Chapter 5: The Occasions of Idolatry and the Worship of the Stars

The occasions of the origin of idolatry — The report of the dominion of the sun and moon — In what sense the sun and moon are the two great lights — The monstrous fiction of Jonathan the Targumist — Delegated dominion as a corrupt basis for worship — The vain reasonings of idolaters (Romans 1:21) — The influence and operations of the sun and moon upon earthly things (Jeremiah 44:17, 18; Acts 14:17) — God alone is the author even of earthly goods — The ornament, course, and glory of the stars as an enticement — God who is above — Some confine God to the heavens; others assign the omnipresence of Christ to His human nature (Deuteronomy 4:19) — The opinion of Lactantius and Diodorus Siculus on the occasions and beginnings of idolatry — The opinion of the philosopher Plotinus on the worship of the stars (Psalm 19:4) — The LXX (Septuagint) noted, and the Vulgate translator — The error of Marsilio Ficino — The ancient Syriac translation — A summary of the vain reasonings. I. We have set forth in the preceding chapter the beginnings of idolatry in the worship of the sun and moon. Before we proceed to expound the advances which this error evidently made in the course of events, it is worth briefly setting out in advance certain handles and occasions of the worship of the celestial stars which the first idolaters appear to have seized upon, together with those vain reasonings by which they had led themselves astray.

II. And first, it seems to me that there settled in the minds of men a tradition concerning the dominion of day and night committed to the sun and moon. For it was necessary that they should believe that those things which they worshipped had been established in authority. The report of those things that are now consecrated to eternal memory in the first chapter of Genesis had spread widely: God made two great lights — the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night — and the stars. Dominion is here attributed to the sun and moon; that is, from the very beginning of all things. But all lords must be honored. It was believed, however, that the sun and moon are called two great lights not properly, but by a kind of synecdoche accommodated to the grasp and understanding of the common people. Why so? Because certain stars are larger than the moon. But is the moon therefore not to be called a great light, or is it not set over the peculiar governance of the night? Surely it is called a great light not with respect to its substance, but with respect to its light; which, however borrowed, is greater than that of all the stars combined. Now to this knot — which is in reality no knot at all — the Jews apply the wedge of their most monstrous fiction. "God made," says the Targum of Jonathan, "two great lights, and they were equal in glory for twenty-one years, less six hundred and seventy-two parts of an hour" (so that we may know he has here attained most precise truth!), "and afterwards the moon brought a complaint against the sun and was diminished; and He set the sun, the greater light, to rule the day, and the moon, which was the lesser light, to govern the night." In this manner that paraphraser defiles the sacred page almost everywhere — as we have already noted more than once — nor does he seem to have been born for any other purpose, so thoroughly do all his peculiar contributions stink. No one will emerge from reading him either more learned or more virtuous. Yet it is probable that the report of this dominion became known to the nations. Satan made use of it as an enticement to idolatry, even while all knowledge of the true God had not yet been abolished. For what would they honor next after God, if not those things to which God had committed authority over day and night, and thus over the whole of human life? Hence the poet depicted Juno herself as a suppliant to Aeolus, who is said to have presided over the winds: —

"Juno, supplicating, used these words: Aeolus, (for to you the divine father and king of men has granted both to calm the waves and to raise them with the wind,)"

"A race hostile to me" — etc. — Aen. I.64. To render religious service to absolute power is natural; to render it to delegated power is corrupt. But this the majority of those who are called Christians do not yet understand.

III. This, then, was the primary occasion of idolatry in the worship of the sun and of the whole host of the heavens, for those men who had willingly cast away the true knowledge of God. The report of the dominion of day and night delegated to the sun and moon, corrupted by depraved traditions, drew into the snare of error those who had cast off almost all true religion toward God. Hence the sun is called king, anax, and by whatever term finally denotes rule and dominion. Add to this that they were eyewitnesses of those things which they had heard by report; they saw that the regulation of the movement and course of the sun and moon, of days and nights, and accordingly of all things that are measured by time, depended on these bodies, so that every ground for doubt seemed to have been removed.

