Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 20–39

I do not know whether errors of this kind too are to be called sins: when a man thinks well of an evil man, not knowing what he is like; or when, instead of the things we perceive through the bodily senses, similar things present themselves which are perceived by the spirit as if by the body, or by the body as if by the spirit, as the apostle Peter thought when, suddenly freed by an angel from prison and chains, he supposed he was seeing a vision; or when in bodily things themselves what is rough is thought smooth, or what is bitter sweet, or what stinks is thought to smell good, or it is thought to thunder when a carriage passes, or a man is thought to be one person when he is another, when two are very like each other, as often happens with twins (whence the poet says, “and an error pleasing to the parents”); and other things of this kind. Nor have I now undertaken to untie that most knotty question which tormented the very acute men, the Academics: whether the wise man ought to approve anything, lest he fall into error if he approves false things as true, since all things, as they assert, are either hidden or uncertain. On this I wrote three volumes at the beginning of my conversion, so that what opposed us as it were at the very door might not hinder us. And certainly the despair of finding truth, which seems to be strengthened by their arguments, had to be removed. Among them, then, every error is thought to be a sin, which they contend cannot be avoided unless all assent is suspended. For they say that whoever assents to uncertain things errs; and they argue, in most acute but most impudent disputations, that nothing is certain in men's perceptions, because of the indistinguishable likeness of the false, even if what is perceived happens to be true. But with us, “The just lives by faith.” But if assent is taken away, faith is taken away, since without assent nothing is believed. And there are true things, though they are not seen, without believing which one cannot reach the happy life, which can only be eternal. But whether we ought to speak at all with those men I do not know, who know not that they will live forever, but do not even know that they live now; indeed, they say they do not know what they cannot fail to know. For no one is allowed not to know that he lives, since if he does not live he cannot even not know anything; for not only to know but also not to know belongs to one who lives. But by not assenting that they live, they evidently think they guard themselves against error, when even by erring they are proved to live, since one who does not live cannot err. As, then, it is not only true but certain that we live, so there are many things true and certain, and far be it that refusing assent to them should be called wisdom rather than madness.

But in those matters where it makes no difference for attaining the kingdom of God whether they are believed or not, or whether they are, or are thought to be, true or false, to err, that is, to think one thing for another, is not to be judged a sin, or if it is, a very small and very light one. Finally, whatever its kind and size, it does not belong to the way by which we go to God, which way is the faith of Christ that works through love. For that error pleasing to the parents in the case of twin sons did not turn aside from this way; nor did the apostle Peter turn aside from this way when, thinking he was seeing a vision, he took one thing for another in such a way that he did not distinguish the real bodies among which he was from the images of bodies among which he thought he was, until the angel by whom he had been freed departed from him; nor did the patriarch Jacob turn aside from this way when he believed that his living son had been killed by a beast. In these and similar falsehoods we are deceived with our faith in God unharmed, and we err without leaving the way that leads to him. These errors, even if they are not sins, are still to be counted among the evils of this life, which is so subjected to vanity that here false things are approved as true, true things rejected as false, and uncertain things held as certain. For although these are absent from that faith through which we tend, by a true and certain way, toward eternal happiness, they are not absent from the misery in which we still are. For in no way would we be deceived in any sense of mind or body if we already enjoyed that true and perfect happiness.

Further, every lie must be called a sin, because a man, not only when he himself knows what is true, but also if at any time he errs and is deceived, as a man may be, ought to speak what he bears in his mind, whether it is true or is thought true and is not. But everyone who lies speaks against what he thinks in his mind, with the will to deceive. And certainly words were instituted not so that men might deceive one another through them, but so that each might convey his thoughts to the knowledge of another. To use words for deception, then, and not for what they were instituted, is sin. Nor is any lie to be thought not a sin because we can sometimes help someone by lying. For we can do so by stealing too, if the poor man to whom it is openly given feels the benefit and the rich man from whom it is secretly taken does not feel the loss; yet no one would say that such theft is not a sin. We can do so by committing adultery too, if some woman appears about to die of love unless she is yielded to in this, and, if she lives, would be cleansed by repentance; yet such adultery will not therefore be denied to be sin. But if chastity rightly pleases us, what has truth done wrong, that the one is not to be violated by adultery for another's benefit, while the other is violated by lying? It is indeed not to be denied that men have made great progress toward the good who lie only for the safety of a man; but in such progress of theirs it is their benevolence that is rightly praised, or even rewarded in this life, not their deceit, which it is enough to pardon, not also to proclaim, especially among the heirs of the New Testament, to whom it is said, “Let your speech be, Yes, yes; no, no; for whatever is more than this is from evil.” Because of this evil, since it does not cease to creep in during this mortal life, even the co-heirs of Christ themselves say, “Forgive us our debts.”

