The City of God: Book 9

Some thinkers have argued that gods come in two varieties, good and evil; others, holding the gods in higher regard, have attributed such honor and excellence to them that the very idea of a wicked god becomes unthinkable. Those who accepted the existence of wicked gods tended to fold demons into the category of "gods," and occasionally, though less often, referred to the gods themselves as demons. On this view, even Jupiter, whom they regarded as king and ruler of all the rest, could be called a demon, as Homer does. Those who insisted, by contrast, that all gods are good and far superior to even the best of men faced a different problem: they could not deny the troubling actions of demons, yet they refused to attribute those actions to gods whose goodness they were committed to defending. Their solution was to draw a firm line between gods and demons, so that whenever unseen spirits displayed behavior that was offensive or disturbing, the blame fell on demons rather than gods. At the same time, these thinkers believed that since no god could deal directly with human beings, demons served as intermediaries, carrying prayers upward and bringing divine gifts back down. This is the position of the Platonists, the most capable and respected of the pagan philosophers, and it is precisely why we chose to debate this question with them: whether worshipping a multitude of gods offers any real benefit toward achieving blessedness in the life to come. That is also why, in the preceding book, we examined how demons, who delight in the very things that good and wise people find repulsive and abhorrent, including the sacrilegious and morally corrupt fictions the poets wrote not about men but about the gods themselves, and the wicked, criminal practices of magic, could possibly be considered closer to the gods than humans are, or capable of mediating between good men and good gods. The conclusion we reached was that this is simply impossible.

This book, as promised at the close of the previous one, should address not the distinctions among the gods (who, according to the Platonists, are all good), nor the distinctions between gods and demons (where the former are placed at a vast distance from humanity while the latter occupy a middle position between gods and men), but rather the distinctions the Platonists draw among the demons themselves. We will examine this question only as far as it bears on our central argument. It has long been a common belief that some demons are evil and others good, and this view, whether it belongs to the Platonists or to some other school, cannot be passed over in silence. If left unaddressed, someone might conclude that he should cultivate the good demons so that, through their intercession, he might find favor with the gods (all of whom he believes to be good) and dwell among them after death. In pursuing that course, however, he would only entangle himself in the snares of wicked spirits and drift far from the true God, in whom alone, and with whom alone, the rational and intellectual human soul finds its genuine blessedness.

What, then, is the actual difference between good and evil demons? The Platonist Apuleius wrote an entire treatise on this subject, and while he says a great deal about their aerial bodies, he says nothing about the spiritual virtues that good demons would necessarily possess. He offers no account of what might make them happy, but he does, unwittingly, provide evidence of their misery: he acknowledges that their minds, the very faculty that qualifies them as rational beings, are not strengthened by virtue or equipped to resist irrational passions. Instead, those minds are churned by violent emotional storms, placing them on the same level as foolish human beings. His own words are: "It is this class of demons the poets refer to, when, without serious error, they feign that the gods hate and love individuals among men, prospering and ennobling some, and opposing and distressing others. Therefore pity, indignation, grief, joy, every human emotion is experienced by the demons, with the same mental disturbance, and the same tide of feeling and thought. These turmoils and tempests banish them far from the tranquillity of the celestial gods." Can anyone read those words and doubt that it is not some lower faculty being described, but the very mind by which demons hold their rank as rational beings, tossed about like a ship in a storm? They cannot even be compared to wise human beings, who face the same passions and perturbations in this life with a steady mind, who never surrender to impulses that would pull them away from wisdom and right conduct, even though human weakness means they are never entirely free from such pressures. Demons resemble wicked and foolish people in character, if not in physical form. One could argue they are worse, since they have grown old in wickedness and seem beyond correction by any punishment. Their minds, as Apuleius himself says, are seas driven by tempest, with no anchor of truth or virtue in their souls from which they might resist their own turbulent and depraved impulses.

