Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
I will now lay out a reasoned account of all this, so that these difficult and obscure matters can be grasped more readily, and I will strip away every trick of the counterfeit divinity that has led men to stray far off the road of truth. But my starting point will lie much further back, so that a reader who comes to this without any prior grounding in the truth can be taught, and can finally understand what stands as the root and cause of these evils—and once the light has reached him, can see plainly both his own failings and those of humankind as a whole. God, supreme in devising and supreme in executing, was on the point of undertaking this work of the world; and because the wellspring of complete and perfect goodness resided in him, as it always does, so that goodness might rise from him like a river and pour out far and wide, he generated a spirit resembling himself, one furnished with the powers belonging to God the Father. In what manner he willed this to happen, we shall attempt to set out in the fourth book. After that he made a second being, and in this one the mark of divine descent did not hold firm. Poisoned, so to speak, by envy welling up from within, this being slid from good toward evil, and of his own free choice—a choice God himself had granted him without constraint—he assumed a name that stood opposed to what he had been. From this episode it becomes plain that envy is the wellspring from which every evil flows. He envied the one who had gone before him, a being who through steadfastness both earns approval and is cherished by God the Father. This former-good-now-evil being the Greeks name diabolos, and among us he is called the accuser, since he lays before God the very offenses into which he himself lures mankind. So then, once he had taken up the construction of the world, God placed this first and greatest Son in charge over the entire undertaking, employing him at once as adviser and as craftsman for devising, arranging, and bringing every part to completion, since this Son is complete in foresight, in reasoning power, and in strength. I speak of him now only briefly, because his power, his title, and his nature call for fuller treatment elsewhere. Let nobody ask out of what raw materials God fashioned works of such magnitude and wonder, since he made all of it from nothing at all. Nor should anyone give ear to the poets who claim that chaos existed at the outset—that is, a jumble of things and elements all mixed together—and that God only later split apart that whole heap, sorting each piece out of the tangled mass, ranging them into order, and so both equipped and beautified the world. Such people fail to grasp God's power, imagining that he could accomplish nothing except by working from material already lying ready at hand; and this response is an easy one to give them. Even philosophers stumbled into the same mistake. Cicero, for instance, when treating the nature of the gods, writes this: "In the first place, then, it is not likely that the matter out of which everything sprang was itself produced by divine foresight; rather, it possesses, and has always possessed, force and character of its own. Just as a builder, when he means to construct something, does not manufacture the material himself but makes use of what lies ready, and just as a modeler works the same way with clay, so too divine providence needed matter on hand—not matter it created, but matter it simply found available. But if matter was not fashioned by God, then neither were earth, water, air, and fire made by him." How many flaws crowd into these ten lines! First, this is the very man who elsewhere, across almost every one of his disputations and books, championed providence and attacked with his sharpest arguments those who denied it existed—yet here he attempts, like some turncoat or deserter, to do away with providence altogether. Should one wish to argue against him on this point, no thought or labor is even required; his own words can simply be read back to him, for no one could refute Cicero more forcefully than Cicero refutes himself. Yet let us concede this much to the Academics and their habitual method, that people of thoroughly independent mind be allowed to say and think whatever they please—let us instead weigh the claims themselves. He says it is not probable that matter was made by God. What proof do you offer for that? You have said nothing to establish why it should be improbable. To me, on the contrary, it seems entirely probable—and not on a whim, either, once I consider that something greater must reside in God than the powerless figure you reduce him to, granting him nothing beyond mere craftsmanship. In what, then, would that divine force differ from a human being, if, like a man, God too stood in need of borrowed help? And he would indeed need such help if he could accomplish nothing unless matter were handed to him by another. If that were so, his power would plainly be incomplete, and the one who supplied the matter would have to be judged more powerful still. By what name, then, would we call the being who surpasses God in power? For it counts as greater to produce one's own materials than merely to arrange what belongs to someone else. But if nothing can possibly be more powerful than God—and God