Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 3.18–4.3

But how great, I do not say shameless, but insane, is the pride of those who are not yet equal to the angels of God and think that they can already have a righteousness equal to that of the angels of God; and do not look at so great and holy a man, who certainly hungered and thirsted for the very perfection of righteousness when he did not wish to be lifted up by the greatness of his revelations! And yet, that he might not be lifted up, he was not entrusted to his own choice and will, but received a thorn in the flesh, an angel of Satan, to buffet him. Because of this he asked the Lord three times that it might depart from him, and the Lord said to him: "My grace is sufficient for you; for power is perfected in weakness." What power, but that to which it belongs not to be lifted up? And who doubts that this belongs to righteousness? With the perfection of this righteousness, then, the angels of God are endowed, who always see the face of the Father, and therefore of the whole Trinity, because they see through the Son in the Holy Spirit. And nothing is more sublime than this revelation; yet none of the angels rejoicing in that contemplation needs an angel of Satan to buffet him, lest so great a revelation lift him up. This perfection of virtue the apostle Paul certainly did not yet have, being not yet equal to the angels of God; but there was in him a weakness of lifting himself up, which had to be restrained even by an angel of Satan, lest he be lifted up by the greatness of his revelations. So, although the first pride cast down Satan himself, yet that supreme Physician, who knows how to use even evil things well, applied against the fault of pride a wholesome though troublesome medicine made from an angel of Satan, as an antidote is commonly made even from serpents against the poisons of serpents. What, then, does "My grace is sufficient for you" mean, but "that you may not fail and succumb under the buffeting of the angel of Satan"? And what does "Power is perfected in weakness" mean, but that in this place of weakness the perfection of virtue can go only so far that, with weakness itself present, pride is repressed? This weakness will certainly be healed by the future immortality. For how can there be said to be full health where medicine is still needed, even from the buffeting of an angel of Satan?

From this it has come about that the virtue which is now in a righteous man is called perfect to this extent: that to its perfection belong also both the knowledge in truth and the confession in humility of its very imperfection. For then this small righteousness is perfect according to its measure, in keeping with this weakness, when it understands also what it lacks. And therefore the apostle calls himself both imperfect and perfect: imperfect, namely, in thinking how much he lacks for the righteousness whose fullness he still hungers and thirsts for; but perfect in that he does not blush to confess his imperfection and advances well in order to arrive, just as we can say that a traveler is perfect whose approach is going forward well, although his intention is not accomplished until his arrival has been made. For this reason, when he had said, "as to the righteousness which is in the law, I was without complaint", he at once added: "What were gains to me, these I have counted losses for Christ's sake. Indeed I count all things to be loss because of the surpassing knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord, for whom I have held all things not only as detriments but have counted them as dung, so that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, which is the righteousness from God in faith." See, the apostle says, certainly not falsely, that as to the righteousness which is from the law he was without complaint; and yet these things which were gains to him he casts away for Christ's sake and counts them losses, detriments, and dung, not only these but all the other things which he mentioned above, for the sake not of just any knowledge but of the surpassing knowledge, as he himself says, of Christ Jesus our Lord, which beyond doubt he still had in faith, not yet in sight. For then the knowledge of Christ will be surpassing, when he has been so revealed that what is believed is seen. Hence he says in another place: "For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory." Hence the Lord himself too says: "He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him." Hence John the evangelist says: "Beloved, we are sons of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be. We know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is." Then the knowledge of Christ will be surpassing; for now it is indeed hidden in faith, but does not yet appear surpassing in sight.

