Why the World Was Made

I have spoken about the things that are forbidden. Now I will say briefly what things are commanded. Standing close beside doing no harm is pity. The first inflicts no injury; the second does good. The first begins justice; the second completes it. Since human nature is feebler than that of the other animals, which God has furnished with the means of inflicting violence and with defenses for warding it off, he gave us the feeling of pity, so that we would place the whole protection of our life in helping one another. For if we are created by one God and descended from one man, and are joined in that way by the law of blood, we ought on that account to love every human being. So we are bound not only to hold back from doing an injury, but not even to avenge one done to us, so that there may be in us a complete refusal to do harm. That is why God commands us to pray always, even for our enemies. [a]

We ought, then, to be creatures fitted for company and for common life, protecting one another by giving and receiving help. Our frailty is open to many accidents and troubles. Expect that what you see happen to someone else may happen to you as well. That is what will finally rouse you to give aid — if you take on the mind of the man who, sunk in troubles, is begging you for help. If anyone is in need of food, let us give it. If we meet someone naked, let us clothe him. If someone is suffering injury from a man more powerful than himself, let us rescue him. Let our house stand open to strangers, and to anyone who needs shelter. Let orphans not go without our defense, or widows without our protection. To ransom prisoners is a great work of pity, and so is visiting and comforting the sick who are poor. If the helpless or strangers die, we should not allow them to lie unburied.

These are the works and the duties of pity, and anyone who takes them up will be offering God a true and acceptable sacrifice. This is the offering better suited to be made to God, who is not won over by the blood of a sheep but by a man’s devotion — and God, because he is just, holds a man to his own law and his own terms. He shows mercy to the man he sees being merciful; he is immovable toward the man he sees being harsh to people who beg him. So, to be able to do all these things that please God, money must be counted as nothing and transferred instead to the treasuries of heaven, where no thief can break in, no rust eat it away, and no tyrant take it, but where it can be kept for us under God’s own guard, as our eternal wealth.

Faithfulness too is a great part of justice, and it should above all be kept by us, who bear the very name of faith — kept above all in the worship of God, because God comes before a human being and is to be preferred to him. If it is a glorious thing to undergo death on behalf of friends, of parents, of children — that is, on behalf of a human being — and if the man who has done it wins lasting memory and praise, how much more so on behalf of God, who is able to give back eternal life in return for a death that lasts a moment? So when a necessity of this kind comes upon us, and we are compelled to turn aside from God and go over to the rites of the nations, no fear and no terror should move us from guarding the faith handed down to us. Let God be before our eyes and in our heart; by his help within us we can overcome the pain of our flesh and the torments applied to our body. Then let us think of nothing but the rewards of undying life. And so, even if our limbs are torn in pieces or burned, we will easily endure everything the madness of a tyrant’s cruelty can contrive against us. Last of all, let us strive to meet death itself not unwillingly and not in fear, but willingly and without flinching, as men who know what glory we are about to have in God’s presence, having triumphed over the world and coming into what was promised us, and with what good things and how great a happiness we will be repaid for these brief evils of punishment and the injuries of this life. But if the chance for that glory is not given, faith will have its reward even in time of peace. [f]

So let faithfulness be kept in every duty of life, and let it be kept in marriage. It is not enough if you keep away from another man’s bed, or from the brothel. Let the man who has a wife look for nothing further; content with her alone, let him guard the secrets of the marriage bed chaste and undefiled. For in God’s sight he is just as much an adulterer, and just as unclean, who throws off the yoke and plays in strange pleasure, whether with a free woman or with a slave. A woman is bound by the ties of chastity not to desire any other man; let the husband be bound by the same law, since God has joined husband and wife in the union of one body. That is why he commanded that a wife is not to be put away unless she is convicted of adultery, and that the bond of the marriage agreement is never to be dissolved unless unfaithfulness has already broken it. And this is added as well, to make chastity complete: not only the act but even the thought must be absent. It is plain that the mind is defiled by the desire, though the desire is never carried out; and so a just man ought neither to do, nor to want to do, what is unjust. So the conscience must be cleansed, for God, who cannot be deceived, inspects it. The breast must be cleared of every stain, so that it may be a temple of God — lit not by the gleam of gold or ivory, but by the brightness of faith and purity.

But it is true that all these things are hard for a human being, and the terms of his frailty do not permit anyone to be without a blemish. So the last remedy is this: that we fall back on repentance, which does not hold the least place among the virtues, because it is a man setting himself right. When we have happened to fail, either in what we did or in what we said, we can come at once to a better mind, admit that we have done wrong, and beg pardon from God — which, in his mercy, he will not refuse to anyone except those who go on in their error. Great is the help, great the comfort of repentance. It is the healing of wounds and offenses; it is hope; it is the harbor of safety. The man who takes it away cuts off his own road to salvation, because no one can be so just that repentance is never necessary for him. But even when there is no offense of ours, we still ought to confess to God, to ask pardon for our faults, and to give thanks even in bad times. Let us always offer our Lord this obedience. Humility is dear and lovely in God’s sight; for since he receives the sinner who confesses his fault sooner than the just man who is haughty, how much more will he receive the just man who confesses, and raise him up in his heavenly kingdom in proportion to his humility. [j]

These are the things a worshiper of God ought to hold out to him; these are the offerings, this is the sacrifice that is acceptable; this is true worship, when a man lays the pledges of his own mind on God’s altar. That supreme Majesty takes delight in a worshiper like this, receives him as a son, and gives him the reward that fits: immortality. I must speak about immortality now, and refute the conviction of those who think the soul is destroyed together with the body. Because they neither knew God nor were able to make out the mystery of the world, they did not even understand what a human being is, or what the soul is. How could they see what follows, when they had not grasped the main point? So, in denying that there is any providence, they plainly denied that there is a God, who is the fountain and source of all things. It followed that they had to say either that the things which exist have always existed, or that they were produced of their own accord, or that they arose out of a meeting together of minute seeds.