Philosophers have traditionally held two competing views on mental emotions, which the Greeks call *πάθη* (passions). Some Latin writers, including Cicero, translate this as "perturbations," others as "affections," and still others as "passions," which is the closest rendering of the Greek. One school holds that even the wise man experiences these emotions, though reason moderates and controls them, imposing limits and keeping them within proper bounds. This is the position of the Platonists and Aristotelians, since Aristotle was Plato's student and the founder of the Peripatetic school. The Stoics, by contrast, hold that the wise man is not subject to these emotions at all. But Cicero, in his *De Finibus*, argues that the Stoics are really quarreling with the Platonists and Peripatetics over words rather than substance. The Stoics refuse to call external and bodily advantages "goods," insisting that virtue alone, understood as the art of living well and existing only in the mind, deserves that name. The other philosophers simply use ordinary language and have no problem calling these things goods, while still acknowledging that compared to virtue, which guides our lives, they are minor and of little ultimate worth. It becomes clear, then, that both parties hold these external things in essentially the same esteem, and that the Stoics are really just indulging a preference for novel terminology. On the question of whether the wise man is subject to mental passions or entirely free from them, I think the dispute is one of words rather than reality. If we look at the substance rather than the labels, the Stoics hold precisely the same view as the Platonists and Peripatetics. I could offer many proofs of this, but for the sake of brevity I will give just one, which I find conclusive. Aulus Gellius, a man of wide learning and an elegant, graceful writer, recounts in his *Noctes Atticae* (Attic Nights) that he once sailed with a distinguished Stoic philosopher. He tells the story in full and with evident relish; I will give only the essentials. When the ship was caught in a violent storm and in serious danger, the philosopher went pale with terror. The other passengers, themselves facing death, were curious to see whether a philosopher would be shaken like ordinary men. Once the storm had passed and they felt safe enough to talk again, a wealthy and self-indulgent passenger from Asia began to mock the philosopher, taunting him for turning pale with fear while he himself had remained unmoved in the face of destruction. The philosopher responded with the same reply that Aristippus the Socratic had once given to a man of similar character in a similar situation: "You had no reason to worry about the soul of a dissolute pleasure-seeker, but I had every reason to worry about the soul of Aristippus." Having dealt with the rich man, Aulus Gellius then asked the philosopher, out of genuine intellectual curiosity and with no intention of giving offense, what had caused his fear. The philosopher, happy to instruct someone so eager to learn, immediately pulled from his bag a book by Epictetus the Stoic, which set out doctrines in full agreement with those of Zeno and Chrysippus, the founders of the Stoic school. According to Aulus Gellius, the book explained that the Stoics recognize certain impressions made on the soul by external objects, which they call *phantasiae* (appearances or mental impressions), and that the soul has no power to determine whether or when these impressions will arrive. When they are produced by something alarming or threatening, they inevitably stir even the wise man's soul, so that for a moment he trembles with fear or sinks into sadness, these impressions getting ahead of reason and self-control. But this does not mean that the mind accepts, approves, or consents to these impressions. Consent, the Stoics hold, is within a person's power. The difference between the wise man's mind and the fool's is precisely this: the fool's mind yields to these passions and goes along with them, while the wise man's mind, though it cannot prevent them from arriving, holds with unshaken firmness to a true and steady judgment about what it should rationally seek or avoid. I have summarized what Aulus Gellius says he read in Epictetus's book about Stoic teaching as accurately as I can, perhaps not with his elegant style, but more briefly and, I think, more clearly. If this account is correct, there is little or no real difference between the Stoic position and that of the other philosophers on the question of mental passions, since both agree that the wise man's mind and reason are not ultimately subject to them. What the Stoics may mean by their claim is that the wisdom of the wise man is clouded by no error and stained by no fault, and that, with his wisdom remaining intact, he is still exposed to the impressions that the goods and hardships of this life (or, as the Stoics prefer, its advantages and disadvantages) make on him. For if that philosopher had truly placed no value on the things he feared losing, namely his life and physical safety, he would not have been frightened enough for the fear to show in the color of his face. Yet he could experience that emotional disturbance while still holding firmly to the conviction that life and bodily safety, threatened by the storm, are not the kind of goods that make their possessors genuinely good, the way righteousness does. As for the Stoics' insistence on calling them advantages rather than goods, that is a quarrel about words that ignores the real substance. What difference does the name make, when the Stoic is just as alarmed as the Peripatetic at the prospect of losing them, and when, whatever they call them, both hold them in the same regard? Both schools agree that if they were threatened with the loss of these goods or advantages unless they committed some immoral or criminal act, they would rather lose whatever preserves bodily comfort and safety than violate righteousness. A mind that is firmly grounded in this resolution does not allow emotional disturbances to override reason, even when those disturbances press hard on the soul's weaker parts. More than that, it rules over them: withholding consent, resisting them, and maintaining the governance of virtue. This is the character Virgil attributes to Aeneas when he writes,

There is no need right now for a thorough and exhaustive treatment of what Scripture teaches about the passions, which forms the heart of Christian understanding on this subject. Scripture subordinates the mind to God, so that He may govern and strengthen it, and then subordinates the passions to the mind, so that the mind may moderate and restrain them and direct them toward righteous ends. In our ethics, we are less concerned with whether a devout person feels anger than with why he feels it; less concerned with whether he feels sadness than with what caused it; less concerned with whether he fears than with what he fears. I cannot imagine any reasonable person objecting to anger directed at a wrongdoer when that anger seeks his correction, or to sadness that is moved to relieve someone's suffering, or to fear for a person in danger of being destroyed. The Stoics, of course, are inclined to condemn compassion altogether. But how much more admirable it would have been in that Stoic we discussed earlier, had he been shaken by compassion urging him to help a fellow human being, rather than shaken by fear of a shipwreck! Far better, far more humane, and far more in keeping with genuine piety, are the words Cicero uses in praise of Caesar: "Among your virtues, none is more admirable and agreeable than your compassion." And what is compassion, after all, but a shared feeling for another person's misery that moves us to help if we can? This emotion remains obedient to reason when compassion is expressed without violating what is right, as when the poor are relieved or the penitent are forgiven. Cicero, who understood how to use language precisely, had no hesitation in calling this a virtue, while the Stoics are not embarrassed to count it among the vices. And yet, as we learn from the writings of the distinguished Stoic Epictetus, who quotes the views of Zeno and Chrysippus, the very founders of the school, even they acknowledge that passions of this kind can invade the soul of the wise man, whom they otherwise insist should be entirely free from vice.

From this it follows that the Peripatetics and Stoics don't actually consider these passions to be vices at all, since they can assail a wise man without compelling him to act against reason and virtue. On that point, then, the Peripatetics (or Platonists) and the Stoics are in full agreement. But as Cicero observes, pointless word-games are the curse of these petty Greek philosophers, who hunger for argument rather than truth. Still, a fair question remains: is our vulnerability to these emotions, even when we are living virtuously, simply part of the weakness that belongs to this present life? Consider the holy angels: they feel no anger when they carry out punishment on those whom God's eternal law has condemned; they feel no sorrow when they bring relief to the suffering; they feel no fear when they come to the aid of those in danger. And yet ordinary language attributes these emotional states to them as well, because even though they share none of our frailty, their actions closely resemble the actions that these emotions produce in us. In the same way, Scripture speaks of God Himself as being angry, and yet without any inner disturbance whatsoever. That word describes the effect of His vengeance, not any unsettling passion within Him.

