On Faith and Works 48–49

Let us, then, take great care, with the help of the Lord our God, not to make people falsely secure by telling them that, if they have been baptized in Christ, however they live in that faith they will come to eternal salvation; lest we make Christians in the way the Jews made proselytes, to whom the Lord said: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, who go around sea and land to make one proselyte; and when you have made him, you make him twice as much a son of Gehenna as yourselves.” But rather let us hold the sound teaching of God the master in both respects, so that Christian life may be in harmony with holy baptism, and eternal life may be promised to no one if either is lacking. For he who said, “Unless one is born again of the Holy Spirit, he will not enter the kingdom of heaven,” also said, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” For of them he said: “The scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses' seat. Do what they say, but do not do what they do; for they say and do not do.” Their righteousness, then, is to say and not to do; and so he wanted ours to exceed theirs by saying and doing; if it does not, the kingdom of heaven will not be entered. Not that anyone should be so lifted up as to dare, I will not say to boast to others, but even to think to himself that he is without sin in this life; but if there were not some sins so grave that they must be punished even with excommunication, the apostle would not say, “When you are assembled, and my spirit, to hand over such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” Hence he also says: “Lest I mourn over many who have sinned before and have not repented of the impurity and fornication they have committed.” Again, if there were not some sins to be healed not by that humility of penance which is given in the church to those who are properly called penitents, but by certain medicines of rebuke, the Lord himself would not say: “Rebuke him between you and him; if he listens to you, you have gained your brother.” Finally, if there were not some sins without which this life is not lived, he would not have put a daily remedy in the prayer he taught, that we should say: “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.”

I have now, I think, set out sufficiently what I think of that whole opinion, in which they raised three questions. One concerns the mixture of good and bad in the church, like wheat and weeds. Here we must beware of thinking that these likenesses were put forward, whether this one or that of the unclean animals in the ark or any others that signify the same, so that the church's discipline might sleep, of which it is said in the figure of that woman, “Strict are the ways of her house”; but so that the rashness of madness, rather than the strictness of diligence, may not go so far as to presume to separate the good from the bad, as it were, through wicked schisms. For through these likenesses and predictions the good were given counsel not of sloth, by which they would neglect what they ought to forbid, but of patience, by which they would bear, with the teaching of truth kept safe, what they cannot amend. Nor, because it is written that unclean animals too entered the ark with Noah, ought those in charge therefore not to forbid it if some most unclean people wish to enter baptism as dancers, which is certainly milder than as adulterers; but by this figure of what took place it was foretold that there would be unclean people in the church for the sake of tolerance, not for the corruption of teaching or the dissolution of discipline. For the unclean animals did not enter the ark wherever they pleased, with its structure broken, but with it intact, through one and the same door which the builder had made. The second question is the one in which they thought that faith alone should be handed on to those to be baptized, but that afterwards, when already baptized, they should be taught about conduct. But it has been shown sufficiently, unless I am mistaken, that it belongs more to the watchman's care at that time, when all who seek the sacrament of the faithful listen more attentively and anxiously to everything that is said, not to keep silent about the punishment with which the Lord threatens those who live badly, lest in baptism itself they be guilty of most grave crimes, when they come to it so that the guilt of all sins may be forgiven. The third question is most dangerous; from it, not considered enough and not treated according to the divine word, that whole opinion seems to me to have arisen: in it, it is promised to those who live most wickedly and shamefully, even if they persist in living so and only believe in Christ and receive his sacraments, that they will come to salvation and eternal life; against the plainest sentence of the Lord, who answered one who desired eternal life, “If you wish to come to life, keep the commandments,” and mentioned which commandments, namely those in which those very sins are avoided to which, in some strange way, eternal salvation is promised because of a faith that without works is dead. On these three questions I have, I think, argued sufficiently, and shown that the wicked are to be tolerated in the church in such a way that church discipline is not neglected; that those who ask for baptism are to be catechized in such a way that they hear and accept not only what they must believe but also how they must live; and that eternal life is to be promised to the faithful in such a way that no one thinks he can reach it through a dead faith, which cannot save without works, but through that faith of grace which works through love. So let the faithful stewards not be blamed, not for their own negligence or laziness, but rather for the obstinacy of certain people who refuse to receive the Lord's money and force the Lord's servants to pay out their counterfeit; since they are unwilling to be even such bad people as holy Cyprian mentions, renouncing the world in words only and not in deeds, when they are unwilling to renounce the works of the devil even in words, since they profess in the plainest voice that they will remain in adultery. If they are accustomed to say anything that I have perhaps not touched on in arguing, I judged it such that my answer was not necessary to it, either because it did not concern the matter in question, or because it was so light that anyone could very easily refute it.