Retractations 0.1–1.6

For a long time now I have been thinking about and planning to do something which I now undertake with the Lord's help, because I judge that it should not be put off: to go back over my small works, whether in books or in letters or in sermons, with a kind of judicial severity, and to mark what displeases me as if with a censor's pen. For no one but an imprudent person will dare to reproach me because I reproach my own errors. But if he says that I ought not to have said things which later displeased even me, he speaks the truth and takes my side. For he is a critic of the same things of which I too am a critic. Indeed, I should not be bound to criticize them if I had been right to say them.

But let each person take what I am doing as he will; in this matter, at any rate, I had to keep in view that saying of the apostle where he says: “If we judged ourselves, we would not be judged by the Lord.” That too which is written, “In much speaking you will not escape sin,” terrifies me greatly; not because I have written much, or because many things which were not dictated have nevertheless been taken down as said by me (for far be it that speaking of necessary things should be counted as much speaking, however great the number and length of the words in which they are said); but I fear this saying of holy Scripture because from so many disputations of mine many things can without doubt be gathered which, if not false, certainly seem, or are even proved, unnecessary. And whom among his faithful did Christ not terrify when he said: “Every idle word that a man speaks, he will render account for it on the day of judgment”? Hence his apostle James too says: “Let every man be quick to hear but slow to speak”; and in another place: “Do not become many teachers, my brothers, knowing that you receive a greater judgment. For in many things we all stumble. If anyone does not stumble in word, he is a perfect man.” I do not claim this perfection for myself even now, when I am an old man; how much less when as a young man I had begun to write or to speak before congregations, and so much was granted to me that wherever it was necessary to speak to the people in my presence, I was very rarely allowed to keep silent and listen to others and be “quick to hear but slow to speak.” It remains, then, that I should judge myself under the one Master whose judgment on my stumbles I desire to escape. Now I think that people become “many teachers” when they hold different and mutually opposed opinions. But when all say the same thing and say what is true, they do not depart from the teaching of the one true Master. They stumble, however, not when they say many things of his, but when they add their own. For thus from much speaking they fall into false speaking as well.

I have decided to write these things so that I may send them out into the hands of people from whom I cannot recall the works I have already published in order to correct them. Nor indeed do I pass over the things I wrote while still a catechumen, when I had given up the earthly hope I used to cherish but was still puffed up by the habits of secular literature; for these too have come to the knowledge of copyists and readers and are read with profit, provided some things are pardoned or, if they are not pardoned, at least the errors are not clung to. Therefore let whoever is going to read these things not imitate me in my errors but in my progress toward the better. For perhaps whoever reads my small works in the order in which they were written will find how I made progress by writing. So that he may be able to do this, I will take care in this work, as far as I can, that he may know that order.

