Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 5 part 114/118

Your letters could neither provoke me to return insults nor recall me from returning letters. For those things which you wrote would move me, if they were said from the truth of God, not from the power of man. You said that my counsel is a crooked and knotty tree, which has nothing straight in itself and perverts the keenness of the eyes. What would you say against me, if I had withdrawn from the agreement which we had established between us in the morning, and in a most easy matter which had rightly pleased us had set up a crooked refusal and knots of difficulty? For then you would judge me not as one glutted with muddy water, but—which is far worse—as one submerged in the drunkenness of perfidy, if I had not returned after the midday meal such as I had withdrawn before the meal. But behold, did you not write back?

what you wished, and dreaded no calumny? So then you can do the rest too, so that there may be something which either we ourselves or others may consider and judge. For as to what you say, that I believe a three-formed person of God—if you had deigned to read that other, somewhat longer writing which I sent, and had wished to answer to those things which are written there, perhaps you would not say this. But nevertheless, behold, this very thing—that I say a three-formed person of God—you both dictated and sent in writing, and feared no calumny; behold, you have shown to be true what I say: that you did not, as had been agreed, wish to have your words dictated when we were together, not because you feared calumny, but because you had no confidence in the truth.

And now, since it has at last pleased you to dictate whether I believe a three-formed person of God, I answer that I do not so believe; for there is one form, because there is one—so to speak—deity, and therefore the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one God. But do you, I ask, deign to answer briefly how you take that which the Apostle says: He who is joined to a harlot is one body; but he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit. For he called the bodies of diverse sex adhering to one another one body; and, since the human spirit could in no way say 'I and the Lord are one,' yet, when it adheres to the Lord, it is one spirit; how much more He who most truly said: I and the Father are one.

Because He inseparably cleaves to the Father, He and the Father are one God—if indeed even this word may be admitted in that divinity, that we should say 'cleaves,' which never at all was, nor ever will be able to be, separated by any distance! To this answer: whether it pleases you to say that the spirit is two-formed, since he who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit. But if this does not please you, then neither did I call the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit a three-formed God, but one God. But if you wish that we confer in person, I do indeed give thanks to your worthiness and benevolence.

But just as you have already been so kind as to write back to me on another matter, as you wished, so be so kind as to write back that we shall dictate what we are going to say; and I shall not fail your wish, so far as the Lord shall help me. For if 'you write and I write' does not edify us, how does 'you say, I say' edify us, when after the din of words we find nothing to review by reading? I, Augustine, dictated this and, having read it over, signed it. Let us refrain from abusive words, lest we spend our time to no purpose, and let us rather turn our attention to the matter that is being handled between us. Letter 242. To Elpidius, lord truly and deservedly honourable and to be longed for, Augustine. Which of us errs in the faith or in the knowledge of the Trinity is another question.

I am indeed grateful that, although you did not know me by face, yet because you believed I was in error, you tried to recall me from error. May God repay you the reward of this goodwill, and make you know what you think you know; for the matter is arduous, as I judge. And I beg you, do not take it as any sort of insult that I have wished for you the gift of so great a knowledge.

For I fear lest the prejudice of a supposed knowledge should drive from your ears — if not true precepts, which I would by no means arrogate to myself before you, yet at least our good wishes, which even an unlearned man like me may hold concerning you (for they are to be offered not with skill but with friendship) — and lest you should rather be angry with me, because I did not congratulate you as one already wise, but rather that you should give thanks that I prayed wisdom for you.

Nevertheless, if I, bearing the burden of the episcopal name, most gladly embrace your goodwill — because you deigned to send me even across the sea to Bonosus and Iason, most learned men, as you write, to bring back rich fruits from their disputations; because, in short, to wipe away the darkness of every error, you took anxious care with kind attentiveness to have brought to me a little book worked out by the talent and strength of a certain bishop of yours — how much more fitting is it that you receive with good spirit the fact that I wished those things to be granted to you by the Lord God which can be given by no human help and strength! For the Apostle says: 'We have not received the spirit of this world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we may know the things that are given to us by God' (1 Cor 2:12).

'Which things also we speak, not in the learned words of human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not perceive the things that are of the Spirit of God; for it is foolishness to him' (1 Cor 2:13-14). Rather, therefore, if it could be done, I would prefer to inquire with you how far a man is to be called 'natural', so that, if we have already transcended him, we may perhaps rightly rejoice that we have in some part touched those things which abide unchangeably above the human mind and understanding. For we must beware lest it seem foolish that we hear the Son to be equal to the Father, because we are still living as the natural man, of whom it is said that the things of the Spirit of God are foolishness to him.

