Letters 102.1–102.24

You preferred to delegate to me the questions put to you, not, I think, from laziness, but because you hear even the things you know more gladly through us, since you love us too much. But I preferred that they be explained by you, because that friend himself who put them, as far as one may guess from the fact that he did not reply to some letters of mine, is as it were ashamed to follow us; let him see for what reason. This, however, I suspect, and my suspicion is neither malicious nor absurd, since you know very well how much I love him and how much it grieves me that he is not yet a Christian; and I think it not unfitting to suppose that one whom I see did not wish to write back to me did not wish anything to be written to him by me. So I beg you, just as I obeyed you and, amid my most pressing occupations, was afraid of offending your holy will, so dear to me, and did what you asked, so you too do what I ask: namely, that you do not mind answering him briefly on all points, as he asked of you, as you told me, which you could have done even before. For when you read this, you will know that almost nothing has been said by me which you did not know yourself or could not have known without my speaking. But I ask you to keep this work of mine with the others whose study you know it suits. But let that work of yours which I demand be had by him to whom it is above all suited, and by the others who take no small delight in these things, as they can be said by you; and I am one of them. May you live always in Christ, remembering us. Six questions against the pagans, explained.

I. On the resurrection. Some people are troubled and ask which of the two resurrections agrees with the promised resurrection, Christ's or Lazarus's. “If Christ's,” they say, “how can it agree with the resurrection of those born of seed, when he was born under no condition of seed? But if it is asserted that Lazarus's resurrection agrees, not even this seems to fit, since Lazarus's resurrection was from a body not yet decomposing, from that body by which he was called Lazarus; whereas ours will be dug out of a confused mass many ages later. Then, if after the resurrection there is to be a blessed state with no injury to the body and no necessity of hunger, what is meant by Christ's having eaten and shown his wounds? If he did it for the sake of the unbeliever, he pretended; but if he showed something real, then the wounds received will be there in the resurrection.”

To these we answer that it is not Lazarus's resurrection but rather Christ's that agrees with the promised resurrection, because Lazarus rose so as to die again, but Christ, as is written of him, “rising from the dead dies no more, and death will no longer have dominion over him.” This is promised too to those who will rise at the end of the world and reign with him for ever. The difference between Christ's birth and ours, that he was born without male seed and we were created from man and woman, no more concerns the resurrection than it concerns the difference of death itself. For his death was not the less real because he was born without male seed; just as the different origin of the first man's flesh from ours (since he was created from the earth without parents, and we from parents) contributed nothing to a difference of death, as though he died one way and we another. As, then, a different birth makes no difference to death, so it makes none to resurrection.

But lest unbelievers likewise refuse to believe this very thing that is written of the first man, let them inquire or notice, if they can at least do this, how many kinds of animals are produced from the earth without parents, which nevertheless themselves bear offspring like themselves by mating; and because of the difference of birth there is no difference in the nature of those produced from the earth and those born of their mating. For they live alike and die alike, though they were born unlike. So it is not absurd that bodies which originated unlike should rise alike. But men of this kind, unable to see to what a difference matters and to what it does not, as soon as they notice some distance in origins, contend that all that follows must differ too. Such men may think that oil from fat ought not to float on water as that which is from the olive does, since the origin of each is very different, the one having flowed from wood, the other from flesh.

As for that difference, that Christ's body rose on the third day not dissolved by decay and putrefaction, whereas ours will be restored after a long time from a kind of confusion into which they will have passed when dissolved: both are impossible to human ability, both are very easy to divine power. For just as the ray of our eye does not reach nearer things more quickly and farther things more slowly, but touches both distances with equal speed, so, when the resurrection of the dead takes place in the twinkling of an eye, as the apostle says, it is as easy for the omnipotence of God and his unspeakable will to raise corpses recently dead as those long since decayed. These things are incredible to some because they have not experienced them, though the whole nature of things is so full of miracles that they are not wonderful, not because reason has easily traced them out, but by the habit of seeing them, and for that reason they do not seem worth consideration or inquiry. For I, and with me whoever strives to understand the invisible things of God through the things that are made, marvel no less, or even more, that in one so small grain of seed all that we praise in the tree lay hidden as if folded up, than that the vast bosom of this world will return whole and entire for the future resurrection what it takes from human bodies as they decay.

