Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 15 part 19/37

But for the present, against these men, who are generally displeased if anyone hates his enemy, we have a word that may press upon their brow, when we ask them whether their god loves their race of darkness. Or if enemies are now to be loved for this reason, that they have a part of good, why ought we not for this reason also to hate them, that they have a part of evil? For by that very rule this too is resolved, and it is taught not to be contrary, that in the ancient Scripture it was said, 'you shall hate your enemy,' and in the Gospel, 'love your enemies': namely, that every unjust man, insofar as he is unjust, is to be held in hatred, but insofar as he is a man, is to be loved — so that we may reproach that which in him we rightly hate, that is, the vice.

So that, by it, that which in him we rightly love — that is, human nature itself — might, the vice being corrected, be set free. This, I say, is the rule by which we both hate the enemy on account of that which is evil in him, that is, iniquity, and love the enemy on account of that which is good in him, that is, a social and rational creature — except that we prove him to be evil not through nature, whether his own or another's, but through his own will. But those men think man to be evil through the nature of the race of darkness, which, according to them, their whole god feared before it was in part conquered, and by which he was in part so conquered that he was not even wholly set free. Having heard, therefore, and not understood, what had been said to the ancients:

'You shall hate your enemy,' men were carried into hatred of the man, whereas they ought to have hated nothing but the vice. These the Lord corrects by saying: Love your enemies; so that He who had already said, 'I have not come to dissolve the Law, but to fulfil it' — and therefore would not dissolve what is written in the Law concerning hatred of an enemy — by commanding assuredly that we should love our enemies, might compel us to understand in what way we could both hate one and the same man on account of his fault and love him on account of his nature. But to understand this is too much for their perverse minds.

They are only to be pressed, so that, according to the lost reason — or rather the madness — of their slander, they may defend their god, whom they cannot call a lover of the race of darkness, and therefore they have no example from him by which to exhort that each should love his own enemy. For they could sooner attribute love of an enemy to the race of darkness itself than to their god. For that race, as they rave, coveted the light neighbouring and adjacent to it, and wished to enjoy it, and, in order to enjoy it, plotted to invade it. Nor is this a fault, when the true and beatific good is sought. Whence the Lord also says: The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and those who do violence seize it.

Behold, the race of darkness, according to their vanity, wished to do violence and to seize the good which it had loved, delighted by its brightness and beauty; nor did God in turn love it, but, detesting it with hatred, strove utterly to root out that which wished to enjoy him. If, therefore, the evil love the good, that they may enjoy it, but the good hate evil, lest they be polluted, answer, Manichaeans: which of them fulfil what the Lord says: Love your enemies? Behold, if you wish these to be single and mutually opposed statements, your god did what is written in the Law of Moses: 'you shall hate your enemy,' and the race of darkness did what is written in the Gospel: 'love your enemies.' And yet not even by inventing could you find

by what means you may settle the question between the light-seeking flies and the light-shunning cockroaches; for you contend that both are offspring of the race of darkness. Whence, then, do the former love a light alien to themselves, while the latter, by turning away from this, delight rather in their own origin? Or are flies born cleaner in fetid sewers than cockroaches in dark bedchambers? Now indeed, as for what was said to the ancients: 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,' how is it contrary to what the Lord says: But I say to you, not to resist evil; but if anyone strikes you on your right cheek, offer him the other also, and the rest — since that ancient precept too was given for restraining the flames of hatreds and bridling the immoderate spirits that rage?

For who, pray, is easily content to repay only as much vengeance as he received of injury? Do we not see men lightly hurt contriving slaughter, thirsting for blood, and scarcely able to find in the sufferings of an enemy wherewith to be sated? Who, struck with a fist, does not either stir up trials for the condemnation of him who struck, or, if he wishes to strike back himself, pound the whole man with fists and heels — if not even snatching up some weapon? Against this immoderate, and therefore unjust, revenge, the Law, fixing a just measure, instituted the penalty of retaliation, that is, that each should pay such a punishment as the injury he inflicted. Accordingly, 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth' is not the tinder, but the limit, of fury; not that that

which had been lulled to sleep should hence be kindled, but that that which was burning should not be extended further, was it imposed. For there is a certain just vengeance, and it is justly owed to him who has suffered injury. Whence, assuredly, when we pardon, we in a certain manner bestow of our own right. Whence also they are called debts which, in the Lord's prayer, we are admonished to remit in human fashion, that ours too may be divinely remitted to us. But that which is owed, even if it is kindly remitted, is nonetheless not unjustly demanded. But just as in swearing even he who swears truly draws near to perjury — from which he is far removed who does not swear at all — and although he does not sin who swears truly, yet he is more remote from sin who does not swear — whence the admonition not to swear is a preservation from the sin of perjury —:

