Retractations 1.15–1.21

During the same time of my presbyterate I held a disputation against a certain Fortunatus, a presbyter of the Manichaeans, who had lived a very long time at Hippo and had led so many astray that because of them he was glad to live there. This disputation, as we argued, was taken down by stenographers as though official proceedings were being drawn up; for it has both the day and the consul. I took care to put it into a book to be preserved. The question treated there is where evil comes from: I asserted that man's evil arose from the free choice of the will, while he strove to argue that the nature of evil is coeternal with God. But on the following day he at last confessed that he could find nothing to say against us; he did not indeed become a Catholic, but he did leave Hippo. In this book, what I said, “I say that the soul was made by God, like all the other things made by God, and that among the things which almighty God made, the chief place was given to the soul,” I said in such a way that I wished it to be understood generally of the whole rational creation; although in the holy Scriptures the angels may not be found to be called souls either at all or easily, as we have already said above. Likewise in another place I said: “I say that there is no sin if one does not sin by one's own will.” There I wished to be understood that sin which is not also the punishment of sin; for of such punishment I said what had to be said elsewhere in the same disputation. And likewise I said: “so that afterward that same flesh which tormented us with punishments while we remained in sin may be made subject to us in the resurrection and may not shake us with any adversity to keep us from observing the law and the divine commandments.” This is not to be taken as though in that kingdom of God, where we shall have an incorruptible and immortal body, the law and commandments are to be taken from the divine Scriptures; but because there the eternal law will be kept most perfectly, and we shall hold those two commandments of loving God and neighbor not in reading but in that perfect and everlasting love itself. This work begins thus: “On the fifth day before the Kalends of September, in the second consulship of Arcadius Augustus and Rufinus, men of senatorial rank, consuls.”

During the same time, before the bishops who ordered me to do so and who were holding a plenary council of all Africa at Hippo Regius, I gave a discourse On Faith and the Creed. At the most earnest urging of some of them who loved me more intimately, I put this discourse into a book. In it the matters themselves are discussed, but without that arrangement of words which is handed over to the competentes to be held in memory. In this book, when the resurrection of the flesh was being treated, I said: “The body will rise, according to the Christian faith, which cannot be deceived. To anyone to whom this seems incredible, he looks at what the flesh is like now but does not consider what it will be like; because at that time of angelic change it will no longer be flesh and blood but only body,” and the rest which I discussed there about the change of earthly bodies into heavenly bodies, since the apostle, when he spoke of this, said, “Flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God.” But whoever takes these words in such a way as to think that the earthly body, such as we now have, is changed by the resurrection into a heavenly body in such a way that there will be neither these members nor the substance of flesh, must without doubt be corrected, being reminded of the Lord's body, which after the resurrection appeared in the same members, not only to be seen with the eyes but also to be handled with the hands, and which confirmed even by word that it had flesh, saying, “Handle and see, for a spirit does not have bones and flesh as you see me have.” Hence it is clear that the apostle did not deny that the substance of the flesh will be in the kingdom of God, but called by the name of flesh and blood either those who live according to the flesh or the corruption of the flesh itself, which then will certainly not exist. For after he had said, “Flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God,” he immediately added, as is rightly understood, by way of explaining what he had said: “Nor will corruption possess incorruption.” On this matter, difficult to persuade unbelievers of, whoever reads the last book of The City of God will find that I have discussed it carefully, as far as I could. This book begins thus: “Since it is written…”

After I had composed two books On Genesis against the Manichaeans, since I had treated the words of Scripture according to their allegorical meaning, not daring to explain such great secrets of natural things according to the letter, that is, how what is said there could be taken according to its proper historical sense, I wished to test what I could do in this most laborious and difficult work as well. But in explaining the Scriptures my apprenticeship collapsed under the weight of so great a burden, and before I had finished even one book I rested from a labor I could not sustain. But in this work, while I was reviewing my small works, that very book, unfinished as it was, came into my hands; which I had not published and had decided to destroy, since I later wrote twelve books whose title is On Genesis according to the Letter. Although in them many things seem to have been sought rather than found, still this book is in no way to be compared with them. Yet after I had reviewed this one too, I wished it to remain, so that it might be an indication, not useless, I think, of my first beginnings in unfolding and searching the divine oracles; and I wished its title to be On Genesis according to the Letter, an Unfinished Book. For I found that it had been dictated up to these words: “Yet the Father is Father, and the Son is nothing other than Son; for even when he is called the likeness of the Father, although this shows that no unlikeness intervenes, still the Father is not alone if he has a likeness.” After this I repeated the words of Scripture to be considered and treated again: “And God said, Let us make man in our image and likeness.” Up to this point I had dictated the book and left it unfinished. What follows there I thought should be added when I reviewed it; but even so I did not finish it, but left it unfinished even with this addition. For if I had finished it, I would at least have discussed all the works and words of God that belong to the sixth day. In this book it seemed to me superfluous to note the same things that displease me, or to defend what may displease others because they are not well understood. Rather, I briefly advise that those twelve books which I made long afterward be read, and that this one be judged by them. This one, then, begins thus: “About the obscure things of nature, which we perceive to have been made by God, the almighty craftsman, one must treat not by asserting but by inquiring.”

