat that I should, chiefly with my tongue and pen, serve their laudable studies in Christ — the twin steeds which charity drives within me — and if I myself confess that by writing I have learned much which I did not know;

this labor of mine ought not to seem superfluous to anyone slothful or very learned, since it is necessary to many diligent and many unlearned men, among whom in no small part it is necessary even to me. From those things, therefore, which we have already read written by others on this matter, being greatly propped up and aided, I have undertaken to seek out — He Himself exhorting — those things which can be piously sought and discussed concerning the Trinity, the one supreme and supremely good God, and to discuss them with His help: so that, if there be no other writings of this kind, there may be something we have, and let those read who will and who are able; but if there already are such, so much the more easily will some be found, the more of such kind there may prove to be.

Truly, since in all my writings I desire not only a pious reader but also a free corrector, most of all in these where the very magnitude of the question — would that it might have as many discoverers as it has gainsayers! Nevertheless, just as I do not wish my reader to be devoted to me, so I do not wish my corrector to be devoted to himself. Let the one not love me more than the catholic faith; let the other not love himself more than the catholic truth. As I say to the former: Do not be enslaved to my writings as though to canonical Scriptures, but in the former, when you find even what you did not believe, believe without hesitation; in the latter, however, hold fast firmly to nothing you did not hold as certain unless you have understood it to be certain — so I say to the latter:

Do not correct my writings out of your own opinion or contention, but out of the divine reading or unshaken reason. If you comprehend anything true in them, by its existing it is not mine, but by your understanding and loving it, let it be both yours and mine; but if you convict anything of falsity, by my erring it will have been mine, but now, by taking heed, let it be neither yours nor mine. Hence, then, this third book takes its beginning, up to the point where the second had reached.

For when we had come to the point of wishing to show that the Son is not on that account less than the Father because the one sent and the other was sent, nor the Holy Spirit less than both because He is read in the Gospel to have been sent both by the one and by the other, we undertook to inquire this: since the Son was sent thither where He was — because He came into this world and was in this world — and since the Holy Spirit likewise was sent thither where He too was, seeing that the Spirit of the Lord filled the world, and that which contains all things has knowledge of the voice, whether the Lord was for this reason said to be sent, because from what was hidden He was born in the flesh, and from the bosom of the Father appeared, as it were coming forth, to the eyes of men in the form of a servant;

and the Holy Spirit likewise, because He too was seen in bodily form as a dove and in cloven tongues as it were of fire; so that to be sent was for them to proceed forth from spiritual secrecy into some bodily form to the sight of mortals — which, because the Father did not do, He was said only to have sent and not also to have been sent. Then it was asked why the Father too was not at some time said to be sent, if He Himself was shown through those bodily forms which appeared to the eyes of the ancients. But if the Son was then shown, why was He said to be sent so long afterward, when the fullness of time came that He should be born of a woman, seeing that even before He was sent when He appeared bodily in those forms.

Or if He could not rightly be said to be sent except when the Word was made flesh, why is the Holy Spirit read to have been sent, whose incarnation of such a kind did not take place? But if through those ancient manifestations neither the Father nor the Son but the Holy Spirit was shown, why is He too now said to be sent, when He was sent even before in those manners? Then we subdivided the matter, that these things might be handled most diligently, and we made the question threefold, one part of which has been unfolded in the second book, while two remain, of which I shall next proceed to discourse.

For it has already been inquired and treated that in those ancient bodily forms and visions there appeared neither the Father alone, nor the Son alone, nor the Holy Spirit alone, but either indifferently the Lord God, who is understood as the Trinity itself, or whichever person of the Trinity the text of the reading might signify by the surrounding indications. Now, therefore, we first inquire what follows. For in the second place in that division it was set down: whether for this work alone a creature was formed in which God, as He then judged fitting, might be shown to human sight;

