Whether God Can Be Angry

I have often noticed, Donatus, that many people hold an opinion which some philosophers have also maintained: that God is not subject to anger. Either the divine nature is altogether kind, they say, and it does not suit his surpassing and excellent power to do harm to anyone; or else he takes no notice of us at all, so that no advantage comes to us from his goodness and no evil from his ill will. But the mistake these men make is a very great one, and it tends to overturn the whole condition of human life, so it has to be refuted — in case you too should be taken in, stirred by the authority of men who think themselves wise. [a]

Not that I am so arrogant as to boast that my own intelligence has grasped the truth. I follow the teaching of God, who alone is able to know hidden things and to reveal them. The philosophers, having no such teaching, imagined that the nature of things could be worked out by guesswork. That is impossible. The mind of a human being, shut up in the dark house of the body, is far removed from any clear sight of the truth; and this is exactly where the divine nature differs from the human — ignorance belongs to the one, knowledge to the other.

That is why we need some light to scatter the darkness spread over human thinking; for while we live in mortal flesh we cannot make out anything by our own senses. But the light of the human mind is God, and whoever has come to know him and has let him into his heart will recognize the mystery of the truth with an enlightened mind. Take God and heavenly instruction away, and everything is full of errors.

Socrates was the most learned of all the philosophers, and yet, in order to prove how ignorant the rest were — men who thought they had hold of something — he rightly said that he knew nothing, except one thing: that he knew nothing. He had understood that their learning had nothing certain in it and nothing true. Nor, as some suppose, was he only pretending to learning in order to refute other people; he had actually caught sight of the truth, in some measure. He testified even at his trial, as Plato records, that there is no such thing as human wisdom. He so despised and derided and threw aside the learning the philosophers boasted of in his day that he claimed the greatest learning was precisely this: that he had learned that he knew nothing.

So if there is no human wisdom, as Socrates taught and Plato handed down, it is clear that knowledge of the truth is divine and belongs to no one but God. God, then, must be known, since the truth is in him alone. He is the Parent of the world and the Framer of all things. He is not seen with the eyes and is barely made out by the mind, and his religion is commonly attacked in many ways by people who have been able neither to reach true wisdom nor to take in the plan of the great heavenly secret.

There are many steps by which the climb is made to the dwelling place of truth, and it is not easy for anyone to reach the top. When the eyes are dazzled by the brightness of the truth, those who cannot keep their footing roll back down to the level ground. Now the first step is to understand that the false religions are false, and to throw aside the godless worship of gods made by human hands. The second step is to perceive with the mind that there is one supreme God, whose power and providence made the world in the beginning and governs it still. The third step is to know his Servant and Messenger, whom he sent as his ambassador to the earth — by whose teaching we are set free from the error that had us tangled up, are shaped for the worship of the true God, and learn righteousness. From every one of these steps, as I have said, there is a quick and easy slide into a fall, unless the feet are planted firmly and stand unshaken. [d]

We see men shaken off the first step who, though they understand which things are false, still do not discover what is true; and though they have come to despise earthly and fragile images, they do not turn to the worship of God, of whom they know nothing. Instead they look with wonder at the elements of the universe and worship the sky, the earth, the sea, the sun, the moon and the other heavenly bodies. I have already corrected their ignorance in the second book of the Divine Institutes.

But I say that those fall from the second step who, though they understand that there is only one supreme God, are nevertheless trapped by the philosophers, taken in by false arguments, and end up holding views about that excellent majesty which are a long way from the truth. Some of them deny that God has any form; others think he is moved by no feeling at all, since every feeling is a mark of weakness, and weakness has no place in God. And those are thrown down from the third step who, though they know God’s Ambassador — who is also the Builder of the divine and immortal temple — either do not receive him, or receive him on other terms than faith requires. I have answered them in part in the fourth book of the work just named, and I will answer them more carefully later, when I begin to reply to all the sects, which have destroyed the truth by their arguing.

But now I will argue against those who fall from the second step and hold wrong views about the supreme God. Some say that he does no one a kindness and never becomes angry, but enjoys the advantages of his own immortality in security and quiet. Others do away with anger but leave God his kindness; for they think that a nature excelling in the highest virtue, while it ought not to wish anyone harm, ought also to wish people well. So all the philosophers agree about anger, and are at odds about kindness.

