which is to be joined to the immortal angels, and is gathered out of mortal men, and now sojourns mortally on earth, or, in the case of those who have undergone death, rests in the hidden receptacles and abodes of souls—it is now, I see, to be said how this part arose, by the creation of the same God, just as it has been said concerning the angels. For according to the faith of Holy Scripture, the human race took its beginning from one man, whom God first founded. And this Scripture, not undeservedly, has a marvellous authority throughout the whole world and among all the nations which, among other true things it has said, it foretold by true divinity would believe in it. CHAPTER X. On the opinion of those who think that the human race, like the world itself, has always existed.
Let us therefore pass over the conjectures of men who know not what they say concerning the nature or the institution of the human race. For some, just as they believed concerning the world itself, suppose that men have always existed. Whence Apuleius also says, when he was describing this kind of living creatures: 'Individually mortal, yet as a whole, in the entire kind, perpetual.' And when it has been said to them, if the human race has always existed, in what way then does their history speak the truth which narrates who were the inventors of various things, and who were the first founders of the liberal disciplines and of the other arts, or by whom this or that region and part of the lands—
this or that island began to be inhabited by whom—they answer that, through fixed intervals of time, by floods and conflagrations, not indeed all, but most parts of the lands are so devastated that men are reduced to a tiny remnant, from whose progeny the former multitude is again restored; and that thus things are again and again discovered and instituted as though for the first time, when rather they are restored, having been interrupted and extinguished by those excessive devastations; but that a man can in no way at all come into existence except from a man. They say, however, what they suppose, not what they know. CHAPTER XI. On the falsity of that history which assigns many thousands of years to past times.
Certain most lying writings also deceive them, which they allege contain in their history of the times many thousands of years, whereas from the sacred letters we reckon that not yet six thousand years have been completed since the institution of man. Wherefore, not to argue at length how the vanity of those writings—in which far more thousands of years are recounted—is refuted, and how no authority suitable to this matter is found in them: that letter of Alexander the Great to his mother Olympias, which he wrote setting forth the narration of a certain Egyptian priest, which he had drawn from writings held sacred among them, contains also kingdoms which Greek history likewise knows;
in which the kingdom of the Assyrians, in that same letter of Alexander, exceeds five thousand years; but in Greek history it has nearly one thousand three hundred from the very rule of Belus, whom that Egyptian also places as king at the beginning of that same kingdom. The empire of the Persians and Macedonians, moreover, down to Alexander himself, to whom he was speaking, that man sets at more than eight thousand years, whereas among the Greeks, the Macedonians down to the death of Alexander are reckoned at four hundred and eighty-five, and the Persians, until they were brought to an end by Alexander's own victory, are reckoned at two hundred and thirty-three. These numbers of years, therefore, are far less than those Egyptian ones; nor would they equal them, even if they were reckoned three times as much.
For the Egyptians are reported once to have had years so short that they were completed in four months each; whence a fuller and truer year, such as now is both ours and theirs, embraced three of their ancient years. But not even so, as I have said, does Greek history agree in the number of times with the Egyptian. And therefore credit is rather to be given to the Greek, because it does not exceed the truth of the years which are contained in our letters, which are truly sacred. Moreover, if this letter of Alexander, which has become especially well known, departs greatly in the spans of times from a credible faith concerning things, how much less is credit to be given to those writings which—
they have wished to bring forth full of fabulous, as it were, antiquities, against the authority of the most well-known and divine books, which foretold that the whole world would believe in it, and in which the whole world, just as was foretold by it, has believed; which has shown that it narrated true things that are past, by those things which it foretold as future, since they are fulfilled with such great truth. CHAPTER XII. On those who think this world indeed not everlasting, but suppose either that there are innumerable worlds, or that this same one world is always being born and dissolved by a fixed succession of ages. But others, who do not think this world everlasting, whether they suppose that not it alone exists, but innumerable worlds,
or whether they suppose it indeed to be alone, but that it innumerably rises and sets at fixed intervals of ages, must of necessity confess that the human race existed at some time before there were men to beget them. For they cannot, as in the case of floods and conflagrations of the lands—which they do not think befall the whole globe entirely, and therefore contend that a few men always remain, from whom the former multitude is restored—they cannot, I say, in the same way suppose that some of mankind is left in the world while the world is perishing; but just as they think the world itself is reborn out of its own matter, so they think the human race in it springs up out of its elements, and then the offspring of mortals sprouts from parents, as do that of the other animals. CHAPTER XIII.
