Commentary on Matthew 14.6–14.12

“Therefore I say to you, The kingdom of heaven is like a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants.” The general sense of the parable aims to teach us to forgive those who have wronged us the sins they have committed against us, especially if, after doing the wrong, the wrongdoer asks the one he wronged, begging that his sins be forgiven him. The parable also wishes to teach us this: that even for sins already forgiven us by God, for which we have received forgiveness, payment may be exacted even after the forgiveness, if we do not forgive those who have wronged us their sins, so that not even the slightest memory of having been wronged remains in us; rather, with the whole heart, helped by freedom from bearing grudges (no ordinary virtue), we should pardon the one who has wronged us for the things he has done to any of us maliciously and treacherously. After the general sense of the parable, one can also examine the whole of it more simply, word by word, so that one who carefully advances in rightly seeking out each of the things written beforehand may profit from testing what has been said. There is also, it is likely, a higher interpretation, more mystical and hard to attest, according to which, in the same way as the parables interpreted by the evangelists, one might inquire into each thing in this parable: for example, who the king is, and who the servants, and what is the beginning of settling accounts, and who is the one debtor of many talents, and who his wife, and what the children, and what are all the other things mentioned besides these, which the king ordered to be sold so that the debt might be paid out of his possessions; and what is the going out of the one who was forgiven the many talents, and who is the one servant who was found owing, not to the master but to the one who had been forgiven; and what the number of the hundred denarii means; and what “He took him by the throat, saying, Pay what you owe” means; and what is the prison into which the one forgiven all the talents went and threw his fellow servant; and who are the fellow servants who were grieved and explained to their lord all that had happened; and who are the torturers to whom the one who threw his fellow servant into prison was handed over; and how, when handed over to the torturers, he paid back all that was owed, so that he owed nothing more. It is likely that other questions too could be brought into the discussion by one more given to inquiry; the explanation and interpretation of these I believe to be greater than human, and to need the Spirit of Christ, who spoke them, so that they may be understood as Christ spoke them. For as “no one among men knows the things of a man except the spirit that is in him, and no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God,” so no one after God knows the things spoken by Christ in proverbs and parables except the Spirit of Christ. One who shares in it, not only as it is the Spirit of Christ, but also as it is of Christ as Wisdom and as Word, could behold what is revealed to him concerning the passage. As for the highest interpretation, we make no promise; yet neither do we despair, if helped by Christ, who is the wisdom of God, of grasping the things shown in the parable. But whether we shall be able also to dictate such things in this writing, God would suggest in Christ, that we may do what is pleasing to him, if only the word of wisdom given through the Spirit from God, and the word of knowledge supplied according to the Spirit, be given us about these things too.

“The kingdom of heaven,” he says, “is like,” and what follows. If it is likened to a king who did such and such things, whom should we say he is if not the Son of God? For he is the king of the heavens; and just as he is wisdom itself, and righteousness itself, and truth itself, so perhaps he is also the kingdom itself: a kingdom not of anything below, nor of a part of the things above, but of all the things above, which have been named heavens. And if you inquire into “Theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” you can say that Christ is theirs, in so far as he is the kingdom itself, reigning in every aspect of himself over the one who is no longer ruled by sin, which reigns in the mortal body of those who have subjected themselves to it. When I say “reigning in every aspect of himself,” I mean something like this: he is righteousness reigning, and wisdom, and truth, and the other virtues, over the one who, through bearing the image of the heavenly, has become heaven; and over every power, whether angelic or of the others that are named, not only in this age but also in the age to come, of saints worthy of such a kingdom. This kingdom of heaven, then, when it came to be “in the likeness of sinful flesh, so as to condemn sin in the flesh,” when God made “him who knew no sin to be sin” for us who bear the body of our sin, “was likened to a man, a king,” the man understood in Jesus. It was united to him (if one may dare to say so) more closely, so as to be united and wholly become one with “the firstborn of all creation,” than “he who is joined to the Lord” becomes “one spirit” with him. This kingdom of heaven, likened to the man, the king, understood in the Saviour, and united to him, is said by anticipation to have wished to settle accounts with his servants. He is going to settle accounts with them so that it may appear how each one has used the householder's approved silver and coins of reason. The example in the parable is taken from masters who settle accounts with their own servants. We shall understand more precisely what the parable shows here if we fix our minds on what happens with household servants who have managed their masters' money and have an account of it demanded from them. For each of them, receiving different amounts of their master's money, uses it either as he should, so as to increase the master's money, or spends it prodigally on things he should not, pouring out what was entrusted to him without discernment and without caution. And there are some who managed such and such sums well but lost others; and when he gives the account, as the master settles accounts with them, it is reckoned how much loss each has caused, and counted how much profit he has brought; and according to how he has managed, he is either honoured, or has payment exacted from him, or is pardoned in some things and deprived in others. Come, then, let us first see from what has been said the coins of reason and the approved silver of the master, of which one receives more and another less. For according to the ability of each, to one are given five talents, as able to manage so much; to another two, as not capable of what the one before him has; to another one, as inferior to the second also. Are these the only differences? Or are these said of certain people in later parts of the Gospel, while there are also others besides these, found in other parables? In one there are two debtors, one of five hundred denarii and the other of fifty, either entrusted with these sums and having managed them badly, being lesser in ability than the one entrusted with the talent; that they received these sums we have not learned, but that they owed so much we seem to be taught by the parable. Others too are found: ten servants, each entrusted with one mina. And if anyone were to consider the variety of the human soul, and the natural aptitudes and lack of aptitude, differing greatly from one another, for more or fewer virtues, and for these virtues or those, he might perhaps understand how each soul has come with certain coins of the householder, which come to light with the completion of reason and with the care that follows the completion of reason, and with training toward what is fitting; or with care and training toward other things, either useful, such as the arts and pursuits, or useful in some ways and not in others, such as doctrines that are neither wholly true nor wholly false.