We can set aside the question of the holy angels for now and turn instead to the Platonist claim that the demons who mediate between gods and men are driven by passions. If their minds remained free and above those passions, Apuleius could never have said that their hearts are tossed by passion the way a sea is churned by storm winds. Their mind, then, that higher faculty of the soul by which they reason, and which, if it truly exists in them, should govern and restrain the turbulent impulses of the lower soul, is itself, according to the Platonist in question, caught in a hurricane of passion. The minds of the demons are therefore subject to fear, anger, lust, and every similar emotion. What part of them, then, remains free and capable of wisdom? What part makes them pleasing to the gods and fit to guide human beings toward a pure life? Their highest faculty is enslaved to passion and given over to vice, which only makes them more determined to deceive and corrupt, in direct proportion to the mental force and intensity of desire they possess.

But if someone argues that it's only the wicked demons, not all of them, about whom the poets speak truthfully when they describe beings driven by violent love or hatred toward certain men, we have to ask: how does that interpretation hold up against Apuleius himself? In the very same passage where he describes demons as creatures swept along by powerful emotional currents, he also presents all demons, not just the wicked ones, as occupying a middle position between gods and men by virtue of their aerial bodies. According to Apuleius, the poets' real fiction lies in something else entirely: they take demons and call them gods, assign them the names of gods, and cast them as the personal allies or enemies of individual men. The poets do this freely, even while claiming that the gods are fundamentally different from demons in character, and infinitely superior to them by their celestial dwelling and their fullness of blessedness. That, in his view, is the poets' invention: calling gods what are not gods, and depicting these beings, under divine names, as fighting among themselves over the men they love or hate with fierce partisan loyalty. Apuleius concedes that this isn't entirely wide of the mark, because even if these beings are wrongly called by the names of gods, they are at least described in their true character as demons. To this category, he says, belongs the Minerva of Homer, "who stepped into the Greek ranks to hold Achilles back." He takes it as poetic fiction that this figure was actually Minerva, since he regards Minerva as a true goddess, placed among those he believes to be entirely good and blessed, dwelling in the sublime ethereal heights, far removed from any direct dealings with humanity. But he does accept that a demon favorable to the Greeks and hostile to the Trojans was genuinely present, just as another demon, whom the same poet names Venus or Mars (gods who, in Apuleius's view, dwell in their heavenly homes far above earthly conflicts), was the Trojans' champion and the Greeks' adversary, and that these demons fought on behalf of those they loved against those they hated. In all of this, he acknowledged that the poets were saying something quite close to the truth. For the poets were describing beings to whom Apuleius himself attributes the same violent and turbulent passions that disturb human beings, beings therefore capable of loves and hatreds that are not reasoned or just, but driven by faction and partiality, much like the spectators at a chariot race or a hunt who form fierce attachments and bitter prejudices. It seems that what this Platonist feared most was that the fictions of the poets would be taken as descriptions of the gods themselves, rather than of the demons who merely bore their names.

The definition Apuleius gives of demons, one that he intends to cover all demons without exception, is this: they are animals by nature, subject to passion in their souls, rational in mind, aerial in body, and eternal in duration. In these five qualities, he has named absolutely nothing that belongs to good men but not also to bad. After speaking first of the celestial beings, Apuleius extended his description to include those who dwell far below on the earth, so that after sketching the two extremes of rational existence he could then address the intermediate beings, the demons. He describes humanity this way: "Men, therefore, who are endowed with reason and speech, whose souls are immortal and whose bodies are mortal, who have weak and anxious spirits, dull and corruptible flesh, dissimilar characters but similar ignorance, who are reckless in their boldness and stubborn in their hope, whose labor is futile and whose fortune is always fading, their race immortal but each individual perishing, each generation filled with creatures whose lives are brief and whose wisdom comes slowly, whose death is sudden and whose life is a lament: these are the men who dwell on the earth." In cataloguing so many qualities that belong to the majority of humanity, did he forget the quality that belongs to the few when he mentions that their wisdom is slow? Had he left that out, his carefully constructed portrait of the human race would have been incomplete. And when he praised the excellence of the gods, he insisted that they surpassed all others in precisely the kind of blessedness he believes men must reach through wisdom. So if he had wanted us to believe that some demons are good, he should have included in his description something showing that they share with the gods some measure of blessedness, or with men some degree of wisdom. As it stands, he has mentioned no good quality by which the good among them could be distinguished from the bad. He did hold back from giving a full account of their wickedness, but not out of concern for the demons themselves; rather, he was writing for their worshippers and did not want to offend them. Even so, he gave perceptive readers enough to understand his real opinion. In only one respect does he liken demons to the gods: the eternity of their bodies. The gods, he insists, are all good and blessed, entirely free from what he himself calls the stormy passions of the demons. As for their souls, he states plainly that demons resemble men rather than gods, and that this resemblance lies not in the possession of wisdom (which even men can attain) but in the turbulence of passions that drive the foolish and wicked, though the good and wise keep those passions so firmly in check that they prefer never to let them in rather than having to overcome them. If he had meant to say that demons resemble the gods in the eternity of their souls rather than their bodies, he would certainly have extended that privilege to human beings as well, since as a Platonist he was committed to the view that the human soul is eternal. Indeed, when describing humanity, he said their souls were immortal and their bodies mortal. It follows, then, that if men do not share eternity with the gods because their bodies are mortal, demons do share eternity with the gods precisely because their bodies are immortal.