During the same time I wrote two volumes On the Lord's Sermon on the Mount according to Matthew. In the first of them, because of what is written, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God,” I said: “Wisdom befits the peacemakers, in whom all things are already set in order and no movement is rebellious against reason, but all things obey the spirit of man, since he himself also obeys God.” It rightly troubles one how I said this. For it cannot happen to anyone in this life that the law warring against the law of the mind should be altogether absent from his members; since even if the spirit of man resisted it in such a way as not to slip into any consent to it, it would not on that account cease to war against it. This, then, which was said, that no movement is rebellious against reason, can rightly be taken to mean that the peacemakers are now doing this by taming the lusts of the flesh, so that at some time they may come to that fullest peace. Accordingly, what I added in another place, when, repeating the same saying of the Gospel, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God,” I said, “And these things can indeed be fulfilled in this life, as we believe they were fulfilled in the apostles,” is to be taken thus: not that we should think that in the apostles, while living here, no movement of the flesh warred against the spirit, but that these things can be fulfilled here to the extent that we believe they were fulfilled in the apostles, that is, in the measure of human perfection, as much perfection as there can be in this life. For it was not said, “These things can be fulfilled in this life, for we believe they were fulfilled in the apostles,” but it was said, “as we believe they were fulfilled in the apostles,” so that they are fulfilled as they were fulfilled in them, that is, with a certain perfection of which this life is capable, not as they are to be fulfilled in that fullest peace which we hope for, when it will be said, “Where, O death, is your strife?” As for the testimony which I inserted in another place, “For God does not give the Spirit by measure,” I had not yet understood that it is more truly taken as said properly of Christ. For if the Spirit were not given to other human beings by measure, Elisha would not have asked for double what there had been in Elijah. Likewise, when I was explaining what is written, “One iota and one stroke will not pass from the law until all things come to pass,” I said that nothing else can be understood than a forceful expression of perfection. Here it is rightly asked whether this perfection can be understood in such a way that it is nevertheless true that no one who already uses the choice of the will lives here without sin. For by whom can the law be fulfilled down to a single stroke, except by one by whom all the divine commandments are done? But among those same commandments is also what we are commanded to say, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors,” a prayer which the whole church says until the end of the world. All the commandments, then, are counted as done when whatever is not done is pardoned. Indeed, what the Lord says, “For whoever breaks one of these least commandments and teaches so,” and so on, up to the place where he says, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven,” I have explained much better and more fittingly in other, later sermons of mine; it would take too long to go over it here. But the sense there comes to this: that their righteousness is greater than that of the scribes and Pharisees who say and do. For of the scribes and Pharisees the Lord himself says in another place: “For they say and do not do.” We also understood better afterward what is written: “Whoever is angry with his brother.” For the Greek copies do not have “without cause,” as it is set down here, although the sense is the same. For we said that one must consider what it is to be angry with one's brother, since he is not angry with his brother who is angry with his brother's sin. Whoever, then, is angry with his brother and not with the sin is angry without cause. Likewise what I said, “This is to be understood also of father and mother and the other bonds of blood, that in them we should hate what the human race has received as its lot by being born and dying,” sounds as though these relationships would not have existed if no one had died, had no sin of human nature gone before; a view I have already disapproved above. For there would certainly have been kinships and relations by marriage even if, with no original sin existing, the human race had increased and multiplied without death. And therefore the question why the Lord commanded us to love our enemies, while in another place he commands us to hate both parents and children, is to be solved otherwise, not as it was solved here, but as we have often solved it since: namely, that we should love our enemies so as to win them for the kingdom of