This dragon, whom you formed to mock at him)—is to be understood thus: that we should reckon him to have been created from the beginning such that he might be mocked by the angels, but ordained to this punishment after sin. The beginning of him, therefore, is the Lord's molding; for there is no nature, even in the most extreme and lowest little beasts, which He did not constitute, from whom is every measure, every form, every order, without which nothing of things can be found or even conceived; how much more the angelic creature, which surpasses in dignity of nature all the rest of the things that God founded! CHAPTER XVI. On the degrees and differences of creatures, which the use of utility weighs in one way, the order of reason in another.
For among these things which in any way are, and are not what God is by whom they were made, the living are preferred to the non-living, just as those things which have the power of begetting, or even of desiring, to those which lack this motion; and among those that live, the sentient are preferred to the non-sentient, as animals to trees; and among those that have sense, the intelligent are preferred to the non-intelligent, as men to cattle; and among those that understand, the immortal are preferred to the mortal, as angels to men. But these are preferred by the order of nature;
yet there is one mode of estimation and another according to each one's use, by which it comes about that we prefer certain things lacking sense to certain sentient things, to such a degree that, if we had the power, we would wish to remove them altogether from the nature of things, whether ignorant of what place they hold therein, or, even if we know, subordinating them to our own conveniences. For who would not rather have bread in his house than mice, or coins than fleas? But why is it a wonder, when even in the estimation of men themselves, whose nature is assuredly of such great dignity, a horse is often valued more dearly than a slave, a gem than a maidservant?
Thus, in the liberty of judging, the reason of one who considers differs greatly from the necessity of one in need or the pleasure of one desiring, since the former weighs what a thing is worth in itself in the grades of things, whereas necessity thinks what it seeks and for what reason, and reason weighs what truth appears to the light of the mind, but pleasure looks for what pleasant thing may flatter the senses of the body. But there is in rational natures so great a power of a certain weight, as it were, of will and love, that, although by the order of nature angels are preferred to men, yet by the law of justice good men are preferred to evil angels. CHAPTER XVII. That the vice of malice is not nature, but contrary to nature, for whose sinning the Creator is not the cause, but the will.
On account of nature, therefore, not on account of the malice of the devil, we rightly understand it to have been said: This is the beginning of the Lord's molding. For without doubt, where the vice of malice would be, a nature not vitiated went before. But vice is so contrary to nature that it cannot but harm nature. Therefore it would not be a vice to recede from God, unless it rather befitted the nature whose vice it is to be with God. Wherefore even an evil will is a great testimony to a good nature. But God, as He is the best creator of good natures, so is He the most just orderer of evil wills, so that, when those make ill use of good natures, He makes good use even of evil wills.
And so He brought it about that the devil, good by His institution, evil by his own will, ordained in lower things, should be mocked by His angels—that is, that his temptations should profit the saints, whom he desires them to harm. And since God, when He created him, was assuredly not ignorant of his future malignity, and foresaw what good things He Himself would make out of his evil, therefore the Psalm says: This dragon, whom you formed to mock at him; so that in the very fact that He formed him—good indeed through His own goodness—He may be understood to have already prepared, through His foreknowledge, how He would use even an evil one. CHAPTER XVIII. On the beauty of the universe, which through the ordination of God is made more brilliant even by the opposition of contraries.
For God would not create any—I do not say of the angels, but even of men—whom He had foreknown would be evil, unless He likewise knew to what uses of good things He might apply them, and thus adorn the order of the ages, like a most beautiful poem, even by certain antitheses, as it were. For the things called antitheses are among the most becoming ornaments of speech, which in Latin may be called 'opposites,' or, as it is more expressively said, 'set over against' (contraposita). This term is not in customary use among us, although Latin discourse too employs the same ornaments of speech, indeed the languages of all nations do. By these antitheses the Apostle Paul too pleasantly expounds that passage in the second Epistle to the Corinthians, where he says:
By the weapons of righteousness on the right hand and on the left: by glory and dishonor, by evil report and good report; as deceivers and yet truthful, as unknown and yet well known; as dying, and behold we live; as chastened and not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and possessing all things. As, therefore, these contraries set over against contraries render the beauty of speech, so by a certain eloquence not of words but of things, the beauty of the world is composed by the opposition of contraries. This is most plainly set forth in the book of Ecclesiasticus in this manner: Against evil is good, and against death is life; so against the godly is the sinner.
