On Christian Doctrine 1.0–1.21

Prologue. It is not superfluous to hand on teaching about how Scripture is to be handled. There are certain rules for handling the Scriptures which, I see, can quite usefully be handed on to those who study them, so that they may profit not only by reading others who have opened up what is hidden in the divine writings, but also by opening it up themselves for others. These rules I have undertaken to hand on to those who are willing and able to learn, if our God and Lord does not deny me, as I write, the things he usually suggests to me as I think about this matter. Before I begin, it seems to me that I ought to answer those who are going to find fault with this work, or who would find fault with it if we did not placate them beforehand. And if some still find fault even after this, at least they will not move others, nor call them back from a useful study to the laziness of ignorance; for they might have moved them, had they not found them forewarned and prepared.

For some will find fault with this work of ours because they have not understood the rules we are going to give. Others, when they have wished to use what they have understood, and have tried to handle the divine Scriptures according to these rules, and have not been able to open up and explain what they wish, will think that I have labored in vain; and because they themselves are not helped by this work, they will judge that no one can be helped. The third kind of critic consists of those who either really do handle the divine Scriptures well, or think they do. Because they see, or think, that they have gained the ability to expound the holy books without having read any observations of the kind I have now undertaken to hand on, they will cry out that these rules are necessary to no one, but that whatever is laudably disclosed about the obscurities of those writings can be done by a divine gift.

Answering all of these briefly, I say this to those who do not understand what we write: that I am not to be blamed because they do not understand it. It is as if they wished to see the old or the new moon, or some very faint star, which I was pointing out with my outstretched finger, but their eyesight was not even sharp enough to see my finger; they ought not to be angry with me on that account. And those who, even after learning and grasping these rules, cannot make out what is obscure in the divine Scriptures, should consider that they can indeed see my finger, but cannot see the stars it is stretched out to point to. So let both the former and the latter stop blaming me, and pray that the light of their eyes may be given them by God. For if I can move a limb of mine to point something out, I cannot also kindle the eyes by which either my pointing or the thing I wish to point out may be seen.

As for those who exult in a divine gift and boast that they understand and handle the holy books without rules such as I have now undertaken to hand on, and who therefore think that I have chosen to write superfluous things, their agitation must be calmed in this way: although they rightly rejoice in a great gift of God, let them remember that they learned even their letters through human beings. Nor should they on that account be insulted by Antony, a holy and perfect man, an Egyptian monk, who is reported to have held the divine Scriptures in memory by hearing them, without any knowledge of letters, and to have understood them by wise reflection; or by that barbarian Christian slave of whom we lately heard from very serious and trustworthy men, who received even the knowledge of letters itself, with no human being teaching him, fully, by praying that they might be revealed to him, obtaining by three days of prayer that he could read through a book handed to him, to the amazement of those present.

Or if anyone thinks these stories are false, I do not argue the point. Certainly, since we are dealing with Christians who rejoice that they know the holy Scriptures without a human guide (and if it is so, they rejoice in a real and no small good), they must grant that each of us learned his own language from earliest childhood by the habit of hearing it, and acquired any other, whether Greek or Hebrew or any of the rest, either likewise by hearing or through a human teacher. Now, then, if it seems good, let us warn all the brothers not to teach their little ones these things, because in one moment of time, when the Holy Spirit came, the apostles were filled and spoke in the languages of all nations; or let anyone to whom such things have not happened not think himself a Christian, or doubt that he has received the Holy Spirit. No, rather, let what must be learned through a human being be learned without pride; and let him through whom another is taught hand on what he has received without pride and without envy. And let us not tempt him in whom we have believed, lest, deceived by such cunning and perversity of the enemy, we refuse even to go to church to hear and learn the Gospel itself, or to read a book, or to hear a man reading and preaching, and expect to be caught up to the third heaven, “whether in the body or out of the body,” as the Apostle says, and there to hear “unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter,” or there to see the Lord Jesus Christ and hear the Gospel from him rather than from men.

