On the Christian Struggle 1–20

The crown of victory is promised only to those who contend. And in the divine Scriptures we constantly find that a crown is promised to us if we conquer. But, not to take long in mentioning many passages, in the apostle Paul we read most plainly: 'I have finished the work, I have completed the course, I have kept the faith; now there remains for me the crown of righteousness.' We ought therefore to know who that adversary is, whom if we conquer we shall be crowned. For he is the one whom our Lord conquered first, so that we too, abiding in him, may conquer. The power and wisdom of God, the Word through whom all things were made, who is the only Son of God, remains always unchangeable above every creature. And since even the creature that has not sinned is beneath him, how much more is every sinful creature beneath him! Therefore, since all the holy angels are beneath him, much more are all the transgressing angels beneath him, whose prince is the devil. But because the devil had deceived our nature, the only-begotten Son of God deigned to take up our very nature, so that by means of it the devil might be conquered, and so that he whom the Son always holds beneath himself might be made to be beneath us too. He signifies him when he says, 'The prince of this world has been cast out,' not because he was cast outside the world, as some heretics think, but out of the souls of those who cleave to the Word of God and do not love the world, of which he is the prince; for he rules over those who love the temporal goods contained in this visible world, not because he is lord of this world, but prince of those desires by which everything that passes away is coveted, so that those who neglect the eternal God and love unstable and changeable things are subject to him. 'For the root of all evils is covetousness, and some, craving it, have wandered from the faith and entangled themselves in many sorrows.' Through this covetousness the devil reigns in a man and holds his heart. Such are all who love this world. But the devil is cast out when this world is renounced with the whole heart. For thus the devil, who is the prince of this world, is renounced, when his corruptions and pomps and angels are renounced. And so the Lord himself, bearing human nature now triumphant, says, 'Know that I have conquered the world.'

But many say, 'How can we conquer the devil, whom we do not see?' But we have a teacher who deigned to show us how invisible enemies are conquered. For of him the apostle said: 'Stripping himself of the flesh, he made an example of the principalities and powers, confidently triumphing over them in himself.' There, then, the invisible powers hostile to us are conquered, where invisible desires are conquered. And therefore, since we conquer the desires for temporal things within ourselves, we must also conquer within ourselves him who reigns in man through those very desires. For when it was said to the devil, 'You shall eat earth,' it was said to the sinner, 'You are earth, and to earth you shall go.' So the sinner has been given as food to the devil. Let us not be earth, if we do not want to be eaten by the serpent. For just as we turn what we eat into our body, so that the food itself becomes, bodily, what we are, so by evil conduct, through wickedness and pride and ungodliness, each person becomes what the devil is, that is, like him, and is made subject to him, as our body is subject to us. And this is what is meant by being eaten by the serpent. Whoever, then, fears that fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels, let him strive to triumph over him within himself. For those who attack us from outside we conquer within, by conquering the desires through which they rule over us. And those whom they find like themselves they drag with them to punishment.

So too the apostle says that he fights within himself against powers outside. For he says: 'Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the princes and powers of this world, the rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.' For this air too, where winds and clouds and storms and whirlwinds occur, is called heaven, as Scripture also says in many places: 'And the Lord thundered from heaven,' and 'the birds of heaven,' and 'the flying creatures of heaven,' though it is plain that birds fly in the air. And we too in ordinary usage call this air heaven; for when we ask about fair or cloudy weather, we sometimes say, 'What is the air like?' and sometimes, 'What is the sky like?' I have said this so that no one may think that evil demons dwell where God set the sun and moon and stars. The apostle calls these evil demons 'spiritual forces' because evil angels too are called spirits in the Scriptures. And he calls them 'rulers of this darkness' because he calls sinful men darkness, over whom these rule. That is why he says in another place, 'For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord,' because from sinners they had been justified. Let us not suppose, then, that the devil with his angels dwells in the highest heaven, from which we believe he fell.

