Letters 143.1–144.3

When I came to answer your letter, which I received through my holy brother and fellow bishop Boniface, I looked for it and could not find it. I remembered, however, that in it you asked how Pharaoh’s magicians found water with which to do something similar when all the water of Egypt had been turned into blood. The question is usually solved in two ways: either that sea water could have been brought to them, or, which is more credible, that these plagues did not occur in the region where the children of Israel were. For this is very plainly stated in some places of that Scripture, and it shows what ought to be understood even where it is not said.

That other letter of yours, which the presbyter Urbanus brought, contains a question put to me not from the divine books but from my own, which I wrote on free choice. In questions of this kind I do not trouble myself much, because, even if my opinion cannot be defended by clear reasoning, it is mine, not that of the Author whose meaning it is not lawful to reject, even when, through failure to understand him, something is taken from him that ought to be rejected. I confess, therefore, that I try to be one of those who write as they progress and progress as they write. Hence, if I have set down anything either too carelessly or too ignorantly, which deserves to be criticized not only by others who can see it but also by myself (because I too ought at least to see it afterward, if I am making progress), this is neither to be wondered at nor grieved over, but rather pardoned and welcomed with congratulation: not because there was an error, but because it was disowned. For a man loves himself too perversely if he wants others to err too, so that his own error may stay hidden. How much better and more useful it is that where he himself erred others should not err, and that by their warning he may be free of error! And if he will not be, at least let him have no companions in his error. For if God grants me what I wish, that I may gather and point out, in a work set up for this very purpose, whatever in all my books quite rightly displeases me, then people will see how far I am from being partial to myself.

But you who love me greatly, if, against those by whose malice or lack of skill or understanding I am criticized, you maintain that I have nowhere erred in my writings, you labor in vain; you have taken up a bad cause, and in it you are easily defeated, with me myself as judge, since it does not please me to be thought by my dearest friends to be what I am not. For surely they love not me but someone else in my place under my name, if they love not what I am but what I am not. For in so far as they know me or believe what is true about me, I am loved by them; but in so far as they attribute to me what they neither recognize in me nor is true, it is not I who am loved by them but some other person. And so, if you at least know this much of me, that when I say something humble about myself I do not say it deceitfully: I am not such as they praise. Tullius, the greatest master of Roman eloquence, says of someone: “He never uttered a word that he would wish to recall.” This praise, though it seems most splendid, is nevertheless more credible of a complete fool than of a perfect wise man. For those whom people commonly call simpletons, the more they are out of tune with common sense and the more absurd and witless they are, the less they utter any word they would wish to recall, since to regret a bad or foolish or unfitting word belongs to people of sense. But if it is taken in a good sense, so that we believe someone was such that, since he spoke everything wisely, he never uttered a word he would wish to recall, this is rather to be believed, with most wholesome piety, of the men of God who spoke moved by the Holy Spirit, than of the man Cicero praises in this way. I am so far from this excellence that, if I have uttered no word I would wish to recall, I would be more like a fool than a wise man. For that man’s writings are most worthy of the highest authority who has uttered no word, I do not say that he would wish to recall, but that he ought to recall. Whoever has not yet attained this, let him take the second part, that of modesty, since he could not have the first, that of wisdom; since he was not able to say everything carefully so that nothing need be regretted, let him regret what he has learned ought not to have been said.

Since, then, the words I have spoken that I would rather recall, if I could, are not none or few, as some of my dearest friends think, but perhaps more than even my detractors suppose, I am not flattered by that saying of Tullius, “He never uttered a word that he would wish to recall,” but I am plainly troubled by the saying of Horace: “A word once sent forth cannot return.” That is why I keep the books on the most dangerous questions, namely those on Genesis and on the Trinity, longer than you wish and can bear, so that, if they cannot help containing some things deserving criticism, there may at least be fewer than there could be if they were published too hastily in headlong haste. For you, as your letters indicate (and my holy brother and fellow bishop Florentius has also written this to me), urge me to publish them so that I can defend them while I live in this flesh, if they begin to be attacked on some points, either by biting enemies or even by friends of little understanding. You say this, of course, because you do not think there is anything in them that can be faulted on true grounds; otherwise you would urge me not to publish them but rather to correct them more carefully. But I look rather to true judges, severe for the sake of truth, among whom I wish first to place myself, so that only those faults may come to them for criticism that I could not see at all, however carefully I examined them.

