Tractates on the Psalms 2.25–2.47

But it is not enough to have answered that he is king; let us also hear who this king is. For the chief priest also questions him with an oath, saying: "I adjure you by the living God to tell us whether you are the Christ, the Son of God." And Jesus says to him: "You have said so." Here too the question is not rejected, but the boasting and glorying of a spontaneous profession is avoided; yet the truth asked for is not denied. And so the modesty of humility and the confession of truth are tempered together, so that there is both courtesy in the answer and knowledge in the question. But we must wait to see what the outcome of this answer is, that the Christ is the Son of God; what, namely, follows on the words "You have said so"? "Truly I say to you, from now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven." He who is Son of Man is also Son of God: the nature of his noble birth does not perish in the assumption of the Son of Man. For he is not therefore not the Son of God because he is also the son of man. The addition of lowliness does not come with a loss of divinity; nor did power receive dishonour through sharing weakness, since weakness was granted the honour of power. For the Son of Man sits at the right hand of God, to be seen coming with the clouds of heaven. By this saying that prophecy is fulfilled which said: "The Lord says to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet."

This king, then, has been established over Sion, God's holy mountain, proclaiming the Lord's decree: certainly not over the mountain of that lost city, the Jerusalem that was wept over, murderous and parricidal, but over his Jerusalem which is in heaven, which is our mother, which is the city of the great king, whose inhabitants today, I think, are those who rose at the Lord's passion. So this king, established, proclaims God's decree, that those who raged and gathered against him might remember that he would come with the clouds of heaven, so that, troubled by the knowledge of the divine coming, they might repent of the insult they had offered to his bodily lowliness, which they had mocked.

The gospel teaching keeps the order of the prophecy. For in the same place the meaning of both sayings is contained, namely of this one: "But I have been established as king by him over Sion, his holy mountain, proclaiming his decree. The Lord said to me: You are my Son, today I have begotten you." For when he says, "From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power," he shows the time at which the Son of Man, who is also Christ and Son of God, would be worthy to sit with God: so that, since he was Son of God before and then was also son of man, what was then son of man might be begotten into the perfect Son of God, that is, for resuming and bestowing on his body the glory of his eternity through the power of the resurrection, the glory which, as one in a body, he asked back from the Father. For he who was in the form of God had taken the form of a servant. And for this form of a servant he had taken he demands the glory of God, in which he had remained, saying: "Father, glorify me with yourself with the glory which I had with you before the world was." He does not seek new things, he does not desire what is foreign; he asks to be such as he had been, and prays to be what he was before, that is, to be begotten into what was his own. He was not then wholly that which he prayed to become; but to become wholly, he asked for nothing other than what he had been. But when he becomes what he was, and is to be what he was not, then that which was not whole was being born, by a kind of beginning of a new birth, into what it had been. This, then, is the day of his resurrection for taking up glory, by which he is born into what he was before times. But being born into what he was before times, he is nevertheless born in time to be what he was not. And therefore the Son of Man is to be seen from now on sitting at the right hand of power, because the nature of the flesh, glorified after the resurrection, was being carried forward to the advance of the glory he had had before, when the son of man, about to sit with the Father, with the corruption of the flesh swallowed up into immortality, was born into the Son of God, then living and never more to die.

The blessed apostle held this new begetting in him, the begetting of this temporal birth, distinguished from that which is before times, and a meaning divided accordingly. For after he had said of that blessed birth, bounded by no times, "the firstborn of all creation, for in him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible," he afterwards also mentions the firstborn from the dead in the resurrection, saying: "the firstborn from the dead, that he himself might have the first place in all things." For he is born into what he was not, though what came to be was what he had been. He is the firstborn from the dead who was the firstborn of creation; firstborn from the dead in order that he might remain firstborn of creation. For the same one is firstborn from the dead who was firstborn of creation.

He is not now something other than he was before, though he himself was also another thing from another; but what was another thing from another was reborn as another thing into that very thing from which it had come before. For he who was born of the virgin as man was then also Son of God; but he who is Son of Man was the same as the Son of God. And he was born again from baptism, being then too Son of God, so that he might be born both into the same and into another. For it is written, when he had come up from the water: "You are my Son, today I have begotten you." But according to the begetting of man being reborn, he too was then being reborn to God as perfect Son, so that in baptism he was prepared as Son of God as he was as son of man.

