Letters 190.1–190.26

Although I have received no letter from Your Holiness addressed to me personally, yet, since the letter you sent to Mauretania Caesariensis arrived while I was present at Caesarea, where church business laid on us by the venerable Pope Zosimus, bishop of the apostolic see, had brought us, it happened that I too read what you had written, when that letter of yours was handed to me by the holy servant of God Renatus, our very dear brother in Christ. At his request, and with his earnest urging, though I was busy with other things, I was compelled to answer it. There was added, while we were staying in that town, the arrival of another holy brother of ours, to be named with due honour, Muresis, and, as far as I learned from him, a close friend of yours. He told me that Your Reverence had sent a letter on this matter to him too, and consulted me on this very question, so that he might convey to you, either by my reply or his own, what I thought about it: namely, whether souls are born by propagation, like bodies, and come from that one soul which was created for the first man, or whether the almighty Creator, who certainly works until now, makes new ones, proper to each individual, without any propagation.

Before I put anything before Your Sincerity on this matter, I want you to know that in my many little works I have never dared to put forward a definite opinion on this question, and shamelessly to commit to writing for the instruction of others what I had not worked out for myself. But by what considerations of facts and reasons I am moved so that my mind inclines to assent to neither assertion, but still hesitates between the two, would take too long to set out in this letter, and is not so necessary. But leaving this aside, this question can be discussed sufficiently, if not to remove hesitation, at least to avoid rashness.

For that in which the Christian faith chiefly consists, namely that 'through a man came death and through a man the resurrection of the dead; for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive'; and that 'through one man sin entered this world, and through sin death, and so death passed to all men, in whom all sinned'; and that 'the judgment from one led to condemnation, but grace from many trespasses to justification'; and that 'through the trespass of one it came upon all men to condemnation, and through the justification of one upon all men to justification of life'; and any other testimonies that declare that no one is born of Adam except bound by the chain of guilt and condemnation, and no one is set free from it except by being reborn through Christ: this we must hold so unshakeably as to know that whoever denies it in no way belongs to the faith of Christ and to the grace of God that is given through Christ to small and great. Hence, if the origin of the soul is hidden, provided redemption is clear, there is no danger; for we do not believe in Christ in order to be born, but in order to be reborn, however we were born.

But we say that the origin of the soul is hidden without danger only so far as we do not believe it to be a part of God but a creature; not born of God but made by him, and to be adopted into his family by the wonderful condescension of grace, not by equal dignity of nature; nor a body but a spirit, certainly not creator but creature; nor that it came into this corruptible body, by which it is weighed down, because the deserts of a life previously lived badly in the heavens or in any other parts of the world drove it there. For the apostle, speaking of Rebecca's twins, says that, not yet born, they had done nothing good or evil, so that it was said, not from works (by which neither was distinguished from the other, for there were none) but from him who calls, that the elder would serve the younger.

With these points, then, most firmly established, if it is so hidden and concealed among the secret works of God that it is not declared by any clear statement of the divine Scriptures whether those not yet born are to be believed to have done nothing good or evil because each receives a soul not propagated from others but newly created from nothing, or because, while they were originally in their parents, they were not yet persons living their own proper lives; let that faith nevertheless remain safe by which we believe that no human being, whether of greater or of tender and however recent age, is set free from the contagion of the ancient death and from the bond of the sin contracted at the first birth, except through the one mediator between God and humanity, the man Christ Jesus.

By the most saving faith in this man, who is also God, even those righteous people were saved who, before he came in the flesh, believed that he would come in the flesh. For our faith and theirs is the same, since they believed would happen what we believe has happened. Hence the apostle Paul says: 'Having the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, I believed, therefore I spoke, we too believe, and therefore we speak.' If, then, those who foretold that Christ would come in the flesh had the same spirit of faith as those who announced that he had come, the sacraments could be different according to the difference of times, yet they all ran back most harmoniously to the unity of the same faith. It is written also in the Acts of the Apostles, the apostle Peter speaking: 'Now therefore why do you tempt God by putting on the neck of the disciples a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they are.' If, then, they too, that is, the fathers, unable to bear the yoke of the old law, believed that they were saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, it is clear that this grace made even the ancient righteous live by faith; for 'the righteous shall live by faith'.

