Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
We already discussed providence at sufficient length in book one; and given that its reality is obvious from how marvelous its works are, the same providence must also have brought man and the rest of living creatures into being. Our next task, then, is to work out why the human race was shaped at all, since everyone agrees with the Stoic claim that the cosmos was built for humanity's benefit—though on one point they go badly astray, holding that it was made not for man but for men, when in fact the singular name “man” already takes in the whole of humankind. They fall into this because they do not realize that a single human being was formed by God; instead they imagine people sprouting up like mushrooms across every land and field. Hermes, by contrast, knew perfectly well that man had been shaped by God and after God's own image. But let me get back to the point. Nothing, in my view, comes into being purely for its own sake—whatever is made at all is necessarily made toward some use. Who, after all, is foolish or idle enough to set about producing something worthless, expecting neither profit nor benefit from it? A person constructing a house does not build it just so a house will exist, but so it can be lived in; a shipbuilder does not labor merely so a ship will appear, but so it can be put to sea; and whoever fashions any vessel does not do it merely to be seen as having made something, but so that the finished item can serve some genuine need. In the very same way, everything else that comes into being is not toiled over pointlessly but for some practical purpose. The cosmos, then, was made by God—and certainly not for the cosmos's own sake, since it has no feeling and needs nothing from the sun's heat, the moon's glow, the stirring of winds, rain's moisture, or the produce of crops. Nor, again, can it be argued that the cosmos exists to serve God himself, since he could get along perfectly well without it, as he did before it came to be, and he himself makes no use of anything contained in it or produced within it. It follows, then, that the cosmos was built for the sake of living creatures, because they are the ones who enjoy what it consists of; everything they need to survive and endure is supplied to them at the proper seasons. Likewise it is evident that the rest of the animals were shaped for man's benefit, since they serve him and were provided for his protection and use—for whether they live on land or in the water, none of them grasps the world's order the way man does. Here we must answer the philosophers, Cicero above all, who asks: “If God made everything for our sake, why did he produce so vast a supply of water-snakes and vipers? Why scatter so many deadly creatures across land and sea?” That is a huge topic for debate, but it deserves at least a brief mention in passing. Because man is put together out of things that differ from and oppose one another—soul and body, that is sky and earth, the fine and the tangible, the eternal and the temporary, the sentient and the brutish, one part lit and one part shadowed—reason and necessity alike demanded that both good and bad things be laid before man: goods to be enjoyed, evils to be avoided and guarded against. For this very reason wisdom was granted him, so that once he understood the nature of good and evil, he could put his reasoning power to work both pursuing the goods and steering clear of the evils. The other animals, lacking wisdom, were instead equipped and armored with natural coverings; man, in place of all such things, received the one thing that counted most: reason alone. So God shaped him bare and unarmed, so that wisdom itself would serve as his shield and covering—placing man's true defense and adornment not outside but within, not in the flesh but in the heart. Had there been no dangers for man to guard against and distinguish from what is good and useful, wisdom would have served no purpose. So let Cicero take note: reason was given to man either so he could catch fish for his own benefit while steering clear of water-snakes and vipers to protect himself, or because good and bad things were set before him precisely on account of the wisdom he had received, whose entire function lies in telling goods apart from evils. Great, then, right, and admirable is the strength, reasoning power, and authority granted to man—the very being for whose sake God made the cosmos itself along with everything that exists, and whom he honored so highly as to place him in charge of it all, since man alone was capable of marveling at God's handiwork. Our own Asclepiades makes this point beautifully in the book on the highest God's providence that he wrote and sent me: one might rightly conclude that divine providence assigned the position nearest to itself to the creature able to comprehend its own arrangement. Consider the sun: who looks at it and truly grasps that it is the sun and how much good it does the rest of creation? Here is the sky—who looks up and takes it in? Here is the earth—who cultivates it? Here is the sea—who sails across it? Here is fire—who makes use of it? So the highest God set all this in order not for his own sake, since he lacks nothing, but for man's sake, so that man might make fitting use of it.
