In contrast, the demons do not behold the eternal causes of temporal events, the cardinal causes, so to speak, in the Wisdom of God, but they have much more knowledge of the future than men can have, by their greater acquaintance with certain signs which are hidden from us; sometimes they also foretell their own intentions. It is true that they are often deceived, while the angels are never deceived. It is one thing to conjecture temporal matters from temporal evidence, mutable things from mutable evidence, and then to interfere in events in a temporal and mutable fashion by the exercise of will and power; this is, in a restricted measure, permitted to the demons. It is a very different thing to foresee the changes of the temporal order in the eternal and unchanging laws of God, which live eternally in his wisdom, and, by participation in the Spirit of God, to know the will of God, which is supremely certain and supremely powerful; this privilege is granted, by a just distinction, to the holy angels. Thus they are blessed, as well as eternal. The good, which renders them blessed, is God, by whom they were created; and the participation in his life and the contemplation of his beauty is their never-failing joy.

  23. The ascription of the title ‘gods’

  The Platonists may prefer to call those good angels ‘gods’ rather than ‘demons’, and to include them among those whom Plato, their founder and master, writes of as having been created by the supreme God.43 They may do as they like; there is no need for us to engage in a tiresome dispute about words. If they mean that they are immortal, but, at the same time, created by the supreme God and that they are blessed, not by themselves, but through adhering to him who made them, then their meaning is the same as ours, whatever title they use. That this is the opinion of the Platonists, or at least of the better Platonists, can be proved from their writings. As for the actual title, the fact that they give the name ‘gods’ to creatures who are immortal and blessed in the above sense, there is here no dispute between us, simply because one can find in our sacred Scriptures such quotations as ‘The Lord, the lord of gods, has spoken,’44 and, in another place: ‘Give thanks to the God of gods,’45 and ‘a great king above all gods’.46 The passage where it says, ‘He is terrible above all gods’,47 is explained by what immediately follows, ‘Since all the gods of the nations are demons; but the Lord made the ‘heavens’.48 The psalmist says ‘above all gods’; but he adds ’of the nations’, meaning those whom the nations regard as gods, who are really ‘demons’: ‘terrible’ refers to the terror which made the demons say to the Lord, ‘Have you come to destroy us?’49 But ‘God of gods’ cannot be understood as meaning ‘God of demons’; and it is unthinkable that ‘a great king above all gods’ should mean ‘a great king above all demons’. The Scriptures also use the name ‘gods’ to describe men who belong to the people of God. I have said, “You are gods, and all of you are sons of the Highest.” ’50 Thus it is possible to take ‘God of gods’ as referring to ‘gods’ in this sense, and to interpret ‘a great king above all gods’ in the same way.

  But it may be asked: If men are called ‘gods’, because they belong to the people of God – that people with whom God talks by the agency of either angels or men – are not the immortal beings much more worthy of that name? For they now enjoy that blessedness which men long to reach in their worship of God. The only reply is that it is not for nothing that in the holy Scriptures men are given the title of ‘gods’ more expressly than are those immortal and blessed beings, to whom, as we are promised, we shall become equal in the resurrection. Presumably the intention was to guard against the possibility that man, in his feebleness, might become unfaithful to God and presume to set up one of those angels as a god for us. There was less risk of this in the case of a man. And it was essential that men who belonged to God’s people should be called ‘gods’ with greater emphasis, so that they might have sure confidence that he was their God, who was entitled ‘God of gods’. For although the name ‘gods’ is applied to those blessed immortals who are in the heavens, they are not called ‘gods of gods’, that is, gods of men who have been given a place among the people of God, the men to whom it was said, ‘I have said, “You are gods, and all of you are sons of the Highest”.’ Hence the saying of the Apostle,

  Although there are those who are called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, there being many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’; nevertheless for us there is one God, the Father, from whom all things come, and in whom we have our being; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things come into being, through whom we came to be.51

