Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Here perhaps someone will ask where sins came from to reach man, or what depravity twisted the rule of the divine institution toward worse things, so that although man was begotten for righteousness, he nevertheless produces unjust works. I have already explained above that God set forth good and evil together, and that he loves the good, while he hates the evil that fights against the good, but that he permitted evil for a reason: so the good might shine out more brightly, given that, as my earlier teaching has shown, neither one holds together apart from the other. Indeed, the world itself is compounded of two conflicting elements bound together, the fiery and the moist, and light could not have come to be unless darkness had also existed, since there can be no above without a below, no rising without a setting, no hot without cold, no soft without hard. So too we ourselves are put together out of two equally opposed things, soul and body, of which the one is assigned to heaven, because it is subtle and untouchable, and the other to earth, because it can be grasped; the one is solid and everlasting, the other fragile and mortal. To the one, then, clings the good — light, life, righteousness; to the other cling darkness, death, and injustice. From this arose in men the corruption of their own nature, so that it became necessary to establish a law by which vices could be forbidden and the duties of virtue commanded. Since, then, there are good and bad things among human affairs, whose explanation I have set out, it is necessary that God be moved in both directions — toward favor, when he sees just things done, and toward anger, when he perceives unjust ones. But Epicurus meets us here with this objection: 'Granted that God feels joy that produces favor and hatred that produces anger, he must equally possess fear, desire, and craving, along with the remaining affections proper to human frailty.' It is not necessary that whoever grows angry must also fear, or that whoever rejoices must grieve; indeed the wrathful are generally less fearful, and those cheerful by nature grieve less. But why speak of the human affections, to which our frailty gives way? Let us consider the divine necessity — I do not wish to say 'nature,' since God is never believed to have been born. The affection of fear has its material basis in man, but not in God. Man fears because he is subject to many mischances and dangers, lest some greater force arise that might beat, plunder, tear, afflict, or destroy him; God, by contrast, is someone that poverty, harm, suffering, and death never touch, so fear is simply impossible for him, since nothing exists capable of doing him violence. Likewise the reason and cause of desire is plain in man: because he was made fragile and mortal, it was necessary to establish a second, distinct sex, through whose mingling children could come into being, keeping the race going on without end. God, however, has no room for this kind of craving, since weakness and death are both alien to his nature; he has no female counterpart whose embrace could bring him delight, nor does one destined to exist forever have any need of an heir. The same may be said of envy and greed, which fall upon man for definite and evident reasons, but upon God in no way at all. But favor and anger and pity do have a basis in God, and that supreme and singular power rightly employs them for the preservation of things.
Someone will ask what this basis is. First, men afflicted by misfortunes commonly take refuge in God, seeking to appease him and beseeching him, believing that he can drive off wrongs from them. God, then, has cause for pity — he is not so harsh and contemptuous of men as to deny help to those who struggle. Likewise, very many are persuaded that righteousness pleases God, and, because he is lord and father of all, they revere him; with constant prayers and frequent vows they offer him gifts and sacrifices, extol his name with praises, and strive to win his favor by just and good deeds. There is, then, reason why God both can and ought to show favor. For if nothing is so fitting to God as beneficence, and nothing so foreign to him as ingratitude, it is necessary that he grant something in return for the services of the best and most holy livers, lest he incur the fault of ingratitude, which is blameworthy even in a man. On the other hand, there are others, criminal and wicked, who defile everything with their lusts, harass with murders, defraud, plunder, perjure themselves, spare neither kin nor parents, and disregard the laws and even God himself. God, then, has in these a basis for anger. For it is not right that, seeing such things done, he should remain unmoved and fail to rise up in vengeance against the wicked and to destroy the pestilent and harmful, so as to provide for all the good — so much so that even in anger itself there is a kind of favor at work. Empty, then, are found the arguments both of those who, unwilling that God be angry, yet wish him to show favor — since not even this can happen without anger — and of those who think there is no movement of mind in God at all. And because certain affections never touch God at all — things like craving, fright, greed, sorrow, and envy — some have claimed that he is entirely devoid of feeling. He is indeed free of these, because they are affections of vice; but those that belong to virtue — namely, anger against the wicked, love for the good, pity for the afflicted — since they are worthy of divine power, he possesses in their own proper, just, and true form. Unless he truly had these, human life would be thrown into confusion, and the state of things would come to such disorder that, with laws despised and overcome, sheer boldness alone would reign, so that in the end no one could be safe except one who prevailed by force — thus the whole earth would be laid waste as by a common brigandage. As it is, however, since the wicked hope for punishment and the good for favor and the afflicted for help, virtues have their place and crimes are rarer. Yet it is often the case that criminals fare better while good people suffer more, with the unjust tormenting the righteous and paying no penalty for it. We shall consider afterward why these things happen; for now let us explain the matter of anger — whether there is any in God, or whether he cares for nothing at all and is not moved by the impious things that are done.
