Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 5 part 90/118

'for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.' He said 'all' and 'all' for this reason, because no one comes into death except through the former, no one into life except through the latter. In the first it was made plain what the will of man availed unto death; but in the second, what the help of God availed unto life. Finally, the first man was but man; the second, however, was both God and man. For sin was committed by forsaking God; righteousness is not wrought without God. And thereby we would neither die, unless we came by carnal propagation from the members of the former, nor would we live, unless by spiritual connection we became members of the latter. Therefore it was necessary for us to be born and to be reborn; but for him, on our account, only to be born;

For we pass over from sin to righteousness by being reborn, whereas He made no passage from any sin to righteousness; but in the fact that He was baptized He commended the sacrament of our regeneration all the more deeply by His humility, signifying nevertheless our old man by His passion and our new man by His resurrection. For the disobedience of concupiscence, which dwells in mortal flesh, whereby it comes to pass that those same members are moved even apart from the choice of the will, is brought back under the discipline of conjugal righteousness to this measure: that children be begotten of lawfully wedded parents for whom it is necessary to be reborn.

Yet Christ did not will to come to His own flesh through this kind of union of male and female, but from a Virgin who conceived Him with no such concupiscence He took for our sake the likeness of sinful flesh, whereby the flesh of sin might be cleansed in us. For, as the Apostle says, as by the offence of one, unto all men to condemnation, so also by the righteousness of one, unto all men to the justification of life. For no one is born except by the working of carnal concupiscence, which is derived from the first man, who is Adam; and no one is reborn except by the working of spiritual grace, which is given through the second man, who is Christ.

Wherefore, if by being born we belong to the former, by being reborn we belong to the latter; nor can anyone be reborn before he has been born. Assuredly He alone was born in a singular way, He who had no need to be reborn, because He made no passage out of sin, in which He never was, nor was He conceived in iniquity, nor did His mother nourish Him in transgressions in the womb, since the Holy Spirit came upon her and the power of the Most High overshadowed her; whence that which was born of her, being holy, is called the Son of God. For the good of marriage does not extinguish, but regulates, the evil of the disobedient members, so that carnal concupiscence, being in a manner bounded, becomes at least conjugal chastity. But the Virgin Mary, to whom it was said:

And the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee — in conceiving her holy offspring under such a shade she burned with no heat of this concupiscence. This cornerstone therefore being excepted, I do not see in what way men are built up into a house of God so as to have God dwelling within them, unless they have been reborn — which they cannot be before they are born. Whatever opinion, then, we may hold concerning the unborn, or rather concerning human beings still established within their mother's inward parts, whether we think that they can or cannot be granted some mode of sanctification — whether on account of John, who, not yet brought forth into this light, nevertheless leaped for joy (which surely no one could believe possible except by the operation of the Holy Spirit), or on account of Jeremiah, to whom the Lord says:

Before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee — nevertheless that sanctification by which both we singly are made temples of God, and all together one temple of God, belongs only to the reborn, which men cannot be unless they have been born; and no one will well finish the life in which he was born unless he has been reborn before he finishes it. But if anyone says that a man is already born even while he is still in his mother's womb, and brings forward a testimony from the Gospel, because it was said to Joseph concerning the pregnant Virgin, the Lord's mother — For that which is born in her is of the Holy Spirit — then does a second birth accrue to this birth? Otherwise there will be not a second but a third. But when the Lord spoke of this, He said, Unless a man be born again.

— reckoning namely that first birth which takes place by the mother giving birth, not by conceiving and being pregnant, which comes forth from her, not which is within her. For we do not call a man reborn whom the mother has brought forth, as though he were born a second time who had already once been born in the womb; but that birth which makes her pregnant not being reckoned, a man is said to be born by delivery, so that he can be reborn of water and the Spirit. According to which birth from the mother the Lord Himself also is said to have been born in Bethlehem of Judea. If therefore a man can be regenerated by the grace of the Spirit in the womb, since there yet remains for him to be born, then he is reborn before he is born — which can in no way happen.