What is to be answered to those who object that the creation of man was too late. But that which we answered, when the question concerning the origin of the world was being debated, to those who are unwilling to believe that it did not always exist, but began to exist, just as even Plato most openly confesses (although by some he is believed to have thought the contrary to what he says): this same thing I would answer also concerning the first creation of man, on account of those who are similarly disturbed as to why man was not created throughout the innumerable and infinite times gone by, and was created so late that less than six thousand years are found, since in the sacred letters he is found to have begun to exist.
For if the brevity of time offends them, because so few years seem to them to have passed since man was instituted, as is read in our authorities, let them consider that nothing is long-lasting in which there is some end, and that all the spans of the ages, if compared to boundless eternity, are to be esteemed not small, but nothing at all. And through this, if not five or six, but even sixty thousand, or six hundred thousand, or sixty times, or six hundred times, or six hundred thousand times the number of years were named, since God made man, or if this sum were likewise multiplied through as many times as many, where we would no longer have any name for the number: in the same way it could be asked why He did not make him before.
For God's cessation, going backward from the creation of man, is so eternal, without beginning, that, if there be compared to it any number of times, however great and unspeakable—which is nonetheless terminated, enclosed within the end of a fixed span—it ought not even to seem so much as if we should compare a tiniest drop of moisture to the whole sea, even as much as the ocean flows around the world; since of these two, the one is exceedingly small, the other incomparably great, yet both are finite. But that span of time which proceeds from some beginning and is confined by some end—however great a magnitude it be stretched to—compared to that which has no beginning, I know not whether it is to be reckoned as the least, or rather as nothing.
For if, from the end, even the briefest moments are taken away one by one—with the number decreasing, however vast it be, so that it finds no name—by returning backward (as if you should subtract the days of a man from that in which he now lives back to that in which he was born), the subtraction will at some point be brought to the beginning.
But if, going backward in a span which began from no commencement, there be taken away—I do not say one by one the minute moments, or the quantities of hours or days or months or even years, but spans as great as that whole sum of years comprehends, which can no longer be expressed by any reckoners whatsoever, yet which is consumed by the gradual subtraction of moments—and if these so-great spans be taken away not once and again and more often, but always: what comes of it, what is brought about, when one never arrives at a beginning which is utterly none at all? Wherefore, that which we now inquire after five thousand and odd years, posterity too could inquire with the same curiosity even after six hundred thousand years,
if this mortality of men should so far continue in arising and dying away, and its untaught infirmity should persevere. Those too who were before us could, in the very recent times of created man, raise this question. The first man himself, in fact, either on the next day, or on the same day after he was made, could have inquired why he was not made before; and at whatever earlier time he had been made, this controversy about the beginning of temporal things would find then no other forces than now or even afterward. CHAPTER XIV. On the revolution of the ages, by which, when they are concluded within a fixed end, certain philosophers believed all things would always return into the same order and the same form.
But the philosophers of this world thought that this could and ought not to be resolved otherwise than by introducing cycles of times, by which they asserted that the same things had always been renewed and repeated in the nature of things, and that thus they would continue to be henceforth without cessation, the rolling courses of ages coming and passing away; whether these cycles took place in a world that remains, or whether a world rising and setting at fixed intervals should always exhibit, as though new, the same things which have passed away and are to come. From which mockery they cannot at all free the immortal soul, even when it has attained wisdom—a soul going without cessation to a false blessedness and returning without cessation to a true misery.