God, and hate in our relatives whatever hinders them from the kingdom of God. Likewise concerning the commandment by which it is forbidden to put away a wife except for sexual immorality, I did indeed discuss it here most scrupulously. But what sexual immorality the Lord wishes to be understood, on account of which it is permitted to put away a wife, whether that which is condemned in illicit intercourse, or that of which it is said, “You have destroyed everyone who commits fornication away from you,” which certainly includes the former too (for he does not fail to commit fornication away from the Lord who takes the members of Christ and makes them members of a prostitute), must be thought over and inquired into again and again. Nor in so great a matter, and one so difficult to sort out, do I want the reader to think that this discussion of ours ought to suffice him; but let him also read the things written later, whether our own or those of others better considered and treated, or let him himself, if he can, examine with a more watchful and intelligent mind the things here which can rightly trouble him. Not that every sin is fornication, for God does not destroy every sinner, since he daily hears his saints saying, “Forgive us our debts,” whereas he destroys everyone who commits fornication away from him; but how far this fornication is to be understood and limited, and whether it is permitted to put away a wife on account of it too, is a most obscure question. That it is permitted, however, on account of that which is committed in illicit intercourse, is no question at all. And where I said that this was permitted, not commanded, I did not attend to another Scripture which says: “He who keeps an adulteress is foolish and ungodly.” Nor indeed would I say that that woman was to be counted an adulteress even after she heard from the Lord, “Neither will I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more,” if she heard this obediently. In another place I defined the sin of a brother unto death, of which the apostle John says, “I do not say that one should pray for that,” in this way: “I think that the sin of a brother unto death is when, after coming to know God through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, anyone assails the brotherhood and is driven by the firebrands of envy against the very grace by which he was reconciled to God.” I did not indeed assert this, since I said that I thought it; but I should have added, “if he ends this life in such a wicked perversity of mind,” since one must certainly not despair of anyone, however wicked, who is still in this life; nor is it imprudent to pray for one of whom one does not despair. Likewise in the second book I said: “No one will be allowed to be ignorant of the kingdom of God when his Only-begotten comes from heaven, not only intelligibly but also visibly, in the Lordly man, to judge the living and the dead.” But I do not see whether he who is “the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,” is rightly called the Lordly man; for who in his holy household cannot be called a Lordly man? And indeed I read this, so as to say it, in some Catholic commentators on the divine oracles. But wherever I have said it, I wish I had not said it. For I saw afterward that it should not be said, although it can be defended with some reason. Likewise what I said, “For hardly anyone's conscience can hate God,” I do not see should have been said. For there are many of whom it was said: “the pride of those who hate you.” In another place, in what I said, that the Lord said, “Sufficient for the day is its own evil,” because necessity itself compelled us to take food, which I think was called evil because it is penal for us (for it belongs to this frailty which we merited by sinning), I did not consider that bodily food was given to the first human beings too in paradise, before they had merited this punishment of death by sinning. For they were immortal in a body not yet spiritual but animal in such a way that in that kind of immortality they nevertheless used bodily food. Likewise what I said, “the glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, which God chose for himself,” I did not say because it is already such in every respect now, although there is no doubt that it was chosen for this, that it may be such when Christ, its life, appears; for then it too will appear with him in glory, and because of that glory the church has been called glorious. Likewise what the Lord says, “Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you,” I thought should be explained laboriously as to how these three differ from one another; but it is far better to refer them all to most urgent asking. For he shows this where he concluded them all with one word, saying, “How much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him”; for he did not say, “to those who ask, seek, and knock.” This work begins thus: “The sermon which the Lord spoke…”