Let us beware of such very proud and very dangerous temptations, and let us rather consider that the apostle Paul himself, although struck down and instructed by a divine and heavenly voice, was nevertheless sent to a man to receive the sacraments and be joined to the Church; and that the centurion Cornelius, although an angel announced to him that his prayers had been heard and his alms regarded, was nevertheless handed over to Peter to be instructed, through whom he would not only receive the sacraments but also hear what was to be believed, what hoped for, and what loved. All of this could certainly have been done through an angel, but the human condition would have been degraded if God seemed unwilling to minister his word to human beings through human beings. For how would it be true, as was said, “For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are,” if God gave no answers from a human temple, but chose to sound forth from heaven and through angels everything he wished human beings to be taught? Then love itself, which binds human beings to one another with the knot of unity, would have no way of pouring souls into one another and, as it were, blending them together, if human beings learned nothing through human beings.

And certainly the apostle did not send that eunuch who was reading the prophet Isaiah and did not understand to an angel, nor was what he did not understand explained to him by an angel, or revealed by God in his mind without the ministry of a man; rather, at a divine prompting Philip, who knew the prophet Isaiah, was sent to him, sat with him, and opened to him in human words and speech what was hidden in that Scripture. Did not God speak with Moses? And yet Moses, with great foresight and no pride, accepted from his father-in-law, a foreigner, advice on ruling and administering so great a people. For that man knew that from whatever soul true counsel proceeded, it was to be credited not to that soul but to him who is the Truth, the unchangeable God.

Finally, whoever boasts that he understands by a divine gift whatever is obscure in the Scriptures without being instructed by any rules, believes well, and it is true, that this ability of his is not as it were self-originated but given by God; for so he seeks God's glory and not his own. But when he reads and understands without any human being explaining it to him, why does he himself aim to explain it to others, and not rather send them back to God, so that they too may understand, not through a man, but by God teaching within? But no doubt he fears to hear from the Lord, “Wicked servant, you should have given my money to the money-changers.” Just as these people, then, pass on to others what they understand, by speaking or by writing, so I too, if I pass on not only what they understand but also what they observe in understanding, certainly ought not to be blamed by them; although no one ought to hold anything as if it were his own property, except perhaps a lie. For all truth is from him who says, “I am the Truth.” For what do we have that we have not received? And if we have received it, why do we boast as if we had not received it?

One who reads a text aloud to listeners pronounces, of course, the letters he recognizes; but one who teaches the letters themselves does so in order that others too may know how to read; yet each conveys what he has received. So too one who expounds to listeners what he understands in the Scriptures is like one who pronounces the letters he recognizes, in the office of a reader; but one who teaches how it is to be understood is like one who teaches letters, that is, who teaches how to read. Just as one who knows how to read does not need another reader, when he finds a book, to hear from him what is written there, so one who has received the rules we are trying to hand on will not, when he finds something obscure in the books, need another interpreter to uncover for him what is hidden; holding certain rules like letters, he will follow up certain traces and arrive himself, without any error, at the hidden sense, or at least will not fall into the absurdity of a wrong opinion. Therefore, although it may well be clear from the work itself that no one rightly opposes this dutiful labor of ours, nevertheless, if such a preface seems a fitting answer to any who object, this is the beginning that occurs to us for the road we wish to take in this book.

There are two things on which all handling of the Scriptures rests: the way of discovering what is to be understood, and the way of setting forth what has been understood. We shall discuss discovering first and setting forth afterwards. It is a great and arduous task, and if it is hard to sustain, I fear it may be rash to undertake. So it would be, indeed, if we relied on ourselves; but as it is, since the hope of completing this work lies in him from whom we already hold many thoughts on this subject given to us, there is no need to fear that he will stop giving the rest once we have begun to spend what has been given. For everything that does not diminish by being given away is not yet possessed as it ought to be possessed while it is held and not given. And he says, “To him who has, it shall be given.” He will give, then, to those who have, that is, to those who use with generosity what they have received, and he will fill up and heap up what he has given. There were five loaves in the one case and seven in the other before they began to be given to the hungry; once that began, they filled baskets and hampers after so many thousands of people had been satisfied. Just as that bread increased while it was being broken, so the things the Lord has already supplied for undertaking this work will, once they begin to be dispensed, be multiplied at his own prompting, so that in this ministry of ours we may not only suffer no want but even rejoice in a wonderful abundance.