'God,' says Epicurus, 'cares for nothing.' He has, then, no power — for whoever has power must necessarily exercise care; or if he has it and does not use it, what cause of neglect could be so great that not only our race, but the world itself, should be worthless to him? 'For that reason,' he says, 'he is incorruptible and blessed, because he is always at rest.' To whom, then, has the administration of such great affairs fallen, if these things we see governed by supreme reason are neglected by God? Besides, how could something living and sentient possibly stay at rest? Rest, after all, belongs to nothing but sleep or death. Yet sleep itself brings no genuine stillness, for while our bodies lie quiet in slumber, our minds keep churning without pause; it fashions for itself images to behold, so as to exercise its own natural motion through the variety of visions, and distracts itself with falsehoods while the limbs are refreshed and gain vigor from the rest. Everlasting rest, then, belongs to death alone. But if death does not touch God, then God is never at rest. And what can God's action be but the administration of the world? But if he takes care of the world, then God takes care of the life of men, and observes the acts of each, and desires them to be wise and good. Here, then, are God's will and his divine law together; anyone who observes and follows them wins God's affection. It is necessary, then, that God be moved to anger against whoever has either violated or scorned this eternal and divine law. 'If God harms anyone,' he says, 'then he is no longer good.' It is quite a serious mistake to brand judgment — human or divine alike — with labels of cruelty and spite, as though anyone who punishes wrongdoers deserves to be called harmful himself. If that were true, our laws would be harmful too, since they impose penalties on offenders, and our judges harmful as well, for sentencing convicted criminals to death. But since a law counts as just when it gives the guilty their due, and a judge earns the name honest and good by punishing wrongdoing — because punishing the wicked protects the safety of the good — God likewise does the good no harm when he stands against the wicked. Rather, he is harmful who either harms the innocent or spares the guilty so as to harm more people. I should like to ask those who make God immovable: if someone had property, a household, a family, and his slaves, scorning the master's patience, seized all his goods, themselves enjoyed his possessions, and were honored by his household, while the master himself was despised by all, mocked, and abandoned — could such a man be called wise, who does not avenge the insults and allows those over whom he has power to enjoy his own goods? What patience could be found so great in anyone — if indeed it should be called patience and not a kind of senseless stupor? But it is easy to bear mere contempt. What if the things Cicero speaks of should happen? For I ask: if some head of a household, with his children killed by a slave, his wife murdered, his house burned, did not exact the harshest punishment on the slave, would he seem clement and merciful, or inhuman and utterly cruel? But if to forgive crimes of this sort is a mark of cruelty rather than mercy, then it is not a virtue in God to remain unmoved at things done unjustly. For the world functions like God's household, and human beings like the servants within it; if his name is held in mockery by them, what patience is it, and how great, that he yields his own honors, sees wrong and unjust things done, and is not indignant? This is proper and natural to one to whom sins are displeasing. To be angry, then, is a matter of reason: for by it offenses are removed and license is restrained, which is certainly done justly and wisely. The Stoics, however, failed to grasp that anger comes in two kinds, a right one and a wrong one, some of it just and some unjust; unable to find a cure for the problem, they chose instead to tear the whole thing out by the roots. The Peripatetics, however, said it should not be uprooted but tempered — to whom I have answered sufficiently in the sixth book of the Institutes. That the philosophers did not know what the true nature of anger was is clear from their definitions, which Seneca has listed in the books he composed On Anger. Anger, he says, is a craving to avenge an injury, or, as Posidonius puts it, a craving to punish one by whom you believe yourself unjustly harmed. Others defined it thus: anger is a stirring of the mind to harm one who has harmed or wished to harm. Aristotle's definition is not far from ours: he says anger is a craving to repay pain. This is the unjust anger of which I spoke above, which exists even in dumb animals; in man it must be restrained, lest through frenzy it rush headlong into some very great evil. Such anger has no place in God, since nothing can injure him, whereas it does occur in man, precisely because man is vulnerable: for injury brands him with pain, and pain produces the craving for revenge. Where, then, is that just anger by which men are moved against wrongdoers? It is certainly not a craving for revenge, since no injury precedes it. I do not speak here of those who offend against the laws — against whom a judge, even without fault, might be angry, yet let us grant that he ought to be of calm mind when he subjects the guilty to punishment, since he is the servant of the laws, not of his own feeling or power (for this is what those who try to root out anger would wish). But I speak chiefly of those who are under our own power — slaves, children, wives, pupils — whom, when we see them go wrong, we are stirred to correct. It is necessary that wrong things displease the good and just man, and whoever is displeased by evil is moved when he sees it done. We rise, then, to punishment not because we have been injured, but so that discipline may be preserved, character corrected, license restrained. This is just anger — and just as correcting depravity in man requires this feeling, so God requires it equally, being the source from which humanity's pattern originally came. For just as we must restrain those subject to our power, so too God must restrain the sins of all. And in order to do this, he must of necessity be angry, since it is natural for the good to be moved and stirred at another's wrongdoing. They ought, then, to have defined it thus: anger is a movement of the mind rising up to restrain sins. For Cicero's definition, that anger is a desire for revenge, does not differ much from the earlier ones. But the anger that we might call frenzy or wrathfulness should not exist even in man, because it is wholly vicious; whereas the anger directed at correcting vice should not be stripped from man, and cannot be stripped from God either, since human affairs require it and benefit from it.