But by apostolic authority, what is now in the psalm, "You are my Son, today I have begotten you," refers neither to the virgin's childbearing nor to the begetting of the washing, but to the firstborn from the dead. For in the book of the Acts of the Apostles it is said thus: "And we bring you the good news of the promise made to the fathers, that God has fulfilled it for our children by raising up our Lord Jesus, as it is written in the first psalm: You are my Son, today I have begotten you, when he raised him from the dead, never again to return to corruption." According to the apostle, then, this voice of God the Father belongs to the day of the resurrection. Let us see whether the evangelists teach the same. For the Lord, rising, used these words to the apostles: "All power has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go now, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." For in rising he received every right in heaven and on earth. And by saying "has been given," he shows that he asked for what he received.

For there follows: "Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession." He received, then, the inheritance of the nations which he asked for. For he asked when he said: "Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son, that the Son may glorify you, as you have given him power over all flesh, that he may give eternal life to all whom you have given him." And again: "I do not pray for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word." This, then, is his inheritance: that he gives eternal life to all flesh, that all nations, baptized and taught, are reborn into life; no longer, according to that divine song of Moses, handed over to the dominion of angels nor divided according to their number, but received into the Lord's household, reckoned among the members of God's family, and transferred from the unjust, sinful, and perverse right of those who ruled them into the eternal and divine kingdom. For no longer is Israel alone the portion of the Lord, nor Jacob the measuring line of his inheritance, but all nations, formerly divided according to the number of the angels, now this whole universe of nations is the people of the one God, and all of it is one; and this is the eternal inheritance, consisting of all who rise from the dead, of this firstborn from the dead, the eternal heir.

In what was added, "and the ends of the earth as your possession," it must not be thought that the repeated expression signifies the same thing, as though only the possession of the nations inhabiting the lands had been given him. For it does not say "and as your possession up to the ends of the earth," but "the ends of the earth." What bounds differs from what is bounded. Being finished and finishing are not the same, nor is receiving a limit the same as limiting: one receives its limit from within, the other limits from outside by its circuit and the way it lies against it. For the earth is not so sunk in depth, extended in breadth, or raised in height that it is not contained on every side by a nature either poured around it or lying beneath it. The sunken and immeasurable abyss of the vast underworld sustains it; the breath of the air poured around and above overshadows and surrounds it. That it is suspended over the abyss beneath it, the prophet testifies, saying: "He founded it upon the seas, and prepared it upon the rivers." And again: "Who established the earth upon the waters." And Scripture is accustomed to call this immeasurable and boundless vastness the abyss, as when Jonah prays inside the whale and says: "The great abyss surrounded me." And this boundless immensity, which is understood to be signified, according to the proper sense of the word, by the abyss, is bounded by the spiritual power of the divine substance, according to the apostle's saying: "For all things are in him and through him; to him be glory for ever and ever." That there are many inhabitants of this infernal region and vast abyss we are taught by the Apocalypse of blessed John, where no one, in heaven, on the earth, or under the earth, was found worthy to open the sealed book. This is certainly not understood to refer to the dead buried in the earth, since, to show a third realm of inhabitants, those who are not within the earth but under the earth, not those who are dead but those who live, had among them no one to unseal the book. When, then, the possession of the ends of the earth is given to the Lord, it is not so much the earth that is given as the things by which the earth is bounded. For he received the ends of the earth, by which the earth itself is bounded.

The blessed apostle Paul, through whose mouth Christ spoke of himself, set out the whole mystery of this, saying: "Who, though he was in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal to God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, made in the likeness of man and found in appearance as a man; he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore God also exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father." So, remaining in the form of God, he took the form of a servant, that is, from God he was born man. And after the death of the cross he is exalted to the name that is above every name: for he is raised up into God, since there is no name beyond God, and this is granted him when he asks it, namely, that he should be what he had been before. For remaining in the form of God he had taken the form of a servant. Then he received the possession of the ends of the earth, that is, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father: not only the earth but also things above and below, and the things by which the earth is enclosed, are given. And in the glory of God the Father he is born, begotten today; that is, the assumption of the form of a servant is honoured, as the reward of death, in the form of God which remained before. And a birth takes place in time, new yet not unheard of, when he who from the form of God had been found in the form of a servant was born firstborn from the dead to resume the glory of God the Father.

Then follows: "You will rule them with a rod of iron; you will break them like a potter's vessel." To many, who either think wrongly or do not know the power and proper sense of the divine words, these things seem contrary to the goodness of God: that the Son of God should rule with the terror of a rod of iron the nations he asked for as a possession and received as an inheritance, and break them in the manner of a potter's vessel. For it is not like any good person to give and to receive what is to be destroyed. And he who prefers the repentance of sinners to their death is not thought likely to act according to the declaration of his nature if he breaks with a rod of iron those he asked to be given him as an inheritance.

