In what has gone before, the character of the oracles has been sufficiently refuted by us, and the divine power of our Savior has been shown, through his gospel teaching, to be at once worthy of God and beneficial to life, since through it alone, and through no other, freedom has come to all people from the demonic phantoms that from of old darkened and ruined the whole of human life. Come, then, let us also direct our account of these same beings against their false opinions about fate, so that the demons who are thought to move the oracles may be shown to be worthless and powerless, not only by the wickedness of their character, but also by the opinions they hold that are neither right nor true. Consider, then, whether you too will not find their account of these things foreign to divine power, both from the passages I shall set out that overturn the doctrine of fate, and directly from the manner in which they are said to make their divinations. For they do not say that the demons have gained knowledge of the future beforehand by some higher power, but that, like human beings, they guess at what is to come from observing the motion of the stars. So, they say, the demons can neither help nor do anything at all, except what accords with fate. The proof of this is that very advocate of the demons himself, in the work he entitled On the Philosophy from Oracles, where he speaks word for word as follows:
The seeming prophecies of the demons in the oracles are conjectures from the course of the stars, like those made by men.
"For what the gods say, if indeed they speak with knowledge of what is fated, they declare from the movement of the stars; and nearly all the truthful gods have made this plain." Then, a little further on, he says: "Apollo, asked what a woman would bear, said from the stars that it would be female, having learned it from the time of conception. He speaks thus: 'It springs from the earth along the paths where the meadows, in their thirst for rain, have drunk up all the drink of their own mother, while within her it stirs for its due time. No boy, but a girl; for Phoebe, keen of sight, has plowed chaste Cypris, who hastens on a female birth for you, my friend.' See, from the time of conception, because the moon was moving toward Venus, he said that a female child would be born. Indeed, they also foretell diseases from that source. Listen: 'Surely an evil poison overpowers him within his breast, pouring forth the painful evil of the lung.' And next, after which he adds: 'These things the mind of the Fates brought on, and fixed him in dark strife, to be overcome by sickness, as lofty Cronus goes along his evil path.' And after other lines: 'But the painful destroyer of mortals, hastening on against Cronus, pressed you to fill up the fated day of your life and laid waste the foundation of your mind; therefore your godlike father's sacred heart threatened you to flee the evil-working Ares.' These things show that they do not prophesy from any divine power of their own, but from watching the stars by the methods of the astrologers, so that in this they differ in no way from human beings and display no work of anything higher or of a more divine nature. But see how they also do away with free will, ascribing to the movement of the stars not only external things and things not in our power, but even our own choices.
They destroy our free will by asserting that our purposes are set in motion by Fate
"So also Apollo, speaking about a certain man and at the same time explaining where his eagerness for military service came from, said: 'He has swift Ares at his birth, who stirs him on, yet will not bring him to the grave; for the counsel of Zeus has fallen upon him, which will at once hold out to him martial glory from Ares.' And again, about another: 'Long-haired Cronus lay upon him, and with hateful goads afflicted the stormy dawn of the son of Talaus.' These noble gods stand in such dread of fate that they admit they cannot defend even their own temples when struck by lightning. Great, then, must be the hope for human beings who pray to obtain help from those who cannot help even themselves! And what need is there any longer to be devout and to worship and serve the gods, if they are wholly unable to help even themselves? Listen, then, to what the oracle says:
They were not able even to defend their own consecrated shrines when struck by lightning
"So temples and sanctuaries too have their fates, and even Apollo's own sanctuary was fated to be struck by lightning, as he says: 'You born of the most holy race of Erichthonius, you have dared to come and ask my voice when the seats of the most beautiful shrine will be laid waste. Hear the wondrous voice from the laurel-roofed recesses. When the winds in the upper air, blowing aloft and roaring, clash with din as they fight against each other, while a windless frost lies over the boundless world, and the afflicted air has no outlet, a blazing torch falls about the earth wherever it chances. The wild beasts on the mountains flee from it in terror into their deepest lairs, and do not stay to look with their eyes upon the descending spear of Zeus. When it draws near, the temples of the blessed ones, tall trees, the peaks of lofty mountains, and ships at sea are overcome by its fiery flights; and Amphitrite herself, the consort of Poseidon, often struck, falls back with a roar. You, then, though you have unbearable grief in your hearts, bear in your spirit the unchangeable counsels of the Fates; for to them the head of Zeus, son of Uranus, nodded assent, that whatever they spin should remain unshaken on their spindles. For it was the lot of the most beautiful shrine, in long ages, to be overcome by the hovering of torches fallen from Zeus.' If, then, by the spindles of the Fates even the temples of the revered gods and their holy dwellings are overcome "by fiery flights," what hope would still remain for mortal men of escaping their destiny? And if there is no help at all from the gods, but one must in every case "bear in one's spirit the unchangeable counsels of the Fates," what is the use of this vain zeal about the gods? one might ask. And why must one assign "libation and the savor of sacrifice" and the honor that comes from them to beings not worthy even of these, if they cannot help us in any way? For then one ought not to think of them as givers of good things either, but rather that cause which they admitted was the cause of the opposite. For if something is fated for human beings, whether something good or its opposite, it will come of necessity and will be present whether the gods will it or not. Necessity alone, then, should be worshiped, and the gods given little thought, or rather none, since they can neither harm nor benefit. But if the God who is over all alone presides over the Fates, and alone is Lord of these too ("for to them," he says, "the head of Zeus, son of Uranus, nodded assent, that whatever they spin should remain unshaken on their spindles"), why do you not set all else aside and confess that the King of all and Master of fate alone is God, and alone the giver of good things and Savior? For to him alone is it easy to turn and change even what you call "the unchangeable counsels of the Fates," so that the one who is consecrated to God the King of all and worships him alone is enslaved neither to necessity nor to fate, but, as one free and released from every bond, follows unhindered the divine and saving dispensations. That is what the true account shows; but see, on the contrary, by what means he says the decrees of fate are undone.
They say that the decrees of Fate may be annulled by magic
"For when someone begged to receive a god, the god said he was unfit because he was bound down by nature; and so, after prescribing rites to avert this, he adds: 'For a demonic force has rushed abundantly with its blast upon your birth, which you must escape by such magic arts.' By this it is also clearly shown that magic was given by the gods for loosing the decrees of fate, to turn it aside by any means whatever." Porphyry tells you this, not I. How then did the one who advises loosing the decrees of fate by magic not, though himself a god, loose what was fated against his own temple when it was burned by lightning? And one who urges people to practice magic rather than philosophy, how could it not be plain what sort of character he has? On top of all this, the same author admits that the gods lie.
They utter lying prophecies
"But further, exact knowledge of the movement of the heavens and of the events that follow from it is beyond the grasp of human beings, and not only of them but also of some of the daemons; hence they lie when asked about many things." To this he again adds: "And it is the surrounding air that compels the oracles to be false, not the beings present who add the falsehood willingly. Often, at any rate, they say beforehand that they will lie; but the inquirers stay and compel them to speak, through ignorance. Apollo, at any rate, once said, when the condition of the surrounding air was evil, as we have shown: 'Hold back force and the power of words: I shall speak falsehoods.' And that what we have said is true, the oracles will show. One of the gods, at any rate, when summoned, said: 'Today it is not fitting to tell the holy path of the stars; for the seats of prophecy are now fettered among the stars.' And he adds: "It has been made plain, then, how falsehood often arises."
Refutation of the argument in defense of Fate
Has your uncertainty now come to an end, then, that there was nothing divine in the gods' oracles? For how could the divine ever lie, being by nature most free of falsehood, if indeed the divine is free of falsehood? And how could a good daemon ever deceive those who consult it with lying words? And how could that which is fettered by the movement of the stars be better than a human being? A mortal man who has given even a little attention to virtue would never lie, having resolved to honor the truth above all, nor, if he lied, would he blame the necessity of fate or the movement of the stars. Rather, even if someone applied fire or iron to his body to force him to corrupt the true word, he would answer this too with freedom of speech: "Let fire come, let swords come; cut, burn up my flesh, glut yourself drinking my dark blood; for sooner will the stars go down beneath the earth, and earth go up to heaven, than a flattering word from me will meet you." But the demon that leads the people astray and deceives them makes a pretext and plays the sophist with the foolish, so that whenever he fails in foretelling the future he may provide himself with fate as a refuge for his absurdity. And when the demon, through his oracles, had made everything depend on fate, and had done away with what is in our power through self-chosen movement, enslaving this too to necessity, see into what ruin of evil doctrines he has thrown those who believe him. For if not only external things but even the impulses of our reasoning are to be ascribed to the stars and to fate, and some inexorable necessity forces human decisions, then philosophy is gone, and piety too is gone; there would be no praise of virtue for the earnest, no love of God, no worthy fruit of the labors of discipline, since necessity and fate would have taken on themselves the cause of everything. It would not be right, then, to blame those who go wrong in their way of life, nor even the impious and most infamous, nor indeed to admire the earnest. In this way, as I said, the great glory of philosophy will also be gone, since it would depend not on self-chosen study and discipline but on the necessity of the stars. See, then, into what an abyss of evil doctrines the wonderful gods have cast people down, and consider how this doctrine urges and drives them toward profligacy, injustice, and countless other evils, bringing about the overthrow of all life at once. If someone, at any rate, were to believe the gods' wonderful oracles outright, that telling the truth and lying are not our work but that of inexorable fate, and likewise wishing to set out on a campaign or on any other action, and not wishing to do such things, how would he not wish to be careless and idle in everything that cannot be accomplished without toil and labor and our own eagerness? For if he thinks that this or that will happen by fate, whether we labor and take pains over it or not, how would he not wish to choose the easier way, letting himself go and neglecting it, since what is to be done will come about by fate and necessity? That is why one can hear most people saying, "This will be done, then, if it is fated for me; so why should I give myself trouble?" For if the one who sets out on a campaign does this not by his own choice but driven by necessity from outside, then clearly so does the one who sets out on robbery and grave-robbing and the other practices, whether impious and licentious or orderly and temperate; for this would follow from the doctrine of fate. How, then, would one who thinks that he undertakes these things not of himself but under necessity from outside ever pay attention to someone who admonishes and teaches him not to give himself over to the things just mentioned? For he would say to the one admonishing him, as some before us have put it: "Why do you admonish me, sir? To change my choice is surely not in my power; fate has decided it beforehand. Why then must I strain toward things I shall not even be able to desire, unless this too is fated for me? But if it is fated, I shall desire it even without your teaching, led by fate. Why then do you trouble yourself in vain? And if you say that your exhorting and teaching is also done by necessity, so that you exhort and persuade me in this way, still, even so, why be earnest about it? The exhortation is idle and useless. For if it is fated for me, I shall work hard; and if it is not fated, it will turn out that we both made our effort in vain." And would not one who holds this opinion rather give up in idleness and say to himself, "Come, I shall not work hard at all, nor trouble myself in vain; for what is fated will come about of necessity"? But one who is earnest about something, or who teaches or urges himself or another both to obey and not to obey, to sin and not to sin, and who rebukes those who sin and praises those who do right, is he not plainly convicted of leaving intact the reality of what is in our power and of free will, and attaching to it only the name of fate? It is as if someone were to call by the name of evil the nature of the good, by whose presence the living creature is best governed. For since we plainly perceive ourselves, when we discipline our sons and flog our servants who have done wrong, and when we will or do not will this or that, not to be forced by any other cause, but to come to such movements of ourselves, by our own power, one who says these things happen by fate would be wrong, and would tend to paralyze both our own eagerness and the encouragements and admonitions given to others, from which we see