The Conferences 13.15–14.8

“By these things it is plainly shown that “the judgments of God are unsearchable and his ways past finding out,” by which he draws the human race to salvation. This we can also prove by the examples of calls in the gospels. For he chose Andrew and Peter and the other apostles, who were thinking nothing about the remedy of their salvation, by the free condescension of his grace. Zacchaeus, who faithfully stretched himself to see the Lord and made up for the shortness of his stature by the height of a sycamore, he not only receives but even honors with the blessing of his dwelling with him. Paul he draws unwilling and resisting. Another he commands to cling to him so inseparably that he does not grant him, when he asks, the briefest respite for his father’s burial. To Cornelius, persisting continually in prayers and alms, the way of salvation is shown as a kind of reward, and he is commanded by an angel’s visit to send for Peter and learn from him the words of salvation by which he would be saved with all his household. And so that manifold wisdom of God dispenses the salvation of men with manifold and unsearchable kindness, and imparts the grace of his bounty according to each one’s capacity, so that he chose to perform even his healings not according to the uniform power of his majesty but according to the measure of faith in which he found each one, or as he himself had apportioned to each. For the one who believed that the will of Christ alone was enough to cleanse his leprosy, he healed by the mere assent of his will, saying: “I will; be cleansed.” For another, who begged him to come and raise his dead daughter by the laying on of his hand, he entered his house and granted what was asked in the same way as he had hoped. For another, who believed that the whole of healing lay in his word of command and answered: “Only say the word, and my servant will be healed,” he restored the loosened limbs to their former strength by the command of his word, saying: “Go, and as you have believed, let it be done for you.” On others, who hoped for healing from touching the fringe of his garment, he bestowed the gifts of health abundantly. To some, when asked, he granted a cure for their diseases; to others he gave healing unasked; others he urged to hope, saying: “Do you want to be healed?” To others who did not hope he brought help of his own accord. The desires of some he examined before satisfying their will, saying: “What do you want me to do for you?” To another who did not know the way by which she might obtain what she desired, he kindly showed it, saying: “If you believe, you will see the glory of God.” Among some he poured out the power of healings so abundantly that the evangelist records of them: “And he healed all their sick”; but among others that immense abyss of Christ’s benefits was so blocked that it is said: “And Jesus could not do mighty works among them because of their unbelief.” And so the generosity of God is itself shaped according to the capacity of human faith, so that to one he says: “According to your faith be it done to you,” to another: “Go, and as you have believed, let it be done for you,” to another: “Let it be done for you as you will,” and again to another: “Your faith has saved you.”

“But let no one think that we have brought forward these things in an attempt to maintain that the sum of salvation lies in the power of our faith, according to the profane opinion of certain people who ascribe everything to free will and define that the grace of God is dispensed according to each one’s merit. On the contrary, we declare with an unqualified statement that the grace of God even overflows and sometimes passes beyond the narrow limits of human unbelief. We remember that this happened in the case of the official in the gospel, who, believing it easier for his sick son to be cured than for a dead one to be raised, hastily begged for the Lord’s presence, saying: “Lord, come down before my son dies.” Although Christ rebuked his unbelief with these words: “Unless you see signs and wonders, you do not believe,” yet he did not exercise the grace of his divinity according to the weakness of the man’s faith, nor did he drive out the deadly disease of fever by his bodily presence, as the man had believed, but by the word of his power, saying: “Go, your son lives.” We read that the Lord poured out this superabundance of grace also in the healing of the paralytic: when the man asked only for the cure of the sickness by which his body had been loosened, he first bestowed health on his soul, saying: “Take heart, son, your sins are forgiven.” After this, when the scribes did not believe that he could forgive men’s sins, to confound their unbelief he also bound together by the word of his power the man’s limbs loosened by paralysis, saying: “Why do you think evil in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, Your sins are forgiven, or to say, Rise and walk? But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins,” then he said to the paralytic, “Rise, take up your bed, and go into your house.” Likewise too in the case of the man who, lying in vain for thirty-eight years by the edge of the pool, had hoped for healing from the moving of its water, he showed the generosity of his spontaneous bounty. For when, wishing to stir him toward the remedies of health, he had said to him: “Do you want to be healed?” and the man complained of the lack of human help, saying: “I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is troubled,” pardoning his unbelief and ignorance, the Lord in his mercy restored him to his former health, not in the way he had hoped, but in the way the Lord willed, saying: “Rise, take up your bed, and go into your house.” And what wonder if such things are told as done by the Lord’s power, when divine grace has worked similar things through his servants too? For when Peter and John were entering the temple and the man lame from his mother’s womb, who knew nothing of walking, asked for alms, they gave him not the cheap coins that the sick man asked for but the use of walking, and enriched one who hoped for the comfort of the smallest coin with the reward of an unhoped-for health, as Peter said: “Silver and gold I have none; but what I have I give you: in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise and walk.”