First, so that no room may be open for this rash and ungodly presumption, the proper senses of the words translated into the Roman tongue must be known. For what we have, "You will rule them with a rod of iron," although "rule" itself is not tyrannical or unjust but shows a rational governance by the judgment of equity and moderation, yet the Greek proper sense signifies a still gentler disposition in the ruler. For where we have "you will rule them," they have poimaneis autous, that is, "you will rule them as a shepherd," since he will have the care of ruling them with a shepherd's affection; for he is the good shepherd, whose sheep we are, for whom he laid down his life. And so that we may not think tyrannical right is signified by the rod, the proper sense of the word "rod" is to be learned from the New and Old Testaments.

The blessed Paul, writing to the Corinthians, whom he was calling back from many sins to repentance by moderate and useful exhortation, says: "What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod, or in love and a spirit of gentleness?" Did Paul have a governor's right, so that he could threaten a rod and come to the church of Christ with the office of a lictor? Certainly that is not to be thought. But since every word of God by which we are drawn back from error to truth, by which through the threat and terror of judgment we are guided to the way of an innocent and holy life, is called a rod, by which, held within the discipline of divine fear, we are restrained by the warning of a moderate and provident ruler, the blessed apostle offered those he was warning the choice of how he should come: whether they preferred him to be present in the severity of teaching and rebuke or in a spirit of gentleness. Both were necessary according to the course of moderation, so that he might come more gently to the obedient and more severely to the insolent. This has been drawn from the authority of the New Testament.

That this teaching of the word is called a rod is known from the Old Testament thus, where it is said: "A rod of uprightness is the rod of your kingdom"; for the uprightness of the rod is the same as that by which we are directed through teaching into a straight and useful way, and what is the rod of the kingdom must necessarily be the very teaching of the kingdom. We have learned that our Lord himself is called a rod because of the useful and moderate proclamation of his teaching, as Isaiah says: "A rod shall come out of the root of Jesse." And so that no one should dare to suppose a tyrannical severity in him from the name "rod," the prophetic word added at once: "And a flower shall rise up from the root, and the Spirit of God shall rest upon him," so that the sweetness of the flower might temper the severity of the rod, while the terror of the teaching brings to each of us the governance of perfect blessedness. With this rod, then, he will rule the nations given him: not corruptible, not perishable, not fragile, but of iron, that is, most strong and, by the solidity of its nature, most firm.

With this rod of iron, then, as he will rule, so he will also break or crush; for the proper sense of the Greek according to the seventy translators expresses this rather. For it is written thus: hōs skeuos kerameōs syntripseis autous. But whether he crushes or breaks, he is not therefore to be thought to ask for an inheritance in order to break and crush it for destruction and abolition, since to him a contrite heart is the best sacrifice. That contrition or breaking, then, is the one that crushes in us bodily pleasures and the incentives of worldly vices and will make us worthy of the Lord's favour, according to the prophet's saying: "A contrite and humbled heart God will not despise." And how much clarity of understanding does the comparison with breaking a potter's vessel bring? For it is not without reason that he will break like a potter's vessel those whom he asked for as an inheritance, ruling them with a rod of iron, except that by the example of the comparison he shows that the loss of such a breakage serves for the restoration of the same vessel.

What kind of breaking we undergo from God, like a potter's vessel, he taught through the prophet Jeremiah, saying: "Arise and go down to the potter's house, and there you will hear my words. And I went down to the potter's house, and behold, he was making a work on the stones. And the vessel he was making fell in his hands; and again he made another vessel, as it pleased him in his sight to make it. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Can I not do with you as this potter, house of Israel? Behold, like the potter's clay you are in my hands. At last I will speak concerning a nation or a kingdom, to strike them and destroy them; and if that nation turns from its evils, I will repent of the evils I intended to do to them. And at last I will speak concerning a nation and a kingdom, to rebuild and to plant; and they will do evil before me, so as not to hear my voice; and I will repent of the good I said I would do to them." So God will break the nations of his inheritance, asked for and obtained, and crush them in order to remake them. For he will break in all of them all insatiable desires, seductive lusts, burning angers, empty superstitions, swelling pride, and ungodly opinions. And he remakes us for a rational use of life by contempt of money, shame at luxury, moderation of anger, knowledge of truth, fellowship in living, and the duties of religion, when through the governance of teaching and the terror of judgment we come alive again in these virtues after those vices. For he does not say "you will break them like a potsherd," lest a vessel that cannot be remade be understood through the fragment of a broken pot; but he says "a potter's vessel," which was becoming a vessel in the very work of the craftsman, so that, according to the example given, the repair of the same broken vessel by the will of the craftsman might be ready at hand.