human affairs most of all set right. Moreover, this doctrine would also overturn the laws laid down for people's benefit. For why must one command or forbid those held fast by another necessity? Nor will it be necessary to punish wrongdoers, who will not have sinned through their own cause, nor to award honors to those who do the noblest deeds; yet each of these has been a great cause of restraining injustice and of readiness to do good. And this opinion would also overturn piety toward the divine, if neither God nor even these oracle-givers themselves help us at all, whether we pray or practice piety, since we are fettered by the necessities of fate. And to say that we are moved like lifeless things, pulled this way and that by strings by some power from outside, so that we will of necessity to do these things and choose other things against our choice, how would this not be shameless and most impudent? For we plainly perceive ourselves, by our own impulse and movement, eager for some things; and when we neglect them we take ourselves to task again; and we perceive ourselves succeeding or failing for this reason, and forced by nothing else, but choosing some things by a willing judgment, and fleeing and refusing others by our own choice. So plain, then, is the case for free will that, just as pain and pleasure, and seeing this and hearing that, are grasped not by reasoning but by direct experience, so we are conscious of ourselves setting out from ourselves and from our own will, choosing some things and turning away from others; so that the freedom and self-determination of the rational and intelligent nature within us must in every way be rightly acknowledged. And if the countless things that happen to us against our choice disturb most people, we must here distinguish the nature of the conditions in which we live, and examine the principle by which things not in our power come about. For in this way the cause of these things too will be taken up by no irrational fate, but by another principle that depends on the providence of the universe. Come, then, let us examine the problem carefully. The ordinances of true religion declare that all things together exist and are governed by the providence of God. But now, taken by kinds, each of the things that come to be is moved in its own way: some by habit, some by nature, some by impulse and impression, some by reasoning and their own judgment and choice; and some come about by a primary principle, others as consequences of what has come about primarily. Thus the cause of the universe has made the ordering of the whole various and manifold, assigning to each kind of being its own distinct constitution of nature. It would take much leisure to go through the account of all the others, but that of free will one may more easily learn as follows. Since a human being is not a thing of one kind, nor composed of a single nature, but has been allotted a union of two opposites, body and soul (the one bound to the soul as an instrument, by consequence, the intelligent being existing by the primary principle; the one irrational, the other rational; the one perishable, the other imperishable; the one mortal, the other immortal), so that we carry a body akin to the irrational beasts but a soul related to the rational and immortal nature, it is surely fitting that this twofold growth, sharing as it does in a double nature, should direct its life in a double and differing way, at one time serving the nature of the body, at another embracing with its diviner part the freedom proper to it. So the same being is both slave and free, having been allotted by God, for reasons he himself knows, such a mixture of soul and body. If, then, someone were to bring what is natural to the body or to the soul under the cause of necessity, using the name of fate, he would miss the proper name. For if there were some unhindered necessity of fate, while many of the things that belong by nature to the body and the soul are impeded, and countless other things from outside meet them against nature and accompany both soul and body by some accident, how could fate and nature be the same? For if they say that fate is unchangeable and that nothing can happen contrary to it (for necessity, they say, is inexorable), while many things, as I said, happen to both soul and body contrary to what is natural, no one would name things rightly who says that fate and nature are the same. Of the things within us, then, some would come about by reasoning and the choice that is in our power, such as what is natural to the soul; some by the nature of the body; and some are accidents happening to these, I mean to soul and body, but brought about naturally by other things. Yet one could not rightly deprive their cause of the power in our soul, or of what is natural to the body, or indeed of what is accidental from outside. For God himself has been declared the maker of the universe, both of what is in our power and of what is natural and of what is accidental. For the divine Scripture must be heard as speaking universally about all things when it declares, "He spoke, and they came to be; he commanded, and they were created." If, then, when we will something, other things sometimes happen contrary to our intention, we should remind ourselves that this is that double and mixed character of the union within us, I mean of soul and body. Because of it the substance of the soul, though intelligent and rational by nature, takes the place of something irrational, against its nature, in a body that is by nature still infantile; and the mind, at home with wisdom, often becomes foolish by some accident, deranged, say, by excessive illnesses of the body. And often old age, coming upon the body by nature, has robbed the understanding of the achievements of its prime, blunting the rational part of the intelligent soul against nature. Again, injuries and pains and mutilations that happen to the body against nature have, by accident, overpowered the soul's free will, as it gives way to the pains because of its union with the body; so that sometimes the nature of the body, sometimes what happens from outside, is found to have been thrown in the way of the soul's freedom as an inescapable bond. Yet the power of the choice that is in our power has come to such a degree of virtue and strength that in many cases it dares to resist and contradict both the nature of the body and what happens from outside. The nature of the body calls a man to the impulse of sexual desire, but the soul, putting a bridle on the passion by temperate reason, becomes master of the body's nature. Again, the body, compelling us to be hungry, thirsty, and cold and the like, calls us to the remedies and satisfactions that accord with nature; but the will, persuaded by temperate arguments and freely embracing certain ascetic exhortations, overrides the nature of the body with fasts and endurance lasting many days, having judged and chosen this by the virtue of its reasoning. And again, the body by nature delights in all pleasures and in the smooth movement of bodies, but the will, out of desire for virtue, has embraced the laborious and rough life. And there are those who have turned for the worse and "exchanged the natural use for that which is against nature, males working shamelessness with males." So reason does not yield to nature in everything; it prevails in very many things, just as it is also overcome; and at times it leads, at times it is itself led, so that sometimes it even draws on itself with its own hands release from the body before its time, when life is judged not to profit it. Now if a person's whole contest were with the proper nature of his body alone, it would be moderate. But since God has set his civic and social life among many things, so that he spends his days with wild beasts and venomous reptiles, in the midst of fire and water and the surrounding air, and of the varied and differing natures in all of these, it is fitting that his struggle and resistance should be not only against the nature of the body that is his own and joined to him, but also against countless external accidents in the midst of which the one who passes mortal life lives, so that he must hold out bravely against these too. Many particular kinds of food, at any rate, and particular mixtures of the air, onsets of frost and blazes of heat, and very many other things, moving naturally by certain principles of their own but falling on us by accident, have caused no small disturbance to our free will because of its union with the body, since the nature of our bodies does not withstand the onsets of things from outside but is overpowered and defeated by external things acting according to their own nature. And again, since we spend our lives with a great many people, and they too, having been given the same substance as we, exercise what is in their power by their own authority, using their own free choice, in this way too we shall naturally be subject to the decisions of others, when their free will makes use of us in some such way, against the body or concerning the soul. For just as the nature of our body is often overcome by things falling on it from outside, so there are times when the will too, troubled by countless choices from outside, is persuaded by its own free judgment and gives itself over to things outside, and is made at times better, at times worse. For bad company is apt to corrupt, just as, conversely, the society of good people makes us better. "For bad company corrupts good morals," just as the companionship of the good preserves and improves. And the rational power of the soul is carried this way and that by the arguments of what happens to it from outside; but again the proper virtue of the rational substance is strong, and shows its power to be truly divine and godlike, when, holding out against all external things and conquering them all with a free mind, yielding nothing of its own virtue, it is made ready to pursue philosophy. When it is careless, however, it is brought by the worse into the worst state, just as it is also improved when it receives care from outside. What need is there to add that the fruitfulness and barrenness of souls and bodies of this or that kind, brought about by some chance in a way proper to the government of the universe, and good and right for the whole, have produced a great abundance of every kind of disturbance for individual parts, and indeed for what is in our power? Yet over all beings universally, those that come about through us and through our own cause, those that come upon us by accident from outside, and those brought about by nature, there presides one all-powerful and almighty providence of God that goes through all things. It manages most things by principles more divine and inexpressible to us, steering the whole with a ready rein, changing many even of the things of nature to what fits the times, working together and cooperating with what is in our power, and assigning in turn the proper order to what happens from outside. Since these things are divided in this way into three, what is in our power, what comes about by nature, and what is accidental, and all are summed up under one principle, that of the will of God, the doctrine of fate will have no place anywhere. And we shall also have found the source of evil, which perplexes most people. It has no place in any of the things that are by nature, neither in bodies nor in substances, still less in what happens by accident from outside. It would be found only in the self-chosen movement of the soul, and in this not when it travels by nature and walks the straight way, but when it steps off the royal road and by its own decision turns to what is against nature, being its own master. For having received this special privilege from God, it is free and self-governing, having taken into itself the judgment of its own impulse. But a divine law, yoked to it by nature like a lamp and a light, calls out to it, sounding within it and saying, "You shall go by the royal road; you shall not turn aside to the right or to the left," teaching that the royal road is the course that follows right reason. For the maker of the universe established this natural law in every soul as its helper and ally in what it must do. Through the law he showed it the straight road, and through the free self-determination given to it he declared the choice of the better worthy of praise and acceptance and of greater prizes and rewards for what is done rightly, because it did right not under compulsion but by free judgment, when it could also have chosen the opposite; and conversely, that the soul that chooses the worst deserves blame and punishment, since by its own movement it neglected the natural law, gave birth to the beginning and source of evil, and used itself badly, not from any necessity outside but from free judgment and decision. The blame lies with the one who chooses; God is blameless. For God made no evil nature, nor indeed the substance of the soul evil; for it is not lawful for the good to make anything but good things. And everything natural is good. And free will is present by nature in every rational soul as a good, and this was brought into being for the choice of good things. When the soul acts badly, nature is not to be blamed. For evil does not come to it according to nature but against nature, being the work of choice, not of nature. For one who had the power to choose the good, when he did not choose it, but willingly turned away from the better and took up the worse, what room for escape would be left to him, since he has become the cause of his own sickness and has neglected the inborn law, his savior and physician? And one who takes no account of all this, hanging everything on necessity and the movement of the stars, and saying that the causes of the wrongs people commit are not from us but from the power that moves all things, how would he not be introducing an unholy and impious way of thinking? For if he holds that the movement of the universe is spontaneous and without providence, he would be convicted at once of atheism, besides being blind to the all-wise harmony and the ordering of the whole, and to the motion that revolves well and in order through the ages. But if he admits that the providence of God leads and carries all things, presides over all, and governs them by all-wise reason, not even so has he escaped the absurdity of impiety; for he acquits those who do wrong among men of the sins committed, as though they had done none of their outrages by their own decision, and he refers the cause of evils to providence in general, calling it necessity and fate, and saying that it is the cause of all the shameful and unspeakable deeds, the cruelty and the bloodshed among men. And who could be more impious than one who presents the God of the universe, the very maker and creator of this whole world, as forcing by necessity one man who does not wish to be impious to do so, and to be an atheist by necessity and a blasphemer against himself; another, whom he himself made male