- THE CITY OF GOD - THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THE CREATOR - BY SAINT AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO -
- Of the creation of angels and men -
As we promised in the immediately preceding book, this, the last of the whole work, shall contain a discussion of the eternal blessedness of the city of God. This blessedness is named eternal, not because it shall endure for many ages, though at last it shall come to an end but because according to the words of the gospel, "of His kingdom there shall be no end." - Luke i. 33 - Neither shall it enjoy the mere appearance of perpetuity which is maintained by the rise of fresh generation to occupy the place of those that have died out, as in an evergreen the same freshness seems to continue permanently and the same appearance of dense foliage is preserved by the growth of fresh leaves in the room of those that have withered and fallen; but in that city all the citizens shall be immortal, men/women now for the first time enjoying what the holy angels have never lost. And this shall be accomplished by God, the most almighty Founder of the city. For He has promised and cannot lie, and has already performed many of His promises and has done many un-promised kindness to those whom He now asks to believe that He will do this also.
For it is He who in the beginning created the world full of all visible and intelligible beings, among which He created nothing better than those spirits whom He endowed with intelligence and made capable of contemplating and enjoying Him, and united in our society which we call the holy and heavenly city in which the material of their sustenance and blessedness is God Himself, as if it were their common food and nourishment. It is He who gave to this intellectual nature free will of such kind, that if he wished to forsake God his blessedness, misery should forthwith result. It is He who, when He foreknew that certain angels would in their pride desire to suffice for their own blessedness and would forsake their great good, did not deprive them of this power, deeming it to be more befitting His power and goodness to bring good out of evil than to prevent the evil from coming into existence. Indeed, evil had never had not the mutable nature - mutable, though good and created by the most high God and immutable Good, who created all things good - brought evil upon itself by sin and this its sin is itself proof that its nature was originally good. For had it not been very good, though not equal to its Creator, the desertion of God as its light could not have been an evil to it. For as blindness is a vice of the eye and this very fact indicates that the eye was created to see the light and as consequently, vice itself proves that the eye is more excellent that the other members because it is capable of light ( for on no other supposition would it be a vice of the eye to want light), so the nature which once enjoyed God teaches, even by its very vice, that it was created the best of all, since it is now miserable because it does not enjoy God. It is He who with very just punishment doomed the angels who voluntarily fell to everlasting misery and rewarded those who continued in their attachment to the supreme good with the assurance of endless stability as the meed of their fidelity. It is He who made also man himself upright with the same freedom of will - an earthly animal, indeed, but fit for heaven if he/she remained faithful to his/her Creator, but destined to the misery appropriate to such a nature if he/she forsook Him. It is He who, when He foreknew that man would in his/her turn to sin by abandoning God and breaking His law, did not deprive him of the power of free-will because He at the same time foresaw what good He Himself would bring out of the evil and how from this mortal race, deservedly and justly condemned, He would by His grace collect, as of now, He does, a people so numerous that He thus fills up and repairs the blank made by the fallen angels and that thus, that beloved and heavenly city is not defrauded of the full number of its citizens, but perhaps, may even rejoice in a still more overflowing population.
- Of the eternal and unchangeable will of God -
It is true that wicked men do many things contrary to God's will; but so great is His wisdom and power, that all things which seem adverse to His purpose do still tend towards those just and good ends and issues which He Himself has foreknown and consequently, when God is said to change His will, as when, for example, He becomes angry with those to whom He was gentle, it is rather they than He who are changed and they find Him changed in so far as their experience of suffering at His hand is new, as the sun is changed to injured eyes and becomes as it were fierce from being mild and hurtful from being delightful, though in itself it remains the same as it was. That also is called the will of God which He does in the hearts of those who obey His commandments; and of this the apostle says, "For it is God that worketh in you both to will." - Philippians ii. 13 - As God's "righteousness" is used not only of the righteousness wherewith He Himself is righteous but also of that which He produces in the man whom He justifies, so also that is called His law which though given by God, is rather the law of men. For certainly they were men to whom Jesus said, "It is written in your law" - John viii. 17 - though in another place we read "The law of his God is in his heart." - Psalms xxxvii. 31 - According to this will which God works in men. He is said also to will what He Himself does not will but causes His people to will; as He is said to know what He has caused those to know were ignorant of it. For when the apostle says: "But now, after that ye have known God or rather are known of God" - Galatians iv. 9 - we cannot suppose that God there for the first time knew those who were foreknown by Him before the foundation of the world; but He is said to have known them then because then He caused them to know. But I remember that I discussed these modes of expression in the preceding books. According to this will, then, by which we say that God wills what He causes to be willed by others, from whom the future is hidden, He wills many things which He does not perform.
