Porphyry of Tyre #4: Augustine and Philoponus vs. Pagan Oracles

Of the three main sources for Porphyry's On the Philosophy to be derived from Oracles (see Porphyry of Tyre parts #2 and #3), I will discuss Philoponus (6 fragments) and Augustine (8 fragments) in this post, and Eusebius (40 fragments) in the next.

Philoponus, On the Creation of the World (around 550 CE)

Porphyry, who has treated every kind of beggar-priestcraft (agyrtian), says in the second book of the treatise about the philosophy (derived) from oracles (logiôn) that the gods show in the oracles (khrêsmois) that everything they predict for people, they (are able to) say because they know the order (of the stars) at birth, since they are the greatest genethialogists (astrologers giving horoscopes based on the moment of birth). (330aF Smith, my transl.)

This establishes the context for Philoponus' discussion of Porphyry, which takes place within a longer passage about (or rather against) astrology. Human astrologers, says Philoponus, may have some justification in claiming that their failures are due to not knowing the exact moment of birth. But since the gods - really demons, as far as Philoponus is concerned - must have better knowledge of both the times of birth and of the positions of the stars, how can even their oracles be wrong, as Porphyry himself admits? This is the pagan philosopher's explanation:

Everything that descends (kation) to the earth falls under the power of the ruling (kratountôn) gods, that is, (becomes subject) to the movement of the stars, so that even the descending gods are under the Fates; and they all descend and give oracles (khrêsmôidousin) down below, where both their oracles (khrêstêria) and their cult statues are set up. And these (gods) are the (children) of Kronos and Rhea and all those (descended) from them. (337F)

What Porphyry is saying here is that the gods who visit their temples are the "younger gods" of the Timaeus, who are junior to the stars and planets. Nevertheless, as long as they are in the celestial regions, they are free; only when they go down to the earth does their freedom and knowledge become limited. And since practical theosophy - what Philoponus calls beggar-priestcraft, i.e. superstitious trickery, or magic - is difficult to manage (khalepên eis enkheirêsin), even the oracles of the gods are therefore sometimes more a matter of faith than of indubitable knowledge. (340aF)

What is more, those who call them (kalountôn) can force (biazomenoi) the gods to give divination (manteia) (341aF). Thus Hecate's impatient question:

Why do you always need me and call me from shining ether,
(Me), the goddess Hecate, with god-compelling necessities (theiodamois anankois)? (342F)

When the callers are unaware of the limits that fate imposes on the gods, they sometimes compel them to speak when they cannot give a certain answer, and thereby produce unreliable oracles. Porphyry takes the evidence for this from oracles, in keeping with the book's title. In one case, when Apollon was under compulsion (biazomenos), he spoke:

Undo the compulsion (lye biên) and the force (kartos) of (your) words; I will (only) speak lies.

Another (unnamed) god, in a similar situation:

Today it is not fitting to proclaim the holy path of the stars,

For the seat of divination is shackled in the stars at this moment. (341aF)

And Hecate, being called (klêtheisa) at an inopportune time:

I do not speak; I will close the doors of (my) long throat,

For the Night's Titaness (= moon), the horned goddess, approaches

By unprofitable kentrois (cardinal points of the ecliptic) and in aspect with evil Ares (= Mars).

After this, being asked whether the gods are also subject to fate, she replied:

May I be freed of the shackles of Nature, that I may obey you (pl.).

Oh heart! What have you (sg.) asked, struck by weakness?

Do you (sg.) not desire to learn what is not permitted (themis) you (sg.) to ask thus?

Do you (pl.) leave off this desire; end the compulsion (pausasthe biês), since you (pl.) are little after all. (342F)

This account of oracular knowledge is not Porphyry's invention, but it is quite novel, and he could no doubt have made a different selection oracles if he had wanted to support a different theory. While I don't know that anyone else explicitly adopts it, it elegantly brings together quite a number of different ideas. Most interestingly, perhaps, it gives a large role to the gods, who in Middle Platonism often seem to disappear between the demiurge and stars on the one hand and the daemons on the other. It explains the fallibility of the gods' pronouncements without making the gods themselves fallible, and attributes the failures of divination to human ignorance.

