Sermons to the People 240.1–241.8

During these days, as Your Love recalls, the Gospel readings concerning the Lord's resurrection are solemnly read. For all four evangelists could keep silent neither about his passion nor about his resurrection. For since the Lord Jesus did many things, not all wrote everything; but one wrote these things, another those; yet in the fullest agreement of truth. The evangelist John even mentions that many things were done by the Lord Jesus Christ which none of them wrote down. As many things were done as had to be done then; as many were written as had to be read now. But to show that all four evangelists, in what they all say together and do not pass over, that is, about the passion or the resurrection of Christ, did not say things contrary to one another, is a very laborious task. For some have thought them contrary to one another, when they themselves were contrary to their own souls. And so those who were able, with the Lord's help, took pains to show that they are not contrary to one another. But, as I said, if I were to show you this and wanted to treat these matters before the people, the multitude of hearers would be overwhelmed with weariness before the knowledge of the truth was revealed. But I know your faith, that is, the faith of this whole multitude, and of those who are not here today and yet are faithful; I know that their faith is so certain of the truthfulness of the evangelists that they do not need my exposition. Whoever knows how to defend these things is more learned, not more faithful. He has faith, and he has the ability to defend the faith. Another does not have the ability, the resources, and the learning to defend the faith, but has the faith itself. But he who knows how to defend the faith is needed by those who waver, not by those who believe. For in the defense of faith the wounds of doubt or unbelief are healed. Whoever defends the faith, then, is a good physician; but in you there is no disease of unbelief. Why should it matter that he knows how to cure what you do not have? He knows how to apply the remedy, but in you there is no fault. “Those who are well do not need a physician, but those who are sick.”

Yet it is not my plan to keep silent with you about what can be said rather readily in the time available and heard rather conveniently. About the resurrection itself, of which the Lord gave an example beforehand in himself so that we might know what we ought to hope for also in our bodies at the end of the world, many people argue many things; some faithfully, some unfaithfully. Those who argue faithfully want to know more carefully what to answer unbelievers; but those who argue unfaithfully argue against their own souls, disputing against the power of the Almighty and saying: How can it come about that a dead man rises? I say, God is the one who does it; and you say, It cannot come about? I do not say, Give me a Christian, give me a Jew; but give me a pagan, a worshipper of idols, a slave of demons, who does not say that God is almighty. He can deny Christ; he cannot deny God almighty. Him, then, whom you believe (I speak as if to a pagan), him whom you believe to be God almighty, I say is the raiser of the dead. If you say, It cannot come about, you detract from the Almighty. But if you believe him almighty, why do you reject me when I say these things?

If we said that the flesh will rise so as to hunger, thirst, fall sick, toil, and be subject to corruption, you would rightly not believe it. For this flesh now has these necessities or calamities. And whence this? The cause is sin. In one we sinned, and we have all been born to corruption. The cause of all our evils is sin. For not without cause do men suffer these evils. God is just, God is almighty: we would in no way suffer these things if we did not deserve them. But since we were in punishments, to which we came from our sins, our Lord Jesus Christ willed to be in our punishments without sins of his own. By bearing punishment without fault, he cancelled both fault and punishment. He cancelled the fault by forgiving sins; he cancelled the punishment by rising from the dead. This he has promised, and he has willed us to walk in hope: let us persevere, and we shall come to the reality. The flesh will rise incorruptible; the flesh will rise without defect, without deformity, without mortality, without burden, without weight. What now torments you will afterwards be your adornment. If, then, it is good to have an incorruptible body, why do we want to despair that God will do this?