or whether angels who already existed were so sent that they spoke in the person of God, taking on a bodily form from bodily creation for the use of their ministry; or whether it was their very own body — to which they are not subject but which they rule as subject — that they changed and turned into such forms as they willed, accommodated and fitted to their actions, according to the power attributed to them by the Creator. When this part of the question has been thoroughly treated, so far as the Lord shall grant, it will finally remain to be seen what we had set out to inquire: whether the Son and the Holy Spirit were also sent before, and if so, what difference there is between that sending and the one we read of in the Gospel;

or whether none of them was sent except when either the Son was made of the Virgin Mary or the Holy Spirit appeared in a visible form, whether in the dove or in the fiery tongues. But I confess that it exceeds the strength of my purpose to determine whether the angels, while the spiritual quality of their body remains, working more hiddenly through it, take on from the lower and grosser elements something fitted to themselves, which they change and turn, as though some garment, into whatever bodily forms — even true ones, just as true water was turned into true wine by the Lord — or whether they transform their own proper bodies into whatever they will, adapted to what they do. But whichever of these it be, it does not pertain to the present question.

And although, since I am a man, I can grasp these things by no experiment, as the angels do who work them, and they know them better than I know to what extent my body is changed by the affection of my will, whether from what I have experienced in myself or from others — yet which of these I should believe on the authority of the divine Scriptures there is now no need to say, lest I be compelled to prove it, and the discourse become longer concerning a matter which the present question does not require. This now must be seen: whether the angels were then acting both those bodily forms appearing to the eyes of men and those voices sounding in their ears, while the very sensible creature, serving at the nod of its Creator, was turned for the time into whatever work was needful, as is written in the book of Wisdom:

'For the creature serving Thee its Maker is strained to torment against the unjust, and grows gentler to do good to those who trust in Thee. For this cause, even then, transforming itself into all things, it served Thy grace, the nurse of all, according to the will of those who longed for Thee.' For the power of God's will reaches through the spiritual creature even unto the visible and sensible effects of the bodily creature. For where does not that wisdom of God almighty work what it wills, which reacheth from end to end mightily, and ordereth all things sweetly?

But there is another natural order in the conversion and mutability of bodies, which, although it too serves at the nod of God, yet by the constancy of custom has lost its power to cause wonder — such as those things which are changed at very brief, or at least not long, intervals of time in heaven, on earth, and in the sea, whether as things come to birth or perish, or appear now in one way, now in another;

but others, though coming from that same order, yet on account of longer intervals of time are less familiar, which, though many are amazed at them, have been grasped by the investigators of this age, and by the progress of generations, whereby they are more often repeated and known by more people, become the less wondrous — such as the eclipses of the luminaries, and certain rarely occurring appearances of the stars, and earthquakes, and monstrous births of living things, and whatever else is similar, none of which happens except by the will of God, though to most people this does not appear.

And so it has been permitted to the vanity of the philosophers to attribute these things also to other causes — either true but proximate ones, since they could by no means see the cause superior to all others, that is, the will of God — or false ones, and brought forth not even from any investigation of bodily things and motions, but from their own conjecture and error. I shall say, if I can, something by way of example, whereby these matters may be clearer. There is certainly in the human body a certain mass of flesh, and a shapeliness of form, and an order and distinction of members, and a due proportion of health.

A soul inbreathed governs this body — a soul also rational, and therefore, though changeable, yet such as can be a partaker of that unchangeable Wisdom, so that there may be a participation of it in the selfsame, as is written in the Psalm concerning all the saints, of whom, as of living stones, is built that Jerusalem our eternal mother in the heavens. For thus it is sung: 'Jerusalem, which is builded as a city, whose participation is in the selfsame.' For the selfsame in this place is understood as that supreme and unchangeable good which is God, and His Wisdom and Will, to whom it is sung in another place: 'Thou shalt change them and they shall be changed; but Thou art the selfsame.'