Let us now explain why God made man himself: had the philosophers grasped this, they would have gone on to defend the truths they had already found, or else never plunged into their worst mistakes. This is the crux, the hinge on which everything turns; miss it, and the whole truth slips through your fingers -- it is exactly what leaves their arguments unable to hold together. Had this point dawned on them, had they understood man's whole mystery, the Academy could never have sliced through their debates and cut down all their philosophy from the flank, so to speak, without a fight. Just as God did not make the cosmos for its own benefit -- having no need of what it offers -- but for man, who makes use of it, so too man himself was made for God's own sake. “What good,” asks Epicurus, “did God get out of man, prompting him to fashion a being purely for his own benefit?” The point was that there should exist someone able to grasp his works, to perceive with the senses and proclaim aloud God's providence in arranging things, his wisdom in making them, his power in bringing them to completion -- and the upshot of all this is that man should worship God. For the one who understands these things is the one who truly worships; he renders fitting homage to the maker of everything, to his own true Father, gauging the greatness of God's majesty by the invention, the undertaking, and the completion of his works. What clearer evidence could be offered that God made the cosmos for man and man for himself than this: of every living creature, man alone is shaped so that his eyes face heaven, his features look toward God, his expression bears a family likeness to his maker, and it seems as though God lifted man from the dust, as if by an extended hand, toward the contemplation of himself? “But what,” Epicurus continues, “does man's worship add to a God already blessed and lacking nothing?” Or, if God valued man enough to build the world on his account, furnish him with wisdom, make him ruler over living things, and love him like a son, why fashion him mortal and fragile? Why expose the one he loved to every kind of harm, when it would have suited better for man to be blessed -- joined and close to God -- and everlasting like God himself, since he was shaped to worship and contemplate him? We have already touched on these matters here and there in earlier books, but because this exact topic is now what our subject demands -- our aim here being to discuss the blessed life -- these things need spelling out more carefully and fully, so that God's design, his labor, and his intent can be understood. Though he could always father countless immortal souls through his own undying spirits, as he did in begetting the angels, whose immortality stands secure without any risk or fear of harm, he chose instead an indescribable undertaking: a method for creating an endless multitude of souls, souls he would first tie to weak, breakable bodies and situate midway between good and evil, since their nature was compounded from both, he placed virtue in their path precisely so that ease and comfort would never hand them immortality; instead, only the hardest struggle and the heaviest toil would carry them through to that ineffable prize -- life everlasting. So, in order to clothe them in limbs both heavy and burdensome -- since they could not float suspended in empty space, the body's weight and heaviness dragging them down -- he decided a home and dwelling had to be constructed for them first. And thus, by indescribable power and glorious might, he built up the works of the cosmos: lifting the light elements aloft and pressing the heavy ones downward, he fixed the heavens in place and established the earth. There is no need to go through this point by point again, since we covered all of it in book two. He set lights in the sky, then, whose regularity, brightness, and movement are calibrated exactly to what living things need; and to the earth, which he intended as their home, he gave a rich capacity for producing and bringing forth things, so that through the abundance of grain, herbs, and greenery it could provide each kind with nourishment suited to its nature and needs. Then, once everything belonging to the cosmos's design was complete, he shaped man out of the very earth he had prepared beforehand as man's dwelling -- that is, he wrapped and clothed his own breath in a body of earth, so that, being composed of opposing elements, man might share in both good and evil. And just as the earth itself bears fruit abundantly, so the human body, drawn from the earth, gained the capacity to reproduce and bring forth young, so that -- being shaped from perishable material and unable to last forever -- once its allotted span of temporal life was spent, it would give way and, through unending succession, renew that frail and feeble thing it carried. Why, then, did he fashion man mortal and frail, after building the world for man's sake? First, so that an endless supply of souls could be generated and fill the whole earth with their numbers; second, so that he could put virtue before man -- that is, the endurance of hardship and toil -- through which he might win the prize of immortality. Man consists of two things -- body and soul, the one earthbound, the other belonging to heaven -- and from this duality come two lives assigned to him: a temporal life tied to the body, and an eternal life resting with the soul. We obtain the first simply by being born; we gain the second only by striving, so that immortality would not come to man, as noted earlier, free of any difficulty. The first life is earthly like the body and therefore ends; the second is heavenly like the soul and therefore has no boundary. We receive the first without knowing it and the second knowingly, because it is granted to virtue rather than to nature -- God wanted us to build up a life for ourselves within this present life. That is why he gave us this present existence: so that we might either lose that true, eternal life through our vices or earn it through virtue. The highest good is not found in this bodily existence, since just as divine necessity granted it to us, divine necessity will likewise dissolve it -- and whatever has an end cannot hold the highest good. But in that spiritual existence, which we secure through our own effort, the highest good does reside, because it admits neither evil nor end. The nature and structure of the body itself bear this out. Other animals bend down toward the ground, since they are earthly and cannot receive immortality, which comes from heaven; man, however, stands erect and gazes toward the sky, because immortality has been held out before him -- though it comes to him