Works (CSEL) 15 part 21/31

for she who is the mother of the son is the mother-in-law of his wife, so that even according to the letter the reckoning of the number is not absurd, and it clearly appears that faith is not bound by the bonds of nature, since although they are liable in the duty of piety, yet in faith they are free. Nor does it seem incongruous if we resolve this sense by a mystical interpretation. One house is one man; for each one is a house either of God or of the devil. And so the spiritual house is the spiritual man, as we have in the epistle of Peter: 'And you too, as living stones, are built up into a spiritual house unto a holy priesthood.' In this house, therefore, two are divided against three, three against two. By the two we frequently read soul and body. And if two shall agree on earth, both make one. And elsewhere:

'I chastise my body and bring it into servitude.' One thing is that which serves, another that to which it is subjected. If we have recognized two, let us also recognize three, which is easy to understand from those two. For there are three affections of the soul in the body: one rational, another concupiscible, the third irascible—that is, λογιστικόν, ἐπιθυμητικόν, θυμικόν. Therefore not two against two, but two against three and three against two shall be divided; for through the coming of Christ man who was irrational was made rational. Before, we were like the beasts that know not reason, we were carnal, we were earthly, according to the saying: 'You are earth, and into earth you shall go.' The Son of God came, sent His Spirit into our hearts, and we were made spiritual sons.

We can say that in this house there are another five, that is, smell, touch, taste, sight, hearing. Therefore if, according to those things which we hear or read, we exclude with a separated sense of sight and hearing the superfluous pleasures of the body which are begotten by taste and touch and smell, we divide two against three, in that the habit of the mind is not captured by the enticements of vices, but by emulation of virtue withdraws itself from the allurements of pleasure, and there comes to be no single consensus of all that would precipitate into error, but the desires of the heart and the offices of virtue separate themselves by dividing. Or if we take the five senses as bodily, the vices already of the body and the sins separate themselves.

And perhaps there are five whom that rich and luxurious man in the Gospel, who is described as being tormented in hell, calls his brothers, to whom he begs that it be commanded that they may know that in this world delights are to be renounced, so that they may have rest after the world—the pursuits of virtue. They can also seem to be flesh and soul, separated from the smell, touch, and taste of luxury, dividing themselves against the assailing vices in one house, flesh and soul subjecting themselves to the law of God, removing themselves from the law of sin.

Although their dissension passed into nature through the transgression of the first man, so that by no means did they agree with equal pursuits toward virtue, yet through the salutary cross of the Lord, both enmities and the law of the commandments being emptied, they came together into the concord of fellowship, after Christ, descending from heaven as our peace, made both one and dissolved the middle wall of the partition, abolishing the enmities in His flesh, the law of the commandments in decrees, that He might create the two in one new man, making peace, and reconcile both in one body to God. Who are the two except the one inner, the other outer?

The one regards the vigor of the soul, the other refers to the sense of the body, although they accord by an inseparable affection in a single breathing-together, when the flesh, being subjected to the better, obeys salutary commands—not so that, transfused into the nature of the soul by the subtlety of its matter, it migrates away.

But because, having renounced delights and being purged from every stain of vices, it walks the path of heavenly conversation by an affection of obedience, no longer as before resisting the law of the mind, but through the law of the mind and the spirit of life freed from the law of sin, so that the flesh becomes an appendage to the soul, no longer a procuress of vices, but a kind of emulator and as it were a handmaid of virtue; and again, when the soul does not wink at the enticements of the body nor is conquered by the delight of carnal pleasures, but a pure mind, stripped of the service of this world, allures and draws the sense of the body into its own pleasures, so that by the use of hearing and reading it may feast on the increases of virtue, and the interior sap, never to know hunger, may be satisfied with spiritual nourishments;

for indeed reason is the food of the mind and the splendid nourishment of sweetness, which does not burden the members nor turn them into the shameful parts of nature, but into adornments, when the wallowing-place of lusts is changed into a temple of God, and the lodging-house of vices begins to be a sanctuary of virtues. Which indeed happens then, when the flesh, returned into the nature of its vigor, recognizes its nurse and, the audacity of contumacy laid aside, is joined to the judgment of the moderating soul—such as it was when it received the secret places of paradise to be inhabited, before, infected by the venom of the pestiferous serpent, it knew a sacrilegious hunger and, by its greed of appetite, passed over the memory of the divine precepts that clung to the soul's senses. Hence sin is shown to have flowed, as it were from body and soul as parents.