IV. They were also carried into this impious opinion by other vain reasonings. For the apostle traces the beginning of idolatry to the fact that men had become vain in their reasonings (Romans 1:21). For when the minds of men were utterly empty of spiritual and heavenly things, and turned away from God, they burned excessively with desire for earthly things. They would never have worshipped what they first had not loved — the creature rather than the Creator. And they seemed to themselves to have clearly perceived how much depended upon the operations and influence of the sun and moon for earthly things to turn out prosperously and happily. They thought that no conjecture was needed here — they were eyewitnesses. And they easily persuaded themselves that whatever was above them and able to help them in those things about which they cared most must be God.

196 THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF IDOLATRY. [Book 3.] for those things about which they had the greatest concern — this they easily persuaded themselves. It was by no other reasoning that the idolatrous Israelites, deceived into the worship of the host of heaven and the queen, that is, the worship of the moon and stars, fell into error, than because they experienced all earthly things as prosperous as a result of that religion: Jer. 44:17, 18, "When," they say, "we burned incense to the queen of heaven, we were satisfied with food, and were merry, and saw no evil. But since we left off burning incense to the queen of heaven, and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have been in want of all things." God, therefore, intending to bring that people back to better conduct and to His own worship, recalls to their minds that those vanities of the nations had been unable to give rain (Jeremiah 14:22). And the apostle Paul, severely reproving the Gentiles themselves for their wicked idolatries and charging them with folly, asserts that God alone, the Creator of all things, had given to men rains from heaven and fruitful seasons (Acts 14:17), clearly indicating that the nations had been drawn into the worship of idols by the hope and expectation of earthly blessings. And this was the second source of that most ruinous error. Furthermore, the psalmist affirms that the ornament of the heavens, the course of the stars, the order of the celestial bodies, declares the glory of God (Psalms 19:1), and the apostle says the same in Romans 1:20. But the apostates had transferred all the glory that belonged to the Creator and assigned it to the creatures themselves. They supposed that the ornament which came from God was itself God. There is also an innate persuasion in the human mind that what ought to be worshipped is in the heavens and above itself. Hence it was always the custom of those in danger, when the presence of God was needed, to stretch out both hands toward the stars. God is therefore described by Hesiod as one "who inhabits the highest dwelling-places." Our Lord Jesus Christ also taught us to invoke our Father who is in the heavens, where He makes His glory manifest in a manner entirely special. Yet the Socinian writer, Bidellus, wrongly confines and encloses God within the heavens in his Catechism, which entirely overthrows the divine nature; while others, assigning to the human nature of Christ, which the heavens contain, either the omnipresence of all things or the omnipresence of each thing, no less effectively destroy it — that is, this is the itch for disputing that afflicts the great majority of those who call themselves Christians. For those, then, who were unwilling to think beyond sense perception, the sun appeared above all to occupy the place of God in the heavens. The Holy Spirit Himself points to this origin and enticement of the worship of the stars in Deuteronomy 4:19, saying, "Lest perhaps you lift up your eyes to the heavens, and see the sun and the moon and the stars, even all the host of heaven, and being driven by impulse you worship them." The impulse of the heart follows the sight of the eyes and leads to idolatry. Drawn by the beauty, glory, order, and movement of the stars, and carried away by excessive admiration, since they did not know how to learn from these things the glory of the true God which they declare — having previously cast away all knowledge of Him — they were gradually impelled into the worship of them. Lest the same thing happen to the Israelites, precaution is taken here and elsewhere.

