The City of God: Volume 2

Book 11: Creation and the Two Cities

1. The Origin of the Two Cities

The city of God we speak of is the city to which Scripture bears witness. By its divine authority, Scripture surpasses all the writings of all nations and has brought minds of every kind under its influence. This has happened through no chance intellectual movement, but clearly through a deliberate arrangement of providence. For there it is written, “Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God” (Ps 87:3). And in another psalm we read, “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of His holiness, increasing the joy of the whole earth” (Ps 48:1). A little later in the same psalm: “As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God. God has established it for ever.”

And in another: “There is a river the streams whereof shall make glad the city of our God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High. God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved” (Ps 46:4). From these and similar testimonies, which would be tedious to quote in full, we have learned that there is a city of God. Its Founder has inspired us with a love that makes us long to be its citizens.

The citizens of the earthly city prefer their own gods to this Founder of the holy city. They do not know that he is the God of gods. He is not the God of false gods, that is, of impious and proud gods. Deprived of his unchangeable light, which he freely shares, these gods have been reduced to a kind of impoverished power. They eagerly grasp at their own private privileges and seek divine honors from their deluded subjects. Rather, he is the God of pious and holy gods, who take greater pleasure in submitting to one than in subjecting many to themselves. They would rather worship God than be worshiped as God.

In the ten preceding books, we have answered the enemies of this city according to our ability and the help given by our Lord and King. Now I recognize what is expected of me and remember my promise. Relying on the same help, I will try to discuss the origin, progress, and deserved destinies of the two cities, the earthly and the heavenly. As we have said, these cities are mingled and, as it were, entangled with one another in this present world. First, I will explain how their foundations were originally laid in the difference that arose among the angels.

2. Christ, the Way to God

It is a great and very rare achievement for someone to contemplate the whole creation, both bodily and spiritual, recognize its changeability, and pass beyond it. Through the continued ascent of the mind, such a person reaches the unchangeable substance of God. At that height of contemplation, he learns from God himself that God alone has made everything that is not of the divine essence.

For God does not speak to a person through some audible creature sounding in his ears, with vibrations in the air connecting the maker of the sound to its hearer. Nor does he speak through a spiritual being that takes on the appearance of a body, such as we see in dreams or similar states. Even in that case, he speaks as though to bodily ears, because he speaks through the appearance of a body and across an apparent interval of space. Such visions are exact representations of bodily objects.

God speaks, then, through none of these means, but through truth itself, if anyone is prepared to hear with the mind rather than the body. He speaks to the part of a person that is better than everything else within him, and above which God alone is better. For we most properly understand, or, if we cannot understand it, at least believe, that humanity is made in God’s image. Without doubt, it is the part by which a person rises above the lower parts he shares with animals that brings him nearer to the Supreme.

But the mind itself, though naturally capable of reason and understanding, is disabled by stupefying and deeply rooted vices. It is unable not only to delight and remain in his unchangeable light, but even to endure that light, until it has gradually been healed, renewed, and made capable of such happiness. It therefore first had to be filled with faith and so purified.

To enable it to advance more confidently toward truth through this faith, truth itself, God, the Son of God, took on humanity without destroying his divinity. He established and founded this faith so that humanity might have a way to its God through one who is both God and man. This is the Mediator between God and humanity, the man Christ Jesus. It is as man that he is the Mediator and the Way.

If a way lies between a traveler and his destination, there is hope that he will reach it. But if there is no way, or he does not know where it is, what use is it to know where he ought to go? The only way infallibly protected against every error is the one in which the very same person is both God and man: God as our destination, man as our way.

3. The Authority of Scripture

This Mediator spoke what he judged sufficient, first through the prophets, then with his own lips, and afterward through the apostles. He has also produced the Scripture called canonical, which has supreme authority. We assent to it in all matters of which we ought not to be ignorant, but which we cannot know for ourselves.

We can know things within reach of our own senses, whether inward or outward, through our own testimony. Such things are called praesentia, meaning things present, because we say they are prae sensibus, before the senses, just as things available to the eyes are said to be prae oculis, before the eyes. For things beyond the reach of our senses, however, we need the testimony of others, since our own testimony cannot make them known to us. We trust those whom we believe have, or have had, these things within reach of their senses.

Accordingly, when it comes to visible objects we have not seen, we trust those who have seen them. The same applies to the other things perceived by each bodily sense. Likewise, when it comes to things perceived by the mind and spirit, this perception too is rightly called sensus, meaning sense, from which sententia, meaning judgment, takes its name. These are invisible things beyond the reach of our own inward sense. We must trust those who have learned them as arranged in that incorporeal light or who contemplate them abiding there.

4. Creation and God’s Eternal Will

Of all visible things, the world is the greatest; of all invisible things, God is the greatest. We see that the world exists; we believe that God exists. That God made the world is something we can believe on no one’s testimony more safely than on God’s own. But where have we heard him? Nowhere more clearly than in the Holy Scriptures, where his prophet said, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1).

Was the prophet present when God made the heavens and the earth? No. But the wisdom of God, through whom all things were made, was there (Prov 8:27). Wisdom enters holy souls, makes them God’s friends and prophets, and silently tells them of his works. They are also taught by God’s angels, who always behold the Father’s face (Matt 18:10) and announce his will to those to whom it is fitting to announce it.

Among these prophets was the one who said and wrote, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” He was so fitting a witness to God that the same Spirit of God who revealed these things to him also enabled him, so long beforehand, to predict that our faith too would come into being.

But why did God choose to create the heavens and the earth at that point, when he had not made them before? If those who ask this question mean to establish that the world is eternal and without a beginning, and therefore was not made by God, they are strangely deceived. They rave in the incurable madness of impiety. Even if the prophets’ voices were silent, the world itself bears its own testimony through its orderly changes and movements and the beauty of all visible things. It testifies both that it was created and that it could have been created only by God, whose greatness and beauty are inexpressible and invisible.

Others admit that God made the world, yet give it a beginning only in the sense of being created, not in time. Thus, in some scarcely intelligible way, they suppose that the world has always existed as a created world. They think this assertion defends God against the charge of arbitrary haste, of suddenly conceiving the entirely new idea of creating the world, or of changing his will on a whim, although he is unchangeable.

But I do not see how their supposition can hold in other respects, especially with regard to the soul. If they maintain that the soul is co-eternal with God, they will be entirely at a loss to explain how it came to experience a new misery that had not existed throughout its previous eternity.

If they say that its happiness and misery alternate without ceasing, they must also say that this alternation will continue forever. This would produce an absurdity: although the soul is called blessed, it is not blessed in this respect, since it foresees its own misery and disgrace. Yet if it does not foresee them, and supposes that it will never be disgraced or miserable but will always be blessed, then it is blessed because it is deceived. Nothing more foolish could be said.

Suppose instead that they think the soul’s misery alternated with its bliss throughout the ages of a past eternity, but that now, once set free, it will never return to misery. Even so, their view implies that it has never been truly blessed before, but at last begins to enjoy a new and uncertain happiness. In other words, they must admit that something new, important, and remarkable happens to the soul that never happened to it throughout a whole past eternity.

If they deny that God’s eternal purpose included this new experience of the soul, they deny that he is the Author of its blessedness. That is unspeakable impiety. If, on the other hand, they say that the soul’s future blessedness results from a new decree of God, how will they show that God is free of the changeability that displeases them?

Further, suppose they acknowledge that the soul was created in time but will never perish in time; that, like number, it has a beginning but no end; and that, after once experiencing misery and being delivered from it, it will never return to misery. They will certainly admit that this happens without any violation of God’s unchangeable purpose. Let them believe the same about the world: it too could be made in time, without God altering his eternal design in making it.

5. Time and Space Beyond the World

Next we must consider what answer to give those who agree that God is the world’s Creator but have difficulties about the time of its creation. We must also consider what answer they can give to difficulties we might raise about the place of its creation. Just as they ask why the world was created then and no earlier, we may ask why it was created here, where it is, rather than elsewhere.

If they imagine infinite stretches of time before the world, during which God could not have been idle, then in the same way they may imagine infinite expanses of space outside the world. If someone says that the Almighty cannot refrain from working in those spaces, will it not follow that they must adopt Epicurus’s dream of innumerable worlds?

There would be only this difference: Epicurus asserts that these worlds are formed and destroyed by the chance movements of atoms, while they would hold that God’s hand makes them. That would follow if they maintain that God cannot rest throughout the boundless immensity of space extending endlessly in every direction around the world, and that the worlds they suppose him to make cannot be destroyed.