For so the Manichaeans went astray, who say that before the foundation of the world there was a race of darkness that rebelled against God; in that war, the wretches believe, almighty God could not help himself in any other way than by sending a part of himself against that race. The princes of that race, as they say, devoured the part of God and were tempered by it, so that the world could be fashioned out of them. Thus they say that God attained victory with great calamities and torments and miseries of his members; and they say these members were mixed with the dark entrails of those princes, so as to temper them and restrain them from their fury. And they do not understand that their sect is so sacrilegious that they believe that almighty God made war on the darkness not through a creature he had made but through his very own nature, which it is impious to believe. And not only this, but also that those who were conquered were made better, because their fury was restrained, while the nature of God, which conquered, was made most wretched. For they say that through that very mixture it lost its understanding and its happiness and was entangled in great errors and disasters. Even if they said that it would one day be wholly purified, they would still be affirming a great impiety against almighty God, a part of whom they believed to have been tossed about for so long a time in errors and punishments without any guilt of sin. But as it is, the unhappy people dare to say further that it cannot even be wholly purified, and that the very part that could not be purified serves as a bond by which the tomb of evil is wrapped and bound, and so that part of God, wretched, remains there forever, having sinned in nothing, and is fixed forever in the prison of darkness. They say this to deceive simple souls. But who is so simple as not to perceive that these things are sacrilegious, by which they affirm that almighty God was so overpowered by necessity that he gave a part of himself, good and innocent, to be overwhelmed by such disasters and defiled by such uncleanness, and could not free it all, and bound with eternal chains what he could not free? Who then would not detest these things? Who would not understand that they are impious and abominable? But when they catch people, they do not say these things first (if they did, they would be laughed at or shunned by everyone), but they choose passages of the Scriptures that simple people do not understand, and through them they deceive unlearned souls by asking where evil comes from. So they do with this passage written by the apostle: 'the rulers of this darkness, and the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.' For those deceivers ask a man who does not understand the divine Scriptures where rulers of darkness in heaven come from, so that when he cannot answer, they may draw him over through curiosity, because every untaught soul is curious. But whoever has learned the Catholic faith well and is fortified by good conduct and true piety answers them even though he does not know their heresy. For he cannot be deceived who already knows what belongs to the Christian faith, which is called Catholic, spread throughout the world, and secure, under the Lord's governance, against all the ungodly and sinners, and also against the negligent among its own.

Since, then, we were saying that the apostle Paul said that we have a wrestling against the rulers of darkness and the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places, and we have proved that this air near the earth is also called heaven, we must believe that we fight against the devil and his angels, who rejoice in our disturbances. For the apostle himself in another place calls the devil 'the prince of the power of this air.' And yet the passage where he says 'the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places' can also be understood otherwise: that he did not say that the transgressing angels themselves are in the heavenly places, but rather we, of whom he says in another place, 'Our way of life is in heaven,' so that we, placed in the heavenly places, that is, walking in the spiritual commandments of God, fight against the spiritual forces of wickedness that try to drag us away from there. So the question rather to be asked is how we can fight and conquer those whom we do not see, so that foolish people may not think that we are to fight against the air.

So the apostle himself teaches, saying: 'I do not fight as one beating the air; but I chastise my body and bring it into subjection, lest perhaps, after preaching to others, I myself should be found reprobate.' He also says: 'Be imitators of me, as I also am of Christ.' Hence we must understand that the apostle himself also triumphed within himself over the powers of this world, as he had said of the Lord, whose imitator he professes to be. Let us too, then, imitate him, as he urges, and chastise our body and bring it into subjection, if we want to conquer the world. For this world can rule over us through its unlawful delights and pomps and destructive curiosity, that is, through the things in this world that bind the lovers of temporal things by a destructive delight and compel them to serve the devil and his angels; and if we have renounced all these things, let us bring our body into subjection.

But in case anyone should ask how it comes about that we subject our body to servitude, this can easily be understood and done if we first subject ourselves to God with good will and sincere love. For every creature, willing or unwilling, is subject to the one God, its Lord. But we are admonished to serve the Lord our God with our whole will, since the righteous man serves freely, the unrighteous serves in fetters. Yet all serve divine providence; but some obey as sons and do with it what is good, while others are bound as slaves, and what is just is done with them. Thus almighty God, Lord of the whole creation, who made all things, as it is written, very good, has so ordered them that he makes good use of both the good and the evil. For what is done justly is done well. And justly are the good happy, and justly do the evil suffer punishment. So God makes good use of both the good and the evil, since he does all things justly. The good are those who serve God with their whole will, while the evil serve by necessity; for no one escapes the laws of the Almighty. But it is one thing to do what the law commands, another to suffer what the law commands. Therefore the good act according to the laws; the evil suffer according to the laws.