When, then, I had left behind both what I had gained in the desires of this world and what I wished to gain, and had betaken myself to the leisure of the Christian life, before I was baptized I first wrote Against the Academics, or On the Academics, in order to remove from my mind, with whatever arguments I could, their arguments, which in many people produce despair of finding the truth and forbid the wise man to assent to anything or to approve anything at all as if it were clear and certain, since to them everything seems obscure and uncertain; for these arguments troubled me. This was done through the Lord's mercy and help. But in these same three books of mine I am not pleased that I so often spoke of fortune, although I did not intend some goddess to be understood by this name, but the chance outcome of things, whether in the goods or evils of our body or in external ones. Hence also those words which no religion forbids us to say: “by chance,” “perchance,” “perhaps,” “perhaps,” “fortuitously”; all of which, however, must be referred back to divine providence. I did not keep silent about this there either, when I said: “For perhaps what is commonly called fortune is governed by a certain hidden order, and we call nothing else chance in events but that whose reason and cause is secret.” I did indeed say this; nevertheless I regret having named fortune there in that way, since I see that people have a very bad habit: where they ought to say, “God willed this,” they say, “Fortune willed this.” As for what I said in one place, “It has been so arranged, whether in accordance with our merits or by the necessity of nature, that the harbor of philosophy does not receive the divine mind clinging to mortal things,” and so on: either neither of these two should have been said, since even so the sense could be complete, or it was enough to say “in accordance with our merits,” as is true of the misery drawn from Adam, without adding “or by the necessity of nature,” since the hard necessity of our nature arose from the merit of preceding iniquity. Likewise where I said there, “Nothing at all is to be worshiped, and everything is to be cast away that is seen by mortal eyes, that any sense touches,” words should have been added so that it read “that any sense of the mortal body touches”; for there is also a sense of the mind. But at that time I was speaking in the manner of those who call nothing sense except that of the body, and nothing sensible except what is bodily. So wherever I have spoken in this way, ambiguity has not been avoided sufficiently, except among those for whom this way of speaking is customary. Again I said: “What do you think living happily is, other than living according to what is best in man?” And explaining a little later what I had called best in man, I said: “Who would doubt that nothing is best in man other than that part of the soul to which, as it rules, all the other things that are in man should be obedient? And this, lest you ask for another definition, can be called mind or reason.” This is indeed true, for as far as man's nature is concerned, there is nothing better in him than mind and reason; but whoever wishes to live happily ought not to live according to it. Otherwise he lives according to man, whereas one must live according to God in order to be able to arrive at happiness; and to attain it our mind must not be content with itself but must be made subject to God. Again, in replying to the one with whom I was disputing, I said: “Here you are plainly not mistaken; and I would gladly wish that this be an omen for you for the rest.” Although this was said not seriously but in jest, I would nevertheless rather not have used that word. For I do not recall having read “omen” either in our sacred writings or in the discourse of any churchly disputant, although “abomination,” which is found constantly in the divine books, is named from it. In the second book, that so-called fable about philocaly and philosophy, that they are sisters born of the same parent, is altogether silly and insipid. For either what is called philocaly is concerned only with trifles, and for that reason is in no way a sister of philosophy; or, if this name is to be honored because, translated into Latin, it means love of beauty, and the true and highest beauty is that of wisdom, then in incorporeal and supreme things philocaly is the very same as philosophy, and they are in no way like two sisters. In another place, when I was treating of the soul, I said: “it will return to heaven more safely.” I would have said “go” rather than “return” more safely, because of those who think that human souls, fallen or cast down from heaven for the merits of their sins, are thrust into these bodies. But I did not hesitate to say it, because I said “to heaven” as though I were saying “to God,” who is its author and creator; just as blessed Cyprian did not hesitate to say: “For since we have the body from the earth and the spirit from heaven, we ourselves are earth and heaven.” And in the book of Ecclesiastes it is written: “Let the spirit return to God, who gave it”; which must of course be understood in such a way as not to contradict the apostle, who says that those not yet born had done nothing good or evil. Without controversy, then, a kind of original region of the soul's happiness is God himself, who did not indeed beget it from himself, but created it from nothing else, as he created the body from earth. For as regards its origin, by which it comes to be in the body, whether it comes from that one man who was created first, when man was made a living soul, or whether individual souls are similarly made for individual people, I did not know then and I still do not know. In the third book I said: “If you ask what I think, I believe that man's highest good is in the mind.” I would have said more truly “in God”; for the mind enjoys him as its highest good in order to be happy. Nor am I pleased with what I said: “It is permitted to swear by every divine thing.” Likewise what I said of the Academics, that they knew the truth, whose likeness they called the truth-like, and that I called this very truth-like thing, which they approved, false, was not rightly said, for two reasons: either because what was in some way like something true would be false, since in its own kind this too is true; or because they approved those false things which they called truth-like, whereas they approved nothing and asserted that the wise man approves nothing. But because they also called this truth-like thing the probable, it came about that I spoke of them so. The very praise, too, with which I extolled Plato or the Platonists or the Academic philosophers more than was fitting for ungodly men has not undeservedly displeased me, especially since Christian teaching must be defended against their great errors. That too which I said, that in comparison with the arguments of Cicero which he used in his Academic books, my own arguments, by which I refuted those arguments with most certain reasoning, were trifles, although it was said in jest and rather as irony, nevertheless ought not to have been said. This work begins thus: “O that, Romanianus, a man fitted to himself…”

