The Instructor 1.5.12–1.6.32

That the instruction of children (paidagōgia) is the training of children (paides) is clear from the word itself. It remains to consider the children whom Scripture means, and then to set the Instructor over them. We are the children. Scripture praises us in many ways and speaks of us allegorically in many forms, varying the simplicity of faith with a range of names. In the Gospel, for instance, it says: “The Lord stood on the shore and called to the disciples (they happened to be fishing): Children, have you any fish?” calling them children, though they were already disciples. “And they brought to him children,” it says, for the laying on of hands in blessing, and when his disciples prevented them, Jesus said, “Let the children alone, and do not hinder them from coming to me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” What the saying means, the Lord himself will make plain, saying, “Unless you turn and become like these children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Here he is not speaking figuratively of rebirth, but setting before us the simplicity of children for us to imitate. The prophetic Spirit too chooses us as children: “Having cut branches of olive or palm,” it says, “the children went out to meet the Lord and cried out, saying, Hosanna to the son of David; blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” Light and glory and praise, with supplication, to the Lord: this is what “Hosanna” means when translated into Greek.

(… when translated into Greek.) And it seems to me that Scripture, alluding to the prophecy just mentioned, rebukes the careless: “Have you never read, Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babes you have prepared praise?” So too in the Gospel the Lord spurs on his disciples, urging them to attend to him as one already hastening to the Father, making his hearers more eager by telling them in advance that he will soon be gone, and showing them that they must gather the fruit of the truth all the more generously, since the Word was about to depart for heaven. So again he calls them children: “Little children, yet a little while I am with you.” And again he likens the kingdom of heaven to children “sitting in the marketplaces and saying, We played the flute for you and you did not dance; we mourned and you did not lament,” and the other things he added in keeping with these. And not only the Gospel thinks so; prophecy agrees with it. David says, “Praise the Lord, you children; praise the name of the Lord.” And he says through Isaiah, “Behold, I and the children whom God has given me.”

Are you surprised to hear that men from among the nations are children before the Lord? You do not seem to me to understand the Attic language, from which one can learn that beautiful, lovely, and freeborn young women are called paidiskai (“girls”), and slave women paidiskaria, though these too are young women, honored with a diminutive on account of the bloom of youth. And when he says, “Let my lambs stand on the right,” he means the simple, children like lambs, not men like sheep by kind; and he has given the lambs a privilege, preferring gentleness and simplicity of mind in human beings, innocence. And again when he says, “like suckling calves,” he speaks allegorically of us again; and “like a dove, innocent and without gall,” us again. And through Moses he commands two young doves or a pair of turtledoves to be offered for sin, saying that the sinlessness, innocence, and forgiving nature of the tender young birds is acceptable to God, and suggesting that like purifies like; and the timidity of turtledoves figures caution toward sins. That he calls us the young birds, Scripture bears witness: “as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings”; so we are the Lord's chicks, the Word most wonderfully and mystically describing the simplicity of the soul in terms of the age of childhood. For sometimes he calls us children, sometimes chicks, sometimes infants, elsewhere sons, often little children, and a young people and a new people: “My servants,” he says, “shall be called by a new name” (by “new” name he means fresh and eternal, pure and simple and childlike and true),

“which shall be blessed on the earth.” And again, figuratively, he calls us colts: unyoked by vice, unbroken by wickedness, simple, and frisking toward the Father alone; not “horses neighing after their neighbors' wives,” beasts of burden mad for females, but free and newborn, spirited through faith, swift runners toward truth, quick to salvation, trampling and stamping on the things of the world. “Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion; proclaim it, daughter of Jerusalem: behold, your king comes to you, righteous [meek] and saving, and he is gentle and riding on a beast of burden and a young colt.” It was not enough to say “colt”; he added “young” as well, showing the youthfulness of humanity in Christ and its ageless eternity together with simplicity. Such young colts, us infants, our divine colt-tamer rears. And even if the young animal in the Scripture is an ass, still it too is a colt. “And he tied the colt to the vine,” it says: tying this simple and infant people to the Word, whom he calls figuratively a vine. For the vine bears wine, as the Word bears blood, and both are drink for human beings for salvation: the wine for the body, the blood for the spirit. And that he also calls us lambs, the Spirit is a trustworthy witness through Isaiah: “As a shepherd he will shepherd his flock, and gather the lambs with his arm,” calling figuratively “lambs” the part of the flock still more tender in simplicity.