“By these examples, then, which we have brought forward from the records of the gospels, we can observe most plainly that God secures the salvation of the human race in diverse and countless ways and by unsearchable paths: that he spurs on to greater ardor the course of some who are willing and thirsting, and compels others even against their will and unwilling; that sometimes he helps so that what he sees we usefully desire may be fulfilled, and sometimes inspires the very beginnings of holy desire, and grants either the beginning of a good work or perseverance in it. Hence it is that in our prayers we proclaim the Lord not only protector and savior but also helper and upholder. For in that he calls us first and draws us to salvation without our knowing and against our will, he is protector and savior; but in that he is accustomed to bring aid to us when we strive, and to receive and shelter us when we flee to him, he is called upholder and refuge. Finally, the blessed apostle, turning over in his mind this manifold generosity of God’s dispensation, and seeing that he had fallen into a kind of immense and boundless ocean of God’s kindness, exclaimed: “O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are the judgments of God and his ways past finding out! For who has known the mind of the Lord?” Whoever, then, believes that he can measure the depth of that inestimable abyss by human reason will be trying to make void the wonder at this knowledge before which so great a teacher of the Gentiles stood in awe. For whoever is confident that he can fully conceive in his mind or explain the dispensations of God by which he works salvation in men is certainly contradicting the truth of the apostle’s saying, and will declare with profane boldness that God’s judgments can be searched out and his ways traced. The Lord, then, wishing to express by a movement of human affection this dispensation and love of his which he deigns to give us with unwearied kindness, and finding in this creation no such feeling of love to which he could more worthily compare it, compared it to the most tender heart of a devoted mother; and he uses this example because nothing dearer can be found in human nature, saying: “Can a woman forget her infant, so as not to have pity on the son of her womb?” But not content with this comparison, he at once goes beyond it and adds: “And even if she should forget, yet I will not forget you.”

