Letters 187.6–187.28

It remains, then, that if 'Today you will be with me in paradise' was said according to the man, paradise is to be understood as being in hell, where Christ was to be on that day according to his human soul. But whether that bosom of Abraham, where the ungodly rich man, being in the torments of hell, saw the poor man at rest, should be counted by the name of paradise or thought to belong to hell, I could not easily say. Of that rich man we read: 'The rich man also died and was buried', and, 'Being in torment in hell'. But in the death or rest of the poor man hell is not named; rather, 'It happened', it says, 'that the poor man died and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom.' Then Abraham says to the burning rich man: 'Between us and you a great chasm has been fixed', as if between hell and the seats of the blessed. For one does not easily find the name of hell used anywhere in the Scriptures in a good sense. Hence it is also often asked how, if only places of punishment are rightly understood as hell, we can piously believe that the soul of the Lord Christ was in hell. But it is well answered that he descended in order to help those whom it was fitting to help. Hence blessed Peter says that he loosed the pains of hell, by which it was impossible for him to be held. Further, if both regions, of those in pain and of those at rest, that is, both where the rich man was tormented and where the poor man rejoiced, are to be believed to be in hell, who would dare to say that the Lord Jesus came only to the penal parts of hell and was not with those who rest in Abraham's bosom? And if he was there, that is to be understood as the paradise which he deigned to promise to the thief's soul on that day. If this is so, 'paradise' is a general name for wherever life is happy. For because the place where Adam was before sin was called paradise, Scripture was not therefore prevented from also calling the Church a paradise with the fruit of its trees.

But the meaning is much simpler and free of all these ambiguities if Christ is taken to have said, 'Today you will be with me in paradise', not according to what he was as man, but according to what he was as God. For the man Christ was that day to be in the tomb according to the flesh and in hell according to the soul; but the same Christ as God is always everywhere. For he is the light that shines even in the darkness, though the darkness does not comprehend it; he is the power and wisdom of God, of which it is written that it reaches mightily from end to end and orders all things sweetly, and reaches everywhere because of its purity, and nothing defiled enters into it. Wherever paradise is, then, whoever of the blessed is there is there with him who is everywhere.

For since Christ is God and man (God, as when he says, 'I and the Father are one'; man, as when he says, 'The Father is greater than I'), and the same is the only-begotten Son of God from the Father and the son of man from the seed of David according to the flesh, both must be borne in mind in him when he speaks or when Scripture speaks of him, and we must look to see what is said according to which. For just as one man is a rational soul and flesh, so one Christ is the Word and man. Accordingly, as regards the Word, Christ is Creator, for all things were made through him; as regards the man, Christ was created, for he was made from the seed of David according to the flesh and made in the likeness of men. Likewise, since in a man there are two things, soul and flesh, according to the soul he was sorrowful even to death, and according to the flesh he suffered death.

Yet when we call Christ the Son of God we do not separate the man, nor when we call the same Christ the Son of Man do we separate God. For according to the man he was on earth, not in heaven, where he now is, when he said, 'No one has ascended into heaven except he who came down from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven'; although according to what he was as Son of God he was in heaven, while according to what he was as Son of Man he was still on earth and had not yet ascended into heaven. Similarly, although according to what he is as Son of God he is the Lord of glory, and according to what he is as Son of Man he was crucified, the apostle nevertheless says: 'For if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory.' And so the Son of Man was in heaven according to God, and the Son of God was crucified on earth according to the man. Just as, then, it could rightly be said that the Lord of glory was crucified, though that suffering belonged to the flesh alone, so it could rightly be said, 'Today you will be with me in paradise', although according to human lowliness he was to be that day in the tomb through the flesh and in hell through the soul, while according to divine unchangeableness he had never left paradise, since he is always everywhere.