And thus look upon all the works of the Most High, two by two, one against one. CHAPTER XIX. What seems to be thought concerning that which is written: God divided between the light and the darkness. Although, therefore, the obscurity of the divine word is even useful for this, that it gives birth to many opinions of truth and brings them forth into the light of knowledge, while one understands it thus and another thus (yet in such a way that what is understood in an obscure place is supported either by the attestation of manifest things or by other passages in no way doubtful; or, when many things are discussed, one arrives also at that which he who wrote it intended; or, if that lies hidden, on the occasion of treating the deep obscurity certain other true things are said):
it does not seem to me an absurd opinion, drawn from the works of God, if, when that first light was made, the angels are understood to have been created, that there was made a distinction between the holy angels and the unclean, where it was said: And God divided between the light and the darkness; and God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. For He alone could discern these, who could also, before they fell, foreknow that they would fall and, deprived of the light of truth, would remain in dark pride. For between this day and night most familiar to us, that is, between this light and these our darknesses, He commanded the heavenly luminaries most familiar to our senses to divide:
Let there be, He said, luminaries in the firmament of heaven, that they may shine upon the earth and divide between the day and the night; and a little after: And God made, He said, two great luminaries, the greater luminary to rule the day, and the lesser luminary to rule the night, and the stars; and God set them in the firmament of heaven to shine upon the earth and to preside over the day and the night and to divide between the light and the darkness. But between that light, which is the holy society of angels intelligibly shining bright with the illumination of truth, and its contrary darkness, that is, the most foul minds of the evil angels turned away from the light of righteousness, He Himself could divide, to whom even the future evil—not of nature, but of will—could not be hidden or uncertain.
CHAPTER XX. Concerning that which, after the distinction of light and darkness, was said: And God saw the light that it was good. Finally, neither is that to be passed over in silence, that, where God said: Let there be light, and there was light, there immediately was subjoined: And God saw the light that it was good; not after He had separated between the light and the darkness and called the light day and the darkness night, lest He should seem to have borne testimony of His approval together with the light to darkness of such a kind. For where the darknesses are blameless, between which and this light visible to these eyes the luminaries of heaven divide, it is added not before but after: And God saw that it was good.
He set them, it says, in the firmament of heaven to shine upon the earth and to preside over the day and the night and to separate between the light and the darkness. And God saw that it was good. Both pleased Him, because both are without sin. But where God said: Let there be light, and there was light; and God saw the light that it was good; and afterward it is added: And God separated between the light and the darkness; and God called the light day and the darkness He called night: in this place it is not added: And God saw that it was good, lest both should be called good, since one of these was evil—by its own vice, not by nature. And therefore there alone the light pleased the Creator; but the angelic darkness, although it had to be ordained, yet did not have to be approved. CHAPTER XXI.
Of the eternal and unchangeable knowledge and will of God, by which all the things He made always pleased Him to be made just as they were made. For what else is to be understood in that which is said of all things, 'God saw that it was good,' except the approval of the work according to the craft by which it was made, which is the wisdom of God? But God is so far from then learning that it was good when it had been made, that none of those things would have been made at all had it been unknown to Him. Therefore, while He sees that it is good—a thing which, unless He had seen it before it was made, would by no means have been made—He teaches that it is good; He does not learn it. And Plato indeed ventured to say something more, namely that God was lifted up with joy at the completion of the universe of the world.