  There is no need, then, of a long discussion about the name, since the facts are clear beyond any shadow of doubt. But there is another matter. We Christians say that it is from the company of these blessed immortals that angels have been sent to announce the will of God to men. The philosophers will not have it so. They ascribe this ministry not to those beings whom they call ‘gods’, that is, to beings who are both immortal and blessed, but to demons who are immortal, but whom they do not venture to call blessed – or at least, if they are both immortal and blessed, they are still good demons, and not gods, since gods (for them) have their dwelling on high, far removed from human contact. Here we may seem to have a dispute about names. But the name ‘demons’ is so detestable that we are bound to repudiate utterly its application to the holy angels.

  And so we may end this book with this assertion. We know that immortal and blessed beings, by whatever name they are called, who for all that, are created beings, do not act as intermediaries, to bring to immortal blessedness wretched mortals, from whom they are separated by a twofold difference. On the other hand, those who are in an intermediate position, by sharing immortality with those above them and misery with those below, are more likely to grudge us happiness than to procure it for us, since their own misery is the due reward of their malice. Hence the supporters of the demons cannot put forward any sound reason why we should worship those demons as our helpers, seeing that we ought rather to shun them as deceivers. As for those good beings, who, because of their goodness, are happy as well as immortal, these philosophers reckon that they should be given the title of ‘gods’, and worshipped with sacred rites and sacrifices, in order that we may attain to a life of blessedness after death. But, whatever be the nature of those beings, and whatever be the name they deserve, they themselves do not wish that such devout homage should be offered in worship to any being other than the one God, by whom they were created, the God who imparts to them their happiness by granting them a share in his own being. This is a matter we shall, God helping us, discuss in detail in the next book.

  BOOK X

  1. The Platonists say that true blessedness is conferred only by God. The question now arises: do those beings, whom they suppose that men should worship for the attainment of blessedness, desire that men should sacrifice to them, or to God alone?

  THAT all men desire happiness is a truism for all who are in any degree able to use their reason. But mortals, in their weakness, ask, ‘Who is happy? And how is happiness gained?’ And those questions have stirred up many disputes of importance which have consumed the energy and the leisure of philosophers. It would be tedious to bring them up and discuss them, and it is also unnecessary. The line we followed in the eighth book was to select the philosophers with whom we should debate the question about the life of happiness which follows death, the question whether we can attain this life by offering the homage of devotion and worship to the one true God, who is also the creator of the gods, or to a multitude of gods. If the reader remembers this, he will not be expecting us to go over the same ground again: especially because, if he happens to have forgotten the details, he can turn back to refresh his memory.

  Now we selected the Platonists as being deservedly the best known of all philosophers, because they have been able to realize that the soul of man, though immortal and rational (or intellectual), cannot attain happiness except by participation in the light of God, the creator of the soul and of the whole world. They also assert that no one can attain this life of blessedness, the object of all mankind’s desire, unless he has adhered, with the purity of chaste love, to that unique and supreme Good, which is the changeless God. And yet those philosophers themselves have either yielded to the futile errors of people in general or, in the Apostle’s words, ‘have dwindled into futility in their thinking’,1 in that they have supposed (or were willing that it should be supposed) that many gods are to be worshipped. Some, in fact, have gone so far as to lay it down that the divine honours of ceremonies and sacrifices are to be rendered even to demons. But I have already replied to this at some considerable length. Our present task concerns those immortal and blessed beings, established in heavenly abodes, in ‘dominations, principalities and powers’,2 the beings whom the philosophers call ‘gods’, and give to some of them the name of ‘demons’, or ‘angels’ – the word used by Christians. The question we must consider and discuss, as far as God grants us strength, is this: What kind of observances of religion and devotion are we to believe that they wish to see in us? Or, to put it more plainly: Is it their desire that we should offer ceremony and sacrifice, or consecrate with solemn ritual either our possessions or ourselves, to their God, who is also our God, and to him alone? Or do they claim those honours also for themselves?

