Therefore, if He exempted believers and rejected the unfaithful, judgment being committed by lot to neither these nor those, how shall that third thing which He says be thought to agree with this: And this is the judgment, that light came into this world, and men loved darkness rather than light? For no place can be left for judgment, since neither the unfaithful nor the faithful are to be judged. And these things indeed will so appear to negligent hearers and incurious readers; but in itself the very force of the words contains the property of the saying and its understanding. He who believes, He says, is not judged. For what need is there to judge a believer? For judgment arises from ambiguous matters; and ambiguity being removed, no examination of judgment is desired.
From which it follows that not even the unfaithful need be judged, because no ambiguity remains as to whether they are unfaithful. But judgment being removed against believers and unbelievers, the Lord added the cause of the judgment and the authors of it, against whom it would be necessary to judge. For there are some who are midway between the pious and the impious, mixed of both, yet proper to neither, because they have taken their stand in this very thing, drawn from both: neither to be mingled with faith, because there is something of unfaithfulness inserted in them, nor to be reckoned to unfaithfulness, because they have also something of faith. For the fear of God holds many in the Church: but the same men the allurements of the world entice to worldly vices. They pray, because they fear; they sin, because they wish.
They call themselves Christians, because the hope of eternity is good: they do heathen things, because the things of the present are alluring. They do not remain impious, because among them the name of God is held in honor: they are not pious, because they pursue the things that are alien to piety. And it is inevitable that they love more those things through which they cannot be what they call themselves, since the will of works is stronger than the will of the name they profess. And therefore the Lord, after He had said that believers are not to be judged and that unbelievers are already judged, added: And this is the judgment, that light came into this world, and men loved darkness rather than light. Against these, then, is the judgment which has already been executed against unbelievers and is not necessary against believers:
because they loved darkness rather than light; not that they did not also love the light, but that their love was more inclined toward darkness. For love is wont to be preferred to love by comparison: and hence is the judgment, because, although they loved Christ, they nevertheless loved darkness more. These, then, will be judged, who neither, as the pious, will not be judged, nor, as the impious, have already been judged; against whom the judgment arises from a love rather preferred. Of this evangelical arrangement the prophet too held the rationale, saying: Therefore the impious shall not rise again in the judgment, nor sinners in the counsel of the just. To the impious he does not leave judgment, because they have already been judged;
but to sinners, whom in the earlier discourse we taught to be distinguished from the impious, he denied the counsel of the just, because they are to be judged. For impiety makes those men pre-judged, but sin holds these detained to be judged. And so neither is impiety, which has already been judged, committed to the judgment of sinners, nor are sinners, who are to be judged, worthy to be found fit for the counsel of the just, who will not be judged. And the order of this difference proceeds from this: because, he says, the Lord knows the way of the just, and the way of the impious shall perish. Sinners do not approach the counsel of the just for this reason, because the Lord knows the way of the just. But He knows it not with a knowledge that dispels ignorance, but with the deigning to know.
For there is not in God this change of human passions, that He should either come to know something or be ignorant of it. The blessed Apostle Paul set forth by what reasoning we are known by God, saying: If anyone among you is a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge the things I write to you, that they are the Lord's; but if anyone does not acknowledge, he is not acknowledged. He shows, therefore, that those are known by God who have come to know the things that are God's: known, that is, when they have come to know, obtaining, namely, the deigning of recognition through the merit of the religion recognized, so that what is known may be understood to be not the advantage of one ignorant, but of one known. But the Lord shows absolutely, in Adam and in Abraham, that He is ignorant of sinners, but knows the faithful.
For to Adam after his sin it was said: Where are you, Adam? Not that God, whom he still had in paradise, was ignorant that he was in paradise; but that, while he is asked where he is, he is shown by that which he sinned to be unworthy of the knowledge of God. But Abraham, long unknown—namely, he to whom, already seventy years old, the word of God came—when he had proved himself faithful to the Lord by the offering of Isaac, is received into divine familiarity with such a deigning: Now I have known that you fear the Lord your God and have not spared your beloved son for my sake. He was surely not ignorant of Abraham's faith, which He had reckoned to him for righteousness when he believed concerning the begetting of Isaac:
but because he had given a great proof of his fear by offering his son, now he is known, now he is proved, now he is worthy, who should not be unknown. So then God both acknowledges and does not know, when Adam the sinner is not known and Abraham the faithful is acknowledged—worthy, namely, to be known by God, who is surely ignorant of nothing. Known to God, therefore, is the way of the just who are not to be judged: and therefore sinners, who are to be judged, are removed from their counsel. But the impious shall not rise again unto judgment, because, their way having perished, they will have already been judged through Him who says: The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed unto the ages of ages. Amen. PSALM II.