Accordingly, men who are born are transferred into the framework of the body of Christ — as into the living structure of the temple of God, which is His Church — not by works of righteousness which they are going to do, but by being reborn through grace, as it were from the mass of ruin to the firm foundation of the building. For apart from this building, which is being constructed to be blessed for the eternal habitation of God, the whole life of man is unhappy and is rather to be called death than life. Whoever therefore shall be inhabited by God, that the wrath of God abide not upon him, will not be a stranger to this body, to this temple, to this birth. But everyone not reborn is a stranger. Moreover, the manifested Mediator did not will that the sacrament of our regeneration should be manifest.

But to the ancient just it was something hidden, although they too were saved by the same faith which was in its own time to be revealed. For we do not dare to prefer the faithful of our time to the friends of God, through whom these things were prophesied to us, since God commends Himself as being the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, so as to say that this is His name for ever. But if circumcision is believed to have served the ancient saints in place of baptism, what shall be answered concerning those who, before this precept was given, pleased God — yet not without faith, since without faith, as it is written to the Hebrews, it is impossible to please Him? But having, says the Apostle, the same spirit of faith, according as it is written:

'I believed, and therefore have I spoken', we also believe, and therefore also we speak. He would not say 'the same' unless the very same spirit of faith were also theirs. But as they, when this same sacrament was hidden, believed the incarnation of Christ as still to come, so we too believe it as accomplished. And by us and by them alike His coming to judgment is awaited as still future; for there is no other mystery of God but Christ, in whom those dead in Adam must be made alive. For, as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive, as we discussed above. Wherefore God,

who is everywhere present and everywhere whole, does not dwell in all, but only in those whom He has made His most blessed temple, or His most blessed temples, rescuing them from the power of darkness and transferring them into the kingdom of the Son of His love, which begins from regeneration. But His temple is spoken of in another way, by way of signification, when it is made by human hands out of inanimate things — as the tabernacle out of wood, curtains, skins, and movable things of this kind; as also through King Solomon the temple out of stones, wood, and metals — but in another way it is the true temple in the reality itself, which was prefigured by those signs. Whence it is said: And you also as living stones are being built up into a spiritual house; and whence again it is written:

For we are temples of the living God, as God says, since 'I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.' Nor ought it to disturb us that through certain persons not belonging, or not yet belonging, to this temple — that is, in whom God does not dwell, or does not yet dwell — some power is at work, as through that man who was casting out demons in the name of Christ, though he did not follow Christ, whom the Lord bade to be permitted on account of the commendation of His name, useful to many. He says also that many will say to Him on the last day: In thy name we have done many mighty works — to whom He would surely not answer, I never knew you, if they belonged to the temple of God, which by dwelling in it He makes blessed.

Cornelius the centurion also, before he was incorporated into this temple by regeneration, saw an angel sent to him and heard him saying that his prayers were heard and his alms accepted. For God does these things as being everywhere present, whether through Himself or through His holy angels. Now as for that sanctification of Jeremiah before he came forth from the womb — although some take it as a type of the Saviour, who had no need of regeneration — nevertheless, even if it be understood of the prophet himself, it can not unfittingly be understood also according to predestination, just as the Gospel calls those not yet reborn sons of God, where Caiaphas, when he had said of the Lord:

It is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not — soon after, the evangelist adds by way of continuation: And this he said not of himself; but being high priest of that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but that he might gather together in one the sons of God who were scattered abroad. He called them sons of God who were established, apart from the Hebrew nation, also among all the other nations, not yet believers, not yet baptized. In what way then were they sons of God, except according to predestination — according to which the Apostle also says that God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world? But that gathering into one was going to make them sons of God.