This being so, consider what I set down in the third book On Free Choice, when I was treating of rational substance, saying: “In the lower bodies, after sin, it is set in order and rules its body, not in every way as it wills, but as the laws of the universe allow.” Let those who think that I laid down and fixed something as certain about the human soul, whether that it comes from the parents by propagation or that it sinned in the acts of a higher and heavenly life so that it deserved to be shut up in corruptible flesh, note this carefully. And let them see that I weighed my words so that, while keeping what I hold as certain, that after the sin of the first man all other men were born and are born in the flesh of sin, for whose healing the likeness of sinful flesh came in the Lord, everything was so worded as to prejudge none of the four opinions which I afterward set out and distinguished. I did not affirm any of them, but, setting their discussion aside for the time, I settled what I was treating, so that, whichever of them was true, God would without doubt be praised.

For whether all souls are propagated from that one soul, or are made individually in individuals, or are created outside and sent in, or sink into bodies of their own accord, without doubt this rational creature, that is, the nature of the human soul, in the lower bodies, that is, earthly ones, after sin is set in order and rules its body not in every way as it wills; meanwhile the sin of the first man is established. For it was not said “after its own sin” or “after it sinned,” but “after sin,” so that, whatever reason might later make clear after discussion, if that were possible, whether it was its own sin or the sin of the parent of its flesh, what was said would be rightly understood: “After sin, in the lower bodies, it is set in order and rules its body not in every way as it wills.” For the flesh lusts against the spirit, and we groan, being burdened, and the body that is corrupted weighs down the soul, and — who could recount all the troubles of fleshly weakness? These will certainly not exist when this corruptible has put on incorruption, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Then, therefore, it will rule a spiritual body in every way as it wills; but now not in every way, but as the laws of the universe allow, by which it has been established that bodies that have arisen perish, and those that have grown grow old. For the soul of that first man before sin, although it ruled a body not yet spiritual but natural, nevertheless ruled it as it willed. But after sin, that is, after sin had been committed in that flesh from which the flesh of sin was afterward to be propagated, the rational soul has been so set in order in the lower bodies that it does not rule its body in every way as it wills. If some do not yet accept that in little children, who have as yet committed no sins of their own, there is nevertheless already flesh of sin, because for healing this too, when they are baptized, that medicine, the likeness of sinful flesh, is necessary, even so they have nothing in these words of mine to be angry about. For it is certain, unless I am mistaken, that this same flesh, even if it is weak not by fault but by nature, nevertheless began to be born after sin, because Adam was not created so, nor did he beget anyone before sin.

Let them look, then, for other things to criticize rightly, not only in other works published more hastily but even in these very books of mine On Free Choice. For I do not deny that they will find things by which they will even do me a kindness: since those books, because they have already gone out into many hands, cannot be corrected, but I certainly can be, since I am still alive. But these words, set down by me so cautiously that I prescribed none of those four opinions or arguments about the origin of the soul, let only those criticize who think that my very hesitation in so obscure a matter deserves criticism. Against them I do not defend myself by arguing that I am right to hesitate in this question, since I have no doubt at all that the soul is immortal (not as God is, who alone has immortality, but in a certain way of its own kind), and that it is a creature, not the substance of the Creator, and whatever else I hold most certainly about its nature. But since the obscurity of this most murky question of the soul’s origin compels me to do this, let them rather stretch out a hand to one who confesses and desires to know whatever the truth is, and let them teach, if they can, or show, whatever they have learned on this matter by sure reasoning or believed from the clearest divine utterance. For if reasoning is brought against the authority of the divine Scriptures, however acute it may be, it deceives by a likeness to truth; for it cannot be true. Again, if the authority of the holy Scriptures is set, as it were, against the clearest and most certain reasoning, the one who does this does not understand; he sets against the truth not the meaning of those Scriptures, into which he has not been able to penetrate, but rather his own, and opposes not what he has found in them but what he has found in himself as though for them.