How, then, can men hope to be favorably introduced to the friendship of the gods through mediators like these? These beings are defective, just as men are, in the better part of every living creature: the soul. They resemble the gods only in the body, which is the inferior part. Every living creature consists of soul and body, and of these two parts the soul is undoubtedly the greater. Even a vicious and weakened soul is clearly superior to the soundest and strongest body, because the soul's higher nature is not dragged down to the body's level even by the corruption of vice, just as gold, even when tarnished, is more precious than the purest silver or lead. And yet these supposed mediators, through whose intervention human and divine things are meant to be reconciled, share an eternal body with the gods and a vicious soul with men, as if the religion that is supposed to unite gods and men through these demons were a bodily matter rather than a spiritual one. What wickedness, then, or what punishment has suspended these false and deceitful mediators as if hanging upside down, so that their inferior part, the body, is linked to the gods above, while their superior part, the soul, is bound to men below? They are joined to the celestial gods by the part that serves, and they share in misery with the inhabitants of earth by the part that should rule. For the body is the servant, as Sallust says: "We use the soul to rule, the body to obey," adding that the one we share with the gods and the other with the brutes. He was speaking there of men, who share a mortal body with the brutes. These demons, whom our philosopher friends have provided as our mediators with the gods, might indeed say of soul and body that the one they share with the gods and the other with men. But as I said, they are suspended and bound upside down: they share the slave, the body, with the gods, and the master, the soul, with miserable men. Their inferior part is elevated; their superior part is pressed down. So if anyone supposes that, because demons are not subject to the separation of soul and body through death as earthly animals are, they therefore resemble the gods in their eternity, then their body should not be seen as the chariot of an eternal triumph, but rather as the chain of an eternal punishment.

Plotinus, whose work is still relatively recent, has earned a reputation as the most insightful interpreter of Plato among all his followers. When writing about human souls, he says, "The Father in compassion made their bonds mortal," meaning he saw it as an act of divine mercy that human beings, carrying mortal bodies, would not be trapped forever in the misery of this life. The demons, however, were judged unworthy of that mercy. They received, alongside souls subject to passion and suffering, not a mortal body like humans have, but an eternal one. Consider what this means: they would have been happier than humans if they had combined a mortal body, as humans do, with a blessed soul, as the gods have. They would at least have been equal to humans if, alongside their miserable souls, they had received mortal bodies like ours, so that death might eventually release them from their torment, provided they had attained some measure of piety. As things stand, however, they are not only no happier than humans (since they share with us the burden of a miserable soul), they are actually worse off, because they are bound to their bodies forever. Plotinus doesn't leave open the possibility that through some gradual progress in wisdom and piety they might eventually become gods; he states plainly that they are demons for eternity.

He claims that human souls are demons, and that after death, good men become *Lares*, bad men become *Lemures* or *Larvae*, and those whose moral standing is uncertain become *Manes*. Anyone who looks at this even briefly can see that it's a moral whirlpool, dragging people toward destruction. After all, if wicked men believe they will become *Larvae* or divine *Manes* after death, those who love causing harm will only grow worse, since the *Larvae* are harmful demons made from wicked men. Such men would naturally expect to be invoked after death with sacrifices and divine honors, precisely so they can go on inflicting injury. But we shouldn't linger on this point. He also notes that the blessed are called *eudaimones* in Greek because they are good souls, that is, good demons, which further supports his view that human souls are demons by nature.

At this point in our discussion, we are concerned with those beings Apuleius described as true intermediaries between gods and men: animals by nature, rational in mind, subject to passion in soul, aerial in body, and eternal in duration. Having distinguished the gods, whom he placed in the highest heaven, from men, whom he placed on earth, not only by their positions but also by the unequal dignity of their natures, he concluded with these words: "You have here two kinds of animals: the gods, widely distinguished from men by sublimity of abode, perpetuity of life, and perfection of nature; for their habitations are separated by so wide an interval that there can be no intimate communication between them, and while the vitality of the one is eternal and indestructible, that of the others is fading and precarious, and while the spirits of the gods are exalted in bliss, those of men are sunk in miseries." Here I find three opposing qualities assigned to the two extremes of being, the highest and the lowest. After naming the three qualities for which we are to admire the gods, he repeated the same three, though in different words, as a contrast to the deficiencies of man. Those three qualities are: sublimity of abode, perpetuity of life, and perfection of nature. He then restated each one in a way that throws its opposite in human existence into sharp relief. Where he had said "sublimity of abode," he now says, "their habitations are separated by so wide an interval"; where he had said "perpetuity of life," he now says that divine life is eternal and indestructible while human life is fading and precarious; and where he had said "perfection of nature," he now says that the spirits of the gods are exalted in bliss while those of men are sunk in miseries. These three qualities, then, he attributes to the gods: exaltation, eternity, and blessedness. To man he attributes their opposites: lowliness of habitation, mortality, and misery.

If we try to locate the middle ground that demons occupy between these two opposites, their physical position presents no difficulty. Between the highest and lowest place, there is a middle place, and that is rightly where we would expect to find them. The other two qualities, however, demand closer attention. We need to determine whether these qualities are entirely absent from the demons, or how they can be distributed among them without undermining their intermediate status. We can rule out the idea that both qualities are absent. We cannot say that demons, as rational beings, are neither blessed nor miserable, the way we might say this of animals or plants, which have no feeling or reason. Nor can we say it the way we describe the middle place itself as neither highest nor lowest. Because demons are rational, they must be either miserable or blessed. By the same logic, we cannot say they are neither mortal nor immortal, since every living thing either lives forever or eventually dies. Our author also stated plainly that demons are eternal. What conclusion are we left with, then, except that these intermediate beings share one of the two remaining qualities with the gods and the other with humanity? If they received both qualities from above, or both from below, they would no longer occupy a middle position at all; they would either rise to the level of the gods or sink to the level of men. Since it has been established that they must possess both qualities, they can only hold their middle ground by receiving one from each side. And since they cannot receive their eternity from below (it simply isn't available there), they must receive it from above. That leaves them no choice but to complete their intermediate position by taking on misery from the human side.