These matters having been treated as the need for brevity requires, since the causes of good and evil things must be known as far as suffices for the way that leads us to the kingdom, where there will be life without death, truth without error, happiness without disturbance, we ought in no way to doubt that the cause of the good things that pertain to us is nothing but the goodness of God, and that the cause of evil things is the will of a changeable good falling away from the unchangeable good, first the will of an angel, afterwards of man.

This is the first evil of the rational creature, that is, the first privation of good. Then, even against their will, there crept in ignorance of what should be done and desire for what is harmful, and with them, as their companions, error and pain; and when these two evils are felt to be impending, the movement of the mind fleeing them is called fear. Further, when the mind obtains what it desired, though harmful or empty, since through error it does not perceive this, it is either overcome by a diseased delight or puffed up by an empty joy. From these, as from fountains not of abundance but of want, all the misery of rational nature flows.

Yet this nature in its evils could not lose the desire for happiness. But these are the evils common to men and to angels condemned by the Lord's justice for their wickedness. But man also has a punishment of his own, by which he was punished with the death of the body too. For God had threatened him with the penalty of death if he sinned, so endowing him with free choice as still to rule him by command and deter him with the threat of destruction; and he placed him in the happiness of paradise, as in the shade of life, from which, if he kept justice, he would ascend to better things.

Hence, made an exile after his sin, he bound his stock too, which by sinning he had vitiated in himself as in its root, with the penalty of death and condemnation; so that whatever offspring was born of him and of the wife, condemned with him, through whom he had sinned, through carnal concupiscence, in which a punishment like his disobedience was repaid, should contract original sin, by which it would be drawn through various errors and pains to that final punishment without end with the deserting angels, its corrupters, masters, and companions. “Thus through one man sin entered the world, and through sin death; and so it passed to all men, in whom all sinned.” By “world” in that place the apostle meant the whole human race.

So, then, things stood: the condemned mass of the whole human race lay in evils, or even wallowed in them, and was hurled headlong from evils into evils; and, joined to the party of the angels who had sinned, it was paying the most deserved penalties of its impious desertion. For to the just wrath of God belongs whatever the wicked do willingly through blind and untamed concupiscence, and whatever they suffer unwillingly in manifest and open punishments; though the goodness of the Creator does not cease to supply life and living power even to the evil angels (if this supply were taken away, they would perish), and, in the case of men, though they are born of a vitiated and condemned stock, to form and animate their seed, to order their members through the ages of life, to quicken their senses through the extents of place, and to give them food. For he judged it better to bring good out of evil than to permit no evil to exist. And if indeed he had willed that there should be no reformation of men for the better at all, as there is none for the impious angels, would it not have come about deservedly that the nature which deserted God, which, using its power ill, trampled on and transgressed the command of its Creator, which it could most easily have kept, which, obstinately turned away from his light, violated in itself the image of its Maker, which by its evil free choice broke off its wholesome servitude to his laws, should be wholly deserted by him forever and pay the eternal penalty it deserved? Certainly he would have done so, if he were only just and not also merciful, and if he did not show his undeserved mercy much more evidently in the deliverance of the unworthy.

When, then, some angels in impious pride deserted God and were cast down from their high heavenly dwelling into the lowest darkness of this air, the remaining number of angels persisted in eternal happiness and holiness with God. For the others were not descended from one fallen and condemned angel, so that original evil should bind them, as it does men, with the chains of a guilty succession and drag them all to deserved punishments; but when he who became the devil was lifted up with his companions in impiety, and by that very pride cast down with them, the rest clung to the Lord in pious obedience, receiving also what those had not had, certain knowledge, by which they might be secure of their eternal stability that would never fall.

