Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 29/87

if men have been called gods because they are in the people of God, whom God addresses through angels or through men, how much more worthy of that name are the immortals who enjoy that blessedness to which men, by worshipping God, desire to attain—what shall we answer, except that it is not in vain that in the Holy Scriptures men have been more expressly named gods than those immortal and blessed beings, to whom we are promised to be made equal in the resurrection? Namely, lest because of their excellence faithless weakness should dare to set up any one of them as a god for us. This is easily avoided in the case of a man. And men more evidently ought to have been called gods in the people of God, that they might become certain and confident that He is their God who is called the God of gods;

because, even though those immortal and blessed ones who are in the heavens are called gods, yet they are not called gods of gods—that is, gods of the men constituted in the people of God, to whom it was said: 'I said, you are gods, and all sons of the Most High.' Hence it is that the Apostle says: 'For even though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as there are gods many and lords many: yet to us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through Him.' There is therefore no need to dispute much about the name, when the matter itself is so clear as to be free from any scruple of doubt.

But that thing which we say—that out of the number of those immortal and blessed beings, angels have been sent who would announce the will of God to men—does not please them, because they believe that this ministry is performed not through those whom they call gods (that is, the immortal and blessed), but through demons, whom they dare to call only immortal, not also blessed; or at any rate so immortal and blessed that they are nonetheless good demons, not gods loftily placed and set apart from human contact. Although the controversy seems to be about a name, yet the name of demons is so detestable that we ought by all means to remove it from the holy angels.

Now therefore let this book be so concluded that we may know that the immortal and blessed beings—by whatever name they be called—who nevertheless are made and created, are not mediators for leading the wretched mortals over to immortal blessedness, from whom they are separated by both differences. But those who are mediators by sharing immortality with the higher beings and misery with the lower—since by the desert of their malice they are wretched—can rather envy us the blessedness which they do not have than bestow it. Hence the friends of the demons have nothing they may bring forward as worthy, why we should worship them as helpers, whom we ought rather to shun as deceivers.

But as for those whom they think good, and therefore not only immortal but also blessed, and to be worshipped under the name of gods with rites and sacrifices for the sake of attaining the blessed life after death—of whatever sort those beings may be, and worthy of whatever appellation, that they do not wish, through such service of religion, that any but the one God be worshipped, by whom they were created and by participation in whom they are blessed—this, with His own help, we shall discuss more diligently in the following book. BOOK X. CHAPTER I. That even the Platonists have defined that true blessedness is bestowed, whether on angels or on men, through the one God; but whether those whom they think should be worshipped on this very account wish sacrifice to be offered to the one God alone, or also to themselves, is to be inquired.

It is the fixed opinion of all who can in any way use reason that all men wish to be blessed. But while the weakness of mortals inquires who are blessed or whence they become so, many and great controversies have been stirred up, in which the philosophers have worn out their studies and their leisure; to bring these forward and discuss them would be both long and unnecessary. For if he who reads these things recalls what we did in the eighth book concerning the choosing of philosophers with whom this question about the blessed life that is to come after death was to be treated—namely, whether we can attain to it by serving with religion and sacrifices the one true God, who is also the maker of the gods, or many gods:

he will not expect that the same things be here repeated, especially since, by re-reading, if perhaps he has forgotten, he may aid his memory. For we chose the Platonists, deservedly the most renowned of all philosophers, for this reason: because they were able to perceive that the immortal and rational—or intellectual—soul of man cannot be blessed except by sharing in the light of that God by whom both it and the world were made; and thus they deny that anyone will attain that which all men seek, namely the blessed life, who has not cleaved with the purity of chaste love to that one supreme Being, which is the unchangeable God.

