Why God Made Us

The argument from the cause comes into view if we ask this: was a human being made at random and for nothing, or for some purpose? And if for some purpose, was it simply so that he might live and go on living in the nature he was made with, or for someone else’s use? And if for use, was it for the use of the Maker himself, or of some other being that belongs to him and is counted worthy of greater care? [a]

Look at the question in the widest way and we find this: no one in his right mind, moved by a reasoned judgment to make something, makes for nothing what he sets out on purpose to make. He makes it either for his own use, or for the use of some other creature he cares about, or for the sake of the thing itself, drawn on by a natural pull and affection toward bringing it into being. Take an illustration, so that the point is clear. A man builds a house for his own use; but for his cattle and camels and the other animals he needs, he builds each of them the shelter that suits it — not for his own use, so far as appearances go, though for his own use if you look at the end he has in view, while as far as the immediate object goes, out of care for the animals he looks after. He also has children — not for his own use, and not for the sake of anything else that belongs to him, but so that those born from him may exist and last as long as they can. By the succession of children and grandchildren he consoles himself over the close of his own life, and thinks that in this way he makes the mortal immortal.

So much for what people do. But God could not have made a human being for nothing, for he is wise, and no work of wisdom is pointless; nor for his own use, since he needs nothing whatever. To one who needs nothing at all, nothing he has made could contribute anything to his own use. Nor did he make a human being for the sake of any of the other works he has made. For nothing that has reason and judgment — nothing greater and nothing lesser — has been made, or is being made, for another’s use; it is made for the sake of its own life and its own continuing.

Reason can find no use at all that would serve as the cause of our creation. The immortals lack nothing and need no help from us in order to exist; and the animals without reason are ruled by nature and supply people with the services each of them was made for, but were not made to make use of people in return. For it neither was nor is right to bring down what rules and leads into the service of what is lower, or to put what has reason under what has none, since what has none is unfit to rule.

So then: a human being has not been made without cause and for nothing — none of God’s works is pointless, at least as far as the Maker’s intention is concerned — nor for the use of the Maker himself, nor for the use of any of the works that came from him. It is clear, then, that on the first and most general account God made a human being for his own sake, out of the goodness and wisdom that can be seen throughout the whole creation; but on the account that lies closer to the creatures themselves, he made him for the sake of the life of the creatures made — a life not lit for a little while and then put out.

To creeping things, I think, and to birds and to fish — to put it generally, to all the animals without reason — God assigned a life like that. But to those who carry the Maker himself within them like an image, who bear a mind with them and have been given a share of reasoned judgment, the Maker has allotted a continuance that goes on forever. He did it so that they might know their own Maker and his power and wisdom, and follow law and justice, and live on forever without pain, together with the very things by which they held their earlier life firm, even though they lived in earthy bodies that decay.

Whatever has come into being for the sake of something else will, when the thing it was made for has ceased, itself fittingly cease to be as well. It will not go on existing for nothing, since among the works of God there is no room for what is pointless. But whatever came into being for the sake of existing and of living according to its own nature — since the cause is bound up with that nature itself and is seen in its existence and in nothing else — can never admit any cause that would wipe its existence out altogether.

And since that cause is seen to lie in existing always, the living creature so made must certainly be kept safe, acting and being acted upon in the ways its nature allows, with each of the two parts it is made of bringing in its own contribution. The soul exists and continues evenly in the nature it was made with, and does the work it was made for: it presides over the body’s impulses, and judges and measures whatever comes along by the proper standards and measures. The body is moved according to its nature toward the things it was made for, and takes on the changes allotted to it — among them the changes of age, of appearance and of size, and, along with the rest, the resurrection. For the resurrection is a kind of change, and the last of them all: the change for the better of whatever is still left at that time.