Do not doubt, then, that the man Christ Jesus is now there from where he will come; recall to memory and hold faithfully the Christian confession: that he rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father, and will come from there and nowhere else to judge the living and the dead. And he will come, as the angelic voice testifies, in the same way as he was seen going into heaven, that is, in the same form and substance of flesh, to which he certainly gave immortality but did not take away its nature. According to this form he is not to be thought spread out everywhere. For we must beware of so asserting the divinity of the man as to take away the reality of the body. It does not follow that what is in God is everywhere as God is. For of us too the most truthful Scripture says that in him we live and move and have our being, and yet we are not everywhere as he is; but that man is in God in a different way, since God too is in that man in a different way, a way proper and singular. For God and man are one person, and both are the one Christ Jesus: everywhere in that he is God, but in heaven in that he is man.

And yet even in saying that God is spread out everywhere we must resist carnal thinking and withdraw the mind from the bodily senses, so as not to imagine that God is spread through all things with a spatial magnitude, as earth or water or air or this light is spread (for every magnitude of this kind is less in its part than in the whole); but rather as wisdom is great even in a man whose body is small. And if there are two wise men, one larger in body, neither wiser, wisdom is not greater in the larger and less in the smaller, nor less in one than in two, but as great in this one as in that, and as great in each as in both. For if they are entirely equally wise, both together are not wiser than each, just as, if they are equally immortal, both together do not live more than each.

Indeed, the immortality of the body itself, which came first in the flesh of Christ and is promised to us at the end, though it is a great thing, is certainly not great in bulk, but, though possessed bodily, by a kind of incorporeal excellence. For though the immortal body itself is less in a part than in the whole, its immortality is as full in a part as in the whole; and though some members are larger than others, some are not more immortal than others. So it is now, when we are healthy in every part according to the measure of bodily health in this present life: we do not say that the health of the whole hand is greater than that of a finger because the whole hand is greater than the finger; rather, health is equal in those unequal members, when smaller members are compared with larger ones in such a way that what cannot be as great as another can nevertheless be as healthy. Health would be greater in larger members if the larger were healthier; but since this is not so, and larger and smaller are equally healthy, there is indeed unequal quantity in the bulk of the members, but equal health in the unequal.

Since, then, a body is a substance of some kind, its quantity lies in the magnitude of its bulk, but its health is not its quantity but its quality. So the quantity of a body could not achieve what its quality could. For quantity, in parts set apart from one another that cannot be in the same place together, since each holds its own extent of space, the smaller parts smaller extents and the larger larger, could not be whole or as great in each part; rather, the quantity is greater in the larger parts and less in the smaller, and in no part as great as in the whole. But the quality of a body that is called health, when the whole body is healthy, is as great in the larger parts as in the smaller; for those that are less large are not therefore less healthy, nor are the larger healthier. Far be it, then, that what the quality of a created body can do in a body, the substance of the Creator cannot do in itself.

God, then, is spread through all things. He himself says through the prophet, 'I fill heaven and earth'; and, as I quoted a little earlier about his wisdom, 'It reaches mightily from end to end and orders all things sweetly'; and again it is written, 'The Spirit of the Lord has filled the world'; and to him it is said in a psalm: 'Where shall I go from your Spirit, and where shall I flee from your face? If I ascend into heaven, you are there; if I descend into hell, you are present.' But God is spread through all things in such a way that he is not a quality of the world but the creative substance of the world, ruling the world without toil and holding it together without burden; yet not spread through spaces of place as if by bulk, so that he would be half in half the body of the world and half in the other half, and so whole in the whole; but he is whole in heaven alone and whole in earth alone, and whole in heaven and earth, and contained in no place, but whole everywhere in himself.

So it is with the Father, so with the Son, so with the Holy Spirit, so with the Trinity, one God. For they did not divide the world among themselves into three parts for each to fill one, as if the Son or the Holy Spirit would have nowhere to be in the world if the Father had occupied the whole. The true incorporeal and unchangeable divinity is not like that. For they are not bodies, whose magnitude would be greater in three than in each one, nor do they hold places by their bulk, so that they could not be together in spaces set apart. For if the soul placed in the body finds there not only no narrowness but even a certain breadth, not of bodily places but of spiritual joys, when what the apostle says comes about, 'Do you not know that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?', and if it can only be said most foolishly that the Holy Spirit has no room in our body because our soul has filled the whole of it, how much more foolish is it to say that the Trinity is hindered anywhere by any narrowness, so that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit cannot be everywhere together!