But since they themselves also—whether yielding to the vanity and error of the peoples, or, as the Apostle says, becoming vain in their thoughts—supposed, or wished it to be supposed, that many gods are to be worshipped, so that some of them judged that even to the demons divine honors of rites and sacrifices were to be offered (to whom we have already in no small part replied): now it must be seen and discussed, as far as God grants, in what manner the immortal and blessed beings, established in the heavenly seats, in dominations, principalities, powers, whom these men call gods, and out of whom they name some either good demons or, along with us, angels—are to be believed to wish that religion and piety be observed by us;

that is, to speak more plainly, whether it pleases them that we offer rites and sacrifices even to themselves, or only to their God, who is also ours; or that we consecrate by religious rites anything of ours, or our very selves. For this is the worship due to divinity—or, if it must be said more expressly, to deity—on account of which, to signify it by one word (since no Latin term sufficiently apt occurs to me), I introduce, where necessary, the Greek, to convey what I wish to say. Latreia, indeed, wherever it is set down in the Holy Scriptures, our translators have rendered 'service.' But that service which is owed to men—according to which the Apostle commands that servants ought to be subject to their masters—is usually called by another name in Greek;

but latreia, according to the usage of those who composed for us the divine oracles, either always or so frequently as to be almost always, denotes that service which pertains to the worship of God. Accordingly, if mere worship (cultus) alone be spoken of, it does not appear to be owed to God alone. For we are said to 'cultivate' (colere) even men, whom we frequent with honorific remembrance or presence. Nor only those things to which we subject ourselves in religious humility, but also certain things which are subject to us, are said to be 'cultivated.' For from this word both farmers (agricolae) and tillers (coloni) and inhabitants (incolae) are named, and they call the gods themselves 'heaven-dwellers' (caelicolae) for no other reason than that they 'cultivate' heaven—not, of course, by venerating it, but by inhabiting it, as it were certain colonists of heaven;

not in the sense in which tenant farmers (coloni) are so called, who owe service to the soil of their birth on account of the agriculture carried on under the lordship of the proprietors; but rather as a certain great author of Latin eloquence says: 'An ancient city there was, the Tyrian settlers (coloni) held it.' For he called them coloni from inhabiting (colere) the place, not from agriculture. Hence too cities founded by greater cities, as it were by swarms of peoples, are called colonies. And therefore that worship (cultus) is owed to none but God, by a certain proper meaning of this word, is altogether most true; but because the cultivation (cultus) of other things also is spoken of, the worship owed to God cannot for this reason be signified in Latin by a single word.

For even religion (religio) itself, though it may seem more distinctly to signify not just anyone's worship but the worship of God (whence by this name our people have rendered that which in Greek is called θρησκεία), nevertheless, because in the Latin custom of speech, not only of the unlearned but even of the most learned, religion is said to be shown to human kinships and affinities and to all sorts of close relationships, this word does not avoid ambiguity, when the question concerns the worship of the deity, so that we could confidently say that religion is nothing but the worship of God, since this word seems to be wrongly taken away from signifying the observance shown to human relationship. Piety (pietas) too is usually properly understood as the worship of God, which the Greeks call εὐσέβεια.

Yet this too is said to be rendered dutifully toward parents. And in the custom of the common people this word is frequently used even of works of mercy; which I think has come about because God especially commands these to be done, and declares that they please Him either instead of sacrifices or above sacrifices. From this custom of speech it has come about that even God Himself is called pius (godly, dutiful); whom indeed the Greeks, by no usage of their own speech, call εὐσεβής, although the common people among them also use εὐσέβεια for mercy. Whence in certain places of the Scriptures, that a clearer distinction might appear, they preferred to say not εὐσέβεια, which is compounded from good worship, but θεοσέβεια, which resounds as composed from the worship of God. But either of these we cannot express by a single word.

That, then, which in Greek is called λατρεία and is rendered in Latin as servitus (service), but the service by which we worship God; or that which in Greek is θρησκεία, in Latin religio, but the religion which is ours toward God; or that which they call εὐσέβεια, which we cannot express by a single word, but can call the worship of God: this we say is owed to that God alone who is the true God and makes His worshippers gods. Whoever therefore are immortal and blessed in the heavenly dwellings, if they do not love us nor wish us to be blessed, are certainly not to be worshipped. But if they love us and wish us to be blessed, surely they wish it from that same source whence they too are blessed; or are they blessed from one source, and we from another? CHAPTER II. What Plotinus the Platonist thought concerning illumination from on high.

But we have no conflict in this question with these more excellent philosophers. For they saw, and in their writings have in many ways most copiously set down, that those beings become blessed from the same source as we, namely by a certain intelligible light set before them, which is God to them and is other than they, by whom they are illumined, so that they shine and by participation in Him subsist perfected and blessed. Plotinus, expounding the meaning of Plato, often and at length asserts that not even that soul which they believe to be the soul of the universe is blessed from any other source than ours, and that this is a light which it itself is not, but by which it was created, and by whose intelligible illumination it intelligibly shines.