For how is that a true blessedness, of whose eternity there is never any confidence, while the soul either most ignorantly does not know, in truth, the coming misery, or most unhappily, in blessedness, dreads it? But if, never to return again to miseries, it passes from these to blessedness, then something new comes to be in time, which has no end of time. Why then not the world also? Why not also man, made in the world?—so that those, I know not what, false cycles, discovered by false and deceitful sages, may be avoided, on the sound path of the right way, in sound doctrine. For some wish also that which is read in the book of Solomon, who is called Ecclesiastes: 'What is it that has been? The same that shall be. And what is it that has been done? The same that shall be done;'
'and there is no new thing whatever under the sun. Who shall speak and say: Behold, this is new? It has already been in the ages which were before us'—they wish this to be understood on account of those cycles returning into the same things and recalling all things into the same. But he said this either concerning those matters of which he was speaking above, that is, concerning some generations going and others coming, concerning the windings of the sun, concerning the gliding of torrents; or assuredly concerning the kinds of all things which arise and set. For there were men before us, there are also with us, there will be also after us: so likewise any living creatures or shrubs.
Those very monstrosities also, which are born in unwonted shapes, although they differ among themselves and some of them are recounted as having occurred only once, nevertheless, according to that whereby they are in general miracles and monstrosities, they certainly both have been and will be. Nor is it a recent or novel thing that a monstrosity should be born under the sun. Although some have so understood these words, as though that wise man wished it to be understood that all things had already been done in the predestination of God, and that therefore nothing is recent under the sun.
But far be it from the right faith that we should believe those cycles to be signified by these words of Solomon, by which those men suppose that the same revolutions of times and of temporal things are so repeated, that, for example, just as in this present age the philosopher Plato taught his disciples in the city of Athens and in that school which was called the Academy, so through countless ages past, at intervals indeed very long, yet fixed, the same Plato and the same city and the same school and the same disciples have been repeated, and through countless ages to come are to be repeated. Far be it, I say, that we should believe these things. For Christ died once for our sins; but rising from the dead He dies no more, and death shall no longer have dominion over Him;
and we, after the resurrection, shall be ever with the Lord, to whom we even now say what the sacred psalm admonishes: Thou, O Lord, shalt keep us and preserve us from this generation and for ever. Now I think that what follows agrees well enough with these men: The wicked walk in a circle; not because their life is to return through the cycles which they imagine, but because such is now the way of their error, that is, false doctrine. CHAPTER XV. Of the temporal condition of the human race, which God instituted neither by a new counsel nor by a mutable will. But what wonder is it, if, wandering in these cycles, they find neither entrance nor exit? Since they know not by what beginning the human race and this our mortality began, nor by what end it is brought to a close;
since indeed they cannot penetrate the depth of God, whereby, although He Himself is eternal and without beginning, He nevertheless began times from some beginning, and made man in time, whom He had never made before — yet not by a new and sudden, but by an unchangeable and eternal counsel. Who can investigate this unsearchable depth, and scrutinize the inscrutable, according to which God made temporal man, before whom no man ever was, not by a mutable will, in time, and multiplied the human race out of one man? Since indeed the psalm itself, when it had premised and said:
Thou, O Lord, shalt keep us and preserve us from this generation and for ever, and then had struck down those in whose foolish and impious doctrine no eternity of the soul's liberation and blessedness is preserved, immediately subjoining: The wicked walk in a circle: as though it were said to Him: 'What then dost thou believe, feel, understand? Is it to be supposed that it suddenly pleased God to make man, whom through the infinite eternity stretching back He had never made before, to whom nothing new can happen, in whom there is nothing mutable?' — it immediately answered, speaking to God Himself: According to Thy depth Thou hast multiplied the sons of men. Let men, it says, perceive what they think, and let them hold and dispute what pleases them:
According to Thy depth, which no man can know, Thou hast multiplied the sons of men. For it is something very deep, both that He has ever been, and that He willed first to make man, whom He had never made, from some particular time, and yet did not change His counsel and will. CHAPTER XVI. Whether, in order that God may be understood to have ever been also Lord, it is to be believed that there was never wanting a creature over which He might be Lord, and in what way that may be called ever created which cannot be called co-eternal. I indeed, just as I dare not say that the Lord God was at some time not Lord, so I ought not to doubt that man never existed before, and that the first man was created from a certain time.