so, whereas he sins who through immoderation wishes unjustly to be avenged, but he does not sin who, applying a measure, wishes justly to be avenged, more remote from the sin of unjust vengeance is he who does not wish to be avenged at all. For he sins who exacts beyond what is owed; but he does not sin who exacts what is owed: yet far safer from the sin of the unjust exactor is he who does not exact what is owed at all — especially lest he too be compelled to render a debt owed by him who owes no debt. I too, therefore, could set forth these matters thus: It was said to the ancients: You shall not avenge unjustly; but I say to you, do not even avenge — this is a fulfilment, just as Faustus says concerning swearing: It was said, 'you shall not swear falsely'; but I say to you, do not even swear;

it is equally a fulfilment. I too, therefore, could speak thus, if by these added words it seemed to me that what was lacking to the Law had been added by Christ, and not rather that what the Law wished to accomplish — that no one should sin by avenging himself unjustly — is more safely preserved if one does not avenge oneself at all, just as that which it wished to accomplish — that no one should sin by swearing falsely — is more safely preserved if one does not swear. For if 'an eye for an eye' and 'whoever strikes you on the cheek, offer him the other also' are contrary, why is 'render to the Lord your oath' and 'do not swear at all' not contrary? And yet Faustus judges the latter to be not a destruction but a fulfilment — which here too he ought to have judged.

For if 'swear truly' is fulfilled by saying 'do not swear,' why is not 'avenge justly' fulfilled by saying 'do not avenge'? So that I judge there to be in both cases a preservation from the sin whereby either a false oath is sworn or unjust vengeance is taken — although this concerning the total remission of vengeance avails also toward this, that by remitting debts of this kind we too may deserve to have them remitted to us. But for a hard people a measure had first to be applied, by which it might discern not to overstep what was owed, so that, anger being tamed — which snatches men to immoderate vengeance — whoever wished might now tranquilly attend to what he himself owed, which he desired to be relaxed to him by the Lord, so that by this consideration he might relax to his fellow-servant what was owed.

For also that concerning the wife who is not to be dismissed, which the Lord commanded — whereas it was said to the ancients: Whoever dismisses his wife, let him give her a bill of divorce — if we attend diligently, we shall see that it is not contrary. For the Lord expounded what the Law willed, when it commanded him who dismisses his wife on any pretext to give a bill of divorce. For it did not say: whoever wishes, let him dismiss his wife — to which it would be contrary not to dismiss — but assuredly it did not wish a wife to be dismissed by her husband.

— he who interposed this delay, so that a mind headlong toward separation, being checked by the writing of the bill, might desist and consider what evil it is to dismiss a wife; especially because, as they report, among the Hebrews it was lawful for no one to write Hebrew letters except the scribes alone, since they both professed a more excellent wisdom and, if any of them were endowed with equity and piety, not only professed it but also followed it. To these, then, who ought to be prudent interpreters of the Law and just dissuaders from separation, the Law wished to send him whom it commanded to give a bill of divorce, if he had dismissed his wife.

For the bill could not be written for him except by those very men, who, on this occasion of a matter coming of necessity, would in a certain manner guide it into their own hands by good counsel, and, acting peaceably between the man and his wife, would persuade to love and concord. But if so much hatred intervened that it could not be extinguished or amended, then assuredly the bill would be written, because he would not dismiss without cause a woman whom he so hated that by no persuasion of the prudent could he be recalled to the love due to marriage. For if a wife is not loved, she is to be dismissed. Because, therefore, she is not to be dismissed, she is to be loved. But love can be composed by admonishing and persuading, not imposed by compelling the unwilling.

This a scribe ought to do, one just and wise, such as it behoved him to be in that profession. That one might come to him, the discordant husband was commanded to have a bill written — which a good and prudent man would not write, unless in a mind too averse and perverse the counsel of concord had no power. But nonetheless from you, out of the sacrilegious vanity of your error, I ask why it displeases you to dismiss a wife whom you judge is to be had not for the fidelity of matrimony, but for the crime of concupiscence. For matrimony was so named from this, that a woman ought to marry for no other reason than that she may become a mother — which is odious to you.