But so that my argument may come down in order to the subject I have set myself, I must make and follow a division of this kind, since anger and kindness are different things and opposed to each other. Either anger must be assigned to God and kindness taken away from him; or both alike must be taken away from him; or anger must be taken away and kindness assigned to him; or neither must be taken away. The nature of the case allows nothing else besides these, so the truth we are looking for must necessarily be found in one of them. Let us consider them one at a time, so that reason and orderly arrangement may lead us to the hiding place of truth.

First, no one has ever said this about God, that he is liable to anger only and is not moved by kindness. It does not suit God to be equipped with a power of that sort, by which he can injure and do harm but cannot help and do good. What resource, then, what hope of safety is held out to human beings, if God is the author of evils only? For if that were so, that venerable majesty would now be dragged out, not to the power of a judge, who is permitted to preserve and set free, but to the office of a torturer and an executioner.

But since we see that human affairs contain not only evils but also good things, it is plain that if God is the author of the evils, there must be another who does the opposite of what God does and gives us the good things. And if there is such a one, by what name is he to be called? Why should the one who injures us be better known to us than the one who benefits us? But if there can be no one besides God, then it is absurd and empty to suppose that the divine power — than which nothing is greater or better — is able to injure but unable to benefit. And in fact no one has ever existed who ventured to assert this, because it is neither reasonable nor in any way credible. Since that much is agreed, let us pass on and look for the truth elsewhere.

What follows concerns the school of Epicurus: that as there is no anger in God, so there is no kindness either. Epicurus thought it was inconsistent with God to injure and inflict harm, which for the most part arises out of the feeling of anger; so he took generosity away from him as well, since he saw that it followed that if God has anger, he must also have kindness. In other words, rather than concede a vice to him, he left him without the virtue too. [i]

This is why God is happy and untouched by decay, he says: because he cares about nothing, takes no trouble himself and gives none to anyone else. But then he is not God at all — not if he is never moved, which belongs to a living being, and never does anything impossible for a man, which belongs to God; not if he has no will whatever, no action, in short no administration worthy of God. And what greater or worthier administration can be credited to God than the government of the world, and above all of the human race, to which all earthly things are subject?

What happiness, then, can there be in God, if he is forever inactive, at rest and unmoving? if he is deaf to those who pray to him and blind to those who worship him? What is so worthy of God, so fitting for him, as providence? But if he cares for nothing and foresees nothing, he has lost his whole divinity. What else is a man saying, when he strips God of all power and all substance, except that there is no God at all?

In fact Marcus Tullius reports that Posidonius said Epicurus understood that there are no gods, and that what he said about the gods he said in order to keep the public’s hatred off himself; so that he leaves the gods in words but takes them away in reality, since he grants them no motion and no office. But if that is so, what could be more deceitful than the man? And that ought to be foreign to the character of a wise and weighty man. If he understood one thing and said another, what else is he to be called but a deceiver, double-tongued, wicked, and on top of that a fool?

But Epicurus was not so crafty as to say those things with the aim of deceiving, since he consigned them to writing as well, and so to everlasting remembrance. He went wrong through ignorance of the truth. Led from the very beginning by the plausibility of a single opinion, he necessarily fell into everything that followed from it. His first opinion was that anger is not consistent with the character of God. And once that seemed to him true and unassailable, he was unable to refuse the consequences; for when one feeling had been removed, necessity itself compelled him to remove God’s other feelings as well. A being not subject to anger is plainly not moved by kindness either, kindness being the feeling opposite to anger. And if there is neither anger nor kindness in him, it is clear that there is in him no fear, no joy, no grief, no pity; for all the feelings work on one system and one movement, and that cannot be the case with God. But if there is no feeling in God, on the grounds that whatever is subject to feeling is weak, then it follows that there is in him neither care for anything nor providence.

The wise man’s argument goes that far and no further. He kept silent about the rest of what follows: namely, that because there is in him neither care nor providence, therefore there is no reflection in him and no perception either — the effect of which is that he has no existence at all. So, having come down step by step, he stayed on the last step, because by then he could see the cliff. But what good did it do him to keep silent and cover up the danger? Necessity forced him to fall, even against his will. He said what he did not mean, because he had so arranged his argument that he necessarily arrived at the very point he wanted to avoid.

You see, then, where a man comes out when anger is removed and taken away from God. In the end either no one believes that, or very few do — and they are the guilty and the wicked, who hope to get away with their sins. But if this too is found to be false, that there is neither anger nor kindness in God, let us come to what stands in the third place.