only if God grants it, for if every person born automatically became immortal, there would be no distinction left between the just and the unjust. Immortality, then, is not something nature simply produces, but the wage and reward earned by virtue. Indeed, a man does not walk upright the moment he is born but crawls on all fours at first, because at this stage the body's condition and this present life are shared in common with the dumb animals; only later, once his strength has grown firm, does he stand upright, his tongue loosens into speech, and he stops being a mute creature. This teaches us that man is born mortal but later becomes immortal, once he begins to live from God -- that is, to pursue righteousness, which consists in worshipping God -- once God has stirred man to look upon heaven and upon himself. That happens when a man, cleansed by the heavenly washing, sets aside his old infancy along with every stain of his former life and, having received the growth that comes from divine strength, becomes a whole and complete human being. Since God has set virtue before man in this way, even though soul and body are joined together, they remain opposed and wage war on each other. What benefits the soul harms the body -- that is, fleeing wealth, forbidding pleasures, disdaining pain and death. Likewise what benefits the body harms the soul -- namely greed and lust, through which riches are chased and the sweetness of assorted pleasures pursued, by which the weakened soul is destroyed. It is therefore inevitable that the just and wise be surrounded by every hardship, since courage is what conquers hardship; the unjust, by contrast, are surrounded by wealth, status, and power, since these are bodily, earthly goods -- but such people live an earthly life and cannot reach immortality, having handed themselves over to pleasures, virtue's enemies. This temporal life, then, must answer to that eternal one, just as the body answers to the soul. Whoever, then, chooses the life of the soul must necessarily hold the life of the body in contempt, and cannot climb toward the heights without looking down on what lies at the bottom. But whoever embraces the life of the body and flings his desires down to earth cannot ever reach that higher existence. The one who would rather live well forever will live poorly for a time and be burdened with every trouble and labor as long as he remains on earth, so as to secure divine and heavenly comfort in the end. And whoever would rather live well only for a time will live badly forever, since God's sentence will condemn him to eternal punishment for having placed earthly things above heavenly goods. This, then, is why God desires to be worshipped and honored by man as by a son honoring a father -- so that man may hold fast to virtue and wisdom, which alone gives rise to immortality. Since no one but God can grant it -- he alone possesses it -- he rewards man's devotion, by which man has honored him, with this very prize: that man may be forever blessed, dwelling with God and always in his presence.
Let us now sketch the whole argument in brief compass. The world came to be so that we could be born; we are born so that, in time, we might recognize God, who fashioned both the cosmos and us; we come to recognize him so that we might worship him; we worship him so that we might gain immortality as wages for our labor, since worshipping God demands the greatest of labors; the prize we are given for that labor is immortality itself, and its purpose is this: transformed into the likeness of angels, we owe unending service to the Lord who is also the supreme Father, and we ourselves become an everlasting kingdom belonging to God. This is the sum of the matter, God's hidden secret, the world's mystery -- and strangers to it are those who, chasing present pleasure, have surrendered themselves to earthly, perishable goods and have drowned souls born for heavenly things in deadly sweetness as though in mud or filth. Let us now ask, in turn, whether any logic at all can be found in the worship of the gods. Suppose they are many; suppose people worship them only so the gods will grant wealth, victory, honor, and other things good only for the here and now; suppose we are born for no reason; suppose no providence operates in human procreation; suppose we come into being by pure chance, purely for our own pleasure; suppose we are nothing after death -- what could be as pointless, as empty, as futile as the human condition, and as the world itself, which, despite being built on an unbelievable scale and with astonishing design, would then be devoted to utterly useless ends? Why, after all, do the winds' currents drive the clouds along? Why do lightning bolts flash, thunder roar, rain fall? Why does the earth yield crops and nourish all its various offspring? Why, in short, does the whole of nature labor so that nothing be lacking of what sustains human life -- if that life is empty, if we perish into nothingness, if there is nothing about us worth more to God? But if it is blasphemous to say so, and unthinkable that what you see built with the greatest design was not established for some equally great purpose, then what logic can possibly lie in these mistaken, corrupt religions, or in the philosophers' notion that souls simply perish? None whatsoever. What reason can they give for why the gods are so scrupulously supplied by men with offerings at their appointed times? Is it so we can hand over grain-meal, wine, the smell of incense, and the blood of cattle? None of this could please immortal beings, since these things decay, nor could it serve beings without bodies, since it is meant for bodily use -- and besides, if the gods wanted such things, they could supply them for themselves whenever they liked. Whether souls die out or last without end, then, two questions remain unanswered either way: is there any sense at all in paying cult to the gods, and who is actually responsible for having built the world? Why, when, for how long, to what degree, or for what purpose were men brought into existence? Why are they born, why do they perish, replace one another, and get renewed? What do the gods gain from being worshipped by people who will be nothing after death? What do they give, promise, or threaten that is worthy of either gods or men? Or, if souls do endure after death, what becomes of them, or what will become of them? What use would the gods have for a storehouse of souls? Where do the gods themselves come from in the first place? How, why, or from where did so many of them arise? So it turns out that if you wander from that overarching scheme we outlined above, every argument collapses and everything dissolves into nothing.