Nor should it trouble us that in this life, according to the flesh they bear, the righteous endure many hard and harsh things. For they suffer nothing evil who can already say what that spiritual man, the apostle, exults in and proclaims when he says: 'We glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces patience, patience approval, approval hope; and hope does not put to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.' If, then, in this life, where there are such great torments, good and righteous men, when they suffer such things, can not only endure them calmly but even glory in the love of God, what must we think of that life which is promised to us, where we shall feel no trouble from the body? For the body of the righteous does not rise to the same state as the body of the ungodly, as it is written: 'We shall all rise, but we shall not all be changed.' And lest anyone think that this change is promised not to the righteous but rather to the unrighteous, and suppose it to be penal, he goes on to say: 'And the dead rise incorruptible, and we shall be changed.' All who are evil, then, are so ordered that each harms himself and all harm one another. For they seek what is loved to their ruin and what can easily be taken from them; and they take it from one another when they persecute one another. And so those from whom temporal things are taken are tormented, because they love them; while those who take them rejoice. But such gladness is blindness and the height of misery, for it entangles the soul further and leads it to greater torments. For the fish too rejoices when, not seeing the hook, it devours the bait; but when the fisherman begins to draw it in, first its insides are wrenched; then, through the very bait in which it rejoiced, it is dragged from all its gladness to its destruction. So are all who think themselves happy with temporal goods: they have taken the hook and wander about with it; the time will come when they will feel what torments they have greedily swallowed. And so they do no harm to the good, because they take from them what they do not love; for what they do love, and from which they are happy, no one can take from them. Bodily torment wretchedly afflicts evil souls, but it bravely purifies good ones. So it comes about that both the evil man and the evil angel serve as soldiers of divine providence; but they do not know what good God works by means of them. And so they are paid not according to the merits of their service but according to the merits of their malice.

But just as these souls, which have a will to harm and a reason to think, are ordered under divine laws, so that no one suffers anything unjust, so all things, both living and bodily, each in its kind and in its order, are administered in subjection to the laws of divine providence. That is why the Lord says: 'Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them falls to the ground without the will of your Father.' He said this wanting to show that whatever men think most worthless is governed by God's omnipotence. For thus the Truth says that the birds of the sky are fed by him and the lilies of the field clothed by him, and says that even our hairs are numbered. But since God himself cares directly for pure rational souls, whether in the best and greatest angels or in men who serve him with their whole will, and governs the rest through them, the apostle could also say most truly: 'For God is not concerned about oxen.' For in the holy Scriptures God teaches men how to deal with men and how to serve God himself; but how they are to deal with their cattle, that is, how to look after the health of their cattle, they know themselves, by practice and skill and natural reason, all of which they have received from the great riches of their Creator. Whoever, then, can understand how God, the founder of the whole creation, governs it through holy souls, which are his ministers in heaven and on earth, since these holy souls too were made by him and hold the first place in his creation, whoever, I say, can understand this, let him understand it and enter into the joy of his Lord.

But if we cannot do this, as long as we are in this body and are away from the Lord, let us at least taste how sweet the Lord is, since he has given us the Spirit as a pledge, in whom we may perceive his sweetness; and let us long for the very fountain of life, where we may be flooded and watered with a sober drunkenness, like the tree that is planted by the streams of water and gives its fruit in its season, and its leaf will not fall. For the Holy Spirit says: 'But the sons of men will hope under the shelter of your wings. They will be drunk with the abundance of your house, and you will give them drink from the torrent of your delight, for with you is the fountain of life.' Such drunkenness does not overthrow the mind, but it does carry it upward and bring forgetfulness of all earthly things; if only we can now say with all our affection: 'As the deer longs for the springs of water, so my soul longs for you, O God.'

But if perhaps, because of the sicknesses of the soul that it contracted from love of the world, we are not yet fit even to taste how sweet the Lord is, let us at least believe the divine authority which he willed to be in the holy Scriptures concerning his Son, who was made for him of the seed of David according to the flesh, as the apostle says; for all things were made through him, as is written in the Gospel, and without him nothing was made. He had pity on our weakness, a weakness we deserved not by his work but by our own will. For God made man incorruptible and gave him free choice of will. For he would not be of the highest excellence if he served God's commandments by necessity and not by will. This is quite easy, as I judge, to understand; and those who have deserted the Catholic faith and yet want to be called Christians do not want to understand it. (For if they confess with us that our nature is healed only by doing right, let them confess that it is weakened only by sinning. And therefore we must not believe that our soul is what God is, because if it were, it would not be changed for the worse either by its own will or by any necessity, since God is understood to be in every way unchangeable.) It is understood, rather, by those who do not love to speak of what they do not know in contention and rivalry and desire for vainglory, but who in Christian humility think of the Lord in goodness and seek him in simplicity of heart. This weakness of ours, then, the Son of God deigned to take up, 'and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us': not because that eternity was changed, but because he showed to the changeable eyes of men the changeable creature which he took up in his unchangeable majesty.