He even draws a likeness for those incorporeal things from these visible and vast heavenly bodies, as though He were the sun and it were the moon. For they think the moon is illumined by the sun being set before it. That great Platonist therefore says that the rational soul—or rather, if it should be called intellectual, of which kind he understands the souls of the immortal and blessed to be also, whom he does not doubt to dwell in the heavenly seats—has above itself no nature except that of God, who fashioned the world, by whom it too was made; nor is the blessed life and the light of the understanding of truth furnished to those beings on high from any other source than that from which it is furnished also to us, in agreement with the Gospel, where it is read: 'There was a man sent from God, whose name was John;'

he came for a testimony, to bear witness of the light, that all might believe through him. He was not that light, but came to bear witness of the light. That was the true light, which lightens every man coming into this world. In this difference it is sufficiently shown that the rational or intellectual soul, such as was in John, cannot be a light to itself, but shines by participation in another true light. This John himself also confesses, where, bearing witness to Him, he says: 'Of His fullness have we all received.' CHAPTER III. Concerning the true worship of God, from which the Platonists, although they understood the Creator of the universe, turned aside by worshipping angels, whether good or evil, with divine honour.

Since these things are so, if the Platonists, or whoever else thought thus, while knowing God, had glorified Him as God and given thanks, and had not become vain in their thoughts, nor in part become authors of the errors of the peoples and in part not dared to resist them: surely they would confess, both for those immortal and blessed beings and for us mortals and wretched ones, that—so that we may be able to be immortal and blessed—the one God of gods is to be worshipped, who is both ours and theirs. To Him we owe that service which in Greek is called λατρεία, whether in any sacred rites or in our very selves. For His temple we all together and each singly are, since He deigns to dwell both in the concord of all and in each one;

not greater in all than in single ones, since He is neither extended by mass nor diminished by division. When our heart is lifted up to Him, it is His altar; we propitiate Him through His Only-begotten as priest; to Him we slay bloody victims, when we contend even unto blood for His truth; to Him we burn the sweetest incense, when in His sight we glow with pious and holy love; to Him we vow and render His own gifts in us, and ourselves; to Him on festal solemnities and appointed days we dedicate and consecrate the memory of His benefits, lest by the rolling of times an ungrateful oblivion creep in; to Him we sacrifice on the altar of the heart the victim of humility and praise, kindled by the fire of charity.

To see Him, as far as He can be seen, and to cleave to Him, we are cleansed from every stain of sins and evil desires, and consecrated in His name. For He Himself is the fountain of our blessedness, He Himself the end of all our longing. Choosing Him, or rather re-choosing Him (for we had lost Him by neglecting)—re-choosing Him therefore, whence religion is said to be named (religere, to re-choose)—we tend toward Him by love, that by reaching Him we may rest, blessed for this reason, because perfected by that End. For our good, concerning whose end there is great contention among philosophers, is nothing else than to cleave to Him, by whose incorporeal embrace alone—if it may be so said—the intellectual soul is filled and made fruitful with true virtues.

We are commanded to love this good with the whole heart, with the whole soul, and with the whole strength; toward this good we ought both to be led by those who love us, and to lead those whom we love. Thus are fulfilled those two precepts, on which hang the whole law and the prophets: 'You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul and with your whole mind,' and: 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself.' For that a man might know how to love himself, an end was appointed for him, to which he should refer all that he did, that he might be blessed; for he who loves himself wishes nothing else than to be blessed. But this end is to cleave to God.

Now therefore, to one who knows how to love himself, when he is commanded about loving his neighbour as himself, what else is commanded but that he should, as far as he can, commend to him God to be loved? This is the worship of God, this is true religion, this is right piety, this is the service owed to God alone. Whatever immortal power therefore, endowed with whatever great virtue, if it loves us as itself, wishes us to be subject to that One, that we may be blessed, to whom it too, being subject, is blessed. If then it does not worship God, it is wretched, because it is deprived of God; but if it worships God, it does not wish to be worshipped in God's stead. For it rather supports that divine sentence and favours it with the strength of love, by which it is written: 'He that sacrifices to gods shall be rooted out, save to the Lord alone.' CHAPTER IV.