It happened that I wrote the book On the Happy Life not after the books On the Academics but in between them. It arose on the occasion of my birthday and was completed in a three-day discussion, as it itself indicates clearly enough. In this book it was agreed among us who were inquiring together that there is no happy life except the perfect knowledge of God. What displeases me in it is that I attributed more than I should have to Mallius Theodorus, to whom I wrote the book, although he was a learned and Christian man; and that I often named fortune there too; and that I said that in the time of this life the happy life dwells in the mind of the wise man alone, however his body may be, whereas the apostle hopes for perfect knowledge of God, that is, knowledge than which none greater is possible for man, in the future life, which alone is to be called the happy life, where the body too, incorruptible and immortal, will be subject to its spirit without any trouble or resistance. Indeed, I found this book incomplete in our copy, lacking not a little, and it was copied in that state by some brothers; and until now I had not found a complete copy with anyone from which to correct it when I reviewed these things. This book begins thus: “If to the harbor of philosophy…”

During the same time, between those books written on the Academics, I also wrote two books On Order, in which a great question is treated: whether the order of divine providence contains all things, good and evil. But when I saw that the matter was difficult to understand and that those with whom I was dealing could hardly be brought by discussion to grasp it, I preferred to speak of the order of study, by which one can progress from bodily things to incorporeal ones. But in these books too I am displeased by the word “fortune,” often inserted; and that I did not add “of the body” when I named the senses of the body; and that I attributed much to the liberal disciplines, of which many saints are quite ignorant, while some who know them are not saints; and that I mentioned the Muses as though they were some goddesses, although in jest; and that I called wonder a vice; and that I said that philosophers not endowed with true piety shone with the light of virtue; and that I commended two worlds, one sensible, the other intelligible, not as the view of Plato or the Platonists but as my own, as though the Lord too had wished to signify this, because he did not say, “My kingdom is not of the world,” but, “My kingdom is not of this world”; whereas it may be found to have been said by some figure of speech, and, if another world was signified by the Lord Christ, that world can more fittingly be understood in which there will be a new heaven and a new earth, when what we pray when we say, “Your kingdom come,” is fulfilled. Nor did Plato indeed err in this, that he said there is an intelligible world, if we are willing to attend not to the word, which is unusual in church usage for that matter, but to the thing itself. For he called intelligible world the very eternal and unchangeable reason by which God made the world. Whoever denies that this exists must say that God made irrationally what he made, or that when he was making it, or before he made it, he did not know what he was making, if the reason for making it was not with him. But if it was, as it was, Plato seems to have called it the intelligible world. Yet we would not use that name if we were already sufficiently instructed in church literature. Nor am I pleased that, after saying, “The greatest care must be given to the best morals,” I soon added, “For otherwise our God will not be able to hear us; but those who live well he will hear most easily.” For this was said as though God does not hear sinners; which was indeed said in the Gospel, but by one who did not yet know Christ, by whom he had already been enlightened in body. Nor am I pleased that I gave so much praise to the philosopher Pythagoras that whoever hears or reads it might think I believed there were no errors in the Pythagorean teaching, whereas there are many, and fundamental ones. This work begins thus: “The order of things, Zenobius…”

Meanwhile I also wrote two volumes, following my interest and love of searching out the truth by reason concerning the things I most desired to know, questioning myself and answering myself, as though we were two, Reason and I, when I was alone. Hence I named this work Soliloquies. But it remained unfinished; yet in such a way that in the first book it was inquired, and it appeared somehow, what sort of person he should be who wishes to grasp wisdom, which is certainly grasped not by the sense of the body but by the mind; and at the end of the book it is concluded by a kind of reasoning that the things that truly are are immortal. In the second book, however, the immortality of the soul is discussed at length and not brought to a conclusion. In these books I do not approve what I said in the prayer: “God, who willed that only the pure should know the truth.” For one can reply that many who are not pure also know many true things. For it is not defined here what the truth is which only the pure can know, nor what knowing is. In what is set down there, “God, whose kingdom is the whole world, which sense does not know,” if God is to be understood, words should have been added so as to say, “which the sense of the mortal body does not know.” If, however, the world which sense does not know is meant, it is rightly understood as the one that is to be in the new heaven and the new earth; but here too those words should have been added, so as to say “the sense of the mortal body.” But I was still speaking in that manner in which sense is properly called that of the body; nor need I constantly repeat what I have already said about this above, but it should be remembered wherever this expression is found in my writings. And where I said of the Father and the Son, “He who begets and he whom he begets is one,” I should have said “are one,” as the Truth himself says openly: “I and the Father are one.” Nor am I pleased that I said that in this life, when God is understood, the soul is already happy, unless perhaps in hope. Likewise what I said, “One does not arrive at union with wisdom by one way,” does not sound well, as though there were another way besides Christ, who said, “I am the way.” This offense to religious ears should therefore have been avoided, although that universal way is one thing, and the other ways are another, of which we also sing in the Psalm: “Make your ways known to me, Lord, and teach me your paths.” In what was said there, that “these sensible things are to be utterly fled,” care should have been taken that we not be thought to hold that opinion of Porphyry, the false philosopher, in which he said that every body must be fled. I did not, however, say “all sensible things” but “these,” that is, corruptible ones. But it should rather have been said thus: but such sensible things will not exist in the new heaven and the new earth of the age to come. Likewise in one place I said that those educated in the liberal disciplines without doubt dig them out, buried in forgetfulness, within themselves by learning, and in a way unearth them again. But this too I disapprove. For it is more credible that even those unskilled in certain disciplines answer truly about them when they are well questioned, because the light of eternal reason is present to them, as far as they can grasp it, where they behold these unchangeable truths; not because they once knew them and have forgotten, as seemed to Plato and such as he. Against their opinion I have argued in the twelfth book On the Trinity, as far as the occasion was given by the work undertaken. This work begins thus: “As I was turning over many and various things with myself…”