So the blessed Paul casts away those past things of his own righteousness as detriments and dung, so that he may gain Christ and be found in him, not having his own righteousness, which is from the law. Why "his own", if it is from the law? For that law is not other than God's. Who but Marcion and Mani and other similar plagues have said so? Since, then, that law is God's, he says that the righteousness which is from the law is his own; and this righteousness of his own he did not wish to have, but threw it away as dung. Why so, except that this is what we also showed above, that those are under the law who, "ignorant of the righteousness of God and wishing to establish their own, have not submitted to the righteousness of God"? For they think that they fulfill the law's commands by the powers of their own choice, and, entangled in this pride, they do not turn to the grace that helps. So the letter kills them, either making them openly guilty even to themselves by their not doing what it commands, or by their thinking that they do what they do not do with the spiritual love which is from God. So they remain either openly wicked or deceitfully righteous: in open wickedness evidently crushed, in deceitful righteousness foolishly puffed up. And so, in a wonderful but true way, the righteousness of the law is fulfilled not by the righteousness which is in the law or from the law, but by that which is in the Spirit of grace. For the righteousness of the law is fulfilled, as it is written, in those who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. But the apostle says that as to the righteousness which is in the law he was without complaint in the flesh, not in the spirit; and he says that the righteousness which is from the law was his own, not God's. It must be understood, then, that the righteousness of the law is fulfilled not according to the righteousness which is in the law or from the law, that is, according to man's righteousness, but according to the righteousness which is in the Spirit of grace; therefore according to the righteousness of God, that is, the righteousness which is man's from God. This can be said more plainly and briefly thus: the righteousness of the law is not fulfilled when the law commands and man acts as if by his own strength, but when the Spirit helps and man's will, not free but set free by God's grace, acts. So the righteousness of the law is to command what pleases God and to forbid what displeases him; but righteousness in the law is to serve the letter and to seek no help of God outside it for living rightly. For when he had said, "not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ", he added, "which is from God". This, then, is the righteousness of God, of which the proud are ignorant and wish to establish their own. For it is not called the righteousness of God because God is righteous by it, but because it is man's from God.

According to this righteousness of God, that is, which is ours from God, faith now works through love. And it works toward this: how a man may come to him in whom he now believes without seeing. When he sees him, then what was in faith, through a mirror in an enigma, will be in sight, face to face; then love itself too will be perfected. For it is said very foolishly that God is loved as much before he is seen as he will be loved when he is seen. Further, if in this life, as no pious person doubts, the more we love God the more righteous we certainly are, who doubts that pious and true righteousness will be perfected when the love of God is perfect? Then, therefore, the law will be fulfilled so that nothing at all is lacking, the law whose fullness, according to the apostle, is love. And therefore, when he had said, "not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, which is the righteousness from God in faith", he then added: "to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings." All these things were not yet full and perfect in the apostle, but, as one set on the way, he was running toward their fullness and perfection. For how had he already known Christ perfectly, who says in another place, "Now I know in part, but then I shall know as I also have been known"? And how had he already known perfectly the power of his resurrection, when it remained for him to know it more fully by experiencing it at the time of the resurrection of the flesh? And how had he already known perfectly the fellowship of his sufferings, not yet having experienced the suffering of death for him? Finally he adds and says, "if in any way I may attain to the resurrection of the dead", and then says, "Not that I have already received, or am already perfect." What, then, does he confess that he has not yet received, and in what is he not yet perfect, except in that righteousness which is from God, which he desired, not wishing to have his own, which is from the law? For this was his starting point, and this was the reason why he said these things, resisting the enemies of the grace of God, for the bestowal of which Christ was crucified; and of their kind are these men too.

For at the place where he undertook to say these things, he began thus: "Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the mutilation. For we are the circumcision, who serve God in spirit" (or, as some manuscripts have, "who serve the Spirit, God", or "the Spirit of God") "and glory in Christ Jesus and do not trust in the flesh." From this it is clear that he is acting against the Jews, who, observing the law carnally and wishing to establish their own righteousness, were being killed by the letter, not given life by the Spirit, and gloried in themselves, while the apostles and all the children of the promise gloried in Christ. Then he added: "Although I too have confidence in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he has confidence in the flesh, I more"; and, listing all the things that have glory according to the flesh, he ended with that point where he says: "as to the righteousness which is in the law, I was without complaint." And when he had said that these things had been altogether losses, detriments, and dung to him, so that he might gain Christ, he added the point at issue: "and be found in him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, which is from God." The perfection of this righteousness, then, which will exist only in that surpassing knowledge of Christ, for the sake of which he said that all things were loss to him, he confessed that he had not yet received, and therefore that he was not yet perfect. "But I follow on," he says, "if I may lay hold of that for which I also have been laid hold of by Christ Jesus." "I may lay hold of that for which I also have been laid hold of" is like "I shall know as I also have been known." "Brothers," he says, "I do not consider that I have laid hold of it myself. But one thing: forgetting what lies behind, stretched out toward what lies ahead, I follow according to intention toward the prize of the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus." The order of the words is: "But one thing I follow." Of this one thing the Lord is also rightly understood to have reminded Martha, when he said: "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things. But one thing is necessary." Wishing to lay hold of this, as one set on the way, he said that he was following toward the prize of the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus. And who would hesitate to say that, when he has laid hold of what he declares he is following, he will then have a righteousness equal to the righteousness of the holy angels, none of whom, certainly, an angel of Satan buffets lest he be lifted up by the greatness of his revelations? Then, warning those who might think themselves already perfect in the fullness of that righteousness, he says: "Let as many of us, then, as are perfect think this" (as if he were saying: if we are perfect according to the capacity of mortal man, in the measure of this life, let us understand that this too belongs to that perfection, that we know we are not yet perfect in that angelic righteousness which will be ours at the manifestation of Christ), "and if in anything you think otherwise," he says, "God will reveal this too to you." How, except to those walking and advancing on the way of right faith, until this pilgrimage is ended and sight is reached? Hence he added in consequence: "Nevertheless, in what we have attained, in that let us walk." Then he concludes that those should be avoided with whom this passage of his discourse began: "Be imitators of me together, brothers," he says, "and observe those who walk so, as you have us for an example. For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, as enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction", and so on. These are the very ones of whom he had said at the beginning: "Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers", and what follows. All, then, are enemies of the cross of Christ who, wishing to establish their own righteousness, which is from the law, that is, from the letter only commanding, not the Spirit fulfilling, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. For "if those who are through the law are heirs, faith is emptied." "If righteousness is through the law, then Christ died for nothing"; then "the scandal of the cross has been made void." And therefore those are enemies of his cross who say that righteousness is through the law, to which it belongs to command, not to help. But the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, in the Holy Spirit, helps our weakness.

