Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 15 part 26/37

What wonder, then, if Abraham, seeing his barren wife desiring for herself offspring which she herself could not bear, from her maidservant and from her husband, yielded not to his own carnal desire, but obeyed the conjugal authority—believing that Sarah willed this by God's nod, who had already promised him an heir of himself, but of what woman had not foretold? In vain, then, did Faustus, in his madness, leap forward to bring this charge, as though faithlessly accusing Abraham of being faithless. For, in his other blindness of not believing, he had no power to understand this; but this, in his lust to calumniate, he neglected even to read.

But as for his calling that just and faithful man a most infamous huckster of his own marriage, and asserting that, for the sake of avarice and belly, he sold Sarah his wife into concubinage to two kings, Abimelech and Pharaoh, at different times, having lied that she, being most beautiful, was his sister—Faustus does not with a truth-telling mouth separate honesty from baseness, but with a slanderous mouth turns the whole into a crime. For this deed of Abraham seems like pandering, but only to those who cannot rightly discern, by the light of that eternal law, right deeds from sins; to whom even constancy can seem obstinacy, and the virtue of confidence is reckoned the vice of audacity, and whatever like things are objected as though against men not acting rightly, by men not perceiving rightly.

For Abraham did not consent to any wickedness of his wife, nor did he sell her adultery; but just as she permitted her maidservant not to her husband's lust, but of her own accord brought her in for the office of begetting, the natural order being in no way disturbed, where her authority lay, commanding one who obeyed rather than yielding to one who desired—so also he, having a chaste wife cleaving to him with a chaste heart, of whose soul, where the virtue of modesty dwelt, he in no way doubted, kept silent that she was his wife and said she was his sister, lest, being slain by aliens and impious men, she should be possessed as a captive—being certain concerning his God that He would suffer nothing base or shameful to befall her. Nor did his faith and hope deceive him.

For Pharaoh, terrified by portents and afflicted with many evils on her account, when he learned by divine revelation that she was his wife, restored her unharmed with honour; and Abimelech, warned and instructed in a dream, did likewise. Some indeed, not slanderous and evil-speaking like Faustus, but rendering due honour to those same books which this man either censures through not understanding or, in censuring, does not understand—when they considered this deed of Abraham, it seemed to them that he had somewhat failed and wavered in the firmness of faith, and that through fear of death, as Peter denied the Lord, so this man denied his wife. But if it were necessary to understand it thus, I would acknowledge the sin of a man.

Nor on that account would I judge that all his merits were blotted out and effaced, just as neither were those of that Apostle—although the fault of denying a wife and denying the Saviour is not equal. But as it is, since I have something whereby to understand it so as not to understand it thus, by no cause am I compelled to slip into rashness so as to reproach one whom no one convicts of having through fear fallen into lying. For when asked whether she were his wife, he did not answer that she was not; but when it was asked of him what that woman was to him, he indicated a sister, he did not deny a wife: he kept silent something true, he did not say anything false. Or are we so foolish as here to follow Faustus, who says he lied about a sister—as though he had learned Sarah's lineage from somewhere, when holy Scripture has not disclosed it?

I think it just that in a matter which Abraham knew and we do not know, we should rather believe the patriarch, speaking what he knows, than the Manichaean, accusing what he does not know. Since therefore Abraham lived at that time in human affairs, when indeed brothers born of both or of one or the other parent were no longer permitted to be joined in marriage, but custom, prohibited by no law and no authority, joined the sons of brothers and others of a more distant degree of kindred—what wonder is it if he had as wife his sister, that is, one begotten of his own father's blood? For he himself said this to the king who was restoring her to him, that she was his sister by his father, not by his mother.

Where certainly he was compelled by no fear to lie that she was a sister, since that king had learned that she was his wife and, terrified by divine intervention, was restoring her with honour. That kinsmen and kinswomen are wont to be called by the general name of brothers or sisters among the ancients, Scripture testifies. For Tobias too says to God, when he prayed, before he was joined to his wife: 'And now, Lord, you know that not for the cause of lust do I take my sister'—though she was not born of intercourse of the same father nor from the same mother's womb, but sprung from the same stock of kindred; and Lot is called the brother of Abraham, though Abraham was his uncle.