For here we are debating with those who, like us, believe that God is spiritual and is the Creator of everything that exists apart from himself. As for others, it is a condescension to debate a religious question with them. The Platonists, by contrast, have gained their standing only among people who give divine honors to numerous gods. They have become prominent among the other philosophers for no other reason than that, although still far from the truth, they are near it in comparison with the rest.

These thinkers do not confine the divine substance to any place, limit it, or divide it among places. Rather, as is worthy of God, they acknowledge that it is wholly present everywhere, though spiritually. Will they perhaps say that this substance is absent from the immense spaces outside the world and is occupied in only one space, the one containing the world? That space is very small compared with the infinity beyond it. I do not think they will go so far as this absurdity.

They maintain that there is only one world, vast in material bulk, yet finite and situated in its own definite place, and that God made it. Let them therefore give the same account of God’s rest during the infinite times before the world as they give of his rest in the infinite spaces outside it.

We cannot comprehend why God placed the world in the particular spot it occupies rather than elsewhere. Nor did the chosen spot have any merit giving it priority over infinitely many others. Yet it does not follow that God placed it there by accident rather than by divine reason.

Likewise, even if earlier times had passed through an infinite past, with no difference by which one time could be preferred to another, it would not follow that God acted by chance in creating the world at that time and no earlier. But if they say that people’s thoughts are futile when they imagine infinite places, because there is no place outside the world, we answer that the same reasoning makes it futile to imagine past times of God’s rest. For there is no time before the world.

6. The Beginning of Time

Suppose eternity and time are rightly distinguished in this way: time does not exist without some movement and transition, while in eternity there is no change. Who, then, does not see that there could have been no time unless some creature had been made whose movement could produce change? The different parts of that movement and change could not occur simultaneously, but would succeed one another. Time would thus begin in these shorter or longer intervals of duration.

God, in whose eternity there is no change at all, is the Creator and Orderer of time. I therefore do not see how he can be said to have created the world after stretches of time had elapsed, unless there was some creature before the world whose movement allowed time to pass.

If the sacred and infallible Scriptures say that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth so that we may understand that he had made nothing previously, then surely the world was made together with time, rather than within time. For if he had made anything before everything else, that thing would instead be said to have been made “in the beginning.”

Something made within time is made both after some time and before some time: after past time and before future time. But no time could then have been past, because there was no creature whose movements could measure its duration. The world was made together with time if change and motion were created in the world’s creation, as seems clear from the order of the first six or seven days.

During these days, morning and evening are counted until, on the sixth day, everything God then made was finished. On the seventh, God’s rest was signified in a mysterious and sublime way. What kind of days these were is extremely difficult, or perhaps impossible, for us to conceive. How much more difficult it is to describe them!

7. Days Before the Sun

We see that our ordinary days have an evening only through the sun’s setting and a morning only through its rising. But the first three days passed without the sun, since it is reported to have been made on the fourth day. First of all, light was made by God’s word. God, we read, separated it from the darkness and called the light Day and the darkness Night.

But what kind of light that was, and by what recurring movement it produced evening and morning, is beyond the reach of our senses. We cannot understand how it happened, yet we must believe it without hesitation.

Either it was some material light, coming from the upper parts of the world far beyond our sight, or from the place where the sun was later kindled; or the name of light signified the holy city, composed of holy angels and blessed spirits. Of this city the apostle says, “Jerusalem which is above is our eternal mother in heaven” (Gal 4:26). And elsewhere: “For ye are all the children of the light, and the children of the day; we are not of the night, nor of darkness” (1 Thess 5:5).

Yet in some respects we may appropriately speak of a morning and evening of this day too. For knowledge of the creature, compared with knowledge of the Creator, is only twilight. It dawns and breaks into morning when the creature is drawn to praise and love the Creator. Night never falls when the Creator is not abandoned for love of the creature.

Indeed, when Scripture recounts those days in order, it never mentions the word night. It never says, “Night was,” but “The evening and the morning were the first day.” So too with the second day and the rest.

Knowledge of created things considered in themselves is, so to speak, more colorless than knowledge of them in God’s wisdom, as in the art through which they were made. Evening is therefore a more suitable image than night. Yet, as I said, morning returns when the creature returns to praise and love the Creator.

When the creature does this in its knowledge of itself, that is the first day. When it does so in its knowledge of the firmament, the name given to the sky between the waters above and those below, that is the second day. When it does so in its knowledge of the earth, the sea, and everything that grows from the earth, that is the third day.

When it does so in its knowledge of the greater and lesser lights and all the stars, that is the fourth day. When it does so in its knowledge of all animals that swim in the waters and fly in the air, that is the fifth day. When it does so in its knowledge of all animals that live on earth, and of humanity itself, that is the sixth day.

8. God’s Rest on the Seventh Day

When it is said that God rested on the seventh day from all his works and made that day holy, we must not understand this childishly, as though work were a burden to God. He “spake and it was done.” He spoke through the spiritual and eternal word, not an audible and passing word.

God’s rest signifies the rest of those who rest in God. In the same way, the joy of a house means the joy of those in the house who rejoice, although something other than the house causes their joy. How much more understandable is such language if the house itself, through its beauty, makes its inhabitants joyful!

In that case, we call the house joyful through two figures of speech. One uses the thing containing for the things contained. We say, for example, “The theaters applaud” or “The meadows low,” meaning that the people in the theaters applaud and the oxen in the meadows low. The other speaks of a cause as though it were its effect. Thus a letter is called joyful because it makes its readers joyful.

Most appropriately, then, the sacred narrative says that God rested, meaning that those who are in him rest, and that he makes them rest. The prophetic narrative also promises this to the people to whom it speaks and for whom it was written. After the good works God does in and through them, they will enjoy eternal rest in him, if through faith they have managed to draw near to God in this life. This was foreshadowed for God’s ancient people by the rest commanded in their Sabbath law, which I will discuss more fully in its proper place.

9. The Creation of the Angels

For now, I have undertaken to discuss the origin of the holy city, beginning with the holy angels. They make up a large part of this city, and indeed its more blessed part, since they have never been exiled from it. With God’s help, I will devote myself to explaining the Scriptures that concern this matter, as far as seems appropriate.

Where Scripture speaks of the world’s creation, it does not plainly say whether or when the angels were created. If it mentions them, it does so implicitly under the name of “heaven,” when it says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Or perhaps it mentions them instead under the name of “light,” which I will discuss shortly.

But I cannot believe that they were entirely omitted. For it is written that on the seventh day God rested from all the works he had made. This very book begins, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” so that God seems to have made nothing before heaven and earth.

He therefore began with the heavens and the earth. As Scripture adds, the earth itself was at first invisible and formless, since light had not yet been made and darkness covered the face of the deep. That is, darkness covered an undefined chaos of earth and sea, for where there is no light, there must be darkness. Then everything recorded as completed in six days was created and arranged. How, then, could the angels be omitted, as though they were not among God’s works, from which he rested on the seventh day?

Yet although the fact that the angels are God’s work is not omitted here, it is not explicitly mentioned. Elsewhere, however, Holy Scripture states it with complete clarity. For in the Hymn of the Three Children in the Furnace it was said, “O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord” (Pr Azar 35). Among the works afterward listed in detail, the angels are named.

And in the psalm it is said, “Praise ye the Lord from the heavens, praise Him in the heights. Praise ye Him, all His angels; praise ye Him, all His hosts. Praise ye Him, sun and moon; praise Him, all ye stars of light. Praise Him, ye heaven of heavens; and ye waters that be above the heavens. Let them praise the name of the Lord; for He commanded, and they were created” (Ps 148:1-5). Here divine authority says most explicitly that God made the angels. For of them, among the other heavenly things, it says, “He commanded, and they were created.”

Who, then, will be bold enough to suggest that the angels were made after the six days of creation? If anyone is so foolish, a passage of Scripture with the same authority disposes of his folly. There God says, “When the stars were made, the angels praised me with a loud voice” (Job 38:7). The angels therefore existed before the stars, and the stars were made on the fourth day.

Shall we then say that the angels were made on the third day? Certainly not, for we know what was made that day. The earth was separated from the water, each element took its own distinct form, and the earth produced everything that grows on it. On the second day, then? Not on that day either. For on it the firmament was made between the waters above and below and was called “Heaven.” In that firmament the stars were made on the fourth day.

There is no question, then, that if the angels are included among God’s works during these six days, they are the light called “Day.” Scripture marks the unity of that day by calling it not the “first day,” but “one day.” For the second day, the third, and the rest are not other days. Rather, the same “one” day is repeated to complete the number six or seven, so that there may be knowledge both of God’s works and of his rest.