Yet even in this Plato was not so foolish as to think that God was made more blessed by the newness of His work; rather, he wished thus to show that the work now finished pleased its Maker, just as it had pleased Him to be made in the craft—not as though God's knowledge is in any way varied, so that things which do not yet exist produce one thing in it, things which already exist another, and things which have been yet another; for not in our manner does He either foresee what is to come, or behold what is present, or look back upon what is past, but in some other manner far and deeply different from the habit of our thoughts. For He does not, by a thought changed from this to that, but altogether unchangeably, see;
so that those things which come to pass in time—the future not yet being, the present already being, the past being no longer—He Himself comprehends them all in a stable and everlasting present; nor does He see otherwise with His eyes and otherwise with His mind, for He does not consist of soul and body; nor otherwise now and otherwise before and otherwise afterward, since His knowledge is not, like ours, changed by the variety of the three times—namely present, past, and future—for with Him there is no variation, neither shadow of a moment of change. Nor does His attention pass from thought to thought, since in His incorporeal gaze all the things He knows are present together at once;
since He knows times by no temporal notions of His own, in the same way as He moves temporal things by no temporal motions of His own. There, therefore, He saw that what He made was good, where He saw that it was good to make it; nor, because He saw it made, did He double His knowledge or increase it in any part, as though He had been of lesser knowledge before He made what He saw—He who would not work so perfectly if His knowledge were not so perfect, to which nothing is added from His works. Wherefore, if it had only to be made known to us who made the light, it would suffice to say, 'God made the light'; but if not only who made it, but also through what He made it, it would be enough to declare it thus: 'And God said: Let there be light, and there was light';
so that we might know that not only God, but God through the Word, made the light. But because it was fitting that three things especially worth knowing concerning the creature should be intimated to us—who made it, through what He made it, why He made it—'God said,' he says, 'Let there be light, and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good.' If, then, we ask who made it: it is God; if through what He made it: He said, 'Let it be,' and it was made; if why He made it: because it is good. There is no author more excellent than God, no craft more effectual than the Word of God, no cause better than that something good should be created by the good God. This too Plato declares to be the most just cause for founding the world, that good works should be made by the good God—whether he read this, or perhaps learned it from those who had read it;
or whether by his most acute genius he beheld the invisible things of God, understood through the things that are made, or whether he too learned it from those who had beheld these things. CHAPTER XXII. Concerning those to whom, in the universe of things well founded by the good Creator, certain things are displeasing, and who suppose that there is some evil nature.
Yet this cause—that is, the goodness of God for the creating of good things—this cause, I say, so just and so fitting, which, when diligently considered and piously pondered, puts an end to all the controversies of those who inquire into the origin of the world, certain heretics did not see; for the needy and fragile mortality of this flesh, already coming from a just punishment, when things do not suit it, gives much offense—such as fire, or cold, or a wild beast, or anything of that sort;
and they do not consider how these things flourish in their own places and natures and are arranged in a beautiful order, and how much they contribute, each according to its portion of comeliness, to the universe of things as to a common commonwealth; or what benefits they afford us ourselves, if we use them suitably and knowingly—so that even those very poisons which through unsuitableness are pernicious, when fittingly applied, are turned into wholesome medicines; while on the contrary even those things in which men delight, such as food and drink and this very light, are felt to be harmful when used immoderately and at the wrong time.
Whence divine providence admonishes us not to find fault with things foolishly, but diligently to inquire into their usefulness, and where our own intelligence or weakness fails, to believe it hidden, just as there were certain things which we could scarcely discover; for this very hiding of usefulness is either an exercise of humility or an abrasion of pride, since there is altogether no nature that is evil, and this name 'evil' is nothing but the privation of good. But from earthly things up to heavenly, and from visible up to invisible, some goods are better than others, and unequal for this very purpose—that all might exist; yet God is so great a craftsman in great things that He is not lesser in small ones; which small things are to be measured not by their own greatness (for there is none), but by the wisdom of their craftsman;
as in the appearance of a visible man, if one eyebrow be shaved off, how nearly nothing is taken from the body, and yet how much is taken from its beauty—since beauty consists not in bulk, but in the equality and proportion of the members! Nor indeed is it much to be wondered at that those who think there is some evil nature, sprung up and propagated from a certain contrary principle of its own, are unwilling to accept this cause of the creation of things—that the good God founded good things; believing rather that He was brought by extreme necessity to these worldly endeavors in order to repel an evil rebelling against Him, and that He mingled His own good nature, in coercing and overcoming the evil, with that which He could only with great labor, after it had been most foully polluted and most cruelly captured and oppressed, scarcely cleanse and set free;
yet not the whole of it, but that part of it which could not be purged from that defilement was to be the covering and chain of the conquered and imprisoned enemy. But the Manichaeans would not thus be foolish, or rather rave, if they believed God's nature to be, as it is, unchangeable and altogether incorruptible, which nothing can harm; and if with Christian soundness they perceived the soul—which by its will could be changed for the worse and corrupted by sin, and thus deprived of the light of unchangeable truth—to be not a part of God, nor of that nature which is God's, but created by Him, far unequal to its Creator. CHAPTER XXIII. Concerning the error in which the doctrine of Origen is blamed.