by nature, to suffer against nature what belongs to women, not by his own choice but compelled by God; and another to become a murderer, not by his own decision but driven by God's necessity, so that one could not reasonably blame wrongdoers, but must either think that these are not sins at all, or declare that God is the maker of all evils? For whether he himself, present to all things and seeing and hearing all things, compels them to do these deeds, or he established the movement of the universe and such a motion of the stars as productive and compulsive of them, the one who constructed such an instrument and devised the snare for the hunted would himself be the cause of those who are caught. Whether, then, he by himself, or again he through some other necessity devised by him, entangles unwilling people in these evils, he himself and no other would be the maker of all evils, and it would no longer be just to say that man has sinned, but God who made him do it. And what doctrine could be more impious than this? The one who brings in fate, then, plainly drives out God and God's providence, just as the one who sets God over all things would do away with the doctrine of fate. For either God and fate would be the same, or the one distinct from the other. They could not be the same. For if they say that fate is a chain of causes coming down from eternity, unbreakable and unalterable, from the movement of the heavenly stars, how would the bodily elements, of which the heavenly bodies too are composed, not be prior to fate, so that one could fairly call fate an accidental consequence of them? And how could what is accidental to the elements be the same as the God over all, if the elements are seen, in their own nature, to be lifeless and irrational, while God is beyond bodies, life itself and wisdom, granting the enjoyment of his creative work both to the individual elements and to the ordering of the whole? God and fate, then, are not the same. And if they are different, which is stronger? But nothing is finer than God, nor anything more powerful. He will therefore master and prevail over the worse; or else, by permitting fate to do evil, he would draw the blame on himself, since, being able to restrain the evil-working necessity, he did not restrain it, but let it loose to the ruin and destruction of all; or rather he himself did this, if he is represented as the maker and creator of all things, fate included. And if he takes no account of the ordering of the universe, the voice of the atheists would raise its head again, to which we must shut our ears, since the divine providence and power plainly shows itself both from the all-wise and skillful works in the universe and from those in us that indisputably display the free and self-determining power of the rational soul. By this power, although countless obstacles fall by accident from outside upon the nature of the body and upon the impulses of choice that are in our power, the freedom of the soul's virtue nevertheless holds out against them all, showing that what is in our power, the choice of noble things, cannot be fought down or conquered. And the present time of our Savior's teaching has shown this most of all by the deeds themselves. For that these are not mere noise and empty words, you may look at the contest of the God-fearing and observe those who by free choice have taken on themselves the labors of the contests for piety. Throughout the whole inhabited world countless multitudes of Greeks and barbarians have displayed them, enduring eagerly every outrage against the body, passing through every kind of torture with a bright face, and at last gladly accepting, in many forms, the release of the soul from the body. And here no argument would allow us to blame fate. For where in all the ages has the movement of the stars produced such athletes of piety for you? Or when did human life, before our Savior's teaching was laid down for all people, put forward such a contest throughout the whole inhabited world? And where in all the ages was there such a school of doctrine for all people, Greeks and barbarians, to destroy superstitious error and to teach the knowledge of the one God over all? And which of the famous sages of all the ages, barbarian or Greek, was ever granted such a fate as to make the doctrine he put forward shine out to the whole world, known even to its farthest bounds, and to win the reputation of a god among those devoted to him? And if these things neither were nor happened in all the ages, nor were heard of by report, then a chain of causes and necessity was not their cause. For long ago, through the same revolution and circuit of the stars, nothing would have prevented others too from having the same birth and fate. From what sort of fate, then, has our Savior, having appeared as God, been proclaimed throughout the whole inhabited world, while the gods long believed in among Greeks and barbarians have been overthrown, and overthrown by no other means than the teaching of the new God? And what fate of theirs proclaimed to all people a God who is creator of all things, and compelled them to say that fate does not exist? And how did fate force them to say and to think that it does not itself exist? And what of those who long ago contended in every kind of contest for the sake of our Savior's teaching of piety, and still contend to this day? So, it seems, they all received one and the same lot: to be made subject to one doctrine and teaching, to display one judgment and choice and one virtue of soul, to take up one and the same life, to love the same doctrine, and to endure lovingly the same sufferings for their steadfastness in piety. And what sound reasoning would grant this: that young and old alike, and every age, the race of men and of women, the natures of barbarian men, slaves and free together, the learned and those without education, not in a corner of the earth nor born under these particular stars, but throughout the whole inhabited world, were forced by the necessity of fate to prefer this teaching above all the ways of their fathers, to welcome death for the sake of piety toward the one God over all, to be very well taught the doctrines of the soul's immortality, and to prefer a philosophy not of words but of deeds? For these things would be plain even to a blind man: that they belong to no necessity, but to learning and teaching, being clear examples of a free judgment and of free choice. Countless other arguments could also be brought to establish the point. Passing over most of them, I shall be content with what has been said, and leave you to examine your own reading of your revered philosophers, so that you may learn how much wiser and better than your oracle-giving gods was the man who refuted their wonderful oracles as false and rebuked the Pythian himself for what he declared about fate. Listen, then, again to the man who entitled his own treatise The Detection of Impostors, how with a truly youthful spirit he corrects the error of the many and of Apollo himself, in which he writes as follows, word for word:
How their philosophers refuted the opinions even of their gods concerning Fate by truer reasoning. From Oenomaus
"You, then, sitting at Delphi, cannot keep silent even if you wished. So Apollo, the son of Zeus, now wills, not because he wills, but because he has been appointed by necessity to will. I think I shall leave everything else aside, since I have somehow been led into this subject, and inquire into a matter that is close to us and worth inquiring into. For, as far as the sages are concerned, it has perished from human life, perished, whether one likes to call it the rudder or the ballast or the foundation of our life: our own authority, which we set as sovereign over the most necessary things, but which Democritus, unless I am mistaken, and Chrysippus mean to show, the one as a slave, the other as half a slave, though it is the finest of human things. But the account of these men is worth as much as one might think, being a man, of human views. But if the divine too now makes war on us, alas, what shall we suffer! But it is neither likely nor just, at least as we judge from these words: 'Hated by your neighbors, dear to the immortal gods, keep your spear within and sit on guard.' For what, says the Argive, if I wish, am I allowed, and am I able, if I so decide, to sit and be on guard? You are allowed, you would say, and you are able; or how could I give you this command? 'Carystus, dear son of glorious Chiron, leave Pelion and go to the headland of Euboea, where it is decreed that you shall found a holy land. Go now; delay no longer.' Is there really something in a man's power, Apollo, and am I master of willing to leave Pelion? And yet I used to hear from many wise men that if it is fated for me to reach the headland of Euboea and found a holy land, I shall go there and settle, whether you speak or not, and whether I will or not. And if I must also will what is necessary for me, and will it even if I do not will it, still you, Apollo, have the better claim to be believed. I think I had better attend to you. 'Tell the Parians, Telesicles, that I bid you found a city clear to see in the misty island.' 'I shall tell them, by Zeus,' perhaps someone puffed up would say, or someone refuting you, 'even if you do not bid me; for it is fated.' And Thasos is the misty island; and the Parians will come to it, when Archilochus, my son, explains that this island was formerly called the Misty. You, then, being quick to punish, will not, I suppose, put up with him, so ungrateful and bold, who would never have told them if you had not chosen to reveal it to him; nor would Archilochus his son have led the Parians out as colonists, nor would the Parians have settled Thasos. I do not know, then, whether you say these things without knowing what you say. But since we seem to be at leisure and to be having a long discussion, and the subject is not a minor one, tell me this; for perhaps a few things out of many are enough. Are you and I something? You would say so. And how do we know this? By what did we judge that we know it? Or is nothing else as adequate as our awareness and perception of ourselves? Well then, how did we find out that we are living creatures? And how that among living creatures we are, as I would say, human beings, and among human beings one is an impostor and the other an exposer of impostors; or, as you would say, one is a man and the other a god, one a prophet and the other a slanderer? And let it be so for you, if I am convicted. And how have we come to know that we are conversing at present? What do you say? Did we not rightly judge our perception of ourselves by that very thing, which is nearest of all? Clearly so. For there was nothing else higher than it, nor older, nor more trustworthy. For if it will not be so, then let no one named Alcmaeon come to you at Delphi any more, having killed his mother, driven from home and longing for home. For he does not know whether he himself is anything at all, nor whether he is driven from home, nor whether he longs for home. Yet even if Alcmaeon is mad and imagines what does not exist, the Pythian at least is not mad. And do not say, 'You seek a return, to reach your fatherland, son of Amphiaraus.' For you do not yet know whether a son of Amphiaraus is questioning you, or whether you who are questioned are anything, and have something to say about what someone asks. Then let not Chrysippus either, who brings in half-slavery without knowing what this very thing is, go to the Stoa, nor suppose that those simpletons will meet him to hear Nobody himself; nor let him take his stand and argue about nothing against Arcesilaus, who is present, and against Epicurus, who is not. For what Arcesilaus is, or what Epicurus is, or what the Stoa is, or what the young men are, or who Nobody is, he neither knows nor is able to know; much less, before that, does he know whether he himself is anything. But neither you nor Democritus will bear it if anyone says this; for there is no measure more trustworthy than the one I speak of; and even if there seem to be some others, they could not be put on a level with it; or if they could be put on a level, they could not surpass it. Well then, someone might say, Democritus, and you, Chrysippus, and you, prophet, since you are indignant if anyone wants to take away your own perception of yourselves (for then all those many books would no longer exist), come, let us be indignant in turn. Why, indeed? Where it suits you, this will be most trustworthy and oldest; but where it does not suit you, there some hidden fate, a destiny, will overpower it, differing for each of you: for one it comes from God, for the other from those little bodies borne downward and bouncing upward, entangling and separating, standing apart and lying side by side, by necessity? For see: in the same way as we perceive ourselves, we perceive also what is voluntary in us and what is forced. It does not escape us how great the difference is between walking and being led, or between choosing and being compelled. And why have I brought these things into the discussion? Because, prophet, the things of which we are masters have escaped you, and you who know all things would not know these, whose cables are fastened to our own will. And this will was plainly the beginning of many things. And one whom the beginning has escaped, which was the cause of what followed, would hardly know what comes after the beginning. Shameless, plainly, was the one who prophesied to Laius that his son would kill him. For the son was surely going to be master of his own will, and neither any Apollo nor anyone higher than he could reach, by any power, things that have neither existence nor the necessity of coming to be. For that is the most ridiculous thing of all: the mixture and combination of saying both that something is in human power and that there is nonetheless a chain of causes. For, as the wiser ones say, it is like the story in Euripides. For Laius, they say, was master of whether he would choose to beget a child, and this escaped Apollo's sight; but once he had begotten one, an inescapable necessity lay on him of dying at the hands of his son. In this way, then, the necessity attached to the future gave the prophet his foreknowledge of what would happen. But surely the son, like the father, was master of his own will, and just as the father was master of begetting or not, so the son was of killing or not. All your prophecies are like this; and this is just what the Apollo of Euripides was saying: 'And your whole house shall walk through blood.' That is, that there will be a self-inflicted blinding of the son because of his marriage to his mother and the kingship he received for solving the riddle; and slaughters of the sons by each other's hand, because of the banishment of one from the throne and the greed of the other, the marriage of the exile in Argos, the expedition of seven ridiculous generals, and the battle. Since these depend on many beginnings and powers, how could you know them