'But the law came in so that the trespass might abound', so that grace might superabound, by which the abundance of the trespass might be healed. 'For if a law had been given that could give life, righteousness would indeed be from the law.' Yet for what good the law was given he went on to add, saying: 'But the Scripture has shut up all things under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.' So the law had to be given, to show man more plainly to himself, lest the proud human mind think it could be righteous by itself, and, not knowing the righteousness of God, that is, the righteousness which comes to man from God, and wishing to establish its own, that is, a righteousness as if gained for itself by its own powers, it should not submit to the righteousness of God. It was fitting, then, that by the addition of the commandment, whose voice is 'You shall not covet', the guilt of transgression should be added to the proud sinner, and so weakness, not healed by the law but convicted by it, might seek the medicine of grace.

Accordingly, since all the righteous, that is, the true worshippers of God, whether before or after the incarnation of Christ, have not lived and do not live except by faith in the incarnation of Christ, in whom is the fullness of grace, certainly what is written, that there is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved, has had power to save the human race from the time when the human race was vitiated in Adam. 'For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive'; because, as in the kingdom of death no one is without Adam, so in the kingdom of life no one is without Christ; as through Adam all are human beings, so through Christ all are righteous human beings; as through Adam all, being mortal in punishment, have been made children of the world, so through Christ all, being immortal in grace, are made children of God.

But why those too are created whom the Creator knew would belong to damnation and not to grace, the blessed apostle mentions with a brevity as concise as his authority is great. For he says that God, 'wishing to show his wrath and make known his power, endured with much patience the vessels of wrath made for destruction, and that he might make known the riches of his glory for the vessels of mercy'; he whom he had described earlier as a potter who makes from the same lump of clay one vessel for honour and another for dishonour. It would rightly seem unjust that vessels of wrath for destruction are made from it, if that whole lump from Adam were not itself condemned. That they become vessels of wrath by being born, then, belongs to deserved punishment; that they become vessels of mercy by being reborn belongs to undeserved grace.

God shows his wrath, then, certainly not as a disturbance of mind, like what is called human anger, but as just and fixed retribution, in that from the stock of disobedience is drawn the offspring of sin and punishment. And 'man born of woman', as it is written in the book of Job, 'is short of life and full of wrath'. For he is the vessel of that of which he is full; hence they are called vessels of wrath. He shows also his power, which he uses well even with the evil, bestowing on them many natural and temporal goods and adapting their malice to exercise the good and to warn them by comparison, so that in them the good may learn to give thanks to God that they have been distinguished from them not by their own merits, which were equal in the same lump, but by his mercy. This appears most clearly in little children, of whom, when they are reborn through Christ's grace and, ending this life at that tender age, pass into eternal and blessed life, it cannot be said that they are distinguished by free choice from other infants who die without this grace in the condemnation of that same lump.

But if only those were created from Adam who were to be re-created by grace, and no other human beings were born besides those who are adopted as children of God, the benefit given to the unworthy would be hidden, because no deserved punishment would be paid to any coming from that same damnable stock. But since he endured with much patience the vessels of wrath made for destruction, he not only showed his wrath and made known his power by rendering retribution and making good use of what is not good, but also made known the riches of his glory for the vessels of mercy. For so the one justified freely learns what is granted to him, when he is distinguished from the condemned, not by his own merit but by the glory of God's most generous mercy, with whom by the same justice he too would have been condemned.

And he willed that so many be born by creating them, whom he foreknew would not belong to his grace, that they are incomparably more numerous than those whom he deigned to predestine as children of the promise to the glory of his kingdom, so that by the very multitude of the rejected it might be shown how little any number, however great, of those most justly condemned counts with a just God. And so that from this too those who are redeemed from that condemnation might understand that this was owed to that whole lump which they saw paid to so great a part of it, not only in those who add many sins to original sin by the choice of an evil will, but also in so many little children who, bound only by the chain of original sin, are snatched from this light without the grace of the mediator. For that whole lump would receive the debt of just condemnation, unless the potter, not only just but also merciful, made from it other vessels for honour according to grace and not according to debt, both coming to the aid of little children, of whom no merits can be spoken, and going before adults, so that they may be able to have some merits.

This being so, if your assertion does not tend to say that new souls, because of the innocence of their newness, cannot be liable to original condemnation before they use free choice to sin, but you confess with the Catholic faith that, even if they leave the body at that tender age, they will go into the condemnation of perdition unless they are set free by the sacrament of the mediator, who came to seek and to save what was lost, then seek where, from what source, or when they began to have the desert of condemnation, if they are new; but in such a way, certainly, that you make neither God nor any nature not created by God the author either of their sin or of the condemnation of the innocent. And if you find what I have urged you to seek, which I confess I have not yet found myself, defend as well as you can, and assert, that the newness of infants' souls is such that they are not derived by any propagation; and share with us, in brotherly love, what you find.