You will inquire here whether all human beings can be called servants of this king; or whether some are servants, those whom he foreknew and predestined, and others are those who do business along with the servants, called bankers. You will also inquire whether, outside the servants, there are those from whom the householder declares he will exact payment with interest: not only those who are strangers to godliness, but also some of the believers. Only the stewards of the word are servants; but the king, settling accounts with the servants, demands payment also from those who have borrowed from the servants, whether a hundred measures of wheat, or a hundred baths of oil, or anything whatever … According to the parable, the one who owes the hundred measures of wheat or the hundred baths of oil is [not] found to be a fellow servant of “the unjust steward,” as is clear from “How much do you owe my master?” Understand that every action that is good or fitting resembles profit and yield, and a wicked one resembles loss; and just as there is a profit of more silver and another of less, and in varying degrees more and less, so in good actions there is, as it were, an assessment of greater or lesser profits. It belongs to him alone who knows how to examine such things, who sees from the disposition, the reasoning, and the action, and from the things not in our power that work together with those in our power, to reckon what kind of work is a great profit, what a lesser one, and what the least; and so too with the opposites, what sin is found, when he settles accounts with the servants, to be a great loss, what a lesser one, and what, if it must be so named, a loss of the last lepton or the last quadrans. The account of the whole and entire life, then, is settled by the kingdom of heaven described, which was likened to a man, a king, when “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive according to what he has done in the body, whether good or bad.” And then, when the account is settled, there will be brought into it both “every idle word that people speak,” and whether anyone ever “gave a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple.”

And this will be when what is written in Daniel comes to pass: “Books were opened, and the court sat.” For there comes to be, as it were, a record of all that has been spoken and done and thought, and by divine power everything of ours that is hidden will be made manifest and everything covered will be revealed. So when someone is not found to have made an effort to be released from his adversary, he will go by way of the ruler and the judge and the officer to the prison, until he pays the last lepton; but when one has made an effort to be released from him, and owes nothing to anyone, and has already made the mina tenfold or fivefold, or doubled the five talents, or made the two into four, he obtains the due reward, entering into the joy of his Lord, or being set over all his possessions, or hearing, “Have authority over ten cities,” or, “Have authority over five cities.” We might think that these things are said as needing a long time, so that the account of the whole time of life here may be settled with us; so that one might suppose that, as the king settles accounts with each of so many servants, the matter needs as long a time as it takes for what has happened from the beginning of the world to the consummation of the age to come to its end; and not of one age only, but of many. But the truth is not so. For God, wishing all at once to rekindle in the memories of all, so that each may become aware of what he has done better or worse, all that has happened to each throughout the whole of time, could do it by ineffable power. When we wish to remind someone of certain things, we need enough time to go through what we say and what brings to remembrance the things we wish to recall; it is not so with God when he wishes to remind us of what we have done in this life, so that, becoming aware of what we have done, we may understand why we are punished or honoured; he could do it at once. If anyone disbelieves that the power of God can act so quickly in these matters, he has not yet understood the God who made the universe, who did not need periods of time to make so great a creation of heaven and earth and the things in them. For even if he seems to have made these in six days, understanding is needed to grasp how “in six days” is meant, because of the words “This is the book of the generation of heaven and earth,” and what follows. We must dare, then, to say that the time of the expected judgment needs no periods of time; but as the resurrection is said to happen “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,” so too, I think, will the judgment.