All teaching is either about things or about signs, but things are learned through signs. Here, however, I have used the word “things” in the strict sense, for what is not used to signify something, such as wood, stone, cattle, and the like. But not the wood which, we read, Moses threw into the bitter waters to take away their bitterness; nor the stone Jacob put under his head; nor the ram Abraham sacrificed in place of his son. For these are things in such a way that they are also signs of other things. There are other signs whose whole use is in signifying, such as words. For no one uses words except for the sake of signifying something. From this it is understood what I call signs: those things, namely, which are used to signify something. Therefore every sign is also a thing; for what is not a thing is nothing at all. But not every thing is also a sign. And so, in this division between things and signs, when we speak of things we shall speak in such a way that, even if some of them can be used to signify, they do not disturb the arrangement by which we discuss things first and signs afterwards; and let us remember that what is to be considered in things now is what they are, not what else they signify besides themselves.

Some things, then, are to be enjoyed, others are to be used, and others enjoy and use. Those that are to be enjoyed make us happy. By those that are to be used we are helped and, as it were, supported as we strive toward happiness, so that we can reach and cling to the things that make us happy. But we who enjoy and use, placed between the two, if we choose to enjoy the things that are to be used, our course is hindered and sometimes even turned aside, so that we are slowed in obtaining the things that are to be enjoyed, or even called back from them, held fast by love of lower things.

For to enjoy is to cling to something with love for its own sake. To use is to refer what has come into use to obtaining what you love, if indeed it is to be loved. For unlawful use should rather be called abuse or misuse. Suppose, then, that we were travelers in a foreign land, who could not live happily except in our homeland, and, unhappy in that exile and wishing to end our misery, we wanted to return home; we would need vehicles, by land or by sea, to be used so that we could reach the homeland that was to be enjoyed. But if the pleasantness of the journey and the very riding in the vehicles delighted us, and, turned to enjoying what we ought to have used, we were unwilling to finish the journey quickly, and, entangled in a perverse sweetness, we became estranged from the homeland whose sweetness would make us happy: so, as we travel away from the Lord in the life of this mortality, if we wish to return to the homeland where we can be happy, this world is to be used, not enjoyed, so that “the invisible things of God may be clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,” that is, so that from bodily and temporal things we may grasp what is eternal and spiritual.

The things, then, that are to be enjoyed are the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the same Trinity, one supreme thing, common to all who enjoy it; if indeed it is a thing and not the cause of all things, and if indeed it is even a cause. For it is not easy to find a name that befits such excellence, except that this Trinity is better called the one God from whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things. So the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are each God, and all together one God; each of them is full substance, and all together one substance. The Father is neither the Son nor the Holy Spirit; the Son is neither the Father nor the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son; but the Father is only the Father, the Son only the Son, and the Holy Spirit only the Holy Spirit. The three have the same eternity, the same unchangeableness, the same majesty, the same power. In the Father is unity, in the Son equality, in the Holy Spirit the harmony of unity and equality; and these three are all one because of the Father, all equal because of the Son, all joined because of the Holy Spirit.

Have we said anything, have we uttered anything worthy of God? No, I feel that I have only wished to say something; but if I have said it, it is not what I wished to say. How do I know this, except because God is unspeakable? And what I have said would not have been said if it were unspeakable. And for this reason God should not even be called unspeakable, because when this is said, something is said. And a kind of battle of words arises, since if that is unspeakable which cannot be spoken, what can be called even unspeakable is not unspeakable. This battle of words is to be avoided by silence rather than settled by speech. And yet, though nothing worthy can be said of him, God has accepted the service of the human voice and has willed that we should rejoice in praising him with our words. For that is why he is called God. For he is not really known in the sound of these two syllables; yet when that sound strikes the ears of all who know the Latin language, it moves them to think of a certain most excellent and immortal nature.