For by 'into one' he does not mean some bodily place, since the prophet foretold concerning such a calling of the nations: And they shall worship him, every one from his own place, all the islands of the nations; but 'that he might gather together into one' was said of gathering into one spirit and into one body, whose one head is Christ. Such a gathering is the building of the temple of God. Such a gathering is made not by carnal generation but by spiritual regeneration. And so God dwells in individuals as in His temples, and in all gathered together into one as in His temple; which temple, so long as it floats like Noah's ark in this world, that comes to pass which is written in the psalm:

The Lord inhabiteth the flood — although, on account of the many peoples of the faithful among all nations, which the Apocalypse signifies by the name of waters, it can fittingly be understood 'the Lord inhabiteth the flood.' And there follows: And the Lord shall sit as King for ever — namely in that His very temple, now established in eternal life after the tossing of this world. God therefore, who is everywhere present and everywhere wholly present, yet not dwelling everywhere but in His temple, to which by grace He is kindly and propitious, is received as dwelling by some more, by others less. But concerning our very Head the Apostle says: For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily — not 'bodily' because God is corporeal.

But either he used a transferred word, as though God dwelt in a temple made with hands not bodily but shadow-wise — that is, by prefiguring signs (for he calls all those observances shadows of things to come, even with a transferred term; for the Most High God, as it is written, dwelleth not in temples made with hands) — or else 'bodily' was said because God dwells also in the body of Christ, which He assumed from the Virgin, as in a temple. For hence it is that, when to the Jews seeking a sign He had said: Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up, the evangelist, consequently expounding what this was, says: But this he spoke of the temple of his body. What then is it?

Do we think this to be the difference between the Head and the other members: that in any member, however excellent — as in some great prophet or apostle — the Godhead may dwell, yet not as in the Head, which is Christ, all the fullness of the Godhead? For in our body too there is sensation in the several members, but not so great as in the head, where all five senses are wholly present: for there is sight and hearing and smell and taste and touch; but in the rest there is touch alone. Or is there also, besides this — that all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in that body as in a temple — something else which forms the difference between that Head and the excellence of any member whatever? There plainly is.

Namely, that by a certain singular assumption of that man, one person was made with the Word. For of no saint could it be said, nor can it, nor will it be able to be said: The Word was made flesh; no saint, by whatever excellence of grace, received the name of the Only-begotten, so that what is the very Word of God before the ages should be spoken together with the assumed man. Singular therefore is that assumption, nor can it in any way be shared with any holy men, however excellent in wisdom and holiness. Herein is a sufficiently clear and manifest proof of divine grace. For who would be so sacrilegious as to dare to affirm that any soul could, by the merit of free will, bring it about that it should be another Christ?

So that, in order that it might belong to the person of the Only-begotten Word, in what manner could a single soul have merited this by free will, given commonly and naturally to all, unless singular grace had bestowed it — grace which it is right to proclaim, but concerning which it is wrong to wish to pass judgment? These things, if according to our powers, as far as the Lord has helped, we have rightly treated: when you stretch yourself out to conceive of God as everywhere present and not diffused through distant spaces as by some mass or extension, but everywhere whole, turn your mind away from all images of bodies which human thought is wont to revolve. For not so is wisdom conceived, not so righteousness, not so, finally, is that charity conceived of which it is written: God is charity.

But when you think of His habitation, think of the unity and gathering of the saints, chiefly in the heavens, where He is especially said to dwell for this reason, that there His will is perfectly fulfilled by the obedience of those in whom He dwells; then upon earth, where, building, He dwells in His house, to be dedicated at the end of the age. But doubt not that Christ our Lord, the Only-begotten Son of God, equal to the Father, and the same the Son of Man, than whom the Father is greater, is both everywhere wholly present as God, and is in the same temple of God as the indwelling God, and is in some place of heaven on account of the measure of a true body.

But when it delights me to converse with you, I know not whether I have kept the measure of a sufficient discourse, as though I were compensating for a long silence by loquacity. But because by the devotion and benevolence with which you have anticipated me you have so wormed your way into my heart that I converse with you as with a friend, whatever in this labour of our pen you recognize to have been usefully wrought, give thanks to God; but if you perceive any faults of mine, as a most dear friend forgive them, wishing for me, of course, with that same sincerity of love, the medicine by which you also grant pardon. CLXXXVIII. To the lady to be honoured with the offices due in Christ, and the deservedly illustrious daughter Juliana, Alypius and Augustine, greeting in the Lord.