Thus His saints, inspired by His holy will, desire many things which never happen. They pray, for example, for certain individuals - they pray in a pious and holy manner - but what they request He does not perform though He Himself by His own Holy Spirit has wrought in them this will to pray. And consequently, when the saints in conformity with God's mind, will and pray that all men be saved, we can use this mode of expression: God wills and does not perform - meaning that He who causes them to will these things Himself wills them. But if we speak of that will of His which is eternal as His foreknowledge, certainly He has already done all things in heaven and on earth that He has willed - not only past and present things but even things that is, still future. But before the arrival of that time in which He has willed the occurrence of what He foreknew and arranged before all time, we say, It will happen when God wills. But if we are ignorant not only of the time in which it is to be, but even whether it shall be at all, we say, It will happen if God wills - not because God will then have a new will which He had not before, but because that event which from eternity has been prepared in His unchangeable will, shall then come to pass.
- Of the promise of eternal blessedness to the saints and everlasting punishment to the wicked -
Wherefore not to mention many other instances besides, as we now see in Christ the fulfilment of that which God promised to Abraham when He said: "In thy seed shall all nations be blessed" - Genesis xxii. 18 - shall be fulfilled which He promised to the same race, when He said by the prophet, "They that are in their sepulchres shall rise again" - Isaiah xxvi 19 - and also "There shall be a new heaven and earth: and the former shall not be mentioned nor come into mind but they shall find joy and rejoicing in it: for I will make Jerusalem a rejoicing and my people a joy. I will rejoice in Jerusalem and joy in my people and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her." - Isaiah 1xv. 17-19 - And by another prophet He uttered the same prediction: "At that time thy people shall be delivered, everyone that shall be found written in the book. And many of them that sleep in the dust" (or as some interpret it, "in the mound") "of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt." - Daniel xii. 1, 2 - And in another place by the same prophet: "The saints of the Most High shall take the kingdom and shall possess the kingdom forever, even for ever and ever." - Daniel vii. 18 - And a little after he says, "His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom." - Daniel vii 27 - Other prophecies referring to the same subject I have advanced in the twentieth book and others still which I have not advanced are found written in the same Sacred Scripture; and these predictions shall be fulfilled, as those also have been which unbelieving men supposed would be frustrate. For it is the same God who promised both and predicted that both would come to pass - the God whom the pagan deities tremble before, as even Porphyry, the noblest of pagan philosophers, testifies.
- Against the wise men of the world, who fancy that the earthly bodies of men cannot be transferred to a heavenly habitation -
But men who use their learning and intellectual ability to resist the force of that great authority which in fulfilment of what was so long before predicted, has converted all races of men to faith and hope in its promises, seem to themselves to argue acutely against the resurrection of the body while they cite what Cicero mentions in the third book De Republica. For when he was asserting the apotheosis of Hercules and Romulus, he says: "Whose bodies were not taken up into heaven; for nature would not permit a body of earth to exist anywhere except upon earth." This, forsooth, is the profound reasoning of the wise men whose thoughts God knows that they are vain. For if we were only souls, that is, spirits without any body and if we dwelt in heaven and had no knowledge of earthly animals and were told that we should be bound to earthly bodies by some wonderful bond of union and should animate them, should we not much more vigorously refuse to believe this and maintain that nature would not permit an incorporeal substance to be held by a corporeal bond? And yet the earth is full of living spirits, to which terrestrial bodies are bound, and with which they are in a wonderful way implicated. If then, the same God who has created such beings wills this also, what is to hinder the earthly body from being raised to a heavenly body, since a spirit which is more excellent than all bodies and consequently than even a heavenly body has been tied to an earthly body? If so small an earthly particle has been able to hold in union with itself something better than a heavenly body, so as to receive sensation and life, will heaven disdain to receive or at least to retain, this sentient and living particle which derives its life and sensation from a substance more excellent than any heavenly body? If this does not happen now, it is because the time is not yet come which has been determined by Him who has already done a much more marvelous thing than that which these men refuse to believe. For why do we not more intensely wonder that incorporeal souls, which are of higher rank than heavenly bodies, are bound to earthly bodies, rather than that bodies, although earthly, are exalted to an abode which though heavenly, is yet corporeal, except because we have been accustomed to see this and indeed are this, while we are not as yet that other marvel, nor have as yet ever seen it? Certainly, if we consult sober reason, the more wonderful of the two divine works is found to be to attach somehow corporeal things to incorporeal and not to connect earthly things with heavenly, which though diverse, are yet both of them corporeal.