It cannot be said that a thing which exists and can be seen has always existed, for it cannot exist of itself without some beginning. Nor can anything be produced of its own accord, because there is no nature without something that generates it. And how could there be first seeds, since seeds arise from things and things in turn arise from seeds? So there is no seed that has no origin. And so it came about that when they supposed the world was produced by no providence, they did not suppose that man was produced by any plan either. But if no plan was used in the making of man, then the soul cannot be immortal.

Others, on the other hand, thought there was one God, that the world was made by him and made for the sake of men, and that souls are immortal. Their opinions were true, and yet they did not see the causes, or the reasons, or the outcomes of this divine work and design, so as to complete the whole mystery of the truth and hold it within some boundary. What they were not able to do, because they did not hold the truth right through, must be done by us, who know it on God’s own announcement.

So let us consider what the plan was in making a work this great and this immense. God made the world, as Plato thought; but Plato does not show why he made it. Because he is good, Plato says, and envies no one, he made the things that are good. But we can see that in the system of nature there are both good things and evil ones. Some perverse person could stand up — an atheist like Theodorus — and answer Plato that it is because God is evil that he made the things that are evil. How will Plato refute him? If God made the things that are good, where did such enormous evils burst out from, which for the most part even get the better of the good ones? They were contained in matter, Plato says. Then if evil things were there, good things were there too; so either God made nothing at all, or, if he made only the good ones, the evils that were not made are more eternal than the goods that had a beginning. In that case the things that once began will have an end, and the things that always existed will last. So evils would be the superior thing. But if they cannot be superior, they cannot be more eternal either. So either they always existed and God has been idle, or both of them flowed from one source — for it is more in keeping with reason that God made all things than that he made nothing. [n]

So on Plato’s view the same God is both good, because he made good things, and evil, because he made evil things. And if that cannot be so, it is clear that this is not why the world was made by God — not because he is good. For he included all things in it, both good and evil; and he made nothing for its own sake, but on account of something else. A house is built not merely so that there may be a house, but so that it may take in and shelter someone to live in it. In the same way a ship is built not merely so that it may look like a ship, but so that men can sail in it. Jars, too, are made not merely so that jars may exist, but so that they may hold the things we need for use. In the same way God must have made the world for some use. The Stoics say it was made for the sake of men, and rightly so, for men enjoy all the good things the world contains in itself. But they do not explain why men themselves were made, or what advantage Providence, the maker of all things, has in them.

Plato also states that souls are immortal. But why, or in what manner, or at what time, or through whose agency they come to immortality; what the nature of that great mystery is; why men who are going to be immortal are born mortal first, and then, when they have run out the course of their time here and laid aside the covering of their frail bodies, are carried over into that everlasting happiness — of all this he understands nothing. And in the end he did not explain the judgment of God, or the distinction between the just and the unjust. He supposed instead that souls which have plunged themselves into crimes are condemned only this far: that they are born again in the lower animals and pay for their offenses that way, until they come back once more into human form; that this is always going on; and that there is no end to the changing over. To my mind he is bringing in a kind of game, like something out of a dream, in which there seems to be neither plan, nor government by God, nor any design at all.

Now I will say what that chief point is which not even the men who spoke the truth were able to tie together, bringing the causes and the reasons into a single view. The world was made by God so that men might be born. Men are born so that they may acknowledge God as a Father, and in that is wisdom. They acknowledge him so that they may worship him, and in that is justice. They worship him so that they may receive the reward of immortality. They receive immortality so that they may serve God forever. Do you see how closely the first links are joined to the middle ones, and the middle to the last? Let us look at them one at a time and see whether they hold together. [s]

God made the world on account of man. Anyone who does not see this is not much different from an animal. Who but a human being looks up at the sky? Who views the sun with wonder, or the stars, or all the works of God? Who inhabits the earth? Who receives its fruit? Who has the fish in his power, or the winged creatures, or the four-footed beasts, except man? So God made all things on account of man, because all things have turned out to be for man’s use.

The philosophers saw this much, but they did not see what follows from it: that he made man himself on his own account. It was fitting, and dutiful, and necessary that, since God contrived such great works for man’s sake and gave him so much honor and so much power that he should hold rule in the world, man should in turn acknowledge God, the giver of such great benefits, who made the world itself on his account, and should pay him the worship and honor owed to him. Here Plato went wrong. Here he lost the truth he had laid hold of at the start, when he said nothing about the worship of the God he had admitted to be the framer and parent of all things, and did not understand that man is bound to God by the ties of piety — which is where religion gets its very name — and that this is the one thing for the sake of which souls become immortal. He did perceive that they are eternal, but he did not come down to that opinion by the regular steps. With the middle arguments taken away, he fell into the truth as though over some sheer cliff, and he went no further, because he had found the truth by accident and not by reasoning. So God is to be worshiped, so that through religion, which is also justice, a man may receive immortality from God. There is no other reward for a devoted mind; and since that mind is itself unseen, the unseen God can repay it with nothing but a reward that is unseen.