Against Jovinian 1.17–1.26

And if Enoch was translated, and Noah was preserved in the flood, I do not think Enoch was translated because he had a wife, but because he first called on God and believed in the Creator, about which the apostle Paul teaches most fully in the Letter to the Hebrews. Further, Noah, who was being preserved as a second root of the human race, had of course to be kept with his wife and sons. And yet in this there is a mystery of the Scriptures. That ark, according to the apostle Peter, was a type of the Church, in which eight souls were saved. When Noah enters it, both he and his sons are separated from their wives; but when he goes out onto the land, the pairs are joined; and what had been separated in the ark, that is, in the Church, is united in the life of the world. At the same time, if the ark had many rooms and nests, and was of two and three stories, and held different beasts, with dwellings larger or smaller according to the kind of animal, I think that the variety of rooms prefigured the variety of the Church.

As for his objection to us that in God's second blessing permission was given to eat meat, which had not been granted in the first, let him know that, just as, according to the Savior's word, divorce was not given from the beginning but was allowed to the human race through Moses because of the hardness of our hearts, so the eating of meat was unknown until the flood. But after the flood, as quails were given to the murmuring people in the desert, so the sinews and rankness of flesh were thrust into our teeth. The Apostle, writing to the Ephesians, teaches that God purposed in the fullness of times to sum up all things and bring them back to their beginning in Christ Jesus, the things in heaven and the things on earth. That is why the Savior himself says in John's Apocalypse: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end." From the first creation of humankind we neither ate meat nor gave bills of divorce, nor were our foreskins cut off as a sign. On this course we came to the flood. But after the flood, with the giving of the law, which no one could fulfill, meat was given to be eaten, divorce was allowed to hardness of heart, and the knife of circumcision was applied, as though God's hand had created more in us than was necessary. But after Christ came at the end of the times, and turned the Omega back to the Alpha, and drew the end back to the beginning, we are not permitted to give a bill of divorce, nor are we circumcised, nor do we eat meat, as the Apostle says: "It is good not to drink wine and not to eat meat." For wine too was dedicated together with meat after the flood.

What shall I say of Abraham, who, as he asserts, was thrice married, and who received the sign of faith in circumcision? If we imitate the number of his wives, let us imitate his circumcision too; for he is not to be followed in part and rejected in part. Further, Isaac, the husband of Rebecca alone, prefigures the Church of Christ and reproves the wantonness of second marriage. And if Jacob had two pairs of wives and concubines, and our opponent will not accept that bleary-eyed Leah, ugly and fruitful, prefigured a type of the synagogue, while Rachel, beautiful and long barren, signified the mystery of the Church, let him know that Jacob did this at the time when he was among the Assyrians, and in Mesopotamia was serving Laban, a very harsh master. But when he wished to enter the Holy Land, and on Mount Gilead set up the heap of witness, at which the master of Mesopotamia had found nothing in his baggage, swearing that he would never return to the place where he had served; and when, having wrestled with the angel at the brook Jabbok, he began to limp, and the broad sinew of his thigh withered, and at once he received the name Israel; then that once beloved wife, for whom he had served, is killed near Bethlehem, where the Lord, the herald of virginity, was to be born, by the son of sorrow; and the partnerships of Mesopotamia die in the city of the Gospel.

But I wonder why he set before us Judah and Tamar as an example, unless perhaps he delights in harlots too; or Onan, who was slain because he grudged his brother seed, as though we approved of any emission of seed without the work of children. It is clear about Moses that he would have been in danger at the lodging place had not Zipporah, whose name means "bird," circumcised her son and cut off the foreskin of marriage with the knife of the Gospel. This is indeed the Moses who, when he had seen the great vision and the angel, or the Lord, speaking in the bush, could not approach him at all until he had loosed the strap of his shoe and cast off the bonds of marriage. Nor is this surprising in the friend, prophet, and lawgiver of God, when the whole people, about to approach Mount Sinai and hear the word, were commanded to sanctify themselves for three days and to abstain from their wives. We know that this (though I am confusing the order of the history by putting it out of place) was also said to David by the priest Ahimelech when David was fleeing: "If the young men are clean from women." And he answered: "Since yesterday and the day before." For they could not eat the bread of the Presence, as the body of Christ, if they were rising from the beds of their wives. And in passing we must consider what he said, "If the young men are clean from women": namely, that in comparison with the purity of the body of Christ all intercourse is unclean. In the law too it is commanded that the high priest marry none but a virgin, and not take a widow. If the condition of virgin and widow is the same, why is the one accepted and the other rejected? And a priest's widowed daughter is ordered to stay in her father's house and not know a second marriage. If a priest's virgin sister dies, he is ordered to go to her funeral as to that of his father and mother; but if she is married, she is disregarded as a stranger. He who has married a wife, and he who has planted a vineyard, as it were the offshoots of children, is forbidden to go out to war; for the slave of a wife cannot serve in the army of the Lord. And the laver in the tabernacle is cast from the mirrors of the fasting women, as from the purest bodies of virgins; and within, in the sanctuary, the cherubim, the mercy seat, the ark of the covenant, the table of the Presence, the lampstand, and the censer are of the purest gold. For silver could not be brought into the Holy of Holies.