And how is it contradictory both that Christ ate after the resurrection and that in the promised resurrection there will be no need of food, when we read that angels too took food of the same kind and in the same way, not by a feigned phantom but in most manifest truth, yet not by necessity but by power? For the thirsty earth absorbs water in one way, the burning ray of the sun in another: the one from need, the other from power. So the body of the future resurrection will be of imperfect happiness if it cannot take food, and of imperfect happiness if it needs food. I could discuss at more length here the changes of bodily qualities and the superior power of higher bodies over lower ones; but my purpose is to answer briefly, and this is written for minds of such a kind that a reminder will suffice.

Let him who put these questions know that after the resurrection Christ showed scars, not wounds, to those who doubted, for whose sake he also chose to take food and drink, not once but more often, lest they think it was not a body but a spirit, and that he appeared to them not solidly but as an image. Those scars would have been false if no wounds had preceded them; and yet they would not have existed at all if he had not willed them to exist. But he willed it for the sake of a certain dispensation, so as to show to those he was building up in an unfeigned faith that not one thing instead of another, but the very thing they had seen crucified, had risen. What then is the meaning of saying, “If he did it for the sake of the unbeliever, he pretended”? As if, supposing some brave man fighting for his country received many wounds in front, and when a most skilful physician could heal them so that no scars would appear, he himself said he would rather be healed so that traces of the wounds remained in his body as titles of glory, that physician would therefore be said to have feigned scars, because, though he could by his art have made them not exist, for a definite reason he made them exist instead. These scars, as I said above, could be proved false in only one way: if no wounds had been healed.

II. On the time of the Christian religion. They also put forward other things, which they said were extracted from Porphyry against the Christians, as stronger arguments: “If Christ,” they say, “declares himself the way of salvation, grace and truth, and places in himself alone the return for souls that believe in him, what did the people of so many ages before Christ do? To pass over,” he says, “the times before Latium was ruled, let us take Latium itself as the beginning, as it were, of human civilization. In Latium itself, before Alba, gods were worshipped. In Alba, too, religions and the rites of temples prevailed. For no fewer ages Rome itself, through a long stretch of ages, was without the Christian law. What,” he says, “has become of such innumerable souls, which are in no way to blame, if he in whom one could believe had not yet granted his coming to men? The world too, together with Rome itself, glowed with the rites of temples. Why,” he says, “did he who is called Saviour withdraw himself for so many ages? But lest they say,” he says, “that the human race was cared for by the old Jewish law, the law of the Jews appeared long after and flourished in a narrow region of Syria, and afterwards crept even into the borders of Italy, but after Gaius Caesar or at the earliest while he was ruling. What then has become of the Roman or Latin souls, which were deprived of the grace of the not yet coming Christ up to the time of the Caesars?”

To this proposition the answer is that they should first say themselves whether the rites of their gods, which were clearly instituted at definite times, profited men. If they deny that these profited anything for the salvation of souls, they destroy them along with us and confess that they are empty. We indeed show that they are even harmful; but it is no small thing that they should first confess them empty for the time being. But if they defend them and assert that they were wisely and usefully instituted, I ask what has become of those who died before these were instituted; for they were certainly cheated of this salvation and benefit. And if they could be purified in another way, why did the same way not continue for their descendants? What need was there to institute new consecrations which did not exist in ancient times?

If here they say that the gods themselves always existed and were everywhere equally able to free their worshippers, but, according to the variety of temporal and earthly things, which they knew to suit definite times and places, they wished to be served in different ways, in different places, in different manners, why do they press this question on the Christian religion, when either they cannot answer it for their own gods, or, if they can, in that very answer they should answer for our religion too: that it makes no difference, according to the different suitability of times and places, by what different sacraments one worships, if what is worshipped is holy; just as it makes no difference, according to the different suitability of languages and hearers, by what different sounds something is said, if what is said is true. With this difference, indeed: that men can institute for themselves the sounds of language, by which to communicate their thoughts to one another, by a kind of social agreement; but those who were rightly wise have followed the will of God as to what rites would befit the Godhead. That will has never been lacking for the salvation of the righteousness and piety of mortals; and if certain things are celebrated differently among various peoples joined in one and the same religion, it matters greatly how far this is done, so that human weakness may be encouraged or tolerated and divine authority not opposed.

