Retractations 2.1–2.24

Of the books which I produced as a bishop, the first two are to Simplicianus, prelate of the church of Milan, who succeeded the most blessed Ambrose, On Various Questions; two of these, from the letter of the apostle Paul to the Romans, I put into the first book. The first of them is on what is written, “What then shall we say? Is the law sin? By no means,” up to where he says, “Who will deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” In it I explained those words of the apostle, “The law is spiritual, but I am carnal,” and the rest, by which the flesh is shown to fight against the spirit, as though a man were being described who is still under the law, not yet placed under grace. For long afterward I recognized that those words can also be those of a spiritual man, and this more probably. The later question in this book runs from the place where he says, “And not only so, but also Rebecca, having conceived from one act of intercourse with Isaac our father,” up to where he says, “Unless the Lord of hosts had left us seed, we would have become like Sodom and been made like Gomorrah.” In solving this question I labored indeed on behalf of the free choice of the human will, but the grace of God conquered; and I could arrive only at this, that the apostle is understood to have said with the clearest truth: “For who distinguishes you? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?” The martyr Cyprian too, wishing to show this, defined the whole of it in his very heading, saying: “That we must boast in nothing, since nothing is our own.” In the second book the other questions are treated and solved according to our slender ability; they are all about the Scripture which is called Kingdoms. The first of them is on what is written, “And the Spirit of the Lord leapt upon Saul,” whereas elsewhere it is said, “And an evil spirit of the Lord was upon Saul.” In explaining this I said: “Although what one wills is in each one's power, what one can do is not in anyone's power.” This was said because we do not say that anything is in our power except what happens when we will; where first and foremost is the willing itself. For the will itself is present without any interval of time when we will; but this power too for living well we receive from above, when the will is prepared by the Lord. The second question is how it was said, “I repent that I appointed Saul king.” The third: Whether the unclean spirit that was in the woman with a divining spirit could bring it about that Samuel was seen by Saul and spoke with him. The fourth, on what is written, “King David went in and sat before the Lord.” The fifth, on what Elijah said, “O Lord, witness of this widow with whom I dwell in her house, you have done evil in killing her son.” This work begins thus: “Most welcome indeed and most pleasant…”

The book Against the Letter of Mani which They Call the Foundation refutes only its beginning; but notes were attached at other parts of it, where it seemed fit, by which the whole letter is overturned and by which I might be reminded if I ever had leisure to write against the whole of it. This book begins thus: “The one true almighty God…”

The book On the Christian Combat was written in a humble style for brothers unskilled in the Latin language, containing the rule of faith and precepts for living. In it, what is set down, “Nor let us listen to those who deny that there will be a resurrection of the flesh and recall what the apostle Paul says, ‘Flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God,’ not understanding what the same apostle says, ‘This corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal put on immortality’; for when this has been done, it will no longer be flesh and blood but a heavenly body,” is not to be taken as though there will be no substance of flesh; but the apostle is to be understood to have called by the name of flesh and blood the very corruption of flesh and blood, which certainly will not exist in that kingdom, where the flesh will be incorruptible. Yet it can also be understood otherwise, so that we take the apostle to have called the works of flesh and blood “flesh and blood,” and those who persistently love these as not going to possess the kingdom of God. This book begins thus: “The crown of victory…”

When I found that the books On Christian Teaching were unfinished, I preferred to finish them rather than pass on to reviewing other things while leaving them so. I therefore completed the third, which had been written up to the place where the testimony from the Gospel is recalled about the woman who hid leaven in three measures of flour until the whole was leavened. I also added the last book and completed that work in four books, of which the first three help toward understanding the Scriptures, while the fourth helps toward how what we understand is to be set forth. In the second book, indeed, concerning the author of the book which many call the Wisdom of Solomon, that Jesus Sirach also wrote it, as he wrote Ecclesiasticus, I learned afterward that this is not as certain as I said, and I found it altogether more probable that he is not its author. Where I said, “With these forty-four books the authority of the Old Testament is concluded,” I called it the Old Testament according to the custom by which the church now speaks; but the apostle does not seem to call anything the Old Testament except what was given on Mount Sinai. And in what I said, that in matters of chronology Saint Ambrose had solved the question, as though Plato and Jeremiah had been contemporaries, my memory deceived me. For what that bishop said on this matter is read in his book which he wrote On the Sacraments, or On Philosophy. This work begins thus: “There are certain precepts…”