For when that one God of gods is thought of, even by those who suspect, name, and worship other gods, whether in heaven or on earth, he is thought of in such a way that the thought tries to reach something than which nothing is better or more sublime. Of course, since people are moved by different goods, partly those that belong to the senses of the body and partly those that belong to the understanding of the mind, those who are given over to the bodily senses think that the God of gods is either the sky itself, or what they see shining most brightly in the sky, or the world itself; or, if they strive to go beyond the world, they imagine something bright and in empty fancy make it either infinite or of the shape that seems best, or they think of the shape of a human body, if they rank it above other things. And if they do not think there is one God of gods, but rather many or innumerable gods of equal rank, they still picture them in their minds as shaped according to whatever each considers excellent in bodies. But those who strive by the understanding to see what God is set him above all natures visible and bodily, and also intelligible and spiritual, above all things changeable. Yet all of them contend eagerly for the excellence of God, and no one can be found who believes God to be something than which something else is better. And so all agree that God is what they rank above all other things.

And since all who think of God think of something living, only those can think of God without absurdity and unworthiness who think of life itself. Whatever bodily form occurs to them, they judge that it lives or does not live by life, and they rank the living above the non-living; and they understand that this living bodily form itself, however brightly it shines, however great its size, however beautiful its adornment, is one thing, and the life by which it is quickened is another, and they rank that life with incomparable dignity above the mass that is quickened and animated by it. Then they go on to examine life itself, and if they find it quickening without sensation, as is the life of trees, they rank above it the sentient life of cattle, and above that again the intelligent life of human beings. When they see that this is still changeable, they are compelled to rank above it too some unchangeable life, namely that life which is not sometimes foolish and sometimes wise, but is rather Wisdom itself. For a wise mind, that is, one that has gained wisdom, was not wise before it gained it; but Wisdom itself was never foolish and never can be. If they did not see it, they would in no way rank, with full confidence, the unchangeably wise life above the changeable. For they see that the very rule of truth by which they proclaim it to be better is unchangeable; and they see it nowhere but above their own nature, since they see that they themselves are changeable.

For no one is so shamelessly foolish as to say, “How do you know that an unchangeably wise life is to be preferred to a changeable one?” For the very thing he asks about, how I know it, is present to all in common and unchangeably for contemplation. And whoever does not see this is like a blind man in the sun, who gains nothing from the brightness of so clear and present a light poured on the very sockets of his eyes. But whoever sees it and flees from it has a weakened mental vision through the habit of the shadows of the flesh. So human beings are driven back from their very homeland by the contrary winds, as it were, of evil habits, pursuing what is lower and inferior rather than what they confess to be better and more excellent.

Therefore, since we are to enjoy fully that Truth which lives unchangeably, and since in it God the Trinity, the author and maker of the universe, takes thought for the things he has made, the soul must be cleansed, so that it may be able to perceive that light and to cling to it once perceived. Let us consider this cleansing as a kind of walking, and a kind of sailing, toward our homeland. For we do not move by changing place toward him who is present everywhere, but by good desire and good conduct.

This we could not do unless Wisdom itself had deigned to adapt itself even to so great a weakness as ours and to give us an example of how to live, and that in no other way than as a man, since we too are human beings. But because when we come to Wisdom we act wisely, when it came to us it was thought by proud men to have acted foolishly. And because when we come to it we grow strong, when it came to us it was thought weak. But “the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” Since, then, it is itself the homeland, it made itself also the way for us to the homeland.

And though it is present everywhere to the sound and pure inner eye, it deigned to appear even to the eyes of flesh of those whose inner eye is weak and unclean. “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world could not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe.” So it is said to have come to us, not by traveling across distances of space, but by appearing to mortals in mortal flesh. It came, then, to where it already was, because “it was in this world, and the world was made through it.” But because human beings, conformed to this world through the desire to enjoy the creature instead of the Creator, and very fittingly called by the name of “world,” did not know it, the Evangelist said, “And the world did not know him.” So, “in the wisdom of God, the world could not know God through wisdom.” Why, then, did it come when it was already here, except that “it pleased God through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe”?

How did it come, except that “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us”? Just as, when we speak, in order that what we have in mind may pass through the ears of flesh into the mind of the hearer, the word we carry in our heart becomes a sound and is called speech; and yet our thought is not changed into that sound, but, remaining whole in itself, takes on the form of a voice by which to make its way into the ears, without any taint of change in itself: so the Word of God, without being changed, was nevertheless made flesh, that it might dwell among us.

