Why Man Was Made Mortal

Now let me give the reason why God made man himself. If the philosophers had known this, they would either have held on to the things they had found to be true, or would not have fallen into their worst errors. This is the main thing; this is the point everything turns on. If a man does not have it, the truth slips away from him altogether. In short, this is why their reckoning never comes out even. If this had dawned on them, if they had known the whole hidden purpose of man, the Academy would never have been able to cut their arguments down from the flank, and all philosophy with them. So then: just as God did not make the world for his own sake, since he has no need of what it offers, but for the sake of man, who has the use of it, in the same way he made man himself for his own sake. Epicurus asks: “What good is man to God, that he should make him for his own sake?” This good: that there might be someone to understand his works; someone able both to admire with his mind and to say out loud what foresight went into their arrangement, what order into their making, what power into their finishing. And the sum of all of it is that he should worship God. For the man who understands these things worships him. He follows him with the reverence owed to the Maker of all things, as his own true Father, and he measures the greatness of his majesty by the invention, the beginning, and the completion of his works. [a]

What plainer argument can be brought forward that God made the world for the sake of man, and man for his own sake, than this: that of all living creatures man alone has been shaped so that his eyes are turned toward heaven, his face toward God, his look in company with his Parent — as though God had reached out his hand, raised man up from the ground, and lifted him to the contemplation of himself? “Then what does the worship man pays confer on God, who is blessed and in need of nothing? Or if he honored man so far as to make the world for his sake, to furnish him with wisdom, to make him lord of everything alive, and to love him as a son — why did he make him subject to death and decay? Why did he lay the one he loved open to every evil? It was fitting that man should be happy, as one closely joined to God, and everlasting as God is everlasting, since he was formed for the worship and contemplation of him.”

I have taught these things for the most part here and there in the earlier books. Still, since the subject now particularly calls for it — because I have undertaken to discuss the happy life — they must be set out more carefully and fully, so that God’s arrangement, and his work and his will, may be known. He was always able, by his own immortal Spirit, to produce countless souls, as he produced the angels, for whom immortality exists without any danger or fear of evils. Yet he devised a work beyond words: how he might create an endless multitude of souls, and how, joining them at the start to frail and feeble bodies, he might place them halfway between good and evil. His purpose was to set virtue before them, made as they were out of both natures — so that they would not arrive at immortality by a soft and easy way of life, but would reach that unspeakable reward of eternal life only through the greatest difficulty and hard labor. So, in order to clothe them with limbs that were heavy and open to injury, since they could not exist in the empty middle space with the weight and heaviness of the body sinking downward, he decided that a home and a dwelling place should be built for them first. And so with unspeakable energy and power he contrived the surpassing works of the world; and having hung the light elements on high and pressed the heavy ones down to the depths below, he made the heavenly things firm and set the earthly ones in place. There is no need to follow each point out separately now, since I discussed them all together in the second book.

So he placed lights in the heaven, whose regularity and brightness and motion were fitted exactly to the advantage of living beings. He gave the earth, which he designed as their dwelling place, the fruitfulness to bring forth and produce all kinds of things, so that with a plenty of fruit and green plants it might supply food according to the nature and the requirements of each kind. Then, when he had completed everything that belonged to the condition of the world, he formed man out of the earth itself, which he had prepared for him from the beginning as a home. That is, he clothed and covered man’s spirit with an earthly body, so that, being put together out of different and opposing materials, he might be open to good and evil. And as the earth itself is fruitful for bringing forth grain, so the body of man, which was taken from the earth, received the power of producing offspring — so that, since he was formed of a fragile substance and could not last forever, he might depart when the span of his temporal life was over, and by an unbroken succession renew the frail and feeble thing he carried.

Why, then, did God make him frail and mortal, when he had built the world for his sake? First, so that a countless number of living beings might be produced, and so that he might fill the whole earth with a multitude. Next, so that he might set virtue before man — that is, the enduring of evils and of hard labor, by which he might be able to win the reward of immortality. For since man is made of two parts, body and soul, one of them earthly and the other heavenly, two lives have been assigned to man: the one temporal, appointed for the body; the other everlasting, belonging to the soul. We received the first at our birth; we reach the second by striving, so that immortality would not come to man without any difficulty. That earthly life is like the body, and so it has an end; this heavenly one is like the soul, and so it has no limit. We received the first while we knew nothing of it, this second knowingly; for it is given to virtue, not to nature, because God wanted us to win life for ourselves within life.