Therefore he who lives according to the righteousness which is in the law, without faith in the grace of Christ, as the apostle recalls that he lived without complaint, must be thought to have no true righteousness; not because the law is not true and holy, but because to wish to obey the letter commanding, without the life-giving Spirit of God, as if from the powers of free choice, is not true righteousness. But the righteousness according to which the righteous lives by faith, since it is man's from God through the Spirit of grace, is true righteousness. And although it is not undeservedly called perfect in some righteous men, according to the capacity of this life, yet it is small compared with that great righteousness which equality with the angels holds. He who did not yet have this said that he was both perfect, on account of the righteousness which was already in him, and imperfect, on account of that which was still lacking. But plainly this lesser righteousness makes merit; that greater one becomes the reward. Hence he who does not pursue this one does not attain that one. Therefore to deny that the fullness of righteousness will exist after the resurrection of man, and to think that there will be as much righteousness in the body of that life as there can be in the body of this death, is singular madness. But that men do not begin there to fulfill the commandments of God which they would not fulfill here is most true. For there will be the fullness of most perfect righteousness, yet not of men pursuing commandments and striving by advancing toward that fullness, but in the twinkling of an eye, as the resurrection of the dead itself will be; since that perfect greatness of righteousness will be given as a reward to those who have done the commandments here, not itself commanded to be done. But I would say "have done the commandments" in such a way that we remember that the commandments themselves pertain to the prayer in which the holy children of the promise daily and truthfully say both "Your will be done" and "Forgive us our debts."

When, then, the Pelagians are pressed by these and similar testimonies and voices of the truth not to deny original sin, not to say that the grace of God by which we are justified is given not freely but according to our merits, and not to say that there is so much righteousness in mortal man, however holy and well-doing, that the forgiveness of sins is not necessary to him even after the washing of regeneration until he ends this life; when, I say, they are pressed not to say these three things, and not by them to alienate those who believe them from the grace of the Savior and persuade them, puffed up into pride, to go headlong into the judgment of the devil, they throw up the clouds of other questions, in which their impiety may lurk among simpler or slower people, or those less learned in the holy Scriptures. These are the clouds of the praise of the creature, the praise of marriage, the praise of the law, the praise of free choice, the praise of the saints: as though any of us found fault with these, and did not rather proclaim all of them with due praises to the honor of the Creator and Savior. But neither does the creature wish to be praised in such a way as not to wish to be healed; and the more marriage is to be praised, the less is the shameful concupiscence of the flesh, which is not from the Father but from the world, to be imputed to it. Marriage certainly found this in human beings; it did not make it, since it exists in very many without marriage, and marriage could have existed without it if no one had sinned. And the law, holy and just and good, is neither itself grace, nor is anything done rightly from it without grace, because it was not given as one that could give life, but was added because of transgression, to convict and shut up men under sin, so that the promise might be given from faith in Jesus Christ to those who believe. And free choice, taken captive, has power only for sin, but for righteousness has no power unless set free and helped by God. And therefore all the saints, whether from that ancient Abel to John the Baptist, or from the apostles themselves to this time and thereafter to the end of the world, are to be praised in the Lord, not in themselves; because the voice of those earlier ones is, "My soul will be praised in the Lord", and the voice of these later ones is, "By the grace of God I am what I am", and to all belongs, "so that he who glories may glory in the Lord", and the confession of all is common: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."

