Letters 139.1–140.18

I am eagerly awaiting the records that Your Excellence promised, and I long to have them read out without delay in the church of Hippo and, if it can be done, in all the churches established in the diocese too, so that people may hear and fully recognize the confessors of wickedness, not as repentance was wrung from them by the fear of God, but as judicial diligence laid open the hardness of most cruel hearts: whether of those who [confessed] to the murder and to the blinding and maiming of the presbyter's body …, or of those who did not dare to deny that they could have known these things, though they said they disapproved of them, while they shun Catholic peace, as if to avoid being polluted by the crimes of others, and remain in that sacrilege of schism among so great a multitude of men guilty of such monstrous crimes; or even of those who said that they would not leave it even when the Catholic truth and the perversity of the Donatists had been demonstrated to them. It is no light thing that God has willed to be done through your work. Would that you might often hear such cases of theirs in this way, and that their crimes and insane obstinacy might often be exposed like this, and that those same records, once published, might be brought to the knowledge of all! As for what Your Eminence wrote, that you are in doubt whether you should order these records to be posted in the Theoprepia, let it be done if a large crowd can gather there; otherwise a more frequented place must be provided, but it must by no means be omitted.

As for the punishment of those men, although they have confessed to such great crimes, I ask you to let it stop short of the penalty of death, both for the sake of our conscience and to commend Catholic gentleness. For this very fruit of their confession comes to us: that the Catholic Church finds an occasion to keep and display her mildness toward her most savage enemies. For amid such cruelty, whatever punishment proceeds short of blood will appear great mildness. And although this now seems unworthy to some of our people, stirred by that atrocity, and like slackness and negligence, yet when the emotions have passed that are usually roused more violently by recent deeds, the goodness will appear outstandingly brilliant, and for this reason it will give all the more pleasure to read and show those records, my lord, deservedly distinguished and most dear and longed-for son. My holy brother and fellow bishop Boniface is there, and I have sent a memorandum by the deacon Peregrinus, who went with him; regard it as my presence, and whatever you jointly decide for the benefit of the church, let it be done with the help of the Lord, who is able to give merciful help in such great evils. Just now Macrobius, their bishop, surrounded by bands of lost men of both sexes, is going round here and there, and has opened for himself the basilicas which the fear of the landowners, such as it was, had closed. While Spondeus, the agent of the most illustrious Celer, whom I commended and do strongly commend to your love, was present, their boldness was somehow broken; but now, since he has left for Carthage, he has opened basilicas even on Celer's own estates and is gathering congregations. With him also is that Donatus, a rebaptized deacon, though he was a tenant of the church, who was the chief participant in that murder. Who of that sort is not with him, when even he is with him? If the proconsul, or both of you together, are to pronounce sentence on them, and perhaps he persists in wishing to punish with the sword (although he is a Christian and, as far as we could observe, not inclined to such bloodshed), nevertheless, if it is necessary, order my letters, which I thought fit to send one to each of you on this matter, to be entered also in the records. For I often hear that it is in the judge's power to soften the sentence and to punish more mildly than the laws. But if he will not consent to this even with my letters, let him at least grant that they be taken into custody. And we have taken care to obtain this from the clemency of the emperors: that the sufferings of the servants of God, which ought to be glorious in the church, should not be dishonored by the blood of their enemies. For I know that in the case of the clerics of Anaunia, who were killed by pagans and are now honored as martyrs, the emperor, when asked, readily granted that those who had killed them and were already held captive should not be punished with a like penalty.

Why I received back from you the books on the baptism of little ones, when I had already sent that very volume to Your Excellence, I have forgotten, unless perhaps, on looking at them, I found them full of errors and wished to correct them, which, being wonderfully hindered, I have not done to this day. As for the letter that I was to write to you and add to them, which I had already begun to dictate when I was there, know that it is still unfinished, with only a little added. If I could give you an account of all the days and nights of work spent on other necessities, you would be deeply saddened and would wonder how many things pull me apart which cannot possibly be put off, and which do not allow me to do the things to which you urge me by your requests and admonitions: I am willing, and I grieve unspeakably that I cannot. For when I am a little free from the needs of those people who press me into service in such a way that I can by no means avoid them and must not despise them, there is no lack of things to dictate which I put first, being so placed at critical moments that they bear no delay: such as the summary of the records of our conference, which was laborious enough for me, when I saw that no one was willing to commit himself to reading so great a heap of documents; such as the letter to the Donatist laity themselves about this same conference of ours, which I have just finished after some nights of work; such as two letters, not short ones, one to Your Love, the other to the illustrious Volusian, which I believe you have already received; such as the book I now have in hand for our Honoratus on certain five questions which he put to me and conveyed by letter, to whom you see how little fitting it would be not to reply at once. For love, which like a nurse cherishes her children, puts the weaker before the stronger, not in the order of loving but in the order of helping, wishing them to be such as those already are whom it passes over for the time, not out of contempt but out of confidence in them. So I cannot lack such necessities of dictating something that keeps me from the dictations for which I burn more, when scarcely a little space is given amid the heaps of occupations into which the desires or the needs of others drag us, pressed into service; and what to do I simply do not know.