From this usage of the word, even the brethren of the Lord are so called in the Gospel—not indeed those whom the Virgin Mary had borne, but all the near kinsmen from His kindred. Someone will say: 'Why did not Abraham rather presume thus concerning his God, that he did not fear to confess her his wife? For God was able to ward off from him the death which he feared, and to protect him with his wife from all destruction in that sojourning, so that neither should his wife, however beautiful she was, be desired by anyone, nor should he himself be slain on her account.' God could indeed have effected this; who is so mad as to deny it? But if Abraham, when questioned, had indicated that woman to be his wife, he would have committed two things to God to be guarded—both his own life and his wife's chastity.

But it belongs to sound doctrine that, when a man has something he can do, he should not tempt the Lord his God. For the Saviour Himself too was not unable to protect His disciples, to whom nevertheless He said: 'If they persecute you in one city, flee into another.' Of which thing He first gave the example. For when He had power to lay down His soul, and would not lay it down except when He willed, yet as an infant He fled into Egypt, His parents carrying Him. And He went up to the feast day not openly but secretly, though at other times He spoke openly to the Jews who were enraged and listened with a most hostile mind, yet were not able to lay hands on Him, because His hour had not yet come.

Not by the necessity of which hour He was compelled to die, but by the fitness of which hour He deigned to be slain. He therefore who, by teaching and reproving openly, and yet by not allowing the fury of His enemies to prevail anything against Him, demonstrated the power of God, that same One, nevertheless, by fleeing and hiding, instructed the weakness of man, that he should not dare to tempt God when he has something he can do, whereby he may escape what it behoves him to avoid. For neither had the Apostle Paul despaired of divine help and protection, nor lost his faith, when he was let down through the wall in a basket, that he might escape the hands of his enemies. Not then in not believing in God did he thus flee; but by tempting God he would have been unwilling thus to flee, when he could thus flee.

Accordingly, when among strangers, on account of Sarah's most excellent beauty, both her chastity and her husband's life were in doubt, and Abraham could not protect both, but nevertheless could protect one of these—that is, his life—lest he should tempt his God, he did what he could; but what he could not do, he committed to Him. He therefore who was not able to conceal himself as a man, concealed himself as a husband, lest he be slain; his wife he entrusted to God, lest she be defiled.

Although it might be disputed more scrupulously whether the chastity of that woman would be violated, even if anyone were carnally united with her, when she permitted this to be done to herself for her husband's life, and that not without his knowledge but at his bidding—in no way deserting conjugal faith nor refusing marital authority; just as he was not an adulterer when, obeying his wife's authority, he consented to beget offspring of the handmaid. But because of the force of first principles—since a woman is not so subjected to two living men for lying together as two women to one man—we accept as much more truly and more honourably that father Abraham neither tempted God, when he took thought for his life as far as a man could, and hoped in God, to whom he commended his wife's chastity.

Now indeed, in this matter, done and set down in the divine books and faithfully narrated, whom would it not delight also to search out the prophetic deed, and with pious faith and zeal to knock at the door of the mystery, that the Lord may open and show who was then prefigured in that man, and whose wife she is who, in this sojourning and among aliens, is not suffered to be defiled or stained, that she may be to her husband without spot or wrinkle? For in the glory of Christ the Church rightly lives, that her beauty may be for the honour of her husband, just as Abraham, on account of Sarah's beauty, was honoured among aliens; and to that very One to whom it is said in the Song of Songs:

'O fairest among women,' by the merit of her very beauty kings offer gifts, just as king Abimelech offered gifts to Sarah, admiring in her more the grace of form which he could love and could not violate. For the holy Church too is in secret the wife of the Lord Jesus Christ. For secretly and inwardly, in a hidden spiritual recess, the human soul cleaves to the Word of God, so that the two are in one flesh: which great sacrament of marriage the Apostle commends in Christ and in the Church. Accordingly the earthly kingdom of this age,

whose figure those kings bore, who were not permitted to defile Sarah, has not experienced nor found the Church to be the wife of Christ—that is, to cleave to Him, faithfully subjected as to her first husband—except when it attempted to violate her and yielded to the divine testimony through the faith of the martyrs, and, being corrected, in later kings honoured with a gift her whom in earlier kings it had not the power to subject to its correction. For what was then prefigured in the same king, first and afterwards, this has been fulfilled in that kingdom, in earlier and later kings.

But when it is said that the Church is the sister of Christ by the father, not by the mother, it is not the kinship of earthly generation, which shall be done away, but of heavenly grace, which shall abide for ever, that is commended. According to which grace the mortal race we shall not be, having received the power to be called sons of God, and to be so. For we have received this grace not from a mother synagogue of Christ according to the flesh, but from God the Father. But this earthly kinship, which temporally generates unto death, calling into another life where none dies, Christ taught us to deny, not to acknowledge, when He says to His disciples: 'Call no man your father on earth; for one is your Father, who is in heaven.' Of which thing He gave an example, when He Himself also said:

'Who is my mother, or who are my brothers?' And stretching out His hand over His disciples He said: 'These are my brothers.' And lest anyone should think of earthly kinship in this word, He added: 'And whosoever shall do the will of my Father, he is my brother and mother and sister'—as though He said: 'From God the Father I name this kinship, not from a mother synagogue. For now I call unto eternal life, where I was immortally born, not unto the temporal life, whence I was made mortal that I might call.'

That the Church, therefore, of whom she is the wife is hidden from the aliens, but of whom she is the sister is not kept silent, this reason meanwhile readily presents itself: because it is hidden and difficult to understand how the human soul is coupled with the Word of God, or mingled, or by whatever better and fitter word it may be said, since that One is God and this a creature. For according to this, Christ and the Church are called bridegroom and bride, or husband and wife. But by what kinship Christ and all the saints are brothers—by divine grace, not by earthly consanguinity, that is, by the father, not by the mother—this is both more expressibly said and more capaciously heard. For all the saints are also brothers among themselves through the same grace; but none of them is the bridegroom of the fellowship of the rest.

Accordingly, the aliens believed Christ, though of most excellent righteousness and wisdom, yet a man, much more easily and readily—not indeed falsely, in that He was a man, but they were ignorant how He was also God. Hence Jeremiah too says: 'And He is a man, and who shall acknowledge Him?' 'And He is a man'—because it is disclosed that He is a brother. 'And who shall acknowledge Him?'—because it is hidden that He is the bridegroom. These things have been said sufficiently concerning father Abraham, against the most impudent and most unskilled and most slanderous voice of Faustus.

But Lot, his brother, just and hospitable in Sodom, and pure and untouched from all contamination of the Sodomites, deserved to escape safe out of that burning—which was a likeness of the future judgment—bearing the type of the body of Christ, which in all the saints even now groans among the wicked and impious, to whose deeds it does not consent, and from whose commingling it shall be delivered at the end of the age, they being condemned to the punishment of eternal fire. But just as another kind of men was figured in his wife—namely of those who, called by the grace of God, look back, not like Paul, who forgets the things that are behind and is stretched out toward the things that are before—whence the Lord Himself says, 'No one

'laying his hand upon the plough and looking back is fit for the kingdom of heaven.' Nor did He pass over in silence that example by which He might, as it were, season us with salt, so that we should not, as fools, neglect this evil, but, as prudent, beware of it. Whence she too, that He might admonish this, was turned into a pillar of salt. For when He was commanding that everyone should snatch himself away from the things that are behind by a most persevering intention toward the things before, He said: 'Remember Lot's wife.' So also in Lot himself, when his daughters lay with him, not that which was figured when he was delivered from Sodom, but something else was figured.

For then that Lot himself seems to have borne the person of the future law, which certain ones begotten of that law and placed under it, by understanding it ill, in a manner intoxicate, and by using it not lawfully, bring forth works of unfaithfulness. 'For the law is good,' says the Apostle, 'if anyone use it lawfully.' Nor yet on that account do we justify this deed, either of Lot himself or of his daughters, because it signified something that foretold the future perversity of certain persons. For the daughters, in doing this, intended one thing; God, who permitted this to be done, another—that even from it He might demonstrate something, His righteous judgment remaining over the sin of the men then present, and His providence keeping watch for the signification of things to come.

Accordingly, that deed, when it is narrated in holy Scripture, is a prophecy; but when it is considered in the life of those who committed it, it is a disgrace. Nor again is the matter worthy of so great reproach and accusation as Faustus, an enemy and blind, vomited forth against it. For that eternal law is consulted, which commands the natural order to be preserved and forbids it to be disturbed, and it does not so judge of this deed as if he had burned with a wicked lust for his daughters, that he might enjoy their incestuous bodies or have them as wives; nor of those women, as if they had blazed with an execrable love for their own father's flesh.

For the reckoning of justice regards not only what was done, but also why it was done, so that it may examine, with the balance of equity, deeds hanging upon their causes. Since therefore those women sought offspring for the preservation of the race—which affection in them was assuredly human and natural—and did not believe they could find other men, as though the world had been consumed in that conflagration (for they could not discern how far that fire had raged)—they wished to unite themselves with their father. They ought indeed never to have been mothers rather than to have used their father thus; yet there is a great difference that they employed that cause, than if they had used the lust of so deadly a pleasure. But they perceived that their father so abhorred that work,

that they did not believe they would accomplish it unless they procured his ignorance. For, as it is written, they made him drunk and lay with him while he knew it not. Wherefore he is indeed to be blamed, yet not so much as that incest deserves, but as much as that drunkenness merits. For this too the eternal law condemns, because it admits food and drink into the natural order only by the grace of preserving health. Although therefore there is a great difference between a drunkard and a drunken man—for neither is a drunkard always drunk, nor is whoever is at some time drunk consequently a drunkard—yet in a just man the cause of this very thing, if not of drunkenness as a habit, at least certainly of intoxication, must be sought.

For what in the end compelled him to consent to, or to trust, his daughters as they frequently mixed wine, or perhaps frequently offered it even unmixed? Or did he wish so to console his daughters as they feigned excessive sorrow, that the grief of that desolation and of their mother's mourning might be driven from the thought of a drunken mind—supposing that they too drank just as much, and by some deceit contrived not to drink? But how it could have befitted a just man to apply such consolation to his sorrowing daughters, we do not see. Or by some most wicked art of the Sodomites could they even with a few cups so intoxicate their father, that they might commit that sin with him unknowing, or rather out of one unknowing?

But it would be strange if Scripture had kept this silent, or if God would suffer His servant to endure this without any fault of his own will. We, however, defend the holy Scriptures, not the sins of men; but we take such pains about the clearing of this deed as if our God had either commanded it to be done, or approved it done, or as if just men were so called in those books that, if they wished to sin, they could not. Since therefore, in the writings which these men censure, God has borne no testimony of righteousness to this deed, by what madness of rashness do they strive from it to accuse those writings, when in other places of them these things are found most plainly forbidden by divine precepts?

Whence in that transaction concerning the deed of Lot's daughters, these things were narrated, not praised. But some things had to be narrated with God's judgment declared, some with it kept silent, so that when it is brought forth what God judged thereof, our ignorance may be instructed; but when it is kept silent, either our skill may be exercised, that we may recall what we have learned elsewhere, or our sloth may be shaken off, that we may inquire into what we do not yet know. God therefore, who knows how even from man's evil work to make good works, propagated the nations He willed from that seed; He did not condemn His own Scriptures on account of men's sins. For He disclosed these things, He did not do them, and admonished that they be avoided, He did not set them forth to be imitated.

With wonderful impudence indeed Faustus has also accused Isaac, the son of Abraham, because he pretended that Rebecca, who was his wife, was his sister. For the lineage of Rebecca is not kept silent, and it is manifest that she was his sister through a most well-known kinship. But that he kept silent that she was his wife—what wonder or what depravity is it, if he imitated his father, when he is defended by the same justice by which his father was found blameless of a like objection? The very things, therefore, which we have said on behalf of Abraham, as far as pertains to this matter, against the accusing Faustus, avail also on behalf of Isaac his son. To rehearse them is not difficult;

unless perhaps some studious person should ask, in the mystery of what figure it is to be received, that the alien king then knew Rebecca to be the wife of her husband, when he saw him playing with her—which he would not have known, unless the man so played with her, his wife, in a manner in which it would not be seemly to play with one who was not a wife. When holy married persons do this, they do it not idly but prudently; for they descend in a certain way to the weakness of the female sex, that they may say or do something with soothing merriment—not enervating, but tempering, manly vigour: which nevertheless, whoever should say or do it to one who is not his wife, is base.

But this, which pertains to the manners of humanity, I would say, lest anyone harsh and without affection should object as a crime that very thing against the holy man—that he played with his own wife. For such inhuman men, if they should see any grave man prattling something playful to boys, even little ones, whereby he might soothe their milky sense with affable and nurturing readiness, reproach him as though he were doting, forgetful of whence they grew up, or ungrateful that they grew up. But what may it mean, in the sacrament of Christ and the Church, that so great a patriarch played with his wife, and that marriage thence…

Whoever, lest he sin against the Church by erring in some point, carefully contemplates in the Holy Scriptures the mystery of her husband, assuredly sees, once this is understood, and finds that he for a little while concealed his majesty, whereby in the form of God he is equal to the Father, under the form of a servant, so that human weakness might be able to contain him, and that in this way he might fittingly adapt himself to his spouse. For what is there absurd here? Nay rather, what could be more suitably accommodated to the foretelling of things to come, if a prophet of God played out something carnal, that the love of a wife might take hold of him, seeing that the very Word of God was made flesh, that he might dwell among us? Now indeed the charge brought against his son Jacob, that four wives are cast at him as though a monstrous crime, is cleared away by a general preface.

For when it was the custom, it was not a crime; and now it is a crime precisely because it is not the custom. For some sins are against nature, others against custom, others against precepts. Since this is so, what crime after all is it that is brought against the holy man Jacob for having several wives at once? If you consult nature, he used those women not for the sake of wantonness but for the sake of begetting; if custom, in that time and in those lands this was commonly done; if precept, it was forbidden by no law. But now why is it a crime, if anyone should do this, except because it is not permitted either by custom or by laws? Whoever despises these two, even though he could use several women only for the sake of begetting,

yet he sins and violates that very human society, to which the propagation of children is necessary. But because men, now that customs and laws are otherwise, cannot take delight in a multitude of wives except through the magnitude of lust, therefore they err and suppose that many wives could not possibly have been had except through the blaze of carnal concupiscence and of foul pleasure. For, comparing not others, whose virtue of soul they are utterly unable to know, but, as the Apostle says, themselves with themselves, they do not understand.

And because they themselves, even if they have but one wife, not only approach her manfully led by the duty of begetting, but are often, conquered by the goad of intercourse, drawn along enervated, they think they are truly inferring how much greater a disease of this kind must captivate others through many women, since they see that they themselves cannot keep within one woman with temperance. But we ought not thus to entrust judgment about the ways of holy men to those who do not have this virtue, just as we do not allow the feverish to judge about the sweetness and wholesomeness of foods, but rather prepare nourishment for them according to the perception and prescription of the healthy through medicine, rather than out of the disposition of their sickness.

Therefore, if these men wish to receive the health not of a false and shadowy chastity, but of a true and solid one, let them trust the divine Scriptures as though they were books of medicine, that not in vain was so great an honour of sanctity bestowed upon certain men who had even several wives, except because it can come to pass that the soul, commander of the flesh, may so prevail with such power of temperance that it does not permit the impulse of generative delight, implanted in the nature of mortals through providence, to exceed the laws imposed for begetting.

Otherwise these slanderers, being calumniators rather than truth-tellers, judges of falsehood rather than of truth, could even accuse the holy Apostles of having preached the Gospel to so many peoples not out of love of begetting children unto eternal life, but out of desire for human praise. For to those evangelical fathers there was no lack of illustrious fame gathered throughout all the churches of Christ by so many tongues praising them; nay rather, so great was it present that no greater honour and glory ought to be conferred by men upon men. This glory in the Church the lost Simon coveted with perverse will, when, blind, he wished to buy from them with money that which they had earned by divine and freely-given grace.

He is understood to have been greedy of this glory whom the Lord in the Gospel calls back, when he wished to follow him, saying: The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has not where to lay his head. For he saw that this man, dark with deceitful pretence and puffed up with windy elevation, had no place for faith where he might receive the Teacher of humility as he stooped down, because in the discipleship of Christ he sought not his grace but his own glory. By this love of glory those were corrupted whom the Apostle Paul marks, that through envy and contention they proclaimed Christ not chastely;

yet the Apostle rejoices at their preaching, knowing that it can come to pass that, while they pursue a desire for human glory, nevertheless the faithful are born from hearing these things—not from their envious desire, by which they wished to be either equalled or preferred to the apostolic glory, but through the Gospel, which even if not chastely, yet they proclaimed—so that out of their evil God might work good; just as it can come to pass that a man may go in to intercourse not with the will of begetting, but be carried away by the lust of luxuriating, and yet a man be born—the good work of God from the fecundity of seeds, not from the baseness of vices.

Therefore, just as the holy Apostles took joint delight with their hearers who admired their teaching, not from greed for winning praise, but from love of sowing the truth: so the holy patriarchs united with their wives who received their seed, not from concupiscence for receiving pleasure, but from providence for propagating posterity; and through this neither did the multitude of peoples make those men ambitious, nor did the multitude of wives make these men lustful. But why do I speak of the men, to whom a most excellent testimony is borne by the divine voice, when it shines forth plainly enough that the women themselves sought nothing else in intercourse than children?