But there are foolish people who say, 'Why could the Wisdom of God not free men in some other way than by taking up a man, being born of a woman, and suffering all those things at the hands of sinners?' To them we say: he certainly could, but if he had done otherwise, it would equally have displeased your folly. For if he had not appeared to the eyes of sinners, they could not with defiled minds have seen his light, which is certainly eternal and is seen by the inner eyes. But as it is, because he deigned to admonish us visibly so as to prepare us for things invisible, he displeases the greedy because he did not have a golden body; he displeases the unchaste because he was born of a woman (for the unchaste greatly hate the fact that women conceive and give birth); he displeases the proud because he bore insults most patiently; he displeases the pleasure-loving because he was tortured; he displeases the fearful because he died. And so as not to seem to defend their own vices, they say that this displeases them not in a man but in the Son of God. For they do not understand what the eternity of God is, which assumed a man, and what that human creature is, which through its changes was being called back to its original firmness, so that we might learn, the Lord himself teaching us, that the weaknesses we gathered by sinning can be healed by doing right. For it was being shown to us to what frailty man had come by his own fault, and from what frailty he is freed by divine help. And so the Son of God assumed a man and in him suffered human things. This medicine for men is so great that it cannot be conceived. For what pride can be healed if it is not healed by the humility of the Son of God? What greed can be healed if it is not healed by the poverty of the Son of God? What anger can be healed if it is not healed by the patience of the Son of God? What ungodliness can be healed that is not healed by the love of the Son of God? Finally, what fearfulness can be healed if it is not healed by the resurrection of the body? Let the human race lift up its hope and recognize its nature; let it see how great a place it has in the works of God. Do not despise yourselves, men: the Son of God took up a man. Do not despise yourselves, women: the Son of God was born of a woman. Yet do not love carnal things, for in the Son of God we are neither male nor female. Do not love temporal things, for if they were rightly loved, the man whom the Son of God took up would have loved them. Do not fear insults and crosses and death, for if they harmed man, the man whom the Son of God took up would not have suffered them. All this exhortation, which is now preached everywhere and revered everywhere, which heals every obedient soul, would not exist in human affairs if all those things that displease the most foolish had not been done. Whom will vicious boastfulness deign to imitate, so that it can be led to receive virtue, if it is ashamed to imitate him of whom it was said before he was born that 'he will be called Son of the Most High,' and who, as no one can deny, is now called Son of the Most High among all nations? If we think much of ourselves, let us deign to imitate him who is called Son of the Most High; if we think little of ourselves, let us dare to imitate the fishermen and tax collectors who imitated him. O medicine that provides for all, that reduces every swelling, restores everything that wastes away, cuts off everything superfluous, guards everything necessary, repairs everything lost, corrects everything depraved! Who will now exalt himself against the Son of God? Who will despair of himself, for whom the Son of God willed to be so humble? Who will think the happy life lies in the things which the Son of God taught are to be despised? To what adversities will he yield who believes that human nature was preserved through such great persecutions in the Son of God? Who will think the kingdom of heaven is closed to him, who knows that tax collectors and prostitutes imitated the Son of God? From what perversity will he not be free who looks on and loves and follows the deeds and words of that man in whom the Son of God offered himself to us as an example of life?

And so now men and women, every age, and every rank of this world have been moved to the hope of eternal life. Some, neglecting temporal goods, fly to divine things; others yield to the virtues of those who do this and praise what they do not dare to imitate. A few, however, still murmur and are tormented by empty envy: either those who seek their own interests in the church, although they seem to be Catholics; or heretics, seeking glory from the very name of Christ; or Jews, wishing to defend the sin of their unbelief; or pagans, afraid of losing the curiosity of their vain license. But the Catholic Church, spread far and wide throughout the whole world, breaking their assaults in earlier times, has been strengthened more and more, not by resisting but by enduring. Now, however, it laughs at their insidious questions by faith, examines them with diligence, and dissolves them with understanding. It does not trouble itself about those who find fault with its chaff, because it carefully and diligently distinguishes the time of harvest, the time of the threshing floors, and the time of the granaries; and those who find fault with its wheat it either corrects if they are in error, or, if they are envious, reckons among the thorns and tares.