But since, in these five things which I have set out, in which they seek hiding places and about which they weave slanders, they are exposed and defeated by divine proofs, they have devised the scheme of frightening off the unskilled, whomever they could, with the detestable name of the Manichees, so that they may not lend their ears to the truth against their most perverse dogmas; namely, because the Manichees condemn with blasphemy the first three of these five, saying that neither the human creature nor marriage nor the law were established by the supreme and true God. But they do not accept what the truth says, that sin took its beginning from free choice, and that from it comes all evil, whether of angel or of man, since, straying too far from God, they have preferred to believe in a nature of evil, always evil and coeternal with God. The holy patriarchs and prophets too they assail with all the curses they can. See by what means the new heretics think that, by putting forward the name of the Manichees, they escape the force of the truth; but they do not escape. For the truth pursues them and overturns Manichees and Pelagians together. For a man, when he is born, because he is something good in so far as he is a man, refutes Mani and praises the Creator; but in so far as he contracts original sin, he refutes Pelagius and has need of the Savior. For the very statement that this nature is to be healed strikes back at both, because it would not need medicine if it were healthy, which is against Pelagius, nor could it be healed at all if it were an eternal and unchangeable evil, which is against Mani. Likewise, our saying that the concupiscence of the flesh is not to be imputed to marriage, which we praise as established by the Lord, is both against the Pelagians, who put it among things to be praised, and against the Manichees, who attribute it to an evil alien nature, since it is an evil that has befallen our nature, not to be separated by being cut off from God, but to be healed by God's mercy. Likewise, our saying that the law, holy and just and good, was added not to justify the ungodly but to convict the proud, because of transgression, is both against the Manichees, because, according to the apostle, it is praised, and against the Pelagians, because, according to the apostle, no one is justified by the law, and therefore the Spirit of grace freely helps to give life to those whom the letter kills, that is, whom the good law, by commanding, makes guilty through transgression. Likewise, our saying that choice, free for evil, must be set free by the grace of God in order to do good is against the Pelagians; but our saying that evil arose from it, which before was not evil, is against the Manichees. Likewise, our honoring the holy patriarchs and prophets with due praise in God is opposed to the Manichees; but our saying that even they, though righteous and pleasing to God, needed the Lord's propitiation is opposed to the Pelagians. The Catholic faith, then, finds both, like the other heretics, to be adversaries, and convicts both by the authority of the divine testimonies and the light of truth.

The Pelagians add to the clouds of their hiding places, indeed, an unnecessary question about the origin of the soul, so that, by troubling manifest things with the obscurity of other things, they may contrive a place to hide. For they say that we look upon a transmission of souls together with a transmission of sin. Where and when they heard this in the discourses, or read it in the writings, of those who defend the Catholic faith against them, I do not know; for although I find something written on this matter by Catholics, the defense of the truth against these men had not yet been undertaken, nor was it being done in order to answer them. But this I say: original sin is so manifest according to the holy Scriptures, and its forgiveness by the washing of regeneration in little children is so firmly established by the great antiquity and authority of the Catholic faith, and so well known through the clear observance of the church, that whatever is argued about the origin of the soul by anyone's inquiry or assertion, if it is against this, cannot be true. Therefore whoever builds up anything, whether about the soul or about any obscure matter, by which he would destroy this which is most true, most firmly founded, most well known, whether he be a son or an enemy of the church, must either be corrected or be avoided. But let this be the end of this book, so that what follows may have another beginning.

After these things which we have treated and answered, those whose letter we have refuted repeat the same things, but in a different manner. For first they set them out as charges against us, as things we supposedly hold wrongly; but afterward, setting out what they themselves hold, they gave back the same things from the opposite side, adding two things which they had not said: namely, that they say that baptism is necessary for all ages, and that death passed to us through Adam, not crimes. These too are to be treated in their place. Accordingly, since in the former book, which we have just completed, we said that they put forward the obstacles of five things in which their dogmas, hostile to the grace of God and to the Catholic faith, lurk, namely the praise of the creature, the praise of marriage, the praise of the law, the praise of free choice, and the praise of the saints, I think it more convenient to distinguish by kind all the things they maintain, whose contraries they charge against us, and to show which of their statements belongs to which of these five, so that by this very distinction our answer may be clearer and shorter.