When God said, “Let there be light, and there was light,” if we are justified in understanding this light as the creation of the angels, then certainly they were created to share in the eternal light. This is the unchangeable Wisdom of God, through which all things were made, and whom we call the only-begotten Son of God. Illumined by the Light that created them, the angels could themselves become light and be called “Day.” They do so by sharing in that unchangeable Light and Day which is the Word of God, through whom both they themselves and everything else were made.

“The true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (John 1:9): this Light also illuminates every pure angel, so that he may be light in God rather than in himself. If an angel turns away from God, he becomes impure, as are all those called unclean spirits. They are no longer light in the Lord, but darkness in themselves, deprived of participation in eternal Light. For evil has no positive nature; rather, the loss of good has received the name “evil.”

10. The Unchangeable Trinity

There is, accordingly, a good that alone is simple, and therefore alone unchangeable: God. By this Good all other goods have been created, but they are not simple and therefore not unchangeable. I say “created,” meaning made, not begotten. For what is begotten of the simple Good is itself simple and is the same as that Good.

These two we call the Father and the Son. Both, together with the Holy Spirit, are one God. In Scripture, the designation Holy is, as it were, assigned particularly to this Spirit. He is someone other than the Father and the Son, for he is neither the Father nor the Son. I say “someone other,” not “something other,” because equally with them he is the simple Good, unchangeable and co-eternal.

This Trinity is one God, and is no less simple because it is a Trinity. We do not say that the nature of the good is simple because the Father alone possesses it, or the Son alone, or the Holy Spirit alone. Nor do we say, with the Sabellian heretics, that it is a Trinity only in name, without any real distinction of persons. Rather, we say that it is simple because it is what it has, except for the relation of the persons to one another.

With regard to that relation, it is true that the Father has a Son, yet is not himself the Son; and the Son has a Father, yet is not himself the Father. But considered in himself, apart from his relation to another, each is what he has. Thus he is living in himself, for he has life and is himself the Life he has.

The nature of the Trinity is therefore called simple because it has nothing it can lose, and because it is not one thing while what it contains is another. It is unlike a cup and its liquid, a body and its color, the air and its light or heat, or a mind and its wisdom. None of these is what it has. The cup is not liquid, the body is not color, the air is not light and heat, and the mind is not wisdom.

They can therefore lose what they have and change to other qualities and states. A cup may be emptied of the liquid that fills it, a body may lose its color, the air may grow dark, and a mind may become foolish.

The incorruptible body promised to the saints in the resurrection cannot, indeed, lose its quality of incorruptibility. But the bodily substance and the quality of incorruptibility are not the same thing. That quality exists in full in every individual part, no greater in one and no less in another. No part is more incorruptible than another.

The body itself is larger as a whole than in any part. One part is larger and another smaller, yet the larger is no more incorruptible than the smaller. The body, which is not a whole body in each of its parts, is therefore one thing; incorruptibility, which is complete throughout, is another. Every part of the incorruptible body, however unequal it may otherwise be to the rest, is equally free from corruption.

For example, the hand is not more incorruptible than the finger because it is larger. Though the finger and hand are unequal, their incorruptibility is equal. Thus, although incorruptibility is inseparable from an incorruptible body, the body’s substance is one thing and its quality of incorruptibility another. The body therefore is not what it has.

The soul too, even if it is always wise, as it will be eternally when redeemed, will be wise by sharing in unchangeable wisdom, which it is not. Even if the air is never deprived of the light shed through it, that does not make it the same thing as the light.

I do not mean that the soul is air, as some have supposed because they could not conceive of a spiritual nature. Despite their great differences, the two have a certain likeness. This makes it appropriate to say that the immaterial soul is illuminated by the immaterial light of God’s simple wisdom, as material air is illuminated by material light. And just as air grows dark when deprived of this light, so the soul grows dark when deprived of the light of wisdom. For material darkness is nothing other than air without light.

Accordingly, things that are essentially and truly divine are called simple because in them quality and substance are identical. They are divine, wise, or blessed in themselves, without anything added from outside. In Holy Scripture, it is true, the Spirit of wisdom is called “manifold” (Wis 7:22) because it contains many things. But it also is what it contains, and, being one, it is all these things.

For there are not many wisdoms, but one. In it are untold and infinite treasures of intelligible things. There are all the invisible and unchangeable reasons for the visible and changeable things created through it. For God made nothing without knowing it; not even a human craftsman can be said to do that. If he knew everything he made, then he made only things he had known. From this follows a striking but true conclusion: this world could not be known to us unless it existed, but it could not have existed unless it had been known to God.

11. The Blessedness of the Angels

Since these things are so, the spirits we call angels were never darkness at any time or in any way. As soon as they were made, they were made light. Yet they were not created merely to exist and live in any manner whatever. They were enlightened so that they might live wisely and blessedly. Some turned away from this light and did not attain this wise and blessed life, which is certainly eternal and includes a sure confidence that it is eternal. They still possess rational life, though darkened by folly, and cannot lose it even if they wish to.

But who can determine how far they shared in that wisdom before they fell? How can we say that they shared it equally with those who, through it, are truly and fully blessed, resting in a true certainty of eternal happiness? If they had shared equally in this true knowledge, the evil angels would have remained eternally blessed along with the good, because they would have had the same confident expectation. However long a life may be, it cannot truly be called eternal if it is destined to end. It is called life because it is lived, but eternal because it has no end.

Not everything eternal is therefore blessed, for hellfire is eternal. Yet if no life can be truly and perfectly blessed unless it is eternal, the life these angels enjoyed was not blessed. It was destined to end and therefore was not eternal, whether they knew this or not. If they knew, fear prevented them from being blessed; if they did not, ignorance prevented them. Perhaps their ignorance did not give them an entirely false expectation, but left them uncertain whether their good would last forever or eventually end. Even then, this very doubt about so great a destiny was incompatible with the fullness of blessedness that we believe the holy angels enjoyed.

We do not restrict the term “blessedness” so narrowly that it applies only to God. Undoubtedly, he is so truly blessed that no greater blessedness is possible. Compared with his blessedness, what is that of the angels, even though they are perfectly blessed according to their capacity?

12. Paradise and the Hope of Eternity

The angels are not the only rational and intellectual creatures whom we call blessed. Who would dare deny that the first human beings in Paradise were blessed before they sinned? They were uncertain how long their blessedness would last and whether it would be eternal, though it would have been eternal had they not sinned. Who would deny their blessedness when, even now, we rightly call people blessed whom we see living righteous and holy lives in the hope of immortality? These people suffer no tormenting remorse of conscience and readily receive divine forgiveness for the sins of their present weakness.

Although they are certain that they will receive their reward if they persevere, they are not certain that they will persevere. Who can know that he will persevere to the end in practicing and growing in grace, unless he has received assurance through some revelation from God? In his just and hidden judgment, God deceives no one but informs few about this matter.

As far as present comfort is concerned, then, the first man in Paradise was more blessed than any righteous person in our present insecure condition. But consider the hope of future good. Anyone who does not merely suppose, but knows with certainty, that he will enjoy the Most High God forever in the company of angels, beyond the reach of evil, is more blessed than the first man was. Whatever bodily torments such a person suffers, he is more blessed than the man who, even amid the great happiness of Paradise, remained uncertain about his future.

13. Assurance of Eternal Blessedness

From all this, anyone can readily see that the blessedness an intelligent being rightly desires consists of two things together: uninterrupted enjoyment of the unchangeable good, which is God, and freedom from all doubt, with certain knowledge that this enjoyment will last forever. We devoutly believe that this is the condition of the angels of light. But reason requires us to conclude that the fallen angels, who lost that light through their own fault, did not enjoy this blessedness even before they sinned. Still, if they lived for any time before their fall, we must grant them some kind of blessedness, though without knowledge of the future.

Perhaps it seems hard to believe that, when the angels were created, some were ignorant of whether they would persevere or fall, while others were entirely certain that their happiness would be eternal. Perhaps it seems hard to believe that they were not all equal from the beginning, until those who are now evil willingly fell away from the light of goodness. Yet it is much harder to believe that the holy angels are now uncertain of their eternal blessedness. Surely they know as much about themselves as we have been able to learn about them from Holy Scripture.