You have heard on what account you should pray to the Lord with me; but I do not want you to stop admonishing me so urgently and so often, for you accomplish something by it. I too commend to Your Excellency the church established in Numidia, for whose needs my holy brother and fellow bishop Delphinus has been sent by my brothers and fellow bishops who labor and share the dangers there. I do not write more on this matter, since you will hear him in person. The rest you will find in the memoranda which I sent to the presbyter, either now or by the deacon Peregrinus, so that I need not repeat them so often. May your heart ever flourish and rejoice in Christ, my lord, deservedly distinguished and most dear and longed-for son. I commend to Your Eminence our son Rufinus, a leading citizen of Cirta.

You have put to me five questions to be discussed and resolved, my dearest brother Honoratus, snatched from here and there, as they could trouble you while reading or come to mind as you were thinking, and as it were poured out before me. If I wish to arrange their solution in a discussion, so as not to treat each one piecemeal, as they were put, but to connect and weave them together in one continuous discourse, the task seems difficult. And yet I think they will be more easily resolved if I do this. For they will help one another if one hangs on the other, until all come into the sequence of the discussion, not singly in separate places, as if each dwelt in its own private aim, but looking to one thing and working together for one thing, by a shared reasoning and an undivided truth.

You wished, then, and asked in writing, to have explained and opened to you what that cry of the Lord means: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"; and what the apostle means when he says, "that rooted and grounded in love you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth"; and who the five foolish virgins are, and who the wise; and what the outer darkness is; and how "The Word of God was made flesh" is to be understood. These are certainly the five questions, mentioned by me as briefly as they were put by you. Therefore, if you agree, let us add a sixth and inquire above all into this: what the grace of the New Testament is. Let all those questions look to this one, and let each, as opportunely as it can, contribute its work to us toward it, not of course in the order in which you put them and I have recalled them, but let each, when it is needed, answer as if called and fulfil the duty of its work. So let the beginning arise thus.

There is a certain human life entangled in the bodily senses, given over to bodily joys, shunning bodily harm and pursuing pleasure. The happiness of this life is temporal; to begin with this life is a matter of necessity, to remain in it a matter of will. For into this life the infant is poured out from its mother's womb; it shuns its harms as much as it can, seeks its pleasures, and can do nothing more. But after it has come to the age at which the use of reason awakens in it, it will be able, with its will helped by God, to choose the other life, whose joy is in the mind, whose happiness is inward and eternal. For there is in a human being a rational soul; but it matters to what it chooses rather to turn the use of that reason by its will: whether to the goods of the outer and lower nature or to the goods of the inner and higher; that is, whether to enjoy the body and time, or to enjoy the Godhead and eternity. For the soul is placed in a kind of middle position, having bodily creation below it, and above it the creator of itself and of the body.

The rational soul, then, can use even temporal and bodily happiness well, if it does not give itself to the creature, neglecting the creator, but rather makes that happiness serve the creator, who has given it too by the most abundant generosity of his goodness. For just as all things that God created are good, from the rational creature itself down to the lowest body, so the rational soul acts well among them if it keeps order and, by distinguishing, choosing, and weighing, subordinates lesser things to greater, bodily to spiritual, lower to higher, temporal to everlasting, so that it may not, by neglecting the higher and desiring the lower (for by this it becomes worse itself), send both itself and its body to something worse, but rather by ordered love turn itself and its body to something better. For since all substances are naturally good, order in them is praised and honored, perversity is blamed and condemned. Nor does the soul, by using creatures perversely, escape the ordering of the creator; for if it uses good things badly, he uses even bad things well; and so the soul, by using good things perversely, becomes bad, while he, by using even bad things in an orderly way, remains good. For he who unjustly orders himself in sins is justly ordered in punishments.