Therefore, since we say that Christ is the Word of God, through whom all things were made, and is therefore Son because he is Word; not a word spoken and passed away, but abiding with the unchangeable Father, himself unchangeable and unchangeably; under whose rule the whole creation, spiritual and corporeal, is administered according to the suitability of times and places; with whom, surely, rests the wisdom and knowledge of what should be done concerning it, and when and where, in directing and governing it: both before he propagated the nation of the Hebrews, through which he would prefigure by suitable sacraments the manifestation of his coming, and in the very times of the kingdom of Israel, and afterwards when he showed himself mortal to mortals in the flesh taken from a virgin, and from then until now, when he fulfils all that he foretold through the prophets, and from now until the end of the world, when he will separate the saints from the ungodly and render to each his own, he is the same Son of God, coeternal with the Father, and the unchangeable Wisdom through whom all nature was created and by participation in whom every rational soul is made blessed.

And so, from the beginning of the human race, whoever believed in him and understood him in whatever way, and lived piously and righteously according to his precepts, whenever and wherever they were, were without doubt saved through him. For as we believe in him both as abiding with the Father and as having already come in the flesh, so the ancients believed in him both as abiding with the Father and as going to come in the flesh. Nor, because according to the variety of times what was then foretold as future is now announced as done, is faith itself therefore varied or salvation itself different; nor, because one and the same thing is prophesied or preached by different rites and sacraments, must different things or different salvations be understood. What is done, and when, that pertains to the one and same deliverance of the faithful and godly, let us attribute to God's counsel, and let us keep obedience for ourselves. So by other names and signs then, and by others now, earlier more hiddenly and later more openly, earlier by fewer and later by more, one and the same true religion is signified and observed.

Nor do we object to them that Numa Pompilius instituted for the Romans a worship of the gods different from that with which they or the Italians had worshipped them before, nor that in the time of Pythagoras that philosophy became celebrated which either did not exist at all before or perhaps lay hidden among very few who held the same opinions but did not live by the same rule; but whether those gods are true or to be worshipped, and whether that philosophy profits the salvation of souls at all: this we argue with them, this we call into question, this we overthrow by argument. Let them stop, then, objecting to us what can be objected to every sect and every name of religion. For since they admit that the times are ordered not by chance but by divine providence, what is fitting and opportune for each time surpasses human counsel and is distributed from the source whence providence itself takes care of things.

For if they say that the Pythagorean teaching did not exist always and everywhere because Pythagoras was a man and could not have this in his power, can they also say that at the very time when he lived, and in the regions where that philosophy flourished, all who could hear him also wished to believe and follow him? And so, all the more, if Pythagoras had been of such power as to preach his doctrines where and when he wished, and if, with that power, he also had supreme foreknowledge of things, he would appear nowhere and never except where and when he foreknew that men would believe him. Therefore, since they do not object to Christ that not all follow his teaching (for they themselves feel that this can by no means rightly be objected either to the wisdom of the philosophers or even to the divinity of their own gods), what will they answer if, setting aside that depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God, where perhaps some other divine counsel lies far more hidden, and without prejudice to other causes too, perhaps, that the wise may investigate, we say to them only this, for brevity's sake, in discussing this question: that Christ willed to appear to men and his teaching to be preached among them when he knew, and where he knew, there were those who would believe in him? For in those times and places in which his Gospel was not preached, he foreknew that all would be such in regard to its preaching as, not indeed all, but many were in his bodily presence, who would not believe in him even when he raised the dead; such as we see many even now, when the proclamations of the prophets about him are fulfilled so manifestly, still unwilling to believe and preferring to resist by human cunning rather than yield to divine authority so clear and evident, so sublime and so sublimely spread abroad, as long as man's understanding is small and weak to yield to divine truth. What wonder then, if Christ knew that in earlier ages the world was so full of unbelievers that he rightly did not wish to appear or be preached to those who, he foreknew, would believe neither his words nor his miracles? For it is not incredible that all were then such as we marvel that so many have been and are from his coming until this time.

And yet from the beginning of the human race, sometimes more hiddenly, sometimes more evidently, as it seemed good to God to suit the times, he never ceased to be prophesied, nor were those lacking who believed in him, from Adam to Moses, and in the people of Israel itself, which by a special mystery was a prophetic nation, and in other nations, before he came in the flesh. For since some are mentioned in the holy Hebrew books, already from the time of Abraham, who were neither of his fleshly stock nor of the people of Israel nor joined to the people of Israel as foreigners, and yet were partakers of this sacrament, why should we not believe that in the other nations too, here and there, there were others at other times, though we do not read of them mentioned in the same authorities? Thus the salvation of this religion, through which alone true salvation is truly promised, was never lacking to anyone who was worthy, and he to whom it was lacking was not worthy. And from the beginning of human propagation to the end it is preached, to some for reward, to some for judgment. And so those to whom it was not announced at all were foreknown as not going to believe; and those to whom it was announced though they would not believe are shown as an example of the former; but those to whom it is announced who will believe are being prepared for the kingdom of heaven and the fellowship of the holy angels.