Would Porphyry's pagan contemporaries have appreciated all this, or would they have seen him - like Philoponus did - as dabbling in disreputable magic? The idea that humans can overpower the divine through ritual had already been attacked in the Hippocratic treatise On the Sacred Disease, half a millenium earlier. But this shows that the idea had long been present in Greek culture - why else critique it? -, and did not only come into currency in "superstitious" late antiquity. It did, however, win a new respectability in this period, since the increasingly prestigious Egyptian priests had long been used to speaking (as if) from positions of power over the deities they addressed. It seems, then, that Porphyry's theosophy embraces practices that could be called magic, but only insofar as they fit into a general pattern that is equally meant to apply to the rituals of public temples. The distinction that seems to count for him is between real knowledge and ignorance, which is the same as that between efficacy and useless results.

Augustine, On the City of God (early 5th cent.)

This does not mean that there is no moral dimension to proper and improper ritual in Porphyry, as this quote in Augustine's great anti-pagan polemic shows:

“There are,” he says,” in a certain place very small earthly spirits (spiritus terreni), subject to the power of evil demons (malorum daemonum). The wise men of the Hebrews, among whom was this Jesus, as you have heard from the oracles of Apollo cited above, turned religious persons from these very wicked demons and minor spirits (minoribus spiritibus), and taught them rather to worship the celestial gods, and especially to adore God the Father. This,” he said, “the gods enjoin; and we have already shown how they admonish the soul to turn to God, and command it to worship Him. But the ignorant and the ungodly, who are not destined to receive favors from the gods, nor to know the immortal Jupiter, not listening to the gods and [the divine men/diviners], have turned away from all gods, and have not only refused to hate, but have venerated the prohibited demons. [Pretending] to worship God, they refuse to do those things by which alone God is worshipped. For God, indeed, being the Father of all, is in need of nothing; but for us it is good to adore Him by means of justice, chastity, and other virtues, and thus to make life itself a prayer to Him, by inquiring into and imitating His nature. For inquiry,” says he, “purifies and imitation deifies us, by moving us nearer to Him.” (346F, from Aug. civ. XIX 23)

This translation, by a Reverend Marcus Dods, is generally accurate, but it gives us Augustine's reading of Porphyry, as it were, and not Porphyry's own meaning. Capital-G God - in distinction to the gods - is treated the god of the Christians, given capitalized pronouns, even called "God the Father" as if Porphyry were speaking about the trinitarian person of the Father in distinction to the Son. In several cases, we could equally well interpret deus as a generic singular and translate "the gods"; not because Porphyry does not conceptually distinguish between the deus pater and the many other gods, but because those who really "worship deum" are the same people either way you take it. The Father, whom we met in an oracle in part #3, is in the first place Jupiter (Zeus in Porphry's original Greek) and the demiurge of pagan philosophy, and only secondarily the same as the god of the Jews. The "wise men of the Hebrews", including Jesus, must therefore have supported worship of the celestial gods: if they were pious toward the greatest god, then from a pagan perspective it is absurd that they should have rejected the other gods. Worship of deus (the Father) and deus (god-kind, if you will) simply goes together.

In the rejection of evil daemons and minor spirits - whom we have also come across in part #3 -, is taking up a Jewish/Christian idea in a more integral fashion. Neither previous nor later pagan philosophers adopted such a stark contrast between illicit daemon worship and proper veneration of the gods, albeit the existence of evil daemons (alongside good ones) was generally assumed; in Middle Platonism, the role of daemons as intermediaries between humans and gods is much more prominent. But Porphyry turns the Christian idea to anti-Christian use, as Augustine complains:

He is right in so far as he proclaims God the Father, and the conduct by which we should worship Him. Of such precepts the prophetic books of the Hebrews are full, when they praise or blame the life of the saints. But in speaking of the Christians he is in error, and caluminates them as much as is desired by the demons whom he takes for gods (…) But who but a diabolical spirit has told or suggested to this man so manifest and vain a lie, as that the Christians reverenced rather than hated the demons, whose worship the Hebrews prohibited? But that God, whom the Hebrew sages worshipped, forbids sacrifice to be offered even to the holy angels of heaven and divine powers, whom we, in this our pilgrimage, venerate and love as our most blessed fellow-citizens. (still from XIX 23)

It is almost comical how terribly indignant Augustine is that anyone would accuse Christians of worshipping demons - while in the same breath he also makes that claim about the pagans.