Although indeed that Majesty, sublime above all things, may be thought of by the spiritual but can be uttered by none, yet it is easy to see, as I judge, that He is not made, through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made. For if He was made through Himself, then He existed before He was made, so that He could be made through Himself — which is said all the more absurdly the more vainly it is thought. But if He was not made through Himself, He was not made at all, since whatever was made, was made through Him; for all things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made. I marvel that too little attention has been paid to what the Evangelist wished so expressly to convey, so that he permitted no one to dissemble; for it was not enough to say:

'All things were made through Him', unless he added: 'And without Him was made nothing' (John 1:3). But I, though slow and still bearing the eye of my mind wounded and its mist not yet wiped away, for gazing upon the incomparable and ineffable excellence of the Father and the Son, nevertheless embrace this with all readiness: that it was sown beforehand for us in the Gospel not so that we might thereby comprehend that divinity, but that we might thereby be admonished that we ought not to boast of a rash comprehension. For if all things were made through Him, whatever was not made through Him was not made. But He Himself was not made through Himself; He was not, therefore, made. And we are compelled by the Evangelist to believe that all things were made through Him; therefore by the same Evangelist we are compelled not to believe that He was made.

Likewise, if without Him was made nothing, then He Himself is nothing, since He was made without Himself. But if it is sacrilegious to think this, it remains that we confess either that He was not made without Himself, or that He was not made. But we cannot say that He was made not without Himself. For if He Himself made Himself, then He already existed before He was made; but if He furnished aid to another, by whom He was made, for His own making, none the less, in that He became by helping Himself, He already existed before He was made. It remains, therefore, that He was made without Himself. But whatever was made without Him is nothing. Either, then, He is nothing or He was not made; but He is not nothing, therefore He was not made. And if He was not made and yet is the Son, without doubt He was born. 'How', you say,

a Son equal to Him, from whom He was born, could be born of the Father alone?' Now this I cannot expound, and I yield to the prophet who says: 'Who shall declare His generation?' (Isa 53:8). But if you think this should be understood of the human generation, by which He was born through a virgin, examine yourself and question your own soul, whether, if it fails in the human generation, it would dare to declare the divine. 'Do not, then', you say, 'call Him equal'. Why should I not say what the Apostle said? 'He thought it not robbery', he says, 'to be equal with God' (Phil 2:6). For even though he did not unfold that equality to the human mind not yet purified, yet he set it down in a word, so that the purified mind might find it in the reality.

Let us therefore give diligence to cleansing our heart, so that from it may arise the keen vision by which we may be able to see these things; for 'blessed are the pure in heart', He says, 'for they shall see God' (Matt 5:8). Thus, going beyond the misty images of the natural man, we shall come to that serenity and sincerity by which we may be able to see that which we see cannot be spoken. For as to the little book which you deigned to send, if leisure and opportunity be granted me to answer its several points, I judge that you will come to know that each man is clothed with so much less of the light of truth, the more he seems to himself to bring forth truth naked. For who could endure — to pass over other things and mention only this one for now, over which I groaned most — that, whereas the Apostle Paul says:

'We see now through a glass, in a riddle, but then face to face' (1 Cor 13:12), yet these men now say that, every veil being drawn back, they bring forth truth naked? If he had said 'We see truth naked', nothing would be more blind than such arrogance of vision; but he did not say 'we see', rather 'we bring forth', so that now not only would truth seem to lie open to the mind's intention, but even to lie subject to the power of the tongue. There are many things that are said about the ineffability of the Trinity, so that the Trinity itself is not spoken — otherwise it is not ineffable — but so that, by those things said, it may be understood that it cannot be spoken. But now, as I judge, my letter has exceeded its measure, since through your own you admonished me to write briefly.

But since you deigned to excuse yourself by the practice of the ancients, I shall not seem absurd to you if you do not mind recalling the length of certain of Cicero's letters — since you made mention of him too in your writing. Letter 243. To Laetus, most beloved lord and most longed-for brother, Augustine, greeting in the Lord. I have read the letter which you sent to the brethren, wishing to console you because your first military service is shaken by many temptations; in it you also intimated that you desire letters from me. I grieved with you, brother, and I could not cease from writing, lest I deny to your longing — and indeed to my own also — that which I saw I owed by the duty of charity.

