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The City of God

Chapter 26.--Of that Opinion of the Platonists, that the Angels Were Themselves Indeed Created by God, But that Afterwards They Created Man's Body.

It is obvious, that in attributing the creation of the other animals to those inferior gods who were made by the Supreme, he meant it to be understood that the immortal part was taken from God Himself, and that these minor creators added the mortal part; that is to say, he meant them to be considered the creators of our bodies, but not of our souls. But since Porphyry maintains that if the soul is to be purified all entanglement with a body must be escaped from; and at the same time agrees with Plato and the Platonistsin thinking that those who have not spent a temperate and honorable life return to mortal bodies as their punishment (to bodies of brutes in Plato's opinion, to human bodies in Porphyry's); it follows that those whom they would have us worship as our parents and authors, that they may plausibly call them gods, are, after all, but the forgers of our fetters and chains,--not our creators, but our jailers and turnkeys, who lock us up in the most bitter and melancholy house of correction. Let the Platonists, then, either cease menacing us with our bodies as the punishment of our souls, or preaching that we are to worship as gods those whose work upon us they exhort us by all means in our power to avoid and escape from. But, indeed, both opinions are quite false. It is false that souls return again to this life to be punished; and it is false that there is any other creator of anything in heaven or earth, than He who made the heaven and the earth. For if we live in a body only to expiate our sins, how says Plato in another place, that the world could not have been the most beautiful and good, had it not been filled with all kinds of creatures, mortal and immortal? ¹ But if our creation even as mortals be a divine benefit, how is it a punishment to be restored to a body, that is, to a divine benefit? And if God, as Plato continually maintains, embraced in His eternal intelligence the ideas both of the universe and of all the animals, how, then, should He not with His own hand make them all? Could He be unwilling to be the constructor of works, the idea and plan of which called for His ineffable and ineffably to be praised intelligence?

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De civitate Dei (CCSL)

Caput XXVII: De Platonicorum opinione, qua putauerunt angelos quidem a deo conditos, sed ipsos esse humanorum corporum conditores.

Ita sane Plato minores et a summo deo factos deos effectores esse uoluit animalium ceterorum, ut inmortalem partem ab ipso sumerent, ipsi uero mortalem adtexerent. proinde animarum nostrarum eos creatores noluit esse, sed corporum. unde quoniam Porphyrius propter animae purgationem dicit corpus omne fugiendum simulque cum suo Platone aliisque Platonicis sentit eos, qui inmoderate atque inhoneste uixerint, propter luendas poenas ad corpora redire mortalia, Plato quidem etiam bestiarum, Porphyrius tantummodo ad hominum, sequitur eos, ut dicant deos istos, quos a nobis uolunt quasi parentes et conditores nostros coli, nihil esse aliud quam fabros conpedum carcerumue nostrorum, nec institutores, sed inclusores adligatoresque nostros ergastulis aerumnosis et grauissimis uinculis. aut ergo desinant Platonici poenas animarum ex istis corporibus comminari, aut eos nobis deos colendos non praedicent, quorum in nobis operationem ut quantum possumus fugiamus et euadamus, hortantur, cum tamen sit utrumque falsissimum. nam neque ita luunt poenas animae, cum ad istam uitam denuo reuoluuntur, et omnium uiuentium siue in caelo siue in terra nullus est conditor, nisi a quo facta sunt caelum et terra. nam si nulla causa est uiuendi in hoc corpore nisi propter pendenda supplicia: quomodo dicit idem Plato aliter mundum fieri non potuisse pulcherrimum atque optimum, nisi omnium animalium, id est et inmortalium et mortalium, generibus inpleretur? si autem nostra institutio, qua uel mortales conditi sumus, diuinum munus est: quomodo poena est ad ista corpora, id est ad diuina beneficia, remeare? et si deus, quod adsidue Plato commemorat, sicut mundi uniuersi, ita omnium animalium species aeterna intellegentia continebat, quomodo non ipse cuncta condebat? an aliquorum esse artifex nollet, quorum efficiendorum artem ineffabilis eius et ineffabiliter laudabilis mens haberet?