For in that way you think that a part of your god, conquered and subdued in battle with the race of darkness, is bound also with fleshly fetters. But, that I may rather explain what is now being treated: if Christ, where, having set forth certain ancient statements, He added 'but I say to you,' neither fulfilled the law of the first men by this addition of words, nor destroyed that law which was given through Moses, as by the opposition of contraries, but rather so commended all the things recalled from the Law of the Hebrews that whatever He might further say from His own person availed either to the exposition to be sought, if that law had put anything obscurely, or to the safer preservation of what that law had willed:

you see how differently must be understood what He says, that He came not to dissolve the Law but to fulfil it: namely, that it should not be completed, as though half-full, by these words, but that what could not be done by the letter commanding — because of the presumption of the proud — might be fulfilled by grace persuading — because of the confession of the humble — in the work of deeds, not by the addition of words. For faith, as the Apostle says, works through love. Whence likewise he says: For he who loves another has fulfilled the Law. Because Christ, coming, gave this love in manifestation through the Holy Spirit, whom He sent as promised — by which love alone the righteousness of the Law could be fulfilled — He therefore said: I have not come to dissolve the Law, but to fulfil it.

This is the New Testament, by which to this love the inheritance of the kingdom of heaven is promised, which was veiled in the figures of the Old Testament according to the distribution of the times. Whence likewise He says: A new commandment I give you, that you love one another. And so all, or nearly all, the things which He admonished or commanded, where He added 'but I say to you,' are found also in those ancient books. There, against anger, it is said: My eye was troubled because of anger, and: Better is he who conquers anger than he who takes a city. There, against a harsh word: The stroke of a whip makes a bruise, but the stroke of the tongue shatters bones. There, against adultery of the heart: You shall not covet your neighbour's wife. For it does not say: do not commit adultery, but: do not covet.

Whence the Apostle recalls this from the Law, saying: For I would not have known concupiscence, unless the Law had said: You shall not covet. There, concerning the patience of not resisting, the man is praised who offers his cheek to one striking him and is filled with reproaches. There, concerning loving an enemy, it is said: If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he thirsts, give him drink. For hence the Apostle too recalled this, and that other in the Psalm: With those who hated peace I was peaceable, and many other things. But that, by refraining from vengeance and by loving even the wicked, we imitate God, you have there a copious passage concerning God Himself doing this; for there it is written: For to prevail always is possible for You alone, and who shall stand against the might of Your arm?

For the whole world before You is as the turning of the scale, and as a drop of morning dew that descends upon the earth; but You have mercy upon all, because You can do all things, and You overlook the sins of men for the sake of repentance. For You love all things that are, and hate nothing of what You have made; for You would not have appointed anything if You had hated it. And how could anything endure, unless You had willed it, or what was not called by You be preserved? But You spare all, because they are Yours, O Lord, who love souls. For Your good Spirit is in all things; wherefore those who go astray in part You correct, and admonishing them concerning the things wherein they sin, You address them, that, malice being forsaken, they may believe in You, O Lord.

To this benign patience of God, who makes His sun to rise upon the good and the evil, and rains upon the just and the unjust, Christ exhorts us to imitate it, so that we may neglect to avenge our own injuries and do good to those who hate us, that we may be perfect, as our heavenly Father is perfect. And that it avails us also toward the remitting of the debts of our own sins, that we relax to others these debts of retribution, and that we must beware lest, if we do not do this, the bond of sin be not remitted to us either, though we beseech — thus it is written in those ancient books: He who wishes to be avenged shall find vengeance from the Lord, and He, confirming, shall confirm his sins.

Forgive your neighbour who harms you, and then, when you beseech, your sins shall be released. Does a man reserve wrath against a man, and seek healing from the Lord? He has no mercy upon a man like himself, and prays for his own sins? And he himself, while he is flesh, reserves wrath, and asks for propitiation from the Lord? And who shall entreat for his sins? Now indeed, concerning the wife who is not to be dismissed, what else, or what more opportune, should I recall from those books than that whence the Lord Himself replied to the Jews questioning Him on this matter? For when they asked whether it was lawful to dismiss a wife for any cause, He said to them: Have you not read, that He who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said:

'For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they two shall be one flesh.' And so they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. Behold, the Jews are convicted out of the books of Moses that a wife ought not to be put away — they who supposed that they were acting according to the will of the law of Moses when they put her away. At the same time we also learn here, with Christ Himself bearing witness, that God made and joined together the male and the female; and in denying this the Manichaeans are condemned, resisting no longer the book of Moses only, but the Gospel of Christ.

