On Faith and Works 31–47

This being so, when we do not admit such people to baptism, we are not trying to pull up the weeds before the time; but we do not want, like the devil, to sow weeds in addition. Nor are we forbidding those who wish to come to Christ; rather, by their own profession we convict them of not wishing to come to Christ. Nor are we forbidding them to believe in Christ; but we show that they do not wish to believe in Christ, who either say that what he says is adultery is not adultery, or believe that adulterers can be his members, whom he says through the apostle will not possess the kingdom of God and are contrary to sound teaching, which is according to the gospel of the glory of the blessed God. So these are not to be counted among those who came to the wedding feast, but among those who refused to come. For since they dare to contradict most openly the teaching of Christ and to oppose the holy gospel, they are not repelled as they come, but scorn to come. But those who renounce the world at least in words, even if not in deeds, do come, and are sown among the wheat, gathered onto the threshing floor, added to the sheep, go into the nets, and are mixed with the guests; but once inside, whether they are hidden or appear, then there will be reason for tolerating them, if there is no power of correcting them, and there ought to be no presumption of separating. But far be it from us so to understand what is written, that those brought to the wedding feast were those they found, good and bad, as to believe that they brought in those who professed that they would persist in being bad. Otherwise the servants of the householder themselves sowed the weeds, and that will be false: “But the enemy who sowed them is the devil.” But since this cannot be false, the servants brought in good and bad, either those who were hidden, or those who appeared so after they had been brought in and admitted; or “good and bad” was said according to a certain human way of life, in which even those who have not yet believed are usually praised or blamed. Hence too the Lord warns the disciples whom he first sends to preach the gospel that, into whatever city they come, they should find out who there is worthy, so as to stay with him until they leave. Who will that worthy person be, surely, but one who is held good in the judgment of his fellow citizens? And who unworthy but one who is known to them as bad? From both these kinds people come to the faith of Christ, and so good and bad are brought in, because those bad people too do not refuse to repent of dead works. But if they refuse, they are not repelled while wishing to enter, but they themselves depart from the entrance by open contradiction.

That servant, then, will also be safe, and will not be condemned among the lazy for refusing to pay out the Lord's talent, since those people refused to receive what he was paying out. For this parable was put forward on account of those who are unwilling to take up the office of steward in the church, offering the lazy excuse that they do not want to give an account of other people's sins, those who hear and do not do, that is, who receive and do not repay. But when the faithful and diligent steward, most ready in paying out and most eager for the Lord's gains, says to an adulterer, “Do not be an adulterer if you wish to be baptized; believe Christ, who says that what you are doing is adultery, if you wish to be baptized; do not be a member of a prostitute if you wish to become a member of Christ,” and he answers, “I will not obey, I will not do it,” he himself refuses to receive the Lord's true money, and wants rather to bring his own counterfeit money into the Lord's treasury. But if he professed that he would do it and did not do it, and afterwards could not be corrected in any way, it would be found out what should be done with him, so that he would not be useless to others if he could not be useful to himself; so that, if he were a bad fish within the Lord's good nets, he would not at least catch his Lord's fish in bad nets; that is, if he had a bad life in the church, he would not at least establish bad teaching there. For when such people, defending such deeds of theirs or most openly professing that they will persist in them, are admitted to baptism, nothing else seems to be preached but that the sexually immoral and adulterers, persisting in that wickedness even to the end of this life, will possess the kingdom of God and will come to eternal life and salvation by the merit of a faith that without works is dead. These are the bad nets that the fishermen must especially beware of, if indeed bishops, or those in charge of churches of lower rank, are to be understood as fishermen in that gospel parable, since it is said: “Come, and I will make you fishers of men.” For in good nets both bad and good fish can be caught; but in bad nets good fish cannot be caught, since under good teaching one who hears and does can be good, and one who hears and does not do bad; but under bad teaching both he who thinks it true, though he does not obey it, is bad, and he who obeys it is worse.