But when I consider of what thing He was ever Lord, if a creature did not ever exist, I am afraid to affirm anything, because I both regard myself and recall that it is written: Who of men can know the counsel of God, or who can think what the Lord willeth? For the thoughts of mortals are timid, and our devices uncertain. For the corruptible body weigheth down the soul, and the earthly habitation depresseth the mind that museth upon many things. From these many things, then, which I ponder in this earthly habitation (and many indeed, for this reason, because I cannot find that one thing which, out of them or beside them — which perhaps I do not ponder — is true), if I should say that there was ever a creature of which He was Lord,
He who is ever Lord and never was not Lord; but now this one, now another, through one and another space of times, lest we should say any creature to be co-eternal with the Creator, which sound faith and reason condemns: it must be guarded against, lest it be absurd and alien from the light of truth, that a mortal creature should indeed ever have existed through the successions of times, one departing, another succeeding; but that the immortal creature should not have begun to be, except when our age was reached, when the angels also were created, if that first-made light rightly signifies them, or rather that heaven of which it was said:
In the beginning God made heaven and earth, since nevertheless they did not exist before they were made, lest the immortals, if they are said to have ever existed, should be believed to be co-eternal with God. But if I should say that the angels were not created in time, but that they too existed before all times, of whom God was Lord, who never was anything but Lord: it will be asked of me also, if they were made before all times, whether those who were made could have existed always. Here perhaps it would seem one must answer: How not always, since that which exists at every time may not unfittingly be said to exist always? But these existed at every time to such a degree that they were even made before all times; if indeed times began from heaven, and these already were before heaven.
But if time was not from heaven, but existed even before heaven; not indeed in hours and days and months and years (for these measurements of temporal spaces, which are usually and properly called times, it is plain began from the motion of the stars; whence God also, when He instituted these, said: And let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years), but in some changeable motion, of which one part passes before, another after, in that they cannot exist together; — if then before heaven there was some such thing in angelic motions, and therefore time already existed, and the angels, from the time they were made, were moved temporally: even thus they existed at every time, since indeed times were made together with them. But who would say:
That did not always exist, which existed at every time? But if I shall answer this, it will be said to me: How then are they not co-eternal with the Creator, if He was always, they always were? How also are they to be said to be created, if they are understood to have always existed? To this what shall be answered? Must it be said that they both always existed, since they existed at every time — they who were made together with time, or with whom times were made — and yet were created? For neither shall we deny that times themselves were created, although no one doubts that time existed at every time. For if time did not exist at every time, then there was time when there was no time. Who, however foolish, would say this? For we can rightly say: There was a time when Rome did not exist;
there was a time when Jerusalem did not exist; there was a time when Abraham did not exist; there was a time when man did not exist, and the like; finally, if the world was made not with the beginning of time, but after some time, we can say: There was a time when the world did not exist; but truly: There was a time when there was no time, we say as unfittingly as if anyone should say: There was a man when there was no man, or: This world existed when this world did not exist. For if it be understood of one thing and another, it can in some way be said, that is: There was another man when this man did not exist; so therefore: There was another time when this time did not exist, we can rightly say; but truly:
There was a time when there was no time — who, even the most foolish, would say this? Just as therefore we say that time was created, while it is nevertheless said to have always existed, because at every time there was time: so it does not follow that, if the angels always existed, they were therefore not created; so that they are said to have always existed for this reason, because they existed at every time, and they existed at every time for this reason, because in no way could the very times exist without them. For where there is no creature by whose changeable motions times are carried on, times cannot exist at all; and therefore, even if they always existed, they were created, nor, if they always existed, are they on that account co-eternal with the Creator. For He always existed in unchangeable eternity; but these were made;
but they are said to have always existed for this reason, because they existed at every time, without which times could in no way exist; but time, since it runs by through mutability, cannot be co-eternal with unchangeable eternity. And by this, even if the immortality of the angels does not pass away in time, nor is it past as though now it were not, nor future as though it were not yet: nevertheless their motions, by which times are carried on, pass from the future into the past, and therefore they cannot be co-eternal with the Creator, in whose motion it is not to be said either that there was anything which now is not, or that there will be anything which is not yet. Wherefore, if God was always Lord, He always had a creature serving His dominion;
yet not begotten of Himself, but made by Him out of nothing, nor co-eternal with Him; for He was before it, although at no time without it — preceding it not by a passing interval, but by an abiding perpetuity. But if I should answer this to those who ask how He was always Creator, always Lord, if the serving creature did not always exist; or how it was created and not rather co-eternal with the Creator, if it always existed: I fear lest I be more easily judged to affirm what I know not, than to teach what I know. I return therefore to that which our Creator willed us to know; but as for those things which He has either permitted to the wiser in this life to know, or has reserved to be known by the wholly perfect in the other life, I confess to be beyond my powers.