“By this it is plainly gathered by those who measure the greatness of grace or the small measure of human will, not with wordy talk but with experience as their guide, that “the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the prudent, nor favor to the learned,” but “one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each as he wills.” And therefore it is proved by undoubting faith and, so to speak, by tangible experience that the God of the universe, like a most devoted father and a most kind physician, according to the apostle “works all in all” without distinction: now inspiring the beginnings of salvation and implanting in each the ardor of a good will, now granting the accomplishment of the work itself and the perfecting of the virtues; now calling back even the unwilling and unaware from ruin already near and a headlong fall, now offering occasions and opportunities of salvation and restraining headlong and violent efforts from deadly designs; receiving some who are willing and running, and dragging others who are unwilling and resisting, and compelling them to a good will. But that the whole is granted by the Godhead to us who do not always resist nor remain persistently unwilling, and that the sum of our salvation is to be ascribed not to the merit of our works but to heavenly grace, we are taught by the words of the Lord himself: “And you shall remember your ways and all your wicked deeds by which you have been defiled, and you shall be displeasing to yourselves in your own sight for all your evil deeds which you have done. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I have done good to you for my name’s sake, not according to your evil ways nor according to your most wicked deeds, O house of Israel.” And therefore it is defined by all the catholic fathers, who learned perfection of heart not by empty disputation of words but in reality and practice, first, that it belongs to the divine gift that each one should be kindled to desire all that is good, but in such a way that the choice of free will is fully open to either side; likewise, second, that it belongs to divine grace that the said exercises of the virtues can be carried out, but in such a way that the possibility of the will is not extinguished; third, that it pertains to the gifts of God that perseverance in the virtue acquired is kept, but in such a way that the freedom surrendered does not feel captivity. For thus the God of the universe must be believed to “work all in all,” that he stirs up, protects, and strengthens, not that he takes away the freedom of the will which he himself once granted. If anything gathered by more cunning human argument and reasoning seems to oppose this understanding, it should be avoided rather than brought forward to the destruction of faith (for we gain not faith from understanding but understanding from faith, as it is written: “Unless you believe, you will not understand”), since how God works all things in us and yet everything can be ascribed to free will cannot be fully grasped by human sense and reason.” With this food blessed Chaeremon strengthened us, so that we did not feel the labor of so pathless a journey.

The order of our promise and of our journey requires that the instruction of Abba Nesteros, a man outstanding in all things and of the highest knowledge, should follow. When he perceived that we had committed some parts of the Holy Scriptures to memory and desired to understand them, he addressed us with these words: “There are indeed many kinds of knowledge in this world, as many as there are varieties of arts and disciplines. But although all of them are either wholly useless or profit only the advantages of the present life, there is none that does not have its own order and method of teaching, by which it can be reached by those who seek it. If, then, those arts are directed by definite and proper lines to make themselves known, how much more does the discipline and profession of our religion, which tends to the contemplation of the hidden things of invisible mysteries and seeks not present gains but the reward of eternal prizes, rest on a definite order and method. Its knowledge is twofold: the first is praktikē, that is, practical, which is perfected by the amendment of conduct and the cleansing of vices; the other is theōrētikē, which consists in the contemplation of divine things and the knowledge of most holy meanings.

“Whoever, then, wishes to reach contemplative knowledge must first acquire practical knowledge with all effort and strength. For this practical knowledge can be possessed without the contemplative, but the contemplative can by no means be grasped without the practical. For there are certain steps, so ordered and distinct that human lowliness can climb to the heights; if they follow one another in the order we have described, one can reach the height, but if the first step is removed one cannot fly across to it. In vain, then, does one strive toward the sight of God who does not avoid the contagion of the vices; for “the spirit of God hates deceit” and “does not dwell in a body subject to sins.”

“This practical perfection rests on a twofold basis. Its first mode is that the nature of all the vices and the method of curing them be known. The second is that the order of the virtues be so discerned, and our mind so formed by their perfection, that it serves them no longer as though forced and subjected to a violent command, but delights in them and feeds on them as on a natural good, and climbs that steep and narrow way with pleasure. For how will one be able to reach either the understanding of the virtues, which is the second step in practical discipline, or the mysteries of spiritual and heavenly things, which lie in the higher step of contemplation, who has neither been able to understand the nature of his own vices nor striven to root them out? It will follow that one who has not conquered the plainer things cannot advance to the higher, and much less will he grasp what is outside him who has not been able to understand what is implanted within him. We must know, however, that we have to labor with a double intensity of effort in expelling vices compared with acquiring virtues. And this we do not take from our own conjecture, but are taught it by the saying of him who alone knows the powers and method of his own workmanship: “Behold,” he says, “I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms, to root up and to pull down, and to destroy and to scatter, and to build and to plant.” He indicated that four things are needed for driving out harmful things, namely to root up, to pull down, to destroy, and to scatter; but for perfecting the virtues and acquiring what belongs to righteousness, only to build and to plant. Hence it is plainly clear that the ingrown passions of body and soul are harder to tear up and uproot than spiritual virtues are to build up and plant.