Why do I linger over Moses, when my purpose, dictating hastily and quickly, is to touch each point briefly and draw some outlines for understanding? I will pass on to Joshua the son of Nun, who was earlier called Ause, or, as is more correctly read in the Hebrew, Hosea, that is, "savior." For he, according to the Letter of Jude, saved the people of Israel and led them out of Egypt and brought them into the land of promise. As soon as this Jesus came to the Jordan, the waters of marriage, which had always flowed under the law, dried up and stood still; and the whole people crossed over with dry and bare feet and came to Gilgal, and there were circumcised a second time. If we take this according to the letter, it cannot stand at all. For if we had a double foreskin, or if the skin once cut away grew again, a second circumcision would rightly have its place. But now this is signified: that Jesus circumcised with the knife of the Gospel the people who had come through the desert; and he circumcised them with a knife of stone, so that what was prefigured before in a few, in the son of Moses, might be fulfilled in all under Jesus. And the foreskins themselves, heaped together in one pile and buried and covered with earth, and the reproach of Egypt taken away, and the name of the place, Gilgal, which means "revelation," show that while the people walked through the desert in uncircumcision, their eyes were blinded. Let us look at what follows as well. After the circumcision of the Gospel and the consecration of the twelve stones in the place of revelation, the Passover is at once celebrated: the lamb is sacrificed for them, and they eat the food of the holy land. Jesus goes out; the Prince of the army meets him holding a sword, that is, showing either that he fights for the circumcised people, or that he cuts through the glue of marriage. And just as it had been commanded to Moses, so too it is commanded to this man: "Loose your shoe, for the place on which you stand is holy ground." Because the army of the Lord was thus armed with the priestly trumpets, the world is overthrown, under the type of Jericho, as by the preaching of the Gospel. And to pass over countless things (for my purpose now is not to open all the mysteries of the Old Testament), the five kings who formerly reigned in the land of promise and resisted the army of the Gospel are defeated, Jesus fighting. I think this is clear in its meaning: that before the Lord led his people out of Egypt and circumcised them, sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch reigned, and everything was subject to them as to rulers. When they fled to the cave of the body and to a dark place, Jesus, entering the body itself, killed them, so that they might be slain by the very thing through which they had reigned before.

But now it is time to raise the standard of Joshua's chastity. Moses is written to have had a wife. And both our Lord and the Apostle interpret Moses as the law: "They have Moses and the prophets." And: "Sin reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of Adam's transgression." No one doubts that in both testimonies Moses signifies the law. As, then, we read that Moses, that is, the law, had a wife, show me that Joshua the son of Nun had either a wife or sons; and if you can show it, I will confess myself beaten. And certainly he received the most beautiful place in the land of Judea in the division, and he dies, not in the number twenty, which is always unlucky in the Scriptures (in which Jacob served, and Joseph was sold, and which Esau loved, receiving in it certain gifts), but in the ten, of whose praise we have often spoken; and he is buried in Timnath-serah, that is, in a most perfect principality, or in the number of a new covering, to signify the flocks of virgins covered by the Savior's help, on Mount Ephraim, that is, on the fruitful mountain, north of Mount Gaash, which means "commotion": for "Mount Zion, the sides of the north, the city of the great king," which is always exposed to envy and says in each temptation: "But my feet were almost moved." And when the book named after him has ended with the burial of Joshua, he is described again in the book of Judges as living and rising again, and his works are proclaimed by way of recapitulation, and we read: "Joshua sent the people away, and the children of Israel went each to his inheritance to possess the land." And: "The people served the Lord all the days of Joshua," and the rest. And at once it is added: "And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died, a hundred and ten years old." Moses, on the other hand, only saw the land of promise and could not enter; and he died in the land of Moab, and the Lord buried him in the valley in the land of Moab opposite the house of Phogor, and no man has known his tomb to this day. Let us compare the burials of the two. Moses dies in the land of Moab, Joshua in the land of Judea. The one is buried in the valley opposite the house of Phogor, which means "disgrace" (for properly in the Hebrew language Priapus is called Phogor); the other on Mount Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash. And in the simple words of the divine Scriptures there is always a more majestic sense. Because among the Jews glory lay in births and childbearing, and "cursed was the barren woman who had no seed in Israel," and "blessed was he who had seed in Zion and household in Jerusalem," and among the greatest blessings was reckoned, "Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine on the sides of your house; your children like olive shoots around your table": therefore his tomb is described as set in a valley opposite the house of the idol which is properly consecrated to lust. But we who serve as soldiers under Joshua as our leader do not know to this day where Moses is buried. For we despise Phogor and all its disgrace, knowing that those who are in the flesh cannot please God. And the Lord before the flood also said: "My spirit shall not remain in these men, because they are flesh." That is why Moses at his death is mourned by the people of Israel, but Joshua, as one who will live, is not mourned. For marriage ends in death; virginity begins to be crowned after death.