What catholic Christian does not know that no new devil will ever arise among the good angels, just as he knows that the present devil will never return to their fellowship? The Truth in the gospel promises the saints and the faithful that they will be equal to the angels of God. They are also promised that they will “go away into life eternal” (Matt 25:46). But if we are certain that we will never fall from eternal happiness, while the angels are uncertain, we will be their superiors rather than their equals. Since the Truth never deceives, and we will be their equals, they must be certain of their blessedness.

The evil angels could not have had this certainty, because their blessedness was destined to end. It follows that either the angels were unequal, or, if they were equal, the good angels received assurance of their eternal blessedness after the others fell into ruin.

There is, however, another possible interpretation of the Lord’s words about the devil: “He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth” (John 8:44). Someone might understand this to mean more than that he was a murderer from the beginning of the human race, when man was made and could be killed by his deceit. On this interpretation, the devil also failed to abide in the truth from the time of his own creation. He was therefore never blessed with the holy angels. Instead, he refused to submit to his Creator and proudly exulted as though he possessed a private dominion of his own. Thus he was both deceived and deceiving.

For no one can escape the dominion of the Almighty. Whoever refuses to submit devoutly to things as they are proudly invents a state of affairs that does not exist, and fools himself with it. In this way we can understand what the blessed apostle John says: “The devil sinneth from the beginning” (1 John 3:8). That is, from the time he was created, he refused the righteousness that only a will devoutly subject to God can enjoy.

Anyone who adopts this opinion at least disagrees with the heretical Manichaeans, and with any other pestilential sect that supposes the devil has a nature of his own derived from some opposing evil principle. These people are so deceived by error that, although they acknowledge the authority of the gospels along with us, they fail to notice what the Lord said. He did not say, “The devil was by nature a stranger to the truth.” He said, “The devil abode not in the truth.” By this he meant us to understand that the devil had fallen from the truth. Had he abided in it, he would have shared in it and remained blessed with the holy angels.

14. Why the Truth Is Not in the Devil

As though we had asked why the devil did not abide in the truth, our Lord adds the reason: “because the truth is not in him.” Now, the truth would be in him if he had abided in it. But this is an unusual way of speaking. As the words stand, “He abode not in the truth, because the truth is not in him,” they seem to make the truth’s absence from him the cause of his failure to abide in it. In fact, his failure to abide in the truth is the cause of its absence from him.

The same form of speech appears in the psalm: “I have called upon Thee, for Thou hast heard me, O God” (Ps 17:6). We would expect the reverse: “You have heard me, O God, because I have called upon you.” But after saying, “I have called,” the speaker acts as though someone were asking for proof. He demonstrates the earnestness and effectiveness of his prayer through its result, God’s hearing him. It is as though he had said, “The proof that I have prayed is that you have heard me.”

15. Sinning from the Beginning

Those who think John’s words about the devil, “The devil sinneth from the beginning” (1 John 3:8), mean that he was made with a sinful nature misunderstand them. If sin belongs to a nature as such, it is not sin at all.

And how do they answer the prophetic evidence? Isaiah represents the devil in the person of the king of Babylon and says, “How art thou fallen, O Lucifer, son of the morning!” (Isa 14:12). Ezekiel says, “Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering” (Ezek 28:13). This means that he was once without sin, for a little later it is said still more explicitly, “Thou wast perfect in thy ways.”

If these passages cannot reasonably be interpreted otherwise, we must also understand “He abode not in the truth” to mean that he was once in the truth but did not remain in it. And the passage “The devil sinneth from the beginning” should not lead us to suppose that he sinned from the beginning of his created existence. It means from the beginning of his sin, when he first began to sin through pride.

There is also a passage in the Book of Job about the devil: “This is the beginning of the creation of God, which He made to be a sport to His angels” (Job 40:14, Septuagint). It agrees with the psalm: “There is that dragon which Thou hast made to be a sport therein” (Ps 104:26). These passages should not lead us to suppose that the devil was originally created to be the sport of the angels. Rather, he was sentenced to this punishment after his sin.

His beginning, then, is God’s handiwork. There is no nature, even among the smallest, lowest, and least of the animals, that is not the work of him from whom all measure, form, and order proceed. Without these, nothing can be planned or conceived. How much more, then, is this angelic nature the handiwork of the Most High, surpassing in dignity everything else he has made!

16. Nature, Usefulness, and Value

Among beings that exist and are not of the essence of God the Creator, those that have life rank above those that have none. Those that have the power to reproduce, or even to desire, rank above those that lack this ability. Among living things, those that have sensation rank above those that do not, as animals rank above trees. Among beings with sensation, those with intelligence rank above those without it, as human beings rank above cattle. And among intelligent beings, the immortal, such as angels, rank above the mortal, such as human beings.

These are the gradations in the order of nature. But when people judge things by their usefulness, their standards of value vary. We therefore prefer some things without sensation to some living beings that have it. This preference can be so strong that, if we had the power, we would remove those living beings from nature altogether. We might do this because we do not know their place in nature, or because, despite knowing it, we sacrifice them to our own convenience.

Who would not rather have bread in his house than mice, or gold rather than fleas? There is little reason to wonder at this. Even in human valuations, though human nature certainly has the highest dignity, people often pay more for a horse than for a male slave, or more for a jewel than for a female slave.

Thus the reason of someone contemplating nature prompts very different judgments from those dictated by the necessity of a person in need or the desire of someone devoted to pleasure. The first considers a thing’s value in itself within the scale of creation; necessity considers how it meets a need. Reason seeks what the light of the mind judges true; pleasure seeks what pleasantly stimulates the bodily senses.

Yet in rational natures, the weight, so to speak, of will and love is so important that, although angels rank above human beings in the order of nature, good human beings are worth more than bad angels in the scale of justice.

17. Wickedness Is Contrary to Nature

We must therefore understand the words “This is the beginning of God’s handiwork” as referring to the devil’s nature, not his wickedness (Job 40:14, Septuagint). Undoubtedly, wickedness can be a flaw or sinful blemish only in a nature that was previously uncorrupted. Such a blemish is so contrary to nature that it cannot fail to damage it. Departure from God would therefore be no sinful flaw unless it occurred in a nature whose proper condition was to abide with God. Even an evil will is thus strong evidence of the goodness of the nature in which it exists.

God is the supremely good Creator of good natures and the most just Ruler of evil wills. While they make bad use of good natures, he makes good use even of evil wills. Accordingly, he caused the devil, good by God’s creation but wicked by his own will, to be cast down from his high position and become the mockery of his angels. That is, God caused the devil’s temptations to benefit those whom the devil intends to injure through them.

When God created the devil, he was certainly not ignorant of the devil’s future malice. He foresaw the good that he himself would bring out of that evil. The psalm therefore says, “This leviathan whom Thou hast made to be a sport therein” (Ps 104:26). We are to see that, even while God in his goodness created the devil good, he had already foreseen and arranged how he would use him when he became wicked.

18. The Beauty of Opposites

God would never have created anyone, whether an angel or even a human being, whose future wickedness he foreknew, unless he also knew how to turn that creature to the benefit of the good. In this way he beautifies the course of the ages like an exquisite poem adorned with antitheses.

What we call antitheses are among the most elegant ornaments of speech. In Latin they might be called “oppositions,” or, more accurately, “contrapositions.” This word is not commonly used among us, though Latin, and indeed the languages of all nations, use the same ornaments of style.

The apostle Paul also uses antithesis gracefully in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, where he says, “By the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, by honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report: as deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things” (2 Cor 6:7-10).

Just as these contrasts between opposites lend beauty to language, so the beauty of this world’s course is achieved through contrasts between opposites. They are arranged by an eloquence, so to speak, of things rather than words. The Book of Ecclesiasticus states this quite plainly: “Good is set against evil, and life against death: so is the sinner against the godly. So look upon all the works of the Most High, and these are two and two, one against another” (Sir 33:15).

19. Dividing Light from Darkness

The obscurity of the divine word certainly has this advantage: it prompts many interpretations of the truth to be proposed and discussed, as each reader sees some fresh meaning in it. Nevertheless, any meaning attributed to an obscure passage should either be confirmed by the evidence of obvious facts or be stated in other, less ambiguous texts.

This obscurity is beneficial whether the author’s meaning is finally reached after many other interpretations have been discussed, or whether that meaning remains hidden while the discussion brings other truths to light.

To me, the following interpretation does not seem inconsistent with God’s work: the angels were created when that first light was made, and the holy angels were separated from the unclean when, as Scripture says, “God divided the light from the darkness; and God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night.” Only he could make this distinction, for only he could foreknow, before their fall, that they would fall and, deprived of the light of truth, remain in the darkness of pride.