But far more to be wondered at is that even certain men who believe, along with us, that there is one principle of all things, and that no nature which is not what God is can exist except as founded by Him, were nevertheless unwilling to believe well and simply this so good and simple cause of the world's fabrication—namely, that the good God founded good things, and that there should be, after God, things which are not what God is, yet good, things which none but the good God would make;
but they say that souls—not indeed parts of God, but made by God—sinned by withdrawing from their Creator, and that by diverse degrees, according to the diversity of their sins, they merited diverse bodies as chains, from the heavens down to the earth; and that this is the world, and that this was the cause of the world's being made—not that good things might be founded, but that evils might be restrained. Hence Origen is rightly blamed. For in the books which he entitles 'Peri Archon,' that is, 'On Principles,' he thought this and wrote this. Wherein I marvel more than can be said that a man so learned and practiced in ecclesiastical literature did not consider, first, how contrary this was to the intention of this Scripture of such great authority, which, through all the works of God, adds:
'And God saw that it was good,' and, when all was completed, adding, 'And God saw all the things that He had made, and behold, they were very good,' willed that no other cause for making the world be understood than that good things should be made by the good God. Wherein, if no one had sinned, the world would only have been adorned and filled with good natures; and because sin exists, not on that account are all things filled with sins, since by far the greater number of good beings preserve the order of their nature in the heavenly realms; nor did the evil will, because it would not preserve the order of nature, on that account escape the laws of the just God who orders all things well;
for just as a painting with a black color set in its own place, so the universe of things, if one could behold it, is beautiful even with sinners, although, considered in themselves, their own deformity makes them foul. Then Origen ought to have seen, and whoever holds such views, that if this opinion were true—that the world was therefore made so that souls, according to the deserts of their sins, might receive bodies as workhouses in which they should be penally confined, those that sinned less receiving the higher and lighter, but those that sinned more the lower and heavier—then the demons, than whom nothing is worse, ought to have had earthly bodies, than which nothing is lower and heavier, rather than men, even good men.
But as it is, in order that we might understand that the merits of souls are not to be weighed by the qualities of bodies, the worst demon has an aerial body, while man—even now, though evil, of a far lesser and milder malice, and certainly before sin—nevertheless received an earthen body. And what more foolish thing can be said than that the craftsman God consulted not for the comeliness of beauty, nor even for the welfare of corporeal things, in making this sun—that there should be one sun in one world—but that this rather came about because one soul had so sinned that it deserved to be enclosed in such a body? And consequently, if it had happened that not one, but two—nay, not two, but ten or a hundred—had sinned in like and equal manner, would this world have a hundred suns?
That this should not happen was provided for, not by the marvelous foresight of the Maker for the welfare and comeliness of corporeal things, but it rather came about by so great a degree of one soul's sinning that it alone deserved such a body. Plainly it is not the progression of souls—concerning which they know not what they say—but the progression of those very men who hold such views, far astray from the truth, that ought by all means to be restrained.
These three things, then, which I commended above, since they are to be sought in each creature—who made it, through what He made it, why He made it, so that the answer is: God, through the Word, because it is good—whether by a mystical loftiness the Trinity itself is intimated to us, that is, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, or whether something occurs which forbids that this be so taken in this passage of the Scriptures, is a question of much discourse, nor must we press to unfold everything in one volume. CHAPTER XXIV. Concerning the divine Trinity, which has scattered through all its works the tokens of its own signification.
We believe and hold and faithfully proclaim that the Father begot the Word—that is, Wisdom, through whom all things were made—the only-begotten Son, one begetting one, the eternal coeternal, the supremely good begetting one equally good; and that the Holy Spirit is at once the Spirit of both Father and Son, Himself consubstantial and coeternal with both; and that this whole is both a Trinity by reason of the propriety of the persons, and one God by reason of the inseparable divinity, just as one Almighty by reason of the inseparable omnipotence; yet so that, even when each is inquired of singly, each of them is answered to be both God and almighty; but when of all together, there are not three gods or three almighties, but one God almighty;
so inseparable is the unity there in the three, which willed itself to be thus proclaimed. But whether the Holy Spirit of the good Father and the good Son, because He is common to both, may rightly be called the goodness of both, I do not dare to hurl forth a rash opinion; yet I would more easily venture to call Him the holiness of both—not as a quality of both, but Himself also a substance and the third person in the Trinity. To this I am the more probably led by the fact that, although both the Father is spirit and the Son is spirit, and the Father is holy and the Son is holy, yet He Himself is properly called the Holy Spirit, as the substantial and consubstantial holiness of both.