According to the Platonists, then, the gods who occupy the highest position enjoy eternal blessedness, or blessed eternity; humans, who occupy the lowest, endure mortal misery, or a miserable mortality; and the demons, who occupy the middle ground, suffer a miserable eternity, or an eternal misery. As for the five qualities that Apuleius included in his definition of demons, he never actually demonstrated, as he had promised, that the demons truly occupy a middle position. Three of those qualities, namely their animal nature, their rational mind, and their soul's susceptibility to passion, he said they share with humans; one quality, their eternity, they share with the gods; and one quality, their aerial body, belongs to them alone. How, then, can they be considered intermediate, when they share three qualities with the lowest order and only one with the highest? Anyone can see that a middle position collapses the moment something tilts and sinks toward the lower extreme. Perhaps, though, we are meant to accept them as intermediate on the basis of their one distinctive quality, the aerial body, since each of the two extremes has its own proper body: the gods an ethereal one, and humans a terrestrial one. And perhaps two of the qualities they share with humans they also share with the gods, namely their animal nature and their rational mind. Apuleius himself, when speaking of gods and humans together, said, "You have two animal natures," and the Platonists are accustomed to attributing a rational mind to the gods as well. That leaves two qualities: their susceptibility to passion, which they share with humans, and their eternity, which they share with the gods. On this reading, they are neither lifted to the highest extreme nor pulled down to the lowest, but held in perfect balance at the midpoint. Yet this is precisely what constitutes the eternal misery, or miserable eternity, of the demons. For anyone willing to say that their soul is subject to passion would also have said that they are miserable, had he not been too embarrassed on behalf of their worshippers to admit it. Furthermore, since the world is governed not by random chance but, as the Platonists themselves acknowledge, by the providence of the supreme God, the misery of the demons could not be eternal unless their wickedness were profound.

If the blessed are rightly called *eudemons* (the happy ones), then the demons who supposedly occupy a middle position between gods and men cannot be eudemons at all. So where exactly do these so-called good demons fit? They are said to rank above men but below the gods, helping the former and serving the latter. If they are both good and eternal, they are surely blessed as well. But eternal blessedness undermines their intermediate status entirely, drawing them so close to the gods and so far from men that the middle ground disappears. The Platonists will therefore struggle in vain to explain how good demons, if they are both immortal and blessed, can legitimately be said to occupy a middle position between gods (who are immortal and blessed) and men (who are mortal and miserable). If these demons share immortality and blessedness with the gods, and share neither quality with men, who are both miserable and mortal, then they are not intermediate at all. They are simply aligned with the gods and remote from men. A true intermediate would hold one quality in common with each side, the way humanity stands as a kind of midpoint between angels and beasts. The beast is an irrational and mortal creature; the angel is rational and immortal; and man, inferior to the angel yet superior to the beast, shares mortality with the one and reason with the other, making him a rational but mortal animal. By the same logic, if we are looking for a genuine intermediate between blessed immortals and miserable mortals, we should expect to find a being that is either mortal and blessed, or immortal and miserable.

There is a longstanding debate among thinkers about whether a mortal human being can also be a blessed one. Some, taking a more modest view of the human condition, have argued that true blessedness is simply not available to us while we remain in this mortal life. Others have rejected that position entirely, boldly insisting that even mortal people can achieve blessedness through the attainment of wisdom. But if that is true, why aren't these wise people serving as mediators between suffering mortals and the blessed immortals? After all, they would share blessedness with the latter and mortality with the former. Surely, if they are truly blessed, they envy no one (and what could be more miserable than envy?), but instead work with everything they have to help suffering mortals find their way to blessedness, so that after death those mortals might become immortal and join the company of the blessed and immortal angels.

If, as seems far more probable and credible, all mortal human beings are also miserable by necessity, then we must look for a Mediator who is not only human but also God. Only through the interposition of His blessed mortality could He bring humanity out of mortal misery and into a blessed immortality. Two things were required of this Mediator: He had to become mortal, and He could not remain mortal. He did become mortal, not by weakening the divinity of the Word, but by taking on the frailty of flesh. And He did not remain mortal in that flesh; He raised it from the dead. The very fruit of His mediation is precisely this: that those for whose redemption He became the Mediator would not remain forever in bodily death. It was therefore fitting that the Mediator between us and God should possess both a temporary mortality and a permanent blessedness, so that through what was temporary He might be joined to mortals, and through what was permanent He might carry them from mortality into that same blessedness. Good angels, then, cannot serve as mediators between miserable mortals and blessed immortals, because they themselves are both blessed and immortal. Evil angels, however, can occupy that middle position, because they share immortality with one side and misery with the other. Against them stands the good Mediator, who, in direct contrast to their immortality and misery, chose to be mortal for a time while remaining blessed for eternity. In this way He destroyed those proud immortals and harmful wretches through the humility of His death and the generosity of His blessedness. He prevented them from luring into misery, through their boast of immortality, those men and women whose hearts He had cleansed by faith and whom He had thereby freed from the dominion of impure powers.

