Against Jovinian 2.24–2.32

In vain, then, do you go over the sheep and goats, the five and five virgins, the Egyptians and Israelites, and the rest of this kind, because the recompense is not in the present but in the future. That is why the day of judgment is promised at the consummation, because now there is no judgment. For the last day would be called the day of judgment without cause if God judged now. At present we sail, we wrestle, we fight, so that at the end we may reach the harbor, be crowned, and triumph. But you perversely and slipperily put forward the conditions of the present age as examples of what is to come, when certainly here there is injustice, there justice, until we enter the sanctuary of God and understand their last end. The saint does not die in one way and the sinner in another. For those sailing on the same sea there is the same calm and storm. The robber is not killed in one way and the martyr in another. Nor are children born in one way from adultery and brothels and in another from chaste marriages. Certainly the Lord and the robbers were crucified by the same sentence. If the judgment of this age and of the age to come is the same, then those who were crucified together here will be treated alike in the future too. Paul and those who had bound him sail together, endure the storm together, and together escape to the shore when the ship is broken by the waves. You cannot deny that the merits of the prisoner and of those who bound him are different. And how was the shipwreck of the Apostle and the soldiers one? Paul the apostle afterwards relates a revelation, and says that those who were in the ship had been granted to him by the Lord. Are he to whom they are granted and those who are granted of one merit? Ten saints could rescue a sinful city. Lot with his daughters was rescued from the fire; his sons-in-law too would have been set free had they been willing to go out. And certainly there is a great difference between Lot and his sons-in-law. Zoar, one city of the Pentapolis, is set free, though it was of the same merit and lay under the same sentence as Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim; it is preserved by the prayers of the holy man. See, the merit of Lot and of Zoar is different, and yet they escape the fire alike. The raiders who, in David's absence, had laid waste Ziklag and carried off their wives and children as plunder are cut down in the field on the third day, and four hundred men flee on camels. Tell me that there is any difference between those who were cut down and those who managed to flee. We read in the Gospel that the tower of Siloam fell on eighteen men and killed them, crushed beneath it. Certainly, according to the Savior's sentence, they had not been the only sinners; but they were punished to frighten the rest, so that when the pestilent man is scourged the fool may become wiser. If there is one punishment for all sinners, it is unjust that one is killed and another is warned by another's death.

You object to me the omer of manna and its one measure, and that the clothing, hair, beard, and shoes of the Israelites were alike; as if we too did not receive the body of Christ alike. In the mysteries there is one sanctification for master and slave, noble and commoner, king and soldier, although what is one becomes different according to the merits of those who receive it. "For he who eats and drinks unworthily will be guilty of violating the body and blood of Christ." Because Judas too drank from the same cup as the other apostles, will he be of one merit with the rest? And if you do not wish to accept the sacrament, certainly we all live alike, breathe one air, are watered by the same moisture, are fed by the same foods. And if foods are changed for the better by the art of cooks and made something sweeter by seasonings, such foods satisfy not nature but pleasure. We hunger alike, we feel cold alike; together we are pinched by cold and melted by heat and warmth. The sun itself and the moon and the whole choir of stars, the rains and the world run alike for us, and according to the Gospel we are all watered by the same rains, good and bad, just and unjust. If present things are examples of future things, then the sun of righteousness too will rise alike for the righteous and sinners, the impious and the holy, Christians, Jews, and Gentiles; whereas Scripture says: "But for those who fear the Lord the sun of righteousness will rise." If it will rise for those who fear, then it will set for despisers and false prophets. The sheep that stand on the right are brought into the kingdom of heaven; the goats are thrust down into hell. That parable does not describe the merits of the sheep among themselves, nor, on the other hand, those of the goats; it makes a distinction only between sheep and goats. For not everything is taught in every place; each likeness is referred to that of which it is a likeness. So the ten virgins too are examples not of the whole human race, but of the watchful and the lazy: the one always awaiting the Lord's coming, the other, giving themselves to sleep and idleness, not thinking of the judgment to come. That is why at the end of the parable it is said: "Watch, for you know neither the day nor the hour." If Noah was set free in the flood and the whole world perished, all were flesh, and that is why they perished. Either you will say that Noah's sons were not of the same merit as Noah, for whose sake his sons were set free; or you will put the cursed Ham in the same place as his father, because he was set free from the flood with him. In the passion of Christ all turned aside; together they became unprofitable; there was none who did good, no, not one. Will you dare, then, to say that Peter and the other apostles who fled denied him in the same way as Caiaphas and the Pharisees and the people crying, "Crucify, crucify such a man"? And to say nothing of the apostles, will Annas and Caiaphas and Judas the traitor seem to you guilty of the same crime as Pilate, who was unwillingly compelled to pass sentence against the Lord? The greater Judas's merit was, the greater his crime; and the greater his crime, the greater his punishment. "For the mighty will suffer torments mightily." "A bad tree does not bear good fruit, nor a good tree bad." If this is so, answer me: how did Paul, when he was a bad tree persecuting the Church of Christ, afterwards bear good fruit? And Judas, when he was a good tree working signs with the apostles, afterwards turned traitor and bore bad fruit? So a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor a bad tree good, only as long as it continues in its goodness or its wickedness. Further, that every Hebrew keeps the Passover alike, and is set free in the seventh year, and in the jubilee, that is, the fiftieth, all property returns to its owners: this is said not of the present but of the future; because, serving during the six days of this world, on the seventh day, the true and eternal Sabbath, we shall be free; if, that is, we are willing to be free while we still serve in the world. But if we are unwilling, our ear will be pierced as a testimony of our disobedience, and we shall serve continually with the wife and children we preferred to freedom, that is, with the flesh and its works.