There are two books of mine whose title is Against the Party of Donatus. In the first of these books I said that I was not pleased that schismatics should be forcibly constrained to communion by the pressure of any secular power. And truly at that time it did not please me, since I had not yet learned by experience either how much evil their impunity would dare or how much the diligence of discipline could contribute to changing them for the better. This work begins thus: “Since the Donatists to us…”

The thirteen books of my Confessions praise the just and good God for both my evil and my good deeds, and stir up the human mind and heart toward him. At least as far as I am concerned, they did this in me when they were being written, and they do it when they are read. What others think of them is for them to see; but I know that they have pleased and still please many brothers greatly. From the first to the tenth they were written about me; in the other three, about the holy Scriptures, from what is written, “In the beginning God made heaven and earth,” up to the rest of the sabbath. In the fourth book, when I was confessing the misery of my soul at the death of a friend, saying that our soul had in some way been made one from two, I said: “And therefore perhaps I was afraid to die, lest he whom I had loved so much should wholly die.” This seems to me a kind of light declamation rather than a serious confession, although this ineptness is somewhat tempered by the addition of “perhaps.” And in the thirteenth book, what I said, that the firmament was made between the upper spiritual waters and the lower bodily waters, was said without enough consideration; but the matter is very hidden. This work begins thus: “Great are you, Lord.”

Against Faustus the Manichaean, who blasphemed the Law and the Prophets and their God and the incarnation of Christ, and said that the Scriptures of the New Testament, by which he is refuted, had been falsified, I wrote a great work, setting out his words and giving my replies. There are thirty-three disputations; and why should I not call them books too? For although some of them are short, still they are books. One of them, however, in which we defend the life of the patriarchs against his accusations, is of such length as hardly any of my books. In the third book, then, when I was solving the question how Joseph could have had two fathers, I said indeed that he was born of one and adopted by the other; but I ought also to have stated the kind of adoption. For what I said sounds as though the other father adopted him while living. But the law adopted sons even for the dead, commanding that the brother of a man who died without sons should marry his wife and raise up offspring from her for his dead brother. This indeed gives a readier explanation there of the two fathers of one man. Now the brothers in whose case this happened were uterine brothers, so that when one of them, called Heli, died, the other, that is, Jacob, of whom Matthew tells that Joseph was begotten, married his wife; but he begot him for his uterine brother, whose son Luke says Joseph was, not of course by begetting but adopted according to the law. This is found in the writings of those who wrote on this matter while the memory of it was fresh after the Lord's ascension. For Africanus did not keep silent even the name of that woman who bore Jacob, the father of Joseph, by her first husband Matthan, who was the father of Jacob and the grandfather of Joseph according to Matthew, and who by her later husband Melchi bore Heli, whose adopted son Joseph was. This, indeed, I had not yet read when I was answering Faustus; but I could not doubt that it could happen through adoption that one man had two fathers. In the twelfth and thirteenth books Noah's second son, who was called Ham, was discussed as though he had been cursed by his father in himself, and not in his son Canaan, as Scripture shows. In the fourteenth, things were said of the sun and the moon as though they had feeling and therefore tolerated their vain worshipers; although the words there can be taken as transferred from the animate to the inanimate by the figure of speech which in Greek is called metaphor, as it is written of the sea that it roars in its mother's womb wishing to come forth, though it certainly has no will. In the twenty-ninth I said: “Far be it that there should be any shamefulness in the members of the saints, even the genital ones. They are indeed called unseemly, because they do not have that appearance of beauty which the members placed in view have.” But in other writings of ours afterward a more probable reason was given why the apostle too called them unseemly, namely because of the law in the members warring against the law of the mind, which came about from sin, not from the first establishment of our nature. This work begins thus: “There was a certain Faustus…”

Against a certain Manichaean named Felix I held a disputation in church, with the people present, over two days. For he had come to Hippo to sow the same error; he was one of their teachers, though unskilled in liberal letters, yet more cunning than Fortunatus. These are church proceedings, but they are counted among my books. There are, then, two books, in the second of which the free choice of the will was discussed, whether for doing evil or good. But we were not compelled by any necessity to discuss more carefully the grace by which those become truly free of whom it is written, “If the Son sets you free, then you will be truly free,” since such was the man with whom we were dealing. This work begins thus: “In the sixth consulship of Honorius Augustus, on the seventh day before the Ides of December.”

The book On the Nature of the Good is against the Manichaeans. In it is shown that God is an unchangeable nature and the highest good, and that from him are the other natures, whether spiritual or bodily, and that all of them, insofar as they are natures, are good; and what evil is and where it comes from; and how many evils the Manichaeans place in the nature of the good, and how many goods in the nature of evil, natures which their error has invented. This book begins thus: “The highest good, than which there is nothing higher, is God.”

