Lactantius — Divine Institutes 7.5

Let us now give the reason why he made the human himself: if the philosophers had known it, they would either have defended the true things they had found or would not have fallen into the greatest errors. For this is the sum, this the hinge of things: whoever has not held it, all truth slips from him; this finally is what makes their account fail to square. If that light had shone on them, if they had known the whole mystery of the human, never would the Academy have cut their disputations and all philosophy across. So then, as God did not make the world for himself, because he does not need its advantages, but for the human who uses it, so he made the human himself for himself. What use, says Epicurus, is the human to God, that he should make him for himself? Namely so that there would be someone who could understand his works, who could both admire with sense and proclaim with voice the providence of arranging, the reason of making, the power of completing: of all which the sum is this, that he worship God. For that one worships who understands these things; that one follows with due reverence the craftsman of all things, his true father, who measures the power of his majesty from the finding, beginning, and perfecting of his works. What clearer argument can be brought that God made both the world for the human and the human for his own sake than that, alone of all living beings, he is so formed that his eyes are aimed at heaven, his face looking toward God, his countenance shared with his parent, and God seems to have raised the human as if with outstretched hand from the ground and stirred him to the contemplation of himself? What then, someone says, does the human's worship confer on God, who is blessed and needs nothing? Or if he held the human in such honor that for his sake he built the world, equipped him with wisdom, made him lord of living things, and loved him as a son, why did he make him mortal and fragile? Why did he throw the one he loved into all evils, when the human ought both to be blessed as joined and near to God and everlasting, as God himself is, for whose worship and contemplation he was shaped? Although we have taught these things here and there in earlier books, yet because the matter itself now especially demands it — since our purpose is to treat of the blessed life — these points must be explained more carefully and fully, so that God's arrangement and work and will may be known.

Although he could always generate countless souls from his immortal spirits, as he generated the angels, for whom immortality stands without any danger and fear of evils, he nevertheless devised an unspeakable work: how he might create an infinite multitude of souls, which he would first set bound to fragile and weak bodies, midway between good and evil, so that, their nature composed of both, he might set virtue before them, lest they reach immortality softly and delicately, but come to that unspeakable prize of eternal life with the greatest difficulty and great labors. Therefore, that he might clothe them with heavy and harassing limbs — since they could not stand in empty mid-air, the weights and heaviness of the body pressing them down — he decided that first a seat and dwelling had to be founded for them. And so with ineffable power and might he wrought the bright works of the world: the light elements hung on high and the heavy pressed to the depths; he made the heavenly firm and set the earthly in place. There is no need now to run through each thing, since in the second book we have treated them all. He therefore set lights in heaven whose governance and brightness and motion are most aptly tempered to the uses of living beings; but to the earth, which he willed to be the seat, he gave fertility of bringing forth and producing variously, so that by the richness of crops and herbs and green things it would supply nourishment according to the nature and use of each kind. Then, when all things that belonged to the world's condition were finished, he fashioned the human from that very earth which he had prepared for him from the beginning as a dwelling — that is, he clothed and wrapped his spirit in an earthly body, so that, compacted from diverse and opposing things, he might take good and evil. And as the earth itself is fertile for bearing crops, so the human's body, taken from the earth, received the plenty of generating and the power of putting forth offspring, so that, since he was formed from fragile material and could not remain forever, when the span of temporal life was finished he would yield and renew by perpetual succession that which he bore fragile and weak.

Why then did he fashion him mortal and fragile, when he had built the world for his sake? First, so that an infinite force of souls might be generated and fill the whole earth with multitude; then, so that he might set before the human virtue — that is, endurance of evils and labors — through which he could obtain the prize of immortality. For because the human consists of two things, body and soul, of which one is earthly and the other heavenly, two lives have been assigned to the human: one temporal, assigned to the body, the other everlasting, which underlies the soul. We receive the former by being born; we attain the latter by laboring, lest immortality stand for the human, as we said before, without any difficulty. The former is earthly like the body and therefore ends; the latter is heavenly like the soul and therefore has no limit. We receive that first life unknowing; this second knowing: for it is given to virtue, not to nature, because God willed us to procure life for ourselves in life. Therefore he gave this present life so that we might either lose that true and perpetual one by vices or deserve it by virtue. In this bodily life there is no highest good, since as it was given to us by divine necessity, so again by divine necessity it will be dissolved: thus what has an end does not have the highest good. But in that spiritual life, which we ourselves acquire through ourselves, the highest good is contained, because it can have neither evil nor end. Nature and the account of the body give proof of this. For the other animals bend toward the ground, because they are earthly, and they do not take immortality, which is from heaven; but the human stands upright and looks to heaven, because immortality is set before him — and yet it does not come unless it is granted to the human by God: for there would be no difference between the just and the unjust if every human became immortal by birth. Therefore immortality is not a sequel of nature, but the wage and prize of virtue. Finally the human does not walk upright at once when born, but first on four feet, because the account of the body and of this present life is common to us with the mute animals; afterward, when strength is confirmed, he is raised and his tongue is loosed into speech and he ceases to be a mute animal. This account teaches that the human is born mortal, but afterward becomes immortal when he has begun to live from God — that is, to follow justice, which is contained in the worship of God — when God has stirred the human to the sight of heaven and of himself. That happens when the human, purified by the heavenly washing, puts off infancy with every stain of prior life and, having received the increase of divine vigor, becomes a perfect and full human. Therefore because God set virtue before the human, although soul and body are associated, they are nevertheless contrary and fight each other. The goods of the mind are evils of the body — that is, flight from wealth, ban on pleasures, contempt of pain and death. Likewise the goods of the body are evils of the mind — that is, desire and lust, by which both wealth is sought and the sweets of various pleasures, by which the weakened mind is extinguished. Therefore the just and wise one must be in all evils, since fortitude is conqueror of evils, but the unjust in riches, in honor, in power: for these are bodily and earthly goods; but those live an earthly life and cannot attain immortality, because they have given themselves to pleasures, which are enemies of virtue. And so this temporal life ought to be subject to that eternal one as the body to the soul. Whoever therefore has preferred the soul's life must despise the body's life, and he will not be able to strive to the highest otherwise than by looking down on what is lowest. But whoever has embraced the body's life and cast his desires to the earth cannot reach that higher life. But whoever prefers to live well forever will live badly for a time and will be affected by all troubles and labors as long as he is on earth, so that he may have divine and heavenly consolation. And whoever has preferred to live well for a time will live badly forever: for he will be condemned by God's sentence to everlasting punishment, because he preferred earthly goods to heavenly. Therefore God seeks to be worshiped and honored by the human as father, so that he may hold virtue and wisdom, which alone begets immortality. For because no one other than he can give it, because he alone possesses it, he pays this prize to the human's piety by which he has honored God: that he be blessed forever and be with God and with God always.