God, therefore, wishing to show that even earthly and temporal happiness is his gift and must be hoped for from no other source but him, judged that in the earlier times of the world the Old Testament should be dispensed, which belonged to the old man, with whom this life must begin. But those prosperities of the fathers are proclaimed to have been granted by God's kindness, although they belonged to this transitory life. For those earthly gifts were promised and given openly; but hiddenly, in all those things, the New Testament was foretold figuratively, and it was grasped by the understanding of a few, whom the same grace had made worthy of the prophetic gift. Those saints, then, dispensed the Old Testament in keeping with the time, but they belonged to the New Testament. For even when they enjoyed temporal happiness, they understood eternal happiness to be the true one and to be preferred, and they administered this one as a mystery so as to attain that one as a reward. And if ever they suffered adversity, they suffered it for this purpose: that, delivered by most evident divine help, they might glorify God as the giver of all good things, not only of the everlasting ones, which they devoutly hoped for, but also of the temporal ones, which they governed prophetically.

But when the fullness of time came, so that the grace which was hidden in the Old Testament might now be revealed in the New, God sent his Son, made of a woman (by which name, in the idiom of the Hebrew language, every female is called, whether untouched by a man or already joined to one). But so that you may recognize what Son he sent and willed to be made of a woman, how great a God he is who deigned to take on this lowliness for the salvation of the faithful, now listen to the Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men; and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it." This God, then, the Word of God, through whom all things were made, is the Son of God, remaining unchangeably, present everywhere, enclosed in no place, nor spread out part by part through all things, as though he had a smaller part in a smaller place and a larger in a larger, but whole everywhere; and so he is not absent even from the minds of the ungodly, although they do not see him, just as this light is not seen by the eyes of the blind when it is present to them. He shines, then, even in such darkness as the apostle means when he says, "For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord"; but such darkness did not comprehend it.

He took, then, a man whom human beings could see, so that, healed through faith, they might afterward see what they could not see then. But lest the man Christ, by the very fact that he appeared visibly, should not be believed to be God as well, and only so much be attributed to him as to a man of most excellent grace and wisdom, therefore "there was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came to bear witness concerning the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness concerning the light." For so great a man had to bear witness concerning him who was not only man but also God, that among those born of women none should arise greater than John the Baptist; for so he to whom the greater John bore witness would be understood to be greater in this, that he was not only man but also God. John too, then, was a light, but such a light as the Lord himself bears witness to when he says, "He was a burning and shining lamp"; which he said also to his disciples: "You are the light of the world"; and to show what kind of light, he went on to add: "No one lights a lamp and puts it under a bushel, but on a lampstand, so that it may shine for all who are in the house; so let your light shine before men." These comparisons were given so that we may understand as far as we can, or, if we cannot yet, may believe without any doubt, that the rational soul is not the nature of God (for that nature is unchangeable), but that it can nevertheless be enlightened by participation; for lamps need to be lit and can be put out. Therefore what is said of John, "He was not the light," refers to that light which is not enlightened by participation, but by participation in which are enlightened all things that are enlightened by it.

Then follows: "He was the true light"; and as if we were asking how the true light was to be distinguished from an enlightened light, that is, Christ from John, he says: "He was the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world." If every man, then John too. And to show his divinity still more by a far greater distance, he says: "He was in this world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him." It was not the world that was made through him that did not know him; for only a rational creature has the power to know him, although this visible world too, that is, heaven and earth, was made through him; but by rebuking the world that did not know him he meant the unbelievers set in the world.

Then he adds: "He came to his own, and his own did not receive him"; either because even unbelievers, in so far as they are human beings, are his, through whom they were created, or he wished his own to be understood properly as the Jews, from whom he took the nature of flesh. Yet not all failed to receive him; for he goes on to say: "But as many as received him, he gave them power to become sons of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God." This is the grace of the New Testament, which lay hidden in the Old, and yet did not cease to be prophesied and foretold by overshadowing figures, so that the soul may understand its God and be reborn to him by his grace. For this birth is spiritual; therefore it is not of blood, nor of the will of man, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God.