For example, pay careful attention to what I shall say. Near the end of the book called Ecclesiastes, where Scripture speaks of the dissolution of man that takes place through this death by which the soul is separated from the body, it is written: “And let the dust return to the earth, as it was, and the spirit return to God, who gave it.” The statement of this authority is without doubt certain and deceives no one with falsehood. But if someone wishes to interpret it so as to try to establish from it the propagation of souls, namely that all others come from that one which God gave to the first man, it seems to support him that the flesh is spoken of there under the name of dust (for here dust and spirit can only be understood as flesh and soul). Thus he may affirm that the soul returns to God because it comes by transmission from that soul which God gave to the first man, just as the flesh returns to the earth because it too comes by transmission from that flesh which in the first man was made from earth; and so he may contend that from what is most familiar about the flesh we ought to believe what is hidden about the soul. For there is no doubt about the transmission of the flesh, but there is doubt about that of the soul. Yet both are so placed in this testimony as though each were set against each on an equal footing: the flesh, namely, returns to the earth as it was (for from there it was taken when the first man was made), and the spirit returns to God who gave it, when he breathed into the face of the man whom he had formed the breath of life, and the man became a living soul, so that thereafter from each thing the propagation of each thing might run down.

And yet, if it is true that God gives to each person a soul not propagated from that one but created elsewhere, what was said also fits this opinion: “Let the spirit return to God who gave it.” So only the other two opinions seem to be excluded. For if each man’s own soul were made in him when it is created, it is thought that it should not have been said “Let the spirit return to God who gave it,” but “to God who made it”; for “gave” sounds as if what could be given already existed outside. Then, as to the words “let it return to God,” they press hard on the word and say: “How will it return where it never was before?” They maintain that it ought rather to have been said, “let it go to God,” or “proceed,” or “depart to God,” rather than “return to God,” if that spirit is not to be believed ever to have been there before. Again, how souls fall into the body of their own accord, when it is written “he gave it,” is not so easy to explain. And so, as I said, these two opinions struggle under the words of this testimony: one, by which each soul is thought to be made in its own body; the other, by which souls are thought to sink into bodies of their own accord. But to the other two, whether souls come by transmission from that one or, created beforehand and kept with God, are given to individual bodies, these words are fitted without difficulty.

And yet, if the defenders of the opinion that souls are made in their own individual bodies affirm that “God gave it” was said of the spirit, which stands for the soul, in the same way as he is rightly said to have given us eyes or ears or hands or anything else (members which he certainly had not already made outside and kept stored somewhere, to give, that is, add and attach, when they were needed, but which he made there in the body to which he is said to have given them), I do not see what answer can be given them, unless perhaps other testimonies or sure reasoning are brought forward by which this opinion may be refuted. Likewise those who think that souls slip down into bodies of their own accord take “God gave it” in the way it was said: “God gave them up to the lust of their hearts.” So only one word remains, the words “let it return to God”: how it can be understood to return where it was not before, if souls are each made in their own bodies. By this word alone one of those four opinions is hemmed in. But not even because of this one word do I think that opinion should be rashly refuted, in case it can be shown by some manner of speaking that holy Scripture usually employs that this too could rightly be said, so that the created spirit is understood to return to God as to the author by whom it was created, not as to one with whom it was at first.

I have written this so that whoever wishes to establish and defend any of those four opinions about the soul may bring forward either such passages from the Scriptures received into the authority of the Church as cannot be understood otherwise, as is the statement that God made man, or reasoning so certain that either no contradiction arises or it is rightly judged to be like madness, as if someone were to say that no one can know the truth or be deceived unless he is alive. For to see how true this is we do not need the authority of the Scriptures; common sense itself proclaims by evident reasoning that it is so true that whoever contradicts it would be thought utterly mad. If anyone can do this in this most obscure question about the soul, let him help my lack of skill; if he cannot, let him not blame my hesitation.

As for the virginity of holy Mary, if what I wrote does not convince him that it could have happened, then all the things that have happened miraculously in bodies must be denied. But if it is not believed because it happened only once, ask your friend, who is still troubled by this, whether nothing is found in secular literature that both happened only once and yet is believed, not as an idle fable but, as they think, on historical evidence. Ask him, I beg you. For if he denies that anything of the kind is found in that literature, he must be reminded; but if he admits it, the question is solved.

