Miscellanies 2.14.60–2.17.77

The involuntary, at any rate, is not judged (and it is twofold: what happens with ignorance, and what happens by necessity). For how could you judge those said to sin in involuntary ways? For either someone was ignorant of himself, like Cleomenes and Athamas, who went mad; or of the act he does, as Aeschylus, who divulged the mysteries on the stage, was tried on the Areopagus and acquitted when he showed that he had not been initiated; or one might be ignorant of the one toward whom it is done, like the man who let fly at his opponent and killed a kinsman instead of the enemy; or of the thing with which it is done, like the man exercising with spears tipped with buttons who killed someone when the spear shed its button; or of the manner, like the man who killed his competitor in the stadium (for he was contending not for death but for victory); or of the purpose for which it is done, as when a physician gave a healthful remedy and killed, but gave it not for this purpose but to save.

The law at that time held liable even the one who killed involuntarily, as it did the one who had an involuntary emission, but not equally with the one who acted voluntarily. And yet even he will be punished as for a voluntary act, if one transfers the condition to the truth; for truly the one who has no control over the generative word is to be punished. This too is an irrational passion of the soul, bordering on idle talk; but “the faithful one has chosen to hide matters in his breath.” Deliberate acts, then, are judged. For “the Lord examines hearts and kidneys”; and “the one who looks with desire” is judged. That is why it says, “You shall not desire”; and “This people honors me with their lips,” it says, “but their heart is far from me.” For God looks at the intention itself, since also Lot's wife, who only turned back willingly toward worldly vice, he left without sense, showing her as a pillar of salt and fixing her so that she could not go farther, not a foolish and useless image, but one to season and preserve the one able to see spiritually.

The voluntary is either what is according to appetite, or according to choice, or according to thought. Now these lie somehow close to one another: a sin, a mishap, a wrong. A sin, for example, is living luxuriously and licentiously; a mishap is striking a friend, through ignorance, as an enemy; a wrong is robbing tombs or temples. Sinning arises from ignorance in judging what one ought to do, or from inability to do it, as indeed someone falls into a pit either not knowing of it or unable to get over it through bodily weakness. But it rests with us, at any rate, to present ourselves for our training and to obey the commandments.

If we are unwilling to take part in these, giving ourselves up to anger and desire, we will sin, or rather we will wrong our own soul. For that famous Laius, according to the tragedy, says: “None of these things you warn me of escapes me; but though I have judgment, nature forces me”; that is, he has become given over to passion. And Medea likewise cries out on the stage: “I understand what evils I am about to do, but anger is stronger than my plans.” Nor is Ajax silent, but, about to slay himself, he cries out: “No pain, then, so bites the soul of a free man as dishonor. So I have suffered, and a deep stain … stirs me up from the depths, provoked by the bitter goads of madness.”

Anger, then, makes tragedy of these, and desire of countless others: Phaedra, Anthea, Eriphyle, “who accepted precious gold for her dear husband.” And another stage has that comic Thrasonides saying, “A cheap little slave girl has enslaved me.” A mishap, then, is an unexpected sin; a sin is an involuntary wrong; and a wrong is voluntary vice. Sin, then, is my own involuntary act. That is why he says, “For sin will not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace,” speaking to those who have already believed, that “by his wound we were healed.” A mishap is another's involuntary act against me; but a wrong alone is found to be voluntary, whether mine or another's.

The psalmist hints at these differences among sins when he calls blessed those some of whose lawless acts God has wiped out, some of whose sins he has covered, others he has not counted, and the rest he has forgiven. For it is written: “Blessed are those whose lawless acts are forgiven and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not count sin, and in whose mouth there is no deceit.” This blessing came upon those who have been chosen by God through Jesus Christ our Lord. For “love covers a multitude of sins,” and he who chooses the repentance of the sinner rather than his death wipes them out.