After this we must speak on “When he began to settle accounts, one was brought to him who owed many talents,” which seems to me to have this meaning. The time of beginning is when the judgment begins from the house of God, as it is written also in Ezekiel, when he says to those appointed over the punishments, “Begin from my holy places”; and it is like the twinkling of an eye. The time of settling accounts is the same, distinguished only in thought; for we have not forgotten what was said before about those who owe more. That is why it is not written, “As he was settling accounts,” but “When he began to settle, there was brought,” at the beginning of his settling accounts, “one who owed many talents,” as one who had caused countless losses: he had been entrusted with great things and believed with much, but had brought his master no profit, and instead had caused countless losses, so that he owed many talents. Perhaps he owed many talents because he often followed the woman named Lawlessness, who sits on the talent of lead. Understand in this passage that each very great sin is a loss of the householder's talents; and such sins are committed by the sexually immoral, adulterers, men who lie with males, the effeminate, idolaters, murderers. Perhaps, then, the one debtor of many talents who was brought to the king had sinned in nothing small, but in all things great and grievous. If you look for him among human beings, you might perhaps find him to be “the man of sin, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship”; and if outside human beings, who would he be but the devil, who has destroyed so many who received him as he worked sin in them? “For a man is a great thing, and a merciful man is precious”: precious as worth a talent, either of gold, as the lampstand of a talent was of gold, or of silver, or of whatever material is understood in a figurative sense. Symbols of these are recorded in Chronicles, where David became rich in many talents, whose number is also given: so many talents of gold, so many of silver, and of the other materials named there, from which the temple of God was built.

But not having the means to repay the talents, for he had lost them, he has a wife and children and other things, of which it is written, “all that he has.” It was possible, if he were sold with his own, for him to find a buyer who would make up the whole debt with the price of him and his; and it was possible for him to be no longer the king's servant but to become the buyer's. And he pleads that he may not be sold along with his own, but may remain in the king's house. That is why “falling down he worships him,” knowing the king to be God, and says, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.” For he was, it seems, an active man, who saw that by later actions he could make up all that was lacking from the earlier loss of the many talents. And this good king had compassion even on the debtor of the many talents, and then released him, granting him something more than he had asked. For the debtor promised to repay all the debts to his master if he were patient; but the lord, having compassion on him, did not merely let him go for the time, so as to recover the debt by being patient, but released him completely and forgave him all the debt. But this wicked servant, though he had asked his master for patience over the many talents, acted without mercy. “For finding one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, he seized him and took him by the throat, saying, Pay what you owe.” How did he not display an excess of wickedness, seizing his fellow servant over a hundred denarii, choking him and depriving him of free breath, when he himself, over the many talents, was neither seized nor choked, but was first ordered to be sold with his wife and children and possessions, and later, after he had worshipped, when his lord had compassion on him, was released and forgiven all the debt? It is a hard task to say, in keeping with Jesus' intention, who is the one fellow servant found owing a hundred denarii, not to his own lord but to the one who owed many talents; and who are the fellow servants who saw the one choking and the other being choked, and were greatly grieved, and clearly reported to their lord all that had happened. As to how the matters stand in truth, I declare that no one can explain them except Jesus, who explained all things privately to his own disciples. He does so by coming to dwell in their ruling faculty, opening all the treasures in the parable, dark, hidden, and invisible, and fully convincing, by clear demonstrations, whomever he wishes to enlighten with the light of the knowledge of the things in this parable; so as to show at once who is the one debtor of many talents brought to the king, the man, and what follows, and who is the other one who owed him the hundred denarii, and the rest: whether he can be the man of sin explained above, or the devil, or neither of these but someone else, either a human being or one of those under the devil. For it is the work of the wisdom of God to explain also the prophecies about those of a particular quality, or who have been qualified with such and such qualities, whether among invisible powers or among certain human beings, recorded in whatever way by the divine Spirit. But since we have not yet acquired a sufficient mind, one that can be blended with the mind of Christ, reaching far enough to contain so much, and to search all things with the Spirit, even the depths of God, we think, while still forming only an indefinite impression of the passage, that what is set forth here concerning the debt of many talents refers to some one wicked servant shown through the parable.