If, then, you profess yourself a recruit of Christ, do not desert the camp in which you must also build that tower of which the Lord speaks in the Gospel. For standing in it and warring under the arms of the word of God, no temptations whatsoever can penetrate you from any side; from it too the darts hurled against the adversary come with heavy weight, and things foreseen are avoided by its firm defence. Consider also our Lord Jesus Christ, who, though He is our King, yet in that fellowship by which He deigned even to be a brother, called His soldiers 'kings', and forewarned that each one going to war against a king who has twenty thousand ought, with the equipment of ten thousand, to be fit for the battle.

But a little before He set forth the exhortatory similitudes of the tower and the king, mark what He said: 'If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, and moreover his own soul, he cannot be my disciple; and if he does not bear his cross and come after me, he cannot be my disciple' (Luke 14:26-27). Then He adds: 'Which of you, wishing to build a tower, does not first sit down and reckon whether he has enough to complete it, lest, when he has laid the foundation, he be unable to build, and all who pass by and see begin to say: This man began to build and could not finish?' (Luke 14:28-30)

'Or what king, going to engage in war with another king, does not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? But if not, while the other is yet far off, he sends an embassy asking for peace' (Luke 14:31-32). But to what these similitudes pertain, He made sufficiently clear by the very conclusion; for He says: 'So then, every one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple' (Luke 14:33). And so both the cost for building the tower and the strength of ten thousand against a king who has twenty thousand are nothing other than that each one renounce all that he has. But the earlier preface agrees with the final conclusion.

For in this — that each one renounces all that he has — there is also contained that he hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, and moreover his own soul. For all these are his own, which for the most part entangle and hinder him from obtaining not those things that are his own, passing away in time, but those things held in common, abiding for eternity. For in the very respect in which a certain woman is now a mother to you, in that very respect she is surely not so to me. Wherefore this is temporal and transitory, as you already see has passed away — namely, that she conceived you, that she carried you in the womb, that she gave you birth, that she nourished you with milk.

But in that she is a sister in Christ, she is such both to you and to me and to all to whom, in the same fellowship of charity, one heavenly inheritance and God as Father and Christ as Brother are promised. These things are eternal; these are worn away by no lapse of time; these are hoped to be held all the more firmly, the more they are proclaimed as to be obtained not by private but rather by common right. You can most easily recognize this in your own mother. For whence does she now hold you entangled and enmeshed, and turn you back, retarded from your appointed course, and bend you aside, except from the fact that she is your own private mother? For in so far as she is a sister to all,

to whom God is Father and the Church is Mother, she hinders you no more than she hinders me or all our brethren, who love her not with a private affection, as you do in your house, but with a public charity in the house of God. In that, then, you are bound to her also by a carnal kinship, this ought to avail for conversing more familiarly and for consulting through a more open door. Let that very thing by which she loves you privately be slain in her, lest she value that she bore you from her own womb more than that she was born, together with you, from the womb of the Church. And what I have said of a mother is to be understood also of every other such kinship. Let each one also think this concerning his own soul,

so that even in it he should hate the private affection, which without doubt is temporal, but should love in it that communion and fellowship of which it was said: 'They had toward God one soul and heart' (Acts 4:32). For thus your soul is not your own but belongs to all the brethren, whose souls too are yours, or rather, whose souls together with yours are not souls but one soul — Christ's only one, which sings in the Psalms that it may be delivered from the hand of the dog (Ps 21:21). From this one comes most easily to the contempt of death. Nor let parents be angry that the Lord commands this — that we hate them — when this is commanded us concerning our own soul. For as it is now commanded concerning the soul, that we hate it for Christ's sake together with our parents, so also,

that which the same Lord says elsewhere concerning the soul can also most fittingly apply to parents: 'He who loves', He says, 'his soul, shall lose it' (John 12:25). I will say confidently also: 'He who loves his parents, shall lose them.' For there concerning the soul He said 'let him hate', which here is 'shall lose'. But just as this precept, by which we are commanded to lose our soul, does not avail so that each one kill himself — which is an inexpiable crime — and yet avails so that he kill in himself the carnal affection of the soul, by which the present life delights with hindrance to the life to come — for this is what is said, 'let him hate his soul' and 'shall lose it' —

which nevertheless is done by loving, since indeed most openly in the same precept He mentions the fruit of that same soul to be acquired, saying: 'He who loses it in this world, shall find it unto life eternal' (John 12:25) — so too concerning parents it is most rightly said that he who loves them should lose them, not slaying them after the manner of parricides, but with the spiritual sword of the word of God striking piously and confidently their carnal affection (by which they try to bind both themselves and those whom they begot with the entanglements of this world), and killing it, may make that thing to live in them by which they are brethren, by which, together with their temporal children, they come to know as eternal parents God and the Church.