As for the parable of the sowing, which produces three yields on each side; and that, according to the Apostle, on the foundation of Christ one builds gold, silver, precious stones, another wood, hay, stubble; and that in a great house there are different vessels: this is plain, and to wish to contradict it is the most open shamelessness. Yet lest he exult in a lie and bring the example of the apostles to prejudice the numbers hundred, sixty, and thirty, let him know that in Matthew and Mark a hundredfold is promised to the apostles who had left all their goods; in the Gospel of Luke "much more," that is, pollaplasiona; and that in no Gospel at all is seven written for a hundred; and that he is held guilty either of forgery or of ignorance. Nor does it harm us that in one Gospel the counting begins from a hundred, in another from thirty; for all Scripture, especially the Old Testament, puts the smaller number first and so climbs step by step to the greater; for example, it says that someone was "five and seventy and a hundred years old," and yet seventy-five could not be more than a hundred because they were named first. If you do not take the difference of the numbers hundred, sixty, and thirty in a good sense, neither will you take it in a bad sense; and the fault of the seed that fell by the wayside, on the rocks, and among the thorns will be the same. But if both those three and these are each single things in a good or a bad sense, it was foolish to number six kinds for two things; especially since in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, when the parable had been told, the Savior always added: "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." Where there is nothing hidden within, we are called in vain to a mystical understanding.

But if the Father and the Son make their dwelling with believers, and you think that where Christ is guest nothing is lacking, I think that Christ dwelt in one way in the Corinthians and in another in the Ephesians; that is, in one way in those among whom the apostle Paul found many sins, in another in those to whom he set out mysteries unknown for ages; in one way in Titus and Timothy, in another in Paul. Certainly among those born of women none has arisen greater than John the Baptist. But where one is called greater, he must have had others less. And: "He who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he." You see, then, that in heaven there is a greatest and a least, and that among the angels too and the invisible creatures there is manifold and infinite variety. Why do the apostles say, "Lord, increase our faith," if there is one measure for all? And the Lord to the disciple: "O you of little faith, why did you doubt?" In Jeremiah too we read of the kingdom to come: "Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, and I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Jacob, not according to the covenant I made with your fathers." And a little after: "I will put my law in their inward parts and write it on their heart, and I will be their God and they shall be my people; and no longer shall a man teach his neighbor and a man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord'; for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest." From the context of that passage the prophet plainly describes the future kingdom of Christ; and how will there be least and greatest there if all will be equal? Surely in the same way as is said in the Gospel: "He who teaches and does will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven; but he who teaches and does not do will be least." The Savior commanded that at a banquet we take the lower place, lest, when someone greater comes, we be shamefully pushed down from the higher one. If we cannot fall, but are only raised up by repentance, what does that ladder in Bethel mean, by which the angels descend and ascend, who come from heaven to earth? Certainly they were among the sheep and at the right hand while they were there. Angels descend from heaven, and Jovinian is secure in his possession of it!