Let us, then, subject the soul to God, if we want to subject our body to servitude and triumph over the devil. Faith comes first, which subjugates the soul to God; then the precepts for living, by keeping which our hope is strengthened, love is nourished, and what was before only believed begins to shine clearly. For since knowledge and action make a man happy, just as error must be avoided in knowledge, so wickedness must be avoided in action. And whoever thinks he can know the truth while he still lives wickedly is in error. It is wickedness to love this world and to think highly of the things that are born and pass away, to covet them and toil to acquire them, to rejoice when they abound, to fear that they will perish, and to be sad when they perish. Such a life cannot see that pure, sincere, and unchangeable truth, and cleave to it, and never again be moved. And so, before our mind is purified, we ought to believe what we are not yet able to understand, since it was most truly said through the prophet: 'Unless you believe, you will not understand.'

The faith is handed down in the church very briefly. In it are commended eternal things, which cannot yet be understood by the carnal, and temporal things past and future, which the eternity of divine providence has done and will do for the salvation of men. Let us believe, then, in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. These are eternal and unchangeable, that is, one God, an eternal Trinity of one substance: God, from whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things.

Nor let us listen to those who say that there is only the Father, and that he has no Son and that there is no Holy Spirit with him, but that the Father himself is sometimes called Son and sometimes Holy Spirit. For they do not know the beginning from which all things are, and his image through which all things are formed, and his holiness in which all things are ordered.

Nor let us listen to those who are indignant and angry because we do not say that three gods are to be worshiped. For they do not know what one and the same substance is, and they are deceived by their own fantasies, because they are used to seeing bodily either three animals or any three bodies separated in their own places. They think the substance of God is to be understood in this way, and they err greatly, since they are proud, and they cannot learn because they do not want to believe.

Nor let us listen to those who say that the Father alone is the true and everlasting God, but that the Son was not begotten of him but made by him from nothing, and that there was a time when he did not exist, yet that he holds the first place in all creation; and that the Holy Spirit is of lesser majesty than the Son and was made after the Son; and that the substances of these three are different, like gold and silver and bronze. For they do not know what they are saying, and they transfer to their disputations empty images from the things they are used to seeing with the eyes of flesh; because it is truly a great thing to behold with the mind a generation that does not happen from some point in time but is eternal, and that very love and holiness by which the begetter and the begotten are ineffably joined to one another. It is a great and difficult thing to behold these things with the mind, even when it is peaceful and calm. It cannot happen, then, that those should see these things who gaze too much at earthly generations, and who add to this darkness still more smoke, which they never stop stirring up for themselves by daily contentions and quarrels, having souls dissolving in the affections of the flesh like wood soaked with moisture, in which fire only belches out smoke and cannot have bright flames. And this can indeed most rightly be said of all heretics.

Believing, then, in the unchangeable Trinity, let us also believe in the temporal dispensation for the salvation of the human race. Nor let us listen to those who say that the Son of God, Jesus Christ, is nothing but a man, though so righteous that he is worthy to be called Son of God. For these too Catholic discipline has cast out, because, deceived by desire for vainglory, they chose to dispute contentiously before they understood what the power of God and the wisdom of God is, and the Word in the beginning through whom all things were made, and how the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

Nor let us listen to those who say that the Son of God did not take up a true man and was not born of a woman, but showed to those who saw him a false flesh and a simulated image of a human body. For they do not know how the substance of God, which administers the whole creation, cannot be defiled at all; and yet they proclaim that this visible sun spreads its rays through all the dregs and filth of bodies and keeps them clean and pure everywhere. If, then, visible clean things can touch visible unclean things and not be defiled, how much more did the invisible and unchangeable Truth, taking up the soul through the spirit and the body through the soul, and so assuming the whole man, free him from all weaknesses with no defilement of its own! And so they are in great straits, and while they fear what cannot happen, that the Truth might be defiled by human flesh, they say that the Truth lied. And though he commanded, saying, 'Let your speech be: Yes, yes; no, no,' and the apostle cries out, 'In him there was not Yes and No, but in him was Yes,' these people contend that his whole body was false flesh, so that they would not seem to themselves to imitate Christ unless they lied to their hearers.