“This practical knowledge, then, which rests on two modes as has been said, is divided among many professions and pursuits. For some set the whole aim of their intention on the secrecy of the desert and purity of heart, as we know that in former times Elijah and Elisha, and in our own times blessed Antony and other followers of the same purpose, clung most intimately to God through the silence of solitude. Some have given all the care of their effort to the instruction of the brothers and watchful care of coenobia, as we remember that recently Abba John, who presided over a great coenobium in the neighborhood of the city called Thmuis, and some men of the same merit, were renowned even for apostolic signs. Some are delighted by the devout service of the guest house and of hospitality, by which in former times the patriarch Abraham and Lot pleased the Lord, and recently blessed Macarius, a man of singular gentleness and patience, who presided over the guest house at Alexandria in such a way that he should be thought inferior to none of those who have pursued the secrecy of solitude. Some, choosing the care of the sick, others carrying out intercession on behalf of the wretched and oppressed, or applying themselves to teaching, or giving alms to the poor, have flourished among great and eminent men by their devotion and kindness.

“Therefore it is useful and fitting for each one to hasten, with the utmost zeal and diligence, to reach perfection in the work he has taken up, according to the purpose he has chosen or the grace he has received; and while praising and admiring the virtues of others, never to depart from the profession he has once chosen, knowing, according to the apostle, that the body of the church is indeed one but its members many, and that it has “gifts differing according to the grace given to us: whether prophecy, according to the proportion of faith; or ministry, in ministering; or he who teaches, in teaching; or he who exhorts, in exhortation; he who gives, in simplicity; he who presides, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.” For no members can claim for themselves the services of other members, since the eyes do not perform the office of the hands, nor the nostrils that of the ears. And therefore “not all are apostles, not all prophets, not all teachers, not all have the gift of healings, not all speak with tongues, not all interpret.”

“For those who are not yet grounded in the profession they have taken up are accustomed, when they hear some people praised for various pursuits and virtues, to be so fired by their praise that they at once long to imitate their way of life; and in this human frailty necessarily spends vain efforts. For it is impossible for one and the same man to shine at once with all the virtues I have listed above. If anyone wishes to aim at all of them together, he must fall into this: that while he follows all, he attains none fully, and gains loss rather than profit from this change and variety. For there are many ways by which one tends to God, and therefore let each one complete the one he has once taken up with the unwavering intention of his course, so that he may be perfect in whatever profession it is.

“Besides the loss which we have said strikes the monk who wishes through fickleness of mind to pass to different pursuits, there is also danger of death from this: that sometimes things done rightly by some are presumed upon by others with bad example, and what turned out well for some is felt to be ruinous by others. For, to give an example, suppose someone wished to imitate the virtue of that man whom Abba John is accustomed to bring forward not as a pattern for imitation but only for admiration. A certain man in secular dress came to the said elder and brought him some first fruits of his crops, and there he found a man seized by a most savage demon. This demon, despising the adjurations and commands of Abba John, declared that he would never leave at his command the body he had possessed; but, terrified at this man’s arrival, he departed, crying out his name with the greatest reverence. The old man, marveling not a little at such evident grace, and all the more astonished because he saw him in secular dress, began to inquire carefully about the course of his life and profession. When he said that he was a layman and bound by the tie of marriage, blessed John, considering in his mind the excellence of his virtue and grace, inquired more attentively what his way of life was. He testified that he was a peasant who sought his living by the daily work of his hands, and that he was aware of no good in himself, except that he never went out in the morning to do the work of the field, nor returned home in the evening, without first giving thanks in church to God, the giver of his daily provision; that he had never used any of his produce without first offering its first fruits and tithes to God; and that he had never led his oxen across the border of another’s harvest without first muzzling them, lest his neighbor suffer even a little loss through his carelessness. And since these things still did not seem to Abba John sufficient to account for such great grace, by which he saw the man preferred to himself, and he searched him, asking what it was that could be compared with the merits of such grace, the man, constrained by reverence for so earnest an inquiry, confessed that twelve years before, when he wished to profess as a monk, he had been compelled by the force and command of his parents to take a wife, whom, without anyone even now knowing it, he kept as a virgin in the place of a sister. When the old man heard this, he was moved to such admiration that he declared publicly in his presence that it was not without reason that the demon who had despised himself could not bear the presence of this man, whose virtue he himself would not dare to aim at, not only in the heat of youth but not even now without danger to his chastity. Although Abba John set forth this deed with the greatest admiration, he urged none of the monks to try it, knowing that many things done rightly by some have brought great ruin on others who imitated them, and that what the Lord has granted to a few by a special gift cannot be claimed by all.