As for the day and night familiar to us, God commanded the heavenly lights that our senses perceive to divide light from darkness. “Let there be,” he says, “lights in the firmament of the heaven, to divide the day from the night.” Shortly afterward he says, “And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness” (Gen 1:14-18).

But the other light is the holy company of angels, spiritually radiant with the illumination of truth. The darkness opposed to it is the foul corruption of the spiritual condition of those angels who have turned away from the light of righteousness. Only God himself could divide this light from that darkness. Their wickedness, which belonged to their will rather than their nature, could not be hidden or uncertain to him even while it was still in the future.

20. Why Only the Light Was Approved

We must not leave this passage of Scripture without noticing that, when God said, “Let there be light, and there was light,” the words “And God saw the light that it was good” were immediately added. No such statement followed the account of his separating the light from the darkness and calling the light Day and the darkness Night. Otherwise, his approval might seem to have been given to that darkness as well as to the light.

When the darkness was not something to be condemned, as when the heavenly bodies divided it from the light our eyes perceive, the statement that God saw that it was good appears after the division is recorded, rather than before it. The passage reads, “And God set them in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.” He approved both, because both were without sin.

But in the other passage God said, “Let there be light, and there was light; and God saw the light that it was good.” The narrative continues, “and God divided the light from the darkness: and God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night.” Here the statement “And God saw that it was good” was not added afterward. Otherwise both would have been called good, although one was evil, through its own fault rather than by nature. In this case, therefore, the light alone received the Creator’s approval. The angelic darkness, though ordered by him, was not approved.

21. God’s Unchanging Knowledge

What else does the repeated phrase “And God saw that it was good” mean, except that the work was approved in its design, which is God’s wisdom? God certainly did not first learn that the work was good when he actually completed it. On the contrary, nothing would have been made unless he had first known it. He sees that what he has made is good, but if he had not seen this before making it, it would never have been made. Clearly, then, he is teaching that it is good rather than discovering it.

Plato was bold enough to say that, when the universe was completed, God was, as it were, elated with joy. Yet Plato was not so foolish as to mean that the novelty of creation made God more blessed. He wanted to indicate that the completed work met with its Maker’s approval, just as it had while it was still in design.

God’s knowledge is not of different kinds, knowing in different ways things that do not yet exist, things that exist, and things that have existed. He does not look forward to the future, look at the present, or look back on the past as we do. His manner of knowing is quite different, profoundly remote from our way of thinking.

He does not move from one thing to another through a succession of thoughts, but beholds all things with absolute unchangeableness. Of the things that arise in time, future things do not yet exist, present things exist now, and past things no longer exist. Yet he comprehends them all in his stable and eternal presence.

Nor does he see in one way with the eye and another with the mind, for he is not composed of mind and body. His present knowledge does not differ from what it always was or will be. The changes of time, past, present, and future, alter our knowledge but do not affect his, “with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (Jas 1:17).

There is no progression from thought to thought in the understanding of him whose spiritual vision embraces at once everything he knows. Just as he moves all temporal things without any movement in himself that time can measure, so he knows all times with a knowledge that time cannot measure.

He therefore saw that what he had made was good when he saw that it was good to make it. Seeing it made did not give him a second knowledge of it or increase his knowledge in any way, as though he had known less before making what he saw. Certainly, he would not be the perfect worker he is unless his knowledge were so perfect that his finished works could add nothing to it.

If the only purpose had been to tell us who made the light, it would have been enough to say, “God made the light.” If we were also to be told how it was made, it would have been enough to say, “And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.” We would then know both that God made the world and that he made it by the word.

But it was right that we should be told three principal truths about the creature: who made it, by what means, and why. Thus it is written, “God said, Let there be light, and there was light. And God saw the light that it was good.” If we ask who made it, the answer is “God.” If we ask by what means, he said “Let it be,” and it was. If we ask why he made it, the answer is “it was good.”

There is no maker more excellent than God, no skill more effective than the word of God, and no better cause than that good should be created by the good God. Plato also gave this as the most sufficient reason for the creation of the world: that good works might be made by a good God. Perhaps he read this passage, or learned these things from people who had read it. Perhaps his penetrating genius reached spiritual and invisible things through created things, or he was instructed about them by people who had discerned them.

22. The Goodness of Every Nature

The goodness of God is the cause of a good creation. This cause is so just and fitting that, when carefully and devoutly considered, it settles all the controversies of those who inquire into the world’s origin. Yet some heretics have failed to recognize it. Their reason, apparently, is that many things, such as fire, frost, and wild beasts, do not suit, but instead injure, this frail, thin-blooded mortal flesh of ours, which is now under just punishment.

They do not consider how admirable these things are in their own places, how excellent in their own natures, or how beautifully fitted to the rest of creation. They do not consider how much beauty they contribute to the universe, each bringing its own contribution as to a commonwealth. Nor do they consider how useful these things are even to us, if we use them with an understanding of what they are suited for.

Even poisons, destructive when used without judgment, become healthful and medicinal when used according to their qualities and purpose. Conversely, things that give us pleasure, such as food, drink, and sunlight, prove harmful when used excessively or at the wrong time.

Divine providence thus warns us against foolishly condemning things and urges us to investigate their usefulness carefully. Where our mental capacity or weakness prevents us from discovering their use, we should believe that they have a use, though hidden. Experience has shown us the usefulness of other things whose use we nearly failed to discover. The concealment of a thing’s use is itself either an exercise in humility or a humbling of our pride. No nature at all is evil; evil is simply the name for an absence of good.

Yet among things earthly and heavenly, visible and invisible, some are better than others. They are unequal for this purpose: that they might all exist. God is a great worker in great things in such a way that he is no less great in little things. These little things must be measured by the wisdom of their Designer rather than by their own greatness, which they do not possess.

Consider a person’s visible appearance. If one eyebrow is shaved off, almost nothing is taken from the body, but how much is taken from its beauty! Beauty consists in the proportion and arrangement of the parts rather than their bulk.

We need not greatly wonder that people who suppose an evil nature has been generated and propagated by an opposing principle of its own refuse to accept this cause of creation: that the good God made a good creation. They believe instead that he was driven to create by the urgent necessity of repelling the evil that warred against him. They believe that he mixed his good nature with the evil in order to restrain and conquer it.

According to them, his nature was thereby shamefully polluted, cruelly oppressed, and held captive. He labors to cleanse and deliver it, but despite all his efforts, he does not wholly succeed. The part of his nature that could not be cleansed of that defilement is to become a prison and chain for the conquered and imprisoned enemy.

The Manichaeans would not talk such nonsense, or rather, rave in this way, if they believed that God’s nature is, as it truly is, unchangeable, absolutely incorruptible, and incapable of injury, and if they held, with Christian sobriety, that the soul is not a part of God or of the same nature as God, but was created by him and is very different from its Creator. This soul, I say, has shown itself capable of changing for the worse through its own will, of being corrupted by sin, and thus of being deprived of the light of eternal truth.

23. Origen’s Account of Creation

But it is much more surprising that some who share our belief have nevertheless refused to accept this good and simple reason for the world’s creation with a good and simple faith: a good God made it good. They believe, as we do, that there is only one source of all things, and that no nature other than the divine can exist unless that Creator brought it into being. The things he created, being different from God, were inferior to him. Yet they were good, because none other than he created them.

These people say instead that souls, though not parts of God but created by him, sinned by abandoning God. In proportion to their various sins, they deserved different degrees of degradation from heaven to earth, and different bodies as prisons. They say that this is the world, and this the cause of its creation: to restrain evil, rather than to produce good things. Origen is rightly blamed for holding this opinion. For this is what he thinks and says in the books he calls Of Origins.

I cannot adequately express my astonishment that a man so learned and so well versed in church literature failed to notice, first, how opposed this is to the meaning of authoritative Scripture. As it recounts all God’s works, Scripture regularly adds, “And God saw that it was good.” When all were completed, it inserts the words, “And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Gen 1:31). Was this not plainly meant to show that the world was created for no other reason than that a good God should make good creatures?

Had no one sinned, this creation would have been filled and beautified with natures that were good without exception. And although there is sin, not everything is therefore full of sin, for the great majority of heaven’s inhabitants preserve the integrity of their nature. The sinful will violated the order of its own nature, but did not thereby escape the laws of God, who justly orders all things for good. Well-placed shadows increase the beauty of a picture. In the same way, to an eye skilled enough to discern it, even sinners contribute to the universe’s beauty, although, considered by themselves, their deformity is a grievous blemish.