But if the divine goodness is nothing other than holiness, then surely it is an intelligence of reason, not a boldness of presumption, that in the works of God, by a certain secret manner of speaking by which our attention is exercised, the same Trinity should be understood as intimated to us—who made each creature, through what He made it, on account of what He made it. For the Father is understood as the Father of the Word, who said, 'Let it be made'; and what was made by His saying it was without doubt made through the Word; but in that which is said, 'God saw that it was good,' it is sufficiently signified that God made what was made by no necessity, by no need of any advantage of His own, but by goodness alone—that is, because it is good;
which is therefore said after it had been made, so that the thing which was made might be shown to agree with the goodness for the sake of which it was made. And if this goodness is rightly understood to be the Holy Spirit, then the whole Trinity is intimated to us in its works. Thence comes the origin, the formation, and the blessedness of the holy City, which is on high in the holy angels. For if it be asked whence it is: God founded it; if whence it is wise: it is illumined by God; if whence it is happy: it enjoys God; subsisting, it is given measure; contemplating, it is enlightened; cleaving, it rejoices; it is, it sees, it loves; it flourishes in the eternity of God, it shines in the truth of God, it rejoices in the goodness of God. CHAPTER XXV. Concerning the threefold division of all philosophy.
As far as it is given to understand, hence the philosophers willed the discipline of wisdom to be threefold—nay rather, they were able to observe that it is threefold (for they did not themselves institute that it should be so, but rather discovered that it is so)—of which one part should be called physics, another logic, the third ethics (whose Latin names are now frequented in the writings of many, so that they are called natural, rational, and moral; which we also briefly touched on in the eighth book);
not that it follows that these men thought anything concerning the Trinity according to God in these three parts, although Plato is said to have been the first to discover and commend this distribution—Plato, to whom neither the author of all natures appeared other than God, nor the giver of intelligence, nor the inspirer of the love by which one lives well and blessedly. But certainly, although on the nature of things, and on the method of investigating truth, and on the end of good to which we ought to refer all that we do, different men hold different views, nevertheless in these three great and general questions all their endeavor is engaged.
Thus, although in each of these there is a manifold disagreement of opinions as to what each man should follow, yet no one hesitates to affirm that there is some cause of nature, some form of knowledge, some chief end of life. There are also three things which are regarded in every man who is a craftsman, in order that he may produce something: nature, instruction, practice; nature is to be judged by talent, instruction by knowledge, practice by its fruit. Nor am I ignorant that, properly speaking, fruit belongs to the one enjoying, use to the one using, and that herein the difference seems to lie, that we are said to enjoy that thing which by itself delights us, not to be referred to anything else, but to use that thing which we seek for the sake of something else (whence temporal things are rather to be used than enjoyed, so that we may merit to enjoy the eternal; not like the perverse, who wish to enjoy money but to use God;
since they do not expend money for the sake of God, but worship God for the sake of money); yet according to that manner of speaking which custom has more prevailingly obtained, we both use fruits and enjoy uses; for fruits too are now properly so called of the fields, all of which we certainly use temporally. In this manner, then, I would speak of 'use' in these three things which I have noted as to be regarded in man, which are nature, instruction, practice. From these, for the obtaining of the blessed life, the threefold discipline, as I have said, was discovered by the philosophers: natural on account of nature, rational on account of instruction, moral on account of practice.
If, then, our nature were from ourselves, we should surely also have begotten our own wisdom, nor should we take care to perceive it by instruction—that is, by learning it from elsewhere; and our love, having proceeded from ourselves and referred back to ourselves, would suffice for living blessedly, nor would it need any other good to enjoy. But as it is, because our nature has God as its author that it might exist, without doubt we must have Him as our teacher that we may be truly wise, and Him also as the bestower of inmost sweetness that we may be blessed. CHAPTER XXVI. Concerning the image of the supreme Trinity, which in a certain manner is found in the nature even of man not yet beatified.