Why did the nations rage, and the peoples meditate vain things? and the rest.—Apostolic authority makes many of us doubtful whether they should think this psalm cohering with the first and, as it were, the outermost part of the first, or rather count it as underlying and second. For in the Acts of the Apostles we are thus taught that this is held and is the first, under the discourse of blessed Paul: And we bring you good tidings of that promise which was made to the fathers: this God has fulfilled to our children, raising up our Lord Jesus, as also it is written in the first psalm: You are my Son, this day have I begotten you; when He raised Him up from the dead, no more to return unto corruption.
On account of this apostolic authority, therefore, it is believed to come about, by the error of the scribes, that this psalm is numbered second in the order, though it is known to be first, as the Teacher of the nations himself testifies. The reason must therefore be understood why both it is to be understood by us as second, and it was shown by the Apostle to be first. For in the middle times of the law, before the only-begotten Son of God—God the Word abiding before the ages—was born a man, at the request of King Ptolemy the seventy elders translated the books of the Old Testament from Hebrew letters into Greek. And it had already been of old instituted by Moses that in every synagogue there should be seventy teachers.
For the same Moses, although he had committed the words of the Testament to writing, nevertheless had separately imparted certain more secret mysteries out of the hidden things of the law to the seventy elders, who should thereafter remain teachers. Of which teaching the Lord too makes mention in the Gospels, saying: Upon the seat of Moses, He says, have sat the scribes and Pharisees: all things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, do and observe; but according to their deeds do not do. The teaching of these, therefore, remained for posterity, which, received from the very writer of the law, was preserved in this number and office of the elders.
These elders, therefore, translating these books and having attained, according to the tradition of Moses, the spiritual knowledge of hidden understandings, translated the ambiguous sayings of the Hebrew tongue and certain things variously announcing themselves according to the virtues of the matters, into fixed and proper significations of words, tempering by the knowledge of the teaching that manifold meaning of the discourses. And from this it comes about that those who translated afterward, interpreting in diverse ways, brought a great error to the nations, since, ignorant of that hidden tradition proceeding from Moses, they published, uncertain by their own judgments, those things which were recorded ambiguously in the Hebrew tongue.
But of the ambiguity of the Hebrew tongue we shall bring forward one example, by which the rest of this kind may be understood to be also thus, just as they are. Bresith is a Hebrew word. It has three significations in itself, that is: in the beginning, and in the head, and in the Son. But the seventy translators rendered it in the beginning, while others translated it diversely: and according to this ambiguity, in every translation this confusion was made by them. But the authority of these seventy interpreters remains perfect. First, because they translated before the bodily coming of the Lord, nor will any flattery of interpretation adapted to the time be alleged, the age of the interpretation being so much earlier:
Next, [I observe] that those very leaders and teachers of the synagogue — men made perfect not only in the knowledge of the Law given through Moses but also in a more hidden teaching — could not be untrustworthy as arbiters of interpretation, for they were the most reliable and weighty authorities in teaching. These men, therefore, in translating the psalms among the other books, both reduced them to a number and set them in order and marked them off by the 'diapsalms' (selahs); yet all these psalms, according to the Hebrews, both were and still are kept in a confused order. The translations of these men, then, were not necessary for those who used only their own tongue; to those very people, nevertheless, all things were preserved with diligent and reverent care.
For them the Lord afterwards fulfilled the whole Law by the mystery both of His incarnation and of His Passion and of His Resurrection; and when these books, which those same translators had published for the king, were compared and found to agree faithfully, the doctrine was established by an inviolable privilege, and its authority was made sure. The blessed apostle Paul, then, a Hebrew of the Hebrews according to his own profession, also according to Hebrew knowledge and faith declared this psalm to be the first, making no use of the translators' numbering; for it was his greatest zeal, in preaching to the rulers of the synagogue, to show from the teaching of the Law that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, born, suffering, and rising again, reigns for ever.
He therefore held to this method, that in preaching to the Hebrews he should follow Hebrew custom. But we must make use of the translators' authority, since they render the Law not by the ambiguity of the letter but by the knowledge of its doctrine. Now the apostolic authority provides us here with the most complete understanding of the person, the time, and the cause. For what the apostles themselves thought concerning this very psalm in the book of their Acts, we shall set forth in their own words. For it is written, when they said: 'Lord, thou art He that made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them, who by the mouth of our father David, thy holy servant, hast said: Why did the nations rage, and the peoples meditate vain things?'
