The Three Kinds of Gods

Our defense requires that at this point we discuss with you what your gods really are — you nations, who are fit objects of our pity — and that we appeal to your own conscience to settle whether they are truly gods, as you would have it supposed, or falsely so, as you are unwilling to have proved. Now this is what human error is made of, thanks to the cunning of the one who devised it: error is never free of ignorance about itself, and that makes your guilt all the greater. Your eyes are open, and they do not see. Your ears are unstopped, and they do not hear. Your heart beats, and it is dull all the same; your mind fails to know the very thing it recognizes. [a]

If the enormous perverseness of your worship could be broken up by a single legal objection, we would have ours ready to hand in this declaration: we know that every one of those gods of yours was set up by men, and by that fact alone any claim of divinity for them falls through, since of course nothing that once had a beginning can rightly seem to be divine. But in fact there are many things that harden a tender conscience into the calluses of deliberate error. Truth is besieged by an enormous army — and yet how safe she is in her own inherent strength! No wonder, when out of her very adversaries she wins over whomever she pleases, as friends and defenders, and lays the whole host of her assailants flat.

So this is what our contest is against: the institutions of our ancestors, the authority of what has been handed down, the laws of those who rule us, and the reasonings of the learned; against antiquity, custom, and the necessity of submission; against precedents, portents, and miracles — every one of which has had a hand in cementing that counterfeit system of gods of yours. Meaning, then, to follow step by step your own handbooks, which you have drawn out of your theology of every sort — because in matters like this the authority of learned men counts for more with you than the evidence of facts — I have taken the works of Varro and made a summary of them. In his treatise Divine Things, put together out of old collections, he has proved a serviceable mark for us to aim at.

Now if I ask him who the clever men were who slipped the gods in among us, he points to the philosophers, the peoples, or the poets. For he has divided the gods into three classes: one the physical class, which the philosophers handle; another the mythical class, which the poets never stop turning over; the third the national class, which the nations have each adopted for themselves. So the philosophers have ingeniously composed their physical theology out of their own conjectures, the poets have drawn their mythical one from fables, and the several nations have forged their national one to suit themselves. Where in the world are we to put truth? In the conjectures? Those are only a doubtful notion. In the fables? Those are an absurd story at best. In what the peoples have taken up? That kind of opinion is a jumble, and it stops at the city limits.

With the philosophers everything is uncertain, because they vary; with the poets everything is worthless, because it is immoral; with the nations everything is irregular and confused, because it rests on nothing but their own choosing. But the nature of God — if it is the true God you are concerned with — is of so definite a character that it cannot be derived from uncertain speculations, or contaminated with worthless fables, or determined by jumbled conceits. It ought to be regarded, as it really is, as certain, entire, and universal, because it is in truth the property of all. So what god am I to believe in? One gauged by vague suspicion? One that a tall tale has published abroad? One that a community has invented? It would be a far worthier thing to believe in no god at all than in one that is open to doubt, or full of shame, or picked out at somebody’s whim.

But among you the authority of the physical philosophers is defended as the special property of wisdom. You mean, of course, that pure and simple wisdom of the philosophers which attests its own weakness chiefly by the variety of opinion that comes of not knowing the truth. Now what wise man is so devoid of truth as not to know that God is the Father and Lord of wisdom itself, and of truth? Besides, there is that divine saying uttered by Solomon: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” But fear has its origin in knowledge; how will a man fear what he knows nothing about? So the man who has the fear of God — even if he is ignorant of everything else, so long as he has reached the knowledge and truth of God — will possess wisdom full and complete. [g]

This is exactly what philosophy has never clearly seen. In their inquisitive appetite for every kind of learning, the philosophers may seem to have gone through the sacred Scriptures themselves for the sake of their great age, and to have derived some of their opinions from them. But they tampered with what they took, and that proves they either despised the Scriptures altogether or did not fully believe them — for in other cases too the simplicity of truth is made to totter by the over-scrupulousness of a belief that will not hold still. And so, as their desire of glory grew, they changed what they had found into products of their own minds. The result is that even what they had discovered degenerated into uncertainty, and out of one or two drops of truth there arose a perfect flood of argumentation.

For once they had simply found God, they did not expound him as they found him; they disputed instead about his quality, his nature, and even about where he lives. The Platonists held that he cares about the world’s affairs, as the one who arranges them and judges them. The Epicureans regarded him as unconcerned and idle, and, so to speak, a nobody. The Stoics believed he was outside the world; the Platonists, inside it. A God they had admitted so imperfectly they could neither know nor fear; and so they could not be wise, since they had wandered away from “the beginning of wisdom,” which is “the fear of God.”