But the vessel of irrational matter has also been fitted, under another understanding, to the reasoning of the human will: men fall through these vices of theirs, but if they repent in them, that is, if they cease from them, God too repents in the case of those whom he had appointed to punishment for this fall; not that this movement of mind falls upon God according to human nature, but because for man repentance of deeds done is the measure of deeds to be done, God too speaks of his repentance with respect to punishment, because those who have ceased to be ungodly would cease to be punished. As, then, it is easy for a potter to remake a lost vessel into the same form, or any he wishes, so it is easy for God, after the falls of vices, to restore from ungodliness to godliness those who wish to be raised up through the instruction of his teaching.

But that breaking like a potter's vessel must also not be overlooked which will take place when these bodies have been dissolved and broken by the fall of death, and restoration is brought according to the craftsman's will. The prophetic word seems to have signified both by the same saying. For when it shows that repentance in what was done before is profitable, it teaches that there must be a kind of new restoration of this present bodily life from vices to virtue, the anger of God against them ceasing as the will to crime ceases. And although it brought this forward from the comparison of the potter, yet when it says of the same potter, "And he made another vessel as it pleased him in his sight," there is understood to be signified also that restoration of rising bodies which will take place according to God's will. For as it pleases him and is worthy in his sight, he will repair what is broken, not from some other matter but from the old and very matter of their origin, giving them the form of beauty pleasing to him; so that the resurrection of corruptible bodies into the glory of incorruption does not destroy their nature by annihilation but changes it by the condition of its quality. For it is not another body, though it will rise into something other, as the apostle says: "It is sown in corruption, it rises in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour, it rises in glory; it is sown in weakness, it rises in power; it is sown a natural body, it rises a spiritual body." There is change, then, but no abolition. And when what was rises into what it was not, it has not lost its origin but has advanced to honour. Let us rejoice, then, to be broken like a potter's vessel both now and then: so that now, in the manner of a potter's vessel, having died with and been buried with the Lord in baptism, we may walk in newness of life and be reborn into the new man of Christ, having put off the old; and then, through this advance of the new birth, we may be remade into that blessed form, pleasing to God, of our repeated restoration.

Not ignorant of this good, the prophet after this exhorts and says: "And now, kings, understand; be instructed, you who judge the earth. Serve the Lord in fear and rejoice with trembling. Lay hold of discipline, lest the Lord be angry and you perish from the just way. When his anger is kindled in a short time, blessed are all who trust in him." This order of teaching is most useful, that it makes known the blessedness of what it exhorts us to; for it is hard to stretch the mind and hope toward what is unknown. So the prophet, wishing to exhort us to understand what he had recounted above, first mentioned the honour of understanding itself, saying, "And now, kings, understand," showing that those who would understand are kings. But we must ask which kings he urges to understand this prophetic exhortation, lest anyone think those are signified whose kingdom now is over human bodies, the services of war, and the fear of nations. These are not eternal and blessed kings with God, since they already fall away from God's commandments and have been assigned to the devil for his kingdom, as he said when he tempted the Lord: "And the devil led him up a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time; and the devil said to him: I will give you this power and their glory, for they have been handed over to me." But the Gospels show us other kings: those to whom the kingdom of God has drawn near, and those who have overcome sin reigning in them, who are kings of their own body, subjecting all the incentives of vices to their rule; for this is the kingdom of God in us. So again Christ reigns in us when through him we ourselves reign with the right of lords over ourselves, according to the saying: "The kingdom of God does not come with observation, nor will they say: Behold here, behold there. For behold, the kingdom of God is within you." The blessed apostle mentions this kingdom, writing to the Corinthians: "Already you reign without us; and would that you did reign, that we also might reign with you." This, then, is the kingdom of God, where sin is conquered, where death is destroyed, where the enemy does not reign; for "death reigned from Adam to Moses," and the apostle says, "Let sin no longer reign in you." Through this kingdom of God, when the kingdom of sin has been dissolved and the opposing kingdom overthrown, we ourselves being kings, this is the kingdom of God for us, when, all the stings of our vices having been crushed, the stain of bodily weakness will be swallowed up.