The philosophers of this world, who were great and learned and better than the rest, held that the human soul is immortal; and not only held it, but defended it with all the arguments they could, and left their defenses written for posterity. The books exist; they are read. I said that these philosophers were better than others in comparison with worse ones, because there were philosophers who said that when a man has died no life remains for him afterwards. These first are certainly to be preferred to such. And in the point in which they were better, though straying from the truth in many things, yet in the point in which they were superior, they had drawn near to the truth. These, then, who held and said that human souls are immortal, sought the causes of men's evils, of the miseries and errors of mortals, as far as men could; and they said, as best they could, that certain sins had gone before in another life, by the merit of which sins these bodies were deserved as a prison for the soul. Then they were asked what will be afterwards, when a man has died. And here they wore out their wits; and they labored as much as they could to give men an account, either for themselves or for others: and they said that the souls of men who live badly, defiled by the worst morals, when they leave their bodies, are at once rolled back into other bodies and pay here the penalties that we see; but that the souls which have lived well, when they leave their bodies, go to the heights of the heavens, rest there in the stars and these conspicuous lights, or in some heavenly and hidden recesses, forget all past evils, and are again delighted to return to bodies and come back to suffer these things. This, then, is the difference they wanted between the souls of sinners and the souls of the righteous: that the souls of sinners, they say, are rolled back into other bodies immediately, as soon as they leave their bodies; but that the souls of the righteous are long at rest, yet not forever, but are again delighted by bodies, and after so much righteousness fall from the highest heavens into these evils. This is what very great philosophers said. More than this the philosophers of this world could find nothing; of whom our Scripture says: “God has made foolish the wisdom of this world.” If its wisdom, how much more its folly? If the wisdom of the world is folly with God, how far from God is the true folly of the world? Yet there is a certain folly of this world which reaches God, of which the Apostle says: “Since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of preaching to save those who believe.” And he says: “For Jews ask for signs and Greeks seek wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, to Gentiles folly, but to those called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” The Lord Christ came, the wisdom of God: heaven thunders; let the frogs be silent. What the Truth said, that is true. What it said, that the human race is in evil because of sin, is plain. But whoever believes in the Mediator, who was established in the middle between God and men (between the just God and unjust men, the just man in the middle, having humanity from below and righteousness from above, and therefore in the middle, one thing from here and one from there: for if he had both from there he would be there, and if both from here he would lie with us and not be in the middle), whoever, then, believes in the Mediator and lives faithfully and well will indeed leave the body and be at rest; but afterwards he will receive the body back, not for torment but for adornment, and will live with God forever. There is nothing to delight him to return, because he has his body with him. So, dearly beloved, since today I have set before you what even the philosophers of this world say, whose wisdom God has rejected as true folly, tomorrow, with the Lord's help, we shall be able to set out the rest.

The resurrection of the dead is the faith proper to Christians. This, that is, the resurrection of the dead, Christ our head showed in himself and gave us as an example of faith, so that the members might hope for in themselves what went before in the head. Yesterday we pointed out to you that the wise men of the Gentiles, whom they call philosophers, the most excellent among them, examined nature and came to know the maker from his works. They did not hear the prophets, they did not receive the law of God; but God, as it were in silence, spoke to them by the works of the world itself, and the beauty of the world invited them to seek the maker of things; nor could they bring their minds to think that heaven and earth stand without an author. Of these the blessed apostle Paul speaks thus: “The wrath of God,” he says, “is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness.” What is “against all ungodliness”? Not only against the Jews, who received God's law and offended the lawgiver; but against all the ungodliness of the Gentiles too the wrath of God is revealed from heaven. And lest anyone say, Why, since they did not receive the law? he went on to add: “And unrighteousness of those who hold down the truth in iniquity.” Now you answer: What truth? For they did not receive the Law, they did not hear a prophet. Hear what truth: “Because what is known of God,” he says, “is manifest among them.” Whence manifest? Hear further: “For God has manifested it to them.” If you still ask, How did he manifest it to those to whom he did not give the law? hear how: “For his invisible things, from the founding of the world, are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made.” “His invisible things,” that is, the invisible things of God; “from the founding of the world,” that is, from when he founded the world; “are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made”: those are clearly seen, being understood through these. “His eternal also”: I say the Apostle's words, I weave them in: “his eternal power also and divinity”; understand: are clearly seen, being understood. “So that they are without excuse.” Why without excuse? “Because, knowing God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks.” He did not say, not knowing God, but knowing.

Knowing from what? From the things he made. Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air spread out and diffused, question the beauty of the sky, question the order of the stars, question the sun brightening the day with its radiance, question the moon tempering the darkness of the following night with its splendor, question the animals that move in the waters, that stay on the land, that fly in the air; souls hidden, bodies visible; visible things to be ruled, invisible things ruling: question these. They all answer you: See, look, we are beautiful. Their beauty is their confession. Who made these beautiful changeable things, if not the unchangeable Beautiful? Finally, in man himself, so that they might be able to understand and know God, creator of the whole world: in man himself, I say, they questioned these two, body and soul. They questioned what they themselves bore: they saw the body, they did not see the soul. But they saw the body only by means of the soul. For they saw through the eye, but within was the one who looked through the windows. Finally, when the dweller departs, the house lies fallen; when the one who ruled departs, what was ruled falls (cadit); and because it falls, it is called a cadaver. Are not the eyes there intact? Even if they are open, they see nothing. The ears are there, but the hearer has moved out. The instrument of the tongue remains, but the musician who moved it has gone away. They questioned, then, these two: the body that is seen and the soul that is not seen; and they found that what is not seen is better than what is seen: the hidden soul better, the visible flesh worse. They saw these things, they looked at them, they examined both, and they found both changeable in man himself. The body is changeable through the ages of life, through decay, through nourishment, through refreshment, through failing, through life, through death. They passed on to the soul, which they had surely grasped as better, and they marveled that it was invisible: they found it too changeable: now willing, now unwilling; now knowing, now not knowing; now remembering, now forgetting; now fearing, now daring; now advancing into wisdom, now falling away into folly. They saw it too to be changeable, and they passed beyond it too; for they were seeking something unchangeable.