A certain Secundinus, not one of those whom the Manichaeans call the elect but one of those they call hearers, whom I did not know even by sight, wrote to me as if a friend, respectfully reproaching me for attacking that heresy in writing, and warning me not to do so, and rather urging me to follow it, with a defense of it and a censure of the Catholic faith. I answered him; but since I did not put at the head of that work who was writing to whom, it is to be counted not among my letters but among my books. His letter too is written out there at the beginning. The title of this volume of mine is Against Secundinus the Manichaean. In my judgment I place it above all that I have been able to write against that plague. This book begins thus: “The goodwill toward me which appears in your letter…”

Meanwhile a certain Hilarus, a man of tribunician rank, a Catholic layman, angered for some reason against the ministers of God, as often happens, was tearing apart with abusive criticism, wherever he could, the custom which had then begun at Carthage of saying hymns from the book of Psalms at the altar, either before the offering or while what had been offered was being distributed to the people, asserting that it ought not to be done. At the bidding of the brothers I answered him, and the book is called Against Hilarus. This book begins thus: “Those who say that mention of the Old Testament…”

There are certain explanations of some passages from the Gospel according to Matthew, and others likewise according to Luke; the former have been gathered into one book, the latter into another. The title of this work is Questions on the Gospels. But why only those passages of the aforesaid evangelists were explained which are contained in these books of mine, and what they are, my prologue indicates clearly enough, with the questions themselves attached and numbered, so that whoever wishes may find what he wants to read by following the numbers. In the first book, then, in what is set down, that the Lord told of his passion privately to two disciples, a faulty copy deceived us; for “twelve” is written, not “two.” In the second, not wishing to explain how Joseph, whose wife the Virgin Mary was called, could have had two fathers, I said that the explanation commonly given, that a brother married the wife of his dead brother to raise up offspring for him according to the law, was weak, because the law commanded that the one born should take the name of the dead man. This is not true; for the law directed that the dead man's name, as it was said, should avail to this end, that he should be called his son, not that he should be called by what the dead man was called. This work begins thus: “This work has not been written in such a way…”

Whether the book whose title is Notes on Job should be counted as mine, or rather as belonging to those who gathered them into one body, as they could or would, copied from the margins of the manuscript, I could not easily say. For they are pleasant to the very few who understand them, who nevertheless must be put off by not understanding many things, since in many places not even the words being explained have been copied in such a way that it is clear what is being explained; then, so much obscurity has followed the brevity of the sentences that the reader can hardly bear it, and must pass over very many things not understood; finally, I found the work itself so faulty in our copies that I could not correct it, nor would I wish it said to have been published by me, except that I know the brothers have it, which could not be denied to their zeal. This book begins thus: “And his works were great upon the earth.”

There is also one book, On Catechizing the Uninstructed, marked with this very title. In this book, where I said, “Nor did the angel who, with the other spirits his attendants, abandoned obedience to God through pride and became the devil, do any harm to God, but to himself; for God knows how to set in order souls that abandon him,” it would more fittingly be said “spirits that abandon him,” since the subject was angels. This book begins thus: “You asked me, brother Deogratias…”

I wrote fifteen books On the Trinity, which God is, over a number of years. But when I had not yet finished twelve of them and was keeping them longer than those who greatly desired to have them could bear, they were taken from me less corrected than they should and could have been when I would have wished to publish them. After I learned this, since other copies of them had remained with us, I had decided not to publish them myself any more, but to keep them so, and to tell in some other work of mine what had happened to me concerning them. However, at the urging of the brothers, since I could not resist them, I corrected them as far as I thought they should be corrected, completed them, and published them, adding at the head of them a letter which I wrote to the venerable Aurelius, bishop of the church of Carthage, in which, as in a prologue, I set out what had happened, what I had wished to do by my own intention, and what I had done under the compulsion of the brothers' charity. In the eleventh of these books, when I was treating of the visible body, I said: “Therefore to love it is to be estranged.” This was said with reference to that love by which something is so loved that the one who loves it thinks himself happy in enjoying it. For it is not to be estranged to love bodily beauty for the praise of the creator, so that each one, enjoying the creator himself, may be truly happy. And likewise in the same book, where I said, “Nor do I remember a four-footed bird, because I have not seen one; but I very easily behold the image of one, when to some winged form such as I have seen I add two other feet such as I have likewise seen,” in saying this I could not recall the four-footed flying creatures which the law mentions. For it does not count among the feet the two hind legs with which locusts leap, which it calls clean, and so distinguishes them from unclean flying creatures of the kind that do not leap with those legs, such as beetles. For all flying creatures of this kind are called four-footed in the law. In the twelfth book, the explanation, as it were, of the apostle's words, where he says, “Every sin that a man commits is outside the body,” does not satisfy me; nor do I think that what was said, “But he who commits fornication sins against his own body,” is to be understood as though he does this who does something in order to obtain the things which are perceived through the body, so as to place in them the end of his good. For this embraces far more sins than that fornication which is committed by illicit intercourse, of which the apostle clearly was speaking when he said this. This work, apart from the letter which was afterward added at its head, begins thus: “The one who is going to read what we discuss about the Trinity…”