  For this is the kind of worship which we owe to the Divinity, or, more precisely, the Deity. I cannot think of a suitable Latin term to express it in one word, and so I shall be inserting, where necessary, a Greek word to convey my meaning. Latreia is the word represented in our translations by ‘service’, wherever it is found in the Scriptures. But the service due to man, the service referred to by the Apostle when he says that servants should be obedient to their masters,3 is called by a different word in Greek, whereas latreia, according to the usage of the writers who preserve for us the words of God, is always, or almost always, the word employed for the service which concerns the worship of God. The word ‘cult’ (cultus) by itself would not imply something due only to God. For we are said to ‘cultivate’ (colere) men when we continually pay respect to them either in our memory or by our presence. And this word is employed not only in respect of things which in a spirit of devout humility we regard as above us, but even of some things which are below us. For from the same word are derived agricolae (cultivators), celoni (fanners) and íncolas (inhabitants); and the gods themselves are called caelicolae simply because they dwell in (colunt) heaven (caelum) – the verb here meaning, of course, ‘inhabit’, not ‘Worship’; they are, as it were, ‘colonists’ of heaven. They are not coloni in the sense in which the word is used of those whose lives are bound up with their native soil, which they cultivate under the authority of a land-owner, but in the sense in which one of the great Latin authors used it in the line,

  An ancient town there was, the dwelling-place

  Of colonists from Tyre.4

  He speaks of ‘colonists’ because they inhabited (ab incolendo), not because they cultivated the place (ab agricultura). Hence also the name ‘colonies’ is given to settlements founded by larger communities as a result of a kind of swarming of the population. Thus although it is quite true that ‘cult’, in the special use of the term, is due only to God, still the word cultus is used in other significations, and for that reason there is no one word in Latin to denote the ‘cult’ which is due to God.

  The word ‘religion’ would seem, to be sure, to signify more particularly the ‘cult’ offered to God, rather than ‘cult’ in general; and that is why our translators have used it to render the Greek word thrêskeia. However, in Latin usage (and by that I do not mean in the speech of the illiterate, but even in the language of the highly educated) ‘religion’ is something which is displayed in human relationships, in the family (in the narrower and the wider sense) and between friends; and so the use of the word does not avoid ambiguity when the worship of God is in question. We have no right to affirm with confidence that ‘religion’ is confined to the worship of God, since it seems that this word has been detached from its normal meaning, in which it refers to an attitude of respect in relations between a man and his neighbour.

  The word ‘piety’ (eusebeia in Greek) is generally understood as referring particularly to the worship of God. But this word also is used of a dutiful attitude towards parents; while in popular speech it is constantly used in connection with acts of compassion – the reason for this being, in my opinion, that God especially commands the performance of such acts, and bears witness that they please him as much as sacrifices or even more than sacrifices. From this familiar usage comes the application of the epithet pius to God himself;5 although the Greeks never call God eusebts, in their language, in spite of the fact that eusebeia is in common use as a synonym for compassion. Hence in some passages of Scripture, to make the precise meaning clear, the word theo-sebeia (God-worship) is preferred to eusebeia (good worship). We have no one word in Latin to express either of these Greek words.

  There is, then, an attitude which is called in Greek latreia and is translated by the Latin servitus, meaning the service of the worship of God; or it may be called thrêskeia in Greek, but in Latin religio, the religion which ‘binds’ us to God;6 or the Greeks may call it theosebeia, which, in default of one equivalent word we may call ‘worship of God’. What is expressed by those words is the worship we hold to be due only to him who is the true God, who transforms his worshippers into gods. Therefore those immortal and blessed beings, whoever they are, who dwell in heavenly habitations, certainly have no claim to our worship, if they do not love us and do not desire our happiness. On the other hand, if they love us and desire our happiness, then they must want that happiness to come from whence theirs is derived. Can our happiness have a different source from theirs?