Just as healing is the way to health, so this healing took up sinners to cure and restore them. And as physicians, when they bind up wounds, do it not carelessly but neatly, so that a certain beauty also goes along with the usefulness of the bandage, so the medicine of Wisdom, by taking up a man, was adapted to our wounds, healing some by their contraries and some by their likes. Just as one who treats a wound of the body applies some contraries, such as cold to hot, wet to dry, or anything else of that kind, and also applies some likes, such as a round cloth to a round wound or an oblong one to an oblong wound, and does not fit the same bandage to every limb but like to like: so the Wisdom of God, healing man, presented itself for his healing, itself the physician, itself the medicine. Because, then, man fell through pride, it applied humility to heal him. We were deceived by the wisdom of the serpent; we are set free by the foolishness of God. And just as that was called wisdom but was foolishness to those who despise God, so this, which is called foolishness, is wisdom to those who overcome the devil. We used immortality badly, so that we died; Christ used mortality well, so that we might live. The disease entered through the corrupted mind of a woman; salvation came forth from the intact body of a woman. To the same contraries belongs the fact that our vices are also cured by the example of his virtues. Now the likes, applied as bandages to our limbs and wounds, are these: born of a woman, he set free those deceived through a woman; a man, he set free men; a mortal, mortals; by death, the dead. Many other things too will show, to those who consider more carefully and are not hurried on by the need to finish the work they have undertaken, how Christian medicine is furnished both from contraries and from likes.

Further, the Lord's resurrection from the dead and ascension into heaven, believed by us, support our faith with great hope. For it shows clearly how willingly he laid down his life for us, since he had it in his power to take it up again in this way. With what confidence, then, does the hope of believers comfort itself, when it considers how great a one suffered how great things for those who did not yet believe? And when he is awaited from heaven as judge of the living and the dead, he strikes great fear into the negligent, so that they turn to diligence and long for him by doing well rather than dread him by doing ill. With what words can the reward he will give at the end be expressed, or with what thought can it be grasped, when for the comfort of this journey he has already given so much of his Spirit, by which, in the adversities of this life, we have such confidence in and love for him whom we do not yet see, and has given gifts proper to each for the building up of his Church, so that we may do what he shows must be done not only without murmuring but even with delight?

For the Church is his body, as the apostolic teaching commends, and is also called his bride. So he binds his body, whose many members perform different functions, with the knot of unity and love as with health. And in this time he exercises and cleanses it with certain healing afflictions, so that, having rescued it from this world, he may join to himself for eternity his bride the Church, “not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing.”

Further, since we are on the way, and that way is not one of places but of affections, and the malice of past sins had blocked it as with thorny hedges, what more generous and merciful thing could he do, who was willing to lay himself down for us as the road by which we might return, than to forgive all their sins to those who turn back, and, crucified for us, to tear out the barriers so firmly fixed against our return?

He has therefore given these keys to his Church, so that whatever it loosed on earth would be loosed in heaven, and whatever it bound on earth would be bound in heaven too; that is, so that whoever in his Church did not believe that his sins are forgiven would not be forgiven, but whoever believed and, corrected, turned away from them, being placed in the bosom of that same Church, would be healed by that same faith and correction. For whoever does not believe that his sins can be forgiven becomes worse by despairing, as if nothing better remained for him than to be evil, since he has no faith in the fruit of his conversion.

Now just as the abandoning of one's former life and conduct, which takes place by repentance, is a kind of death of the soul, so the death of the body is the dissolving of its former animation. And as the soul, after the repentance by which it has put to death its former ruined conduct, is reformed for the better, so we must believe and hope that the body too, after this death which we all owe through the bond of sin, will be changed for the better at the time of the resurrection; not so that flesh and blood will possess the kingdom of God, which cannot be, but so that “this corruptible will put on incorruption, and this mortal will put on immortality,” and, causing no trouble because it will suffer no want, it will be quickened by a blessed and perfect soul in perfect peace.

But one whose soul does not die to this world and does not begin to be conformed to the truth is dragged by the death of the body into a heavier death, and will come to life again not to be changed into a heavenly condition, but to pay its penalties.

This, then, is what faith holds, and it must be believed that the matter stands so: that neither the soul nor the human body suffers complete destruction, but that the ungodly rise again to inestimable punishments, and the godly to eternal life.