But much more wonderful is this: that although God is whole everywhere, he does not dwell in all. For it cannot be said to all what the apostle says, either what I have already quoted or this: 'Do you not know that you are the temple of God and the Spirit of God dwells in you?' Hence the same apostle says the opposite of some: 'But anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.' And who would dare to suppose, unless he were utterly ignorant of the inseparability of the Trinity, that the Father or the Son could dwell in someone in whom the Holy Spirit does not dwell, or the Holy Spirit in someone in whom the Father and the Son do not? Hence it must be admitted that God is everywhere by the presence of his divinity, but not everywhere by the grace of his indwelling. Because of this indwelling, in which the grace of his love is beyond doubt recognized, we do not say, 'Our Father, who are everywhere', though this too is true, but 'Our Father, who are in heaven', so that in prayer we may rather call to mind his temple, which we ourselves also ought to be; and in so far as we are, so far do we belong to his fellowship and to the family of adoption. For if the people of God, not yet made equal to his angels, is called his temple while still on this pilgrimage, how much more is his temple in heaven, where the people of the angels is, to whom we are to be joined and made equal when, our pilgrimage ended, we receive what has been promised!

So he who is everywhere does not dwell in all, and even in those in whom he dwells he does not dwell equally. Otherwise, why did Elisha ask that the Spirit of God that was in Elijah might be doubled in him? And why among all the saints are some holier than others, unless by having God as indweller more abundantly? How then did we speak truly above in saying that God is whole everywhere, when he is in some more fully and in others less? But we must look carefully at what we said: that he is whole everywhere in himself, not in the things of which some receive him more and others less. For he is said to be everywhere because he is absent from no part of the world, and whole because he does not present a part of himself to one part of things and another part to another, equal to equal, smaller to smaller and larger to larger, but is present whole equally not only to the whole of creation but also to any part of it. Those are said to be far from him who by sinning have become most unlike him, and those to draw near to him who by living devoutly receive his likeness; just as eyes are rightly said to be the farther from this light the blinder they are (for what is so far from light as blindness, even if the light is at hand and floods the extinguished eyes?), and eyes are rightly said to draw near to the light that make progress in recovering their sight as health returns.

Further, since we thought that when we said God is whole everywhere it could not be understood clearly enough unless we added 'in himself', this must be explained more carefully. How is he everywhere, if in himself? Everywhere, clearly, because he is nowhere absent; in himself, because he is not contained by the things to which he is present, as if he could not exist without them. For take away spaces of place from bodies, and they will be nowhere; and because they will be nowhere, they will not exist. Take away bodies themselves from the qualities of bodies, and there will be nowhere for the qualities to be, and so they necessarily will not exist. For when a body is equally healthy or equally white through its whole bulk, health or whiteness is not greater in one part than in another, nor greater in the whole than in a part, since the whole is certainly not healthier or whiter than a part. But if it is unequally healthy or unequally white, it can happen that health or whiteness is greater in a smaller part, when smaller members are healthier or whiter than larger ones: so far is it from being by bulk that a thing is called great or small in qualities. Nevertheless, if the bulk of the body itself, however large or small, is taken away entirely, its qualities will have nowhere to be, though they are not to be measured by bulk. But God is not smaller himself if he is received less by one to whom he is present. For he is whole in himself, and he is not in the things in which he is in such a way as to need them, as if he could not exist except in them. And just as he is not absent from one in whom he does not dwell, and is present whole, though that one does not have him, so he is present whole to one in whom he dwells, though that one does not receive him wholly.