'What need is there,' they say, 'for anger, since sins could be corrected without this feeling?' And yet there is no one who can look calmly upon a wrongdoer. Perhaps one who presides over the laws can, since the crime is not committed before his own eyes but is reported to him from elsewhere as something still uncertain; and a crime can never be so plain that there is no room for a defense, and so a judge may remain unmoved against one who might yet be found innocent — and when the crime, once uncovered, comes into the light, he follows the laws' verdict rather than his own. Granting this, we can say his actions proceed without anger, since he has an external standard to obey: But surely, when wrong is done at home by our own people, whether we see it or perceive it, we cannot help but feel indignation; for the very sight of wrongdoing is unworthy. Whoever is not moved at all either approves the offense — which is more shameful and more unjust — or shuns the trouble of correcting it, which a calm and quiet mind rejects and refuses unless anger goads and rouses it. But whoever, though moved, forgives out of ill-timed leniency more often than is necessary, or even always, ruins the lives of those very people whose boldness he nourishes toward greater crimes, and supplies himself with an everlasting source of trouble. The restraint of one's own anger in the face of wrongdoing is, then, itself a vice. Archytas of Tarentum is praised, who, on finding everything on his farm ruined through his overseer's fault, said, 'Wretched man, I would already have killed you with blows, were I not angry.' Men consider this a unique example of self-control, but, led astray by his authority, they do not see how foolish were both his words and his deed. For if, as Plato says, no wise man punishes because a wrong was done, but so that wrong may not be done, then it is clear what a poor example the sage set. For if slaves perceive that their master rages when he is not angry, and spares them when he is angry, they will certainly not sin lightly to avoid a beating, but as gravely as they can, so as to provoke the perverse man's temper and get off unpunished. I, for my part, would praise him if, having become angry, he had given his anger time, so that once the swelling of the mind had subsided over an interval, the punishment might be kept in measure. The penalty, then, should not have been forgiven on account of the greatness of his anger, but deferred, so that he might not brand either an offender with pain greater than was just, or himself, as punisher, with frenzy. But what fairness or wisdom is it that someone be punished for a small offense but not for the greatest? If he had actually grasped the nature of things and their causes, he would never have championed such an ill-fitted restraint, one that leaves a worthless slave glad his master had grown angry with him. For just as God equipped the human body with a range of different senses needed for living, he likewise gave the mind a range of affections that hold the scheme of life together: just as he granted desire so children could be brought into being, he granted anger so wrongdoing could be held in check. But those who do not know the limits of good and evil use desire, as they use it for corruption and pleasure, so too they use the feeling of anger to do harm, growing angry at those they hate. So they grow angry even at those who have done no wrong, even at equals or even superiors. From this, monstrous crimes are rushed into daily; from this, tragedies are often born. Archytas would therefore be praiseworthy if, having become angry at some fellow citizen and equal who had wronged him, he had nonetheless restrained himself and softened the onset of his frenzy through patience. Such self-restraint is praiseworthy, by which some great looming evil is checked; but failing to restrain the wrongdoing of one's slaves or children is itself a wrongdoing, for they will pass on to a greater evil through impunity. Here anger deserves no restraint at all — rather, if it is lying dormant, it ought to be stirred awake. And what we say of man applies equally to God, who made man in his own likeness. I pass over speaking of God's form, since the Stoics deny that God has any shape, and a vast further matter would arise were I to wish to refute them; I speak here only of the mind. If it belongs to God to think, to know, to understand, to foresee, to grant — and of all living creatures man alone possesses these — then he was made in the likeness of God. But he falls into vice for this reason: mixed with earthly frailty, he cannot preserve what he received from God incorrupt and pure, unless he is instructed by that same God in the precepts of righteousness.