One Ruler, Not Many

So let our work begin with the question that comes next and belongs with the first one: is the universe governed by the power of one God, or of many? No one who has any intelligence and stops to think can fail to see that one Being both made everything and governs it by the same power with which he made it. For why would many be needed to hold up the government of the universe — unless we happen to think that if there were more than one, each would have less might and strength? And that is exactly what people who hold that there are many gods bring about. Those gods have to be weak, since not one of them could hold up the government of so vast a mass on his own, without help from the rest. But God, who is the eternal Mind, is beyond doubt excellent, complete and perfect in every part. And if that is true, he must be one. For a power or excellence that is complete keeps its own proper stability. Count a thing solid when nothing can be taken away from it, and perfect when nothing can be added to it. [a]

Who can doubt that a king who governed the whole world would be the most powerful of kings? And rightly so, since everything that exists anywhere would belong to him, and all resources from every quarter would be gathered into him alone. But if more than one divide the government of the world between them, each will certainly have less power and strength, since each has to keep inside the share assigned to him. In the same way, if there is more than one god, each will count for less, because the others hold the same power in themselves. And by its nature excellence is more perfect in the one who has the whole of it than in the one who has only a small part of the whole. So God, if he is perfect — as he ought to be — cannot be other than one, precisely because he is perfect, so that all things may be in him. The excellences and powers of the gods, then, must be weaker, since each must lack exactly as much as is in the others; and so the more of them there are, the less powerful each will be.

And why even mention that this highest power, this divine energy, cannot be divided at all? For whatever can be divided must also be liable to destruction. But destruction is far from God, since he is incorruptible and eternal; so it follows that the divine power cannot be divided. God is therefore one, if what holds so great a power can be nothing else. And yet those who think there are many gods say that the gods have divided the various offices among themselves. We will take all of that up in its proper place. For now I state only what belongs to the subject in hand. If they have divided the offices among themselves, we come back to the same point: no one of them can do the work of all. And a god who cannot govern everything while the rest stand idle is not perfect. So it turns out that governing the universe calls for the perfect excellence of one rather than the imperfect powers of many.

Anyone who imagines that a thing of such size cannot be governed by one Being is mistaken. He has not grasped how great the might and power of the divine majesty are, if he thinks that the one God who was able to create the universe is unable to govern what he created. But let him picture in his mind the sheer immensity of that divine work — how before it there was nothing, and yet by the power and wisdom of God it was made out of nothing, a work that only one could have begun and finished. Then he will understand that what one has established is far more easily governed by one.

Someone may say that a work as immense as the universe could not even have been built except by many. But however many and however great he takes them to be — whatever size, power, excellence, and majesty he assigns to the many — I assign all of it to one and say that it exists in one, so that these qualities are in him in a measure that can neither be imagined nor put into words. And since on this subject we fail both in perception and in speech — for the human heart cannot take in the light of so great an understanding, and a mortal tongue cannot explain such great matters — this is exactly what we ought to understand and to say.

I can see, again, what may be urged on the other side: that those many gods are each such as we hold the one God to be. But that is impossible, because the power of each of these gods will be unable to go any further, since the power of the others meets it and blocks it. Either each must be unable to pass his own limits, or, if he does pass them, he must drive another out of his territory. People who believe in many gods do not see that some of them might want the opposite of what others want, and that quarreling and strife would follow — as Homer showed the gods at war among themselves, some wanting Troy taken and others against it.

So the universe must be ruled by the will of one. Unless power over the separate parts is referred back to one and the same providence, the whole itself will not be able to hold together, since each ruler takes care of nothing beyond what belongs to him in particular — just as a war could not be waged without a single general in command. If one army had as many generals as it has legions, cohorts, wedge formations, and cavalry squadrons, then first of all the army could never be drawn up in battle order, since every one of them would refuse the dangerous post; and it could not easily be governed or held in hand either, because each would follow his own plans, and the clash of plans would do it more harm than good. In the same way, in this government of the natural order, unless there is one to whom the care of the whole is referred, everything will come apart and fall into ruin.

To say that the universe is governed by the will of many amounts to saying that there are many minds in one body. The body’s parts have many different jobs, so one might suppose a separate mind governs each separate sense; and the same for the many feelings that move us to anger, or desire, or joy, or fear, or pity, so that a mind might be supposed at work in each of them. Anyone who said that would look as though he lacked even the one mind he has. But if in one body a single mind governs so many things and attends to the whole at once, why should anyone suppose that the universe cannot be governed by one, and yet can be governed by more than one?

And because the defenders of many gods are aware of this, they say that the gods preside over separate offices and separate parts in such a way that there is still one chief ruler over them. On that principle, then, the rest will not be gods at all, but attendants and servants whom that one mighty and all-powerful ruler appointed to these posts; and they themselves will be subject to his authority and his orders. So if they are not all equal to one another, they are not all gods, since what serves and what rules cannot be the same thing. For if “God” is a title of the highest power, then he must be incorruptible, perfect, incapable of suffering, and subject to no other being. So those whom necessity compels to obey the one greatest God are not gods. But those who hold this opinion are not deceived for no reason, and we will lay bare the cause of the error shortly. For now, let us prove the oneness of the divine power from testimonies.

The prophets, and there were a great many of them, proclaim and declare the one God. Filled with the inspiration of the one God, they foretold what was coming, and their voices agree and harmonize. But people who do not know the truth think these prophets are not to be believed; they say those voices were not divine but human. So then — because the prophets proclaim one God, they must have been either madmen or frauds. But in fact we see that what they predicted has come true, and is coming true daily; and their foresight, agreeing as it does on one view, shows that no fit of madness drove them. For who with a deranged mind could — I will not say predict the future — even speak coherently? Were they frauds, then, who said such things? Nothing was more utterly foreign to their character than a scheme of deceit, since they themselves held other people back from every kind of fraud. For God sent them precisely to be heralds of his majesty and to correct human wickedness. [f]

Besides, the urge to make things up and tell lies belongs to people who covet riches and are greedy for gain — a temper far removed from those holy men. They carried out the task entrusted to them with such disregard for everything life requires that they not only stored up nothing for the future, they did not even work for the day, but were content with the food God supplied and nothing laid by. And they got no gain out of it; they endured torture and death instead. For the rules of righteousness taste bitter to the wicked and to people whose lives are unholy. So those whose sins the prophets brought to light and forbade tortured and killed them with the greatest cruelty. Men who had no desire for gain, then, had neither the inclination to deceive nor a motive for it. And why even mention that some of them were rulers, or even kings, men on whom no suspicion of greed or fraud could possibly fall — and yet they proclaimed the one God with the same prophetic foresight as the rest?