Who could keep from laughing at his thinking that the many dwellings with the Father are the churches spread through the whole world, when Scripture most plainly teaches, according to John's Gospel, that the Lord spoke not of the number of churches but of the dwellings of heaven and the eternal tabernacles for which the prophet longs? "In my Father's house," he says, "are many dwellings. If it were not so, I would have told you, for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am you may be also." The place and dwellings which Christ says he is preparing for the apostles are surely in the Father's house, that is, in the kingdom of heaven, not on earth, where he was leaving the apostles for the present. At the same time the sense of Scripture must be observed: I would tell you, he says, that I go and will prepare a place for you, if there were not many dwellings with the Father; that is, if each did not prepare a dwelling for himself not by God's generosity but by his own works. And so it is not mine to prepare but yours; for the place prepared did Judas no good, since he lost it by his own fault. In this sense too must be understood what is said to the sons of Zebedee, one of whom wanted to sit at the left and the other at the right: "You will indeed drink my cup; but to sit at my right or at my left is not mine to give you, but to those for whom it has been prepared by my Father." It is not the Son's to give; and how is it the Father's to prepare? Different and very many dwellings, he says, are prepared in heaven for very many and different virtues, which not persons but works receive. In vain, then, do you ask of me what lies in yourselves, what my Father has prepared for those who by worthy virtues will ascend to so great a dignity. Further, what he says, "I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am you may be also," he says properly to the apostles, of whom it is written in another place: "That as I and you, Father, are one, so they too may be one in us": those who have believed, who are perfect, who can say, "The Lord is my portion." But if there are not many dwellings, how is it that in both the Old Testament and the New the high priest holds one rank, the priests another, the Levites another, the doorkeepers another, the temple wardens another? And in the book of Ezekiel, where the order of the future Church and the heavenly Jerusalem is described, the priests who had sinned are degraded to temple wardens and doorkeepers; and though they are in the temple of God, that is, at the right hand, they are not among the rams but among the least of the sheep. In that river too which goes out from the temple, and waters the salt sea and gives life to all things, many kinds of fish are described. Why are there in the kingdom of heaven Archangels, Angels, Thrones, Dominions, Powers, Cherubim, and Seraphim, and every name that is named, not only in the present age but also in the age to come? There is no reason for a difference of names where there is no difference of merits. An Archangel is surely archangel of other, lesser angels. Archangels, Powers, and Dominions have others through whom they exercise power and over whom, as subjects, they rule. This is in heaven, this in the ministry of God; so do not, in your usual way, laugh and sneer at us if we put forward emperors, prefects and counts, tribunes and centurions, companies, and the rest of the order of the army.