But if you do not find why or how the souls of infants become sinful, and, having no malice in themselves, by what they are forced to draw from Adam that for which they are condemned, since you believe them not propagated from that first sinful soul but enclosed, new and guiltless, in the flesh of sin, do not even so let your assent turn rashly to the other opinion, so as to believe that they are derived by propagation from that one soul; lest perhaps another may be able to find what you cannot, or you may one day find what you could not now. For those too who assert that souls are propagated from the one soul which God gave to the first man, and so say that they are derived from the parents, if they follow the opinion of Tertullian, certainly maintain that they are not spirits but bodies and arise from bodily seeds. What more perverse thing could be said? Nor is it surprising that Tertullian dreamed this, since he thought that even God the Creator himself is nothing but body.

When this madness has been driven from Christian heart and lips, whoever confesses that the soul, as it is, is not body but spirit, and yet is derived from parents into children, is indeed under no constraint in this respect: that the true faith proclaims that all souls, even those of little children, whom the Church baptizes not for a false but for a true remission of sins, draw original sin, committed by the first man's own will and transmitted to all his descendants by generation, to be cleansed only by regeneration. But when one begins to consider and examine what is being said, it would be a wonder if any human sense could grasp in what way, as a lamp is lit from a lamp and another flame arises from it without loss to the first, so a soul comes into being in the offspring from the soul of the parent, or is derived into the offspring; whether the incorporeal seed of the soul runs separately by some hidden and invisible way of its own from the father into the mother when conception takes place in a woman, or, what is still harder to believe, lies hidden in the bodily seed; and when the seeds flow uselessly without any conception, whether the seed of the soul does not go out with them, or returns with the greatest speed and in an instant of time to where it came from, or perishes; and if it perishes, how the soul itself, whose seed is mortal, is immortal; or whether it receives immortality when it is formed so as to live, just as it receives righteousness when it is formed so as to be wise; and in what way God fashions it in a human being, even if the soul is derived seminally from a soul, as he fashions the members of the body in a human being, though the body is derived seminally from a body. For if the spiritual creature too were not fashioned by God, it would not be written, 'Who fashions the spirit of man within him'; and from the passage that reads, 'Who fashioned the hearts of men one by one', if souls are signified by 'hearts', who would doubt that they can be fashioned? But the question is whether it is from the one soul of the first man, as he fashions the faces of men one by one, yet from the one body of the first man.

When these and many other such questions are asked on this matter, which cannot be explored by any sense of the flesh, are far removed from our experience, and lie hidden in the most secret recesses of nature, a man should not blush to confess that he does not know what he does not know, lest, by lying that he knows, he never deserve to know. And who denies that God is the creator and maker not of one soul only but of every soul, except one who most openly opposes his words? For without any ambiguity he says through the prophet, 'I have made every breath', clearly wishing souls to be understood, as the following words show. So he made not only the one breath that he breathed into the first man made from the earth, but every breath; he made it, and he still makes it. Yet the question is whether he makes every breath from that one breath, as every human body from that one body, or whether he makes new bodies from the one, but new souls from nothing. For who makes the kinds of things suited to their origins even from seeds, but he who made the seeds themselves without seeds? But where a matter naturally obscure exceeds our measure, and the divine Scripture does not clearly help, human conjecture is presumptuous to define anything about it. According to the lives they begin to have as their own, we say that new human beings are born, whether in soul or in body; but according to original sin they are born old, and therefore are renewed by baptism.

So I have not yet found anything certain about the origin of the soul in the canonical Scriptures. For those who assert that new souls are made without any propagation also include among the testimonies by which they try to show it those two that I mentioned a little earlier: 'Who fashions the spirit of man within him', and, 'Who fashioned the hearts of men one by one'; and you see how their opponents can answer them, for whether, when he fashions, he fashions from another or from nothing is uncertain. Yet the chief testimony among the rest seems to be what we read in Solomon's book Ecclesiastes: 'And the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.' But the answer is very easy: the body to the earth, from which the first human body was made, and the spirit to God, by whom the first human soul was made. For just as our body, they say, though propagated from that first body, nevertheless returns to that from which the first body itself was made, so our soul, though propagated from that soul, returns not to nothing, since it is immortal, but to him by whom the first soul itself was made. And so what is written of the spirit of each person, that it returns to God who gave it, does not solve this most obscure question, since whether from that one or from no other, God certainly gave it.