Furthermore, if what they themselves opine and proclaim were true — that the devil made and joined together the male and the female — with what diabolical cunning does Faustus reprove Moses as one dissolving marriages by a bill of divorce, and praise Christ as one confirming that bond by the precept of the Gospel? Whereas surely, according to his own foolish and sacrilegious opinion, he ought rather to have praised Moses for separating what the devil had made and joined, and to have blamed Christ for making solid the devil's fabrication and fetter.

Now see how the good Master opens up this question: why Moses himself — from whose book was cited that conjugal chastity concerning the first union of male and female, so holy and to be violated by no separation — afterward permitted a man to put away his wife. For when they had answered Him, 'Why then did Moses command to give a bill of divorce, and to put her away?' He said to them, 'Because of the hardness of your heart Moses permitted you to put away your wives.' This is what we expounded a little before. For how great was that hardness which could not, even by the interposition of a document — where a place is granted to the just and prudent for dissuasion — be loosened and bent toward receiving back or recalling the love of marriage?

Thus the Lord declared, by the testimony of that same law, both what the law enjoined upon the good and what it permitted to the hard-hearted: for He both admonished that a wife should not be put away, out of that same Scripture which recorded the union of male and female, and set forth the divine authority of that union, and showed that a bill of divorce was to be given because of the hardness of a heart to be either subdued or left untamed.

Wherefore, since all those excellent precepts of the Lord, which Faustus wished to show were contrary to the ancient books of the Hebrews, are found in those very books, whence came the Lord 'not to destroy the law but to fulfil it,' save that — apart from the figures of the promises, which, when the truth was rendered, have been fulfilled and taken away — the very precepts also, through which that law is 'holy and just and good,' should be fulfilled in us: not through the oldness of the letter that commands, and by the transgressions of the proud increasing the guilt even of prevarication, but through the newness of the Spirit that helps, and the confession of the humble that liberates by the grace of salvation?

For truly, just as all these sublime precepts are not lacking in those ancient books, so there the end to which they are to be referred is hidden — although the saints lived according to it, who foresaw its future revelation and, in keeping with the fitness of the times, either prophetically veiled it or wisely understood what was prophetically veiled. And finally — a thing I would not say rashly — I know not whether anyone has found in those books the name 'kingdom of heaven,' which the Lord names so frequently. It is indeed said there: 'Love wisdom, that ye may reign for ever.' And that eternal life itself, were it not there openly proclaimed, the Lord would not have said even to the wicked Jews: 'Search the Scriptures, in which ye think ye have eternal life;'

and these are they which testify of Me.' For to what else does this pertain, which is there written: 'I shall not die, but live, and shall declare the works of the Lord'; and 'Lighten mine eyes, that I never sleep in death'; and 'The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them'; and a little after: 'But they are in peace; and though before men they suffered torments, their hope is full of immortality; and having been afflicted in few things, in many they shall be well rewarded'; and in another place: 'But the just shall live for evermore, and their reward is with the Lord, and their thought is with the Most High; therefore shall they receive a kingdom of glory and a crown of beauty from the hand of the Lord'?

These and many other testimonies of eternal life are found there, whether most manifest or somewhat obscure. And concerning the very resurrection of bodies the prophets were not silent; whence the Pharisees fiercely contended against the Sadducees who did not believe it. This appears plainly not only in the canonical Acts of the Apostles — which these men do not accept, lest they be convicted concerning the coming of the true Paraclete whom the Lord promised — but also in the Gospel, where the Sadducees put to Him a question about a woman who had married seven brothers one after another, since in her marriage one succeeded another as each died: whose wife of them she would be in the resurrection.

Accordingly, that Scripture abounds in testimonies of eternal life and of the resurrection of the dead; but this name, that is, 'kingdom of heaven,' does not from any passage there occur to me. For this pertains properly to the revelation of the New Testament, because those bodies which had been earthly shall, by that change which Paul more openly recalls, become in the resurrection spiritual and thereby heavenly, in which we may possess the kingdom of heaven.

This name was reserved to be uttered by the mouth of Him whom that whole apparatus of the old dispensation — in generations, deeds, sayings, sacrifices, observances, festivals, and in all the heralds of its utterances, in its events and in the figures of things — was travailing to bring forth as one to come, a King to rule and a Priest to sanctify His faithful ones: who, 'full of grace and truth,' came 'not to destroy the law but to fulfil it,' by helping through grace unto the doing of the precepts, and by taking care through truth unto the fulfilling of the promises. BOOK TWENTY. FAUSTUS said: Why do you worship the sun, unless because you are pagans and a schism of the Gentiles, not a sect?