As for his saying, "Do you not know that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit?", it is trivial, since divine Scripture is accustomed to call one thing in the plural and many in the singular. And yet let him know that in the temple itself there are many little rooms: there is an outer court and an inner, there are porches, there is the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies. There are kitchens too in the temple, there are store-rooms, presses, and places for keeping vessels. So too in the temple of our body there are different merits. God does not dwell in all equally, nor is he poured into all in the same measure. Some of the spirit of Moses is taken away and given to the seventy elders: I think the abundance of a river is one thing, that of streams another. A double spirit of Elijah is given to Elisha; and so the double grace worked greater signs. The one, living, raised a dead man; the other, dead, raised a dead man. The one called down famine on the people; the other in one day provided the enemy's supplies to a besieged city. And though he says, "Do you not know that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit?" of the whole Church of believers, who, gathered together, form one body of Christ, here the question now is who in the body is worthy to be Christ's feet, who his head, who his eyes, who his hands. The two women in the Gospel, the penitent and the holy one, signify this: one holds his feet, the other his head. Though some think that she is one woman, and that she who first began at the feet came by degrees to the head. And as for what he objects: "I do not pray for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that as I, Father, am in you and you in me, we are one, so all may be one in us," and that the whole Christian people is one in God, as most dear children, partakers of the divine nature: we have already said above, and now it must be impressed more fully, that we are one in the Father and the Son not according to nature but according to grace. For the human soul and God are not of the same substance (as the Manichees are accustomed to say). But "You have loved them," he says, "as you have loved me." You see, then, that our being taken into the fellowship of his substance is not of nature but of grace; and he loves us because the Father loved the Son, and the members are loved, that is, in the body. "For as many as received Christ, to them he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." The Word became flesh, that we might pass from the flesh into the Word. The Word did not cease to be what it had been, nor did the man lose being what he was born; the glory was increased, not the nature changed. Do you want to know how we become one body with Christ? Let him who made us teach you: "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven." And John the evangelist, who had drawn wisdom from Christ's breast, agrees with the same words, saying: "By this we understand that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God." If you believe in Christ as the apostles believed, you will become one body with them in Christ. But if it is rash to claim their faith and works for yourself when you do not have the same faith and works, you will not be able to have the same place.

Further, your boast that bride, sister, mother, and all these names belong to the one Church, and that all believers are signified by these names, tells against you. For if there is one order in the Church, and it does not have many members in one body, what need is there for it to be called bride, sister, and mother, unless it is bride to some, sister to others, mother to others? All indeed stand at the right; but one stands as a bridegroom, another as a brother, another as a son. "My little children," he says, "with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you." Do you think those who are being brought to birth are of the same merit as the one who is in labor? Hence too you foolishly wished to assert that we love all members equally, and do not prefer the eye to the finger nor the hand to the ear, but that in the loss of each member the pain is common; whereas the Apostle teaches the Corinthians that some members are more honorable, others less presentable, and that the less presentable are clothed with greater honor, while those honorable in themselves do not need our care. Do you think the mouth and the belly, the eyes and the passages through which dung and urine are discharged, are of the same order and merit? "The lamp of your body," he says, "is your eye. If the eye is blind, the whole body is in darkness." If you cut off a finger or the tip of an ear, there is pain indeed, but not so great a loss, nor so great a disfigurement with the pain, as if you put out the eyes, cut off the nose, or slit the mouth. Without some members we can live; without others not at all. There are light sins, there are grave ones. It is one thing to owe ten thousand talents, another to owe a farthing. We shall be held to account both for an idle word and for adultery; but it is not the same to blush and to be tortured, to redden with shame and to be tormented for a long time. Do you think what we say is our own? Hear the apostle John: "He who knows that his brother is sinning a sin not unto death, let him ask, and he will give him life, for him who sins not unto death. But he who has sinned unto death, who will pray for him?" You see that if we pray for lesser sins, we obtain pardon; if for greater, it is hard to obtain; and that there is a great difference between sins and sins. That is why of the people of Israel, because they had sinned a sin unto death, it is said to Jeremiah: "Do not pray for this people, nor take up intercession for them, and do not oppose me, for I will not hear you." And if we all enter the world and leave the world alike, and this prejudges things to come, then righteous and sinners will be held alike before God, because now we are born and die in the same way. And if you maintain that there are two Adams, one earthly and the other heavenly, and that those who are in the earthly are at the left and those who are in the heavenly are at the right, answer me meanwhile, that I may ask you about two brothers: was Esau in the earthly or in the heavenly? No doubt you will answer that he was in the earthly. In which was Jacob? You will say at once, in the heavenly. And how was he in the heavenly, when Christ, who is called the second and heavenly Adam, had not yet come in the flesh? Either, then, you will reckon all before Christ's incarnation in the old Adam, and the righteous too will be in the earthly man, and at the left among your goats; or, if it is impious to put Isaac where Ishmael is, Jacob where Esau is, the saints where the sinners are, the last Adam will be counted from the time Christ was born of the Virgin, and the argument of the two Adams will not help your sheep and goats; for we have shown that in the first Adam there were both sheep and goats, and that in one and the same man some stood at God's right hand and others at his left. "For from Adam to Moses death reigned over all, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of Adam's transgression."