Let us, then, set before our mind such a wise man, whose rational soul is already a partaker of the unchangeable and eternal truth, which he consults concerning all his actions, and does nothing at all which he has not recognized in it as needing to be done, so that, subject to it and obeying it, he may act rightly. If this man, having consulted the supreme reason of divine justice — which he heard in secret with the ear of his heart — and at its bidding wearied his body with labor in some office of mercy and contracted an illness, and, the physicians having been consulted, it were said by one that the cause of the disease was a dryness of the body, but by another an excess of humor;

one of them would state the true cause, the other would err, yet both would pronounce concerning proximate, that is, bodily, causes. But if the cause of that dryness were sought and found to be voluntary labor, one would already have come to a higher cause, which proceeds from the soul to affect the body which it rules; yet not even this would be the first. For that first cause was without doubt higher still, in the very unchangeable Wisdom, which the soul of the wise man, serving it in love and obeying it as it ineffably commanded, had undertaken the voluntary labor. Thus nothing but the will of God would most truly be found to be the first cause of that illness.

But now, if in this dutiful and pious labor that wise man had employed helpers laboring together with him in the good work, yet not serving God with the same will, but desiring to attain the reward of their carnal lusts, or to avoid carnal discomforts; and had employed also beasts of burden, if the management of accomplishing that work so required — which beasts of burden would surely be irrational animals, and would not therefore move their limbs under their loads because they thought anything of that good work, but by the natural appetite of their own pleasure and the avoidance of trouble; and finally had employed even those bodies wholly lacking all sensation which were necessary to that work, namely grain, wine, oil, clothing, money, a book, and whatever is of this kind.

In all these bodies engaged in that work, whether animate or inanimate — whatever were moved, worn away, repaired, destroyed, reformed, affected and changed in one way or another in places and times — surely there would be no other cause of all these visible and changeable deeds than that invisible and unchangeable will of God, using through the just soul, as the seat of Wisdom, all things — even evil and irrational souls, and lastly bodies, whether those breathed into and animated, or those lacking all sensation — since it first used that very soul, good and holy, which it had subjected to itself for pious and religious obedience?

What, therefore, we have set down by way of example concerning one wise man — though still bearing a mortal body, though seeing but in part — this it is permitted to think concerning some household where there is a society of some such men, this concerning a city, or even concerning the whole world, if the sovereignty and governance of human affairs be in the hands of men wise and holy and perfectly subject to God. But since this is not yet the case (for it is fitting that we should first be exercised mortally in this pilgrimage, and be instructed under scourges through the strength of meekness and patience), let us think upon that supernal and heavenly fatherland itself, whence we are on pilgrimage.

For there the will of God — who maketh His angels spirits and His ministers a flaming fire — presides, in spirits joined together in supreme peace and friendship, and fused into one will by a certain spiritual fire of charity, as in a lofty and holy and secret seat, as it were in His own house and in His own temple. Thence, by certain most well-ordered motions of the creature — first spiritual, then bodily — He diffuses Himself through all things and uses all for the unchangeable decision of His judgment, whether incorporeal or corporeal things, whether rational or irrational spirits, whether good ones through His grace or evil ones through their own will.

But just as grosser and lower bodies are governed in a certain order through the more subtle and more powerful, so all bodies are governed through the spirit of life, and the spirit of irrational life through the spirit of rational life, and the deserting and sinning spirit of rational life through the pious and just spirit of rational life, and that one through God Himself; and thus the whole creation through its Creator, from whom and through whom and in whom it was also founded and established. And through this, the will of God is the first and supreme cause of all bodily forms and motions.

For nothing happens visibly and sensibly which is not either commanded or permitted from the inner, invisible, and intelligible court of the supreme Emperor, according to the ineffable justice of rewards and punishments, of graces and requitals, in this most ample and immense commonwealth, as it were, of the whole creation.