So, then, they came to know God who made, through the things that he made. “But they did not honor him as God or give thanks”: the Apostle himself says it. “But they became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools.” By claiming for themselves what they had received, they lost what they held. Calling themselves great, as it were, they became fools. And to what did they come? “And they changed,” he says, “the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man.” He means idols. And it was a small thing to make an idol in the form of a man and to bind the craftsman to the likeness of his own work: that was a small thing. But beyond that, what? “And of birds, and of four-footed beasts, and of serpents.” For all these dumb and irrational animals they, great sages as it were, made gods for themselves. I used to rebuke you when you worshipped the image of a man: what shall I do to you when you worship the image of a dog, the image of a snake, the image of a crocodile? They came even to these things. As high as they were carried up in seeking, so deep were they sunk in falling. For what falls from a height is plunged the deeper.

These, then, as I reminded you yesterday, inquired what comes afterwards, that is, what comes after this life. They inquired as men: but how would they find it, since they were men? They did not have God's teaching; they did not hear the prophets: they could not find it; they conjectured. I reported their conjectures to you yesterday. Bad souls go out, they say, and because they are unclean they are at once rolled back into other bodies; the souls of the wise and righteous go out, and because they have lived well they fly to heaven. Well done, well done: you have found them a fine place: flying, they reach heaven. And what there? There they will be, they say, and they will rest with the gods: their seats will be the stars. You have found them no bad dwelling: at least leave them there; do not throw them down. But, they say, after long ages, having utterly forgotten their old miseries, they begin to want to return to bodies; and it will delight them to come, and they come again to suffer these things, to endure these things, to forget God, to blaspheme God, to follow the pleasures of the body, to fight against lusts. They come to these miseries: from where, and to where? Tell me why! Because they forget. If they forget all evils, let them forget also the delight of the flesh. This alone they remembered, to their harm, from which they fell. They come: why? Because it delights them to dwell again in bodies. How does it delight them, except through memory, because they once dwelt there? Wipe out the whole memory, and perhaps you will leave wisdom remaining: let nothing remain that calls them back.

One of their own authors shuddered at this, the one to whom it was shown, or rather who brought in a father in the underworld showing it to his son. For nearly all of you know it; and would that few of you knew it. But few of you know it from books, many from the theaters: that Aeneas descended to the underworld, and his father showed him the souls of great Romans who were to come into bodies; Aeneas himself was terrified and said: “O father, are we to think that some souls go from here up to the sky, sublime, and return again to sluggish bodies?” Are we to believe, he says, that they go to heaven and come back again? The son understood better than the father explained. He rebuked the desire of souls wanting to return again to bodies. He called it a dread desire, he called them wretched; and he did not blush to say so. To this, philosophers, you have brought it: that souls are purified, reach the highest purity, and through that very purity forget everything, and through forgetting their miseries return to the miseries of bodies. Tell me, I beg you: even if these things were true, would it not be better not to know them? Even if they were true, I say, though without doubt they are false, because they are foul: would it not be better not to know them? Or will you perhaps tell me: You will not be wise if you do not know these things? Why should I know them? Can I be better now than I shall be then in heaven? If in heaven, when I shall be better and more perfect, I shall forget all that I have learned here, and being better there I shall not know these things, let me not know them now. You say that one dwelling in heaven forgets everything: let me be ignorant of all these things on earth. Then, I ask you, do these souls in heaven know that they will suffer again the miseries of this life, or do they not know? Choose what you will. If they know that they will suffer such great miseries, how are they happy while thinking of their miseries to come? How are they happy where they are without security? But I see what you choose: you will say, They do not know. So you praise this ignorance there, which you do not let me have now, teaching me on earth what you say I shall not know in heaven. They do not know, you say. If they do not know and do not think they will suffer, they are happy by erring. For what they will suffer, they think they will not suffer: and what is thinking falsely but erring? They will be happy, then, by error; they will be blessed, not by eternity but by falsity. May the Truth free us, so that we may be truly happy: for the word of our Redeemer is not idle: “If the Son sets you free, then you will be truly free.” For he himself said: “If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Then hear something worse, something to be lamented or rather laughed at. Here, wise man, here, philosopher, that is, on earth (for example Pythagoras, Plato, Porphyry, and I know not who else of them), why do you philosophize? For the happy life, he says. When will you have this happy life? When I have left this body on earth, he says. So now a miserable life is led, but there is hope of a happy life; there a happy life is led, but there is hope of a miserable life. So the hope of our unhappiness is happy, and the hope of our happiness unhappy. Let us cast these things away, and either laugh because they are false or grieve because they are thought great. For these, my brothers, are the great ravings of great doctors. How much better do we hold the great mysteries of great saints! They say that souls purified, cleansed, and wise return out of love of bodies; that purified souls return to bodies out of love of bodies. Does a purified soul love like that? Is not that love a great filth?