  2. Plotinus on illumination from on high

  There is no conflict on this subject between us and those eminent philosphers. For they saw, and in their writings proclaimed, with abundant emphasis and in all kinds of ways, that those beings received their happiness from the same source as we do, by a kind of light which is shed on them, a light apprehended by the intellect. This light for them is God. It is something other than themselves: it brings them illumination, so that they are full of light, and, by participation in this light, exist in a state of perfection and bliss.

  Plotinus often stresses, in expounding Plato’s views, that even the being whom they hold to be the ‘Soul of the Universe’ receives its blessedness from the source of our soul’s felicity; and that source is the light, distinct from the Soul itself, by which it was created and by whose intelligible illumination it shines with intelligible light. Plotinus finds a comparison for these immaterial realities in the great material bodies in heaven which are visible to our sight, God being the sun, and the soul the moon, for it is supposed that the moon is illuminated by the light cast on her by the sun.

  The great Platonist holds that the souls of the immortal and blessed beings who, he is certain, dwell in celestial abodes, belong to the class of rational (perhaps the better term would be ‘intellectual’) souls. The rational (or intellectual) soul, he writes, has nothing above it in the scale of being except God, who fashioned the world, the God by whom the soul itself was created; and those supernal beings receive the life of bliss and the light of the understanding of the truth from no other source than that from which they are given to us. Thus he agrees with the Gospel, where we read these words, ‘There was a man sent from God, and his name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness to the light, so that all men should believe through him. He was not the light, but he had to bear witness to the light. The true light was that which illuminates every man coming into the world.’7 This distinction clearly shows that the rational (or intellectual) soul, like the soul of John, cannot be light to itself, and that it shines only by participation in the true light of another. John himself admits this when, in bearing witness to that light, he says, ‘We have all received from his plenitude.’8

  3. The true worship of God, and the Platonic deviation in the cult of angels

  This being so, if the Platonists, or any others who shared those opinions, had acquaintance with God, had glorified him as God and given thanks to him and had not ‘dwindled into futility in their thinking’,9 and had not sometimes sponsored the errors of the people in general, and sometimes failed in courage to resist them, then they would straightway have admitted that there was one object of worship both for the immortal and blessed beings, and for us, in our mortal and wretched condition, so that we may attain to immortality and bliss. Both alike must worship the one God of gods, who is the angels’ God, as he is ours.

  To this God we owe our service – what in Greek is called latreia – whether in the various sacraments or in ourselves. For we are his temple, collectively, and as individuals.10 For he condescends to dwell in the union of all and in each person. He is as great in the individual as he is in the whole body of his worshippers, for he cannot be increased in bulk or diminished by partition. When we lift up our hearts to him, our heart is his altar. We propitiate him by our priest, his only-begotten Son. We sacrifice blood-stained victims to him when we fight for truth ‘as far as shedding our blood’.11 We burn the sweetest incense for him, when we are in his sight on fire with devout and holy love. We vow to him and offer to him the gifts he has given us, and the gift of ourselves. And we have annual festivals and fixed days appointed and consecrated for the remembrance of his benefits, lest ingratitude and forgetfulness should creep in as the years roll by. We offer to him, on the altar of the heart, the sacrifice of humility and praise,12 and the flame on the altar is the buring fire of charity. To see him as he can be seen and to cleave to him, we purify ourselves from every stain of sin and evil desire and we consecrate ourselves in his name. For he himself is the source of our bliss, he himself is the goal of all our striving. By our election of him as our goal – or rather by our re-election (for we had lost him by our neglect); by our reelection (and we are told that the word ‘religion’ comes from relegere, ‘to re-elect’13), we direct our course towards him with love (dilectio), so that in reaching him we may find our rest, and attain our happiness because we have achieved our fulfilment in him. For our Good, that Final Good about which the philosophers dispute, is nothing else but to cleave to him whose spiritual embrace, if one may so express it, fills the intellectual soul and makes it fertile with true virtues.

 

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