During the same years in which I was dictating the books On the Trinity little by little, I also wrote others with continuous labor, inserting them into the intervals of those; among them are four books On the Agreement of the Evangelists, because of those who slander them as disagreeing. The first of these books was written against those who either honor Christ as supremely wise, or pretend to honor him, and therefore will not believe the Gospel, because it was not written by him but by his disciples, who they think attributed divinity to him in error, so that he would be believed to be God. In this book, that the nation of the Hebrews began from Abraham is indeed credible, so that the Hebrews might seem to have been called as it were Abrahei; but they are more truly understood to have been named from him who was called Heber, as it were Heberei; on this matter I have discussed enough in the sixteenth book of The City of God. In the second book, when I was treating of the two fathers of Joseph, I said that he was begotten by one and adopted by the other; but I should have said “adopted for the other.” For he had been adopted according to the law, as is more to be believed, for the dead man, since the one who begot him had married his mother, the wife of his dead brother. Likewise where I said, “But Luke ascends to David himself through Nathan, through which prophet God expiated his sin,” I should have said “through a prophet of which name,” lest it be thought that the same man was meant, whereas it was another, although he too was called so. This work begins thus: “Among all the divine authorities…”

In certain books Against the Letter of Parmenian, bishop of the Donatists at Carthage and successor of Donatus, a new question is treated and solved: whether in unity, through communion in the same sacraments, the wicked contaminate the good; and it is argued how they do not contaminate them, for the sake of the church spread throughout the whole world, against which they made a schism by slandering it. In the third of these books, when it was being discussed how what the apostle says is to be taken, “Remove the evil from among yourselves,” what I said, that each should remove the evil from himself, is not to be so understood, but rather so: that the evil man is to be removed from among good men, which is done by church discipline, as the Greek language shows, where it is written without ambiguity, so that “the evil man” is understood, not “this evil”; although I replied to Parmenian according to that other understanding as well. This work begins thus: “Many things indeed elsewhere against the Donatists…”

Against the Donatists, who try to defend themselves by the authority of the most blessed bishop and martyr Cyprian, I wrote seven books On Baptism, in which I taught that nothing is so effective for refuting the Donatists, and for altogether shutting their mouths so that they may not defend their schism against the Catholic Church, as the letters and the conduct of Cyprian. But wherever in these books I mentioned the church not having spot or wrinkle, it is not to be taken as though it already is so, but as being prepared to be so, when it too will appear glorious. For now, because of certain ignorances and weaknesses of its members, it has reason for the whole of it to say daily, “Forgive us our debts.” In the fourth book, when I said that suffering can take the place of baptism, I set down the example of that thief as not suitable enough, because it is uncertain whether he was not baptized. In the seventh book, concerning the vessels of gold and silver placed in a great house, I followed the sense of Cyprian, who took these as among the good, and the wooden and earthen ones among the wicked, referring to the former what is said, “some indeed for honor,” and to the latter what is said, “but some for dishonor.” But I approve rather what I afterward found or noticed in Tyconius: that in both kinds some are to be understood as for honor, not of course only the golden and silver ones, and again in both kinds some as for dishonor, not of course the wooden and earthen ones only. This work begins thus: “In those books which against the letter of Parmenian…”

When we were dealing with the party of Donatus in many and frequent disputations, a certain layman, then one of them, brought to the church some things said or written against us in a few would-be testimonies which they think support their cause. I replied very briefly. The title of this little book is Against What Centurius Brought from the Donatists, and it begins thus: “You say that, because it is written in Solomon, ‘Abstain from strange water…’”