After the books of the Soliloquies, having now returned to Milan from the country, I wrote a book On the Immortality of the Soul. I had meant it to be a kind of memorandum for myself toward finishing the Soliloquies, which had remained unfinished; but somehow, against my will, it got into people's hands and is counted among my small works. In the first place it is so obscure because of the intricacy and brevity of its reasonings that it wearies even my own attention when it is read, and is hardly understood even by me. Then, thinking of nothing but human souls, I said in one argument of this book: “Nor can there be learning in one who learns nothing”; and likewise in another place I said: “Nor does knowledge embrace anything except what belongs to some discipline”; and it did not come to my mind that God does not learn disciplines and yet has knowledge of all things, in which there is also foreknowledge of the future. Of the same kind is what was said there, that there is no life with reason for anyone except the soul; for God's life is not without reason, since in him there is both the highest life and the highest reason. And a little before that I said that what is understood is always of the same kind, whereas the soul too is understood, and it certainly is not always of the same kind. As for what I said, that the soul cannot be separated from eternal reason because it is not joined to it spatially, I certainly would not have said it if I had already then been so instructed in the sacred writings as to remember what is written: “Your sins separate between you and God.” From this one is given to understand that there can also be said to be a separation of things that were joined not spatially but incorporeally. What I meant by saying, “If the soul lacks a body, it is not in this world,” I have not been able to recall. For do not the souls of the dead either lack a body or are they not in this world? As if the underworld were not in this world! But since lacking a body can be in a good sense, perhaps by the name “body” I meant bodily plagues. If that is so, I used the word too unusually. That too was rashly said: that from the highest being the form of the body is bestowed through the soul, by which it exists, to whatever degree it exists; that the body therefore subsists through the soul and exists by the very fact that it is animated, whether universally, like the world, or individually, like each animal within the world. All this was said quite rashly. This book begins thus: “If learning is anywhere…” During the same time, when I was at Milan about to receive baptism, I also tried to write books on the disciplines, questioning those who were with me and who were not averse to studies of this kind, wishing to arrive, or to lead others, through bodily things to incorporeal ones by certain fixed steps, as it were. But of these I was able to complete only the book on grammar, which I later lost from our book-cupboard, and six volumes on music, as far as concerns that part of it which is called rhythm. But I wrote those same six books after I was baptized and had returned from Italy to Africa; at Milan I had only begun that discipline. Of the other five disciplines begun there in the same way, on dialectic, on rhetoric, on geometry, on arithmetic, and on philosophy, only the beginnings remained, and even these we lost, but I think that some people have them.