“But let us return to the exposition of knowledge with which our discourse began. As we said above, practical knowledge branches into many professions and pursuits, but contemplative knowledge is divided into two parts, that is, historical interpretation and spiritual understanding. Hence Solomon too, when he had enumerated the manifold grace of the church, added: “For all who are with her are clothed double.” The kinds of spiritual knowledge are three: tropology, allegory, anagogy, of which it is said in Proverbs: “But you, write them for yourself threefold upon the breadth of your heart.” History, then, embraces the knowledge of past and visible things, which is set out by the apostle thus: “For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. But the one by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, while the one by the free woman was born through the promise.” What follows belongs to allegory, since the things that really happened are said to have prefigured the form of another mystery: “For these,” he says, “are two covenants, one from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery, which is Hagar. For Sinai is a mountain in Arabia, which corresponds to the present Jerusalem, and she is in slavery with her children.” Anagogy, rising from spiritual mysteries to certain higher and more sacred secrets of heaven, is added by the apostle thus: “But the Jerusalem above is free, which is our mother. For it is written: Rejoice, barren one who does not bear; break forth and cry, you who are not in labor; for many are the children of the desolate, more than of her who has a husband.” Tropology is the moral explanation that concerns the cleansing of life and practical instruction, as if we were to understand these same two covenants as practical and contemplative discipline, or indeed if we wished to take Jerusalem or Sion as the soul of man, according to the saying: “Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem; praise your God, O Sion.” So these four figures, if we wish, flow together into one, so that one and the same Jerusalem can be understood in four ways: according to history, the city of the Jews; according to allegory, the church of Christ; according to anagogy, that heavenly city of God, “which is the mother of us all”; according to tropology, the soul of man, which is often rebuked or praised by the Lord under this name. Of these four kinds of interpretation the blessed apostle says: “But now, brothers, if I come to you speaking in tongues, what shall I profit you unless I speak to you either in revelation, or in knowledge, or in prophecy, or in teaching?” For revelation belongs to allegory, by which what the historical narrative covers is laid open by spiritual sense and exposition; for example, if we try to explain how “all our fathers were under the cloud, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea,” and how “all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink from the rock that followed them; and the rock was Christ.” This exposition, compared with the prefiguration of the body and blood of Christ which we receive daily, contains the method of allegory. Knowledge, which the apostle likewise mentions, is tropology, by which we discern with prudent examination whether all things that belong to practical discernment are useful or honorable; as when we are commanded to judge among ourselves “whether it is fitting for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered.” This method, as has been said, contains the moral sense. Again prophecy, which the apostle put in the third place, signifies anagogy, by which the word is carried over to invisible and future things, as in this: “But we do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, concerning those who have fallen asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For if we believe that Christ died and rose again, so also God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep through Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive at the coming of the Lord shall not precede those who have fallen asleep in Christ; for the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a command, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead who are in Christ will rise first.” In this kind of exhortation the figure of anagogy is displayed. But teaching unfolds the simple order of historical exposition, in which no more hidden meaning is contained than what sounds in the words, as in this: “For I delivered to you first of all what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose on the third day, and that he was seen by Cephas,” and: “God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem those who were under the law,” or this: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord.”