Likewise those who defend the propagation of souls with thoughtless rashness can think of no testimony to bring forward, among others that they think support their cause, more plain and explicit than what is written in Genesis: 'All the souls that went into Egypt with Jacob, who came out of his thighs.' For by this seemingly most evident testimony souls can be believed to be propagated from parents into children, since it seems to be said quite plainly that souls too, not only the bodies of the sons, came out of Jacob's thighs; so that in this way they would wish also to understand as the whole from a part what Adam said when his wife was shown to him, 'This now is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh'. For he did not say 'and soul of my soul'; but it may be that by naming the flesh both are to be understood, just as here he named souls and yet wished bodies also to be understood in the sons.

But this testimony, as if so clear and plain, would certainly not suffice to untie this question, not even if it read with the feminine gender, 'which came out of his thighs', so that we would understand the souls as what came out. It would not suffice, because it is shown that by the name of soul the body alone can be signified, by a certain figure of speech by which the container is signified through what is contained, as one poet says, 'They crown the wines', when the vessels of wine were crowned: the wine is contained, the vessel contains. So, just as we call 'church' the basilica in which the people is contained who is truly called the Church, so that by the name of church, that is, of the people contained, we signify the place that contains them, so, because souls are contained in bodies, the bodies of the sons can be understood by naming their souls. In this way also is better taken what the law says, that whoever has gone in upon a dead soul, that is, upon the corpse of a deceased person, is defiled, so that by the name 'dead soul' the dead body is understood which contained the soul; just as, even when the people, that is, the Church, is absent, that place is nonetheless called a church. These answers would be given, as I said, if it were put in the feminine gender, 'which came out of Jacob's thighs', that is, which souls. But now, since the masculine gender has been put, that is, 'who came out of Jacob's thighs', who would not rather understand it thus: all the souls of those who came out of his thighs, that is, the souls of the persons, so that even so it can be understood that the persons, whose souls those were, came out of their father's thighs only according to the body, and by the number of the souls so many persons are understood?

I should like to read your little book, which you mentioned in your letter, in case perhaps you have put some unambiguous testimonies there. When a friend very dear to me, and very devoted to the study of the divine writings, asked me what I thought about this question, and I, setting aside embarrassment, confessed to him my uncertainty and ignorance in the matter, he wrote about it far across the sea to a most learned man. He wrote back that he should rather consult me, not knowing that he had already done so and could hear nothing certain and definite from me. Yet in that same short letter he indicated that he believed souls are made rather than propagated, at the same time noting that the Western Church usually holds the propagation of souls, for he himself is in the East. Having learned of this, and with this greater opportunity, I wrote to him a book of some length, consulting him and asking him first to teach me and then to send me those whom I might teach.

That book of mine, written not as a teacher but as an enquirer, and rather as one eager to learn, can be read at my house; but it should not be sent anywhere or given to anyone outside until, with the Lord's help, I have received his reply, ready to defend most promptly and willingly what he holds, if he can teach me how souls neither come from Adam and yet incur from him the just lot of condemnation, unless they attain by rebirth to the forgiveness of sins. For far be it that we should believe either that the souls of little children receive a false cleansing of sins in the washing of regeneration, or that God, or any nature not created by God, is the author of the defilement from which they are cleansed. Until, then, either he replies or I, if God wills, learn in some way, if the soul draws no origin from that sinful soul, what is the cause of its incurring original sin, which must be in all little children, and into which neither God forces it while innocent, since he is not the author of sin, nor any nature of evil, since there is none, I dare proclaim nothing of the kind.