He brings forward Samson too, and does not consider that the Nazirite of the Lord was once shorn by a woman. Though he bears a type of the Savior, in that he loved a harlot from among the Gentiles, the Church, and in dying killed many more of the enemy than he had killed while alive, yet he gives no examples of marital chastity. And certainly he is the one of Jacob's prophecy who, while carried along at the speed of a galloping horse, was struck by a serpent and fell backward. Why he listed Deborah and Barak and the wife of Heber the Kenite I do not understand at all, since it is one thing to weave together leaders of wars and the order of history, another to signify any figures of marriage, which do not appear in them at all. Further, his preferring Jephthah the father to the tears of his virgin daughter tells in our favor. For we too praise not so much virgins of the world as those who are virgins for Christ's sake. And the father is censured by many of the Hebrews for a rash vow, since he said: "If you will indeed deliver the children of Ammon into my hands, whoever comes out of my house to meet me when I begin to return in peace from the children of Ammon shall be the Lord's, and I will offer him as a burnt offering." "If a dog," they say, "if an ass had met him, what would he have done?" From this they hold that it was by God's dispensation that he who had vowed without forethought should feel the error of his vows in his daughter's death. And if Samuel, brought up in the tabernacle, married a wife, what does this prejudice virginity? As though even today very many priests do not have marriages, and the Apostle does not describe a bishop as the husband of one wife, having children in all chastity! At the same time we must know that Samuel was a Levite, not a priest, not a high priest. That is why his mother made him an ephod bad, that is, a linen shoulder garment, which is properly the dress of the Levites and of the lower order. That is why in the Psalms he is named not among the priests but among those who call on the name of the Lord: "Moses and Aaron among his priests, and Samuel among those who call on his name." For Levi begot Kohath, Kohath begot Amminadab, Amminadab begot Korah, Korah begot Assir, Assir begot Elkanah, Elkanah begot Zuph, Zuph begot Toah, Toah begot Eliel, Eliel begot Jeroham, Jeroham begot Elkanah, Elkanah begot Samuel. And no one doubts that the priests were born of the stock of Aaron, Eleazar, and Phinehas. Since they too had wives, they would rightly be set against us if, led by the error of the Encratites, we maintained that marriages are to be rejected; and if our High Priest after the order of Melchizedek were not without father, without mother, that is, without marriage. And indeed Samuel reaps great fruit from his children: since he himself pleased God, he begot such as displeased the Lord! And if he objects to us Boaz and Ruth to prove second marriage, let him know that in the Gospel, for a type of the Church, even Rahab the harlot is counted in the line of the Lord's ancestors.

Further, as to his boast that David bought a wife with two hundred foreskins, let him know that David had very many other wives as well, that he took back Michal the daughter of Saul, whom her father had given to another, and that in his old age he was warmed by the embraces of the Shunammite girl. I do not say this because I dare to detract in any way from holy men, but because it is one thing to live under the law, another under the Gospel. He killed Uriah the Hittite and became an adulterer with Bathsheba. And because he was a man of blood (not, as many think, because of wars, but because of the murder), he was forbidden to build the temple of the Lord. But for us, if we cause one of the least to stumble, and if we say "Raca" to a brother, and do not look rightly, it is better that a millstone be tied around our neck; and we shall be liable to Gehenna, and adultery will be reckoned against us for a look alone. He passes to Solomon, through whom wisdom itself sang; and since he calls him a married man and dwells on his praises, I wonder why he does not add also that from the Song of Songs: "There are sixty queens and eighty concubines, and maidens without number"; and that from Third Kings, that he had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, and countless others. These indeed are the women who turned his heart away from the Lord. And yet, before he had many wives and fell into the vices of the flesh, at the beginning of his reign and of his youth, he built the temple to the Lord. For each one is judged not by what will come but by what is present. But if Solomon's examples please him, he will not be content with being married twice or three times; unless he has seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, he will not be able to fulfill his type and merit. I beg you, reader, and I remind you of this often, to know that I speak as necessity compels me. I do not detract from those who lived under the law; they served their times and conditions, and fulfilled that sentence of the Lord, "Increase and multiply and fill the earth"; and, what is greater, they provided types of things to come. But for us, to whom it is said, "The time is short; it remains that those who have wives be as though they had none," something else is prescribed, and virginity is dedicated by the virgin Savior.