Second, Origen and all who agree with him should have seen what follows from their opinion. Suppose the world was created so that souls could be punished for their sins by being confined in bodies as in houses of correction. Suppose those whose sins were more pardonable received lighter, more ethereal bodies, while those whose sins were grosser and more serious received denser bodies, bound more closely to the earth. Then devils, whose wickedness is deepest, ought to have earthly bodies even more than wicked human beings do, since earthly bodies are the densest and least ethereal of all.

But in fact, the most wicked devil has an ethereal body. A human being, though wicked, has a wickedness small and pardonable in comparison with the devil’s, yet received a body of clay even before sinning. This shows us that what souls deserve cannot be measured by the qualities of their bodies.

And what assertion could be more foolish than this: God did not intend our sun to benefit material creation or add splendor to its beauty, and did not create a single sun for that reason in this single world. Instead, it merely happened that only one soul had sinned in a way that deserved confinement in such a body. On this principle, if not one but two, or ten, or a hundred souls had happened to sin in the same way and with the same degree of guilt, this world would have a hundred suns. By that reasoning, the fact that it does not would be due to no thoughtful foresight of the Creator, arranging the safety and beauty of material things. It would instead be due to the fact that only one soul had achieved so fine a quality of sinning, and therefore it alone had deserved such a body.

Clearly, people who hold these opinions should aim to confine themselves, rather than souls about which they do not know what they are saying. Otherwise, they may fall far from the truth, and deservedly so.

Earlier, I recommended three answers when these questions are asked about any creature: Who made it? By what means? Why? The answers should be: God; through the Word; because it was good. It is very much open to question whether these three answers mystically indicate the Trinity itself, namely, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is also open to question whether there is good reason to understand this passage of Scripture in that way. These are questions, I say, and no one can be expected to explain everything in one volume.

24. The Trinity in God’s Works

We believe, maintain, and faithfully preach that the Father begot the Word, that is, Wisdom, through whom all things were made. He is the only-begotten Son, one as the Father is one, eternal as the Father is eternal, and, equally with the Father, supremely good. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of both Father and Son, and is himself of the same substance and coeternal with both.

Together they are a Trinity because of the distinct persons, and one God because of the indivisible divine substance. They are also one Almighty because of their indivisible omnipotence. Yet when we ask about each individually, each is called God and Almighty. When we speak of them together, we say that there are not three Gods or three Almighties, but one God Almighty. So great is the indivisible unity of these Three that we must speak in this way.

But I do not presume to decide hastily whether the Holy Spirit of the Father and the Son, who are both good, can properly be called the goodness of both because he is common to both. Nevertheless, I would have less hesitation in saying that he is the holiness of both. I do not mean that he is merely a divine attribute, but that he himself is also the divine substance and the third person in the Trinity.

I am more encouraged to say this because, although the Father is a spirit and the Son a spirit, and the Father holy and the Son holy, the third person is distinctively called the Holy Spirit. It is as if he were holiness itself in substance, sharing the same substance as the other two.

But if divine goodness is nothing other than divine holiness, then it is certainly reasonable study, rather than presumptuous intrusion, to ask whether this same Trinity is hinted at in an enigmatic manner of speech that stimulates our inquiry. Scripture tells us who made each creature, by what means, and why. For it is the Father of the Word who said, “Let there be.” And what was made when he spoke was certainly made through the Word.

The words “God saw that it was good” sufficiently indicate that God made what he made neither from necessity nor to supply any lack, but solely from his own goodness, that is, because it was good. This is stated after the creation took place, so that there might be no doubt that what was made satisfied the goodness for whose sake it was made. If we are right in understanding this goodness to be the Holy Spirit, then the whole Trinity is revealed to us in creation.

Here, too, are the origin, enlightenment, and blessedness of the holy city above, among the holy angels. If we ask where it came from, God created it. If we ask where its wisdom came from, God enlightened it. If we ask where its blessedness came from, God is its bliss. It has its form by existing in him, its enlightenment by contemplating him, and its joy by abiding in him. It exists; it sees; it loves. In God’s eternity is its life, in God’s truth its light, and in God’s goodness its joy.

25. Philosophy’s Three Parts

As far as one can judge, it is for the same reason that philosophers have sought a threefold division of knowledge, or rather, were able to see that such a division existed. For they did not invent it, but discovered it. One part is called physical, another logical, and the third ethical. The Latin equivalents of these names have now become established in many authors’ writings, so that these divisions are called natural, rational, and moral. I touched briefly on them in Book 8.

I would not conclude that these philosophers had any thought of a trinity in God when they made this threefold division. Yet Plato is said to have been the first to discover and make it known. He saw that God alone could be the author of nature, the giver of understanding, and the kindler of the love through which life becomes good and blessed.

It is certain, however, that philosophers spend all their intellectual energy on these three great general questions, even though they disagree about the nature of things, the way to investigate truth, and the good toward which all our actions should tend. Their opinions are confusingly diverse, and each strives to establish his own view on each question. Yet none of them doubts that nature has some cause, knowledge some method, and life some end and aim.

Again, anyone who practices a craft must possess three things to accomplish anything: natural ability, education, and practice. Natural ability is judged by capacity, education by knowledge, and practice by its fruit. I know that, strictly speaking, fruit is what one enjoys, while use, or practice, is what one employs. The difference seems to be this: we are said to enjoy what delights us in itself, without reference to any further end. We use what we seek for the sake of some end beyond it.

For this reason, temporal things should be used rather than enjoyed, so that we may deserve to enjoy eternal things. We should not be like those perverse people who want to enjoy money and use God. Instead of spending money for God’s sake, they worship God for money’s sake.

In ordinary speech, however, we both use fruits and enjoy uses. For we rightly speak of the “fruits of the field,” which we certainly all use in this present life. It was in keeping with this usage that I said three things should be observed in a person: natural ability, education, and practice. From these, as I said, philosophers have developed the threefold division of the knowledge through which a blessed life is attained. Natural philosophy concerns nature, rational philosophy education, and moral philosophy practice.

If we were ourselves the authors of our nature, we would have produced knowledge within ourselves. We would not need to reach it through education, that is, by learning from others. Our love, too, proceeding from ourselves and returning to us, would be enough to make our lives blessed. It would need no enjoyment beyond ourselves. But as things are, our nature necessarily has God as its author. It is therefore certain that we must have him as our teacher in order to be wise, and as the giver of spiritual sweetness in order to be blessed.

26. The Trinity’s Image in Us

We do indeed recognize in ourselves the image of God, that is, of the supreme Trinity. This image is not equal to God. Rather, it is very far removed from him, being neither coeternal nor, to put it in a word, of the same substance as him. Yet it is nearer to him in nature than any other of his works, and is destined to be restored so that it may bear a still closer resemblance. For we exist, we know that we exist, and we delight in our existence and our knowledge of it.

Moreover, no plausible illusion disturbs us about these three things. We do not encounter them through a bodily sense, as we perceive things outside ourselves: colors by seeing, sounds by hearing, smells by smelling, tastes by tasting, and hard or soft objects by touching. What we perceive in the mind and hold in memory are images resembling these objects of sense, rather than the objects themselves. These images stir us to desire the objects.

But without any deceptive presentation of images or apparitions, I am entirely certain that I exist, and that I know and delight in this. Concerning these truths, I have no fear at all of the arguments of the Academicians, who ask, “What if you are deceived?” For if I am deceived, I exist. Someone who does not exist cannot be deceived. If I am deceived, that very fact shows that I exist.

Since I exist if I am deceived, how can I be deceived in believing that I exist? For it is certain that I exist if I am deceived. Therefore, since I, the person deceived, would exist even if I were deceived, I am certainly not deceived in knowing that I exist. Consequently, neither am I deceived in knowing that I know. Just as I know that I exist, I also know this: that I know.

When I love these two things, I add a certain third thing to them, namely, my love, which is equally important. Nor am I deceived in knowing that I love, since I am not deceived about the things I love. Even if they were false, it would still be true that I loved false things. For how could I rightly be blamed and forbidden to love false things if it were false that I loved them? But since they are true and real, who doubts that, when they are loved, the love of them is itself true and real?

Further, just as no one fails to wish to be happy, no one fails to wish to exist. For how can anyone be happy if he is nothing?

27. Existence, Knowledge, and Love

The very fact of existing has a natural charm so pleasing that even the miserable are unwilling to perish for this reason alone. When they feel their misery, they wish for their misery to be annihilated, rather than themselves.