Humanity, then, is mortal and miserable, separated by a vast distance from the immortal and the blessed. What bridge can bring us to immortality and blessedness? The immortality of the demons, which might seem appealing, is steeped in misery; the mortality of Christ, which might have seemed off-putting, is now finished and gone. In the one case, there is the terror of eternal misery; in the other, a death that could never last forever is no longer something to fear, and a blessedness that is eternal is something we can fully embrace. The immortal but miserable mediator inserts himself between us and blessed immortality precisely because the thing that blocks that passage, namely misery, still lives in him. But the mortal and blessed Mediator inserted Himself so that, having passed through death, He might transform mortals into immortals (demonstrating this power through His own resurrection), and lift the wretched into the company of the blessed, a company He Himself had never left. There is, then, a wicked mediator who drives friends apart, and a good Mediator who reconciles enemies. Those who divide are many, because the multitude of the blessed are blessed only through their participation in the one God. The evil angels are cut off from that participation, and so they are wretched; they insert themselves not to help us toward blessedness but to obstruct it, and their very number works against us, steering us away from that one beatific good. To reach that good, we don't need many mediators but one: the uncreated Word of God, through whom all things were made, and in sharing whom we find our blessedness. I am not saying He is Mediator because He is the Word, for as the Word He is supremely blessed and supremely immortal, and therefore infinitely removed from miserable mortals. He is Mediator as He is man, because through His humanity He shows us that we don't need to seek out other mediators to climb toward that blessed and beatific good step by step. Instead, the blessed and beatific God, having taken on our humanity Himself, has opened a direct path to participation in His divinity. In delivering us from our mortality and misery, He does not lead us to the immortal and blessed angels so that we might become immortal and blessed by sharing in their nature. He leads us directly to the Trinity, by participation in whom the angels themselves are blessed. And so, when He chose to take the form of a servant and to be made lower than the angels in order to serve as our Mediator, He remained higher than the angels in the form of God: at once the way of life on earth and life itself in heaven.

The opinion that the same Platonist attributes to Plato, namely that "no god holds intercourse with men," is simply not true. According to this view, the gods' refusal to associate with humanity is the clearest proof of their exalted nature, since such contact would contaminate them. But notice what this argument concedes: if the gods would be contaminated by contact with men, then the demons, who do maintain that contact, are themselves contaminated. And if the demons are contaminated, it follows that they cannot purify those who contaminate them in the first place. The result is that everyone is defiled together, the demons through their association with men, and men through their worship of demons. Alternatively, if someone argues that the demons are not contaminated by mingling with humanity, then the demons turn out to be superior to the gods, since the gods apparently cannot manage the same contact without being polluted.

For this, we are told, is the glory of the gods: that they are so highly exalted that no human contact can taint them. He does affirm that the supreme God, the Creator of all things, whom we call the true God, is described by Plato as the only God whom human language is too poor to adequately express; and that even the wise, when their minds are freed as much as possible from the body's grip, catch only brief glimpses of His nature, comparable to a flash of lightning cutting through darkness. If, then, this supreme God, who is truly above all things, nonetheless visits the minds of the wise when they are freed from the body with a presence that is both intelligible and beyond words, even if only occasionally and like a swift burst of light across the dark, why are the other gods kept at such a lofty distance from all human contact, as though they would be defiled by it? As if it weren't enough to refute this simply by looking up at the heavenly bodies that give the earth its necessary light. If the stars, which by his account are visible gods, are not contaminated when we gaze at them, then neither would demons be contaminated when people observe them up close. But perhaps it is the human voice, not the human eye, that pollutes the gods; and that is why demons are appointed as intermediaries, carrying human words to gods who keep their distance out of fear of being defiled? What am I to say about the other senses? As for smell, neither the demons who are present among us, nor the gods, even if they were present and breathing the air around living people, would be polluted by it, since they are apparently not contaminated by the fumes rising from the animal carcasses offered in sacrifice. As for taste, they feel no bodily hunger that would force them to seek food from humans. And touch is entirely within their own control. For while it may seem that "contact" gets its name precisely because the sense of touch is most directly involved, the gods, if they wished, could mingle with humanity in ways that allowed them to see and be seen, hear and be heard; so where is the need for physical touch? People would never dare to want this if they were already favored with the sight or conversation of gods or good demons; and if, out of excessive curiosity, they did want it, how could they possibly achieve it without the consent of the god or demon, given that they cannot so much as catch a sparrow unless it is caged?

There is, therefore, nothing preventing the gods from mingling with humans in bodily form, from seeing and being seen, from speaking and listening. And if demons do mix with humans in this way, as I have said, without being polluted, while the gods would supposedly be polluted by doing the same, then demons are actually less susceptible to pollution than the gods. But if even the demons are contaminated by such contact, how can they possibly help humans attain blessedness after death? If these mediators are themselves polluted, they cannot cleanse anyone, let alone present purified souls to gods who are themselves unpolluted. And if they cannot offer humans this benefit, what good does their supposed friendly mediation actually accomplish? Perhaps the outcome is not that humans gain access to the gods at all, but simply that humans and demons end up together in a shared state of pollution and, as a result, shared exclusion from blessedness. Unless, of course, someone wants to argue that the demons work like sponges, becoming filthier themselves in proportion to how clean they make their friends. But if that is the solution, then the gods, who avoid all contact with humans out of fear of pollution, are somehow comfortable mixing with demons who are far more polluted than any human. Or perhaps the gods, who supposedly cannot cleanse humans without defiling themselves, can cleanse demons contaminated by human contact without suffering any defilement at all? Who could believe such nonsense, unless the demons had already worked their deception on him? If seeing and being seen is the source of contamination, and if the gods that Apuleius himself calls visible, "the brilliant lights of the world," along with the other stars, are seen by humans every day, are we really to believe that demons, who can choose not to be seen, are somehow safer from contamination? Or if it is only the act of seeing (not being seen) that contaminates, then they must deny that these gods of theirs, these brilliant lights of the world, ever look down upon humanity when their rays fall on the earth. Those rays are not contaminated by falling on every kind of filth imaginable, so why should we assume the gods would be contaminated by mixing with humans, even if direct contact were required to help them? After all, the rays of the sun and moon make contact with the earth constantly, and yet that contact does not pollute the light.