It pleased God, then, the Creator and Ruler of the universe, that, since not the whole multitude of angels had perished by deserting God, the part that had perished should remain in everlasting perdition, while the part that had stood firm with God when the other deserted should rejoice in its happiness, most certainly known to be forever; but that the other rational creature, which was in men, since it had wholly perished through sins and punishments both original and personal, should, by a part of it being restored, make up what that diabolical ruin had diminished in the angelic society. For this is promised to the saints when they rise, that they will be equal to the angels of God. Thus the Jerusalem above, our mother, the city of God, will be cheated of no part of the number of her citizens, or perhaps will even reign with a more abundant number. For we do not know the number either of holy men or of unclean demons, in whose place the sons of the holy mother, who appeared barren on earth, succeeding, will remain without any limit of time in that peace from which those fell. But the number of those citizens, whether that which is or that which is to be, is in the contemplation of that Maker who calls the things that are not as though they were, and orders all things in measure and number and weight.

But can this part of the human race, to which God has promised deliverance and an eternal kingdom, be restored by the merits of its own works? Far from it. For what good does a lost man do, except so far as he has been freed from perdition? Can it be by the free choice of the will? This too, far from it. For man, using free choice ill, destroyed both himself and it. For as one who kills himself certainly kills himself while living, but by killing himself no longer lives, and will not be able to raise himself again once he has killed himself, so, when sin was committed by free choice, sin being the victor, free choice was lost: “For by whom a man is overcome, to him he is also enslaved.” This is certainly the judgment of the apostle Peter; and since it is true, what liberty, I ask, can a slave so bound have, except when it delights him to sin? For he serves freely who willingly does the will of his master. And therefore he is free to sin who is the slave of sin. Hence he will not be free to act justly unless, freed from sin, he begins to be the slave of justice. That is true liberty, because of the joy of right doing, and at the same time pious servitude, because of obedience to the commandment. But whence will this liberty to do well come to a man bound and sold, unless he redeems him whose voice is this: “If the Son makes you free, then you will be truly free”? Before this begins to be done in a man, how can anyone glory in free choice in good work, who is not yet free to work well, unless, puffed up with vain pride, he exalts himself? This the apostle restrains, saying, “By grace you have been saved through faith.”

And lest they should claim for themselves at least faith itself, so as not to understand that it was given by God (as the same apostle says in another place that he had obtained mercy to be faithful), here too he added and said, “And this not from yourselves, but it is the gift of God; not from works, lest anyone should be lifted up.” And lest it be thought that good works would be lacking to the faithful, he added again: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus in good works, which God prepared that we should walk in them.” We are made truly free, then, when God fashions us, that is, forms and creates us, not to be men, which he has already done, but to be good men, which he now does by his grace; that we may be a new creation in Christ Jesus, according to what was said, “Create a clean heart in me, O God.” For God had not failed to create his heart already, as far as the nature of the human heart is concerned.

Likewise, lest anyone glory, if not in his works, then in the very free choice of his will, as though merit began from himself, and the very liberty to do well were repaid to him as a reward owed, let him hear the same herald of grace saying, “For it is God who works in you both to will and to work, for his good will.” And in another place: “So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.” For without doubt, if a man is of an age to use reason, he cannot believe, hope, or love unless he wills, nor reach the prize of the upward calling of God unless he has run willingly. How, then, is it “not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy,” unless because the will itself, as it is written, is prepared by the Lord? Otherwise, if it was said, “It is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy,” because it comes about from both, that is, from the will of man and the mercy of God, so that we take the saying as if it meant, “The will of man alone does not suffice unless there is also the mercy of God,” then neither does the mercy of God alone suffice unless there is also the will of man; and therefore, if it was rightly said, “It is not of man who wills but of God who shows mercy,” because the will of man alone does not accomplish it, why is it not rightly said conversely, “It is not of God who shows mercy but of man who wills,” because the mercy of God alone does not accomplish it? But if no Christian will dare to say, “It is not of God who shows mercy but of man who wills,” lest he most openly contradict the apostle, it remains that “It is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy” is rightly understood as said so that the whole may be given to God, who both prepares the good will of man to be helped and helps it when prepared. For the good will of man precedes many gifts of God, but not all; and among those which it does not precede is the good will itself. For both are read in the holy oracles: “His mercy will go before me,” and “His mercy will follow me.” It goes before the unwilling, that he may will; it follows the willing, that he may not will in vain. For why are we told to pray for our enemies, who are certainly unwilling to live piously, unless that God may work in them even to will? And likewise why are we told to ask that we may receive, unless that what we will may be done by him by whom it was brought about that we will? We pray, then, for our enemies, that the mercy of God may go before them, as it went before us; and we pray for ourselves, that his mercy may follow us.