Two books whose title is To the Inquiries of Januarius contain many discussions about sacraments, whether those which the church observes universally or partially, that is, not equally in all places; yet not all could be mentioned, but the inquiries were answered sufficiently. The first of these books is a letter, for it has at its head who is writing to whom; but this work is counted among the books because the following one, which does not have our names, is much longer and many more things are treated in it. In the first, then, what I said of the manna, that it tasted in the mouth to each according to his own will, does not occur to me how it can be proved, except from the book of Wisdom, which the Jews do not receive into canonical authority. This, however, could have happened to the faithful, not to those who murmured against God, who certainly would not have desired other food if the manna had tasted to them as they wished. This work begins thus: “To what you asked me…”

What compelled me to write a book On the Work of Monks was this necessity: when monasteries had begun to exist at Carthage, some supported themselves with their own hands, obeying the apostle; but others wished to live on the offerings of the devout in such a way that, doing no work from which they might either have or supply what they needed, they thought and boasted that they were rather fulfilling the precept of the Gospel where the Lord says, “Look at the birds of the air and the lilies of the field.” Hence even among laypeople of a lower way of life, but fervent in zeal, tumultuous disputes had begun to arise by which the church was disturbed, some defending one view, some another. Added to this was the fact that some of those who said that one should not work wore their hair long. Hence the contentions of those quarreling on one side and of those fighting, as it were, on the other increased with partisan zeal. Because of this the venerable old man Aurelius, bishop of the church of that same city, ordered me to write something on this, and I did. This book begins thus: “To your command, holy brother Aurelius…”

The heresy of Jovinian, by making the merit of consecrated virgins equal to conjugal chastity, had such force in the city of Rome that it was said to have cast down into marriage even some nuns, about whose chastity no suspicion had arisen before, chiefly by this argument, when he pressed them, saying: “Are you then better than Sarah, better than Susanna or Anna?” and by recalling the other women most highly commended by the testimony of holy Scripture, than whom they could not think themselves better or even equal. In this way he also broke down the holy celibacy of holy men by recalling and comparing the married fathers. The holy church that is there resisted this monstrosity most faithfully and most strongly. But these arguments of his had remained in the little talks and whisperings of certain people, which no one dared to urge openly. Yet it was necessary to meet even poisons creeping in secret with the ability which the Lord gave, especially since it was being boasted that Jovinian could not be answered with praise of marriage but only with disparagement of it. For this reason I published a book whose title is On the Good of Marriage. In it the great question about the propagation of children before human beings merited death by sinning, since intercourse seems to be a matter of mortal bodies, was put off; but in other writings of ours afterward it is explained sufficiently, I think. I also said in one place: “For what food is to the health of the body, intercourse is to the health of the race, and neither is without carnal pleasure; which, however, when moderated and restrained by temperance and brought to natural use, cannot be lust.” This was said because lust is not the good and right use of lust. For just as it is evil to use good things badly, so it is good to use evil things well; I have discussed this matter more carefully elsewhere, especially against the new heretics, the Pelagians. What I said of Abraham, “By this obedience that father Abraham, who was not without a wife, was prepared to be without his only son, and that killed by himself,” I do not sufficiently approve. For it is rather to be believed that he believed that his son, if he had been killed, would soon be restored to him by being raised up, as is read in the letter to the Hebrews. This book begins thus: “Since each human being is a part of the human race…”

After I wrote On the Good of Marriage, it was expected that I would write On Holy Virginity; nor did I delay, and I showed in one volume, as well as I could, how great a gift of God it is and with how great humility it must be guarded. This book begins thus: “We recently published a book On the Good of Marriage.”

During the same time I wrote twelve books on Genesis, from the beginning until Adam was sent out of paradise and a flaming sword was set to guard the way to the tree of life. When eleven books had been completed up to this point, I added a twelfth, in which paradise was discussed more carefully. The title of these books is On Genesis according to the Letter, that is, not according to allegorical meanings but according to the proper sense of events that happened. In this work more things were sought than found, and of those that were found fewer were established, while the rest were set down as though still to be inquired into. These books I indeed began later than those On the Trinity but finished earlier; therefore I have now gone over them in the order in which I began them. In the fifth book, and wherever in those books I set down concerning the seed to which the promise was made that it was ordained through angels in the hand of a mediator, the apostle does not have it so, as I afterward saw in more correct copies, especially Greek ones. For it was said of the law, which many Latin copies have as though said of the seed, through the translator's error. In the sixth book, what I said, that Adam lost by sin the image of God according to which he was made, is not to be taken as though none remained in him, but that it was so deformed that it needed reforming. In the twelfth, concerning the underworld, I think I ought rather to have taught that it is under the earth than to have given a reason why it is believed or said to be under the earth, as though it were not so. This work begins thus: “All divine Scripture is twofold…”