The Stoics and some others are supposed to have thought much better about the divine nature, since they say that there is kindness in God, but not anger. It is a very agreeable and very popular thing to say: that God is not subject to such smallness of mind as to suppose he is injured by anyone, since it is impossible for him to be injured; or that this serene and holy majesty should be excited, disturbed and driven wild, which is the mark of human frailty. [n]

For they say that anger is a stirring and disturbance of the mind, which does not suit God. When it comes over anyone’s mind it raises such waves, like a violent storm, that it changes the mind’s whole condition: the eyes glare, the face shakes, the tongue stumbles, the teeth chatter, and the face is stained by turns, now flushed with red, now drained white. But if anger does not become a man — supposing him a man of wisdom and standing — how much less does so foul a change become God! And if a man, when he has authority and power, does widespread injury through anger, sheds blood, tears down cities, wipes out communities and reduces provinces to wasteland, how much more should we believe that God, since he has power over the whole human race and over the universe itself, would have destroyed everything by now, if he were angry.

So they think that so great and so ruinous an evil ought to be absent from him. And if anger and agitation are absent from him, because they are disfiguring and harmful, and if he inflicts injury on no one, then they think nothing else remains except that he is mild, calm, favorable, generous, the preserver. For on those terms he may at last be called the common Father of all, and the best and greatest, which his divine and heavenly nature demands.

For if among men it looks praiseworthy to do good rather than to injure, to give life rather than to kill, to save rather than to destroy — and if harmlessness is not undeservedly counted among the virtues, and the man who does these things is loved, esteemed, honored and celebrated with every blessing and prayer, and for his services and kindnesses is judged most like God — how much more right is it that God himself, who excels in divine and perfect virtues and is removed from every earthly stain, should win over the whole human race by divine and heavenly kindnesses!

These things are said plausibly and in a popular way, and they draw many people into believing them. Those who hold them do come nearer to the truth, but they partly fail, because they have not thought hard enough about the nature of the case. For if God is not angry with the godless and the unrighteous, it is clear that he does not love the devout and the righteous. So the error of those who take away both anger and kindness at once is at least more consistent. In matters that are opposite, one must be moved on both sides or on neither. The man who loves the good also hates the wicked, and the man who does not hate the wicked does not love the good — because the loving of the good arises out of the hatred of the wicked, and the hating of the wicked has its origin in the love of the good. There is no one who loves life without a hatred of death, and no one who wants light except the man who avoids darkness. These things are so bound together by nature that neither can exist without the other.

If a master has a good slave and a bad one in his household, it is obvious that he does not hate them both, nor confer benefits and honors on both; for if he did, he would be both unjust and foolish. He speaks to the good one as a friend, honors him, and sets him over his house and household and all his affairs; but the bad one he punishes with abuse, with the lash, with stripping, with hunger, with thirst, with chains. The punished one becomes an example to the rest to keep them from doing wrong, and the honored one an example to win them over; so that fear holds some back and honor spurs others on.

So the one who loves also hates, and the one who hates also loves; for there are people who ought to be loved, and there are people who ought to be hated. And just as the man who loves confers good things on those he loves, so the man who hates inflicts evils on those he hates. That argument is true, and there is no way it can be refuted.

The opinion of those who assign the one to God and take away the other is therefore empty and false, and no less so than the opinion of those who take away both. But the Stoics, as I have shown, are not entirely wrong: they hold on to the better of the two. The Epicureans, carried along by the exactness of their own reasoning, fall into the greatest error of all, because the premises they assumed were altogether false. They ought not to have reasoned like this: since God is not liable to anger, therefore he is not moved by kindness. They ought to have reasoned like this: since God is moved by kindness, therefore he is also liable to anger. If it had been certain and beyond doubt that God is not liable to anger, then the other point would necessarily have been reached. But since the question whether God is angry is the more open to doubt, while it is almost perfectly plain that he is kind, it is absurd to want to overturn what is certain by means of what is uncertain, when it is easier to confirm uncertain things by means of certain ones.

These are the opinions the philosophers have held about God. But if we have found that what they say is false, one last resource remains, the only place in which the truth can be found — one that no philosopher has ever embraced or at any time defended: that it follows that God is angry, since he is moved by kindness. This is the opinion I must maintain and argue for; for on this the whole sum of devotion and religion turns, and no honor can be owed to God if he grants nothing to those who worship him, and no fear is owed to him if he is not angry with the man who does not worship him. [r]