It is truly astonishing that brothers who think otherwise, when they ought to abandon this opinion, whether new or old, but in any case pernicious, themselves go further and say that it is a new teaching by which the most wicked people, openly professing that they will persist in their disgraceful acts, are not admitted to baptism; as if they were living abroad somewhere, when prostitutes, actors, and any other professionals of public shame are not allowed to approach the Christian sacraments unless such bonds have been loosed or broken. These would certainly all be admitted according to these men's view, were it not that the holy church keeps an ancient and robust custom, coming from that most clear truth by which she holds it certain that those who do such things will not possess the kingdom of God; and unless they repent of these dead works, they are not allowed to approach baptism; and if they have crept in, they cannot be saved unless they change afterwards and repent. But drunkards, the greedy, revilers, and whatever other damnable vices cannot be proved and refuted by open deeds, are nevertheless scourged most forcefully by commandments and catechetical instructions, and all such people seem to approach baptism with their will changed for the better. But if they have noticed that adulterers, whom not human but divine law condemns, that is, men who have other men's wives as their own, or women who have other women's husbands, are in some places admitted rather carelessly, they ought to try to correct this on the basis of those right practices, that is, so that these too are not admitted; not to corrupt those right practices on the basis of these crooked ones, so as to hold that competents should not be catechized about correcting their conduct, and consequently that all the professionals of those public disgraces and crimes, that is, prostitutes, pimps, gladiators, and anything of this kind, should be admitted even while remaining in those evils. For all those things which the apostle lists, concluding that those who do such things will not possess the kingdom of God, those who act more forcefully rebuke fittingly when they are manifest, and do not admit to receiving baptism those who resist and profess that they will remain in them.

But those who think that other sins are easily compensated by almsgiving do not doubt that three are deadly and to be punished by excommunication until they are healed by a more humble penance: unchastity, idolatry, and murder. Nor is there need now to ask what kind of view this is of theirs, and whether it should be corrected or approved, lest we prolong the work undertaken because of a question that is not at all necessary for completing it. For it is enough that, if not all sins are to be admitted to the sacrament of baptism, adultery is among all of them; and if only those three are to be excepted, adultery is among those three too, from which this dispute arose.

But since the conduct of bad Christians, even when it was formerly at its very worst, does not seem to have had this evil, that men married other men's wives or women married other women's husbands, perhaps for that reason this negligence has crept in in certain churches, that in the catechizing of competents these vices were neither inquired into nor struck at; and so it came about that they began to be defended. Yet these are still rare among the baptized, if we do not make them frequent by neglecting them. Such negligence in some, lack of skill in others, and ignorance in others, the Lord is plausibly understood to have signified by the name of sleep, where he says: “But while men were sleeping, the enemy came and sowed weeds over them.” That these vices had not appeared earlier in the conduct even of bad Christians may be judged from this: blessed Cyprian, in his letter on the lapsed, when in lamenting and reproving he lists many things by which he says God's indignation was rightly stirred to allow his church to be scourged by an intolerable persecution, does not name these at all there; although he does not keep silent even about that other thing, and affirms that it belongs to the same bad conduct, asserting that to join the bond of marriage with unbelievers is nothing else than to prostitute the members of Christ to the Gentiles. In our times this is no longer thought to be a sin, since in fact nothing is commanded about it in the New Testament; and so it has been believed either to be lawful or left as doubtful. Likewise it is also uncertain whether Herod married the wife of a dead or a living brother, and so it is not so clear what John was saying was not lawful for him. About a concubine too, if she has professed that she will know no other man even if she is sent away by the one to whom she is subject, it is rightly doubted whether she ought not to be admitted to receive baptism. Also, whoever has put away a wife caught in adultery and married another does not seem to be put on a level with those who put away and marry apart from the cause of adultery; and in the divine sayings themselves it is so obscure whether even this man, who is certainly permitted to put away an adulteress, is nevertheless to be held an adulterer if he marries another, that, as far as I judge, anyone who is mistaken there is mistaken venially. Therefore, crimes of unchastity that are manifest are by all means to be barred from baptism unless they are corrected by a change of will and repentance; but where things are doubtful, every effort must be made that such unions not take place. For what need is there to put one's head into so great a danger of uncertainty? But if they have taken place, I do not know whether those who have made them should likewise be thought not to be admitted to baptism.