How foolishly he has put Elijah and Elisha in the catalogue of the married is clear without my saying anything. For if John the Baptist came in the spirit and power of Elijah, and John is a virgin, he certainly came not only in his spirit but also in his chastity of body. Further, as to what can be cited of Hezekiah (though he, with his usual stupidity, did not see it), that after his life was restored and extended by fifteen years he said, "From now on I will beget children," let him know that this is not found in the Hebrew books, but instead it reads: "The father shall make your truth known to the children." Nor is it surprising that Huldah, the wife of Shallum, a prophetess, was consulted by Josiah king of Judah when the captivity was already near and the wrath of the Lord was dripping on Jerusalem; for this is the rule of the Scriptures, that when holy men are lacking, women are praised to the reproach of men. As for Daniel, it is superfluous to speak, since the Hebrews hold to this day that he and the three young men were eunuchs, on the basis of that sentence of God which Isaiah speaks to Hezekiah: "And of your sons who will be born of you they will take, and make them eunuchs in the king's house." And again we read in Daniel: "And the king told Ashpenaz, the chief of the eunuchs, to bring in some of the children of the captivity of Israel, of the royal seed and of the nobles, youths in whom there was no blemish, handsome in appearance and skilled in wisdom." And they argue: if Daniel and the three young men were chosen from the royal seed, and Scripture foretold that some of the royal seed would be eunuchs, these were the ones made eunuchs. But if he objects what is said in Ezekiel, that Noah, Daniel, and Job could not deliver sons and daughters in a sinful land, the answer is that it is said hypothetically. For at that time Noah and Job, who we know lived many ages before, were not alive. And the sense is: if such and such men were in a sinful land, they could not deliver their sons and daughters, because the righteousness of the father will not deliver the son, nor will the sin of one be imputed to another; for the soul that sins, it shall die. And this too must be said: that Daniel, according to the history of his book, was taken captive with King Jehoiachin at the time when Ezekiel too was led into captivity. How then could he have sons when he was still a boy? And after three years were completed he was brought into the king's service. And lest anyone think that Ezekiel was already speaking of Daniel as a man, not a boy: "It happened," he says, "in the sixth year," that is, of King Jehoiachin, "in the sixth month, on the fifth of the month"; and, "I was sitting in my house, and the elders of Judah were sitting before me." And on the same day it is said to him, "If Noah and Daniel and Job were there." Daniel was therefore still a boy, and known to the people, either for his interpretation of the king's dreams or for the deliverance of Susanna and the killing of the elders. And it is clearly proved that at the time when these things were said of Noah, Daniel, and Job, Daniel was still a boy and could not have had sons and daughters to deliver by his righteousness. So much for the law.