- Of the resurrection of the flesh which some refuse to believe, though the world at large believes it -
But granting that this was once incredible, behold now, the world has come to the belief that the earthly body of Christ was received up into heaven. Already both the learned and unlearned have believed in the resurrection of the flesh and its ascension to the heavenly places, while only a very few either of the educated or uneducated are still staggered by it. If this is a credible thing which is believed, then let those who do not believe see how stolid they are; and if it is incredible, then this also is an incredible thing, that what is incredible should have received such credit. Here then we have two incredible - to wit, the resurrection of our body to eternity and that the world should believe so incredible a thing; and both these incredible the same God predicted should come to pass before either had as yet occurred. We see that already one of the two has come to pass, for the world has believed what was incredible; why should we despair that the remaining one shall also come to pass and that this which the world believed, through it was incredible, shall itself occur? For already that which was equally incredible has come to pass, in the world's believing an incredible thing. Both were incredible: the one we see accomplished, the other we believe shall be; for both were predicted in those same Sacred Scriptures by means of which the world believed. And the very manner in which the world's faith was won is found to be even more incredible, if we consider it.
Men uninstructed in any branch of a liberal education without any of the refinement of heathen, unskilled in grammar, not armed with dialectic, not adorned with rhetoric but plain fishermen and very few in number - these were the men whom Christ Jesus sent with the nets of faith to the sea of this world and thus took out of every race so many fishes and even the philosophers themselves, wonderful as they are rare. Let us add, if you please or because you ought to be pleased, this third incredible thing to the two former. And now we have three incredible, all of which have yet come to pass. It is incredible that Jesus Christ should have risen in the flesh and ascended with flesh into heaven; it is incredible that the world should have believed so incredible a thing; it is incredible that very few men of mean birth and the lowest rank and with no education, should have been able to so effectually to persuade the world and even its learned men of so incredible a thing. Of these three incredible, the parties with whom we are debating refuse to believe the first; they cannot refuse to see the second which they are unable to account for if they do not believe the third. It is indubitable that the resurrection of Christ and His ascension into heaven with the flesh in which He rose, is already preached and believed in the whole world.
If it is not credible, how is it that it has already received credence in the whole world? If a number of noble, exalted and learned men had said that they had witnessed it and had been at pains to publish what they had witnessed, it were not wonderful that the world should have believed it, but it were very stubborn to refuse credence; but if, as is true, the world has believed a few obscure, inconsiderable, uneducated persons, who state and write that they witnessed it, is it not unreasonable that a handful of wrong-headed men should oppose themselves to the creed of the whole world and refuse their belief? And if the world has put faith in a small number of men of mean birth and the lowest rank, and no education, it is because the divinity of the thing itself appeared all the more manifestly in such contemptible witnesses. The eloquence, indeed, which lent persuasion to their message, consisted of wonderful works, not words. For they who had not seen Christ Jesus risen in the flesh, nor ascending into heaven with His risen body, believed those who related how they had seen these things and who testified not only with words but wonderful signs. For men whom they knew to be acquainted with only one or at most two languages, they marveled to hear speaking in the tongues of all nations. They saw a man, lame from his mother's womb, after forty years stand up sound at their word in the name of Christ; that handkerchiefs taken from their bodies had virtue to heal the sick; that countless persons, sick of various diseases, were laid in a row in the road where they were pass, that their shadow might fall on them as they walked and that they forthwith received health; that many other stupendous miracles were wrought by them in the name of Jesus Christ; and finally, that they even raised the dead. If it be admitted that these things occurred as they are related, then we have a multitude of incredible things to add to those three incredible. That the one incredibility of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ may be believed, we accumulate the testimonies of countless incredible miracles, but even so we do not bend the frightful obstinacy of these sceptics. But if they do not believe that these miracles were wrought by Christ's apostles to gain credence to their preaching of His resurrection and ascension, this one guard miracle suffices for us, that the whole world has believed without any miracles.
- That Rome made its founder Romulus a god because it loved him; but the Church loved Christ because it believed Him to be God -
Let us here recite the passage in which Tully expresses his astonishment that the apotheosis of Romulus should have been credited. I shall insert his words as they stand: "it is most worthy of remark in Romulus that other men who are said to have become gods lived in educated ages, when there was a greater propensity to the fabulous and when the uninstructed were easily persuaded to believe anything. But the age of Romulus was barely six hundred years old and already literature and science had dispelled the errors that attach to an uncultured age." And a little after.......
- WELCOME TO SACRED SCRIPTURE / WORD OF GOD / HOLY BIBLE READER'S COMMUNITY -
Wishing you, 'Happy Reading', and may God, the Father, the Son of the living God, Jesus Christ, fills your heart, mind, thoughts, and grants you: The Holy Spirit, that is, Wisdom, Knowledge, Understanding, Counsel, Piety, Fortitude, Fear of the Lord, and also His fruits of the Holy Spirit, that is, Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Trustfulness, Gentleness and Self-Control. Amen! God blessing be upon you!
If we live by the truth and in love, we shall grow in all ways into Christ Jesus, who is the head by whom the whole body is fitted and joined together, every joint adding its own strength, for each separate part to work according to it function, so the body grows until it has built itself up, in love. - Ephesians 4:15-16 -