Indeed, we too have honored the finest and most perfect possessions in life with a name drawn from childhood, calling them education (paideia) and instruction (paidagōgia). We agree that instruction is good training from childhood toward virtue. The Lord reveals to us more expressively what is meant by the name “child”: “When a question arose among the apostles as to which of them was greatest, Jesus set a child in their midst, saying, Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” So he did not use the name “children” for the age of those who lack reason, as some have thought; nor, when he says, “Unless you become like these children, you will not enter the kingdom of God,” is it to be taken ignorantly. We infants no longer roll on the ground, nor creep on the earth like snakes as before, wriggling with our whole body around senseless desires; but, stretched upward in our thought, having renounced the world and sins, “touching the earth with a light foot,” only so far as to seem to be in the world, we pursue holy wisdom, which seems folly to those who are sharpened for knavery.

Rightly, then, those who have known God alone as Father are children: simple, infant, and pure, lovers of the unicorn's horns. To those who have advanced in the Word he proclaimed this saying, commanding them to take no thought for the affairs of this world and urging them to attend to the Father alone, imitating children. So in what follows he says: “Do not be anxious about tomorrow; sufficient for the day is its own evil.” So he commands them to lay aside the cares of life and to hold fast to the Father alone. And whoever fulfills this commandment is truly an infant and a child both to God and to the world: to the world as one who has gone astray, to God as one beloved. And if, as Scripture says, there is “one teacher in heaven,” then all on earth may rightly be called disciples.

For this is how the truth stands: perfection is always with the Lord who teaches, and childhood and infancy with us who are always learning. So prophecy has honored the perfect with the name “man.” Through David, speaking of the devil, it says, “The Lord abhors a man of blood,” calling him “man” as perfect in wickedness; and the Lord too is called “man” because he is perfect in righteousness. So the apostle, writing to the Corinthians, says: “For I betrothed you to one man, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ,” whether as infants and holy, but in any case to the Lord alone. Writing to the Ephesians, he revealed most clearly what we are seeking, saying: “Until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be infants, tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we may grow up in all things into him.” He says this “for the building up of the body of Christ,” “who is the head,” and the only man perfect in righteousness. And we infants, guarding against the winds of the heresies that puff us up with pride, and not trusting those who set up other fathers for us, are perfected when we are the church, having received the head, Christ.

Here it is right to consider the name “infant” (nēpios): the infant is not classed among the foolish. The foolish one is nēpytios; but nēpios is ne-ēpios (“newly gentle”), as ēpios is the tender-minded, as if one had newly become gentle and mild in character. The blessed Paul pointed to this most clearly when he said: “Though we could have been a burden as apostles of Christ, we became gentle among you, as a nurse cherishes her own children.” The infant, then, is gentle, and in this way more tender, delicate, simple, guileless, and without hypocrisy, straightforward and upright in mind; and this is the foundation of simplicity and truth. “For on whom shall I look,” it says, “but on the gentle and quiet?” Such is the virgin speech, tender and unaffected; so it is customary to call a maiden a tender bride and a boy tender-minded. And we are tender, soft toward persuasion and easily shaped toward goodness, without gall and unmixed with malice and crookedness. For the old generation is crooked and hard-hearted; but the chorus of infants, we the new people, is delicate as a child.

