Perhaps you also ask the cause of the error in judgment; for this is where the course of the argument now leads. So once again we shall reasonably find a starting point that will make this question clear as well. We have received from the Fathers an account of the following kind. It is not a mythical tale, but one that draws its credibility from our own nature. There is a twofold way of apprehending the things that exist, since our contemplation is divided between the intelligible and the sensible.
Nothing in the nature of existing things could be apprehended outside this division. Yet the two are separated from one another by a great interval: the sensible does not belong among the marks of the intelligible, nor the intelligible among those of the sensible; rather, each is characterized by qualities opposite to the other. For the intelligible nature is bodiless, intangible, and without form, while the sensible, as its very name indicates, falls within apprehension through the senses.
But just as, within the sensible world itself, although the elements stand in great opposition to one another, a harmony has been devised out of those opposites by the wisdom that governs the whole, so that the whole creation comes into agreement with itself and nowhere does natural opposition dissolve the bond of concord; in the same way, by divine wisdom there is also a certain mixing and blending of the sensible with the intelligible, so that all things may share equally in the beautiful and nothing among existing things may be deprived of participation in the better nature.
For this reason, the region corresponding to intelligible nature is a subtle and highly mobile essence, having, in its supramundane portion, a strong affinity with the intelligible by reason of what is distinctive to its nature. Yet by a higher providence there is a certain intermingling of the intelligible with sensible creation, so that nothing in creation may be rejected—as the Apostle says—and nothing may be excluded from divine fellowship.
For this purpose the divine nature brings forth in the human being a mixture of the intelligible and the sensible, as the account of creation teaches. For, it says, God took dust from the earth and formed the human being, and through His own inbreathing implanted life in what He had formed, so that the earthly might be raised together with the divine and one grace, equal in honor, might extend throughout all creation, the lower nature being mingled with the supramundane.
Now the intelligible creation had come into existence beforehand, and each of the angelic powers had been assigned some activity toward the constitution of the whole by the authority that governs all things. Among them was a certain power appointed to encompass and rule the region around the earth, strengthened for this very task by the Power that orders the whole. Then the earthly creature was fashioned as an image of the power above: this living creature was the human being. In him was the Godlike beauty of intelligible nature, blended by an ineffable power. The one who had received the administration of the region around the earth regarded it as a terrible and intolerable thing that from the nature subject to him there should appear a being made like to the surpassing dignity.
As for how one who had been created for no evil by the One who established the whole in goodness sank into the passion of envy, a precise treatment of the question does not belong to the present work. Yet it would be possible to set out the argument briefly for those who are more ready to be persuaded.
For virtue and evil are not contrasted as though they were two things appearing with independent subsistence. Rather, just as nonbeing is set over against being, though one cannot say that nonbeing stands over against being as something subsisting in itself—we say instead that nonexistence is contrasted with existence—in the same way evil stands opposed to virtue, not as something existing in itself, but as something understood through the absence of what is better. And just as we say that blindness is opposed to sight, though blindness does not exist by nature in itself but is the deprivation of a condition that existed before, so too we say that evil is contemplated in the deprivation of the good, like a shadow that follows when the ray of light withdraws.
Since, then, the uncreated nature does not admit movement by turning, change, or alteration, while everything that subsists through creation has a natural relation to alteration—because the very subsistence of creation began from alteration, what did not exist being transferred into existence by divine power—the power already mentioned was itself created and chose what seemed good to it by a self-determined movement. When it closed its eye to the good and ungrudging, like someone who lowers his eyelids in the sunlight and sees darkness, then by the very fact of not willing to contemplate the good it came to know what is contrary to the good.
This is envy. It is generally acknowledged that the beginning of any matter is the cause of what follows from it in due sequence. Thus health is followed by bodily vigor, activity, and a pleasant way of living; sickness by weakness, inactivity, and a life of discomfort. So too all other things follow in due sequence from their proper beginnings. Just as freedom from passion becomes the beginning and foundation of life according to virtue, so the inclination toward evil that arose through envy became the road to all the evils that afterward appeared.
For once the one who had generated envy in himself by turning away from goodness had acquired an inclination toward evil, he was like a stone broken loose from a mountain height and driven downward by its own weight. In the same way, having been torn away from his natural affinity with the good and weighted toward evil, he was carried of himself, as though by a certain weight, toward the furthest limit of wickedness. And the intellectual power that he had received from the Creator to cooperate in participation in what is better he instead made a collaborator in devising things belonging to evil. With cunning he goes about deceiving the human being, persuading him to become his own murderer, the killer of himself.
For through the divine blessing the human being had been strengthened and was exalted in dignity: he had been appointed to rule the earth and everything upon it. He was beautiful in appearance, for he had become an image of the archetypal beauty; by nature he was free from passion, for he was an imitation of the Impassible; and he was full of confident freedom, delighting in the face-to-face manifestation of the divine. All these things were fuel for the adversary's passion of envy. Yet he was unable to accomplish his purpose by any strength or force, because the power of God's blessing was stronger than his violence. For this reason he schemes to draw the human being away from the power that strengthens him, so that he may become easy for him to capture in his attack.
It is like the flame of a lamp clinging around the wick: if someone unable to extinguish the flame by blowing on it were to mix water into the oil, by this device he would dim the flame. In the same way, by deception the adversary mixed evil into the human being's moral choice and brought about a kind of extinguishing and dimming of the blessing. When that blessing fails, its opposite necessarily enters in its place.
Death is opposed to life, weakness to power, curse to blessing, shame to confident freedom, and to every good there corresponds what is understood as its opposite. For this reason humanity is now in the present evils, because that beginning supplied the occasions for such an end.