I am genuinely surprised that such learned men, men who insist that all material and sensible things are far inferior to spiritual and intelligible ones, would bring up bodily contact in connection with the blessed life. Have they forgotten what Plotinus said? "We must fly to our beloved fatherland. There is the Father, there our all. What fleet or flight shall convey us there? Our way is, to become like God." If, then, one draws closer to God by becoming more like Him, then distance from God is simply unlikeness to Him. The human soul grows unlike that incorporeal, unchangeable, and eternal essence in direct proportion to how much it craves things that are temporal and mutable. And since the things below us, which are mortal and impure, cannot hold communion with the immortal purity above, a mediator is certainly needed to bridge that gap. But not a mediator who resembles the highest order of being by possessing an immortal body, while resembling the lowest by having a diseased soul, which makes him more inclined to resent our healing than to help bring it about. What we need is a Mediator who, by sharing our mortality in the flesh, is at the same time able to offer us truly divine help, cleansing and liberating us through the immortal righteousness of His spirit, by which He remained heavenly even while present on earth. Let no one imagine that the uncontaminated God could be polluted by the humanity He took on, or by the human beings among whom He lived in human form. For even if His incarnation had taught us nothing else, these two truths alone would have been worth everything: that true divinity cannot be defiled by flesh, and that demons are not superior to us simply because they have no flesh. This, then, as Scripture says, is the "mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim 2:5). This is not the place to speak as fully as I could about His divinity, by which He is equal to the Father, and His humanity, by which He has become like us.

Consider the demons: these false and deceptive mediators whose uncleanness of spirit constantly betrays both their misery and their malice. Though they exploit the lightness of their aerial bodies and the nature of the regions they inhabit to divert us and obstruct our spiritual progress, they do not bring us closer to God; they prevent us from reaching Him. Even within the physical framework that the demons' friends construct according to the weight of the various elements, placing aerial demons between the ethereal gods and earthly humans, this arrangement is fundamentally misguided. Righteousness does not travel that road, because we rise to God not through physical ascent but through incorporeal, spiritual conformity to Him. Within this physical scheme, the gods are imagined to enjoy a special privilege: their spatial distance from humanity supposedly shields them from the contamination of human contact. The logic, then, is that demons are defiled by humans rather than humans being cleansed by demons, and that the gods themselves would be polluted if their elevated position did not protect them. Who could be so desperate as to seek purification through a system in which humans contaminate, demons are contaminated, and even the gods are vulnerable to contamination? Who would not instead choose the path by which we escape the defilement of demons entirely, are cleansed by the uncontaminable God Himself, and are brought into fellowship with the uncontaminated angels?

But some of those who worship demons, whom I might call demonolators, including Labeo, claim that what they call demons are simply what others call angels. If I want to avoid a purely verbal dispute, I need to say something about the good angels. The Platonists don't deny that good angels exist; they simply prefer to call them good demons. We, however, follow Scripture, and as Christians we have learned from it that some angels are good and some are bad. What we have never found in Scripture is any mention of good demons. Wherever that term or anything related to it appears, it refers exclusively to wicked spirits. This usage has become so universal that even among those called pagans, who hold that demons as well as gods deserve worship, you would be hard pressed to find a single man, however well-read or learned, who would dare to compliment his slave by saying "You have a demon." Nor could anyone doubt that the slave would take such a remark as a curse. Why, then, should we put ourselves in the position of having to explain away our words every time we cause offense by using the word "demon," when almost everyone attaches a negative meaning to it? We can avoid that problem entirely by simply using the word "angel."

The very origin of the word "demon" is worth examining in light of the divine scriptures. The word comes from a Greek term meaning knowledge. Yet the apostle, speaking through the Holy Spirit, says, "Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up" (1 Cor 8:1). This can only mean that knowledge without love does no real good; it simply inflates a person with an empty sense of self-importance. The demons, then, possess knowledge without love, and this is precisely what makes them so proud. They crave the divine honors and acts of worship that they know belong to the true God alone, and they demand these things, as far as they are able, from everyone under their influence. Against this demonic pride, under which the human race was held captive as a deserved punishment, God brought the full weight of His humility to bear, appearing in the form of a servant. But humanity, sharing the demons' pride without sharing their knowledge, and swollen with its own moral corruption, failed to recognize Him.

The demons themselves recognized this revelation of God clearly enough, as shown when they cried out to the Lord, even as He stood before them clothed in the weakness of human flesh: "What have we to do with You, Jesus of Nazareth? Have You come to destroy us before the time?" (Matt 8:29). These words reveal that the demons possessed great knowledge but no love whatsoever. They feared His power to punish them, yet felt nothing for His righteousness. He revealed to them exactly as much as He chose, and what He chose to reveal was precisely what was necessary. But He did not make Himself known to them as He does to the holy angels, who know Him as the eternal Word of God and share in the joy of His eternity. Instead, He revealed Himself in the way best suited to strike terror into those beings whose tyranny He intended to break, freeing those predestined for His kingdom and its glory, a kingdom that is eternally true and truly eternal. He made Himself known to the demons, then, not through the eternal and unchanging light that illumines the faithful whose souls have been cleansed by faith in Him, but through certain temporal displays of His power and signs of His mysterious presence. These signs were far more perceptible to the angelic senses of wicked spirits than to the frailty of human perception. When He judged it wise to gradually withdraw these signs and retreat into deeper obscurity, the prince of the demons began to doubt whether He was truly the Christ, and attempted to discover the truth by tempting Him. Christ permitted this temptation only to the degree that served His purpose: to shape the humanity He had taken on into a model for our own imitation. But after that temptation, when, as Scripture tells us, the good and holy angels ministered to Him (Matt 4:11), those same angels who inspire dread in impure spirits, He revealed His greatness to the demons with increasing clarity. Even the apparent weakness of His flesh could not diminish His authority, and none dared resist it.