thoroughly, or how could the chain bind them together? For if Oedipus, being master of himself, had not wished to be king, or, having wished and done this, had not chosen to marry Jocasta, or, having married her, had not been puffed up, nor been bad-tempered and hard to please, how would the particular events have happened? How would he have laid hands on his eyes? How would he have laid on his sons the curse of Euripides, and yours? And how would what followed have come about, unless causes came to be first, before you could say anything about the future? And again, if the sons had come to terms and reigned together, or if by agreement they had kept to the arrangement of ruling in turn, or if the exiled one had decided to go not to Argos but to Libya or to the Perrhaebians, or, having gone to Argos, had decided to sell salt fish and not to take a rich wife, but some laboring woman or a tavern-keeper; or if Adrastus had not given him his daughter; or if he had given her, but Polynices had not desired the road home; or if, having desired it, he had mastered himself; or if Adrastus had paid no heed to him when he asked for an alliance; or if neither Amphiaraus nor Tydeus nor any of the other commanders had followed Adrastus; or if they had followed, but Polynices on arrival had not fought his brother, but had either come to terms and reigned with him or, if the brother was unwilling, had withdrawn, persuaded by Euripides saying, 'And you too have come senselessly to sack your fatherland'; or if not he, but the other had listened to those other clever sayings of Euripides, 'Then sun and night serve mortals, and will you not bear to have an equal share of the house?', how would they have come together to fight, and the whole house of Laius have walked through blood? But, you will say, these things happened. They did; but by what road did you come to know them? Or do you not see how often the power within us who fill out the drama has cut through the whole drama? In this way, too, taking any plot you like, I shall cut through your chain and show that it is impossible. But you say you know the last parts of the plot, while the whole plot is made up of interruptions of the chain's power. Or do you not understand what I mean? In each plot, prophet, living creatures make sometimes few beginnings, sometimes many within it. And beginnings always cut off what led up to them and bring forward other events; and these can go forward only so far as another beginning, arising from somewhere, does not order what follows it to follow what went before, but to follow itself. And a donkey, a dog, or a flea could be a beginning. For you will not take away, by Apollo, even the flea's power; the flea will move with an impulse of its own, and sometimes, becoming entangled in human affairs, it will provide the beginning of some course of events. And you, though you deal with this class of things, do not perceive it. 'You destroyed Trachis, the city of divine Heracles, Locrian; but Zeus has given you ruin, and will give yet more.' What do you say? Was it not fated that it should be destroyed by you? Then why are we to blame, and not your necessity? You do not act justly, Apollo, nor do you rightly rebuke us who do no wrong. And this Zeus, the necessity of your necessity, why does he punish us, and not, if anyone, himself, for having made necessity to be such? And why does he even threaten us? Or why do we suffer famine, as though we were masters of this? Either the city will be resettled by us or not; whichever it is, that is fated. Cease your anger, then, Zeus, maker of famine; for what is fated will be, and your chain has been ordered to do this; we are nothing against it. And you too, Apollo, stop uttering vain oracles; for what must be will be, even if you keep silent. But we, Zeus and Apollo, what are we to suffer, who are in no way the cause of your legislation, that is, your necessity-making? What have we to do with your curses, which you yourselves deserve to bear for what we were compelled to do? 'Men of Oeta, do not hasten in the recklessness of your minds.' But we do not hasten, Apollo; we are driven, and not by recklessness but by your necessity. And how, Apollo, do you praise that Lycurgus, who was not good willingly or by choice, but unwillingly, if anyone ever becomes good unwillingly? What you are doing now is like someone praising and honoring those with beautiful bodies, and blaming and punishing the ugly. For the wicked could justly say to you, 'You did not allow us, gods, to become good; and not only that, but you forced us to be wicked.' And as for the good, if they walked about with their arms akimbo, no one would allow it, but would say, 'Chrysippus and Cleanthes and all of that chorus, you have been made to be good. I praise virtue, but I do not praise you virtuous men.' And Epicurus too, whom you, Chrysippus, reviled so much, I acquit of the charges, at least so far as you are concerned. For what is he to suffer, who was not willingly soft or unjust, as you often abused him? 'The gods are gracious to the life of orderly mortals, and receive the holy sacrifices and honors of the devout.' It seems to me you would not say this unless you were persuaded that people go where they go not unwillingly but willingly. And what they will, neither god nor human sophist, once so refuted beforehand, will dare to say is subject to necessity; or else we shall argue with him no longer, but, taking a stout strap, as for an unruly boy, we shall give his ribs a good thrashing." So much did Oenomaus argue at length against the oracle-giver. But if you do not take pleasure in this sort of thing, take and read what other philosophers have said about fate, which overturns not only the oracles quoted above but all the other notions held about the doctrine in general. For since not only the unlearned and ordinary people, but also very many who prided themselves on education and philosophy, have been swept along together into this doctrine, I think it necessary to set out the philosophers' own rebuttals of one another, for an exact examination of the problem. First, then, I shall read to you from Diogenianus what he says about fate in answer to Chrysippus, as follows:
On the same subject. From Diogenianus
"After all this it is worth setting out also the views of Chrysippus the Stoic on this subject. For in the first book of his On Fate, wishing to show that all things are held fast by necessity and fate, he uses, among other testimonies, the words spoken thus by the poet Homer: 'But hateful doom has gaped about me, the doom that was allotted me even at my birth.' And: 'Afterward he shall suffer whatever Fate spun for him with her thread at his birth, when his mother bore him.' And: 'No man, I say, has escaped his Fate.' He did not see that what is said elsewhere by the poet is directly opposed to these, words which he himself uses in his second book when he wants to establish that many things also come about through us, such as 'For they perished by their own recklessness,' and 'Alas, how mortals blame the gods! For they say evils come from us; but they themselves by their own recklessness have sorrows beyond what is fated.' For these and similar words are opposed to the claim that all things come about by fate. Nor could he see that Homer does not support his doctrine even in those other verses. For he will be found to suggest from them not that all things come about by fate, but rather that some things happen according to it. For 'But hateful doom has gaped about me, the doom that was allotted me even at my birth' would not be said to mean that everything happens according to doom, but only death itself; and indeed it is truly fated for every living creature that is born to die. Again, 'Afterward he shall suffer whatever Fate spun for him with her thread at his birth, when his mother bore him' means the same. For it does not say that everything that follows will happen to him by fate, but that certain things will happen to him by necessity. For what else does the qualification 'whatever' signify than this? Many things, if not all, lie upon us by necessity. And 'No man, I say, has escaped his Fate' is very well said. For who could escape what necessarily happens to every living creature? So far from having Homer on his side in thinking that all things come about by fate, Chrysippus has him against him, since Homer has said clearly and often that many things come about through us, but he would nowhere be found saying explicitly that all things happen by necessity. And for the poet, since he does not promise us the truth about the nature of things but imitates the passions, characters, and opinions of all kinds of people, it would be fitting even to say contrary things often; but for a philosopher it is fitting neither to say contrary things nor, for that very reason, to use a poet as a witness." And after other things he says: "Chrysippus thinks he brings another strong proof of fate in all things: the coining of such names as these. For he says that 'destiny' (pepromene) is a government that is limited (peperasmene) and brought to completion, and 'fate' (heimarmene) a government strung together (eiromene), whether from the will of God or from whatever cause. And he says that the Fates (Moirai) are named from having been divided (memeristhai) and distributed to each of us; and in the same way 'what must be' (to chreon) is so called as what falls due and is proper according to fate. And he takes the number of the Fates to suggest the three times in which all things revolve and through which they are accomplished. And Lachesis is so called from allotting (lanchanein) to each his destiny; Atropos from the unturnable (atrepton) and unalterable character of the allotment; and Clotho from all things being spun together (synkeklosthai) and strung together, and from their being one ordered course. By babbling these and similar things he thinks he proves necessity in all things. I am moved to wonder whether, saying such things, he did not perceive his own idle talk. For let it be granted that people, using these notions, coined the names in question, as he derives them, believing that fate holds all things fast and that the causes established beforehand from eternity in all that is and comes to be are unalterable. Why then, Chrysippus, do you follow all human opinions, as though none seemed to you mistaken about anything, but all were contemplators of the truth? How then do you say that there is no one, except the sage, who does not seem to you mad, equally with Orestes and Alcmaeon? And that only one or two sages have ever existed, while the rest, through folly, are as mad as those just mentioned? And how do you refute those opinions of theirs as mistaken, such as those about wealth and fame and tyranny and pleasure in general, which most people have thought good? How do you say that all established laws and constitutions are mistaken? Or why did you write such a multitude of books, if people held mistaken opinions about nothing? For we shall not say that when they hold the same opinions as you they think rightly, and when different ones they are mad. For in the first place, not even you say that you are a sage, much less we, so that we should make agreement with your opinion the criterion of their ever thinking rightly. Next, even if this were true, what should one have said: that all are equally mad, and not rather praise them so far as they plainly held the same opinions as you, as having grasped something right, and suppose them to err so far as they disagreed? Yet even so one ought not to regard their opinion as sufficient testimony to the truth; everyone would agree that they are, not mad as you think, but far removed from wisdom. It is ridiculous, then, for you to use as witnesses, through the coining of names, people whom you would say differ in no way from yourself in understanding, unless it happens that those who first coined these names were sages, which you will in no way be able to show. But let it be granted to you that this is so, and that those names were coined with the meanings you wish, and that this did not happen through false opinions. Where, then, do they signify that absolutely all things are by fate, and not, if anything, only those things of which there is a fate? For the number of the Fates and their names, and Clotho's spindle and the thread wound on it and its spinning, and all such things said in those accounts, indicate the inviolable and eternal sequence of causes for those things that are thus compelled to happen, and that are prevented from being otherwise. Such things may be many; but of those that do not come about in this way, people have ascribed some to gods as their governors and makers, have supposed us ourselves to be the cause of others, and again nature of others, and chance of others. Wishing to show how changeable and unstable chance is, now one way and now another, they made an image of this sort of coincidence of events and depicted Fortune standing on a ball. Or are these not also held by people? For even if they sometimes confuse the causes, and think that what happens by fate or by chance happens by divine power, and what happens through us happens by fate, still it is surely plain to everyone that they believe all these causes to exist among things. So neither people's assumptions nor the coining of such names turns out to support Chrysippus's opinion." Next after this he adds: "In the first book of On Fate, then, he uses proofs of this kind; but in the second he tries to answer the absurdities that seem to follow from the doctrine that all things are compelled, which we too set out at the beginning: for instance, that it does away with our own eagerness concerning blame and praise and exhortation, and with everything that appears to happen through our own cause. He says, then, in the second book that it is plain that many things come about from us, but that these are no less co-fated with the government of the universe. And he uses examples of this kind. That the cloak would not be lost, he says, was not fated simply, but together with its being guarded; and that this man would be saved from the enemy, together with his fleeing the enemy; and that children would be born, together with being willing to lie with a woman. For just as, he says, if someone said that Hegesarchus the boxer would certainly leave the contest unhit, it would be absurd to expect Hegesarchus to fight with his hands down because it was fated that he would come away unhit, since the one who made the declaration said this because of the man's exceptional guard against being hit, so it is with other things. For many things cannot come about without our also willing them and bringing the most strenuous eagerness and effort to them, since it was fated, he says, that they should come about together with this. Here again one might wonder at the man's lack of reflection and of reasoning, both about the facts and about the inconsistency of his own arguments. For I think that just as what is called sweet is most opposed to what is called