But I have thought these things should be treated without affirmation, so that those who read these things may see from what perils of questions they ought to refrain, and may not judge themselves fit for all things, but rather may understand how much the Apostle is to be obeyed, who wholesomely commands where he says: But I say, through the grace of God which is given to me, to all who are among you, not to be more wise than it behoveth to be wise, but to be wise unto temperance, to every one as God hath imparted the measure of faith. For if the infant be nourished according to its own strength, it will come to pass that by growing it may take in more; but if it exceed the strength of its own capacity, it will fail before it grows. CHAPTER XVII. In what way the eternal life promised to man by God before eternal times is to be understood.
What ages passed before the human race was instituted, I confess I am ignorant; yet I do not doubt that no creature at all is co-eternal with the Creator. The Apostle also speaks of eternal times, and not as future, but — what is more to be wondered at — as past. For thus he says: In hope of eternal life, which God, who lieth not, promised before eternal times; but hath manifested in His own times His word. Behold, he has said in retrospect that there were eternal times, which nevertheless were not co-eternal with God, since indeed He, before eternal times, not only existed, but also promised eternal life, which He manifested in His own, that is, in fitting times — what else than His Word? For this is eternal life.
But in what way did He promise, since He certainly promised to men, who did not yet exist before eternal times, unless because in His eternity and in His very Word, co-eternal with Him, it was already fixed by predestination, which was to be in its own time? CHAPTER XVIII. What sound faith defends concerning the unchangeable counsel and will of God against the reasonings of those who maintain that the works of God return, repeated from eternity, through ever the same cycles of the ages. That also I do not doubt, that before the first man was created, there never was any man; nor that same man revolved through I know not what cycles I know not how often, nor any other man like him in nature.
Nor do the arguments of the philosophers deter me from this faith, of which that is thought the most acute which they advance, that no infinite things can be comprehended by any knowledge; and by this, they say, God has with Himself all the finite reasons of all the finite things which He makes; but His goodness is not to be believed ever to have been idle, lest His operation be temporal, of which there was previously eternal cessation, as though He repented of His former leisure without beginning, and on that account undertook the beginning of His work;
and therefore, they say, it is necessary that the same things be always repeated and that the things ever to be repeated should run their course, either while the world abides in a changeable manner — which, though it never was not, yet was made without a beginning of time — or by the world's own rising and setting being always repeated through those cycles and ever to be repeated; lest, namely, if God's works are said to have at some time first begun, He be believed to have in some way condemned His former cessation without beginning as inert and slothful and therefore displeasing to Himself, and on that account to have changed it;
but if He be reported to have always indeed wrought temporal things, yet one set and another, and so at some time to have come even to the making of man, whom He had never made before, He would seem to have done what He did not by knowledge — by which they think that whatever things are infinite cannot be comprehended — but as if for the hour, just as it came into His mind, by a certain fortuitous inconstancy. Further, if those cycles be admitted, they say, by which, either while the world abides, or while the world itself too inserts its revolving risings and settings into those same cycles, the same temporal things are repeated, then neither is slothful idleness — especially of so long a duration without beginning — attributed to God, nor improvident rashness of His works;
since, if the same things be not repeated, they cannot, varied by infinite diversity, be comprehended by any knowledge or foreknowledge of His. These argumentations, by which the impious try to turn aside our simple piety from the right way, that we may walk with them in a circle, if reason could not refute them, faith ought to deride. To this is added, that with the help of the Lord our God, reason made manifest shatters those rolling circles which opinion fabricates.