While the nature of the body is tempted, the ill-sound soul suffers along with it. And if it had reined in the appetite of the body, the origin of sin would have been extinguished in its very birth—that origin which, infused as it were by the virile motion of the body, the soul, made wet and corrupted even in its own vigor, brought forth, heavy with alien burdens. For indeed that more violent and stronger sex is borne by a certain strong impulse as a virile affection, while this one strives to hold a reckoning more soft than vehement. From these, therefore, the motion of diverse desires grew up. But when the soul returns into itself, overcome by shame at its deformed offspring, it forswears its degenerate heirs, renouncing its motions, abhorring sin.

The flesh too, having paid out the lot of grievous toils as interest and wearied by the miserable usury of injury, when it has grieved that it is transfixed by its own desires, which it had itself begotten for itself, as if by the thorns of the world, hastens to put off the old man, that it may take itself away from itself, lest a perishing succession abandon the improvident parent. Again the irrational motion of desires, alluring it by the painted charm as it were of a certain beauty with the enticements of pleasure, took it to itself as if for the use of fellowship. Thus pleasure, as a kind of daughter-in-law of body and soul, marries the motion of depraved desire. Therefore, as long as in one house, with the vices conspiring, there remained an undivided and inseparable consensus, no division seemed to exist.

But when Christ sent into the earth the fire by which He might burn up the offenses of the flesh, or the sword which signifies the edge of an unsheathed power by which the secret things of the spirit and of the marrow are penetrated, then flesh and soul, renewed by the mysteries of regeneration, forgetting what they were, begin to be what they were not, and separate themselves from the fellowship of the old vice, though formerly dear to them, and cast out as it were the bond of prodigal posterity, so that parents are divided against children, while the intemperate motion is renounced by the temperance of the body, and the soul declines the partnership of fault, nor does there remain any place for that extraneous and externally-taken pleasure.

Children too are divided against parents, while the vices of the old man flee the senile censure of the renewed man, and the more youthful pleasure shuns, as it were, the discipline of a serious household—the norm of piety. Nor is it incongruous if we suppose that these too divide themselves for this reason, that they may become better than their parents, especially since in later passages He said: 'If anyone comes to me and does not hate father or mother and children and brothers and sisters, even his own soul, he cannot be my disciple.' And therefore, according to the simple form of understanding, the son who follows Christ is set before Gentile parents; for religion stands above the offices of piety.

This too, according to a loftier interpretation, since sin is born from the flesh and as it were operates in the womb of the flesh, concerning which the Apostle says: 'But if I do that which I will not, it is no longer I that do it, but the sin that dwells in me.' When the Lord's blood, poured out for the life of this world, has abolished the vices, the offense is turned into grace—'for sin abounded, that grace might more abound'—and it comes to pass that repentance, arisen out of sin, impels toward a conversion of purpose and toward a desire for spiritual grace. And so what was for me unto death, this shall be unto salvation.

Therefore sin, washed by the watering of the fountain, is separated from the flesh whence it was begotten; and while each one desires to redeem his fault, that out of the sequence of guilt there may come a zeal for discipline. The concupiscence too of evil things and a certain more fervid motion of desire is, by the word of God, transfused into an appetite of divine charity and love, and in the same nature there comes to be a varied discipline, and that appetite of body and soul acquires for itself a pleasure of the heavenly mysteries far better than before. For the mind is nourished by the knowledge of things, and, the promise of things to come having been ascertained, the loftier soul disdains its old works; for the natural man does not perceive the things that are of the Spirit of God, for it is foolishness to him;

but the spiritual man judges all things, yet he himself is judged by no one. 'While you go with your adversary to the magistrate, on the way give diligence to be delivered from him, lest perhaps he condemn you before the judge, and the judge hand you over to the exactor, and the exactor cast you into prison. I tell you, you shall not go out thence until you pay even the last farthing.' This too Matthew set down, but he specifically, this one generally; for he thought it said about the reconciling of the peace of dissenting brothers, this one about repentance and the amendment of every fault. Let us therefore discuss who is the adversary, who the magistrate, who the judge, who the exactor, and what we should think the farthing to be, which unless one pays, he is cast into prison.

And according to Matthew indeed the adversary is one with whom you seem to have least agreed in this life, who before the coming Judge of the dead and the living will pursue you with the charge of an abiding quarrel; but according to Luke our adversary is especially that one who sows the enticements of offenses, that he may have partners in punishment whom he had as companions in error, and therefore he seeks associates in guilt, that he may betray the liable ones unto penalty. Of whom the Apostle Peter warns us to beware, saying: 'Your adversary the devil, like a lion seizing and roaring, seeks whom he may devour.'

