The City of God by Augustine - 12 - God Rules Over Both Evil and Time
Book Twelve
Quote
📝 For they know not how the human race, and this mortal condition of ours, took its origin, nor how it will be brought to an end, since they cannot penetrate the inscrutable wisdom of God. For, though Himself eternal, and without beginning, yet He caused time to have a beginning; and man, whom He had not previously made, He made in time, not from a new and sudden resolution, but by His unchangeable and eternal design.
Notes
🔥 All angels were created equally good. But some adhere to God, which is a blessing, and others don't, which leads to their misery. Nothing is evil by nature. Evil stems from the will that chooses to act in ways contrary to nature.
🔥 Our judgments about good and evil are limited by our nature. It's in the nature of fire to give light and to burn — both of these natures are beautiful, but humans perceive each one differently in how they can affect us. Our specific, limited perspective shapes our view of what is good and what is evil.
🔥 Pride is the beginning of sin — that is, seeing one's own will as superior and preferable to God's.
🔥 But what causes a will to become evil? It's a vexing question. Augustine says it's like trying to see darkness when the only way to know darkness is through the fact that we can't see it. Or the way that silence is only known by the lack of hearing.
🔥 All those who draw near to God share a holy fellowship with each other and together form one city of God.
🔥 Augustine disputes the claim that the world is many thousands of years old. The Bible, he believes, says the earth is 6000 years old, and this corresponds to Greek accounts of history. He cites Alexander the Great's letter to his mother and debunks some of the claims discussed in it.
🔥 All that said, Augustine remains humble with what can be known about why or how God made the world. "Who can search out the unsearchable depth of this purpose, who can scrutinize the inscrutable wisdom, wherewith God, without change of will, created man, who had never before been, and gave him an existence in time, and increased the human race from one individual?"
🔥 The idea that God is eternal, and decided to create time, and therefore time must have a beginning, is difficult to wrap one's head around. Are angels co-eternal with God? How can that be if they were created? Augustine admits we are limited in what we can know. And he quotes Paul from the book of Romans, which supports this, too: "For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith."
🔥 Augustine, instead, seems to have some fun with our small position facing these mysteries between time and eternity. "[God] can act while He reposes, and repose while He acts. He can begin a new work with (not a new, but) an eternal design." God "comprehends all incomprehensibles with so incomprehensible a comprehension."
🔥 He disputes the idea that everything happens in cycles, that once we go up to heaven, we'll still at some point have to start the whole process all over again (from disunion back to union with God). The idea is that God wants to keep creating and recreating so he can know his own works in fullness. But Augustine says having to leave God after being united with him would be too awful. Our experiences and all creation is already new, Augustine says, not part of some cycle that's been repeated from before.
🔥 God created mankind, starting with a single man, Adam. God knew man would sin, but also that he would save them by his grace.
🔥 God made man in his own image, with reason and intelligence, so they would be above all the other creatures.
🔥 God alone is the Creator. Augustine is against the idea that angels or lesser gods created earth and man, which some people argue.
Reflection
💬 Augustine's view of history is shaped and informed by the Bible. This biases his view in a lot of ways, such as the age of the earth, even though he does look at other sources of evidence and makes the effort to argue from a place of reason. Still, with the age of the earth, he does seem to be arguing backwards from his conclusion.
However, what he also gets from having his view of history shaped by the Bible is a total, cosmic, epic story. It's not merely material or meangingless. It's a story that encompasses everything and gives it meaning.