If, therefore, the Apostle Paul — although he still bore the burden of the body which is corrupted and weighs down the soul, although he still saw in part and in an enigma, longing to be dissolved and to be with Christ, and groaning within himself, awaiting the adoption, the redemption of his body — could nevertheless proclaim the Lord Jesus Christ by signifying, in one way through his tongue, in another through his epistle, in another through the sacrament of His body and blood;

for indeed we call neither his tongue, nor the parchments and ink, nor the significant sounds uttered by the tongue, nor the signs of letters written on little skins, the body and blood of Christ; but only that which, taken from the fruits of the earth and consecrated by mystic prayer, we rightly receive unto spiritual salvation in memory of the Lord's passion for us — which, though it be brought by the hands of men to that visible form, is not sanctified so as to be so great a sacrament except by the Spirit of God working invisibly, since God works all these things which are done by bodily motions in that work, moving first the invisible things of the ministers, whether the souls of men or the hidden services of spirits subject to Him;

what wonder is it if also in the creature of heaven and earth, of sea and air, God works what He wills — things sensible and visible, for the signifying and showing of Himself in them as He Himself knows it ought to be done — not by that substance of His own whereby He is appearing, which is altogether unchangeable and more inwardly and secretly sublime than all the spirits He created? For by the divine power administering the whole spiritual and bodily creation, on certain days of every year the waters of the sea are summoned and poured out over the face of the earth.

But when this happened at the prayer of holy Elijah — because there had preceded so continuous and so long a fair weather that men were failing from famine, nor at the very hour when that servant of God prayed had the air itself borne any moist appearance as a sign of rain soon to come — when such great and so swiftly following downpours ensued, the divine power appeared, by which that miracle was dispensed and granted. Thus God works the ordinary lightnings and thunders. But because on Mount Sinai they were happening in an unusual manner, and those voices were uttered not with a confused din, but it appeared by most certain indications that certain signs were being given by them, they were miracles. Who draws the moisture through the root of the vine to the grape-cluster and makes wine, but God, who gives the increase even while man plants and waters?

But when at the Lord's nod water was turned into wine with unwonted swiftness, the divine power was declared, even the foolish confessing it. Who solemnly clothes the shrubs with leaf and flower, but God? Yet when the priestly rod of Aaron flowered, the divinity conversed in a certain manner with doubting humanity. And certainly, for the begetting and forming of all woods and of the flesh of all animals, the earthly matter is common; and who makes these things, but He who said that this earth should bring them forth, and by that same word of His governs and drives what He created? But when He turned that same matter, from the rod of Moses, into the flesh of a serpent, closely and swiftly, it was a miracle — a change indeed of a changeable thing, yet an unwonted one.

But who gives life to each living thing at its birth, save he who also for that hour gave life to that serpent, just as the work required? And who restored to the corpses their own souls when the dead rose again, save he who gives life to flesh in the wombs of mothers, that they may be born who are destined to die? Yet when these things come to pass by a certain continuous flow, as it were, of things slipping and streaming past, passing from the hidden into the open and from the open into the hidden by their accustomed course, they are called natural; but when, for the admonishing of men, they are pressed upon us with an unaccustomed mutability, they are named mighty works. Here I see what may occur to a weak understanding, namely, why these miracles should also be wrought by magic arts. For the magicians of Pharaoh likewise made serpents and other like things.

But this is the more to be marveled at: how that power of the magicians, which was able to make serpents, utterly failed when it came to the tiniest of flies. For the sciniphes are the smallest of little gnats, by which as a third plague the proud Egyptian people were smitten. There indeed the magicians, failing, said: 'This is the finger of God.' Whence we are given to understand that not even those transgressor angels and airy powers—thrust down into this lowest darkness as into a prison of their own kind, from that dwelling of the sublime, ethereal purity, and through whom the magic arts can do whatever they can do—have any power at all except by power granted from above.

And this power is granted either to deceive the deceitful, as it was granted against the Egyptians and even against the magicians themselves, so that in the seduction of those spirits they might seem admirable to those by whom the works were done, while being condemned by the truth of God; or to admonish the faithful not to desire to do any such thing as a great matter—for which reason these things too have been handed down to us by the authority of Scripture; or to exercise, prove, and make manifest the patience of the just. For it was by no small power over visible things that Job lost all that he had, both his sons and the very health of his body.

