The Anger That Corrects

At this point someone may perhaps ask where sins came into human life from, and what perversion twisted the rule God laid down toward worse things, so that a creature born for righteousness nevertheless does unrighteous work. I have already explained this in an earlier place. God set good and evil before man at one and the same time. He loves the good and hates the evil that stands against it; but he allowed the evil for this reason, that the good might also shine out, since — as I have often taught — we understand that neither of the two can exist without the other. [a]

In short, the world itself is made up of two elements that are opposed to one another and bound together, fire and moisture. Light could not have been made unless there had also been darkness, since there cannot be a higher place without a lower, or a rising without a setting, or warmth without cold, or softness without hardness. In the same way we ourselves are put together out of two substances equally opposed to one another, soul and body. The one is assigned to heaven, because it is fine and cannot be handled; the other to earth, because it can be taken hold of. The one is unbroken and everlasting, the other frail and mortal. So good clings to the one and evil to the other: light, life and righteousness to the one; darkness, death and unrighteousness to the other.

This is how the corruption of their nature arose among human beings, and this is why a law had to be established, forbidding vices and laying down the duties of virtue. Since, then, there are good and evil things in human affairs, whose nature I have now set out, God must be moved in both directions: to kindness when he sees right things done, and to anger when he sees unrighteous ones.

But Epicurus argues against us, and says: “If God has in him the feeling of joy that leads him to show kindness, and of hatred that moves him to anger, then he must necessarily have fear as well, and inclination, and desire, and the other feelings that belong to human weakness.”

It does not follow that a man who is angry must also be afraid, or that a man who feels joy must also grieve. In fact those who are liable to anger are less timid than others, and those of a cheerful temper are less affected by grief. And why should I speak of the feelings of humanity, which our nature gives way to? Let us weigh what is necessary to the divine — for I am unwilling to say “nature,” since it is believed that our God was never born.

The feeling of fear has something to work on in man, but nothing in God. A man is exposed to many accidents and dangers, and so he is afraid that some greater force may arise to strike him, strip him, tear him, throw him down, destroy him. But God is exposed to no need, no injury, no pain and no death, and so he cannot possibly be afraid, because there is nothing that can do violence to him. The reason and cause of desire is likewise plain in man. Since he was made frail and mortal, another and different sex had to be made, so that by their union offspring might be produced and his race carried on without a break. But this desire has no place in God, because frailty and death are far from him; there is no female with him in whose union he could take pleasure; and he has no need of anyone to come after him, since he will live forever. The same can be said about envy and about craving: man is liable to them for sure and obvious reasons, and God is not liable to them at all. But kindness and anger and pity really do have their grounds in God, and that greatest and matchless power uses them to preserve the world.

Someone will ask what those grounds are. First of all, when evils come upon them, people in their low state generally turn to God: they try to appease him and beg him, believing that he is able to drive their injuries away. So he has an occasion for exercising pity, since he is not so pitiless, and so contemptuous of humanity, as to refuse help to people in distress. [f]

A great many, too, are convinced that righteousness pleases God. They worship him as the Lord and Parent of all; with constant prayers and repeated vows they offer gifts and sacrifices; they follow up his name with praise; and they work at winning his kindness by right and good deeds. There is therefore a reason why God may and should show them kindness. For if nothing suits God so well as doing good, and nothing is so unlike his character as being ungrateful, he must make some return for the services of excellent men who live holy lives, so as not to lie open to the charge of ingratitude — a charge that is blamed even in a man.

But others, on the contrary, are criminals and wicked men. They defile everything with their lusts, they harry people with killings, they practice fraud, they plunder, they swear falsely, they spare neither relatives nor parents, they disregard the laws and even God himself. So anger too has its proper grounds in God.

For it is not right that God should see such things and not be moved — that he should not rise to take vengeance on the wicked, destroy the dangerous and the guilty, and so look after the interests of all good men. In this way even anger itself has an act of kindness contained in it.

So the arguments turn out to be empty and false, both those of the men who will not allow that God is angry but will have him show kindness — which in fact cannot happen without anger — and those of the men who think there is no movement of mind in God at all. Because there are some feelings God is not liable to, such as desire, fear, greed, grief and envy, they have said that he is entirely free from every feeling. He is not liable to those, because those belong to vice; but as for the ones that belong to virtue — anger toward the wicked, regard for the good, pity for the afflicted — these are worthy of the divine power, and he has them as his own, both just and true.

And if he does not have them, human life will be thrown into confusion, and things will fall into such disorder that the laws will be despised and beaten down, reckless daring alone will reign, and in the end no one can be safe except the man who is stronger than the rest. The whole earth will be laid waste, as though by a robbery everyone had a share in. But as things are, since the wicked expect punishment and the good hope for kindness and the afflicted look for help, there is room for the virtues, and crimes are rarer.

But it is said that the wicked often prosper more, and the good are more wretched, and the righteous are harassed by the unrighteous and nothing is done about it. Why these things happen we will consider later on. For the moment let us explain about anger: whether there is any in God; whether he takes no notice at all, and is unmoved by the things that are done in contempt of him.