In the letter to the Romans the apostle declares that he rejoices over “the hearts of the innocent,” and he gives something like a definition of infants when he says: “I want you to be wise as to what is good, and guileless as to what is evil.” For we do not understand the word nēpios (“infant”) as a privative, though the grammarians lay down that nē is privative. If those who disparage our infancy call us foolish, see how they blaspheme against the Lord, supposing that those who have fled to God are foolish. But if, as is rather to be understood, they themselves take “infants” to mean the simple, let us rejoice in the name. For the minds that are infant are new minds, newly made wise amid the old folly, which have dawned according to the new covenant. For God has been known only recently, at the coming of Christ: “No one has known God except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son reveals him.” The new people, then, are young, in contrast to the older people, having learned the new good things. And we have this ageless youth as the fullness of our life, in which we are always in the prime of understanding, always young, always gentle, always new. For those who have shared in the new Word must be new.

What has shared in eternity tends to be made like the incorruptible, so that for us the name of childhood is the springtime of our whole life, because the truth in us is ageless, and our character is steeped in that truth. And wisdom is ever-blooming, always remaining the same and unchanging, never altering. “Their children,” it says, “shall be carried on shoulders and comforted on knees; as a mother comforts someone, so will I comfort you.” The mother draws her children to her, and we seek our mother, the church. Everything weak and tender, since it needs help because of its weakness, is welcome, sweet, and delightful, since God does not refuse help to such an age. For as fathers and mothers take more pleasure in seeing the foals of horses, the little calves of cattle, the lion's cub, the fawn of the deer, and the human child, so the Father of all things welcomes those who have fled to him; and having regenerated them by the Spirit to adoption, he knows them as gentle, and loves these alone, and helps them, and fights for them; and so he names them “child.” I also refer Isaac to the child. Isaac means “laughter.” The curious king saw him playing with his wife and helper, Rebecca. The king (Abimelech was his name) seems to me to be a certain supramundane wisdom, spying on the mystery of the play; and they interpret Rebecca as “patience.” O the wise play! Laughter helped by patience, and the king watching over it! The spirit of the children in Christ, who live in patience, rejoices; and this is the divine play. Heraclitus says that his Zeus plays such a game.

For what other work is fitting for the wise and perfect than to play and rejoice together in the patience of good things and the ordering of good things, keeping festival with God? The message of the prophecy can also be understood in another way: that we rejoice and laugh at our salvation, like Isaac. He too laughed, freed from death, playing and rejoicing with the bride who is our helper for salvation, the church. The fixed name of patience has been given her, either because she alone remains forever, always rejoicing, or because she is composed of the patience of believers, who are members of Christ. And the witness of those who endured to the end, and the thanksgiving for them, is the mystic play and the salvation that helps us, with holy joy. So Christ the King looks down from above on our laughter, and, “looking out through the window,” as Scripture says, he beholds the thanksgiving and the blessing, the exultation and gladness, and also the patience that works with them, and their union, the church, his own; showing only his face, which is lacking to the church,

the church being perfected by her royal head. And where, then, was the window through which the Lord was shown? The flesh, through which he was made manifest. Again, Isaac (for it can be taken in another way too) is a type of the Lord: a child as son (for he was the son of Abraham, as Christ is the Son of God), and a sacrificial victim like the Lord. But he was not offered up as the Lord was; Isaac only carried the wood of the sacrifice, as the Lord carried the wood of the cross. He laughed mystically, prophesying that the Lord would fill us with joy, us who have been redeemed from corruption by the Lord's blood. But he did not suffer; not only, fittingly, yielding the first place in suffering to the Word, but also, by not being slain, hinting at the divinity of the Lord. For Jesus rose after his burial … without suffering, just as

Isaac was released from being sacrificed. I will add another very strong argument for my point. The Spirit calls the Lord himself a child, prophesying this through Isaiah: “Behold, a child is born to us, and a son is given to us, whose government is upon his shoulder; and his name is called Angel of Great Counsel.” Who, then, is this infant child, in whose image we infants are? Through the same prophet he describes his greatness: “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace, for the increase of his instruction; and of his peace there is no end.” O great God! O perfect child! The Son in the Father, and the Father in the Son! And how could the instruction of that child not be perfect, which extends to all of us his children, instructing us his infants? He has stretched out to us his hands, which are clearly trusted. John too, “the greatest prophet among those born of women,” bears witness to this child: “Behold the Lamb of God.” For since Scripture calls the infant children lambs, it has called God the Word, who became man for our sake and wished to be made like us in every way, the Lamb of God, the Son of God, the Father's infant.