As far, then, as concerns the wholesome teaching of the truth, so that no deadly sin is given a most pernicious security or even granted a most pestilent authority, this is the order of healing: that those to be baptized believe in God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, in the rite by which the creed is handed on; that they repent of dead works; and that they do not doubt that they will receive in baptism the forgiveness of absolutely all past sins: not so that it may be allowed to sin, but so that having sinned may do no harm; so that there may be forgiveness of what was done, not permission to do it. Then it can truly be said, even spiritually, “See, you have been made well; sin no more,” which the Lord said of bodily health because he knew that the man he had healed had suffered that weakness of the flesh too on account of the merits of his sins. But I wonder how these people think it can be said, “See, you have been made well,” to a man who both goes in to be baptized an adulterer and comes out baptized an adulterer. For what disease will be serious and deadly, if adultery will be health?

“But among the three thousand,” they say, “whom the apostles baptized in one day, and among the many thousands of believers with whom the apostle filled the gospel from Jerusalem as far as Illyricum, there were surely some joined to other men's wives, or women to other women's husbands; and in their case the apostles ought to have laid down a rule, to be kept thereafter in the churches, whether they should not be admitted to baptism unless they had corrected those adulteries.” As though it could not likewise be said against them that they do not find anyone mentioned who was admitted while being such; or as though the crimes of individual people could be mentioned, which would be endless, when that general rule is more than enough, where Peter, testifying with many words, says to those to be baptized: “Rescue yourselves from this crooked generation.” For who doubts that adulteries belong to the crookedness of this generation, and those who have chosen to persist in that same iniquity? Likewise it can be said that public prostitutes, whom certainly no church admits to baptism unless freed from that shame, could have been found among so many thousands of believers then through so many nations, and that the apostles ought to have laid down examples about receiving or refusing them. Yet from certain lesser things we can infer greater ones. For if the tax collectors coming to John's baptism were forbidden to exact anything more than what had been appointed them, I would be surprised if adultery could be permitted to those coming to the baptism of Christ.

They have also mentioned that the Israelites committed many grave evils and shed much blood of the prophets, and yet did not deserve to be wholly destroyed for these deeds, but only for their unbelief, by which they refused to believe in Christ. They do not see that their sin was not only that they did not believe in Christ, but also that they killed Christ: of which the one belongs to the crime of unbelief, the other to the crime of cruelty. The one, then, is against right faith, the other against good life. But he is free of both faults who has the faith of Christ, not the dead faith without works that is found even in demons, but the faith of grace which works through love.

This is the faith of which it is said: “The kingdom of heaven is within you.” For those seize it who use force by believing, obtaining the spirit of love, in which is the fullness of the law, without which the law in the letter made them guilty even of transgression. So it is not to be thought that it was said, “The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and those who use force seize it,” because even the wicked, by merely believing and living very badly, arrive at the kingdom of heaven; but because that guilt of transgression, which the law alone, that is, the letter without the spirit, produced by commanding, is loosed by believing, and by the violence of faith the Holy Spirit is obtained, through whom, with love poured into our hearts, the law is fulfilled not by fear of punishment but by love of righteousness.

Let no incautious mind, then, be deceived into thinking that it has known God if it confesses him with a dead faith, that is, without good works, after the manner of demons, and therefore not doubting that it will come to eternal life because the Lord says: “Now this is eternal life, that they may know you, the one true God, and him whom you have sent, Jesus Christ.” For this too should come to mind, which is written: “By this we know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says, ‘I have known him,’ and does not keep his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” And lest anyone think that his commandments concern faith alone (though no one has dared to say this, especially since he said “commandments,” which, lest their number scatter our thought, all hang on those two, the whole law and the prophets), although it could rightly be said that God's commandments concern faith alone, if by it is understood not a dead but a living faith, which works through love, still John himself afterwards made clear what he meant when he said: “This is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another.”

This, then, is what profits: to believe in God with right faith, to worship God, to know God, so that we may have from him help for living well and, if we sin, may merit pardon from him, not persisting securely in deeds that he hates, but withdrawing from them and saying to him: “I said, Lord, have mercy on me; heal my soul, for I have sinned against you.” Those who do not believe in him have no one to say this to; and they say it in vain who, being so far from him, are strangers to the grace of the Mediator. Hence come those words in the book of Wisdom, which a pernicious security understands in some strange way: “And if we sin, we are yours”; since, that is, we have a good and great Lord, who both wills and is able to heal the sins of the penitent, not one who would not dare to destroy those who persist in wickedness. Indeed, after saying, “We are yours,” he added, “knowing your power”: certainly a power from which the sinner cannot withdraw or hide himself. And so he went on to add: “But we will not sin, knowing that we are counted yours.” For who, worthily considering the dwelling with God, to which all who are called according to his purpose are counted by predestination, would not strive so to live as to befit such a dwelling? So what John too says, “I have written these things to you so that you may not sin; and if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins,” does not aim at our sinning with security, but at our not despairing of pardon, as we withdraw from sin, if any has been committed, because of that advocate whom unbelievers do not have.