But “all body is to be fled.” Their great later philosopher Porphyry, the fiercest enemy of the Christian faith, who lived already in Christian times, yet blushing at those very ravings and corrected in some part by Christians, said and wrote: “All body is to be fled.” “All,” he said, as if every body were a wretched chain on the soul. And certainly, if any body whatever is to be fled, there is no point in your praising the body to him and telling how, by God's teaching, our faith praises the body: since even the body we now have, though we have it as a punishment of sin, and “the body that decays weighs down the soul,” yet this body has its beauty, the arrangement of its members, the distinction of its senses, its upright stature, and other things at which those who consider them well are amazed. But that future body will be altogether incorruptible, altogether immortal, altogether agile and easy in moving. But Porphyry says: In vain do you praise the body to me; whatever the body may be, if the soul wants to be happy, all body is to be fled. This the philosophers say: but they err, they rave. I prove it quickly; I do not want to argue longer: because that which is set over must have something subject to it. For there are two things connected with each other, what is set over and what is subject. God is above all: to him all things are subject. And the soul, if it has some honor with God, must have something subject to it. But I do not want to argue longer on this: I read your books. You say that this world is a living being, that is, heaven, earth, seas, all the things that are huge bodies, elements immense on every side: all this, and the universal body that consists of all these elements, you say is a great living being, that is, it has its own soul, but does not have bodily senses, because there is nothing outside it that could be sensed; yet it has understanding, it cleaves to God; and the soul of the world itself is called Jupiter, or is called Hecate, that is, as it were the universal soul ruling the world and making it one living being. And you say that this same world is eternal, will always be, will have no end. If, then, the world is eternal, and the world remains without end, and the world is a living being, that soul is always held in the world: is all body, then, to be fled? What is it you were saying, “All body is to be fled”? I say that blessed souls will always have incorruptible bodies. You who say, “All body is to be fled,” kill the world. You tell me to flee from my flesh: let your Jupiter flee from heaven and earth.

What of the fact that we find the same Plato, the teacher of all these, in a certain book of his which he wrote about the constitution of the world, bringing in God as the maker of the gods, that is, making the heavenly gods, all the stars, the sun and the moon? He says, then, that God is the craftsman of the heavenly gods; he says that the stars themselves have intellectual souls, which understand God, and visible bodies, which are seen. I say this so that you may understand: this sun that you see would not be seen unless it were a body: this is true. No star or moon would be seen unless it were a body: he speaks the truth. That is why the Apostle too says: “There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies.” And it goes on: “The glory of the heavenly is one, and that of the earthly another.” And again, speaking of the glory of the heavenly bodies, the Apostle added and said: “The glory of the sun is one, the glory of the moon another, the glory of the stars another. For star differs from star in glory: so also is the resurrection of the dead.” You see that brightness has been promised to the bodies of the saints, and a different kind of brightness, because the merits of love are different. But what do they say? These stars that you see are indeed bodies, but they have their own intellectual souls, and they are gods. Meanwhile, about the bodies, since they are bodies, they speak the truth: but whether they have their own souls, why should I discuss that? Now let us come to the point. God is brought in by Plato himself addressing the gods whom he made of bodily and incorporeal substance, and among other things saying to them: “Since you have come into being, you cannot be immortal and indissoluble.” At this word they could have trembled at once. Why? Because they desired to be immortal and did not want to die. So, to take away their fear, he went on to add: “Yet you will not be dissolved, nor will any fates of death destroy you, nor will they be stronger than my will, which is a greater bond for your perpetuity than those by which you are bound together.” See, God gives security to the gods made by him: he gives them the security of immortality; he gives them security that they will not leave the globes of their bodies. Is all body, then, to be fled? As far as I think, they have been answered, as you could understand: as far as we too can speak, as far as the hour for the sermon permits, as far as your capacity allows, they have been answered. But what they themselves say, as they think, acutely about the resurrection of bodies, so that we may answer them too, it would be a great deal for me to tell you today. But since I have once promised you that this question of the resurrection of the flesh would be dealt with during these days, prepare your ears and hearts for tomorrow for what remains, with the Lord's help.