We can also, and abundantly, strip for the contest against those who love to find fault.

For we are not called children and infants because of the childish and contemptible character of our learning, as those who are puffed up about knowledge have slandered us. On the contrary, as soon as we are regenerated we have received the perfection for which we were striving. For we were enlightened, and that is to know God. So the one who has known the perfect is not imperfect. And do not find fault with me for professing to have known God; for this is how it pleased the Word to speak, and he is free. For example, when the Lord was baptized, a voice sounded from heaven as witness to the Beloved: “You are my beloved Son; today I have begotten you.” Let us ask the wise, then: is Christ, begotten again today, already perfect, or, what is most absurd, deficient? If the latter, he must learn something more. But it is not reasonable that he should learn anything more, since he is God. For no one could be greater than the Word, nor a teacher of the only Teacher. Will they not, then, be forced to admit that the Word, born perfect of the perfect Father, was perfectly born again, in accordance with the prefiguring of the divine plan? And if he was perfect, why was the perfect one baptized? “It was necessary,” they say, “to fulfill what is required of human beings.” Excellent. For I say: then at the moment he was baptized by John, did he become perfect? Clearly. Then he learned nothing more from him? No. But is he perfected by the washing alone, and sanctified by the descent of the Spirit? So it is.

The same thing happens with us, for whom the Lord became a model. Being baptized, we are enlightened; being enlightened, we are adopted as sons; being adopted, we are made perfect; being made perfect, we are made immortal. “I said,” it says, “You are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High.” This work is called by many names: grace, enlightenment, perfection, and washing. It is a washing, by which we are cleansed of our sins; a grace, by which the penalties due to our sins are remitted; an enlightenment, by which that holy light of salvation is beheld, that is, by which we see the divine clearly; and we call perfect that which lacks nothing. For what more does the one who has known God still lack? It would truly be absurd for something not complete to be called a grace of God; being perfect, he will surely give perfect gifts. And as everything comes to be at the moment he commands, so the completion of the grace follows at the moment he merely wills to give it. For the future is anticipated by the power of his will.

Moreover, deliverance from evils is the beginning of salvation. Those, then, who have merely first grasped the boundaries of life are already perfect; and we who have been separated from death already live. Salvation, then, is following Christ: “For what came to be in him is life.” “Truly, truly, I say to you,” he says, “whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” So merely believing and being born again is perfection in life; for God is never weak. For as his will is a work, and this is called the world, so his intention is the salvation of human beings, and this has been called the church. He knows, then, whom he has called; and those whom he has called, he has saved; and he has called and saved at the same moment. “For you yourselves,” says the apostle, “are taught by God.” It is not lawful for us, then, to think imperfect what is taught by him; and the lesson is the eternal salvation of the eternal Savior, to whom be thanks forever, amen. And the one who has only been regenerated, as the very name shows, being enlightened, is at once set free from darkness and receives the light on the spot.

So those who have shaken off sleep are at once awake within; or rather, as those who try to remove a cataract from the eyes do not supply them from outside with light, which they do not have, but by removing the obstruction from the eyes leave the pupil free; so we who are baptized, having wiped away by the divine Spirit the sins that darken us, like a mist, have the eye of the spirit free, unobstructed, and full of light, by which alone we behold the divine, as the Holy Spirit flows into us from heaven. This is a blending of eternal radiance, able to see the eternal light; since like is dear to like, and the holy is dear to him from whom the holy comes, who is properly called light: “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.” That is why, I think, the human being was called by the ancients phōs (“man,” also “light”). “But he has not yet received the perfect gift,” they say. I agree; yet he is in the light, and the darkness does not overtake him; and between light and darkness there is nothing. The end is reserved for the resurrection of those who believe; and it is not the receiving of something else, but the obtaining of the promise already made. For we do not say that both exist together at the same time, the arrival at the goal and the anticipation of the arrival. For eternity and time are not the same, nor are the beginning and the end; but both concern one thing, and the one Lord is concerned with both. Faith, so to speak, is the beginning, born in time; the end is the obtaining of the promise, secured forever. The Lord himself revealed most clearly the equality of salvation, saying: “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on …