Nor, then, is any milder condition to be promised from these words to those who wish to believe in God in such a way as to remain in corrupt ways; much less from those where the apostle says, “Those who have sinned without the law will perish without the law; and those who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law,” as though in this place there were some difference between perishing and being judged, when the same thing is signified by another word. For the Scriptures are accustomed to put “judgment” also for eternal damnation, as the Lord says in the gospel: “The hour will come in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice; and those who have done good will come forth to the resurrection of life, but those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.” Nor is it said here, “the one those who believed, the other those who did not believe,” but, “the one those who did good, the other those who did evil.” For good life is inseparable from the faith that works through love; indeed, that faith itself is good life. So we see that the Lord said “resurrection of judgment” for the resurrection of eternal damnation; for of all who will rise (among whom will certainly be also those who do not believe at all, since they too are in the tombs) he made two parts, declaring that some will rise to the resurrection of life, others to the resurrection of judgment.

But if they say that those who do not believe at all are not to be understood there, but those who will be saved through fire because they believed, even if they lived badly, so that they think their temporary punishment is signified by the name of judgment (though this is said most shamelessly, since the Lord divided absolutely all who will rise, among whom there will certainly be unbelievers too, into two, life and judgment, wanting judgment to be understood as eternal, although he did not add this, just as with life; for he did not say, “to the resurrection of eternal life,” though he certainly did not want anything else to be understood): let them see, nonetheless, what they will answer where he says, “But whoever does not believe has already been judged.” For here, without doubt, they either understand judgment as put for eternal punishment, or they will dare to say that even unbelievers will be saved through fire, since “whoever does not believe,” he says, “has already been judged,” that is, is already destined for judgment. And then there will be nothing for them to promise as a great benefit to those who believe and live wickedly, since even those who do not believe will not be destroyed but judged. If they do not dare to say this, let them not dare to promise anything milder to those of whom it is said, “They will be judged by the law,” since it is certain that judgment is also usually named for eternal damnation. What of the fact that we find those who sin knowingly to be not only in no milder but in a worse condition? For these are above all those who have received the law; for, as it is written, “where there is no law, there is no transgression.” Hence also this: “I would not have known covetous desire if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’ But sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, worked in me every kind of covetous desire,” and much else that the same apostle says on this matter. From this graver guilt the grace of the Holy Spirit frees, through Jesus Christ our Lord, which, with love poured into our hearts, gives delight in righteousness, by which the excess of desire is overcome. So it is confirmed from this that of those of whom it is said, “Those who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law,” nothing milder but something graver is to be understood than of those who, sinning without the law, will perish without the law; and that judgment in this place is not said of a temporary punishment, but of that by which unbelievers too will be judged.

For those who use this sentence to promise salvation through fire to those who believe and live very badly, telling them, “Those who have sinned without the law will perish without the law; and those who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law,” as though it were said, “they will not perish, but will be saved through fire,” could not even notice that the apostle said this of those who sinned without the law and those who sinned under the law when he was dealing with Gentiles and Jews, so as to show that the grace of Christ, by which they are freed, is necessary not only for the Gentiles but for both; which the whole letter to the Romans itself shows plainly. So let them now, if they please, promise salvation through fire even to Jews who sin under the law, of whom it is said, “They will be judged by the law,” without the grace of Christ freeing them, since it is said of them, “They will be judged by the law.” And if they do not do this, so as not to go against themselves, since they say that these are bound by the gravest crime of unbelief, why do they transfer to unbelievers and believers, with respect to the faith of Christ, what was said of those who sinned without the law and those who sinned under the law, when Jews and Gentiles were in question, so that both might be invited to the grace of Christ? For it was not said, “Those who have sinned without faith will perish without faith; and those who have sinned in faith will be judged by faith,” but “without the law” and “under the law” was said, so that it might be clear enough that the case touched is the one between Gentiles and Jews, not the one between good and bad Christians.