must necessarily be complete in power, in reason, and in capability—then the very one who fashions matter must also be the one who fashions everything composed from that matter. Nothing could or should exist without God either making it or consenting to it. But, he says, it is probable that matter both has and has always had its own force and character. What force could it possess with no one to give it, what character with nothing to generate it? If it possessed force, it took that force from something else—and from whom could it take it, if not from God? If it possessed character, which by definition comes from being born, then it was born—and by whom, if not by God, could it have been brought forth? For nature, from which you claim everything arose, produces nothing at all if it lacks intelligence; yet if it has the capacity to generate and to make, then it necessarily possesses intelligence, and for that very reason must be God, since no other name can be given to a force that combines foresight in devising with the skill and capability to make. On this point Seneca, sharpest of all the Stoics, saw better, recognizing that nature is nothing other than God himself. "Shall we then," he asks, "withhold praise from God because his virtue is inborn rather than learned from anyone else? No—we shall praise him all the more, for though that virtue is inborn, he is the one who gave it to himself, since God himself simply is nature." So then, when you credit nature with the origin of things while stripping that credit from God, you are floundering in the same mire, Geta, twisting back to confess under a different name the very thing you denied under the first: whatever you say cannot come from him, you plainly admit does come from him once you rename it. There follows a wretchedly weak comparison. As a builder, Cicero says, does not himself manufacture his materials when constructing something, but uses what is ready to hand—and a modeler works the same way with clay—so too divine providence needed matter close at hand, not matter of its own making but matter already prepared. No, quite the opposite is true: God would then be of lesser power if he worked from something already supplied, which is exactly the human condition. A builder without timber builds nothing, because he cannot produce the timber itself; and that incapacity belongs to human weakness. God, however, makes his own material precisely because he is able to—capability is what defines deity, for a being unable to do this would not be God at all. A human being works from what already exists because mortality renders him weak, and that weakness confines him to a fixed and modest degree of power; God, by contrast, works from what does not yet exist because eternity renders him strong, and that strength grants him boundless capability, limitless as his own life, with neither bound nor measure. Why, then, is it any wonder that God, intending to build the world, first prepared the very matter from which he would build it, and prepared it out of nothing? For it would be an outrage for God to borrow anything from outside himself, given that everything exists from him or within him. Were something to exist prior to him, were anything at all to be made by a hand other than his own, he would immediately forfeit the very power and title of deity. For if matter was never made — just as God, who formed this world out of matter, was not — then two eternal and mutually opposed principles stand established. And that arrangement cannot hold without conflict and ruin, since two forces of differing character and force must inevitably collide. Both, then, cannot remain eternal if they stand against each other, for one must necessarily overcome the other. It follows that whatever is eternal must be single in nature, so that everything else might descend from it as from a single source. Either, then, God arose out of matter, or matter arose out of God—and which of these is closer to the truth is not hard to see. Of these two, one can perceive and sense, the other cannot. The power to bring something into being belongs only to what senses, what understands, what thinks, what moves. Nothing can be begun, made, or brought to completion unless reason has foreseen both the manner of its making before it exists and the manner of its persisting once it has been made. In short, the one who makes something is the one who has both the will to make it and the hands to carry that will through. But whatever lacks sensation lies inert and lifeless forever; nothing can spring from a thing where no voluntary motion exists. Since every living creature depends on reason, it plainly cannot be born from something devoid of reason, nor can something be drawn from a source where that thing is simply absent. Nor should anyone raise the objection that certain creatures seem to spring out of the soil — for it is not the earth by itself that produces them, but the spirit of God, apart from which nothing at all is generated. God, therefore, cannot have arisen from matter, since a sensing being cannot possibly spring from an insensible one, a rational being from a brute one, an impassible being from a passible one, a bodiless being from a bodily one; matter, rather, must derive from God. Whatever exists as solid, tangible body receives its force from outside itself; whatever