III. On the distinction of sacrifices. Now let us look at the question that follows. “They condemn,” he says, “the rites of sacrifice, victims, incense and the rest that the worship of the temples practised, though the same worship,” he says, “began in ancient times with them, or with the God whom they worship, since God is represented as having needed first-fruits.”

To this the answer is that, since this question is recognized as raised from that passage of our Scriptures where it is written that Cain offered a gift to God from the fruits of the earth and Abel from the firstlings of the sheep, one should rather understand from it how ancient a thing sacrifice is, which the true and sacred writings warn must be offered to none but the one true God; not that God needs it, since in those very writings it is most plainly written, “I said to the Lord, You are my God, for you have no need of my goods”, but that even in accepting, rejecting or receiving these he takes thought only for men. For worshipping God benefits us, not God himself. When therefore he inspires and teaches how he is to be worshipped, he does it not from any need of his own but for our very great benefit. All such sacrifices are significant, likenesses of certain things, by which we ought to be reminded of the very things they are likenesses of, whether to search them out, or know them, or recall them. To discuss this sufficiently would require no brief discourse, whereas our purpose now is to answer briefly; especially since in other little works of ours we have already said much on this, and those who expounded God's words before us have spoken copiously of the likenesses of the sacrifices of the Old Testament as shadows and figures of things to come.

This at least must not be passed over even in this brevity: that the false gods, that is, the demons, who are fallen angels, would never have demanded a temple, priest, sacrifice and whatever else belongs to these from their worshippers whom they deceive, had they not known that these are owed only to the one true God. But when these are offered to God according to his inspiration and teaching, it is true religion; when offered to demons according to their ungodly pride, it is harmful superstition. Therefore those who know the Christian writings of both testaments do not blame the sacrilegious rites of the pagans for building temples, instituting priesthoods and making sacrifices, but for offering these to idols and demons. And who would doubt that idols lack all sense? Yet when they are placed on seats of honourable height, so as to be looked at by those who pray and sacrifice, by the very likeness of living members and senses, though senseless and lifeless, they affect weak minds so that they seem to live and breathe, especially when the veneration of the multitude is added, by which such great worship is paid them.

These morbid and pestilent affections the divine Scripture would heal, which inculcates a thing well known but with the wholesome remedy of warning, saying, “They have eyes and do not see, they have ears and do not hear”, and the rest. For these words, the more obvious and popularly true they are, the more they strike a wholesome shame into those who, when they pay divine worship with fear to such images and gaze on them, venerating and adoring them as like living beings, and address prayers to them as if present, sacrifice victims, pay vows, are so affected that they do not dare think them without sense. But lest these people think that our books mean to say only that affections of this kind arise in the human heart from idols, it is most plainly written: “For all the gods of the nations are demons.” Hence the apostolic teaching says not only what is read in John, “Brothers, guard yourselves from idols”, but also what is read in Paul: “What then do I say? That what is sacrificed to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? But what the nations sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God; and I do not want you to become partners with demons.” From this it can be sufficiently understood that it is not so much sacrifice itself (for the holy men of old sacrificed to the true God) but sacrifice to false gods and ungodly demons that true religion condemns in the superstitions of the nations. For as truth urges men to become partners of the holy angels, so ungodliness seduces them to fellowship with the demons, for which eternal fire is prepared, as an eternal kingdom is for the fellowship of the saints.