As for what you try to prove, that abuse and murder, "Raca" and adultery, an idle word and impiety are repaid with one punishment, you have already been answered above, and I will now answer briefly. Either you will deny that you are a sinner, so as not to be liable to Gehenna; or, if you are a sinner, you will be led to hell even for a light fault. "The mouth that lies," it says, "kills the soul." I suspect that you have sometimes lied, being a man; for every man is a liar, that God alone may be true, and be justified in his words, and prevail when he judges. Either, then, you will not be a man, so as not to be a liar; or, if you have lied because you are a man, you will be punished with parricides and adulterers. For there is no difference between sins! And those whom you raise from low to high will not be as grateful to you as those whom, for a light and daily sin, you have thrust into the outer darkness will be angry. And if in persecution he who is strangled, he who is beheaded, he who flees, and he who dies shut up in prison have one crown of victory in various kinds of struggle, this too tells for us. For in the martyr it is the will, from which death itself springs, that is crowned. It is mine to set myself against the fury of the Gentiles and not to deny the Lord. Then it lies in their choice either to behead, or to burn, or to shut up in prison, or to apply various kinds of penalties. But if I flee and die in solitude, the crown of the one dying will not be the same, because the cause of death is not the same, Christ. As to your saying that there is no difference at all between the brother who was always with the father and the one who was afterwards received back in repentance, I add, if you like, that the one drachma which had been lost and found was joined to the rest, and the one sheep which the good shepherd sought out, leaving the ninety-nine, and brought back, completed the number of a hundred. But it is one thing to be a penitent and beg pardon with tears, another always to be with the father. That is why, through Ezekiel, the shepherd and father speaks to the sheep brought back and to the son once lost: "And I will establish my covenant with you, and you will know that I am the Lord, and you will remember and be confounded, so that you will not open your mouth any more because of your confusion, when I have been appeased toward you in all that you have done." So that penitents may have nothing less than the righteous, confusion alone suffices them in place of all punishment. That is why it is said to them in another place: "And you will remember your most evil ways and all the crimes by which you were defiled, and you will loathe yourselves in your own sight for all the wickednesses you have done; and you will know that I am the Lord, when I have done good to you for my name's sake, and not according to your evil ways nor according to your most wicked crimes." The son too is rebuked by the father for begrudging his brother's salvation, and being tortured by envy while the angels rejoice in heaven. And yet the likeness of the two brothers, the thrifty and the prodigal, does not refer to the merits of the whole human race, but either to the persons of the Jew and the Christian, or to those of the saints and the penitents. On this parable I dedicated a little book to Bishop Damasus while he was still living.

Further, if to the laborers of the first, third, sixth, ninth, and eleventh hours one denarius is paid, and the reward begins with those who labored last in the vineyard, here too not men of one time and one age are described, but from the beginning of the world to its end there are mysteries of different callings. At the first hour Abel and Seth were called; at the third Enoch and Noah; at the sixth Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; at the ninth Moses and the prophets; at the eleventh the people of the Gentiles, to whom the wage is paid first, because, believing in the crucified Lord, by the difficulty of faith it earned the greatness of the rewards; and many kings and prophets desired to see what we see, and did not see it. But the one denarius is not one reward, but one life and one deliverance from Gehenna. Moreover, as at the emperor's indulgence those guilty of different crimes are released from prison, and each, according to his labor or works, is in this or that state of life, so the denarius, as the indulgence of the true Emperor, sends all out of prison through baptism. Then it is our labor to prepare different things for ourselves according to the difference of virtues.