Another part of Christianity that Porphyry turns against the Christians is Jesus himself:

What we are going to say will certainly take some by surprise. For the gods have declared that Christ was very pious, and has become immortal, and that they cherish his memory: that the Christians, however, are polluted, contaminated, and involved in error. And many other such things [] do the gods say against the Christians. [...] 

But to some who asked Hecate whether Christ were a [g]od, she replied: 

"You know the condition of the disembodied immortal soul, and that if it has been severed from wisdom it always errs. The soul you refer to is that of a man foremost in piety: they worship it because they mistake the truth." 

Of this very pious man, then, Hecate said that the soul, like the souls of other good men, was after death dowered with immortality, and that the Christians through ignorance worship it. And to those who ask why he was condemned to die, the oracle of the goddess replied: 

"The body, indeed, is always exposed to torments, but the souls of the pious abide in heaven. And the soul you inquire about has been the fatal cause of error to other souls which were not fated to receive the gifts of the gods, and to have the knowledge of immortal [Jupiter]. Such souls are therefore hated by the gods; for they who were fated not to receive the gifts of the gods, and not to know [g]od, were fated to be involved in error by means of him you speak of. He himself, however, was good, and heaven has been opened to him as to other good men. You are not, then, to speak evil of him, but to pity the folly of men: and through him men’s danger is imminent." (345aF, from Aug. civ. XIX 23)

All this fits quite well into a Platonic cosmology - albeit the idea of a pious person being "endowed" with immortality is more Stoic than Platonic if understood literally, since Platonically speaking, souls are always immortal -, and thus "domesticates" the idea of Jesus' special status without making any concessions to Christian ideas that go against paganism. But Augustine rightly notes that it conflicts with another oracle that Porphyry also cites:

To one who inquired what god he should propitiate in order to recall his wife from Christianity, Apollo replied in the following verses: 

“You will probably find it easier to write lasting characters on the water, or lightly fly like a bird through the air, than to restore right feeling in your impious wife once she has polluted herself. Let her remain as she pleases in her foolish deception (inanibus fallaciis), and sing false laments to her dead [g]od, who was condemned by right-minded judges, and perished ignominiously by a violent death.” 

In these verses Apollo exposed the incurable corruption of the Christians, saying that the Jews, rather than the Christians, recognized [g]od. (343F, from Aug. civ. XIX 22)

Yet the oracles are perhaps not as contradictory as Augustine makes them out to be. After all, Apollo's oracle does not call Jesus himself immoral or impious, only a "dead god", i.e., not a god at all (since gods do not die). The judges' right-mindedness does imply that the crucifixion was deserved, but Porphyry's opinion seems to have been that Jesus died the way he did in order to mislead the impious into worshipping him (346F), so that neither the judges nor Jesus would be at fault.

Augustine uses 343F to argue that Porphyry should accept the Hebrew Bible's teachings, if "the Jews, rather than the Christians, recognized God"; but the Latin version he quotes does not mean that the Christians were wrong and the Jews correct, but that the Jews recognized the god - i.e. Zeus - more than the Christians. But the criterion for this comparatively greater correctness is Platonic, so that there is no reason for Porphyry to follow Jewish teachings where they go against Platonism (as e.g. in the question of the eternity of the world, 344aF).

Augustine also makes much the same argument on the basis of another fragment, which he refers to several times, because he likes the thought that the pagan gods are afraid of the god "whom the Hebrews honor": 

Apollo, [] when asked whether word, i.e., reason (verbum sive ratio = gr. logos), or law is the better thing, replied in the following verses, [...] from which I (=Augustine) select the following as sufficient: 

“God, the Generator, and the King prior to all things, before whom heaven and earth, and the sea, and the hidden places of [the underword] (infernorum abdita) tremble, and the deities themselves are afraid, for their law is the Father whom the holy Hebrews honor [very much].” (344F, from Aug. civ. XIX 23)

Once more, for Porphyry, the Father and the other gods belong to one and the same order; for Augustine, the gods' fear proves their merely demonic status, and that Porphyry should follow the Hebrews in all things.