Now baptized, when I was at Rome and could not bear in silence the boasting of the Manichaeans about their false and deceitful continence or abstinence, by which, to deceive the unskilled, they even set themselves above true Christians, with whom they are not to be compared, I wrote two books, one On the Morals of the Catholic Church and the other On the Morals of the Manichaeans. In the one On the Morals of the Catholic Church, where I set down the testimony in which we read, “Because for your sake we are afflicted all the day long, we are regarded as sheep,” the faultiness of our copy deceived me, since I had little memory of the Scriptures, in which I was not yet practiced. For other copies of the same translation do not have “for your sake we are afflicted” but “for your sake we are afflicted with death,” which others have said in one word, “we are put to death.” The Greek books show that this is more correct, from which language the translation of the ancient divine Scriptures into Latin was made according to the Seventy translators. And yet I said many things in discussing these words, that is, “for your sake we are afflicted,” which in substance I do not reject as false; yet I certainly did not demonstrate from these words at any rate the agreement of the Old and New Scriptures which I wished to show. I have said how the error crept up on me; but from other testimonies I showed the same agreement sufficiently. And a little later I set down a testimony from the book of Wisdom according to our copy, in which it was written, “For wisdom teaches sobriety and justice and virtue,” and on these words I discussed things that are indeed true, but found on the occasion of a faulty text. For what is truer than that wisdom teaches the truth of contemplation, which I thought was signified by the name of sobriety, and uprightness of action, which I wished to be understood by the two others, justice and virtue? Whereas the more correct copies of the same translation have: “For she teaches sobriety and wisdom and justice and virtue.” For by all these the Latin translator named those four virtues which are commonly on the lips of philosophers, calling temperance sobriety, giving prudence the name of wisdom, expressing fortitude by the word virtue, and translating justice alone by its own name. And much later we found in Greek copies that these four virtues are called by their own names in that same book of Wisdom, as the Greeks name them. Likewise what I set down from the book of Solomon, “Vanity of those who are vain, said Ecclesiastes,” I had indeed read in many copies, but the Greek does not have this; it has rather “vanity of vanities,” which I saw later, and I found that those Latin copies are more correct which have “of vanities,” not “of those who are vain.” Yet whatever I discussed on the occasion of this faulty text is shown by the things themselves to be true. As for what I said, “Let us first love with full charity the very one whom we wish to know, that is, God,” it would have been better said “sincere” than “full,” unless perhaps it is thought that the love of God will not be greater when we see face to face. So let it be taken as though “full” were said of a love than which there can be none greater as long as we walk by faith; for it will be fuller, indeed fullest, but by sight. Likewise what I said of those who help the needy, that they are called merciful even if they are so wise that they are no longer troubled by any pain of mind, is not to be taken as though I had laid down that there are such wise men in this life; for I did not say “since they are” but “even if they are.” In another place, where I said, “Now when this human love has nourished and strengthened the soul clinging to its breasts, it has become fit for following God; when his majesty has begun to disclose itself as much as suffices for the soul while it is an inhabitant of this earth, such ardor of charity is born and such a fire of divine love rises up that, with all vices burned away, it becomes clear enough in the sanctified and purified man how divinely it was said, ‘I am a consuming fire,’” the Pelagians may think that I said this perfection can be attained in this mortal life. But let them not think so. For the ardor of charity, become fit for following God and so great that it consumes all vices, can be born and grow in this life; but to accomplish that for which it is born, so that no vice is in a man, it cannot as a consequence do here, although so great a thing is accomplished by that same ardor of charity where and when it can be accomplished; so that, just as the washing of regeneration cleanses from the guilt of all the sins which human birth has drawn and wickedness has contracted, so that perfection may cleanse from the stain of all the vices without which human weakness cannot exist in this world. So too must be taken what the apostle said: “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, cleansing her by the washing of water in the word, that he might present to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind.” For here is the washing of water in the word by which the church is cleansed. But since the whole church says, as long as it is here, “Forgive us our debts,” it is certainly not here without spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind; yet from what it receives here it is led to that glory and perfection which is not here. In the other book, whose title is On the Morals of the Manichaeans, what I said, “The goodness of God so orders all things that fall away that they are where they can most fittingly be, until by ordered movements they return to that from which they fell away,” is not to be taken as though all things return to that from which they fell away, as seemed to Origen, but all those things which do return. For those who will be punished in everlasting fire will not return to God, from whom they fell away; although all things that fall away are so ordered that they are where they can most fittingly be, since those who do not return are also most fittingly in punishment. In another place I said: “Hardly anyone doubts that beetles come from the mud which they roll into a ball and bury,” whereas many doubt whether this example is true, and many have not even heard of it. This work begins thus: “In other books I think we have sufficiently dealt…”