That sacrifice is owed to the one true God. For—to pass over now other things which pertain to the homage of religion by which God is worshipped—certainly there is no man who would dare to say that sacrifice is owed to any but God. Many things, indeed, drawn from divine worship have been applied to human honours, whether through excessive humility or through pernicious flattery; yet in such a way that those to whom they were rendered were held to be men, who are said to be cultivated and venerated, and, if much is added to them, even adored: but who has judged that sacrifice should be offered to any but Him whom he either knew, or supposed, or imagined to be a god?

Moreover, how ancient is the worship of God by sacrificing, those two brothers Cain and Abel sufficiently indicate, of whom God rejected the sacrifice of the elder, and regarded that of the younger. CHAPTER V. Concerning the sacrifices which God does not require, but willed to be offered for the signifying of those things which He does require. But who would be so foolish as to suppose that those things which are offered in sacrifices are necessary for any uses of God? Since divine Scripture testifies this in many places, lest we make it long, it will suffice to recall that brief saying from the psalm: 'I said to the Lord, You are my God, for You have no need of my goods.'

Not only therefore in cattle or in any other corruptible and earthly thing, but not even in man's very righteousness, is God to be believed to have need; and the whole of what rightly worships God profits man, not God. For no one would say that he had done a service to the fountain if he drank, or to the light if he saw. Nor, as for the fact that other sacrifices in the slaying of cattle were made by the ancient fathers, which now the people of God read of but does not perform, is anything else to be understood than that by those things were signified these things which are wrought in us, to this end, that we may cleave to God and consult our neighbour's good toward the same end. A visible sacrifice therefore is the sacrament, that is, the sacred sign, of an invisible sacrifice.

Whence that penitent in the prophet, or the prophet himself, seeking to have God propitious to his sins, says: 'If You had wished sacrifice, I would surely have given it; in burnt offerings You will not delight. The sacrifice for God is a troubled spirit: a contrite and humbled heart God will not despise.' Let us observe how, where he said God did not wish sacrifice, there he showed that God did wish sacrifice. He does not wish, then, the sacrifice of a slaughtered beast, but He wishes the sacrifice of a contrite heart. By that, therefore, which he said God did not wish, this is signified, which he subjoined that God did wish. Thus then he said God did not wish those things, in the manner in which they are believed by the foolish to be wished, as it were for the sake of His own pleasure. For if He did not wish those sacrifices which He does wish (of which this is one:

a heart contrite and humbled by the sorrow of repentance), He would not have willed them to be signified by those sacrifices which He was supposed to desire as though delightful to Himself: He certainly would not have commanded these to be offered in the old law. And therefore they had to be changed at the opportune and now certain time, lest they should be believed to be desirable to God Himself, or at least acceptable in us, rather than the things which were signified by them. Hence too in another place of another psalm He says: 'If I were hungry, I would not tell you; for the world is mine and the fullness thereof. Shall I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?' As though He said: Surely if these were necessary to me, I would not ask of you what I have in my own power. Then, adding what those things signify:

'Offer,' He says, 'to God the sacrifice of praise, and pay your vows to the Most High; and call upon me in the day of tribulation, and I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.' Likewise in another prophet He says: 'Wherewith shall I lay hold of the Lord, take hold of my God most high? Shall I lay hold of Him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord accept thousands of rams, or tens of thousands of fat goats? Shall I give my firstborn for my ungodliness, the fruit of my womb for the sin of my soul? Has it been declared to you, O man, what is good? Or what does the Lord require of you, but to do judgment, and to love mercy, and to be ready to walk with the Lord your God?'

And in this prophet's words both are distinguished, and it is sufficiently declared that God does not require for their own sake those sacrifices by which are signified these sacrifices which God does require. In the epistle which is inscribed 'To the Hebrews': 'Forget not,' he says, 'to do good and to share; for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.' And by this, where it is written 'I desire mercy rather than sacrifice,' nothing else must be understood than that one sacrifice is preferred to another; since that which is called sacrifice by all is the sign of the true sacrifice. But mercy is the true sacrifice; whence it was said, as I recalled a little before: 'For with such sacrifices God is well pleased.'