This is also called adoption. For we were something before we were sons of God, and we received the kindness of becoming what we were not; just as one who is adopted, before he was adopted, was not yet the son of the one who adopts him, yet he already existed to be adopted. And from this generation by grace that Son is distinguished who, though he was the Son of God, came to become the son of man and to grant us, who were sons of man, to become sons of God. For he became what he was not, yet he was something else, and this very something was the Word of God, through whom all things were made, and the true light which enlightens every man, and God with God. We too by his grace have become what we were not, that is, sons of God; but we were something, and this very something far lower, that is, sons of men. He therefore came down so that we might go up, and remaining in his own nature he became a sharer in our nature, so that we too, remaining in our nature, might become sharers in his nature; yet not in the same way: for sharing in our nature did not make him worse, while sharing in his nature makes us better.

So "God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law"; for he received the sacraments of the law, "that he might redeem those who were under the law," that is, those whom the law held guilty, the letter killing, as long as the commandment was not fulfilled, before the Spirit gave life; because "the love of God," which fulfils the commandment, "is poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us." Accordingly, when he had said, "that he might redeem those who were under the law," he at once added, "that we might receive the adoption of sons," so as to distinguish the grace of this kindness from the nature of that Son who was sent as Son, not made so by adoption but always begotten Son, so that, having shared the nature of the sons of men, he might adopt the sons of men to share his own nature too. Therefore also, when he had said, "He gave them power to become sons of God," and had added the manner, lest a bodily birth be understood, namely that he granted this to those who believe in his name and are reborn by grace, a spiritual birth, "not of blood nor of the will of man nor of the will of the flesh, but of God," he soon commended the sacrament of this as it were exchange. For as if we, amazed at so great a good, would not dare to wish for it, he immediately added: "And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us"; which is one of those five things you wanted explained to you; as if he said: O men, do not despair that you can become sons of God, since the Son of God himself, that is, the Word of God, was made flesh and dwelt among us. Return the exchange: become spirit and dwell in him who was made flesh and dwelt among us. For it is no longer to be despaired of that human beings can become sons of God by participation in the Word, when the Son of God by participation in flesh became the son of man.

We, then, who are changeable, are made sharers in the Word in order to be changed for the better; but the unchangeable Word, changed in no way for the worse, became a sharer in flesh by the mediation of a rational soul. For the man Christ did not, as the Apollinarian heretics thought, either have no soul or have no rational soul; but Scripture, in its usual way, to show Christ's humility more, put "flesh" for "man", lest he should seem to have shunned the word "flesh" as something unworthy. For because it is written, "All flesh shall see the salvation of God," souls are not to be understood as excluded there. So "The Word was made flesh" says nothing other than if it were said, "The Son of God was made the son of man." He, "though he was in the form of God," as the apostle says, "did not think it robbery to be equal with God" (for it was not a matter of usurpation, that it should be called robbery, but it belonged to his nature to be equal); "yet he emptied himself," not losing the form of God but "taking the form of a servant"; "he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross." See how he commends the same one as man and as God, so that there is one person, lest not a Trinity but a quaternity be introduced. For just as the number of persons is not increased when flesh is joined to soul so that there is one man, so the number of persons is not increased when a man is joined to the Word so that there is one Christ. So we read, "The Word was made flesh," that we may understand the singleness of this person, not that we may suspect the divinity was changed into flesh.

Therefore the man Christ, so that the grace of the New Testament, which belongs not to temporal but to eternal life, might be revealed through him, was certainly not to be commended by earthly happiness. Hence his subjection, hence his passion, hence the scourges, the spitting, the insults, the cross, the wounds, and, as if he were overcome and subdued, death itself: so that his faithful might learn what reward of piety they ought to seek and hope for from him whose sons they had been made, lest God be served as something great in order that those who served him might seek to obtain earthly happiness, casting away and trampling on their faith by valuing it at the cheapest price. Hence almighty God, by a most beneficent providence, granted earthly happiness to the ungodly too, so that it might not be sought as something great by the good. Hence that seventy-second psalm introduces a man repenting that he had once served God with a heart not upright for this reward, and who, when he saw the ungodly flourishing and excelling in it, was disturbed and had begun to think that God does not care for human affairs. And when the authority of the saints who belong to God called him back from this thought, he undertook and set himself to understand so great a secret, which was not opened to him in his labor until he entered the sanctuary of God and understood the last things; that is, until, having received the Holy Spirit, he learned to desire better things and foresaw what punishment awaits the ungodly, even those who had flourished for a time with a kind of grassy happiness. Read this seventy-second psalm, as it was expounded through my ministry on the night before the dawning of the feast of the most blessed Cyprian, and attend to it carefully.