There is no shortage of proof that among the philosophers there was not only ignorance about the divinity but actual doubt. Diogenes, asked what was taking place in heaven, answered, “I have never been up there.” Asked again whether there were any gods at all, he replied, “I do not know. Only that it is useful that there should be gods.” When Croesus inquired of Thales of Miletus what he thought about the gods, Thales took several extensions of time to consider, and then answered with one word: “Nothing.” Even Socrates denied those gods of yours with an air of certainty — and then with the same certainty asked that a cock be sacrificed to Aesculapius. And so, when philosophy is caught in such uncertainty and inconsistency in its practice of defining God, what “fear” could it possibly have had of one it was not competent to determine clearly?

We have been told, then, that the world is god. That is what the physical class of theologizers make it out to be, and they have handed down such views about the gods that Dionysius the Stoic divides them into three kinds. The first, he supposes, takes in the gods that are most obvious, such as the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars; the next, those that are not apparent, such as Neptune; the remaining one, those that are said to have passed from the human state to the divine, such as Hercules and Amphiaraus. In the same way Arcesilaus makes a threefold form of the divinity — the Olympian, the Astral, and the Titanian — sprung from Caelus and Terra; and from these, through Saturn and Ops, came Neptune, Jupiter, and Orcus, and their whole progeny. Xenocrates of the Academy makes a twofold division, the Olympian and the Titanian, which descend from Caelus and Terra. Most of the Egyptians believe there are four gods: the Sun and the Moon, the Heaven and the Earth.

Democritus conjectures that the gods arose along with all the fire above; Zeno too will have it that their nature resembles fire. That is why Varro also makes fire the soul of the world: in the world fire governs all things, just as the soul does in us. But all this is most absurd. For he says that while it is in us we have existence, and as soon as it has left us we die. On that showing, then, every time fire quits the world in a flash of lightning, the world comes to its end.

From these developments of opinion we can see that your physical class of philosophers is driven to the necessity of contending that the elements are gods, since it alleges that the other gods sprang from them — and only from gods could gods be born. We shall have to examine those other gods more fully in the proper place, in the mythical section of the poets. But since we must meanwhile treat of them in their connection with the present class, we shall probably succeed, once we turn to the gods themselves, in showing even from this class that beings said to be sprung from the elements can by no means appear to be gods. That gives us a presumption at once that the elements are not gods, since what is born of the elements is not god. In the same way, when we show that the elements are not gods, we get by the law of natural relationship a presumption that beings whose parents — the elements — are not gods cannot rightly be maintained to be gods themselves. It is a settled point that a god is born of a god, and that what lacks divinity is born of what is not divine. [q]

Now so far as this world your philosophers discuss — I use the term for the universe in its most comprehensive sense — contains the elements, ministering to them as its component parts (for whatever its own condition may be, the same of course will be the condition of its elements and constituent portions), it must have been formed either by some being, on Plato’s enlightened view, or by none at all, on the harsh opinion of Epicurus. And since it was formed, and so had a beginning, it must also have an end. So a thing that at one time, before its beginning, had no existence, and that by and by, after its end, will cease to have any, cannot by any possibility seem to be a god: it wants the one character divinity must have, eternity, which is reckoned to be without beginning and without end.

If, on the other hand, the world is in no way formed, and therefore ought to be accounted divine — since as divine it is subject neither to a beginning nor to an end of itself — then how is it that some assign generation to the elements, which they hold to be gods, when the Stoics deny that anything can be born of a god? And how is it that they wish those beings they suppose to be born of the elements to be regarded as gods, when they deny that a god can be born at all? Whatever must hold good of the universe will have to be predicated of the elements as well — of heaven, of earth, of the stars, and of fire, which Varro has vainly proposed that you should believe to be gods and the parents of gods, contrary to that very generation and nativity he had declared impossible in a god.

This same Varro had shown that the earth and the stars were living, ensouled things. But if that is the case, they must also be mortal, according to the condition of ensouled nature. The soul is evidently immortal, but that attribute is limited to it alone; it does not extend to what it is associated with, that is, the body. And nobody will deny that the elements have body, since we both touch them and are touched by them, and we see certain bodies fall down out of them. So if they are ensouled, then — laying aside the account of a soul, as befits their condition as bodies — they are mortal, and certainly not immortal.