But you, dearest brother, if you accept it willingly or patiently, I warn not to fall incautiously into the new heresy which is striving to tear up the established foundations of the most ancient faith by arguing against the grace of God, which the Lord Christ in his ineffable goodness bestows on small and great. Since Pelagius and Caelestius emerged as either its authors or at least its sharpest and best-known advocates, they have been condemned throughout the Christian world, unless, corrected, they also do penance, by the vigilance of episcopal councils, with the help of the Saviour who protects his Church, and also by two venerable bishops of the apostolic see, Pope Innocent and Pope Zosimus. Copies of the recent letters about them that have come from that see, whether those addressed specially to the Africans or those addressed generally to all bishops, we have taken care to have sent to you, in case they have not yet reached Your Holiness, by the brothers to whom we also gave this letter to deliver to Your Reverence. These men are not heretics because they say that souls do not draw their origin from that first sinful soul, which perhaps can be truly said for some reason, or can be unknown without damage to faith; but they try to prove from it the thing for which they are judged utterly plain heretics: that the souls of little children draw nothing evil from Adam to be expiated by the washing of regeneration. For Pelagius's argument on this matter, which is attached, among his other condemnable statements, to the letter of the apostolic see, runs thus: 'If the soul', he says, 'is not by transmission, but the flesh alone has the transmission of sin, then the flesh alone deserves punishment. For it is unjust that a soul born today, not from the mass of Adam, should bear so ancient a sin belonging to another; for by no reasoning is it granted that God, who forgives one's own sins, should impute another's.'

If, then, you can assert the newness of souls without any propagation in such a way that, by just reasoning not foreign to the Catholic faith, they are shown even so to be liable to the first man's sin, assert what you think as best you can. But if you cannot make them strangers to propagation except by making them at the same time free from every bond of sin, restrain yourself completely from discussion of this kind. For the remission of sins even in the baptism of little children is not false, nor said in words only, but truly brought about. For, to use the words which are read in the letter of the most blessed bishop Zosimus himself: 'The Lord is faithful in his words, and his baptism holds the same fullness in reality and in words, that is, in deed, confession and true remission of sins, in every sex, age and condition of the human race. For no one is made free except one who is the slave of sin, nor can anyone be called redeemed except one who was truly captive before through sin, as it is written: If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. For through him we are spiritually reborn, through him we are crucified to the world; by his death is torn up that bond of death, brought in from Adam upon all of us and transmitted to every soul, the bond contracted by propagation, by which absolutely no one born is not held liable before being set free through baptism.' In these words of the apostolic see the Catholic faith is so ancient and well-founded, so certain and clear, that it would be wrong for a Christian to doubt it.

Since, then, by the death of Christ the bond of death contracted by propagation is torn up, not for one soul or some souls, but for every soul, if you can defend souls as strangers to propagation in such a way that they are nevertheless shown by entirely sound reasoning to be bound by this bond, which is to be torn up only by the death of Christ, and appear to be justly held by this debt not by their own propagation but by that of the flesh, then not only defend it, with no one forbidding you, but also show us how we may defend it with you. But if you cannot assert what you think about the newness of souls except by saying that they are not held by the first man's sin, or that, by a propagation not their own but of the flesh, they are made sinners, though most innocent, with God as author or by some nature of evil, it is better that the origin of the soul should remain hidden, provided we do not doubt that it is God's creature, than that God should be called the author of sin, or a foreign nature of evil be brought in against God, or the baptism of little children be held void.

But so that Your Affection may also hear from me something definite on this question, not to be thought of small account, indeed especially necessary and to be held: however the origin of souls stands, whether they are propagated from that one or from none, it is not lawful to doubt that the soul of the mediator drew no sin from Adam. For if no soul is propagated from another, while all are held by the propagated flesh of sin, how much less is it to be believed that his soul could have come from the propagation of a sinful soul, whose flesh came from a virgin, conceived not by lust but by faith, so as to be in the likeness of sinful flesh, not in sinful flesh! But if the other souls are liable to the sin of the first sinful soul because they have been propagated from it, then certainly the soul which the Only-begotten fitted to himself either drew no sin from there or was not drawn from there at all. For he who forgives our sins could not have been unable to draw a soul to himself without sin; nor could he who created a new soul for that flesh which he made from earth without a parent have been unable to create a new one for the flesh which he took from a woman without a man.

I have answered these things as I could, to the letter of Your Holiness, though not addressed to me but to our very dear friends, not with the expertise you desired but with anxious love. If you receive it gratefully and keep this brotherly warning, now useful not by erring but by careful consideration, in the peace of the Church, thanks be to God. And if you are surprised that I do not yet know these things, or even are not surprised, and do not refuse in mutual love to teach me something certain about the origin of souls, keeping that faith which is most certain and clear, much more abundant thanks be to God. May you live always to the Lord, remembering us, most blessed lord and brother, desired with sincere love.