These kings, then, the prophet urges to understand: that they may know that kings raged and peoples meditated vain things against the Lord and his Christ; that they may understand also the one laughing from heaven and speaking in anger, and the king established over Sion, the holy mountain, proclaiming the decrees of God the Father; that they may recognize who was begotten as Son, and also the time at which he who made times was begotten in time; that they may understand in what he asked for the inheritance of the nations and the possession of the ends of the earth; and that they may not be ignorant what this rod of iron is with which, ruling them, he breaks them like a potter's vessel. For understanding these things they will recognize the whole mystery of the divine will; and since through obedience to the commandments they will be heirs of God the Father and co-heirs of our Lord Jesus Christ, it necessarily follows that, being co-heirs of the eternal king, they are kings.

Since the Gospels and the apostle have testified about the kings, it follows that we should learn who the judges of the earth are, who likewise must be instructed; especially since he calls the kings by the bare name, without designation of any kingdom, to teach that they are kings of themselves and in themselves, but speaks of judges "of the earth." That a judge and a king differ we know from the very usage of earthly custom, for reigning is not the same as judging: kingship is dominion, judgment the measure of equity. So all the saints are to be understood as judges of the earth, whose life and faith are the judgment of the unbelieving and unjust. The Lord shows this in the Gospels, saying: "The men of Nineveh will rise in the judgment and will judge this generation, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. The queen of the South will rise in the judgment and will judge this generation, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and behold, something greater than Solomon is here." Such will be the judges of the earth, whose faith and fear, by comparison, condemn the unrepentant and ungodly. For if the repentance of the Ninevites, undertaken at Jonah's preaching, gained the fruit of repentance, their obedient repentance must judge the insolent impenitence of these. Or will not the queen of the South, hearing the longed-for wisdom of Solomon from the ends of the earth, condemn by her foreign hearing the unbelief and carelessness of those present? Christ, the author, increases the judgment of disobedience and unwillingness to hear, since he differs from Solomon and Jonah. And the apostle plainly shows that these are the judges of the earth, saying: "Do you not know that the saints will judge the world, and the world is judged by you?", since holiness, by comparison, through the merit of the blessedness it has attained, condemns the life of the guilty.

The prophet at once added the work of this understanding and instruction, saying: "Serve the Lord in fear and rejoice with trembling." He does not allow service to be careless or negligent; he wants fear mixed into every duty of service. For as fearful slaves serve their earthly masters more diligently, since fear mixed with obedience draws out the will to a more careful compliance, so too those who serve God, if they fear through a fear that hangs over them, will not be negligent in the service they have undertaken. And so that this fear of the faithful should not be thought a tyrannical terror, to what he had said, "Serve in fear," he added "and rejoice," so that the exultation of joy might temper the fear of service, since fear itself would bring a cause of gladness through the consciousness of faithful service. Further, so that the freedom of joy might not go beyond the bounds of fitting moderation, he added "rejoice with trembling," because gladness free of trembling would be dangerous, leading to forgetfulness of fear. And so the reasoning of the prophetic utterance is preserved: fear holds service in check, exultation moderates fear, and the trembling that follows restrains exultation.

He taught that the exultant fear and trembling exultation of this service consist in what follows, saying: "Lay hold of discipline." By the force of the word he shows the meaning of a will impatient and, as it were, overhasty toward it, teaching that discipline is not so much to be sought as to be seized: not content with a lukewarm faith in observing this obedience, but desiring the ardour of the spirit in eagerness to seize it. So those who seize the kingdom of heaven delight the Lord, when he says: "From the days of John the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force"; because, although the possession of the heavenly kingdom was proclaimed to Israel, the faith of the Gentiles seized this possession for itself first, while Israel distrusted.

So Paul too runs in order to lay hold, saying: "But I follow, that I may lay hold of that for which I also have been laid hold of." He does not hurry with slow step or follow with an idle course, for he follows in order to lay hold. It would seem enough to have said that he follows in order to attain, but he himself wishes to bring force, hurries to lay hold, and, in the manner of a bodily example, to seize. And he knows that he has already been laid hold of in that very thing which he hurries to lay hold of. For if God, born as man, laid hold of us, who differ from his nature, through bodily nature, becoming himself what we are, it is ours now to strive to lay hold of what he is, so that our haste may join itself to that glory into which he raised nature out of this bodily corruption; and so we shall lay hold of that in which we were laid hold of, if we attain the nature of God, God having first attained the nature of men. Discipline, then, is to be laid hold of and seized with a kind of embrace and a bodily grip, lest it slip away or fall.