The praise of the creature, as far as the human race is concerned, which is now in question, they carry out with these statements: that God is the maker of those who are born, that the sons of men are the work of God, and that all sin comes down not from nature but from the will. To this praise of the creature they apply their saying that baptism is necessary for all ages, namely so that that creature may be adopted among the sons of God, not because it contracts anything from its parents to be expiated by the washing of regeneration. To this praise they join also their saying that the Lord Christ was sprinkled with no stain of sin, as far as his infancy is concerned, because they assert that his flesh was most pure from all contagion of sin, not by his own excellence and singular grace, but by the sharing of the nature that is in all infants. To this belongs also their bringing in the question of the origin of the soul, trying in this way to make all the souls of little children equal to the soul of Christ, since they want them to be likewise sprinkled with no stain of sin. For this reason they also say that nothing evil passed from Adam through the rest except death. "And death," they say, "is not always an evil, since it is a cause of rewards even for the martyrs, and what makes a death to be called good or bad is not the dissolution of bodies, which will be raised in every kind of human being, but the difference of merits, which arises from human freedom." These things they write in this letter about the praise of the creature. Marriage they praise according to the Scriptures, because the Lord says in the gospel: "He who made them from the beginning made them male and female. And he said: Increase and multiply and fill the earth", although this is written not in that place of the gospel but in the law. They also add: "What therefore God has joined together, let man not separate", which words of the gospel we recognize. In praise of the law they say that the old law, according to the apostle, just and holy and good, could confer eternal life on those who kept its commandments and lived righteously by faith, such as the prophets and patriarchs and all the saints. In praise of free choice they say that free choice has not perished, since the Lord says through the prophet: "If you are willing and listen to me, you will eat the good things of the land; if you are unwilling and do not listen to me, the sword will devour you"; and that therefore grace helps the good purpose of each person, but does not implant the zeal for virtue in one who resists, because there is no respect of persons with God. With the praise of the saints they cover themselves, saying that baptism renews men perfectly, since the apostle is a witness, who testifies that the church from the Gentiles is made holy and spotless through the washing of water; that the Holy Spirit also helped good minds in ancient times, as the prophet says to God, "Your good Spirit will lead me in the right way"; that all the prophets and apostles or saints, both of the New and of the Old Testament, to whom God bears witness, were righteous not in comparison with criminals but by the rule of virtues; and that in the time to come there is a reward both of good works and of evil; but that no one can fulfill there the commandments which he despised here, because the apostle said: "We must be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive the things proper to the body, according to what he has done, whether good or evil." In all these, whatever they say in praise of the creature and of marriage they try to refer to this end, that there should be no original sin; whatever in praise of the law and of free choice, to this end, that grace should help only merit, and so grace be no longer grace; whatever in praise of the saints, to this end, that mortal life in the saints should seem to have no sin, and that it should not be necessary for them to pray to God for the forgiveness of their debts.

Whoever with a Catholic mind shudders at these wicked and damnable dogmas in this threefold division, let him avoid the hiding places and snares of that fivefold one, and be so careful between the two that he so turns away from Mani as not to incline to Pelagius, and again so separates himself from the Pelagians as not to join the Manichees; or, if he is already held by one or the other, let him not so rescue himself from either as to rush into the other. For they seem to be opposed to each other, since the Manichees reveal themselves by censuring those five things, while the Pelagians hide themselves by praising them. Therefore he condemns and avoids both who, according to the rule of the Catholic faith, in human beings who are born so glorifies the Creator for the good creation of flesh and soul (which the Manichee does not want) as yet to confess, because of the fault which passed into them through the sin of the first man, that a Savior is necessary even for little children (which Pelagius does not want); who so distinguishes the evil of shameful concupiscence from the goodness of marriage as neither, like the Manichees, to blame that from which we are born, nor, like the Pelagians, to praise that at which we are ashamed; who so maintains that the law was given through Moses, holy and just and good, by the holy and just and good God (which the Manichee denies against the apostle), as to say that it shows sin but does not take it away, commands righteousness but does not give it (which again Pelagius denies against the apostle); who so asserts free choice as to say that the evil of both angel and man began not from some nature always evil, which does not exist, but from choice itself (which overturns the Manichaean heresy), and yet that the captive will cannot breathe again into wholesome freedom except by the grace of God (which overturns the Pelagian heresy); who so praises in God the holy men of God, not only from the time when Christ was manifested in the flesh onward but also of earlier times (whom the Manichees dare to blaspheme), as yet to believe what they themselves confess about themselves rather than what the Pelagians falsely say. For the voice of the saints is: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."