Consider even those who are utterly miserable, both in their own judgment and in fact. Wise people consider them miserable because of their folly. So do people who count themselves blessed and think these others miserable because they are poor and destitute. Suppose someone offered these miserable people immortality in which their misery would never die, with this alternative: if they shrank from existing eternally in the same misery, they could be annihilated, existing nowhere at all and in no condition. They would instantly choose, joyfully and even exultantly, to exist forever in that condition rather than not exist at all.

Their well-known feelings bear witness to this. When we see that they fear death and prefer to live in such misfortune rather than end it by dying, is it not clear enough how nature shrinks from annihilation? Accordingly, when they know they must die, they ask as a great favor for this mercy: that they may live a little longer in the same misery, postponing its end in death. They thus prove beyond doubt how gladly and eagerly they would accept immortality, even if it assured them endless ruin.

Do not all irrational animals, which know nothing of such calculations, bear witness that they wish to exist? From huge dragons down to the smallest worms, they avoid death with every movement in their power. Even plants and shrubs lack the kind of life that enables them to avoid destruction through movements we can see. Yet do they not all seek, in their own fashion, to preserve their existence? They root themselves ever more deeply in the earth to draw nourishment and send out healthy branches toward the sky.

Finally, even lifeless bodies, which lack both sensation and the life that reproduces through seed, either rise toward the upper air, sink into the depths, or remain balanced between them. In this way they preserve their existence in the position where they can exist most in keeping with their nature.

How much human nature loves the knowledge of its existence, and how it shrinks from deception, can be sufficiently understood from this fact: everyone prefers to grieve with a sane mind rather than rejoice in madness. This great and wonderful instinct belongs to human beings alone among all animals. Some animals have keener eyesight than we do for this world’s light. Yet they cannot reach that spiritual light which somehow illuminates our minds, enabling us to form right judgments about all things. Our power to judge is proportionate to our acceptance of this light.

Nevertheless, irrational animals, although they lack knowledge, certainly have something resembling knowledge. Other material things, by contrast, are called objects of sense because we sense them, rather than because they have senses themselves. Yet in plants, nourishment and reproduction bear some resemblance to life endowed with sensation.

Both plants and all other material things have their causes hidden in their nature. But their outward forms, which give beauty to this visible structure of the world, are perceived by our senses. They thus seem to wish to compensate for their own lack of knowledge by providing us with knowledge.

We perceive them through our bodily senses, but we do not judge them by those senses. For we have another and far superior sense, belonging to the inner person, through which we perceive what is just and what is unjust. We perceive the just through an intelligible idea, and the unjust through the absence of that idea. This sense receives no help in its work from eyesight, the opening of the ear, the air passages of the nostrils, the palate’s taste, or any bodily touch. Through it I am assured both that I exist and that I know this. I love these two things, and in the same way I am assured that I love them.

28. Loving Love Itself

We have said as much as the scope of this work requires about these two things: our existence and our knowledge of it. We have discussed how much we love them, and how even lower creatures possess a kind of likeness to them, though with a difference. We still need to discuss the love with which they are loved, and determine whether this love is itself loved.

Without doubt it is, and here is the proof. In people who are rightly loved, it is love itself that is chiefly loved. For a person is rightly called good because he loves what is good, rather than because he knows it. Is it not obvious, then, that we love in ourselves the very love with which we love whatever good we love?

There is also a love with which we love what we ought not to love. A person who loves the love with which he loves what ought to be loved hates this other love. Both can quite possibly exist in one person. This coexistence is good for a person to this end: the love that helps us live well may grow, and the other, which leads us to evil, may decrease, until our whole life is perfectly healed and transformed into good.

If we were beasts, we would love the life of the flesh and senses, and this would be a sufficient good for us. When all was well with us in that respect, we would seek nothing beyond it. Likewise, if we were trees, we could not, strictly speaking, love anything. Nevertheless, we would seem to long, as it were, for what would enable us to bear fruit more abundantly and luxuriantly.

If we were stones, waves, wind, flame, or anything of that kind, we would lack both sensation and life. Yet we would possess a kind of attraction toward our proper position and natural order. For the specific gravity of bodies is, as it were, their love, whether their weight carries them downward or their lightness upward. A body is carried by its gravity wherever it is carried, just as a spirit is carried by love.

But we are human beings, created in the image of our Creator. His eternity is true, and his truth eternal; his love is eternal and true. He himself is the eternal and true Trinity, worthy of adoration, without confusion and without separation.

As we survey all the works he has established, we can detect his footprints, as it were, sometimes more and sometimes less distinctly, even in things beneath us. For they could not exist at all, take any bodily form, or follow and observe any law unless they had been made by him who supremely exists, and is supremely good and supremely wise. Yet when we behold his image in ourselves, let us, like the younger son in the gospel, come to ourselves, rise, and return to him from whom we departed through sin. There our existence will have no death, our knowledge no error, and our love no misfortune.

For now, we are assured that we possess these three things through our own awareness of their presence, rather than through the testimony of others. We see them with our own entirely truthful inner vision. Yet we cannot know by ourselves how long they will continue, whether they will never cease to exist, or what outcome their good or bad use will bring. We therefore seek others who can tell us these things, unless we have already found them. There will be an opportunity later, though not now, to discuss the trustworthiness of these witnesses.

But in this book, with God’s help, let us continue as we began to speak of the city of God as it exists forever immortal in heaven, rather than in its state of pilgrimage and mortality. That is, let us speak of the holy angels who remain faithful to God, who never have deserted him and never will. As we have already said, God at the beginning made a separation between them and those who forsook eternal light and became darkness.

29. How the Holy Angels Know

The holy angels come to know God through the presence of unchangeable truth to their souls, rather than through audible words. This truth is the only-begotten Word of God. They know the Word himself, the Father, and their Holy Spirit. They know that this Trinity is indivisible, that its three persons are one substance, and that there are not three Gods but one God. They know this so well that they understand it better than we understand ourselves.

They also know created things by this better way: in the wisdom of God, as if in the art through which they were created, rather than in the things themselves. Consequently, they know themselves better in God than in themselves, although they also have this latter knowledge. For they were created, and are different from their Creator. In him, therefore, they have what we might call noonday knowledge; in themselves, twilight knowledge, as we explained earlier.

There is a great difference between knowing a thing in the design according to which it was made and knowing it in itself. For example, the straightness of lines and the correctness of figures are known in one way when conceived in the mind, and in another when drawn on paper. Justice is known in one way in unchangeable truth, and in another in the spirit of a just person.

So it is with all other things: the firmament between the waters above and below, which was called heaven; the gathering of the waters below, the uncovering of dry land, and the production of plants and trees; the creation of the sun, moon, and stars; the animals brought forth from the waters, including birds, fish, and monsters of the deep; everything that walks or crawls on the earth; and human beings themselves, who surpass everything else on earth.

The angels know all these things in one way in the Word of God, in whom they see the eternally abiding causes and reasons according to which the things were made. They know them in another way in the things themselves. The former knowledge is clearer; the latter is dimmer, and concerns the works themselves more than their design. Yet when these works are directed toward the praise and adoration of the Creator himself, it is as if morning dawns in the minds of those who contemplate them.

30. Six as a Perfect Number

These works are recorded as having been completed in six days, the same day repeated six times, because six is a perfect number. This does not mean that God needed an extended time, as if he could not create all things at once. Once created, those things would mark the course of time through their own proper movements. Rather, the number six signified the perfection of the works.

For six is the first number made up of its own parts: its sixth, its third, and its half. These are respectively one, two, and three, which together make six. In this way of considering a number, its parts are those that divide it exactly, such as a half, a third, a fourth, or a fraction with any denominator.

For example, four is part of nine, but is not therefore a part that divides it exactly. One is, however, because it is the ninth part; and three is, because it is the third. Yet these two parts, the ninth and the third, or one and three, fall far short of adding up to the whole sum of nine.

Again, four is part of ten, but does not divide it exactly. One does, because it is a tenth. Ten also has a fifth, which is two, and a half, which is five. But these three parts, a tenth, a fifth, and a half, or one, two, and five, add up to eight rather than ten.

The parts of twelve, on the other hand, add up to more than the whole. It has a twelfth, which is one; a sixth, or two; a fourth, which is three; a third, which is four; and a half, which is six. But one, two, three, four, and six add up to sixteen, which is more than twelve.