This is why he has given us this present life: so that we may either lose that true and eternal life by our vices, or earn it by virtue. The chief good is not contained in this bodily life, since, just as it was given to us by divine necessity, so it will again be destroyed by divine necessity. What has an end, then, does not contain the chief good. But the chief good is contained in that spiritual life which we get for ourselves, because it cannot hold evil and cannot have an end. Nature and the way the body is built are an argument for this. Other animals lean toward the ground, because they are earthly and are incapable of the immortality that comes from heaven; but man stands upright and looks toward heaven, because immortality is set before him — though it does not come to him unless God gives it. Otherwise there would be no difference between the just and the unjust, since every man who is born would become immortal. Immortality, then, is not something that simply follows from nature. It is the reward and repayment of virtue. Finally, a man does not walk upright as soon as he is born, but at first on all fours, because the nature of his body and of this present life is something we share with the dumb animals. Afterward, when his strength is settled, he raises himself, and his tongue is loosened so that he speaks clearly, and he stops being a dumb animal. This argument teaches that man is born mortal, but afterward becomes immortal, when he begins to live in accordance with God — that is, to follow justice, which is summed up in the worship of God, since God raised man to a view of the heaven and of himself. And this takes place when a man, cleansed in the heavenly washing, puts off his infancy along with all the pollution of his past life, and, having received an increase of divine strength, becomes a perfect and complete man.

Therefore, because God has set virtue before man, the soul and the body, though they are bound together, are contrary to one another and work against each other. The things that are good for the soul are evil to the body: keeping clear of riches, ruling out pleasures, thinking little of pain and of death. In the same way the things that are good for the body are evil to the soul: craving and lust, by which riches are wanted, and the enjoyment of every kind of pleasure, by which the soul is drained of strength and snuffed out. So the just and wise man must necessarily be caught up in every kind of evil, since courage wins its victory over evils; but the unjust man is caught up in riches, in honors, in power. These goods belong to the body and are earthly, and the men who hold them live an earthly life as well, and are unable to reach immortality, because they have given themselves over to the pleasures that are virtue’s enemies.

So this temporal life ought to be under that eternal life, as the body is under the soul. Whoever prefers the life of the soul, then, must think little of the life of the body; and there is no other way for him to strive after what is highest unless he has thought little of what is lowest. But the man who has taken up the life of the body, and has turned his cravings downward to the earth, is unable to reach that higher life. The man who prefers to live well for eternity will live badly for a time, and will be subject to every trouble and labor as long as he is on the earth, so that he may have divine and heavenly comfort. And the man who prefers to live well for a time will live badly for eternity, for he will be condemned by God’s sentence to eternal punishment, because he has preferred earthly goods to heavenly ones. This, then, is why God seeks to be worshipped, and to be honored by man as a Father: so that man may have virtue and wisdom, which alone produce immortality. For since no one but God is able to give that immortality, seeing that he alone possesses it, he will grant to a man’s devotion, with which he has honored God, this reward: to be blessed for all eternity, and to be forever in the presence of God and in the company of God.

And no one can take shelter behind the excuse that the fault belongs to the one who made both good and evil. Why did he want evil to exist, if he hated it? Why did he not make good only, so that no one would sin and no one commit evil? I have explained this in almost all the earlier books, and touched on it lightly above; still it has to be brought up again and again, because the whole matter turns on this point. There could be no virtue unless he had made things contrary to each other, and the power of good cannot show itself at all except by comparison with evil. So evil is nothing but the explanation of good. Take evil away, then, and good must be taken away with it. If you cut off your left hand or foot, your body will not be whole, and life itself will not stay the same. For the framework of the body to be properly adjusted, the left limbs are joined to the right in the most suitable way. In the same way, if you make all the game pieces alike, no one will play. If you give the circus one color only, no one will think it worth watching, since all the pleasure of the races has been taken away. The man who first set up the games favored one color, but he brought in another as a rival, so that there would be a contest, and some taking of sides in the show. So God, when he was fixing what was good and giving virtue, appointed their opposites as well, for them to contend with. If there is no enemy and no fight, there is no victory. Take away the contest, and even virtue is nothing. How many contests men have with one another, and by what a variety of skills they are carried on! Yet no one would be counted outstanding in bravery, in speed, or in excellence, if he had no opponent to compete with; and where victory is missing, glory and the prize of victory must be missing along with it. So, in order to strengthen virtue itself by constant exercise and to make it perfect through its struggle with evils, he gave both together, because each of the two without the other is unable to keep its force. And so there is diversity, and the whole system of truth depends on it.