It happened to us most gratefully and joyfully that your Reverence's letter found us stationed together at Hippo, so that we might return these replies to it jointly, rejoicing at the knowledge of your safety and in turn announcing, by mutual love, our own — which we are confident is dear to you — lady to be honoured with the offices due in Christ, and deservedly illustrious daughter. And we know very well that you know how great an affection of devotion we owe to you, and how great is the care concerning us, both before God and among men.

For although our smallness came to know you first through letters, and afterwards also by bodily presence, as pious and catholic — that is, true — members of Christ, nevertheless also through our ministry, when you had received the word of the hearing of God, as the Apostle says, you received it not as the word of men, but, as it is in truth, the word of God. Of which our ministry, by the assisting grace and mercy of the Saviour, so great a fruit sprang up in your house, that, human nuptials being already prepared, the holy Demetrias preferred the spiritual embrace of that Bridegroom, to whom, beautiful above the sons of men, virgins are wedded, to have the more abundant fecundity of the Spirit and not to lose the integrity of the flesh.

But we should not have known in what way that exhortation of ours was then received by the faithful and noble virgin, had we not learned — after we had departed, when a little later she had professed virginal sanctity — that this immense gift of God, which through His servants indeed He plants and waters, but through Himself gives the increase, had come to us who are the labourers, by the most joyful message and truthful testimony of your letter. Since these things are so, let no one call us importunate, if in admonishing you to shun doctrines contrary to the grace of God, we are solicitous with a more forward earnestness.

For although the Apostle bids us to be instant in preaching the word not only in season but also out of season, nevertheless we do not reckon ourselves among the number of those men to whom our speech or page might seem importunate, when we address you so that you may vigilantly avoid that which does not pertain to sound doctrine. Hence therefore it is that you received our admonition with so grateful a mind that in your letter, to which we now reply, you said: 'Truly, as to your Reverence's exhortation that I should not lend my ears to those men who often corrupt the venerable faith by depraved treatises, I give abundant thanks for so pious an admonition.' Since therefore you add and say:

'But let your priesthood know that I and my little household are far removed from persons of this kind: and our whole family so follows the catholic faith that it has never at any time deviated into any heresy, nor ever fallen — I do not say into those sects which are scarcely expiated, but not even into those which are seen to have small errors' — this is what more and more compels us not to keep silence with you concerning those who attempt to vitiate even those things which are sound. For we account your house no small church of Christ. Nor indeed is the error of those small who think that we have from ourselves whatever of righteousness, continence, piety, chastity is in us, on the ground that God so created us that, beyond

beyond His revealing knowledge to us, He does nothing to help us, so that the things which by learning we know are to be done, we should also do by loving them — defining, that is, that nature and doctrine alone are the grace and help of God, that we may live justly and rightly. But as for having a good will — wherein is this very thing that we live justly — and charity itself, which so excels among all the gifts of God that it has even been called God, by which alone it is fulfilled in us if we fulfil anything of the divine law and admonition, they will not have us divinely helped, but say that we ourselves suffice for these things by our own choice. Let this error not seem to you a trifling one, to be willing to profess oneself a Christian and to be unwilling to hear the Apostle of Christ, who, when he had said:

The charity of God is shed abroad in our hearts — lest anyone should think that he can have it only through his own choice, immediately subjoined: By the Holy Spirit, who is given to us. Whoever does not yet confess this to be the great grace of the Saviour, who ascended on high, led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men, you understand how greatly and how ruinously he errs. In what way then could we, in admonishing you — to whom we owe so great a love — that you may beware of such things, dissemble, when we had read a book which someone (whoever he may be) wrote to the holy Demetrias — or whether it has reached you, we would rather learn from your reply?

In which book, if it is lawful, let the virgin of Christ read whence she is to believe that her virginal sanctity and all her spiritual riches are hers from no other source than herself, and thus, before she is most fully blessed, let her learn to be — which God forbid! — ungrateful to God. For the words written to her in that same book are these: 'You have therefore even here', he says, 'those things whereby you may deservedly be preferred to others, or rather from this the more; for the bodily nobility and opulence of your family will be understood to be not yours, but the spiritual riches no one but yourself can confer upon you. In these therefore you are rightly to be praised, in these deservedly to be preferred to others, which cannot be except from you and in you.' You perceive indeed how great a ruin is to be guarded against in these words.