For he does not divide himself among the hearts or bodies of human beings to dwell there, giving one part of himself to this one and another to that, as this light does through the openings and windows of houses. Rather, if a deaf man does not take in a sound at all, though it is a bodily and passing thing, and a man hard of hearing does not take it in wholly, and among those who hear, though they are equally near it, one takes it in more than another the sharper his hearing, and less the duller his hearing, though the sound itself does not ring more or less variously, but is equally present to all in the place where they are: how much more excellently can God, of incorporeal and unchangeably living nature, who cannot be stretched and divided through lapses of time like a sound, nor needs airy space as his place in which to be present to those present, but remaining in himself in eternal stability, be present whole to all things and whole to each, even though those in whom he dwells have him, according to the difference of their capacity, some more fully and some less, those whom he builds for himself, by the grace of his goodness, as his most beloved temple!

Divisions of gifts are indeed spoken of, as among the parts and members of one body, where we are both all together one temple and each one a temple, because God is not greater in all than in each, and it often happens that many receive him less and one more fully. But when the apostle had said, 'There are divisions of gifts', he added at once, 'but the same Spirit'; and again, having listed the divisions of gifts, he says, 'All these are worked by one and the same Spirit, dividing to each individually as he wills.' Dividing, then, not himself divided, because he is one and the same. Those divisions are spoken of as of the members in a body, because the ears have not the same function as the eyes, and so too the other members, harmoniously distributed in different functions; yet when we are healthy, they rejoice together in a common and equal health, one and not various, not greater here and less there, though they themselves are unequal. The head of this body is Christ; the unity of this body is commended in our sacrifice, which the apostle briefly signified when he said: 'One bread, one body, we who are many.' Through our head we are reconciled to God, because in him the divinity of the Only-begotten has been made a sharer in our mortality, so that we too might be sharers in his immortality.

This mystery is far from the hearts of the proud wise, who are therefore not Christians and so not truly wise; I mean even those wise men who knew God, because, as the apostle says, knowing God they did not glorify him as God or give thanks. You know in what sacrifice it is said, 'Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.' Far from the humility of this sacrifice is their pomp and buskin. And so it is a very wonderful thing how God is the indweller of some who do not yet know God, and not of some who know him. For those who knew God but did not glorify him as God or give thanks do not belong to the temple of God; and little children sanctified by the sacrament of Christ and reborn of the Holy Spirit do belong to the temple of God, though by their age they certainly cannot yet know God. Hence those could know him and not have him, while these could have him before they knew him. Most blessed are those for whom to have God is the same as to know him; for that knowledge is the fullest, truest and happiest.

Here I must now also deal with the question you added after the signature of your letter: 'If little children are still ignorant of God, how could John, even before he was born, leap in his mother's womb at the arrival and presence of the mother of the Lord?' For after mentioning that you had read my book on the baptism of little children, you added and said: 'I should like to know what you think about pregnant women, since the mother of John the Baptist answered with the faith of belief on behalf of the child.'

These are certainly the words of Elizabeth, John's mother: 'Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy.' But to say this, as the evangelist said beforehand, she was filled with the Holy Spirit, by whose revelation she certainly learned what that leaping of the infant had signified, namely that the mother of him whose forerunner and herald he was to be had come. This, then, could have been a sign of so great a thing, to be recognized by adults, not recognized by the little one. For when this was first narrated in the Gospel it was not said, 'The infant in her womb believed', but 'leaped'; nor did she herself say, 'The infant in my womb leaped in faith', but 'leaped for joy'. We see leaping not only of little children but even of animals, certainly not coming from any faith or religion or any rational knowledge. But this leaping was plainly unusual and new, because it was in the womb and at the arrival of her who was to give birth to the Saviour of humankind. Therefore it was wonderful, therefore to be counted among the great signs; therefore this leaping, and as it were a return greeting given to the mother of the Lord, was, as miracles are wont to be, done divinely in the infant, not humanly by the infant.