If what grieved us deeply in your city has been removed; if the hardness of the human heart, which resisted a most manifest and, so to speak, public truth, has been overcome by the power of that same truth; if the sweetness of peace is now relished, and the love of unity no longer dazzles wounded eyes but enlightens and strengthens healthy ones, these are not our works but God’s. I would not attribute them to human resources at all, not even if so great a conversion of the multitude had come about while we were with you, speaking and exhorting. He does and accomplishes this who through his ministers admonishes outwardly by the signs of things, but by the things themselves teaches inwardly through himself. Yet we ought not on that account to be more sluggish in setting out to visit you, since whatever praiseworthy thing has been done among you was done not by us but by him who alone does wonders. For we ought to hasten much more eagerly to see God’s works than our own, since we too, if we are anything good, are his work, not men’s. That is why the apostle said: “Neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the growth.”

Xenocrates, as you write and as we remember from that literature, by discussing the fruit of temperance suddenly converted Polemo, not only a drunkard but drunk at that very moment, to another way of life. Although, then, as you have understood wisely and truly, he was not won for God but only freed from the domination of self-indulgence, still I would attribute not even that improvement in him to a human work but to a divine one. For even the goods of the body itself, which is the lowest part of us, such as beauty, strength, health, and anything of this kind, come only from God, the Creator and perfecter of nature; how much more can no one else bestow the goods of the mind! For what could human folly think more proud or ungrateful than to suppose that, while God makes a man beautiful in the flesh, a man makes himself chaste in mind? In the book of Christian wisdom it is written thus: “When I knew,” he says, “that no one can be continent unless God gives it, and this too was a part of wisdom, to know whose gift this was.” If Polemo, then, when he was made continent from self-indulgent, had known whose gift this was, so as to cast off the superstitions of the nations and worship him piously, he would have become not only continent but also truly wise and savingly religious, which would have availed him not only for the honorableness of the present life but also for the immortality of the life to come. How much less, then, ought I to claim for myself this conversion of yours or of your people, which you have just announced to us, which, without my speaking or even being present, was without doubt brought about by God in those in whom it was truly brought about! Recognize this above all, then; think on this piously and humbly. To God, brothers, give thanks to God; fear God, so that you do not fall away; love him, so that you may make progress.

But if love of a man still secretly keeps some apart, and fear of a man deceitfully brings them together, let such people note that they neither deceive God, to whom the human conscience lies bare, as witness, nor escape him as judge. And if anything about the question of unity itself still troubles them, out of concern for their salvation, let them, as I think, extract this most just demand from themselves: that about the Catholic Church, that is, the Church spread through the whole world, they believe rather what the divine Scriptures say than what human tongues slander. As for the dissension itself that arose among men (and whatever they were like, they certainly do not prejudice the promises of God, who said to Abraham, “In your seed all nations shall be blessed,” which was believed when it was heard foretold, and is denied when it is seen fulfilled), let them meanwhile consider this very brief and, unless I am mistaken, most unanswerable argument: either this case was tried in the Church’s court overseas, or it was not. If it was not tried there, the fellowship of Christ throughout all the nations overseas, in whose communion we rejoice, is innocent, and therefore those who separate themselves from these innocent people do so by a sacrilegious division. But if this case was tried there, who does not understand, who does not perceive, who does not see that they were defeated in it whose communion was separated from there? Let them choose, then, whether they would rather believe what the Church’s judges pronounced or what the defeated litigants mutter. Consider carefully, in your wisdom, how nothing sober can be answered against this dilemma, so very brief to state and so very easy to understand. And yet Polemo was more easily turned from drunkenness … of inveterate error. Pardon a letter perhaps more long than pleasant, yet, as I think, more useful than flattering, honorable lords, justly to be welcomed, dearest and most longed-for brothers. As for our coming to you, may God fulfill the desire of us both. For with what ardor of love we are kindled to see you we cannot express in words; but we have no doubt that you kindly believe it.