“… the last day.” So, as far as is possible in this world, which he hinted at as “the last day,” being kept until the time when it will end, we believe that we have become perfect. For faith is the perfection of learning; that is why he says, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.” If, then, we who have believed have life, what remains beyond the possession of eternal life? Nothing is lacking to faith, which is perfect of itself and complete. If anything is lacking to it, it is not wholly perfect, and it is not faith, limping in some respect. Nor do other things await believers after their departure from here, who have all alike received the pledge here; but what we have already grasped beforehand by believing as something that will be, we receive after the resurrection as something that has come to be, so that the saying may be fulfilled: “Let it be done according to your faith.” Where faith is, there is the promise; and the fulfillment of the promise is rest. So knowledge is in the enlightenment, and the end of knowledge is rest, which is understood to be the last thing desired. As inexperience is ended by experience and perplexity by a way through, so darkness must vanish by enlightenment. Darkness is ignorance, by which we fall into sins, being dim-sighted about the truth. Enlightenment, then, is knowledge, which makes ignorance vanish and gives clear sight. And the casting off of worse things is the revealing of better things; for what ignorance wrongly bound, knowledge rightly unbinds.

These bonds are loosed as quickly as possible, by human faith and divine grace, when our offenses are forgiven by one healing medicine, the baptism of the Word. We wash away all our sins, and are no longer evil on the spot. This is one grace of the enlightenment: that our character is not the same as before we were washed. And since knowledge rises together with enlightenment, flashing around the mind, we who were unlearned are at once called disciples, that learning having come to us at some earlier time; for you could not name the moment. For instruction leads to faith, and faith, together with baptism, is trained by the Holy Spirit. Further, that faith is the one universal salvation of humankind, and that the equality and fellowship of the just and loving God are the same toward all, the apostle explained most clearly, saying: “Before faith came, we were guarded under the law, shut up for the faith that was to be revealed; so the law became our instructor to Christ, that we might be justified by faith; but now that faith has come, we are no longer under an instructor.”

Do you not hear that we are no longer under that law, which was with fear, but under the Word, the Instructor of free choice? Then he added the saying that is free of all partiality: “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus; for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” So in the Word himself there are not some who are “gnostics” and others “psychics,” but all who have put away the desires of the flesh are equal and spiritual before the Lord. And elsewhere again he writes: “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free; and we were all made to drink of one drink.”

It is not out of place to use the very words of those people, who say that the remembrance of better things is a straining of the spirit. By “straining” they mean the separation of worse things that comes from the recollection of better; and repentance for lesser things necessarily follows for the one who has recalled the better; indeed they admit that the spirit itself, having repented, runs back up. In the same way we too, having repented of our sins, renouncing our failings, strained clean by baptism, run back to the eternal light, children to the Father. “Jesus rejoiced in the Spirit and said, I thank you, Father, God of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding, and revealed them to infants.” The Instructor and Teacher calls us infants, who are better suited for salvation than the wise of the world, who, thinking themselves wise, are puffed up. And he cries out, rejoicing and exceedingly glad, as if lisping along with the infants: “Yes, Father, for so it was well-pleasing before you.” For this reason what was hidden from the wise and understanding of this age has been revealed to infants. Rightly, then, the children of God are infants: those who have put off the old man and stripped off the tunic of wickedness, and put on the incorruption of Christ, so that, having become new, a holy people, born again, we may keep the human being undefiled, and be infants as a newborn of God, cleansed of sexual immorality …