Confident of all this — no less confident than we are of what has already happened — and looking closely at our own nature, we are content with a life that comes with neediness and decay, since it suits our present life; and we hope with assurance for a continuance that is free from decay. We do not make this up out of human invention and feed ourselves on false hopes. We have put our trust in a guarantee that cannot mislead: the intention of the one who fashioned us. By that intention he made a human being out of an immortal soul and a body, and equipped him besides with a mind and an inborn law, for preserving and guarding what he had given — the things that suit a thinking life and a life lived by reason. We know well that he would not have built such a creature, and furnished it with everything needed for lasting, if he had not meant what he made to last. [e]

So if the Maker of this whole universe made a human being to share in a thinking life, and made him a spectator of his own magnificence and of the wisdom that shows in everything, so that he might go on always contemplating them, then by the intention of his Author and by the nature he received, the cause of his creation guarantees that he will continue forever, and that continuance guarantees the resurrection, without which he could not continue at all.

From what has been said, then, it is plain that the resurrection is clearly shown by the cause of our creation and by the intention of the one who made us. And since this is the cause for which a human being has been brought into this world, the next step is to examine the argument that follows it, either naturally or in the order set out. In our examination, the nature of the human beings born follows on the cause of their creation; the just judgment of their Maker upon them follows on their nature; and the end of their life follows on all of these. Now that we have examined the point set first, we must go on to consider the nature of human beings.

The proof of the teachings that make up the truth — or of any matter whatever that is put forward for examination — if it is going to produce steady confidence in what is said, does not take its start from outside, nor from what certain people think or have laid down as settled, but from the common and natural notion of the matter, or from the way secondary truths follow on primary ones. [g]

For the question concerns either the primary teachings — and then all that is needed is a reminder that stirs up the natural notion — or the things that follow naturally on the first ones, and their natural sequence. In that case the order matters, and we must show what really follows from the first truths, or from the ones set first, so as neither to neglect the truth and our security in it, nor to confuse things that nature has arranged and marked off from one another, nor to tear apart the natural sequence.

That is why I think anyone who has taken these questions up honestly, and who wants to judge intelligently whether human bodies rise or not, ought first to look carefully at the force of the arguments that go to prove it, and at the place each one holds: which is first, which second, which third, and which comes last of all.

Having sorted them out, he must set first the cause of the creation of human beings — that is, the intention of the Creator in making a human being — and join to it, as is fitting, the nature of the human beings so made. Not that their nature comes second in rank; it is only that we cannot pass judgment on both at once, even though the two exist together and carry equal weight for the question before us.

These arguments come first, and take their start from the work of creation, and by them the resurrection is plainly shown. But we can gain conviction about it no less from the arguments drawn from providence — I mean from the honor or the penalty owed to each person by just judgment, and from the end of human life. For many, in taking up the question of the resurrection, have rested the whole case on the third argument alone, thinking that judgment is the cause of the resurrection.

That this is false is shown plainly enough by the fact that, while all human beings who die rise again, not all who rise are judged. If the justice of the judgment were the only cause of the resurrection, then those who have done nothing wrong and nothing right — that is, very young children — ought not to rise at all. But since all do rise, both the rest and those who died in their earliest years, these children themselves prove our point: the resurrection does not come about for the sake of judgment as its primary reason, but because of the intention of the one who fashioned us and the nature of those he fashioned.

The cause seen in the creation of human beings is by itself enough to show that the resurrection follows in natural sequence upon the dissolving of bodies. Still, it is perhaps right not to shrink from any of the arguments proposed, but, in keeping with what has been said, to point out to those who cannot see it for themselves what each of the arguments that follow has to offer — and before the others, the nature of the human beings made, which leads to the same conclusion and carries the same weight as evidence for the resurrection. [l]

For consider. The nature of human beings in general is put together out of an immortal soul and the body fitted to it at its making. God did not allot this sort of coming-to-be, or this life and whole course of existence, to the nature of the soul by itself or to the nature of the body apart, but to the human beings made out of both, so that, having lived their lives with the same elements they were born and live with, they might arrive at one common end. Since one living creature is formed out of the two — a creature that undergoes whatever the soul undergoes and whatever the body undergoes, and does and carries out whatever calls for the judgment of the senses or of reason — the whole chain of these things must necessarily be referred to some one end, so that all of it, and by all of it, may run together into one harmony and one shared experience: a human being’s creation, a human being’s nature, a human being’s life, a human being’s actions and sufferings, his course of life, and the end that suits his nature.