bitter, black to white, and hot to cold, so too what is through us is opposed to what is by fate; since he has already chosen to call 'by fate' those things that come about in any case, whether we will or not, and 'through us' those that reach their end because we are earnest and active, or are not accomplished because we are careless and idle. If, then, the cloak is saved because I am earnest in guarding it, and children are born because I am willing to approach my wife, and not dying at the enemy's hands because of the will to flee them, and leaving the contest unhit because of fighting bravely against the opponent and guarding against his blows, how will 'by fate' be preserved here? For if these things happen according to fate, they could not be said to happen through us; and if through us, then clearly not according to fate, because these cannot coincide with each other. But it will be through us, he says, though what is through us is encompassed by fate. And how, I would ask, encompassed? If guarding the cloak and not guarding it came about from my own power, then clearly I would be master also of its being saved. And from the very distinction Chrysippus makes it becomes plain that the cause that lies in us is set free from fate. For it is fated, he says, that the cloak will be saved if you guard it, and that there will be children if you too are willing, but otherwise neither of these would be. But in the case of things foreordained by fate we would never use such qualifications. We do not say that every man will die if this or that happens, and will not die if it does not, but simply that he will die, whatever is done to keep him from dying at all; nor that a certain man will not be capable of pain if he does such-and-such, but that every man is capable of pain whether he wills it or not; and so with all other things fated to be thus and not otherwise. So if it is necessary that something come about if we will it, but not otherwise, it is evident that our willing and not willing was not held fast beforehand by any other cause, but was self-determined. And if this was not compelled, then clearly the coming about of the thing was not held fast from eternity either, unless the very willing or not willing to guard the cloak also came about by some fate and by a necessary cause from outside. But in that case the power of authority that is in us is completely abolished, and the cloak would no longer be saved or lost through my cause. So I would reasonably be blameless when it is lost (for some other cause was destroying it), and again in no way praised when it is saved, since I did not bring this about either. But you strained in your argument as though you could save everything." So much for the man already mentioned. Let there be joined to these the passages from Alexander of Aphrodisias, a man very distinguished in philosophical writing, who in his work On Fate also used such words as these to refute the doctrine:
On the same subject. From Alexander Aphrodisiensis
"The causes of what comes to be are divided into four kinds of cause, as the divine Aristotle has shown. For of causes some are productive, others have the character of matter; there is also among them the cause according to form; and besides these three there is among them a cause that is also an end, for the sake of which what comes to be comes to be. So many are the differences among causes; for whatever is the cause of something will be found to fall under one of these causes. And even if not everything that comes to be needs so many causes, those that need the most do not exceed the number stated. Their difference would become clearer if it were seen in the example of something that comes to be. Let the division of causes be shown for us in a statue. Of the statue, the productive cause is the craftsman who made it, whom we call a sculptor; the matter is the underlying bronze or stone, or whatever is shaped by the craftsman according to his art; for this too is a cause of the statue's having come to be and of its being. And the form produced by the craftsman in this underlying material is also itself a cause of the statue; which is why it is the form of a discus-thrower, or a javelin-thrower, or of some other definite figure. And these are not the only causes of the statue's coming to be; second to none of the causes of its coming to be is the end for whose sake it came to be, that is, the honor of someone or some act of piety toward a god. For without such a cause the statue would not have come to be at all. Since the causes are so many, and their difference from one another is clear, we would rightly count fate among the productive causes, as bearing the same relation to what comes about according to it as the sculptor's art does to the statue." "This being so, it would follow to give an account of productive causes. For so it will become clear whether fate must be held the cause of everything that comes to be, or whether other things too besides it must be allowed, as being productive causes of some things. Aristotle, dividing everything that comes to be, says that some things come to be for the sake of something, the one who makes them having some aim and end set before him for what comes to be; and others for the sake of nothing, such as come to be not by any purpose of the maker and have no reference to a definite end, such as holding and twirling bits of straw, touching and pulling at hairs, and whatever else happens in the same way. That these too come to be is clear; but they do not have the cause that is the end and the 'for the sake of which.' Things that come to be in this way, aimlessly and simply, admit of no reasonable division. But of those that have reference to something and come to be for the sake of something, some come to be by nature and others by reason. For things that have nature as the cause of their coming to be proceed by certain numbers and a definite order toward some end, at which, once they have come to be, they cease coming to be, unless something stands in their way and becomes an obstacle to their natural path toward the goal set before them. And things that come to be by reason also have an end. For none of the things that come to be by reason comes to be at random; all of them refer to some aim. Things that come to be by reason are those that come to be through their makers reasoning about them and working out how they might come to be. In this way come to be all things done by the arts and by choice. These differ from things that come to be by nature in that things that come to be by nature have in themselves the principle and causes of such coming to be (for that is what nature is), and come to be in a certain order, but without the nature that makes them using reasoning about them as the arts do. But things that come to be by art and choice have the principle of motion and the producing cause outside, not in themselves, and the maker's reasoning about them directs their coming to be. And third among the things that come to be for the sake of something are those believed to come about by chance and spontaneously. They differ from things that come to be primarily for the sake of something in this: in the latter, what comes before the end comes to be for the sake of the end; but in these, what comes before the end comes to be for the sake of something else, and there meets them, as they come to be for the sake of something else, as an end, what is said to come about spontaneously and by chance." "This being so, and everything that comes to be having been distributed into these modes, it follows next to see in which of the productive causes fate must be placed. Is it among the things that come to be for the sake of nothing? Or is this altogether unreasonable? For we always use the name of fate with reference to some end, saying that it came about by fate. So it is necessary to place fate among the things that come to be for the sake of something." Having made these distinctions in these very words, the man already mentioned next establishes at greater length that fate is nothing other than what comes about by nature; for the necessity of fate, he says, is not seen in what is accomplished by our reasoning and by art. And he says that very many natural things happen to be hindered, and these are called contrary to nature, just as in matters of art what is contrary to art is so called. And if anything at all comes about contrary to what is natural, it would also come about contrary to fate, if indeed what is according to nature is the same as what is according to fate. "We see, at any rate," he says, "that the body too, because its nature is of this kind or that, falls into diseases and decay in accordance with its natural constitution, yet not in the same way in all cases, nor of necessity. For care, changes in way of life, the prescriptions of physicians, and the counsels of gods are often enough to drive out such a condition. In the same way, in the case of the soul too, one would find in each person choices, actions, and ways of life that differ from the natural constitution, as people are improved by training, by learning, and by better teachings.... When, for example, the physiognomist once said some outrageous things about Socrates the philosopher, very far from his chosen way of life, and was laughed at for it by Socrates' companions, Socrates said that Zopyrus had not erred at all; for he would have been such a man, as far as his nature went, had he not become better than his nature through the training of philosophy. Such are natural things, which he says differ in no way from what is by fate. "And things that come from chance are of this kind: when something has come about for the sake of something else, and what it came about for does not result, but something else that was not even expected at the start. For one is said to have found a treasure by chance when, digging for some other purpose and not to find treasure, he comes upon treasure. And people say someone recovered his money by chance when, having gone to the marketplace for some other reason, he comes upon the debtor who has money and receives what was owed. And a horse is said by some to have been saved spontaneously when, in hope of food or for some other reason, it escapes those holding it, and the result of its flight and running is that it comes upon its masters. This being so, these things too would not be by fate. And there are some causes hidden from human reasoning, which are believed to work by certain antipathies, the cause through which they happen being unknown: such as certain amulets are supposed to produce effects, though there is no reasonable or persuasive cause for their producing them; and further, incantations and some such trickeries. For of these everyone agrees that the cause is hidden; which is why they call them inexplicable. And besides these there are many things that happen contingently and either way, and these too would not be by fate. Things are said to happen contingently in cases where not happening also has room, as the very expression 'either way' makes known: for instance, moving one of one's own limbs, a chance turn of the neck, stretching out a finger, raising the eyelids, a seated person standing up, a moving person resting, a speaking person falling silent. In countless cases one would find a power present that is capable of opposites, and these could not come from fate; for what comes from fate does not admit the opposite in the one in whom it is." "Moreover, deliberation is not given to man in vain; but he would be capable of deliberation in vain if he did of necessity what he does. Yet man plainly appears to be the only living creature that has this advantage from nature over the others: he does not follow impressions as they do, but has reason as the judge of what strikes him. Using it, if on examination the things imagined are such as they appeared at first and really are, he assents to the impression and so pursues them; but if they appear otherwise, he no longer holds to his first assumption, reason having refuted it, because he has deliberated about them." "We deliberate, at any rate, only about things we are able to do. And if we ever act without deliberating, we often repent and blame ourselves for our thoughtlessness; and if we see others acting thoughtlessly, we reproach them as wrongdoers and think they should use counselors, since such things are in our power." "That their doctrine of fate was false, sufficient proof is that not even its champions themselves can abide by what they say. For they profess to exhort and teach, they advise people to learn and be educated, and they rebuke and censure those who do not do what they should, as though they sinned by their own choice. They also leave behind very many writings by which they think the young should be educated. They would have stopped their ambition in argument if they had noticed that they think those who sin involuntarily deserve pardon, but those who do wrong voluntarily deserve punishment, plainly because both sinning and not sinning lie in their power. So even on their own showing the necessity of fate is abolished, and it is established that free will belongs to us by nature; while there are also very many things not in our power, such as natural things and those from chance, which are themselves different from the account of fate, as has been shown before." These have been abridged by us from a great many, because the account of free will is extensive in our own doctrines; and the passages of the philosophers quoted agree with it, bearing witness to our divine writings and refuting as false the opinions about fate held not only by the mass of people but also by the wonderful oracle-giving gods. Some of these were directed rather in the Cynic manner against the noble oracles, and others were answers to the wonderful philosophers from their own associates. It is time now to examine also the arguments drawn from astrology against those who play the Chaldean, who profess this wicked art of sorcery as a branch of learning. I shall set before you the proofs of these too, from a man who was a Syrian by race and had advanced to the summit of Chaldean science. Bardesanes was the man's name, who in his dialogues with his companions is recorded to have said something like this:
How the argument for Fate is refuted from Mathematical science. From Bardesanes