Accordingly, the man Christ, who is also God Christ, from whose most merciful humanity and in whose form of a servant we were to learn what is to be despised in this life and what is to be hoped for in the other, in the very passion in which his enemies thought themselves great and victorious, took up the voice of our weakness, in which our old man was crucified together with him, so that the body of sin might be done away, and said: "God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And this is one of your five questions. So begins the twenty-first psalm, which was sung so long before in prophecy about his passion and about the revelation of the grace that he brought for making and setting free the faithful.

Accordingly, I will run through that same psalm, recalling and expounding it (the psalm whose first verse the Lord cried out as he hung on the tree, showing that its prophecy referred to him), so that you may understand from it how the grace of the New Testament was not kept silent even at the time when it was veiled in the Old. For it is spoken in the person of Christ as regards the form of the servant, in which our weakness was carried. For Isaiah too said of him: "He carries our weaknesses and is in sorrows for us." From the voice of this weakness, then (that weakness by which Paul, not heard in what he asked and therefore in a way forsaken, nevertheless hears from the Lord: "My grace is sufficient for you; for power is made perfect in weakness"), from the voice, then, of this weakness of ours, which our head transferred to himself, it is said in this psalm: "God, my God, look upon me: why have you forsaken me?" For one who prays is forsaken in that in which he is not heard. Jesus transferred this voice to himself, namely the voice of his body, that is, of his church, which was to be reformed from the old man into the new man; the voice, namely, of human weakness, which had to be denied the goods of the Old Testament, so that it might now learn to desire and hope for the goods of the New Testament.

Among those goods of the Old Testament, belonging to the old man, what is desired above all is the temporal prolonging of this life, that it may be held somewhat longer, since it cannot be held always. Hence all know that the day of death will come, and yet all, or almost all, try to put it off, even those who believe they will live more happily after death; so great a power has the sweet fellowship of flesh and soul. For no one ever hated his own flesh; and therefore the soul does not wish to depart even for a time from its flesh, even from its weakness, although it is confident that it will receive it back without weakness for ever. Accordingly, serving the law of God with the mind but drawing with the flesh the desires of sin, which the apostle forbids us to obey, the devout man by the reason of his mind desires to be dissolved and to be with Christ, but by the feeling of the flesh he refuses and shrinks from it, and, if it were possible, he does not wish to be stripped but to be clothed over, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life, that is, so that the body itself may be transferred from weakness to immortality without death between.

But these words, by which the human day and the length of this life are desired, are words of sins, and are far from that salvation of which we do not yet hold the reality but already the hope, of which it is written that "in hope we were saved; but hope that is seen is not hope." And so in this psalm too, when he had said, "God, my God, look upon me; why have you forsaken me?" he at once adds: "Far from my salvation are the words of my sins"; that is, these are the words of my sins, and they are far from that salvation of mine which the grace not of the Old but of the New Testament promises me. Although it can also be punctuated thus: "God, my God, look upon me; why have you forsaken me, far from my salvation?", as if he said: By forsaking me, that is, by not hearing me, you have become far from my salvation, namely the present salvation of this life; so that "the words of my sins" has another sense, that is: these things I have said are words of sins, because they are words of carnal desires.

Christ says these things in the person of his body, which is the church; he says them in the person of the weakness of the flesh of sin, which he transferred to the likeness of the flesh of sin that he took from the virgin; the bridegroom speaks them in the person of the bride, because he united her to himself in a certain way. In Isaiah too, where he says, "As a bridegroom he has bound a turban on me, and as a bride he has adorned me with ornament," "he has bound on me" and "he has adorned me" are as it were the voice of one, and yet we understand the bridegroom and the bride as Christ and the church. "But they shall be two in one flesh": "a great sacrament," said the apostle, "in Christ and in the church"; therefore "no longer two, but one flesh." If then one flesh, surely, fittingly, also one voice. Why do you look here, human weakness, for the voice of the Word, through whom all things were made? Hear rather the voice of the flesh, which was made among all things, since "the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us"; hear rather the voice of the medicine by which you are healed, so that you may see God, whom he put off for you to see, but brought man for you to see, offered him to be killed, gave him to be imitated, set him forth to be believed, so that by this faith the eye of the mind might be healed to see God. Why then do we disdain to hear the voice of the body from the mouth of the head? The church suffered in him when he suffered for the church, just as he too suffered in the church when the church suffered for him. For just as we have heard the voice of the church suffering in Christ, "God, my God, look upon me; why have you forsaken me?", so we have heard also the voice of Christ suffering in the church: "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"