The human race, then, was held under just condemnation, and all were children of wrath. Of this wrath it is written: “For all our days have failed, and in your wrath we have failed; our years will be considered like a spider's web.” Of this wrath Job too says: “For man born of woman is short of life and full of wrath.” Of this wrath the Lord Jesus too says: “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not believe in the Son does not have life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” He does not say “will come” but “abides.” For every man is born with it. For this reason the apostle says: “For we too were by nature children of wrath, like the rest.” Since men were in this wrath through original sin, all the more grievously and destructively as they had added greater or more numerous sins on top of it, there was need of a mediator, that is, a reconciler, who would appease this wrath by offering a unique sacrifice, of which all the sacrifices of the Law and the Prophets were shadows. Hence the apostle says: “For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being now reconciled by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.” But when God is said to be angry, no disturbance of his is signified, such as is in the mind of an angry man; but by a word transferred from human emotions his vengeance, which is only ever just, has received the name of wrath. That we are reconciled to God through the mediator, then, and receive the Holy Spirit, so that from enemies we are made sons (“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God”): this is the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Of this mediator it would take long to say as much as he deserves, though worthy things cannot be said of him by man. For who could explain in fitting words this alone: that “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,” so that we might believe in the only Son of God the Father almighty, born of the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary? For the Word was made flesh in this way: flesh being taken up by the divinity, not the divinity changed into flesh. And by “flesh” here we should understand man, by a figure of speech in which the part signifies the whole, as it was said, “For by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified,” that is, no man. For it is not right to say that anything of human nature was lacking in that taking up; but it was a nature in every way free from every bond of sin: not such as is born of both sexes through the concupiscence of the flesh with the obligation of guilt, whose guilt is washed away by regeneration, but such as was fitting to be born of a virgin, whom the faith, not the lust, of the mother had conceived. And if her integrity had been corrupted even as he was born, he would no longer be born of a virgin, and the whole Church would falsely (far be it) confess him born of the virgin Mary: the Church, which, imitating his mother, daily gives birth to his members, and is a virgin. Read, if you like, my letter on the virginity of holy Mary to the illustrious man Volusianus, whom I name with honor and affection.

Accordingly Christ Jesus, the Son of God, is both God and man: God before all ages, man in our age. God, because he is the Word of God, for “the Word was God”; and man, because a rational soul and flesh were joined to the Word into unity of person. Therefore, in so far as he is God, he and the Father are one; but in so far as he is man, the Father is greater than he. For since he was the only Son of God, not by grace but by nature, he became also the son of man so as to be full of grace too; and the same one is both, from both, one Christ. For “being in the form of God, he did not think it robbery,” what he was by nature, “to be equal with God. But he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant,” not losing or lessening the form of God. And therefore he was both made less and remained equal, being both in one, as has been said; but the one because of the Word, the other because of the man: because of the Word equal to the Father, because of the man less. One Son of God, and the same the son of man; one son of man, and the same the Son of God; not two sons of God, God and man, but one Son of God: God without beginning, man from a definite beginning, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Here the grace of God is commended greatly and plainly. For what did human nature in the man Christ merit, that it should be uniquely taken up into the unity of person of the only Son of God? What good will, what zeal for a good purpose, what good works went before, by which this man should merit to become one person with God? Was he a man before, and was this unique benefit given him because he had uniquely earned God's favor? Surely, from the moment he began to be a man, he began to be nothing else than the Son of God, and this the only Son, and, because of God the Word who became flesh by taking him up, certainly God; so that, as any man is one person, namely rational soul and flesh, so Christ is one person, Word and man. Whence such great glory for human nature, without doubt freely given with no preceding merits, unless it is that here the great and sole grace of God is plainly shown to those who consider faithfully and soberly, so that men may understand that they are justified from sins by the same grace by which it came about that the man Christ could have no sin? So also the angel greeted his mother when he announced to her this future birth: “Hail,” he says, “full of grace.” And a little later: “You have found grace with God.” And she indeed is called full of grace, and is said to have found grace with God, so that she might be the mother of her Lord, indeed of the Lord of all. But of Christ himself the evangelist John, having said, “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,” says, “And we saw his glory, glory as of the only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” What he says, “The Word was made flesh,” is “full of grace”; what he says, “the glory of the only-begotten from the Father,” is “full of truth.” For the Truth himself, the only-begotten Son of God, not by grace but by nature, by grace took up man in such unity of person that the same one was also the son of man.