"By nature a human being is born, grows to maturity, begets, eats, drinks, sleeps, grows old, and dies; and this is true of every human being and of every irrational animal. And the other animals, being merely animate and born wholly by union, are carried along almost wholly by nature. The lion eats flesh and avenges itself when wronged, and therefore all lions eat flesh and avenge themselves; and ewes eat grass, do not touch meat, and do not avenge themselves when wronged; and the same is the way of every ewe. The scorpion eats earth and harms those who have not harmed it, striking with its venomous sting; and the same malice belongs to all scorpions. The ant knows by nature that winter is coming, and toiling all summer stores up food for itself; and all ants likewise work. The bee cultivates honey, from which it also feeds; and the same cultivation belongs to all bees. And we could set out many kinds of animals which, unable to depart from their nature, could cause you great wonder; but I thought it enough to make the demonstration from those at hand: that the other animals are carried along gladly, by necessity, according to what they share in common and the difference given to each by nature, while human beings alone, having as their special gift the mind and the speech that proceeds from it, follow nature in what they share in common, as I said before, but in what is special to them do not live according to nature. For not all have one diet: some feed like lions, others like ewes; they do not have one style of dress, nor one custom, nor one law of life among them, nor one movement of desire for things; but each person chooses a life for himself according to his own will, not imitating his neighbor except where he wishes. For his freedom is not subject to slavery; and if he ever serves willingly, this too belongs to his freedom, to be able to serve willingly. How many people, and especially among the Alans, eat flesh like wild animals, not tasting bread, and not because they do not have it but because they do not wish to! Others do not taste meat, like tame animals; others eat only fish; and others do not taste fish even if they are starving. Some drink water, others wine, others strong drink. In short, there is much difference in foods and drinks among humankind, people differing even in eating vegetables and fruits. Moreover, some, like scorpions and asps, harm without having been harmed; others, like irrational animals, avenge themselves when harmed; others snatch like wolves and steal like weasels; others, like ewes and goats, are driven off by those of like nature and do not harm those who harm them. And some are called good, others bad, others just. From this one can see that a human being is not led wholly by nature (for which would we call his nature?), but is carried partly by nature and partly by choice. That is why he receives praise, blame, and condemnation in what is by choice, while in what is by nature he is free of blame, not out of pity but by reason." And next he says: "People in each country have laid down different laws, some written and some unwritten. Of these I shall describe those I know and remember, beginning from the beginning of the world. Among the Seres there is a law to kill no one, to commit no sexual immorality, not to steal, and not to worship images; and in that very large country one cannot see a temple, nor a woman who is a prostitute, nor one called an adulteress, nor a thief dragged to court, nor a murderer, nor anyone murdered. For the star of fiery Ares, standing at mid-heaven, has not compelled anyone's free will to kill a man with iron, nor has Cypris, being with Ares, compelled anyone among them to lie with another man's wife, though surely Ares stands at mid-heaven every day, and Seres are born every hour and every day. Among the Indians and Bactrians there are many thousands of the so-called Brahmans, who by the tradition of their ancestors and laws neither kill nor worship images, do not taste anything that has had life, are never drunk, never tasting wine or strong drink, and take part in no wickedness, attending to God; while the other Indians kill, commit fornication, get drunk, worship images, and are carried along almost entirely by fate. And in the same region of India there is a tribe of Indians who hunt down strangers who fall into their hands, sacrifice them, and eat them; and neither have the beneficent stars prevented these from committing murder and unlawful unions, nor have the maleficent ones compelled the Brahmans to do evil. Among the Persians there was a law to marry their daughters, sisters, and mothers; and not only in that country and that region did the Persians make these unholy marriages, but also those of them who have emigrated from Persia, who are called Magusaeans, practice the same lawlessness, handing down the same laws and customs to their children in succession. Of these there are many to this day in Media, Egypt, Phrygia, and Galatia. And surely Cypris was not found in the bounds and houses of Cronus, with Ares accompanying Cronus, at the births of all of them. Among the Gelae there is a law that the women farm, build, and do all the manual work, and have intercourse with whomever they wish, without being accused by their husbands, and no one is called an adulteress, because all are workers and have intercourse with all, especially with strangers. And the Gelaean women use no perfume and wear no dyed garments, but all go barefoot; whereas the Gelaean men adorn themselves in soft garments and various colors, wear gold, and use perfume, and not from any other effeminacy, for they are brave, most warlike, and great hunters. And not all the women of the Gelae were allotted Cypris in an evil station in Capricorn or Aquarius, nor do all their men have the Paphian with Ares in Aries, where those who play the Chaldean say the brave and the luxurious are found. Among the Bactrians the women use every kind of distinguished ornament and every perfume, served by maids and young men more than the men are, going about on horseback with great display, adorning their horses with much gold and costly stones; and they are not chaste, but have intercourse indiscriminately with slaves and strangers, having such license, and, not being accused by their husbands, they almost rule over them. And surely laughter-loving Aphrodite does not stand at mid-heaven with Zeus and Ares in her own bounds at every birth of the women of Bactria. But in Arabia and Osrhoene not only are adulteresses put to death, but even those suspected do not go unpunished. Among the Parthians and Armenians murderers are put to death, sometimes by the judges, sometimes by the blood relatives of the murdered. And if someone kills his wife, or a childless brother, or an unmarried sister, or a son or daughter, he is not accused by anyone, such being the law in those countries. But among Greeks and Romans those who kill their relatives are subjected to greater punishment. In Hatra one who steals something worth an obol is stoned; among the Bactrians one who steals a little is spat upon; among the Romans he is beaten with blows; for such are the laws. From the river Euphrates to the Ocean, toward the east, one who is reviled as a murderer or a thief is not very angry, but one reviled as a man who sleeps with men avenges himself even to the point of murder; but among the Greeks even the wise who have boy-loves are not blamed. In the same East, those who are violated in this way, if it becomes known, are killed by their brothers or fathers and relatives, and are not even granted a public burial. But among the Gauls the young men are married to men openly, not thinking this a reproach because of their law. And it is not possible that all in Gaul who are so godlessly violated were allotted at their births the Morning Star with Hermes setting in the houses of Cronus and the bounds of Ares. In Britain many men have one wife, but in Parthia many wives have one husband, and all are chaste, obeying him according to the law. And the Amazons all have no husbands, but, like irrational animals, once a year about the spring equinox they cross their own borders and have intercourse with their neighbors, who regard this as a kind of festival. Having conceived by them, they return, and of necessity all give birth at one season, according to the law of nature; they cast out the male children and rear the female. They are warlike and take care of physical training. Hermes with Aphrodite in the houses of Hermes makes sculptors, painters, and bankers; in the houses of Aphrodite, perfumers, or singers, and actors of poems. Yet among the Taeni and Saracens, in upper Libya, among the Moors, among the Nomads at the mouth of the Ocean, in outer Germany, in upper Sarmatia, in Scythia, among all the nations of the northern parts of the Pontus, in all Alania and Albania, in Otene and Saunia, and in Chryse, one cannot see a banker, a sculptor, a painter, an architect, a geometer, a singer, or an actor of poems; the mode of action of Hermes and Aphrodite is lacking in this whole circle of the inhabited world. The Medes all throw their dead, while still breathing, to dogs reared with care; and not all of them have Ares with the Moon below the earth in Cancer in a daytime nativity. The Indians burn their dead, and with them burn their wives, who go willingly; and surely not all the Indian women burned alive have the Sun with Ares below the earth in a night nativity, in Leo, in the bounds of Ares. Most of the Germans die by hanging, and surely the mass of the Germans do not have the Moon and the hour-sign hemmed in by Cronus and Ares. In every nation, on every day, and under every kind of nativity people are born; but in each portion of humankind law and custom prevail, because of human free will. Nativity does not compel the Seres to kill against their will, or the Brahmans to eat meat, or the Persians not to marry unlawfully, or the Indians not to be burned, or the Medes not to be eaten by dogs, or the Parthians not to have many wives, or the women in Mesopotamia not to be chaste, or the Greeks not to exercise with naked bodies, or the Romans not to rule, or the Gauls not to be married as brides, or the other barbarian nations to take part in what the Greeks call the Muses. But, as I said before, each nation and each person uses his own freedom as he wishes and when he wishes, and is subject to nativity and to nature, because of the flesh he wears, partly as he wishes and partly as he does not wish. For everywhere and in every nation there are rich and poor, rulers and ruled, healthy and sick, each according to the lots of his nativity." "These things, Bardesanes," I say to him, "have thoroughly persuaded us. But the astronomers say that this earth has been divided into seven climes, and that one of the seven stars rules each clime; and that the different laws were not laid down by people for themselves, but the will of each ruler prevails in its own region, and what the ruled have made custom is that law." "He answered: 'This division is not true, Philip. For even if the inhabited world has been divided into seven parts, still in one part we find many differences of laws. There are not seven laws according to the seven stars, nor twelve according to the signs of the zodiac, nor thirty-six according to the decans, but countless. And you should remember what I said before: that in one clime and in one region of the Indians there are cannibal Indians and there are those who abstain from living things; and that the Magusaeans marry their daughters not in Persia alone but in every nation where they live, keeping the laws of their ancestors and the rites of their mysteries. We have also listed many barbarian nations, in the south and west, east and north, that is, in different climes, that have no share in the science of Hermes. How many wise men, do you think, have abolished badly laid down laws? How many laws have been dissolved through impracticability? How many kings, having conquered nations, have abolished the laws before them and laid down their own? And none of the stars lost its own clime. Yesterday the Romans, having conquered Arabia, changed the laws of the barbarians; for free will follows free will. And I shall set out for you what can persuade even the unbelieving. All the Jews who received the law through Moses shed the blood of their male children on the eighth day by circumcising them, not waiting for the presence of a star, not respecting the authority of a clime, not led by the law of a foreign land; but whether they are in Syria, or in Gaul, or in Italy, or in Greece, or in Parthia, or wherever they are, they do this. This is not according to nativity; for not all the Jews can have one nativity. Moreover, every seven days, wherever they are, they all rest from all work, neither travel nor use fire; and nativity does not compel a Jew to build a house, or pull one down, or work, or sell, or buy on the days of the Sabbath, although on that same day Jews beget and are born, are sick and die. For these things no longer belong to free will. In Syria and in Osrhoene many used to castrate themselves for Rhea; and then, by a single decree, King Abgar ordered that those who castrated themselves should have their hands cut off as well; and from that time no one castrated himself in Osrhoene. And what shall we say about the sect of the Christians, to which we, many as we are, belong, who have arisen in different climes, in every nation and clime, and who, many as we are, are called by one name? The Christians in Parthia, though Parthians, do not take many wives; those in Media do not throw their dead to dogs; those in Persia, though Persians, do not marry their daughters; among the Bactrians and Gelae they do not defile marriage; those in Egypt do not worship Apis, or the dog, or the goat, or the cat. But wherever they are, they are neither overcome by badly laid down laws and customs, nor does the nativity presided over by the ruling stars compel them to practice the evils forbidden by their teacher; yet they are subject to sickness and poverty, sufferings and what are thought dishonors. For just as a free man among us is not compelled to be a slave, and if he is compelled, resists those who compel him, so too the man among us who appears to be a slave cannot easily escape his subjection. For if we could do everything, we would be the whole; and if we could do nothing, we would be, as I said before, the instruments of others and not our own. But when God consents, all things are possible and unhindered; for nothing can resist his will. Even the things that seem to resist do resist because he is good and allows each nature to have its own character and the free will of its choice.'" So much from the Syrian too. I shall mention one more thing and close the discussion. Since the passages from outside writings have been set out sufficiently, but those from the sacred writings remain, which we need above all for the Preparation for the Proof of the Gospel, it would be well to survey these too, so that the discussion may lack nothing of what bears on the problem. So I shall make these things clear to you as well. But you would not be able to understand the sacred oracles bare, since many of them have been put forward in a veiled way. Therefore I shall present to you their interpreter. And you, unless you begrudge your betters, surely know the man, who still dances among the companies of Christ to this day through the labors he has left behind, and is not unknown to outsiders either because of the zeal he showed even for their learning. Consider, then, how much and what kind of things the wonderful Origen set out on the present subject in his Commentaries on Genesis, and how he went through the doctrine of fate.