I have thought it appropriate to say this much to illustrate the perfection of six. As I said, it is the first number exactly made up of the sum of its own parts, and in this number of days God completed his work. Therefore, we must not despise the study of numbers, which in many passages of holy Scripture proves especially helpful to the careful interpreter. Nor is it without reason that this has been counted among God’s praises: “Thou hast ordered all things in number, and measure, and weight” (Wis 11:20).

31. Seven, the Number of Completeness

On the seventh day, however, God’s rest is set forth. This is the same day repeated seven times, and seven is also a perfect number, though for a different reason. Then, too, we first hear that the day is hallowed. God therefore did not wish to hallow this day through his works, but through his rest. That rest has no evening, for it is not a creature that could be known in one way in the Word of God and in another way in itself, producing a twofold knowledge, daylight and dusk, or day and evening.

Much more could be said about the perfection of seven, but this book is already too long. I fear I might seem to seize an opportunity to display my little smattering of knowledge more childishly than usefully. I must therefore speak with moderation and dignity, lest, in pursuing “number” too eagerly, I be accused of forgetting “weight” and “measure.”

Let it be enough here to say that three is the first whole number that is odd, and four the first that is even, and that these two make seven. For this reason, seven often stands for all numbers together, as in “A just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again” (Prov 24:16). That is, however often he falls, he will not perish. This was meant to refer to afflictions that lead to humility, rather than to sins.

Again, “Seven times a day will I praise Thee” (Ps 119:164) is expressed elsewhere as “I will bless the {sc:LORD} at all times” (Ps 34:1). Many such instances are found in the divine writings. In them, as I said, the number seven is commonly used to express the whole or the completeness of something.

Thus this number signifies the Holy Spirit, of whom the Lord says, “He will teach you all truth” (John 16:13). In it is the rest of God, the rest his people find in him. For rest is in the whole, that is, in perfect completeness, while labor is in the part. So we labor as long as we know in part; “but when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away” (1 Cor 13:10).

Even our search through the Scriptures themselves requires toil. But the holy angels, whose fellowship and assembly we long for during this laborious pilgrimage, already abide in their eternal home. They therefore enjoy perfect ease of knowledge and happiness of rest. They help us without difficulty, for their spiritual movements, pure and free, cost them no effort.

32. Angels Before the World?

Someone may oppose our opinion and say that the holy angels are not meant by the words “Let there be light, and there was light.” He may suppose or teach that these words meant some material light then created for the first time. He may say that the angels were created before the firmament that divides the waters and is named “the heaven,” and even before the time indicated in the words “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”

He may argue that “In the beginning” does not mean that nothing was made before, since the angels were. Instead, it means that God made all things through his Wisdom or Word, who is named “the Beginning” in Scripture. For in the gospel, when the Jews asked him who he was, he replied that he was the Beginning (John 8:25).

I will not dispute this interpretation, chiefly because it gives me the greatest satisfaction to find the Trinity celebrated at the very beginning of Genesis. For the words “In the Beginning God created the heaven and the earth” mean that the Father made them in the Son. The psalm bears witness to this when it says, “How manifold are Thy works, O {sc:LORD}! in Wisdom hast Thou made them all” (Ps 104:24). A little later, the Holy Spirit is also fittingly mentioned.

First we are told what kind of earth God created at the beginning. Or we are told what mass or matter God had provided, under the name “heaven and earth,” for the construction of the world. This is stated in the additional words, “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” Then, to complete the mention of the Trinity, it is immediately added, “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”

Let each person, then, understand it as he pleases. The passage is so profound that it may well suggest many opinions to exercise the reader’s discernment, none of them departing far from the rule of faith. At the same time, let no one doubt that the holy angels in their heavenly dwellings, although not coeternal with God, are secure and certain of eternal and true happiness.

The Lord teaches that his little ones belong to their company. He not only says, “They shall be equal to the angels of God” (Matt 22:30), but also shows what blessed contemplation the angels themselves enjoy, saying, “Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones: for I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven” (Matt 18:10).

33. Angels as Light and Darkness

Certain angels sinned and were cast down to the lowest parts of this world. There they are, so to speak, imprisoned until their final condemnation on the day of judgment. The apostle Peter declares this very plainly when he says that “God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness to be reserved unto judgment” (2 Pet 2:4). Who, then, can doubt that God separated these angels from the rest, either in his foreknowledge or in action? And who will dispute that the rest are rightly called “light”? Even we, who still live by faith and only hope for equality with them without yet enjoying it, are already called “light” by the apostle: “For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord” (Eph 5:8). As for the fallen angels, everyone who understands or believes that they are worse than unbelieving human beings knows very well that they are called “darkness.”

So although light and darkness are to be understood literally in the passages of Genesis that say, “God said, Let there be light, and there was light,” and “God divided the light from the darkness,” we also understand them to signify these two communities of angels. One enjoys God; the other swells with pride. To one it is said, “Praise ye Him, all His angels” (Ps 148:2); the prince of the other says, “All these things will I give Thee if Thou wilt fall down and worship me” (Matt 4:9). One blazes with holy love for God; the other reeks with the unclean desire to exalt itself.

And since, as it is written, “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble” (Jas 4:6), we may say that one dwells in the heaven of heavens, while the other has been cast out of it and rages through the lower regions of the air. One is peaceful in the brightness of devotion; the other is tossed by storms of desire that cloud its vision. At God’s bidding, one tenderly brings help and justly carries out vengeance; driven by its own pride, the other seethes with the desire to subdue and harm. The angels of one community serve God’s goodness as fully as they desire; those of the other are restrained by God’s power from doing the harm they wish to do. The first community laughs at the second when its persecutions do good against its will. The second envies the first when it gathers in its pilgrims.

These two angelic communities are different and opposed to one another. One is good by nature and upright in will; the other is also good by nature, but corrupt in will. Other, clearer passages of Holy Scripture describe them in this way. So I think that this book of Genesis also speaks of them under the names of light and darkness. Even if its author perhaps meant something different, our discussion of this obscure language has not been wasted. Although we may have failed to discover his meaning, we have kept to the rule of faith, which believers know well enough from other passages of equal authority. For although this passage speaks of God’s material works, they certainly resemble his spiritual works. Thus Paul can say, “Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness” (1 Thess 5:5).

If, on the other hand, the author of Genesis saw in these words what we see, our discussion reaches a more satisfying conclusion. We may then suppose that this man of God, so exceptionally and divinely wise, did not omit all mention of the angels. Or rather, we may suppose this of the Spirit of God, who through him recorded God’s works, completed on the sixth day. The angels may have been included in the words “in the beginning” because God made them first, or, as seems most likely, because he made them in the only-begotten Word.

Under the names heaven and earth, the whole creation is signified. These names may divide it into spiritual and material creation, which seems more likely. Or they may refer to the two great parts of the world in which all created things are contained. Thus creation is first presented as a whole, and then its parts are listed according to the mystical number of the days.

34. The Waters and the Angels

Some, however, have supposed that the angelic hosts are somehow referred to under the name of waters. They take this to be the meaning of “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters” (Gen 1:6). In their view, the waters above should be understood as the angels. The waters below would signify either the visible waters, the multitude of evil angels, or the nations of humanity. If this is so, the passage does not show when the angels were created, but when they were separated.

There have also been people foolish and wicked enough to deny that God made the waters, because nowhere is it written, “God said, Let there be waters.” With equal folly they might say the same of the earth, for nowhere do we read, “God said, Let the earth be.” But they reply that it is written, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Yes, and water is meant there too, for both land and water are included in the one word “earth.” For “the sea is His,” as the psalm says, “and He made it; and His hands formed the dry land” (Ps 95:5).

But those who interpret the waters above the skies as angels find a difficulty in the specific gravity of the elements. They fear that water, because of its fluidity and weight, could not be placed in the upper parts of the world. If they were to construct a human being according to their own principles, they would therefore put no moist bodily fluid in the head. They would leave out what the Greeks call “phlegm,” which plays the part of water among the elements of our body.

Yet in God’s handiwork, the head is the seat of phlegm, and surely a most suitable one. According to their theory, however, this arrangement would be so absurd that they would refuse to believe it if they did not already know the fact. Suppose this same scriptural account told them that God had put a moist and cold, and therefore heavy, bodily fluid in the uppermost part of the human body. These weighers of the world would refuse to believe it. And if confronted with the authority of Scripture, they would insist that the words must mean something else.

But if we were to investigate and discover every detail written in this divine book about the creation of the world, we would have much to say and would stray far from the intended purpose of this work. We have now said what seemed necessary about these two different and opposing communities of angels. In them we also find the origin of the two human communities, which we intend to discuss shortly. Let us therefore bring this book too to a close.