Those are not counted that do not arise from choice; for “he who has desired,” it says, “has already committed adultery.” And the Word who enlightens forgives sins: “And in that time,” says the Lord, “they will seek the injustice of Israel, and it will not exist, and the sins of Judah, and they will not be found. For who is like me? And who will stand against my face?” You see one God proclaimed as good, rendering what is deserved and forgiving sins. And John too, in his larger letter, is seen teaching the differences among sins in these words: “If anyone sees his brother sinning a sin not unto death, he will ask, and he will give him life,” he said, for those who sin not unto death; “for there is a sin unto death; I do not say that one should ask about that. All injustice is sin,

and there is sin not unto death.” But David too, and before David Moses, show knowledge of the three doctrines in these words: “Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly,” as the fish go in darkness into the depths; for those that do not have scales, which Moses forbids us to touch, feed at the bottom of the sea; “nor stood in the way of sinners,” as those who seem to fear the Lord sin like the pig, for when hungry it squeals, but when full it does not know its master; “nor sat in the seat of the pestilent,” as the birds ready for plunder. And Moses exhorted: “You shall not eat the pig, nor the eagle, nor the hawk, nor the raven, nor any fish that has no scales on it.” So says Barnabas. But I myself have heard a wise man explaining such things, taking “the counsel of the ungodly” to be the Gentiles, “the way of sinners” the Jewish belief, and “the seat of the pestilent” the heresies.

Another said more properly that the first blessing is set down for those who have not followed the evil opinions that have fallen away from God; the second for those who do not remain on the broad and wide way, whether those brought up in the law or those from the Gentiles who have repented; while “the seat of the pestilent” would be the theaters and the law courts, or, what is more likely, following the evil and destructive powers and sharing in their works. “But his will is in the law of the Lord.” Peter, in the Preaching, called the Lord “Law and Word.” The lawgiver also seems to teach, in another way, abstinence from three kinds of sin: sins in word, through the voiceless fish (for there is indeed a case where silence is better than speech; “there is also a safe reward for silence”); sins in deed, through the rapacious and flesh-eating birds; the pig delights in mud and dung,

and one must not have a defiled conscience either. Fittingly, then, the prophet says: “Not so the ungodly, but like the chaff that the wind drives away from the face of the earth. Therefore the ungodly will not rise in judgment” (those already condemned, since “he who does not believe is already judged”), “nor sinners in the counsel of the righteous” (those already condemned so as not to be united with those who have lived without stumbling), “for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, and the way of the ungodly will perish.” Again the Lord shows plainly that both trespasses and offenses rest with us, setting out ways of healing suited to the passions, wishing us to be corrected by the shepherds through Ezekiel, blaming some of them, I think, for not keeping the commandments: “You have not strengthened the weak,” and so on until, “and there was none who sought or turned back.” For “there is great joy with the Father when one sinner is saved,” says the Lord. In this way Abraham is more praiseworthy, because “he went as the Lord had told him.”

From this one of the wise among the Greeks drew the saying, “Follow God.” “But the godly,” says Isaiah, “have counseled wise things.” Counsel is inquiry into how we might conduct ourselves rightly in present circumstances, and good counsel is prudence regarding our counsels. What then? Does not God too, after his pardon of Cain, fittingly introduce not long afterward Enoch, who repented, showing that repentance naturally begets pardon? And pardon consists not in remission but in healing. The same thing happens in the people's making of the calf under Aaron. From this one of the wise among the Greeks said, “Pardon is better than punishment,” as indeed also “Give a pledge, and ruin is at hand” comes from the saying of Solomon: “Son, if you become surety for your friend, you will deliver your hand to an enemy; for a man's own lips are a strong snare, and he is caught by the words of his own mouth.” And more mystically “Know yourself” has been taken from there: “You have seen your brother, you have seen your God.”

In this way, I suppose, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself.” On these commandments, he says, the whole law and the prophets hang and depend. With these the following agree: “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be fulfilled. And this is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” “For the Lord is merciful and compassionate, and the Lord is kind to all.” And Moses, enjoining “Know yourself” more clearly, often says, “Take heed to yourself.” “By acts of mercy and faithfulness, then, sins are purged; and by the fear of the Lord everyone turns away from evil.” And the fear of the Lord is instruction and wisdom.