How refuted also from the interpretation and testimony of the Divine Scriptures. From Origen
"Concerning the lights, which are none other than the sun, the moon, and the stars, having come to be 'for signs,' it is among the most necessary things to discuss. For not only do nations foreign to the faith of Christ go astray on the subject of fate, thinking that everything that happens on earth and to each person, and perhaps even to irrational animals, comes about through the combination of the so-called planets with the signs of the zodiac; but many also who are supposed to have believed are distracted by the question whether human affairs are not, after all, compelled, and cannot possibly happen otherwise than as the stars bring them about in their different configurations. It follows for those who teach this that they wholly do away with what is in our power, and therefore also with praise and blame, and with actions worthy of acceptance and, again, worthy of censure. If this is so, what is proclaimed about God's judgment is gone, together with the threats against sinners that they will be punished, and the honors and blessings for those who have given themselves to better things; for none of these will any longer reasonably come to pass. And if one saw the consequences of what he teaches, faith too will be vain, and the coming of Christ achieving nothing, and the whole dispensation through the law and the prophets, and the labors of the apostles to establish the churches of God through Christ; unless, according to those who dare to say such things, Christ too, having come under the necessity of the stars' motion by taking on birth, did and suffered everything, and it was not the God and Father of the universe who granted him his wondrous powers, but the stars. And from these godless and impious doctrines it follows also that believers are said to believe in God because they are led by the stars. We would ask them what God intended in making such a world, in which some who are men suffer what belongs to women, without being in any way the cause of their own licentiousness, while others, having been given the condition of wild animals because the movement of the universe has made them so, since God ordered the whole in this way, give themselves up to the most savage and utterly inhuman deeds, murders and piracies? And what need is there for us to speak of what happens among human beings and of the sins they commit, countless as they are, whom the champions of these doctrines acquit of all blame, ascribing to God the cause of all that is done badly and blameworthily?" "And if some of them, as if defending God, say that the good God is another, who is the source of none of these things, and attach all such things to the Creator, then first, not even so will they be able to prove what they want, that he is just. For how could one who is, on their view, the father of so many evils reasonably be called just? Second, we must examine what they will say about themselves: whether they are subject to the movement of the stars, or have been set free and, while living in this life, have nothing worked on them from there. For if they say they are subject to the stars, plainly the stars granted them this very thought, and the Creator, through the motion of the universe, will have suggested the doctrine about the higher God whom they have invented, which they do not want. But if they answer that they are outside the Creator's laws concerning the stars, then, so that what they say may not be an unproved assertion, let them try to bring us to it more compellingly, by showing the difference between a mind subject to birth and fate and another free from them. For it is plain that such people, if asked to give an account, will be quite unable to do so. And besides what has been said, prayers too become superfluous, used in vain. For if it is compelled that certain things happen, and the stars do them, and nothing can happen apart from their combination with one another, we unreasonably ask God to grant us these things. And why must one lengthen the discussion further, demonstrating the impiety of the doctrine of fate, which has become a beaten track among the many without examination? For what has been said is enough for an outline." "Let us remind ourselves from what point we came to these matters, examining 'Let the lights be for signs.' Those who learn the truth about things either declare them soundly as eyewitnesses of the events, having seen what the sufferers suffered and the doers did; or they come to know them by hearing from those who report them without being in any way the cause of what happened (let us leave aside for now the fact that the doers or sufferers, by recounting what they have done or suffered, can lead one who was not present to knowledge of what was done). If, then, someone taught by one who is in no way the cause of events that such things have happened or will happen to such people does not distinguish that the one who teaches about something as past or future is not necessarily the cause of the thing's being so, he will think that the one who showed that these things happened or will happen made them or will make them; but plainly he will think wrongly. It is as if someone, coming upon a prophetic book foretelling the things about Judas the betrayer, having learned what would happen and seeing it fulfilled, were to think that the book was the cause of its happening afterward, since he had learned from the book what Judas would do afterward; or again, were to suppose that not the book was the cause, but the one who first wrote it, or the one who inspired it, God, let us say. But just as, in the case of the prophecies about Judas, the words themselves, when examined, show that God did not become the maker of Judas's betrayal, but only revealed, having foreknown them, the things that would be done by Judas's wickedness through his own fault, so, if someone were to go deeply into the account of God's foreknowing all things, and into those in whom he, as it were, impressed the accounts of his foreknowledge, he would understand that neither the one who foreknew is necessarily the cause of what was foreknown, nor are the things that received the imprints of the accounts of the foreknower's foreknowledge." "That God knows long beforehand that each future thing will happen is plain even without Scripture, directly from the notion of God, to one who understands it as an axiom of the power of God's mind. But if this must also be established from the Scriptures, the prophecies are full of such examples; and so is the story of Susanna, where God knows all things before they come to be, as she says: "Eternal God, who knows what is hidden, who knows all things before they come to be, you know that these men have borne false witness against me." Most clearly, in the third book of Kingdoms, both the name of a king and his deeds were written down, prophesied many years before they happened, as follows: "And Jeroboam made a feast in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like the feast in the land of Judah. And he went up to the altar in Bethel which he had made for the heifers he had made." Then a little later: "And a man of God came from Judah by the word of the Lord to Bethel, and Jeroboam was standing at his altar to offer sacrifice; and he cried out against the altar by the word of the Lord, and said, 'Altar, altar, thus says the Lord: A son is born to the house of David, Josiah is his name, and he shall sacrifice upon you the priests of the high places who offer sacrifice upon you, and he shall burn human bones upon you.' And he gave a sign on that day, saying, 'This is the sign that the Lord has spoken, saying: Look, the altar is torn apart, and the fat that is on it shall be poured out.'" And a little later it is shown that the altar was torn apart and the fat was poured out from the altar, according to the sign that the man had given by the word of the Lord. And in Isaiah, who lived long before the captivity to Babylon, after which captivity Cyrus king of the Persians later came and helped in the building of the temple, which took place in the times of Ezra, these things are prophesied about him by name: "Thus says the Lord God to my anointed, Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped, that nations may obey before him; and I will break the strength of kings; I will open doors before him, and cities shall not be shut. I will go before you and level mountains; I will shatter bronze doors and crush iron bars; and I will give you dark treasures; hidden, unseen ones I will open to you, that you may know that I am the Lord God, who calls your name, the God of Israel. For the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen, I will call you by my name, and I will receive you." For from these words too it is clearly shown that, for the sake of the people whom Cyrus benefited, the Lord God granted him, though he did not know the religion of the Hebrews, to rule many nations. And one can learn these things also from the Greeks who recorded the history of Cyrus, the subject of the prophecy. Further, in Daniel, when the Babylonians were then ruling, the kingdoms that would come after him are shown to Nebuchadnezzar. They are shown through the image: the empire of the Babylonians is called gold, that of the Persians silver, that of the Macedonians bronze, and that of the Romans iron. And again in the same prophet the things concerning Darius and Alexander, and the four successors of Alexander the king of the Macedonians, and Ptolemy who ruled Egypt, called Lagus, are prophesied thus: "And a male goat came from the southwest over the face of the whole earth, and the goat had a horn between its eyes. And it came up to the ram that had the horns, which I had seen standing before the Ubal, and it ran at it in the force of its strength. And I saw it reach the ram, and it was enraged against it and struck the ram and broke both its horns, and the ram had no strength to stand before it; and it threw it to the ground and trampled it, and there was none to rescue the ram from its hand. And the he-goat grew exceedingly great; and when it was strong its great horn was broken, and other horns came up beneath it toward the four winds of heaven; and from one of them came out one strong horn, and it grew exceedingly toward the south and the west." And what need is there to mention the prophecies about Christ, such as Bethlehem the place of his birth, Nazareth the place of his upbringing, the withdrawal into Egypt, the wonders he did, and the way in which he was betrayed by Judas, who had been called to be an apostle? For all these are signs of God's foreknowledge. And the Savior himself says, "When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then you will know that its desolation has come near." For he foretold what happened later, the end in the razing of Jerusalem." "Since it has been shown, then, not inappropriately, that God has foreknowledge, in order to explain how the stars become signs we must understand that the stars have been ordered to move in such a way, the so-called planets moving contrary to the fixed stars, that from the configuration of the stars, taking signs of everything that happens to each person and to the whole, there may come to know them not human beings (for it is far beyond human power to be able truly to read from the motion of the stars what concerns each of those who act or suffer in any way), but the powers, who must know these things for many reasons, as we shall show, as far as we can, in what follows. But human beings, having come to understand something from certain observations, or from the teaching of angels who transgressed their proper order and taught some things about these matters for the ruin of our race, supposed that the things from which they think they take the signs are the causes of what the word says they signify. We shall discuss these points too, briefly but as carefully as we can, at once. These problems, then, will be set before us. (1) How, since God foreknows from eternity what each person is thought to do, is what is in our power preserved? (2) In what way are the stars not productive of human affairs, but only significant of them? (3) That human beings cannot have exact knowledge of these things, but the signs are set out for powers higher than humans. (4) What is the reason why God made the signs for the knowledge of the powers? This will be examined fourth. Let us look, then, at the first. Many of the Greeks, fearing it, and thinking that events are compelled and what is in our power is in no way preserved if God foreknows the future, dared to adopt an impious doctrine rather than accept one that is, as they say, glorious for God but does away with what is in our power, and therefore with praise and blame, and with the acceptability of virtues and the blameworthiness of vices. And they say: If God knew from eternity that a certain man would do wrong and commit these wrongs, and God's knowledge does not err, then the one foreseen to be such will certainly be unjust and commit these wrongs, and it is impossible that he will not do wrong. And if it is impossible that he will not do wrong, his doing wrong is compelled, and it will be impossible for him to do anything other than what God knew. And if it is impossible for him to do anything else, and no one is blameworthy for not doing the impossible, we accuse the unjust in vain. And from the unjust man and his wrongs they go on to other sins too, and then, from the opposite side, to what are thought good deeds; and they say that it follows from God's having foreknown the future that what is in our power cannot be preserved. To them it must be said that God, applying himself to the beginning of the making of the world, since nothing comes about without a cause, goes through each future thing in his mind, seeing that since this has happened, this follows; and if this follows, this comes next; and when it has come about, this will be; and so, going through to the end of events, he knows what will be, without being in every case the cause of each thing known coming about. For just as, if someone sees a man rash through ignorance, and through his rashness stepping thoughtlessly onto a slippery road, and grasps that he will slip and fall, he does not become the cause of the man's slipping, so we must understand that God, having foreseen what each will be, also sees the causes of his being such, and that he will commit these sins or do these good deeds. And if we must say so, foreknowledge is not the cause of what happens (for God does not lay hold of the one foreknown to sin when he sins); rather, we shall say something more paradoxical but true: the future event is the cause of the foreknowledge about it being such as it is. For it does not happen because it is known, but it is known because it was going to happen. But a distinction is needed. If someone interprets 'it will certainly be' to mean that what is foreknown must necessarily happen, we do not grant it to him; for we shall not say that, since Judas was foreknown to become a traitor, there was every necessity for Judas to become a traitor. In the prophecies about Judas, at any rate, reproaches and accusations against Judas are written down, showing everyone that he was blameworthy. But blame would not have been attached to him if he had been a traitor of necessity, and it had not been possible for him to become like the other apostles. See whether this is not shown by the passages we shall quote, which run as follows: "Let there be none to pity his orphans, because he did not remember to show mercy, and persecuted a poor and needy man, and one pierced in heart, to put him to death. And he loved a curse, and it shall come to him; and he did not desire blessing, and it shall be far from him." "But if someone explains 'it will certainly be' as meaning that these things will be, but it was possible for them to happen otherwise, we grant this as true. For it is