Behold, the zeal of truth, and of knowing and grasping the will of God in the holy Scriptures, seizes you. The duty of evangelical preaching seizes you. The Lord gives the signal that we should keep watch in the camp, that we should build the tower from which we may be able both to descry and to repel the enemy of everlasting life. The heavenly trumpet seizes the soldier of Christ for the battle, and a mother holds him back — not indeed such a one as was the mother of the Maccabees, nor even one like the Spartan mothers, of whom it is handed down to memory that they roused their sons to the contests of war, to shed their blood for their earthly fatherland, far more amply and more ardently than the blast of the trumpets.

For a mother who does not permit you to be removed from worldly cares in order to learn life, shows sufficiently in what way she would permit you, if there were need, utterly to repudiate the world so as to undergo death. But what does she say, or what does she allege? Perhaps those ten months in which you burdened her womb, and the pains of childbirth and the labors of upbringing? This, this slay with the saving word; this destroy of the mother's, so that you may find life eternal. This remember to hate in her, if you love her, if you are a recruit of Christ, if you have laid the foundations of the tower, lest those passing by say: 'This man began to build and could not finish.' For that is a carnal affection and still sounds of the old man.

The Christian warfare exhorts us to destroy this carnal affection both in ourselves and in our own, yet not in such a way that anyone should be ungrateful to his parents and mock, when they are enumerated, those very benefits by which he was brought forth into this life, received, and nourished. Let him rather preserve piety everywhere; let these things have their place, where greater things do not call. The Church is a mother, a mother even of your mother. She conceived you both of Christ, she brought you forth in the blood of the martyrs, she bore you into everlasting light, she nourished and nourishes you with the milk of faith; and preparing greater foods, she shudders that you still wish to wail as little ones and without teeth.

This mother, spread throughout the whole world, is agitated by such various and manifold assaults of errors, that even her miscarried sons do not hesitate to wage war against her with unbridled arms. She grieves too that, through the sloth and torpor of certain ones whom she holds in her bosom, her members grow cold in very many places and become less fit for cherishing the little ones. Whence, save through other sons, whence, save through other members — of whose number you are — does she demand the just and due help? Deserting her needs, will you turn to carnal words? Does she not resound in your ears with graver complaints? Does she not display more precious inward parts and heavenly breasts? Add the assumption of flesh by her Husband, that you might not cleave to carnal things.

And by the eternal Word, all those things which your mother casts up against you, that you might be entangled by them, were assumed: add the insults, the scourges, the death — even the death of the cross (Phil 2:8). Conceived by such seeds and begotten by such wedlock into a new life, do you grow faint and waste away into the old man! Did not your Emperor, then, have an earthly mother? Yet when she was announced to Him as He was doing heavenly things, He answered: 'Who is my mother, or who are my brethren?' And stretching out His hand toward His disciples, He said that no one belonged to His kindred except him who did the will of His Father (Matt 12:48-50). In which number surely the kindly One included even Mary herself: for she too did the will of the Father. Thus the best and divine Master both the maternal name

which they had announced to Him as though it were something private and proper, because it was earthly, He cast off in comparison with the heavenly kinship; and, mentioning that same heavenly kinship in His disciples, He showed by what fellowship of race that Virgin should again cleave to Him together with the rest of the saints. And lest by this most salutary teaching, in which He taught that carnal affection in parents is to be despised, error should take support — whereby it is denied by certain persons that He had a mother — in another place He admonished His disciples not to say that they had a father on earth (Matt 23:9), so that, just as it is manifest that they had fathers, so He might make manifest that He had a mother, whose earthly kinship nevertheless being despised, He might furnish to His disciples an example of despising such kinships.