Therefore it will not be beside the point to inquire into this very thing also, that we may see more plainly whether we ought to be called by this name. And indeed if I now report to you my faith simply, as among friends, I may perhaps seem to be inventing this by way of excuse, or to be blushing — God forbid — at the worship of the divine lights. But do you receive it however you will: I shall not repent of having spoken, if only for the sake of some who will thus far learn that our religion has nothing in common with the Gentiles. Therefore we worship one and the same Godhead of God the Father Almighty, and of Christ His Son, and of the Holy Spirit, under a threefold appellation;

but the Father Himself we believe to dwell in the highest and principal light, which Paul elsewhere calls 'inaccessible,' while the Son abides in this second and visible light. And since He too is twofold — as the Apostle knew Him, saying that Christ is 'the power of God and the wisdom of God' — we believe His power to dwell in the sun, but His wisdom in the moon. Moreover, of the Holy Spirit also, who is the third majesty, we confess this whole compass of the air to be the seat and dwelling-place; and out of His powers and spiritual outpouring we hold that the earth also, conceiving, gives birth to the passible Jesus, who is the life and salvation of men, hanging on every tree.

Wherefore both for us concerning all things, and for you likewise concerning the bread and the cup, there is an equal reverence, although you most bitterly hate the authors of these things. This is our faith: about which, if you should think fit to inquire on another occasion, you shall hear more — although not even this be for the present a less firm argument, that either you or any other, being asked where he believes his God to dwell, will not hesitate to answer: 'in the light.' Whereby this worship of mine is confirmed by the testimony of well-nigh all. But now to that other matter: that you have named us not a sect, but a schism of the Gentiles. A schism, unless I am mistaken, is when men who hold the same opinion and worship with the same rite as the rest take pleasure merely in a division of assembly;

but a sect is when men opine far otherwise than the rest, and have instituted for themselves a worship of the divinity by another rite, far dissimilar. If these things are so, my opinion and worship, for their part, are far other than those of the pagans; concerning yours we shall see afterward. The pagans dogmatize that good and evil, foul and splendid, perpetual and perishable, mutable and certain, corporeal and divine, all have one origin. To these things I hold utterly contrary views, who confess God the origin of all good things, but hyle (matter) of their contraries; for so does our theologian name the origin and nature of evil. Likewise the pagans think that God is to be worshipped with altars, shrines, images, victims, and incense.

I walk far different from these in this matter also, who consider my very self, if only I be worthy, to be the rational temple of God; I receive Christ His Son as the living image of the living Majesty; the mind, imbued with good arts and disciplines, as the altar. Divine honours also and sacrifices I set in prayers alone, and those pure and simple. How then am I a schism of the pagans? For thus far you might also have called me a schism of the Jews, because I too worship the Almighty God — a thing which every Jew also boldly claims for himself — while you did not consider the diversity of rites, whereby the Almighty is worshipped by me and by the Jews, if indeed the Jews do worship the Almighty.

But meanwhile we are treating of opinion, which has so deceived both the pagans concerning the worship of the sun and the Jews concerning the Almighty. Yet neither is it true, if you should call me a schism of yours, although I venerate and worship Christ — because I worship Him by another rite and another faith than you. A schism, indeed, ought either to change nothing from that whence it was made, or not much. As, for instance, you who, revolting from the Gentiles, first tore off with you the opinion of monarchy — that is, that you believe all things to be from God — but you turned their sacrifices into love-feasts, their idols into martyrs, whom you worship with like vows; you appease the shades of the dead with wine and banquets; you celebrate the solemn days of the Gentiles together with them, such as the Kalends and the solstices. Of your manner of life you have assuredly changed nothing:

you are truly a schism differing in nothing from your mother-body except in the assembly. Likewise your predecessors the Jews, though themselves too separated from the Gentiles, gave up graven images only; but temples and immolations and altars and priesthoods and the whole ministry of sacred things they exercised by the same rite, and far more superstitiously than the Gentiles. And concerning the opinion of monarchy they too dissent in nothing from the pagans. Wherefore it is established that both you and the Jews are schisms of Gentile religion, whose faith you hold and whose rites, though moderately altered, you keep — and so, on the score of a mere division of assemblies, you think yourselves to be sects.