receives force in this way is subject to dissolution; whatever can dissolve will eventually perish; whatever perishes must necessarily have had a beginning; and whatever had a beginning had some source from which it arose—that is, some maker endowed with sense, foresight, and the skill to make. That maker can be none other than God. Since he possesses sense, reason, foresight, capability, and power, he is able both to create living beings and to fashion lifeless ones, because he understands the proper method for making each. Matter, on the other hand, cannot have existed forever, since if it had, it could undergo no change at all—for what has always existed never ceases to exist, and where a beginning has never been present, an end cannot be present either. Indeed it is more plausible that something with a beginning should lack an end than that something lacking a beginning should possess one. If, then, matter was never made, nothing at all can be made out of it; and if nothing can be made from it, it does not even qualify as matter, since matter by definition is that from which something is made. Whatever a thing is made from is destroyed and becomes something else the moment it undergoes the maker's shaping hand. Since matter reached its end at the very point the world was fashioned from it, matter must also have had a beginning. For whatever is destroyed had first been constructed; whatever is dissolved had first been bound together; whatever is brought to an end had first been begun. If, then, we can infer from matter's transformation and termination that it once had a starting point, by whose hand could it have been brought about except God's? God alone, therefore, is the one who was never made, and for that reason he alone can destroy other things while himself remaining beyond destruction. He will endure forever exactly as he is, because he was generated from nothing outside himself, and his origin and birth depend on no other thing capable of changing and dissolving him. He exists entirely from himself, as we stated in the first book, and is therefore exactly what he willed himself to be: incapable of suffering, unchangeable, incorruptible, blessed, eternal. Now consider the conclusion with which Cicero closes his argument—far more absurd still. As he puts it: deny that God shaped matter, and you must likewise deny that earth, water, air, and fire were his handiwork. How cleverly he slid past the real danger! He had earlier taken up that premise as though it needed no proof, even though it stood far less certain than the very point he used it to establish. Deny that God fashioned matter, he claims, and you must equally deny that God fashioned the cosmos. He preferred to draw a false conclusion from a false premise rather than a true one from a true premise, and though uncertain claims ought to be proven from certain ones, here he drew his proof from an uncertain claim in order to overturn something that was in fact certain. That the world is the product of divine foresight—leaving aside Trismegistus, who proclaims exactly this, leaving aside the Sibylline verses, which announce the same thing, leaving aside the prophets, who with one breath and one voice bear witness to the world's workmanship and craftsmanship by God—is agreed upon by nearly every school of philosophers as well: the Pythagoreans, the Stoics, the Peripatetics, which together make up the chief disciplines of thought. Indeed, from those original seven sages down to Socrates and to Plato, it was taken as settled and beyond doubt, until, many generations later, a single deranged figure emerged—Epicurus—bold enough to deny what stood most evident, purely out of a hunger for novelty, so that a school might carry his name. Finding nothing genuinely new to offer, yet still wished to appear to differ from everyone else, he chose instead to demolish the old—an effort in which every philosopher who barked back at him from every side exposed his error. It is therefore more certain that the world was fitted together by providence than that matter was compacted together by providence. One should not, then, deny the cosmos its divine origin simply because its underlying matter lacks a proven divine origin; rather, the world's plain dependence on providence should lead us to conclude that its matter, too, owes its existence to that same divine hand. Reason favors crediting God with matter's origin—since nothing lies beyond his capability—far more than it favors stripping God of credit for the cosmos, given that nothing whatsoever can arise apart from mind, reasoning, and deliberate design. Yet the fault here lies not with Cicero but with his school. Having taken up an argument meant to dismantle the nature of the gods—a subject on which the philosophers endlessly chattered—he judged, out of ignorance of the truth, that all divinity ought to be swept away together. He could indeed sweep away "the gods," since they never existed in the first place; but when he tried to overturn the divine providence residing in the one true God, because he had set himself against truth itself, his arguments gave out and he necessarily tumbled into this pit, with no way to climb back out. Here, then, I hold him fast, pinned and unable to move, since Lucilius, who argued the opposing side, fell utterly silent. This is the hinge on which