For the same Jesus Christ, the only-begotten, that is, the only Son of God, our Lord, was born of the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary. And certainly the Holy Spirit is the gift of God, a gift which is itself equal to the giver; and therefore the Holy Spirit too is God, not less than the Father and the Son. From the fact, then, that Christ's birth according to his humanity is from the Holy Spirit, what else is shown than grace itself? For when the virgin asked the angel how what he announced to her could come about, since she knew no man, the angel answered: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the holy one to be born of you will be called the Son of God.” And Joseph, when he wished to put her away, suspecting adultery, since he knew she was not pregnant by him, received this answer from the angel: “Do not fear to take Mary as your wife; for what is born in her is of the Holy Spirit”: that is, what you suspect is from another man is of the Holy Spirit.

Shall we therefore say that the Holy Spirit is the father of the man Christ, so that God the Father begot the Word and the Holy Spirit the man, and from both substances there is one Christ, son of God the Father according to the Word and son of the Holy Spirit according to the man, because the Holy Spirit begot him as his father from a virgin mother? Who will dare to say this? Nor is there need to show by argument how many other absurdities follow, since this itself is already so absurd that no faithful ears can bear it. Accordingly, as we confess, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is God from God, but as man was born of the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary, in both substances, divine and human, is the only Son of God the Father almighty, from whom the Holy Spirit proceeds. How, then, do we say that Christ was born of the Holy Spirit, if the Holy Spirit did not beget him? Is it because he made him? For our Lord Jesus Christ, in so far as he is God, is he through whom “all things were made”; but in so far as he is man, he himself was also made, as the apostle says: “He was made of the seed of David according to the flesh.” But since the whole Trinity made that creature which the virgin conceived and bore, though it belongs to the person of the Son alone (for the works of the Trinity are inseparable), why was the Holy Spirit alone named in making it? Or is it that, even when one of the three is named in some work, the whole Trinity is understood to work? So indeed it is, and it can be shown by examples. But we must not linger longer on this. For what troubles us is how it was said, “born of the Holy Spirit,” when he is in no way the son of the Holy Spirit. For because God made this world, it is not right to say that it is the son of God or born of God; but made, or created, or founded, or established by him, or whatever of this kind we can rightly say. Here, then, since we confess him born of the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary, it is difficult to explain how he is not the son of the Holy Spirit and is the son of the virgin Mary, when he was born both of him and of her. Without doubt he was born of him not as of a father, but of her as of a mother.

It is not to be granted, then, that whatever is born of something must at once be called the son of that thing. For, to pass over that a son is born of a man in one way, and a hair, a louse, or a worm in another, none of which is a son; to pass over these, I say, since they are unseemly comparisons for so great a matter: certainly no one would rightly call those who are born of water and the Holy Spirit sons of the water; but they are plainly called sons of God the Father and of mother Church. So, then, born of the Holy Spirit, he is the son of God the Father, not of the Holy Spirit. For what we said about the hair and the rest serves only to remind us that not everything born of something can also be called the son of that from which it is born. Likewise it does not follow that all who are called sons of someone are also said to be born of him, as with those who are adopted. People are also called sons of Gehenna, not as born of it but as prepared for it, as sons of the kingdom are those who are prepared for the kingdom.