Nor is it therefore to be supposed that this matter of visible things serves those transgressor angels at their nod, but rather God, by whom this power is granted so far as, in his sublime and spiritual and unchangeable seat, he judges fit. For to the condemned wicked, even in the mine, water and fire and earth serve, that they may make thereof what they will—yet only so far as it is permitted. Nor indeed are those evil angels to be called creators because through them the magicians, resisting the servant of God, made frogs and serpents; for they did not themselves create these. For of all things that are born corporeally and visibly, certain hidden seeds lie concealed in these bodily elements of this world. These are one thing—already visible to our eyes in fruits and living creatures;

but another thing are those hidden seeds of these seeds, from which, at the Creator's command, the waters first brought forth the swimming and flying creatures, and the earth first brought forth its shoots and the first living things of their kind. For they were not then so produced into offspring of this sort that in the things produced that power was consumed; but for the most part the fitting occasions of the temperatures are wanting whereby they might break forth and carry out their species. For behold, the tiniest twig is a seed; for, suitably committed to the earth, it makes a tree. But a subtler seed of this twig is some grain of the same kind, and thus far it is visible to us.

But now the seed even of this grain, though we cannot see it with our eyes, we can nevertheless conjecture by reason; for unless there were some such power in these elements, there would not for the most part be born from the earth things that had not been sown there, nor so many animals with no prior mingling of male and female, whether in earth or in water, which yet grow and by coupling bring forth others, though they themselves arose from no coupling parents. And certainly bees do not conceive the seeds of their offspring by coupling, but gather them with their mouth, as though scattered abroad over the lands.

For the Creator of the invisible seeds is himself the Creator of all things, since whatever things by being born come forth to our eyes receive from hidden seeds the beginnings of their coming-forth, and take their increases of due magnitude and the distinctions of their forms from those original, as it were, rules.

Just as, therefore, we do not call parents the creators of men, nor farmers the creators of the crops—although it is by their motions applied from without that God's inward power works to create these things—so it is not lawful to think either the evil angels, or even the good angels, creators, if by the subtlety of their sense and body they have come to know the seeds of these things, more hidden to us, and secretly scatter them through fitting temperings of the elements, and thus afford occasions both for the generating of things and for the hastening of their increases. But neither do the good do these things except so far as God commands, nor do the evil do them unjustly except so far as he himself justly permits. For the wicked have in their malice a will that is unjust;

but power they receive only justly, whether for their own punishment, or for the punishment of others among the wicked, or for the praise of the good. And so the Apostle, distinguishing the God who inwardly creates and forms from the works of the creature which are applied from without, and taking a similitude from agriculture, says: 'I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.' Just as, therefore, in our very life it is God alone who can form the mind by justifying it, but to preach the Gospel outwardly men also can do—not only the good through the truth, but even the evil through occasion;

so God inwardly works the creation of visible things, but the outward operations—whether of good or of evil angels or men, or even of whatever animals—according to his command and the distributions of powers imparted by him and the appetites for advantages, he thus applies to the nature of things, in which he creates all things, even as he applies the tillage to the land. Wherefore I can no more say that the evil angels summoned by magic arts were the creators of frogs and serpents than I can say that evil men are the creators of the crop which I shall have seen springing up by their labor. Just as neither was Jacob the creator of the colors in the flocks, because he set before the mothers, as they drank at conception, the variegated rods for them to gaze upon.

But neither were the flocks themselves the creators of the variegation of their own offspring, because there had clung to their soul a many-colored fancy, impressed through the eyes from the sight of the variegated rods—a fancy which could affect nothing except the body, which was animated by the spirit so affected, through a sympathy of their commingling, whence the tender beginnings of the young might be tinged, as far as color, with it. For that they should be thus affected from themselves—either the soul from the body or the body from the soul—the fittingnesses of reason bring this about, which live unchangeably in that supreme Wisdom of God whom no spaces of places contain; and while it is itself unchangeable, it forsakes none of the things that exist even changeably, because none of them has been created except through it.

For that from the flocks not rods but flocks should be born, this the unchangeable and invisible reason of the Wisdom of God brought about, through which all things were created; but that from the variegation of the rods the color of the conceived flocks should draw something, this the soul of the pregnant beast brought about, affected outwardly through the eyes and inwardly drawing with it, according to its own measure, a rule of forming which it had received from the innermost power of its Creator.