Nor do the ungodly excuse their sacrilegious rites and images by elegantly interpreting what each signifies. For all that interpretation refers to the creature, not to the Creator, to whom alone is owed that service of religion which is called by one word in Greek, latreia. Nor do we say that the earth, the seas, the sky, the sun, the moon, the stars and certain heavenly powers not readily seen are demons; but since all creation is partly corporeal and partly incorporeal, which we also call spiritual, it is clear that what we do piously and religiously proceeds from the will of the mind, which is a spiritual creature and to be preferred to every corporeal one. From this it follows that sacrifice is not to be offered to a corporeal creature. There remains the spiritual, which is either godly or ungodly: godly in righteous men and angels who rightly serve God, ungodly in wicked men and angels, whom we also call demons. And so sacrifice is not to be offered even to a spiritual creature, however righteous, since the more godly it is and subject to God, the less it deems itself worthy of such an honour, which it knows is owed only to God. How much more ruinous, then, is it to sacrifice to demons, that is, to a wicked spiritual creature, which, dwelling in this nearest and misty sky as in its prison of air, is predestined to eternal punishment! Therefore, even when men say they sacrifice to the higher heavenly powers, which are not demons, and think the difference is only one of name, because they call them gods and we call them angels, none but demons present themselves to mock them with manifold deceit, demons who delight in and in a way feed on human error; for the holy angels approve no sacrifice except that which, according to the teaching of true wisdom and true religion, is offered to the one true God, whom they serve in holy fellowship. So, just as the ungodly pride of men or demons commands or desires that these divine honours be shown to itself, so the godly humility of men or holy angels has refused them when offered and has shown to whom they were owed. Of this the most manifest examples are shown in our sacred writings.

That sacrifices were distributed in the divine words according to the suitability of times, so that some were made before the manifestation of the New Testament, which is administered from the one true victim of the one priest, that is, from the shed blood of Christ, and another is now offered, suited to this manifestation, by us who, the name now declared, are called Christians, is shown not only in the Gospel writings but also in the prophetic ones. For a change, not of God nor of religion itself but of sacrifices and sacraments, would now seem shamelessly preached had it not been foretold before. For just as one and the same man, if he offers God one thing in the morning and another in the evening according to the suitability of the time of day, does not change God or religion, just as he who greets in one way in the morning and another in the evening does not change his greeting; so in the whole course of the ages, when one thing was offered by the ancient saints and another is offered by those who now live, sacred mysteries suited to the times are celebrated not by human presumption but by divine authority, and neither God nor religion is changed.

IV. On what is written: “With the measure you measure, it will be measured to you again.” Now next let us see what kind of thing it is that he proposed about the measure of sin and punishment, slandering the Gospel thus: “Christ threatens eternal punishments to those who do not believe him, and elsewhere he says, ‘With the measure you measure, it will be measured to you again’: rather ridiculously and contradictorily,” he says; “for if he will render punishment by measure, and every measure is bounded by an end in time, what is the meaning of the threats of infinite punishment?”

It is hard to believe that this question was raised and proposed by any kind of philosopher, since he says, “Every measure is bounded by time”, as if measure were usually only of times, like hours, days and years, or as when we say that a short syllable has one unit of time compared with a long syllable. For I think that pecks and bushels, urns and amphorae are not measures of times. How then is every measure bounded by time? Do not they themselves say that this sun is everlasting? And yet they dare to investigate by geometrical measurements how large it is in relation to the earth, and to report it. Whether they can or cannot do this, it is agreed that it has its own measure of its orb; for if they grasp how large it is, they grasp its measure, and if they do not achieve this, they certainly do not grasp its measure; but it is not therefore nothing because men cannot know it. Something can therefore be both everlasting and have a definite measure of its own mode. I spoke of the eternity of the sun according to their view, so that they may be convicted by their own opinion and concede that something can be everlasting with a measure. And so let them not think that what Christ threatened about everlasting punishment is not to be believed because he also said, “With the measure you measure, it will be measured to you again.”

For if he had said, “What you have measured, this will be measured to you”, even so it would not be necessary to refer the saying to the same thing in every respect. For we can rightly say, “What you plant, this you will pluck”, though no one plants a fruit but a tree, and plucks fruit rather than a tree; but we say this according to the kind of tree, because one does not plant a fig tree to pluck a nut from it. So it could be said, “What you have done, you will suffer”, not that if someone commits sexual immorality he should suffer sexual immorality, but that what he did to the law by this sin the law should do to him; that is, because he took out of his life the law that forbids such things, the law itself should take him out of the life of men which it governs. Again, if he had said, “As much as you have measured, so much will be measured to you”, even so it would not follow that we must understand penalties equal to sins in every way; for wheat and barley, for example, are not equal, and yet it could be said, “As much as you have measured, so much will be measured to you”, that is, as much barley as wheat. And if it concerned pains and it were said, “As great a pain as you have inflicted, so great a pain will be inflicted on you”, it could be that the pain would be as great, though longer in time, that is, greater in duration and equal in force. For if we say of two lamps, “This fire was as hot as that”, it will not be false because one of them was perhaps put out sooner. So if something is as great in one respect and not as great in another, because it is not as great in every way, the respect in which it is as great is not therefore false.