Lactantius long ago detected this source of error, in his work On the Origin of Error, Book 2, chap. 24: "When," he says, "in Egypt, on account of the pleasant constitution of the land, they seldom kept themselves indoors in halls and huts, but spent the whole night sleeping under a clear sky not subject to any malign influences, by the frequent sight of the celestial bodies and the constant law of the advancing stars, they gradually arrived at the opinion that the stars were gods and the preservers of the universe, whom they worshipped with various rites and ceremonies." Diodorus Siculus, in the Bibliotheca, Book 1, chap. 11, at the beginning, narrates similarly: that the most ancient inhabitants of Egypt, gazing up at the world and contemplating the nature of the universe, and marveling not without astonishment, supposed that the sun and moon were the first and eternal gods — calling the one Osiris and the other Isis — "that is, the most ancient inhabitants of Egypt, contemplating the world above them and the nature of the universe, and admiring it not without wonder, supposed that the sun and moon were eternal and primary gods, the former being called Osiris, the latter Isis." From this he himself declares that the two primary and eternal gods were the sun and the moon.

VII. From these things the reason for the divine precaution mentioned above appears most clearly. For since very many nations had been driven into the worship of the stars by the very sight, contemplation, and admiration of them, He sternly warns them lest the same thing happen to His own people. And indeed not without cause: Maimonides affirms that he had learned the reasons for many laws from the idolatrous worship of the Sabaeans, in the third part of the Moreh Nevuchim, chap. 29; and that work above all should be consulted by the reader who is devoted to the study of these matters. How great, furthermore, were the reasonings drawn from contemplation of the order and movement of the stars among those ignorant of the true God, for the purpose of ascribing a divine nature to them, Plotinus shows after many centuries, in the Enneads, II.9: "The stars," he says, "which are in the lower spheres, and those that shine in the highest, why they should not be gods cannot be conceived, inasmuch as they are carried in order and are united in ornament." Hence, after the Christian religion had spread its rays far and wide, the followers of the Platonic philosophy, who with most absurd rivalry attempted to oppose the authority of their wisdom to it, rejected the innumerable fictitious gods of the ancient Gentiles, yet contended that the Sun and other stars must be worshipped, and accordingly attributed sight and hearing to them. This same Plotinus teaches us in the Enneads, IV.4: "But now," he says, "since we have said that memory is superfluous in the stars, we have given them senses; and not only sight, but also hearing, and moreover we have granted them to hear prayers, which we direct to the sun; and likewise certain other men direct them to other stars, and they believe that they will obtain many things from them by prayers." That this star-madness appeared to be supported — to add the observation in passing — by the most famous interpreter of Plotinus, using for that purpose that passage of the psalmist: "In the sun He has placed His tabernacle,"

198 THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF IDOLATRY. [Book 3.] "He has placed His tabernacle in the sun," (Psalms 19:4). For it is thus that the Vulgate translator renders the words of the psalmist from the Greek translation of the LXX (Septuagint), as it is called. But the Hebrew truth has a far different sense: in them — that is, in those heavens — He has placed a tabernacle for the sun, as our translators render the words. Now this version greatly vexed the ancients. Question 63 to the Orthodox reads as follows: "Since some have interpreted that saying 'In the sun He has placed His tabernacle' variously and obscurely, teach us its meaning" — that is: "Because some have interpreted it variously and obscurely, namely, 'In the sun He has placed His tabernacle,' instruct us in its explanation." The most learned author of the answers replies: "That phrase, 'In the sun He has placed His tabernacle,' means that He placed the tabernacle of the heavens"

of the sun; or thus it was made: in them He placed the tabernacle of the sun. In this way it is certainly not read in the Syriac version that now exists; and that version, even for other reasons as well, does not appear to be that ancient Syriac translation known to many of the ancients.

VIII. And these were the chief heads of the most vain reasonings by which the wicked apostates led themselves into the worship of the stars. First, a depraved and corrupt tradition occupied their minds concerning the dominion of the sun and moon over day and night. Next, they seemed to themselves to perceive that the yield of all earthly goods — that is, of temporal blessings, with the care and pursuit of which alone they were occupied — depended chiefly upon the influence of those bodies. Entangled and impeded by these vain opinions, when they contemplated the admirable ornament of the heavens, full of august majesty, the course of all the stars, the splendor and efficacy of the sun, and their position in the heavens, they rushed headlong into this star-madness, for from the admiration of these things the transition to their worship follows.