And yet even if in that child the use of reason and will was so far accelerated that within his mother's womb he could already recognize, believe and consent, for which in other little ones age is awaited, this too must be counted among the miracles of divine power, not drawn into precedent for human nature. For when God willed, even a dumb beast spoke rationally, yet people are not thereby advised to await the counsels of an ass in their deliberations. Therefore I neither despise what happened in John nor fix from it a rule for what to think about little children; rather, I proclaim it as wonderful in him precisely because I do not find it in others. Something similar indeed is the struggle of the twins in Rebecca's womb; but this too was so much a portent that the woman sought a divine oracle because of it and heard that two peoples were prefigured in those two infants.

But if we wished to show in words that little children, who do not yet know even human things, do not know divine things, I fear we might seem to insult our own senses, trying to persuade by speech where the evidence of the truth very easily surpasses all the power and function of speech. Do we not see that even when they begin to utter signs of articulate sound of some kind and pass from infancy to the beginnings of speech, they still think and say things such that, if they remained in them and continued so as the years went by, no one, not even a fool, would doubt that they were utter fools? Unless perhaps it remains for us to believe that in the wailing of infancy, or in the still silence of the womb itself, little children were wise, and afterwards, when they began to talk with us, came by growing to this ignorance at which we laugh. You see how absurd it is to think so, when the mind of children breaking out into words of whatever kind, which is certainly almost nothing compared with what adults understand, can nevertheless be called intelligence compared with the state in which they are born. And why, at the very safeguard of so great a salvation, when Christian grace comes to their aid, is it not imputed to them that they resist with what cries and movements they can, and all their struggling is counted for nothing until the sacraments are completed in them by which what was contracted from the original condemnation is expiated, unless because they so little know what they are doing that they are not even judged to be doing it? Further, if they already used the choice of reason and will, by which consent ought to be given to that sanctification, what Christian does not know how great an evil it would be to resist so great a grace, and that what was done would not only profit nothing but guilt would even increase from it?

We say, then, that the Holy Spirit dwells in baptized little children, although they do not know it. For they do not know him, though he is in them, just as they do not know their own mind, whose reason, which they cannot yet use, is in them like a sleeping spark to be roused as age advances. Nor should this seem strange in little children, since the apostle says even to some adults, 'Do you not know that you are the temple of God and the Spirit of God dwells in you?' Of such he had said a little earlier, 'But the natural man does not perceive the things of the Spirit of God', and he calls them little children too, not in age of flesh but of mind. So they did not perceive by knowledge the Holy Spirit who dwelt in them; and with the Holy Spirit dwelling in them they were still natural, not yet spiritual, because they could not yet perceive by knowledge the Spirit their indweller.

He is said to dwell even in such people because he works in them secretly so that they may be his temple, and he brings this to completion in those who make progress and persevere in progress. For 'we have been saved in hope', as the apostle says, although in another place he says, 'He saved us through the washing of regeneration.' Since, then, he says here 'He saved us', as if salvation itself had already been given, he explains how this is to be understood where he says: 'For we have been saved in hope. But hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.' Many things, then, are spoken of in the divine Scriptures as if done, when they are understood to be still in hope. Hence also what the Lord said to the disciples: 'All that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you', which was said so much according to hope of things to come that he says to them afterwards: 'I have many things to tell you, but you cannot bear them now.' So in those in whom he dwells while they are still mortal he carries on the very building of his dwelling, which he completes not in this life but in another after this, when death will be swallowed up in victory and it will be said to it: 'Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?' And what is the sting of death but sin?

For this reason, even now that we have been reborn of water and the Spirit, and all our sins, whether of origin from Adam, in whom all sinned, or of our deeds, words and thoughts, have been blotted out in the cleansing of that washing, nevertheless, because we remain in this human life, which is a trial upon earth, we rightly say, 'Forgive us our debts.' And the whole Church says this prayer, the Church which the Saviour cleanses by the washing of water in the word, so as to present her to himself glorious, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, then, certainly, when it will be completed in reality, where now she walks in hope by making progress. For how is she now without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, when, either in all the people belonging to her who already use the reason of the mind and the choice of the will and carry the burden of mortal flesh, or at least (as even the contentious themselves must admit) in many of her members, she truthfully says, 'Forgive us our debts'?