Yet even if they want “law” in that place to be taken as “faith,” which is very inappropriate and absurd, they can read here too a most plain sentence of the apostle Peter. He was speaking of those who had taken as an occasion for the flesh and a cloak for malice what is written, that we who belong to the new testament are not children of the slave woman but of the free, with the freedom with which Christ has set us free; and they had thought that to live freely was this: that, as if secure of so great a redemption, they could think whatever pleased them lawful for them; not attending to what was said: “You were called to freedom, brothers; only do not use freedom as an occasion for the flesh.” Hence Peter himself also says, “Free, not having freedom as a cloak for malice”; and he says of them in his second letter too: “These are dry springs and mists driven by a whirlwind, for whom the gloom of darkness has been reserved. For, speaking proud words of vanity, they entice with the lusts of the flesh of unchastity those who have barely escaped, living in error, promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption. For by whatever a man is overcome, to that he is bound as a slave. For if, having fled the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them not to know the way of righteousness than, knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment handed on to them. What the true proverb says has happened to them: ‘The dog has returned to its own vomit,’ and, ‘The washed sow to wallowing in the mire.’” Why, against this most manifest truth, is a better condition still promised to those who have known the way of righteousness, that is, the Lord Christ, and live corruptly, than if they had not known it at all, when it is said most plainly: “It would have been better for them not to know the way of righteousness than, knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment handed on to them”?

For the holy commandment in this place is not to be understood as the one by which it is commanded that we believe in God (though the whole is contained in that very commandment, if we understand the faith of believers as that which works through love); but he expressed plainly what he meant by the holy commandment, namely the one by which it is commanded that, withdrawing from the defilements of this world, we should live in chaste conduct. For he says thus: “For if, having fled the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.” He does not say “having fled ignorance of God” or “having fled the unbelief of the world” or anything of the kind, but “the defilements of the world,” in which is certainly all the impurity of disgraceful acts. For speaking of these above, he said: “Feasting with you, having eyes full of adultery and of unceasing sin.” That is also why he calls them dry springs: springs, clearly, because they have received the knowledge of the Lord Christ, but dry because they do not live accordingly. The apostle Jude too, speaking of such people, says: “These are the ones who, stained, feast at your love feasts without fear, feeding themselves, clouds without water,” and so on. For what Peter says, “feasting with you, having eyes full of adultery,” Jude says as, “stained, they feast at your love feasts.” For they are mixed with the good at the feasts of the sacraments and the love feasts of the people. And what Peter calls “dry springs,” Jude calls “clouds without water,” and James “dead faith.”

So let not a temporary punishment of fire be promised to those who live shamefully and wickedly because they have known the way of righteousness, when it would have been better for them not to know it, as the most truthful Scripture testifies. For of such people the Lord too says: “And the last state of that man will be worse than the first,” since, not receiving the Holy Spirit as the dweller in his cleansed house, he made the unclean spirit return into him more manifold. Unless perhaps these people we are dealing with are to be held better because they did not return to the impurity of adulteries but did not withdraw from it; nor, having been cleansed, did they defile themselves again, but refused to be cleansed. For they do not even deign, in order to enter baptism with an unburdened conscience, to vomit up their former impurities, to gulp them down again like dogs; but they insist on holding their undigested wickedness stubbornly, with raw heart, in the very holiness of the washing. Nor do they hide it even by a pretended promise, but belch it out by the shamelessness of their profession. Nor, going out of Sodom, do they look back at the past like Lot's wife, but they disdain to go out of Sodom at all; indeed, they try to enter to Christ with Sodom. The apostle Paul says: “I who was formerly a blasphemer and persecutor and insolent; but I obtained mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief”; and to these it is said: “You will obtain mercy rather if you have lived badly knowingly, in the faith itself”! It would be too long and almost endless to want to collect all the testimonies of the Scriptures by which it appears that the case of those who lead a most wicked and unrighteous life knowingly is not milder than that of those who do so unknowingly, but even graver for that very reason. So let these suffice.