Whatever things therefore in the ministry of the tabernacle or of the temple are read to have been divinely prescribed in many ways concerning sacrifices, are referred to the love of God and of neighbour by way of signifying. For on these two precepts, as it is written, hang the whole law and the prophets. CHAPTER VI. Concerning the true and perfect sacrifice. Accordingly, the true sacrifice is every work which is done that we may cleave to God in holy fellowship, referred, that is, to that end of good by which we can be truly blessed. Whence even mercy itself, by which a man is succoured, if it is not done for God's sake, is not a sacrifice. For although it is done or offered by man, yet sacrifice is a divine thing, so that by this name also the old Latins called it.

Whence man himself, consecrated in the name of God and devoted to God, in so far as he dies to the world that he may live to God, is a sacrifice. For this too pertains to the mercy which each one does to himself. Therefore it is written: 'Have mercy on your own soul, pleasing God.' Our body also, when we chastise it with temperance, if we do this, in the manner we ought, for God's sake, so that we present not our members as weapons of unrighteousness unto sin, but as weapons of righteousness unto God, is a sacrifice. Exhorting to which the Apostle says: 'I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, well pleasing to God, your reasonable service.'

If therefore the body, which the soul uses as an inferior, like a servant or like an instrument, when its good and right use is referred to God, is a sacrifice: how much more the soul itself, when it refers itself to God, so that, kindled by the fire of His love, it loses the form of worldly concupiscence and, subjected to Him as to the immutable Form, is re-formed, pleasing to Him from this, that it has received of His beauty, becomes a sacrifice! The same Apostle, consequently adding this, says: 'And be not conformed to this world; but be reformed in the newness of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and well-pleasing and perfect.'

Since therefore the true sacrifices are works of mercy, whether toward ourselves or toward our neighbours, which are referred to God, and works of mercy are done for no other reason than that we may be delivered from misery and thereby be blessed (which does not happen save by that good of which it was said: 'But for me it is good to cleave to God'): surely it follows that the whole redeemed city itself, that is, the congregation and fellowship of the saints, is offered to God as a universal sacrifice through the great Priest, who also offered Himself in His passion for us, that we might be the body of so great a Head, according to the form of a servant. For this He offered, in this He was offered, because according to this He is mediator, in this priest, in this the sacrifice.

When therefore the Apostle had exhorted us to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, well pleasing to God, our reasonable service, and not to be conformed to this world, but to be reformed in the newness of our mind, to prove what is the will of God, what is good and well-pleasing and perfect—which whole sacrifice we ourselves are—he says: 'For I say, through the grace of God which is given to me, to all who are among you, not to be more wise than it behoves to be wise, but to be wise unto temperance; as God has dealt to each one the measure of faith. For as in one body we have many members, but all the members have not the same functions: so we, being many, are one body in Christ;'

and individually members one of another, having different gifts according to the grace which is given to us.' This is the sacrifice of Christians: many, one body in Christ. Which the Church also celebrates in the sacrament of the altar, known to the faithful, where it is shown to her that in that thing which she offers, she herself is offered. CHAPTER VII. That the love of the holy angels toward us is such that they wish us to be worshippers, not of themselves, but of the one true God.

Deservedly do those immortal and blessed beings, set in the heavenly seats, who rejoice together in the participation of their Creator, by whose eternity they are firm, by whose truth they are certain, by whose gift they are holy—since they mercifully love us mortals and wretched ones, that we may be immortal and blessed—not wish us to sacrifice to themselves, but to Him whose sacrifice they too, together with us, know themselves to be. For together with them we are one city of God, to which it is said in the psalm: 'Most glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God'; of which one part sojourns as a pilgrim in us, another part renders aid in them. Concerning

that supernal city, where the will of God is the intelligible and immutable law, from that supernal court, as it were (for there indeed care is taken concerning us), that holy Scripture descended to us, ministered through angels, where it is read: 'He that sacrifices to gods shall be rooted out, save to the Lord alone.' To this Scripture, to this law, to such precepts, so great miracles have borne witness, that it is sufficiently apparent to whom those immortal and blessed beings wish us to sacrifice, who wish us to be that which they themselves are. CHAPTER VIII. Concerning the miracles which God, for the strengthening of the faith of the pious, deigned to apply even through the ministry of angels to His promises.

For if I should recall things too ancient, I shall seem to roll back farther than is enough—what miracles were done attesting the promises of God, by which, thousands of years beforehand, He foretold to Abraham that in his seed all nations were to have blessing.