It does not escape me what more skillful people may urge against this here. If good cannot exist without evil, how can you say that the first man, before he had offended God, lived in the exercise of good only, or that hereafter he will live in the exercise of good only? I must look into this question; I left it out in the earlier books so that I might fill the subject out here. I have said above that the nature of man is made up of opposing elements. The body, since it is earth, can be laid hold of, lasts only a while, has no feeling of its own, and is dark. But the soul, since it is from heaven, is fine and unsubstantial, everlasting, endowed with feeling, and full of light; and because these qualities are opposed to one another, it follows of necessity that man is subject to good and evil. Good is assigned to the soul, because it cannot be dissolved; evil to the body, because it is frail. Since, then, the body and the soul are connected and united together, good and evil must necessarily hold together, and they cannot be separated from one another except when the body and the soul are separated. Finally, the knowledge of good and of evil was given to the first man at one and the same time; and when he understood it, he was immediately driven out of the holy place where there is no evil. For while he had to do with good only, he did not know that this itself was good. But once he had received the knowledge of good and evil, it was no longer lawful for him to remain in that place of happiness, and he was banished into this common world, so that he might experience both of the things whose nature he had come to know at once. It is plain, therefore, that wisdom has been given to man so that he may tell good from evil — so that he may distinguish what is to his advantage from what is not, and what is useful from what is useless; so that he may have judgment and consideration about what he ought to guard against, what to want, what to avoid, and what to follow. Wisdom, then, cannot exist without evil; and that first father of the human race, as long as he had to do with good only, lived like an infant, knowing nothing of good and evil. But hereafter man must be both wise and happy without any evil — and that cannot take place as long as the soul is clothed with the dwelling of the body.

But when a separation has been made between the body and the soul, then evil will be parted from good; and as the body perishes and the soul remains, so evil will perish and good will remain. Then man, having received the garment of immortality, will be wise and free from evil, as God is. So the man who wishes that we should have to do with good only is really wishing above all that we should live without the body, which is where evil is. But if evil is taken away, then either wisdom, as I have said, or the body will be taken from man: wisdom, so that he may not know evil; the body, so that he may not feel it. As things are, since man is furnished with wisdom to know and with a body to perceive, God willed that both should exist together in this life, so that virtue and wisdom might be in agreement. So he placed man in the middle, between the two, so that he might be free to follow either good or evil. But he mixed into evil some things that look good — a variety of delightful enjoyments — so that by these enticements he might lead men on to the evil hidden underneath. And in the same way he mixed into good some things that look evil — hardships and miseries and hard labor — so that the soul, put off by their roughness and unpleasantness, might shrink back from the good hidden underneath. But here the work of wisdom is needed, so that we may see more with the mind than with the body; and very few are able to do it, because virtue is difficult and rarely found, while pleasure is common and public. So it necessarily happens that the wise man is reckoned a fool. While he looks for good things that are not seen, he lets the things that are seen slip out of his hands; and while he avoids evils that are not seen, he runs into evils that are before his eyes. That is what happens to us when we refuse neither torture nor death for the sake of the faith, since we are driven toward the greatest wickedness — to betray the faith, to deny the true God, and to sacrifice to dead and death-bearing gods. This is the reason God made man mortal and made him subject to evils, although he had framed the world for his sake: so that man might be capable of virtue, and so that his virtue might reward him with immortality. And virtue, as I have shown, is the worship of the true God.