the whole matter turns; everything revolves around this single point. Let Cotta free himself from this whirlpool if he can—let him produce arguments to show that matter existed always, shaped by no providence at all, and let him demonstrate how anything heavy and solid could either exist without a maker or undergo change, ceasing to be what it had always been so as to become what it had never been. Should he manage to prove that, I will then, and only then, concede that the world too was not established by divine providence—and even then I would grant it only while holding him fast in other snares. For he will be forced back, against his own will, into claiming that both matter, from which the world derives, and the world, which derives from matter, sprang up by nature—while I will maintain that this very nature simply is God. Nothing capable of marvels—that is, nothing governed by the highest reason—can act without possessing mind, foresight, and power. And so it follows that God made everything, and nothing whatsoever can exist that did not trace its origin back to God. Yet this same man, whenever he plays the Epicurean and refuses to grant that the world was made by God, likes to demand what hands, what machines, what levers, what workforce could ever have raised so vast a construction. Perhaps you would have seen for yourself, had you been able to exist at the moment it was made. But so that man could not witness God's handiwork directly, God chose not to introduce him into this world until every part of it stood complete. In truth he could not have been introduced any earlier at all: how could he have survived while the sky was still being built overhead and the earth still being laid down below, while moist elements, perhaps, were still congealing under extreme cold or hardening and solidifying under fiery heat? Or how could he have lived before the sun was even set in place, before crops or animals yet existed? It was therefore necessary that man be formed last, only once the finishing touch had already been applied to the world and to everything else within it. And indeed the sacred scriptures teach precisely this: man came last among God's works, ushered into a dwelling already raised and fully furnished for him—since everything else existed for his sake. Even the poets admit as much. Ovid, once the world stood complete and every living creature had been shaped, adds this: "A creature more sacred than these, and capable of a loftier mind, was still lacking—one fit to hold dominion over the rest—and so man came to be." It must be reckoned wrong, then, to pry into matters God intended to keep hidden. Cicero's own inquiry, however, sprang not from any eagerness to learn but from a wish to refute, since he was confident nobody could answer it—as though the impossibility of describing exactly how these things were made should be taken as proof that they were not divinely made at all. Suppose you had grown up inside a house built and decorated with great skill, yet had never once witnessed any construction: would you conclude that the house had not been built by human hands, simply because you had no idea how it had been built? Surely you would put to that house the very question you now put to the world: what hands, what tools could ever have achieved work on such a scale—especially if you were looking at massive stones, immense blocks, towering columns, the entire structure raised up sublime and lofty. Would this not seem to you to exceed the bounds of ordinary human strength, precisely because you would have no idea that it had been achieved not so much through brute force as through reason and skilled craft? And if a human being—in whom nothing is perfect—can nonetheless accomplish through reason far more than his limited strength alone would allow, why should it strike you as unbelievable that the world is said to have been made by God, in whom, precisely because he is perfect, neither his wisdom knows any limit nor his strength any measure? We see his works plainly with our eyes, yet by what means he produced them is beyond even the reach of the mind to grasp, because—as Hermes puts it—the mortal cannot draw near the immortal, the temporal cannot draw near the eternal, the corruptible cannot draw near the incorrupt, meaning it cannot come close enough for understanding to follow. And so a creature still bound to earth cannot take in a clear view of heavenly matters, because it remains hemmed in, as though under guard, by its own body, and is thereby kept from perceiving all things with a sense set free and unbound. Let it be understood, then, how foolish it is to go searching after things that cannot be put into words—for that is nothing less than overstepping the limits of one's own condition, failing to grasp how far it is permitted for a human being to advance. Indeed, when God opened truth to mankind, he chose that we should know only what mattered for a person to know in pursuit of life; whatever pertained instead to idle and unlawful curiosity he kept silent about, so that it might remain hidden. Why, then, do you go searching for things you cannot know—and would gain no greater happiness from knowing even if you could? Wisdom reaches its completion in a human being once that person recognizes both that God is one and that everything in existence was made by him.