Here again the accusers fasten on us, saying that joy and grief are passions of the soul. For they define joy as a reasonable elation, and exultation as rejoicing at good things, and pity as grief at one suffering undeservedly; and such things, they say, are changes and passions of the soul. But we, it seems, do not stop understanding such things in the Scriptures in a fleshly way, and, starting from our own passions, taking the will of the passionless God to be like our own movements; and, supposing that it is with the Almighty as we are able to hear, we err godlessly. For the divine could not be spoken of as it is; but as we, fettered by flesh, were able to listen, so the prophets spoke to us, the Lord accommodating himself for our salvation to human weakness.

Since, then, it is the will of God that the one who obeys the commandments and the one who repents of his sins should be saved, and we rejoice at our salvation, the Lord who spoke through the prophets has made our joy his own, as in the Gospel he says in his love for humankind: “I was hungry and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me to drink. For what you have done to one of these least, you have done to me.” As, then, he is fed without being fed, because the one he wishes has been fed, so he rejoiced without being changed, because the one who repented has come to be in joy, as he wished. And since God, being good, shows mercy richly, giving the commandments through the law and the prophets, and more closely now through the coming of the Son, saving and showing mercy, as has been said, to those who have received mercy; and since properly the greater shows mercy to the lesser, and a man could not be greater than a man, insofar as he is a man, but God is greater than man in every way; if, then, the greater shows mercy to the lesser, God alone will show us mercy. For a man becomes sociable through righteousness and shares what he has received from God, both through natural goodwill and relationship and through the commandments he obeys.

But God has no natural relationship to us, as the founders of the heresies would have it (neither if he made us from what does not exist, nor if he fashioned us from matter, since the one does not exist at all, and the other is in every way different from God), unless someone will dare to say that we are a part of him and of the same substance with him. And I do not know how anyone who has known God will bear to hear this, when he looks at our life and at the evils in which we are mixed up. For in that case God would, which it is not lawful even to say, sin in part, if indeed the parts of the whole are parts and complete the whole; and if they do not complete it, they would not be parts either. But God, being by nature “rich in mercy,” cares for us through his goodness, though we are neither parts of him nor his children by nature.

And indeed this is the greatest demonstration of God's goodness: that, though we are so related to him and wholly estranged by nature, he nevertheless cares for us. For the love of animals for their young is natural, and so is friendship among the like-minded from familiarity; but God's mercy toward us is rich, though we are in no way related to him, I mean in our substance or nature or in the power proper to our substance, but only in being the work of his will. And he calls to adoption, the greatest advance of all, the one who willingly, with discipline and teaching, has taken up the knowledge of the truth. “Lawless deeds ensnare a man, and each one is bound with the cords of his own sins”; and God is not responsible. And truly “blessed is the man who is in awe of all things” through reverence.

As, then, knowledge is a state that knows, from which knowing results, and its apprehension is unshakable by reason; so ignorance is a yielding impression, shakable by reason. And what can be shaken, like what is trained by reason, rests with us. Close to knowledge lie experience and cognizance, understanding, intellection, and knowing. Cognizance would be knowledge of universals by species; experience is comprehensive knowledge, so as to inquire into what each thing is like; intellection is knowledge of what is intelligible; understanding is knowledge of what can be compared, or unshakable comparison, or the power of comparing things of which there is prudence and knowledge, both of each one and of all that fall under one account. Knowing is knowledge of the thing itself, or knowledge in agreement with what happens; and truth is knowledge of what is true, and the state of truth is knowledge of true things.

Knowledge is formed through reason and cannot be shaken by another argument. Here it inquires into knowing. What we do not do, we do not do either because we cannot, or because we do not wish to, or for both reasons. We do not fly, since we neither can nor wish to; we do not swim right now, say, since we can but do not wish to; and we are not like the Lord, since we wish to but cannot. “For no disciple is above the teacher, but it is enough if we become like the teacher”: not in substance, for it is impossible for what is by adoption to be equal in existence to what is by nature, but in having become eternal, having come to know the contemplation of what exists, being called sons, and beholding the Father alone through what is his own. Willing, then, precedes everything; for the rational powers are by nature the servants of willing. “Will,” it says, “and you will be able.” For the one who knows, willing, judging, and practice are the same. For if the purposes are the same, the doctrines and judgments are the same too, so that his words, life, and manner may be consistent with his stance. “An upright heart seeks knowledge,” and hears it. “God has taught me wisdom, and I have come to know the knowledge of the holy.”