That indeed which was said: 'These good things cannot be except in you', was most excellently and most truly said: this plainly is food; but that which he says, 'not except from you' — this is altogether poison. Far be it that the virgin of Christ should gladly hear these things, she who piously understands the proper poverty of the human heart, and therefore knows not to be adorned there except by the gifts of her Bridegroom. Let her therefore rather hear the Apostle saying: I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear lest, as the serpent seduced Eve by his subtlety, so also your minds should be corrupted from the chastity which is in Christ. And therefore, concerning these spiritual riches also, let her hear not that man who says: 'No one but yourself can confer them upon you', and:

'They cannot be except from you and in you' — but let her hear Him who says: We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us. Concerning that same holy virginal continence also — that it is not hers from herself, but is God's gift, though conferred upon her who believes and wills — let her hear the same truthful and pious teacher, who, when he was treating of this, says: I would that all were as I myself; but every man has his own gift from God, one after this manner, another after that. Let her also hear that same one, the only Bridegroom not only of herself but of the whole Church, saying concerning such chastity and integrity: Not all receive this word.

But those to whom it is given, so that she may understand, from the fact that she has so great and so illustrious a good, that she ought rather to give thanks to God and to our Lord, than to hear the words of anyone (as if she had it as it were from herself) — not to say of a flattering fawner, lest we should seem to judge rashly of men's hidden things, but at least of an erring praiser. For every best gift and every perfect gift, as the Apostle James also says, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights. Hence therefore also holy virginity, in which your daughter, willing and rejoicing, overcame you — later in birth, earlier in deed; by descent from you, in honour before you; in age following, in sanctity preceding — in which there began to be yours also what could not be in you.

For she did not marry carnally, so that she might be increased spiritually not only for herself but also for you, beyond you; since you too, by that compensation, are the lesser than she, in that you so married that she might be born. These are the gifts of God, and they are indeed yours, but not from you; for you have this treasure in earthly and still fragile bodies, as in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of you. Nor be surprised that we say they are both yours and are not from you; for we call the daily bread ours too, yet we add: Give us — lest it be thought to be a law owed to us. Accordingly, as it is written, pray without ceasing, in all things give thanks; for you pray

— that you may possess these things perseveringly and progressively — you give thanks, because you do not have them from yourselves. For who distinguishes you from that mass of death and perdition derived from Adam? Is it not He who came to seek and to save that which had perished? Or, when a man shall have heard the Apostle saying: For who distinguishes you? is he going to answer: 'My good will, my faith, my righteousness', and not immediately going to hear what follows: For what have you that you did not receive? But if you also received it, why do you glory as if you had not received? We do not wish, therefore, that the sacred virgin, when she hears or reads: 'No one but yourself can confer spiritual riches upon you;

in these you are rightly to be praised, in these deservedly to be preferred to others, which cannot be except from you and in you' — we utterly do not wish her so to glory, as though she had not received. Let her indeed say: In me, O God, are the vows of praise which I shall render to Thee; but, because they are in her yet not also from her, let her also remember to say: O Lord, in Thy will Thou hast supplied strength to my beauty. For although they are also from her on account of her own choice, without which we do not work the good, yet not, as that man said, 'not except from her'. For one's own choice, unless it be helped by the grace of God, cannot even be a good will in a man. For it is God, says the Apostle,

who works in you both to will and to work, for His good pleasure — not, as those men suppose, only by revealing knowledge, that we may know what we ought to do, but also by inspiring charity, that the things which by learning we know, we may also do by loving. For assuredly he knew how great a good continence was, who said: And when I knew that no one could be continent unless God gave it. Not only therefore did he know how great this good was and how desirably it was to be coveted, but also that it could not be except by God's giving; for wisdom had taught him — for this he says: And this itself was of wisdom, to know whose gift this was. Nor yet did knowledge suffice for him, but he says: