Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 52 part 5/5

Finally, this is the faith which works through love, not through fear—not by dreading punishment, but by loving righteousness. Whence, then, is this love, that is, this charity, through which faith works, but from the very source whence faith itself obtained it? For it would not be in us, however much it be in us, unless it were poured abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who is given to us. For the charity of God is said to be poured abroad in our hearts—not that by which He Himself loves us, but that by which He makes us lovers of Himself; just as the righteousness of God is that by which we are made righteous by His gift, and the salvation of the Lord that by which He makes us saved, and the faith of Jesus Christ that by which He makes us faithful.

This is the righteousness of God, which He not only teaches through the precept of the law, but also gives through the gift of the Spirit. But it follows that we should inquire a little whether that will by which we believe is itself also a gift of God, or whether it is exercised from that free will which is naturally implanted. For if we say that it is not a gift of God, it is to be feared lest we suppose ourselves to have found something which we could answer to the apostle when he rebukes and says: 'For what do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you had not received it?'—we might answer: 'Behold, we have the will to believe, which we did not receive; behold wherein we boast, in what we did not receive.'

But if we say that even a will of this kind is nothing but a gift of God, again it is to be feared lest the unbelieving and impious seem not without reason, as it were justly, to excuse themselves for not having believed, on the ground that God was unwilling to give them that will. For that which is said, 'It is God who works in us both to will and to work, for His good will,' pertains now to the grace which faith obtains, so that a man's works may be good—the works which faith works through love, which is poured abroad in the heart through the Holy Spirit who is given to us. But we believe in order that we may obtain this grace, and assuredly we believe by will: concerning this it is asked whence it is in us. If from nature, why is it not in all, since it is the same God who is the Creator of all?

If from the gift of God, again why is this not in all, since He wills that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth? Let us therefore say this first, and see whether it satisfies this question: that free choice, naturally attributed by the Creator to the rational soul, is that middle power which can be either directed to faith or inclined to unbelief; and therefore neither can a man be said to have that will by which he believes God, as though he had not received it, since indeed at God's call it rises from the free choice which it naturally received when it was created.

But God wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth—yet not so as to take away from them free choice, by using which well or ill they may be most justly judged. When this happens, the unbelieving indeed act against the will of God when they do not believe His Gospel; nor do they therefore overcome it, but rather defraud themselves of a great and supreme good, and entangle themselves in penal evils, being about to experience in their torments the power of Him whose mercy in His gifts they despised. Thus the will of God is always unconquered; but it would be conquered if it did not find what to do concerning the despisers, or if they could in any way escape what He has determined concerning such men. For he who says, for example:

'I will that all these my servants labor in the vineyard, and after the labor, resting, feast; yet so that whoever of them shall be unwilling to do this shall grind forever in the mill'—whoever shall despise this seems indeed to act against the will of his lord, but he will overcome it only if, despising the mill also, he shall escape it, which can in no way be done under the power of God. Whence it is written: 'God has spoken once'—that is, unchangeably, though it can also be understood of the single Word. Then, adding what He has unchangeably spoken, he says: 'These two things I have heard, that power belongs to God, and to You, O Lord, mercy; for You will render to each one according to his works.'

He therefore will be guilty unto condemnation under His power, who shall have despised His mercy unto believing. But whoever shall have believed and committed himself to Him to be absolved from all his sins and healed from all his vices and kindled and enlightened by His warmth and light, shall have from His grace good works, from which even according to the body he may be redeemed from the corruption of death, be crowned, and be satisfied with good things not temporal but eternal, above what we ask and understand. This order the psalm held, where it is said: 'Bless

my soul, the Lord, and forget not all His benefits: who is propitious to all your iniquities, who heals all your infirmities, who redeems your life from corruption, who crowns you in compassion and mercy, who satisfies your desire with good things.' And lest perhaps the deformity of this so great good of this oldness—that is, of mortality—should despair, 'Your youth,' he says, 'shall be renewed like the eagle's,' as though he said: 'These things which you have heard pertain to the new man and to the new testament.' Recall these very things with me a little, I beseech you, and gaze delightfully upon the praise of the mercy, that is, of the grace of God. 'Bless,' he says, 'my soul, the Lord, and forget not all His benefits':

Not 'attributions,' but 'benefits' (retributions), because He renders good things for evil. 'Who is propitious to all your iniquities': this is done in the sacrament of baptism. 'Who heals all your infirmities': this is done in this life of the faithful man, while the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, so that we do not do the things that we would, while another law in the members wars against the law of the mind, while to will is present with us, but to accomplish the good we find not; which infirmities of the oldness, if with persevering intention we advance, are healed from day to day as the newness increases, by the faith which works through love. 'Who redeems your life from corruption': this comes to pass in the final resurrection of the dead. 'Who crowns you in compassion and mercy':

This is done in the judgment, where, when the just King shall have sat upon His throne to render to each according to his works, who shall boast that he has a chaste heart? or who shall boast that he is clean from sin? Therefore it was necessary there to make mention of the compassion and mercy of the Lord, where debts might now seem able to be exacted and deserts rendered in such a way that there would be no room for mercy. He crowns, therefore, in compassion and mercy, yet even so according to works. For he shall be set apart to the right hand, to whom it shall be said: 'I was hungry, and you gave me to eat,' since 'judgment is without mercy'—but to him who has not shown mercy; 'blessed, however, are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.'

But now, when those on the left shall have gone into eternal burning, and the just into eternal life—because this, he says, is eternal life, that they may know You the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent—by that knowledge, that vision, that contemplation the desire of the soul shall be satisfied with good things. For this alone is enough for it; beyond this it has nothing to crave, nothing to pant after, nothing to seek. For with desire for this satiety he was burning who said to the Lord Christ: 'Show us the Father, and it suffices us.' To whom the answer was: 'He who has seen me has seen the Father also,' because this is eternal life, that they may know the one true God and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. But if he who has seen the Son has seen the Father also,

assuredly he who sees the Father and the Son sees also the Holy Spirit of the Father and the Son. Thus we neither take away free choice, and our soul blesses the Lord, not forgetting all His benefits, nor, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, wills to establish its own, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly and lives by faith, until it be brought to the vision—by that faith, namely, which works through love. Which love is poured abroad in our hearts, not through the sufficiency of our own will nor through the letter of the law, but through the Holy Spirit who is given to us. Let this disputation, if it suffices for the solving of that question, suffice.

But if the answer be that we must take heed lest anyone think that sin, which is committed through free will, is to be attributed to God—if, in that which is said, 'What do you have that you did not receive?'

—on that account even the will by which we believe is attributed to the gift of God, because it arises from free will, which we received when we were created—let him attend and see that not only is this will to be attributed to the divine gift because it is from free will, which was created in us naturally, but also because, by the persuasions of things seen, God brings it about that we will and that we believe; whether outwardly through evangelical exhortations, where even the commandments of the law effect something, if they so admonish a man of his own weakness that, by believing, he flees to the justifying grace; or inwardly, where no one has in his own power what comes into his mind, but to consent or dissent belongs to one's own will.

By these means, then, when God acts upon the rational soul that it may believe in Him — for it cannot believe anything whatever by free will if there is no persuasion or calling to which it may give credence — assuredly God works in a man even the very will to believe, and in all things His mercy goes before us; but to consent to God's calling, or to dissent from it, belongs, as I have said, to one's own will. And this fact not only does not weaken what was said, 'For what do you have that you did not receive?' but even confirms it. For the soul cannot receive and have the gifts of which it hears this said, except by consenting; and thus what it has and what it receives are of God, while the receiving and the having belong indeed to the one who receives and has.

Now if anyone should press us to search into that depth — why one man is so persuaded that he is convinced, while another is not — for the present only two answers occur to me that I am content to give: 'O the depth of the riches!' and, 'Is there injustice with God?' Whoever is displeased with this answer, let him seek those more learned than I; but let him beware lest he find presumptuous men. Let us therefore at last bring this book to a close. Whether by so great a length of it we have accomplished anything, I do not know — not with you, whose faith I know, but with the minds of those men.

On whose account you were unwilling that I should write — those who prefer to defend their own opinion, not against ours, but (to speak more mildly, and not to name Him who spoke in His apostles) certainly against so great an apostle Paul, and not against one sentence of his, but against so vehement, so earnest and watchful a struggle of his, rather than to hear him beseeching them through the mercy of God, and saying, through the grace of God which was given him, that they be not wiser than they ought to be, but wise unto sobriety, each according as God has apportioned to him the measure of faith. But now consider what you set before me, and what we have accomplished by so long a labor of this discussion. It certainly moved you — in what sense it was said that it can come to pass that a man be without sin.

— namely, if his will is not lacking, with the divine aid helping, although no one has been, nor is, nor will be of such perfect righteousness in this life. For I thus set forth this very thing in those books written to you earlier: 'If it be asked of me,' I said, 'whether a man can be without sin in this life, I shall confess that he can, through the grace of God and his free will, not doubting that free will itself pertains to the grace of God, that is, to the gifts of God; and not only that it should exist, but that it should be good, that is, be turned to the doing of the Lord's commandments; and so the grace of God not only shows what is to be done, but also helps, so that what it has shown can be done.'

But to you it seemed absurd that a thing which can come to pass should be without an example. From this arose the question of this book; and therefore it pertained to us to show that something can come to pass even though an example be lacking. Hence at the beginning of this discourse we set down certain things from the Gospel and from the Law — as concerning the passing of the camel through the eye of a needle, and the twelve thousand legions of angels who could, had He willed, have fought for Christ, and those nations which God says He could have exterminated at once from before the face of His people — all of which things were not done. To these may also be added those things which are read in the Book of Wisdom: how many novel torments God could have brought forth against the impious, with creation serving Him at His nod, which nevertheless He did not bring forth;

There is also the case of that mountain which faith would remove into the sea, which nevertheless we have neither read nor heard was ever done anywhere. For whoever should say that any of these things is impossible to God — you see how foolish he is, and how he speaks against the faith of His Scripture. Many other things of this kind may occur to one reading or reflecting, which we cannot deny to be possible to God, although an example of them is lacking. But because it can be said that those works are divine, whereas to live righteously pertains to our own works, I undertook to show that this work too is divine; and I have done this in the present book, more verbosely perhaps than is enough. But against the enemies of grace?

Even concerning the grace of God I seem to myself to have said too little, and nothing delights me so much to say abundantly as where His Scripture most fully supports me, and where it is brought to pass that he who glories may glory in the Lord, and that in all things we may give thanks to the Lord our God, holding our hearts on high, whence from the Father of lights is every good gift and every perfect gift. For if a thing is not the work of God because it is done through us, or because we do it by His giving, then neither is it the work of God that a mountain should be removed into the sea, since the Lord said this could be done through the faith of men, and attributed it to their own work, saying: If you have faith in you as a grain of mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain, 'Be lifted up and cast into the sea,' and it shall be done, and nothing shall be impossible to you.

He certainly said 'you,' not 'me' or 'the Father'; and yet a man does this in no way except by His giving and working. Behold how perfect righteousness is without an example among men, and yet is not impossible. For it would come to pass, if so great a will were applied as suffices for so great a thing. But it would be so great, if nothing that pertains to righteousness were hidden from us, and if those things so delighted the soul that the delight in them would surpass whatever else of pleasure or of pain hinders it. That this is not so pertains not to impossibility, but to the judgment of God.

For who does not know that it is not in a man's power what he may know, nor does it follow that what has been recognized as to be desired should be desired, unless it delight as much as it ought to be loved? And this belongs to the health of the soul. But perhaps someone may suppose that nothing is lacking to us for the knowledge of righteousness, seeing that the Lord, finishing and abridging His word upon the earth, said that upon two precepts hang the whole Law and the Prophets, and did not pass them over in silence, but set them forth in the plainest words. 'You shall love,' He says, 'the Lord your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul and with your whole mind.' And, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' What is truer than that, when these are fulfilled, righteousness is wholly fulfilled?

Yet let him who attends to this also attend to that: how in many things we all offend, while we suppose that what we do pleases, or at least does not displease, God whom we love; and afterward, admonished through His Scripture or by sure and evident reasoning, when we have learned that it does not please Him, by repenting we entreat that He would pardon. Human life is full of such lessons. But whence do we know less what pleases Him, except because He Himself is less known to us? For we see now through a glass in a riddle, but then face to face. But who would dare to think, when it shall have come to that of which He says:

'that I may know even as I also am known' — that the love of God for those who contemplate Him will be as great as it now is for the faithful, or that it can in any way be compared with that, as being near to it? Moreover, if the greater the knowledge, the greater will be the love, assuredly it must be believed that just as much as is now lacking to love, so much is lacking to the perfecting of righteousness. For something can be known or believed and yet not loved; but that which is neither known nor believed cannot be loved. But if by believing the saints were able to attain to so great a love — than which the Lord Himself testified there can be none greater in this life — that they should lay down their souls for the faith or for their brethren, then, when from this pilgrimage,

— in which we now walk by faith — it shall have come to that sight which, not yet seen, we hope for, and by patience await, then beyond doubt that love itself shall be not only above what we here possess, but far above what we ask or understand. Nor, however, shall it on that account be able to be more than with the whole heart, with the whole soul, with the whole mind. For there remains nothing in us that could be added to the whole, since, if anything remained, that would not be the whole. Accordingly, this first precept of righteousness, by which we are commanded to love God with the whole heart and with the whole soul and with the whole mind — to which the other, concerning the love of neighbor, is consequent — we shall fulfill in that life, when we shall see face to face.

But for this reason it has been enjoined upon us even now, that we might be admonished what we ought to demand by faith, whither to send our hope in advance, and, forgetting the things that are behind, to stretch ourselves forward unto the things that are before. And by this, as far as it seems to me, he has greatly advanced, in that righteousness which is to be perfected, in this life, who has learned by advancing how far he is from the perfection of righteousness. But if there can be spoken of a certain lesser righteousness suited to this life, by which the just man lives by faith — although a pilgrim from the Lord, and therefore walking by faith, not yet by sight — it is not absurdly said that it too pertains to this, that he sin not. For if there cannot yet be so great a love of God as is owed to that full and perfect knowledge, it is not therefore already to be reckoned as a fault.

For it is one thing not yet to attain the whole of charity, another to follow no cupidity. Wherefore a man ought, although he love God far less than he can love Him when beheld, nevertheless to desire nothing unlawful. Just as, even in those things which lie near the senses of the body, the eye can be delighted by no darkness, although it cannot be fixed upon the most brilliant light. But behold, let us now suppose such a human soul in this corruptible body, which, though it has not yet by that most surpassing perfection of the love of God absorbed and consumed all the motions of earthly lust, nevertheless, in this lesser righteousness, consents by no inclination to that same lust for the doing of anything unlawful — that it may already pertain to that now immortal life:

'You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul and with your whole strength'; but to this belongs: 'Let not sin reign in your mortal body, to obey its desires'; to that belongs: 'You shall not covet'; to this: 'Go not after your lusts'; to that, to seek nothing more than to persist in that perfection; to this, to have in practice what it does, and to hope for the perfection of the former as a reward — so that through the former the just man may live without end in that which he desired in the latter, while through the latter the just man may live by faith, in which he desires the former with a sure end.

These things being established, it will be a sin of one living by faith to consent at some time to some unlawful delight — not only in the perpetrating of those horrible crimes and disgraceful deeds, but even in these lighter matters: as when he lends his ear to some voice that ought not to be heard, or his tongue to some word that ought not to be said, or even in his very heart so thinks of something that he would prefer to be lawful that which delights him evilly and is known through the precept to be unlawful; for even this is a consent to sin, which indeed would come to pass, did not the penalty deter. Such just ones, living by faith, have no need to say: 'Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors'? And they prove to be false what is written:

'In your sight shall no living man be justified'? And this: 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us'? And this: 'For there is no man who will not sin'? And this: 'For there is not a just man on earth who will do good and will not sin' — for each of these two testimonies speaks not of the past, that is, 'has sinned,' but of the future, that is, 'will sin' — and whatever else Holy Scripture records to this same effect?

But since these things cannot be false, I see this to be the consequence: that whatever kind or however great a righteousness we may be able to define in this life, there is no one among men in it who has no sin at all; and it is necessary for every man to give, that it may be given to him, to forgive, that it may be forgiven him; and, if he has any righteousness, not to presume it to be of his own, but of the grace of the justifying God; and still further, to hunger and thirst after righteousness from Him who is the living bread, and with whom is the fountain of life — who so works justification in His saints, laboring amid the temptation of this life, that there is nevertheless both that which He bountifully adds to those who ask, and that which He mercifully pardons to those who confess.

But let these men find, if they can, someone living under the burden of this corruption who has already nothing to be pardoned — provided, however, they confess that he was helped to be such not by the teaching of the law given, but also by the infused Spirit of grace; else they will incur the charge not of any ordinary sin, but of impiety itself. Yet, although they can by no means find such a one — if they receive those divine testimonies in a fitting sense — nevertheless it is in no way to be said that God lacks the power whereby the human will may be so aided that not only this righteousness, which is of faith, may in every part be perfected in man, but also that righteousness according to which afterward, in the very contemplation of Him, we are to live for eternity.

Since indeed, if He should now will in anyone even to clothe this corruptible with incorruption, and here among men who are to die to bid him live who would by no means die, so that, with all the old state utterly consumed, no law in his members should war against the law of his mind, and he should know God everywhere present just as the saints are afterward to know Him — who, being mad, would dare to affirm that this cannot be? But why He does not do so, men inquire, and those who inquire do not attend that they themselves are men. I know that, as there is no impossibility, so neither is there injustice with God; and I know that He resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble;

And I know that to him, to whom, lest he be exalted, a thorn of the flesh had been given, a messenger of Satan to buffet him, when he besought once and again and a third time, it was said: 'My grace is sufficient for you; for strength is made perfect in weakness.' There is, therefore, something in the hidden and deep place of the judgments of God, that even the mouth of the just may be stopped in their own praise, and be opened only unto the praise of God. But this something — who could search it out, who could trace it, who could know it? So unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor? Or who has first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed to him? For from Him, and through Him, and in Him are all things; to Him be glory unto the ages of ages. Amen.

(Page 175, line 13 in Knöll's edition.) THE SPIRIT AND THE LETTER, TO MARCELLINUS: ONE BOOK. To him I had written three books, whose title is 'On the Merits and Remission of Sins,' where the matter of the baptism of little children is also carefully discussed; he wrote back to me that he had been disturbed because I had said it could come to pass that a man be without sin, if his will be not lacking, with the divine aid helping, although no one has been, nor is, nor will be of such perfect righteousness in this life. For he asked how I had said that could come to pass of which the example is lacking. On account of this inquiry of his I wrote a book, whose title is 'On the Spirit and the Letter,' treating that apostolic sentence where he says: 'The letter kills, but the spirit gives life.'

In which book, as far as God helped, I disputed fiercely against the enemies of the grace of God, by which the impious is justified. But when I was treating of the observances of the Jews, who abstain from certain foods according to the old law, I said: 'the ceremonies of certain foods.' Which word is not in use in the Holy Scriptures. Nevertheless it seemed fitting to me, because I held in memory that ceremonies (ceremoniae) were so called from 'lacking' (carere), as it were 'carimoniae,' in that those who observe them lack (careant) those things from which they abstain. But if the origin of this name, which shrinks from true religion, be otherwise, I did not speak according to that, but according to this which I mentioned above. This book thus begins:

'Having read the little works which I recently labored to compose for you, dearest son Marcellinus.'