The good angels think little of the knowledge of material and transitory things that the demons take such pride in possessing. This isn't because the angels are ignorant of such things, but because the love of God, through which they are sanctified, is supremely precious to them. Compared to that beauty which is not merely immaterial but also unchangeable and beyond description, a beauty that sets them ablaze with holy love, they regard everything beneath it as insignificant. Everything that falls short of God Himself they treat as secondary, so that with every good thing within them they may fully enjoy the good that is the very source of their goodness. For this reason, they actually possess a more reliable knowledge even of temporal and mutable things, because they contemplate the principles and causes behind those things in the Word of God, through which the world was made. These are the causes by which one thing is approved, another rejected, and all things arranged in their proper order. The demons, by contrast, do not behold these eternal and, so to speak, foundational causes of temporal things within the wisdom of God. Instead, they foresee a greater portion of the future than humans do simply because they are more familiar with signs that remain hidden from us. Sometimes, too, what they predict is nothing more than their own intentions made known in advance. And in the end, demons are frequently deceived, while angels never are. There is a fundamental difference between two kinds of knowledge: on one side, using temporal and changeable things to guess at what changes time may bring, and shaping those things through one's own will and ability (which is permitted to the demons to a certain degree); on the other side, foreseeing the changes of time within the eternal and immutable laws of God, which live in His wisdom, and knowing the will of God, the most certain and powerful of all causes, by sharing in His Spirit. This second kind of knowledge is granted to the holy angels through a just and fitting arrangement. And so the angels are not only eternal but blessed, and the good in which they are blessed is God Himself, by whom they were created. Without end, they enjoy the contemplation and participation of Him.

If the Platonists prefer to call these angels gods rather than demons, and to count them among those beings whom Plato, their founder and master, held to have been created by the supreme God, they are welcome to do so. I have no interest in fighting over terminology. If they affirm that these beings are immortal, created by the supreme God, and blessed not through their own power but through their union with their Creator, then they are saying exactly what we say, regardless of what name they give these beings. That this is the view of all the Platonists, or at least the best of them, can be confirmed by reading their own writings. As for the name itself, if they choose to call such blessed and immortal creatures gods, there is no need for any serious dispute between us on that point. Our own Scriptures say, "The God of gods, the Lord has spoken" (Ps 50:1); and again, "Give thanks to the God of gods" (Ps 136:2); and again, "He is a great King above all gods" (Ps 95:3). Where Scripture says, "He is to be feared above all gods," the reason follows immediately: "for all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens" (Ps 96:4-5). The phrase "above all gods" is qualified by "of the nations," meaning above all those whom the nations regard as gods, which is to say, above the demons. It is before Him that the demons tremble with that terror which drove them to cry out, "Have you come to destroy us?" (Mark 1:24). But when Scripture says "the God of gods," it cannot mean the god of the demons, and we should never interpret "great King above all gods" as "great King above all demons." Yet that same Scripture also calls men who belong to God's people "gods": "I have said, you are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High" (Ps 82:6). So when God is called the God of gods, this may well be understood as referring to these human gods; and the same applies when He is called a great King above all gods.

Nevertheless, someone might ask: if human beings are called gods because they belong to God's people, whom He addresses through men and angels, aren't the immortal beings who already enjoy the very happiness that humans seek through worship far more deserving of that title? And what can we say to this, except that Scripture has good reason to call human beings gods more explicitly than it calls those immortal and blessed spirits, to whom we hope to be made equal at the resurrection? The concern was that weak and wavering faith, overwhelmed by the greatness of these beings, might be tempted to elevate some of them to the status of God. With human beings, that danger simply didn't exist. Beyond that, it was right and fitting that the people belonging to God should be called gods in the most explicit terms, so that they could be assured and confirmed in the knowledge that the One called God of gods is their God. For although those immortal and blessed spirits who dwell in the heavens are called gods, they are not called gods of gods, meaning gods of the people who belong to God and to whom it is said, "I have said, you are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High" (Ps 82:6). This is the point behind the apostle's words: "Though there be those who are called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as there are gods many and lords many, yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we in Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and we through Him" (1 Cor 8:5-6).

We don't need to labor over terminology when the underlying reality is so clear it admits no serious dispute. Our position is that the angels sent to convey God's will to humanity belong to the order of blessed immortals. The Platonists, however, find this unsatisfying, because they believe this ministry is carried out not by what they call gods (that is, not by blessed immortals) but by demons. They don't dare call these demons blessed, only immortal; and even when they do place them among the blessed immortals, they rank them merely as good demons rather than as gods dwelling in the highest heaven, far removed from all human contact. Still, even if this might look like a quarrel over words, the name "demon" is so deeply repugnant to us that we cannot bring ourselves to apply it to the holy angels under any circumstances. Let us close this book, then, with one firm conclusion: whatever we choose to call these immortal and blessed spirits, they are still creatures, and as such they do not serve as mediators to bring miserable mortals into everlasting happiness. The gap is simply too great; these spirits are separated from us by a double distinction. As for those other beings who do act as mediators, sharing immortality with their superiors and misery with their inferiors (a misery they justly bear as punishment for their wickedness), they cannot grant us the blessedness they themselves have been denied. They begrudge us what they cannot have. The friends of demons, then, have no compelling reason to urge us to worship these beings as helpers rather than shun them as enemies of our true interests. As for those spirits who are genuinely good, and therefore not only immortal but also blessed, and whom the Platonists believe we should honor with the title of gods and approach with worship and sacrifice in hope of inheriting eternal life: with God's help, we will show in the following book that these spirits, whatever name you give them and whatever nature you assign them, desire that religious worship be offered to God alone, the One who created them and whose self-communication to them is the very source of their blessedness.