Wishing also that the case of the Donatists should come to the knowledge of the humblest common people and of the altogether unskilled and unlettered, and should stick in their memory as far as we could bring it about, I made a psalm for them to sing, arranged by the Latin letters, but only as far as the letter V; such psalms they call abecedarian. I left out the last three, but in their place I added a final section, as a kind of epilogue, as though Mother Church were addressing them. The refrain too, which is sung in response, and the prologue of the case, which we also wished to be sung, are not in the order of the letters; for their order begins after the prologue. I did not want it done in any kind of verse, lest metrical necessity should force me to use words less familiar to ordinary people. This psalm begins thus: “All you who rejoice in peace, now judge what is true”; which is its refrain.

During the same time of my presbyterate I also wrote a book Against the Letter of Donatus, who was the second bishop of the party of Donatus at Carthage after Maiorinus. In that letter he argues that the baptism of Christ is to be believed to exist only in his communion. We contradict him in this book. In it I said in one place of the apostle Peter that the church was founded on him as on a rock. This sense is also sung by the mouths of many in the verses of the most blessed Ambrose, where he says of the cock: “At its crowing he, the rock of the church, washed away his fault.” But I know that afterward I very often explained what was said by the Lord, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church,” in such a way that it should be understood as upon him whom Peter confessed when he said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”; and thus Peter, named from this rock, would represent the person of the church, which is built upon this rock and has received the keys of the kingdom of heaven. For it was not said to him, “You are the rock,” but, “You are Peter.” But the rock was Christ; and Simon, having confessed him, as the whole church confesses him, was called Peter. Of these two opinions, let the reader choose which is the more probable. In another place I said: “God seeks no one's death.” This is to be taken thus: that man brought death on himself by deserting God, and brings it on himself who does not return to God, according to what is written, “God did not make death.” But this too is no less true: “Life and death are from the Lord God”: life, that is, from him as giver, death from him as avenger. Likewise, as for what I said, that Donatus, whose letter I was refuting, had asked the emperor to give bishops from overseas as judges between himself and Caecilianus, it is found more probable that not he but another Donatus, though of the same schism, did this. He, however, was not the Donatist bishop of Carthage but the one from Casae Nigrae, who nevertheless was the first to commit that wicked schism at Carthage. Nor indeed did Donatus of Carthage establish that Christians should be rebaptized, which I had believed he established when I was replying to his letter; nor did he himself remove from the middle of a sentence of the book of Wisdom words necessary to the matter, where, though it is written, “He who is baptized from a dead body and touches it again, what does his washing profit?” he set it down as though it were written, “He who is baptized from a dead body, what does his washing profit?” For we learned afterward that very many copies, though African ones, had it so, without “and touches it again” in the middle, even before the party of Donatus existed. Had I known this already, I would not have said so much against him as a thief or violator of the divine oracle. This book begins thus: “I had heard from you yourself in person…”

At the same time there came into my hands certain disputations of Adimantus, who had been a disciple of Mani, which he wrote against the Law and the Prophets, trying to show that the writings of the Gospels and the apostles are contrary to them. I answered him, setting down his words and giving my reply to them. This I contained in one volume, and in it I answered certain questions not once but twice, because what I had answered had been lost, and was found when I had already answered again. Some of these same questions I solved in popular sermons in church; some I have still not answered; some remained which were passed over because of other, more pressing matters, forgetfulness also being added to the pile. In this book I said: “For that people which received the Old Testament was held under certain shadows and figures of things before the coming of the Lord, according to a wonderful and most orderly distribution of times; yet in it there is so great a proclamation and foretelling of the New Testament that no precepts and promises, however lofty and divine, are found in the Gospel and the apostolic teaching which are lacking in those old books too.” But I should have added “almost,” and said: “so that almost no precepts and promises, however lofty and divine, are found in the Gospel and the apostolic teaching which are lacking in those old books too.” For what is it that the Lord says in the Gospel sermon on the mount, “You have heard that it was said to those of old, this; but I say to you, this,” if he himself commanded nothing more than was commanded in those old books? Then, we do not read that the kingdom of heaven was promised to that people among the things which were promised in the law given through Moses on Mount Sinai, which is properly called the Old Testament, and which the apostle says was prefigured by Sarah's slave woman and her son; but there the New was also prefigured, by Sarah herself and her son. Accordingly, if the figures are examined, all things are found prophesied there which have been presented, or are awaited to be presented, through Christ. Yet because of certain precepts which are not figurative but literal, which are found not in the Old but in the New, it would be said more cautiously and modestly that almost none, rather than none, are here which are not also there; although there are there those two commandments concerning the love of God and of neighbor, to which all things, the legal, the prophetic, the evangelical, and the apostolic, are most rightly referred. Likewise what I said, “The name of sons is taken in three ways in the Scriptures,” was said without enough consideration. For without doubt we passed over some other ways, as one is called a son of Gehenna, or an adoptive son, which are certainly said neither according to nature nor according to teaching nor according to imitation. Of these three ways, as though they were the only ones, we gave examples: according to nature, as the Jews are sons of Abraham; according to teaching, as the apostle calls sons those whom he taught the Gospel; according to imitation, as we are sons of Abraham, whose faith we imitate. As for what I said, “When it has put on incorruption and immortality, it will no longer be flesh and blood,” it was said that there will be no flesh in the sense of fleshly corruption, not in the sense of substance, according to which the Lord's body too was called flesh after the resurrection. In another place I said: “Unless one changes his will, he cannot do good.” That this is placed in our power he teaches in another place, where he says: “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad.” This is not against the grace of God which we preach. For it is in man's power to change his will for the better; but that power is nothing unless it is given by God, of whom it is said, “He gave them power to become sons of God.” For since that is in our power which we do when we will, nothing is so much in our power as the will itself. But the will is prepared by the Lord. In this way, then, he gives the power. So too must be understood what I said afterward, that it is in our power to merit either to be grafted in by the goodness of God or to be cut off by his severity; because nothing is in our power except what we attain by our will; and when that will is prepared by the Lord as strong and powerful, the work of piety becomes easy, even what was difficult and impossible. This book begins thus: “Concerning what is written: In the beginning God made heaven and earth.”