And where does Varro get the idea that the elements are ensouled? Because, if you please, the elements have motion. Then, to anticipate the objection that many other things have motion — wheels, carriages, various other machines — he volunteers the statement that he believes only such things to be ensouled as move of themselves, without any apparent mover or impeller from outside, like the visible turner of the wheel, or driver of the carriage, or operator of the machine. If, then, they are not ensouled, they have no motion of their own. But in alleging a power that is not apparent, he points to the very thing it was his duty to go looking for: the creator and controller of the motion. It does not at once follow that because we do not see a thing we should believe it does not exist. Rather, what one does not see has to be investigated all the more profoundly, in order to understand better the character of what is apparent.

Besides, if you admit the existence only of those things that appear, and suppose them to exist simply because they appear, how is it that you also admit to be gods things that do not appear? And if things that have no existence can seem to have it, why may things that do not seem to have it not exist all the same — such as the Mover of the heavenly bodies? Granted, then, that things are ensouled because they move of themselves, and that they move of themselves when they are not moved by another: it still does not follow that they must straightway be gods, either because they are ensouled or because they move of themselves. Otherwise what is to prevent every animal whatever from being accounted a god, moving as they all do of themselves? This, to be sure, is allowed among the Egyptians — but their superstitious vanity has another basis.

Some affirm that the gods were called θεοί because the verbs θέειν and σείεσθαι mean to run and to be moved. That term, then, indicates no majesty at all, since it is derived from running and motion and not from any dominion of godhead. But the supreme God whom we worship is also designated Θεός, and no course or motion appears in him, because he is not visible to anyone. Clearly, then, that word must have had some other derivation, and what was discovered in it was the property of divinity innate in himself. Dismissing that ingenious interpretation, then, it is far more likely that the gods were not called θεοί from running and motion, but that the term was borrowed from the designation of the true God — so that you gave the name θεοί to the gods you had likewise forged for yourselves. [v]

There is plain proof that this is the case in the fact that you actually give the common appellation θεοί to all those gods of yours, in whom no attribute of course or motion is indicated at all. So when you call them θεοί and call them immovable with equal readiness, there is a deviation both from the meaning of the word and from the idea of godhead, which is set aside outright if it is measured by the notion of course and motion. But if that sacred name is peculiarly significant of deity, and is simply true and not a forced interpretation in the case of the true God, and only transferred in a borrowed sense to those other objects you choose to call gods, then you ought to show us that there is also a community of character between them, so that their common designation may rightly depend on their union of essence.

But the true God, on the sole ground that he is not an object of sense, is incapable of being compared with those false deities that can be seen and sensed — to say sensed is enough. That amounts to a clear statement of the difference between an obscure proof and a manifest one. Since the elements are obvious to all, and God, on the contrary, is visible to none, how will it be in your power to pass from the part you have not seen to a decision about the objects you do see? Since, therefore, you have no way of combining them in your perception or your reason, why do you combine them in name, with the purpose of combining them also in power?

See how even Zeno separates the matter of the world from God. He says that God has percolated through matter like honey through the comb. God, therefore, and Matter are two words and two things. Proportioned to the difference of the words is the diversity of the things; and the condition of matter follows its designation. Now if matter is not God, because its very appellation teaches us so, how can the things inherent in matter — that is, the elements — be regarded as gods, since the component members cannot possibly be of a different kind from the body? But what concern have I with physiological conceits? It were better for a man’s mind to ascend above the state of the world than to stoop down to uncertain speculations.

Plato’s form for the world was round. The square, angular shape that others had conceived it to be, he rounded off — with compasses, I suppose — from his laboring to have it believed simply to be without a beginning. Epicurus, however, who had said, “What is above us is nothing to us,” wished notwithstanding to have a peep at the sky, and found the sun to be a foot across. Thus far, you must confess, men were niggardly even with celestial objects. In process of time their ambitious conceptions advanced, and so the sun too enlarged its disk; and the Peripatetics accordingly marked it out as a larger world.

Now, pray tell me, what wisdom is there in this hankering after conjectural speculations? What proof is afforded us, for all the strong confidence of its assertions, by the useless affectation of a scrupulous curiosity, tricked out with an artful show of language? It therefore served Thales of Miletus quite right when, star-gazing as he walked with all the eyes he had, he had the mortification of falling into a well, and was unmercifully twitted by an Egyptian, who said to him, “Is it because you found nothing on earth to look at that you think you ought to confine your gaze to the sky?” His fall, then, is a figurative picture of the philosophers — of those, I mean, who persist in applying their studies to a vain purpose, indulging a stupid curiosity about natural objects when they ought rather to be directing it toward their Creator and Governor.