It is worth considering when the king, the man in the parable, wished to settle accounts with his servants, and to what time we should refer what is said. For if it is after the consummation, or at it, at the time of the expected judgment, how will one make sense of what is said about the one who owed a hundred denarii and was choked by the one who had been forgiven the many talents? But if it is before the judgment, how could one show an account settled before it by the king, the man, with his servants? We must think in general, about every parable whose explanation has not been recorded by the evangelists (even though Jesus explained everything privately to his own disciples), that those who wrote the Gospels concealed the clear meaning of the parables for this reason: that the things signified by them were greater than the nature of written letters, and each solution and clear explanation of such parables was such that not even the world itself could contain the books that would be written on such parables. But it may be that a suitable heart is found, which because of its purity can contain the letters of the clear explanation of the parables, so that they may be written in it by the Spirit of the living God. Someone will say, however, that perhaps we act impiously, we who wish, because of the secret and mystical character of certain heavenly writings, that these should be signs of them, and who try to make them clear, even if it seems, for the sake of argument, that we have carefully grasped their meaning. To this too it must be said: if there are any who have received the gift of understanding these things accurately, they know what they must do. But we, who confess that we fall short of being able to reach the depth of what is signified in these things, even if we grasp to some extent a somewhat coarser general sense of the passage, shall say this: some things which we seem to find after much testing and inquiry, whether by the grace of God or by the power of our own mind, we do not dare to entrust to writing; but some things, for the sake of our own exercise and that of those who will read them, we set out to some extent. Let this be said in our defence, because of the depth of the parable. As to when the king of the parable, the man, wished to settle accounts with his servants, we shall say that it seems to take place around the proclaimed time of the judgment. This is shown by one parable towards the end of the present Gospel, and one in the Gospel according to Luke. So as not to lengthen the discussion by setting out the very wording, since anyone who wishes can take it from the Scripture itself, we shall say that the parable according to Matthew shows that “a man going abroad called his own servants and delivered to them his possessions, and to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one”; then they did their business with what had been entrusted to them; “And after a long time the lord of those servants comes,” and it is written in these very words that he also settles accounts with them. Compare this with “And when he began to settle accounts,” and see that he called the time of the householder's absence abroad the time in which, “while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord,” and called his coming, when “after a long time the lord of those servants comes,” the time at the consummation, at the judgment; for “after a long time the lord of those servants comes and settles accounts with them,” and what follows takes place. The parable according to Luke shows more clearly that “a nobleman went into a far country to receive a kingdom for himself and to return”; as he was going, he called ten servants and gave them ten minas, and said to them, “Trade until I come.” This nobleman, hated by his own citizens, who sent an embassy after him because they did not want him to reign over them, returned having received the kingdom, and said that the servants to whom he had given the money should be called to him, “so that he might know what they had gained by trading.” Seeing what they had done, he gave praise to the one who had made the mina into ten minas, saying, “Well done, good servant, because you were faithful in a very little,” and gives him authority over ten cities, those under his kingdom; but to another, who had made the mina fivefold, he did not give the praise he had assigned to the first, nor did he use the word “authority” as he had specified for the first, but said to him, “And you, be over five cities”; and to the one who had tied up the mina in a cloth he said, “Out of your own mouth I judge you, wicked servant,” and to those standing by he said, “Take the mina from him and give it to the one who has the ten minas.” Who, then, will not say of this parable too that the nobleman who went into a far country to receive a kingdom for himself and to return is Christ, going abroad, as it were, to receive the kingdom of the world and of the things in it; that those who received the ten minas are those entrusted with managing the word with which they were entrusted; and that his citizens, when he lived as a citizen in the world by becoming man, those who did not want him to reign, are perhaps Israel which disbelieved him, and perhaps also the nations that disbelieved him?