According to Matthew, our adversary is every exercise of virtue and the apostolic and prophetic word, which binds us to the harsher precepts and to the instructions of a stricter life; and it is fitting that we agree with this adversary, so that we may emulate him in our works, lest by any stubbornness of ours it be shown that we have fallen away from him. According to Luke, however, no one is more our adversary than our own fall, which accuses us by the evidence of our own life — not because it seeks the office of any judge of accusation, but because before the One who knows all our own deed accuses us, since it is found to be estranged from the practice of virtue and from the apostolic precepts.

And so our adversary is every practice of vices: lust is our adversary, avarice is our adversary, every wickedness is our adversary, every unjust thought is our adversary, and finally every evil conscience, which both afflicts us here and will accuse and betray us in the time to come, as the Apostle testifies, saying: 'their conscience bearing witness, and their thoughts in turn accusing or even defending them.' But if conscience betrays each person, how much more does the work of our deeds stand ready before God, which, imprinted upon our body, will be reviewed at the last time, and the secret of our thought, written in our hearts, will be read!

Let us therefore take pains that, while we are set in this course of life, we may be freed from a wicked deed as from an evil adversary, lest, while we go with our adversary to the magistrate, on the way he condemn our error. For this reason also, according to Matthew, He says: 'Be in agreement with your adversary, while you are with him on the way'; but the Greek said εὐνοῶν, that is, 'well-disposed.' For if, while we are in this life, we free ourselves from the chains of the devil, neither shall he be condemned on our account, nor shall we be subject to his chains. Hence too the psalm is written 'for the Assyrian,' the seventy-ninth. For you do well to take counsel for your adversary, and you act on behalf of that Assyrian — that is, the vain one — if, freed from his snares, you render him this goodwill, that he may escape the penalty of your fall and of death.

But if you cling to his chains, he will hand you over as a guilty man to the magistrate, being himself both accuser and betrayer. Who is the magistrate, except the One in whose power are all things, and who claims for Himself the lofty dignity of the full and perfect time? To Him the holy prophet, relying on the conscience of his good works and not fearing the adversary, hastens, saying: 'My soul has thirsted for the living God; when shall I come and appear before the face of God?' For this magistrate will hand the guilty man over to the Judge — namely, to Him to whom He granted power over the living and the dead, and granted it by nature, not by grace; for He did not receive what He did not have, but took up what, when He was begotten, He assumed from the substance of the Father.

He who pointed out the accuser also shows you this magistrate and judge, and reveals when he is to be unveiled. 'In the day,' he says, 'when God shall judge the hidden things of men, according to my gospel, through Jesus Christ our Lord.' This therefore is the judge, Jesus Christ, through whom hidden things are exposed and the penalty for wicked work is decreed. Do you wish to know that Christ is the judge, who hands over to the officer and casts into prison? Question Him yourself — rather, read Him saying in the gospel: 'Take and cast him into outer darkness.' His officers too He Himself pointed out in another place where He says: 'So shall it be at the consummation of the age; the angels shall go forth and separate the wicked from the midst of the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire:

there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' It now remains for us to understand what the figure of the farthing means. And it seems that, under the name of a familiar thing, a spiritual mystery of understanding is expressed. For just as those who pay money render a debt, and the name of the interest is not discharged before the whole sum, down to the last coin, by whatever kind of payment, the entire amount is paid, so by the compensation of charity and of the remaining deeds, or by some satisfaction, the penalty of sin is dissolved. Nor is it without purpose that here He set down not two coins of bronze, as elsewhere, not the as, not the denarius, but the farthing; for the exchange of the farthing is, as it were, a kind of compensation, when one thing is rendered and another is signified as paid.

So here too either the injury is redeemed by the price of charity, or the penalty is relaxed by the assessment of the injury. We recall, moreover, that the farthing used to be given in the baths, by the offering of which, just as there everyone receives the means of washing, so here he receives the means of cleansing; for the sin of each is washed away by the kind of condition described above, when the guilty one is so long subjected to penalties as to pay the punishment for the committed error. But concerning those Galileans, whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices, there seems to be a certain figure touching upon those who, by diabolical compulsion, do not offer their sacrifice in purity. Their prayer turns to sin, as is written of Judas the betrayer, who, set among the sacrifices, was plotting the betrayal of the Lord's blood.

A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard. What does it mean that in His gospel the Lord frequently introduces the parable of the fig tree? For you have elsewhere that at the Lord's command all the greenery of this leafy wood withered. From this you understand the Creator of all, who can command natures, so that they either suddenly dry up or grow green.

Elsewhere He recalls that from the tenderness and the leaves of this tree the coming of summer is wont to be inferred, signifying by both things: both that the empty glory which the Jewish people put forward has, like a flower, fallen at the Lord's coming, because it remained fruitless in works; and that the day of judgment, like the coming of summer, in which the ripened fruits of all lands are gathered in, is to be measured out from the fullness of the Church, into which the Jews too shall come to believe. Here too, therefore, let us seek some mystery of a deeper sense. The fig tree is in the vineyard. Now the vineyard was the Lord of Sabaoth's, which He gave over to the plundering of the nations. And so He who caused His vineyard to be plundered, here too commanded the fig tree to be cut down.

The comparison of this tree is fitting for the synagogue, because just as this tree, abounding in flowing leaves, disappoints the hope of its owner by the empty expectation of looked-for produce, so also in the synagogue, while its teachers, barren in works, nevertheless boast in words as in leaves abounding, the empty shadow of the law overflows. But the hope of false produce, once looked for, mocks the prayers of the believing people. There is also in the nature of the tree something by which you may the more believe that the likeness of the synagogue is expressed by comparison with it. For if you inquire diligently, you will find the custom of this tree's nature distinct from the practice of all other trees.

For other trees bear a flower before the fruit, and by the flower as a herald of themselves they mark out the fruits that are to come; this one alone from the beginning buds forth fruits in place of flowers. In other trees the flower is shaken off and the fruits are born; in this one the fruits fall off so that fruits may take their place. Therefore those first ones come forth empty of fruit in the stead of a flower; thus by a certain premature manner of being born, the things which know not the order of nature cannot preserve nature's benefit. For where the bud is wont to thrust itself out from the middle of the bark, there the smallest fruits of this kind of all burst forth. Of these we read in the Song of Songs: 'The fig tree puts forth its green figs.' And so, while all other shrubs whiten in early spring, the fig tree alone knows not how to grow hoary with its own flower.

Perhaps because no ripeness in fruits is earlier for these. For as others succeed, these are, as it were, rejected as degenerate, and with a dry, weak root they are stripped off, while those are renewed for which the sap is more useful. Yet some remain — very rare — and do not fall off, those for which this produce has smiled, so that from the midst of two twigs, with a short shoot bursting forth, they push up; and, covered by twin protections as by the bosom of a parent's nature, they grow with the warmth of a fuller sap. These, called forth by the mildness of a gentler breeze and grown more mature by longer seasons, when they have stripped off the wild temper of the earlier sap, are preferred to the rest in beauty and in the grace of ripeness.

Look now at the worship and the dispositions of the Jews, who, like the first fruits of a poorly fruitful synagogue, collapsed after the likeness of the falling green fig, so that fruits enduring beyond the age might succeed for our race. For the first people of the synagogue, weak as it were in the root of works, could not draw in the abundance of natural wisdom of the parched, and therefore fell off like a useless fruit, so that from the same twigs, as it were, of a fruitful tree, out of the richness of the ancient religion a new people of the Church might emerge. Therefore he who was ceased to be, that he who was not might begin. Yet the first ones came from Israel.

Whom the branch of a stronger nature had brought forth, under the shadow of the law and of the cross, in the bosom of both, tinged with a twofold sap, after the example of the ripening green fig, by the grace of fairest fruits they surpassed the rest — they to whom it is said: 'You shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.' Nor is that foreign to the matter, that Adam and Eve —

those first parents of ours, of our race as of our error, who covered themselves with the leaves of this tree, deserved to be exiles of paradise, when, conscious of their transgression, they shunned the presence of the Lord as He walked — that they might signify what was to come, namely, that in the last times the Jewish people, at the coming of the saving Lord, who came to call them, recognizing through the devil's temptations that it was stripped of virtues, and dreading the uncovered reproaches of conscience, straying from religion, confounded by transgression, would withdraw from the Lord, covered over by the veilings of flowing words as of leaves, while the shameful parts of its deeds remained. Therefore those who plucked the leaves of the fig tree, not the fruits, were cast out from the kingdom of God; for they were turned into a living soul.

The second Adam came seeking not the leaves either, but the fruits; for He was in a quickening spirit. But in the spirit the fruit of virtue is acquired, the Lord is worshipped. Now the Lord sought, not because He did not know that fruit was lacking on the fig tree, but in order to show in a figure that the synagogue ought already to have had fruit. Then from what follows He teaches that He did not come before the time, He who came over three years; for thus you have it: 'Behold, these three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none. Cut it down therefore; why does it even cumber the ground?' He came to Abraham, He came to Moses, He came to Mary; that is, He came in a seal, He came in the law, He came in the body. We recognize His coming from His benefits:

in one place is purification, in another sanctification, in another justification. Circumcision purified, the law sanctified, grace justified: one in all things, and one is all things. For no one can be cleansed except him who fears the Lord. No one deserves to receive the law except one purified from guilt; no one comes to grace unless he has known the law. Therefore the Jewish people could neither be purified, because it had a circumcision not of the soul but of the body; nor be sanctified, because it was ignorant of the power of the law, following the carnal rather than the spiritual things — but the law is spiritual; nor be justified, because it did not bring forth repentance for its offenses and therefore knew not grace.

Rightly therefore was no fruit found in the synagogue, and therefore it is ordered to be cut down. But the good husbandman — perhaps he in whom is the foundation of the Church, foreseeing that another was to be sent to the nations, but himself to those who were of the circumcision — devoutly intervenes that it should not be cut down, trusting that, by his own calling, the Jewish people too could be saved through the Church; and so he says: 'Let it alone this year also, until I dig about it and put in a basket of dung.' How quickly did he recognize that the hardness and pride of the Jews were the causes of barrenness! And so he knows how to cultivate, who knows how to detect the vices.

He promises that the hardness of their heart is to be dug with apostolic mattocks, so that the twice-sharp word may turn over the rust of the mind grown crusted with long neglect, and, the heart being broken up, may rouse the sense, now flourishing under the airy breath, lest a heap of earthly things bury and hide the root of wisdom. He says too that a basket of dung is to be put in. Great indeed is the power of dung, which is so great that it makes fruitful things out of barren, green things out of dry, fruitful things out of sterile. In it sat Job when he was tempted and could not be conquered; and Paul reckons all things as dung, that he may gain Christ. In short, when before this Job had lost very much, after he sat in the dung he had nothing that the devil could take from him.

Good is the earth that is dug, good the dung that is put in. In short, the Lord 'raises up the needy from the earth, and lifts the poor from the dunghill.' And so, through the exercise of the spiritual understanding and the disposition of humility, that good husbandman judges that the Jews too will become fruitful in the gospel of Christ. For he remembered that the Lord had spoken through Haggai, that on the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, from the day on which the temple of the Almighty Lord was founded, 'the vine and the fig and the pomegranates and the trees of the olive, which bear no fruit — from this day I will bless them.'

By which it is revealed that, at the very close of the declining year — that is, at the setting of the world now growing old — the holy temple of God, which is the Church, is to be built, by whose grace, through the sanctification of the laver, the peoples both of the Jews and of the nations may be able to have the fruit of their merits. Therefore, by the nature of the tree, the appearance of the synagogue is indicated as fruitful in its later produce — for we are from the seed of the fathers — and the Jews are deservedly compared to falling green figs, because with a heart grown fat and a hardened neck they cannot attain to their own perpetuity; who, if they die and as it were fall away to this world, that they may be reborn into the inner man through the grace of the laver, will assuredly be fruitful.

But the perfidy of obstinate men made the synagogue useless, and therefore, as if sterile, it is ordered to be cut down. What was said of the Jews I think must be guarded against by all, and most of all by us, lest, void of merits, we occupy the fruitful place of the Church — we who, like pomegranates, ought to bear among ourselves the blessed fruits: the fruit of modesty, the fruit of conjunction, the fruit of mutual charity and love, enclosed within the one womb of mother Church, lest the breeze harm us, lest the hail beat us down, lest the heat of cupidity burn us up, lest a shower of moisture dash us to pieces. Yet some, by allegory, think this fig tree to be a figure not of the synagogue but of malice and wickedness.

These, however, differ in nothing except that they choose the genus in place of the species; and they say they take this precaution because the Lord said to the fig tree: 'Never may fruit be born from you forever' — whereas we surely know that very many of the Jews have believed and will believe. But he who believes is no longer fruit of the synagogue, but of the Church; nor is he born of the synagogue who is reborn in the Church. For just as there are those who went out from us, but were not of us — for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us — so we say of those who believe from among the Jews, that, if they were of the synagogue, they would remain in the synagogue; but they went out from the synagogue for this reason, that they might be believed not to have been of the synagogue.

Next, in place of malice He would intervene and say it should be cultivated, that it might bring forth fruit — since the Lord came for this purpose, to abolish the seeds of wickedness. 'Now He was teaching in their synagogue on the sabbaths. And behold, a woman who had a spirit of infirmity for eighteen years, and she was bent over.' How quickly He indicated what He would say about the synagogue! He shows that He has come to that very tree, He who was preaching in it. Then in the infirm woman, as in a figure of the Church, He succeeds; for she, when she has fulfilled the measure of the law and of the resurrection, in that perpetual rest, raised on high to the summit, will not be able to feel the bending-down of our infirmity.