not possible for God to be mistaken, but it is possible, concerning things that may or may not happen, to think that they will happen or will not happen. We shall say this more clearly thus: if it is possible for Judas to be an apostle like Peter, it is possible for God to think of Judas that he will remain an apostle like Peter; if it is possible for Judas to become a traitor, it is possible for God to think of him that he will be a traitor. And if Judas will be a traitor, God, foreknowing the truth by his foreknowledge of the two possibilities just mentioned, either of which could be, will foreknow that Judas becomes a traitor; but the thing of which there is knowledge could also have happened otherwise. And God's knowledge would say: It is possible for this man to do this, but also the opposite; and both being possible, I know that he will do this. For God would not, in giving an oracle about someone, say, 'It is not possible for this man to be self-controlled,' in the way that he would say, 'It is not possible for this man to fly.' For there is no power at all of flying in a human being, but there is a power both of self-control and of licentiousness. Both powers being present, the one who pays no heed to words of exhortation and instruction gives himself to the worse; but the one who seeks the truth and wishes to live by it gives himself to the better. This man does not seek the truth because he leans toward pleasure; that one examines these things, won over by the common notions and by exhorting reason. And again, this man chooses pleasure, not because he is unable to face it down, but because he does not struggle; while that man despises it, seeing the shamefulness that is often in it. That God's foreknowledge does not impose necessity on the things it has grasped, this too will be said in addition to what has been said: that in many places of the Scriptures God commands the prophets to preach repentance, without pretending to know whether the hearers will turn or will remain in their sins; as in Jeremiah it is said, "Perhaps they will hear and repent." For it is not because God does not know whether they will hear or not that he says, "Perhaps they will hear and repent," but as showing by what is said the equal balance, so to speak, of the powers, so that his foreknowledge, announced beforehand, may not make the hearers lose heart, by presenting an appearance of necessity, as though it were not in their power to turn, and so itself become, as it were, a cause of their sins. Or again, for those who, by not knowing the good that is foreknown, could live in virtue by struggling and resisting vice, foreknowledge might become a cause of slackness, as they would no longer stand firmly against sin, since what was foretold would certainly come about. In this way too foreknowledge of the good to come would become a kind of hindrance. God, then, ordering everything in the world for our benefit, reasonably blinded us also to the future. For knowledge of it would have released us from the contest against vice, and, appearing to have settled the matter, would have let us become subject to sin the sooner by not wrestling against it. At the same time, it would also conflict with someone's becoming noble and good for the foreknowledge to have come to him that he will certainly be good. For in addition to what we have, there is need of greater vehemence and effort to become noble and good; but knowledge grasped beforehand that one will certainly be noble and good slackens the discipline. Therefore it is to our advantage that we do not know whether we shall be good or wicked." "Since we have said that God blinded us to the future, see whether we can in this way make clear a passage from Exodus that is inquired about: "Who made the deaf and the dumb, the seeing and the blind? Was it not I, the Lord God?" That is, he has made the same person both blind and seeing: seeing as to the present, blind as to the future. As for the deaf and the dumb, this is not the time to explain it. That very many things not in our power are causes of many things in our power, we too shall admit; if these did not happen, I mean the things not in our power, certain things in our power would not be done. But certain things in our power are done in consequence of certain prior events not in our power, while it remains possible, given the same prior events, to do other things than what we do. If anyone seeks for what is in our power to be released from the whole, so that we do not choose these things because of what has happened to us, he has forgotten that he is a part of the world and is enclosed in the fellowship of humans and of the surrounding world. I think it has been shown moderately, as in summary, that God's foreknowledge does not in every case compel what is foreknown. "Come now, let us also contend that the stars are in no way productive of human affairs, but only significant. It is clear that if a certain configuration of the stars were thought to produce certain things that happen to a person (let the discussion now be about this), the configuration that occurred today, say, regarding this person could not be thought to have produced past events concerning another person or other people; for everything that produces is prior to what is produced. Yet according to the learning of those who profess such things, things prior to the configuration are thought to be foretold concerning people. For they profess to grasp, in some such way, taking the hour of a given person, how each of the planets stood, vertically over this or that degree of the sign of the zodiac, or the minutes within it; and which star of the zodiac was on the eastern horizon, which on the western, which at mid-heaven, and which at the point opposite mid-heaven. And when they have set out the stars, which they think they have configured for themselves, as so configured at the time of a given person's birth, at the time of delivery of the one they are considering, they examine not only the future but also the past, and what happened before the birth and conception of the person in question: about the father, what sort of man he is, rich or poor, sound in body or maimed, better or worse in character, without property or wealthy, having this occupation or that; and the same about the mother and about older brothers, if there are any. Let us grant for the present that they grasp the truth on this point, though we shall show later that this too is not so. Let us ask, then, those who suppose human affairs to be compelled by the stars how today's configuration of a certain kind can have produced what is earlier. For if this is impossible, then insofar as anything true is found about what is earlier in time, it is clear that the stars, moving in this way in heaven, did not produce what is past and happened before they were in that position. And if so, perhaps one who grants that they speak truly, attending to what is said about the future, will say that they speak truly not because the stars produce, but only because they signify. But if someone claims that the stars do not produce the past, but that other configurations were the causes of those events, while the present configuration only signified them, and that the future, however, is shown by the present configuration of a given person's birth, let him show the difference by which one can demonstrate from the stars that some things are understood to be true as from producing causes, and others as from signs only. Unable to give the difference, they will in fairness agree that nothing in human affairs comes about from the stars, but, as we said before, is at most signified; as if someone took past and future not from the stars but from the mind of God through some prophetic word. For just as we showed earlier that God's knowing what each will do does no harm to the doctrine of what is in our power, so neither do the signs that God appointed to signify hinder what is in our power. Rather, just like a book that contains the future prophetically, the whole heaven, being as it were God's book, can contain the future. That is why, in the Prayer of Joseph, what Jacob says can be understood in this way: "For I read in the tablets of heaven all that will happen to you and your sons." And perhaps "The heaven shall be rolled up like a scroll" shows that the words it contains, which signify what will be, will be completed and, so to speak, fulfilled, just as prophecies are said to have been fulfilled by coming to pass. And in this way the stars will have come to be for signs, according to the saying, "Let them be for signs." But Jeremiah, turning us back to ourselves and removing the fear of what are thought to be signified, and perhaps also supposed to come from there, says, "Do not be afraid of the signs of heaven."" "Let us look also at a second argument, how the stars cannot be productive but, if anything, significant. From a great many nativities one can take what concerns one person (we say this by hypothesis, granting that knowledge of them can be acquired by humans). For example, about this man suffering this and dying by falling among robbers and being murdered, one can, he says, take it from his own nativity, and, if he happens to have several brothers, from that of each of them. For they think that the nativity of each contains a brother who will die at the hands of robbers, and likewise that of the father and of the mother and of the wife and of his sons and of his servants and of his dearest friends, and perhaps even of the murderers themselves. How then is it possible that one contained in so many nativities (to grant them this) should be subject to the configuration of the stars of this nativity rather than of those? It is unconvincing to claim that the configuration at this man's own nativity produced these things, while that at the nativities of the others did not produce them but only signified them. For it is silly to say that the nativity of all of them contained, each one, what produced this man's murder; so that in fifty nativities, let us suppose, this man's murder would be contained. And I do not know how they will be able to account for the fact that the configuration at the birth of nearly all those in Judea is such that they receive circumcision on the eighth day, being mutilated and wounded and falling into inflammation and injuries, and needing physicians at their very entrance into life; while that of the Ishmaelites in Arabia is such that all are circumcised at thirteen. For this is recorded of them. And again, that certain people among the Ethiopians have their kneecaps removed, and the Amazons one of their breasts. How do the stars do these things to these nations? I think that if we gave it attention we would not be able even to establish anything true to say about them. Though so many ways of foretelling are current, I do not know how people ran aground on saying that augury and sacrificial divination do not contain the producing cause but only signify, and the observation of shooting stars likewise, but no longer the casting of nativities. For if events are recognized (to grant that they are known) and come about from the source from which the knowledge is taken, why should things come about from the stars rather than from birds, and from birds rather than from the entrails of sacrifices? And why from the entrails of sacrifices rather than from shooting stars? This will suffice for the present to refute the view that the stars produce human affairs." "But what we conceded (for it did no harm to the argument), that humans can grasp the heavenly configurations, and the signs, and what they are signs of, let us now examine whether it is true. Those skilled in these matters say that one who is to grasp truly the matters of nativity-casting must know not only in which twelfth-part the so-called star is, but also in which degree of the twelfth-part and in which sixtieth; and the more exact say also in which sixtieth of the sixtieth; and they say this must be done for each of the planets, examining its relation to the fixed stars. Again, on the eastern horizon, they say, one will need to see not only which twelfth-part was on it, but also the degree and the sixtieth of the degree, the first or the second sixtieth. How then, since an hour, broadly speaking, covers half a twelfth-part, can one take the sixtieth, without having a proportional division of the hours, so as to know, for example, that so-and-so was born at the fourth hour and a half, and a fourth, an eighth, a sixteenth, and a thirty-second of an hour? For they say that what is signified varies greatly through ignorance not of the whole hour but even of a fraction of it. In twins, at any rate, the interval is often a mere instant of an hour, and many differences in what happens to them and what they do occur, as they say, because of the relation of the stars, and the part of the twelfth-part on the horizon, which is not grasped by those who think they have observed the hour. For no one can say that the interval between one's birth and the other's is a thirtieth of an hour. But let this be granted them as to taking the hour. There is, however, a theorem current showing that the circle of the zodiac moves, like the planets, from west to east one degree in a hundred years, and that in a long time this changes the position of the twelfth-parts, the intelligible twelfth-part being one thing and the visible figure, so to speak, another. And they say the outcomes are found not from the figure but from the intelligible sign, which can hardly be grasped at all. But let this too be granted, that the intelligible twelfth-part can be grasped, or that the truth can be taken from the visible twelfth-part. Yet the so-called blending, as they call it, of the stars in these configurations they themselves will admit they cannot account for completely: what is shown as worse, say, is obscured by this star because it is aspected by that better one, and obscured to this or that degree; and often again the obscuring of the worse by the aspect of the better is hindered because another star is so configured as to signify worse things. And I think that anyone who attends to these topics would despair of grasping these things, which are in no way set out for humans, but at most reach as far as being signified. And if anyone has had experience of these matters, he will know rather how often those who speak, and even those who have written, miss the mark in their guessing, than how they are thought to hit it. Isaiah, at any rate, as though these things cannot be found out by humans, says to the daughter of the Chaldeans, who more than all others professed these things: "Let the astrologers of heaven stand up and save you; let them tell you what is about to come upon you." For by these words we are taught that even those most devoted to such study cannot foretell what the Lord has willed to bring on each nation." So much from the man already mentioned. But this whole discussion of ours comes down to two main points: that those thought to give oracles city by city are not gods, nor even good daemons, but on the contrary impostors, deceivers, and cheats, who have put forward, for the ruin and perversion of true piety, their deception of humankind, both the rest of it and that concerning fate. Since from this deception no one in all the ages except Jesus our Savior has redeemed the whole human race, it was fitting that all the present material should be treated by us with care at the beginning of the Preparation for the Gospel, so that we might learn by fact from what ancestors we are sprung, and in what deception they were formerly held fast, and from how much and how great blindness and godlessness we ourselves and the whole of human life have looked up and found healing from the long and age-old working of demons through the saving gospel teaching alone.
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Preparation for the Gospel, Book 6
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