He comes to the Gospel and sets before us Zechariah and Elizabeth, Peter and his mother-in-law, and with his usual folly does not understand that these too ought to be numbered among those who served the law. For the Gospel does not exist before the cross of Christ; it was dedicated by his passion and blood. By this rule Peter and the other apostles (to grant him, for the moment, more than is needed) did indeed have wives, but wives they had taken at a time when they did not know the Gospel. Taken up afterward into the apostleship, they leave the duty of marriage. For when Peter, speaking for the apostles, says to the Lord, "Behold, we have left everything and followed you," the Lord answered him: "Amen I say to you, there is no one who has left house or parents or brothers or wife or children for the sake of the kingdom of God who will not receive much more in this age, and in the age to come eternal life." But if he objects to us, to prove that all the apostles had wives, "Do we not have the right to take about women or wives" (since gynē in Greek means both) "as the other apostles, and Cephas, and the brothers of the Lord?", let him add also what is in the Greek manuscripts: "Do we not have the right to take about sisters, women or wives?" From this it appears that he spoke of other holy women, who according to Jewish custom ministered to their teachers from their own means, as we read was done for the Lord himself. For the order of the words also indicates this: "Do we not have the right to eat and drink, or to take about sisters, women?" Where eating and drinking and the supply of expenses come first, and women who are sisters are added, it is plain that we must understand not wives but, as we said, those who ministered from their own means. This too is written in the old law of that Shunammite woman, who used to receive Elisha and set before him a table and bread and a lampstand and the rest. Or certainly, if we take gynaikas as "wives," not "women," the added word "sisters" takes away the wives and shows that they were sisters in the spirit, not spouses. And yet, apart from the apostle Peter, it is not plainly reported of the other apostles that they had wives; and since it is written of one and the rest are passed over in silence, we ought to understand that those of whom Scripture indicates nothing of the kind were without wives. And yet he who set against us Zechariah and Elizabeth, Peter and his mother-in-law, should know that of Zechariah and Elizabeth John was born, that is, a virgin from marriage, the Gospel from the law, chastity from wedlock, so that the virgin Lord might be both announced and baptized by a virgin prophet. And we can say of Peter that he had a mother-in-law at the time when he believed, and no longer had a wife, although in the Circuits both his wife and his daughter are read of. But now our whole contest is about the canon. And since he has appealed to the apostles, on the ground that the leaders of our discipline and the chiefs of Christian doctrine were not virgins, let us grant for the moment that they were not virgins (for this cannot be proved except of Peter); let him know that these are the apostles of whom Isaiah prophesies: "Unless the Lord of hosts had left us a seed, we would have been like Sodom and would have been made like Gomorrah." Those, then, who were from the Jews could not have in the Gospel the virginity they had lost in Judaism. And yet John, one of the disciples, who is said to have been the youngest among the apostles, and whom the faith of Christ found a virgin, remained a virgin; and that is why he is loved more by the Lord and reclines on the breast of Jesus. And what Peter, who had had a wife, does not dare to ask, he asks John to ask. And after the resurrection, when Mary Magdalene announced that the Lord had risen, both ran to the tomb, but John got there first. And when they were in the boat fishing on the lake of Gennesaret, Jesus was standing on the shore, and the apostles did not know whom they were seeing; only the virgin recognizes the virgin and says to Peter, "It is the Lord." Again, after Peter heard the sentence that he would be girded by another and led where he did not wish, and his passion on the cross had been foretold, and he said, "Lord, what about this man?", not wishing to leave John, with whom he had always been joined, the Lord said to him: "What is it to you if I wish him to be so?" From this the saying went out among the brothers that that disciple would not die. From this it is shown that virginity does not die, nor does it wash away the stains of marriage with the blood of martyrdom, but remains with Christ, and its falling asleep is a passing over, not a death. But if he obstinately maintains that John was not a virgin, while we have said that virginity was the cause of the special love, let him explain, if he was not a virgin, why he was loved more than the other apostles. "But," you say, "the Church is founded on Peter." Although in another place the same is done on all the apostles, and all receive the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and the strength of the Church is established on them equally, yet one is chosen among the twelve for this reason, that by appointing a head the occasion of schism might be removed. But why was John not chosen, the virgin? Deference was paid to age, because Peter was older; lest one still a young man, almost a boy, be preferred to men of advanced age; and lest the good master, who ought to remove from his disciples the occasion of strife, and who had said to them, "My peace I give you, my peace I leave you," and "Whoever wishes to be greater among you, let him be the least of all," should seem to give cause for envy against the young man whom he loved. And that we may know that John was then a boy, the histories of the Church teach most plainly that he lived until the reign of Trajan, that is, he fell asleep in the sixty-eighth year after the Lord's passion, as we too have briefly noted in the book On Illustrious Men. Peter is an apostle, and John is an apostle; the one a husband, the other a virgin. But Peter is only an apostle; John is apostle, evangelist, and prophet. Apostle, because he wrote to the churches as a teacher; evangelist, because he composed a book of the Gospel, which, apart from Matthew, none of the other twelve apostles did; prophet, for on the island of Patmos, to which he had been banished by the emperor Domitian for his witness to the Lord, he saw the Apocalypse, containing countless mysteries of things to come. And Tertullian reports that at Rome he was put into a jar of boiling oil and came out purer and fresher than he went in. And his Gospel itself differs much from the others. Matthew begins to write as if of a man: "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham"; Luke from the priesthood of Zechariah; Mark from the prophecy of Malachi the prophet and of Isaiah. The first has the face of a man, because of the genealogy; the second the face of a calf, because of the priesthood; the third the face of a lion, because of the voice of one crying in the wilderness: "Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." But our John, like an eagle, flies to the heights and reaches the Father himself, saying: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; he was in the beginning with God," and the rest. Virginity explained what marriage could not know. And to include much in a few words, and to show what privilege John had, or rather virginity in John: the virgin mother is commended by the virgin Lord to the virgin disciple.