But if there is one harmony and one shared experience belonging to the whole creature, both in what grows out of the soul and in what is carried out by means of the body, then the end of all these must be one as well. And the end will truly be one only if the creature whose end it is stays the same in its makeup; and the creature will be exactly the same only if all the parts it is made of are the same. And they will be the same, in the particular union that belongs to them, only if what was dissolved is united again to make up the creature. The putting together of the same human beings necessarily shows that the resurrection of dead and dissolved bodies follows; for without it the same parts could not be naturally united to one another, nor could the nature of the same human beings be put back together.

And if mind and reason have been given to us for discerning the things the mind grasps — not merely the things that exist, but also the goodness and wisdom and righteousness of the one who gave them — then it necessarily follows that, as long as the things for whose sake this reasoned judgment was given remain, the judgment given for them must remain as well. But it cannot remain unless the nature that received it, the nature it belongs to, remains. And the one who received mind and reason is the human being, not the soul by itself. So the human being, who is made of both parts, must continue forever. And he cannot continue unless he rises again. For if no resurrection takes place, the nature of human beings as human beings will not continue.

And if the nature of human beings does not continue, then the soul has been fitted for nothing to the body’s need and to the body’s experiences; the body has been bridled for nothing, kept from getting what it reaches for, yielding to the soul’s reins and guided as with a bit; the mind is for nothing, and so is good sense, and the careful keeping of righteousness, and the practice of every virtue, and the laying down and enforcing of laws — in a word, everything noble in human beings or done for their sake, or rather the very creation and nature of human beings themselves. But if what is pointless has been driven out of all God’s works, from every side, and out of every gift he gives, then it necessarily follows that the body’s continuance, in the way proper to its own nature, lasts as long as the soul, which has no end.

Let no one find it strange that we call a continuance interrupted by death and decay a continuance at all. Let him think instead that the word does not have only one meaning, and that there is not only one measure of continuance, because the nature of the things that continue is not one either. [n]

If each of the things that continue has its continuance according to its own nature, then in the case of beings that are purely free from decay and immortal we will not find a continuance on the same level as ours, since the substance of higher beings is not brought down to the level of those that differ from them by standing lower; nor is it right to look for that even, unchanging continuance in human beings. Those beings were made immortal from the beginning and go on without end by the will of their Maker alone; but human beings, as far as the soul goes, have an unchanging continuance from birth, while as far as the body goes, they receive freedom from decay by way of change.

That is what the teaching about the resurrection means. It is with this in view that we wait for the body to be dissolved, since dissolving is what follows a life of neediness and decay, and after it we hope for a continuance free from decay. We do not put our own death on the level of the death of the animals without reason, nor human continuance on the level of the continuance of the immortals — so that we may not, without noticing it, put human nature and human life on a level with things they should not be compared to.

So there is no reason to be troubled if some unevenness can be seen in the way human beings continue; and we need not give up on the resurrection just because the soul’s separation from the parts of the body, and the dissolving of its pieces, cut the continuous life in two. When the senses and the natural powers slacken, as they naturally do in sleep, that seems to interrupt the conscious life; people sleep at regular intervals of time and in a manner come back to life again — and yet we do not refuse to call this life. That, I suppose, is why some call sleep the brother of death: not tracing the two back to the same ancestors or fathers, but because the same states come over those who have died and those who sleep, at least as far as stillness goes, and the fact that they perceive nothing present or happening — or rather, do not perceive even their own existence and their own life.

So if we do not refuse to call the life of human beings life — a life full of so much unevenness from birth to dissolution, and interrupted by everything we have mentioned — then neither ought we to give up on the life that comes after dissolution, the life that brings the resurrection with it, even if for a while it is interrupted by the separation of the soul from the body.