God, says Epicurus, has regard for nothing; therefore he has no power. Anyone who has power must necessarily have regard for affairs. For if he has power and does not use it, what cause can be great enough that — I will not say our race, but the universe itself — should be beneath his notice? This is why he says God is untouched by decay and happy: because he is always at rest. [j]

To whom, then, has the running of such great affairs passed, if the things we see governed by the highest judgment are neglected by God? And how can one who lives and perceives be at rest? Rest belongs either to sleep or to death. But sleep does not have rest in it. When we are asleep the body is indeed at rest, but the soul is restless and stirred up: it makes images for itself to look at, so that it exercises its natural power of motion by a variety of visions and calls itself away from things that are not there, until the limbs have had their fill and take fresh strength from the rest. So everlasting rest belongs to death alone. And if death has no hold on God, it follows that God is never at rest.

But what can God’s action consist in, except the running of the world? And if God carries on the care of the world, it follows that he cares about the life of human beings and takes notice of what individuals do, and that he earnestly wants them to be wise and good. This is God’s will; this is the divine law; and the man who follows it and keeps it is loved by God. God must necessarily be moved with anger against the man who has broken this everlasting and divine law, or despised it.

If God does harm to anyone, he says, then he is not good. Men fall into no slight error who slander every rebuke, human or divine, with the name of bitterness and spite, and think that the one who punishes the harmful ought himself to be called harmful. But if that is so, it follows that our laws are harmful, since they lay down punishment for offenders, and our judges harmful, since they pass death sentences on men convicted of crime. But if a law is just when it awards the lawbreaker what he deserves, and a judge is called upright and good when he punishes crimes — for the man who punishes the evil is guarding the safety of the good — then it follows that God is not harmful when he opposes the evil. The harmful man is the one who either injures an innocent man, or spares a harmful one so that he may injure many.

I would gladly put a question to the men who represent God as unmoved. Suppose someone had property, a house, and a household of slaves, and suppose the slaves despised their master’s forbearance and seized everything, taking the enjoyment of his goods for themselves; suppose the household honored them, while the master was despised by everyone, insulted and deserted. Could a man be called wise who did not avenge the insults, but let the people he had power over enjoy his property? Can forbearance like that be found in anyone? If, that is, it is to be called forbearance, and not rather a kind of numb stupor.

But contempt is easy to put up with. What if the things Cicero speaks of were done? “For I ask: if the head of a house had his children put to death by a slave, his wife murdered and his house set on fire, and did not exact the most severe punishment from that slave, would he look kind and merciful, or inhuman and utterly cruel?”

But if pardoning deeds of that kind belongs to cruelty rather than to dutiful love, then it is no part of goodness in God to be unmoved at the things that are done unjustly. For the world is, so to speak, God’s house, and human beings are, so to speak, his slaves; and if his name is a joke to them, what sort of forbearance is it, and how much of it, to give up his own honors — to see wicked and unjust things done and not be indignant, when indignation belongs by nature and by right to one who is displeased at sins? To be angry, therefore, is the work of reason. That is how faults are removed and lawlessness is curbed, and it plainly agrees with justice and wisdom.

But the Stoics did not see that there is a distinction between right and wrong, and that there is a just anger as well as an unjust one; and because they could not find a remedy for the thing, they wanted to remove it altogether. The Peripatetics said it was not to be cut out but kept within bounds, and I have made them a sufficient reply in the sixth book of the Institutes.

That the philosophers did not know what anger is, is plain from their definitions, which Seneca listed in the books he wrote on the subject of anger. “Anger,” he says, “is the desire to avenge an injury.” Others, as Posidonius says, describe it as the desire to punish the man by whom you think you have been unfairly injured. Some have defined it this way: “Anger is a stirring of the mind to injure the man who has either done an injury or wanted to do one.” Aristotle’s definition is not far from ours, for he says that anger is the desire to pay back pain.

That is the unjust anger I spoke of before, the kind that is found even in animals that cannot speak; and in man it has to be held down, in case rage drives him into some very great evil. It cannot exist in God, because he cannot be injured; but it is found in man, since man is frail. An injury burns anguish into him, and anguish produces the desire for revenge.

Where, then, is that just anger against offenders? Clearly it is not the desire for revenge, since no injury comes before it. I am not speaking of people who sin against the laws; a judge may be angry with them without incurring any blame, but let us grant that he ought to have a settled mind when he sentences the guilty to punishment, since he is the servant of the laws and not of his own feeling or power — for that is how the men want it who try to root anger out. I am speaking rather of those who are in our own power: slaves, children, wives and pupils. When we see them do wrong, we are stirred up to restrain them.

For it cannot fail to happen that a man who is just and good is displeased with things that are bad, and that a man displeased with evil is moved when he sees it done. So we rise up to take vengeance — not because we have been injured, but so that discipline may be kept up, character corrected and lawlessness put down. This is just anger; and as it is necessary in man for the correcting of wickedness, so it is plainly necessary in God, from whom the example comes to man. For as we ought to restrain those who are subject to our power, so God ought to restrain the offenses of everyone. And in order to do it he must be angry, since it is natural for one who is good to be moved and stirred at another’s fault.

So this is the definition they ought to have given: anger is an emotion of the mind rousing itself to restrain faults. Cicero’s definition — “Anger is the desire of taking vengeance” — does not differ much from the ones already mentioned. But the anger we may call fury or rage ought not to exist even in man, because it is wholly a vice; while the anger that has to do with the correcting of vices ought not to be taken away from man, and cannot be taken away from God, because it is both serviceable for human affairs and necessary.