Are these things, then, interrupted by the words of your mother, and does there find place among them the reminder of her who was pregnant and gave suck, so that from Adam and Eve you should be born and nourished as another Adam? Look rather, look upon the second Adam from heaven, and now bear the heavenly image, as you have borne the earthly (1 Cor 15:47-49). Nay, let even here those very maternal earthly benefits have their place, which are enumerated to you for the enervating of your heart; let them have their place entirely; do not be ungrateful, repay grace to your mother, repay spiritual things for carnal, eternal for temporal. But she is unwilling to follow? Let her not hinder. She is unwilling to be converted to better things? Beware lest she pervert and overturn you to worse.

What difference does it make whether in a wife or in a mother, provided only that Eve be guarded against in any woman whatsoever? For that shadow of piety comes from the leaves of that tree with which our first parents covered themselves in that damnable nakedness. And whatever in those words and suggestion it holds out to you as though a duty of charity, in order to twist you away from the most genuine and sincere charity of the Gospel, belongs to the cunning of the serpent and to the duplicity of that king who has twenty thousand — whom we are taught to overcome by the simplicity of ten thousand, that is, of the heart, in which we seek God. Attend rather to these things, dearest one, and take up your cross and follow the Lord.

For when I noticed you present, retarded from divine study by domestic cares, I perceived that you were rather being carried and led by your cross than that you bore and led it. For what else does our cross — which the Lord commands to be borne by us, so that we may follow Him most unencumbered — signify, than the mortality of this flesh? For it torments us, until death is swallowed up in victory (1 Cor 15:54). This cross itself, therefore, must be crucified and transfixed with the nails of the fear of God, lest, its members being loosed and free, we be unable to bear it as it struggles against us. For you are wholly unable to follow the Lord except by bearing it; for how will you follow Him, if you are not His? But those who are Jesus Christ's, says the Apostle, have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires (Gal 5:24).

If indeed your family estate has any money, with the business of which it is neither fitting nor becoming for you to be entangled, it is truly to be given to your mother and your household. For their want, if you have resolved to distribute such goods of yours to the poor that you may be perfect, ought to hold the first place with you; for if anyone, says the Apostle, does not provide for his own, and especially for his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever (1 Tim 5:8). And if, in order to set these matters in order,

— in order that you might strip your neck to be clothed with the bonds of wisdom — you set out from us, what harm do the flowing tears of your mother do you, or in what way do they pluck at you: the flesh, or the flight of a slave, or the death of maidservants, or the sickly health of the brethren, if there is in you an ordered charity that knows how to set greater things before lesser and to be moved by mercy — that the poor may have the Gospel preached to them, that the Lord's plentiful harvest may not, through the scarcity of workers, lie as prey to the birds — and to have a heart ready to follow the Lord's will in that which He shall decide to do with His servants, whether by scourging or by sparing? Meditate on these things, be in these things, that your progress may be manifest in all (1 Tim 4:15). I beseech you to beware,

lest you give greater sorrow to the good brethren by your torpor than you had already given them joy by your alacrity. But to commend you by letters to those whom you wished, I have thought as superfluous as if anyone had wished to commend you to me in the same manner. Letter 244. To Chrysimus, lord truly and deservedly most dear and to be praised, a brother, Augustine, greeting in the Lord. A rumor has brought to me — may God grant that it be untrue! — that you are so disturbed in mind that I greatly wonder at your prudence and Christian mind giving too little thought to the fact that the condition of earthly things can in no way be made equal to the heavenly, where our heart and our hope are to be placed.

O man of sense, was either your whole good in those things which you now seem to be losing, or did you reckon so great a good there, that, it being withdrawn, your mind should thus be darkened with excessive sadness, as though its light were not God but earth? For I have heard — I have already said: may God grant that I have heard falsely! — that you even wished to lay hands upon yourself; which I rather believe did not either ascend into your heart or issue from your mouth. But nevertheless, because you were so disturbed that this could be said of you, being gravely saddened concerning you, I have thought that your charity should be consoled by this address of a letter, although I do not doubt that the Lord our God speaks better things in your heart; for I know with what pious zeal you have always heard His word.

Lift up your soul, therefore, dearest brother in Christ; our God neither perishes from His own nor will He lose His own. But He wishes to warn us how frail and uncertain are these things which men love too much, so that He may loose from them the bond of desire, by which, being entangled, they drag us, and that we may accustom our whole love to run toward Him in whom we may fear no losses. He Himself, through our ministry, exhorts you to think manfully that you are a faithful Christian and redeemed by His blood — who not only by eternal wisdom but also by human presence taught us temperately to despise the prosperity of this world and bravely to endure adversity, promising the reward of that felicity which no one can take from us.