'The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers gathered together as one, against the Lord and against His Christ.' For in truth they gathered together in that city against thy holy Son Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, Herod and Pontius Pilate and the people of Israel, to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel had determined to be done. And now, Lord, look upon their threatenings, and grant to thy servants to speak thy word with all boldness. There is therefore no ambiguity as to what the psalm of prophecy showed so long a time beforehand. For then, mingled together in Herod and Pilate, the raging nations and the peoples meditating vain things stood up as one with their own kings and rulers.
For by the common judgment both of the governor and of the tetrarch the Passion of condemnation was confirmed against the Lord. And indeed, according to prophetic knowledge, the exact propriety of each individual word was carefully fitted to each class and name: so that the nations 'raged,' that is, being stirred by an ignorant and disordered impulse, when they saw and heard the Son of God in the flesh. And they raged to such a degree that they pierced Him with a crown of thorns, mocked Him arrayed in a royal robe with the salutation and honor due a king, struck His head with a reed, gave Him vinegar and gall to drink, and pierced His side with a lance. For the cohort of soldiers subject to Pilate did these things out of the raging of an intemperate wrath.
But the peoples 'meditated vain things,' that is, they were occupied with an empty meditation upon the things of God, since through their meditation upon the Law they did not understand Him who was proclaimed in the Law. For even then the people of the synagogue abounded not only from that generation of Abraham according to the flesh, but from many peoples; under the single name of Israel was contained the diversity of many peoples. And this is so written in the book of Acts: 'Now there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation which is under heaven.' So these peoples 'meditated vain things,' being gathered from many peoples into one people. The kings also 'stood up,' namely Pilate and Herod, in whom the kings of the earth are understood;
and each of the two, by reason of the laws over which they presided, lent the service of his presence. But those who with impious and irreligious counsel plotted against the Lord in many assemblies, these are the 'rulers who gathered together as one': namely, often gathered into the house of Caiaphas with all the chief priests. In short, Herod the tetrarch and Pilate the governor were called the kings of the earth, because they stood up by the right of earthly authority. But the rest, who gathered together as one, are neither rulers of the earth nor chief priests: for they held no royal right, being subject to the Roman governor and the tetrarch, nor did they any longer deserve to be called chief priests, since they had become impious against God and the Lord of that very priesthood.
And since it is not ambiguous that, according to apostolic authority, the psalm was begun from the person of God the Father — for indeed they said, 'who by the mouth of our father David, thy holy servant, hast said' — therefore, in order that the change of person might be understood, the 'diapsalma' was inserted by the interpreters, though it was not contained in the books of the Hebrews. The person, then, that is changed must be understood to be that of the apostles, who say: 'Let us break their bonds and cast away their yoke from us.' It is necessary that they should detest what they censure. Of these, then, who both raged and meditated vain things, they break the bonds and cast off the yoke. And it is not ambiguous that to cast off the yoke and to break the bonds are two different things:
and both of these suit each of the aforementioned class and name respectively — so that they break the bonds of the men of the nations, but cast off the yoke of the peoples. For the nations are bound by the bonds of their own sins, from which they cannot loose themselves through their unbelief, according to that which is said: 'The sinner is bound fast by the cords of his own sins'; but the Jews are burdened by the yoke of the Law, which the apostles cast off from themselves, blessed Peter saying: 'Now therefore why tempt ye the Lord, to put upon the neck of the disciples a yoke which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?' This yoke of the peoples, then, they cast off from themselves, because they had been subject to it; but the bonds they break not for themselves, but for the nations.
And so the sense of each expression is preserved, in that, where the bonds are broken, they add no significance of their own person, but where they cast off the yoke, there by saying 'Let us cast off from us' they are understood to speak of none other than themselves: so that, having cast off that heavy and intolerable yoke, they might submit themselves to that sweet and light one to which they were invited, namely the yoke of evangelical sanctification, while for the nations they might break the bonds by the freedom of their preaching, according to that which they said in commemoration of the same psalm: 'And now, Lord, look upon their threatenings, and grant to thy servants to speak thy word with all boldness.' For these teachings of the apostles break asunder the snares of all unbeliefs and sins.
And since above a twofold person was preserved, when it says: 'against the Lord and against His Christ,' so now too a twin signification of Him who derides and mocks has followed. For the outrage against the one is not distinguished from that against the other, nor is the honor of religion divided as regards the two. For those who by their proper and lawful nature according to itself, in the glory of the Godhead, are one Father and Son, are also one whether in the injury of contempt or in the honor of reverence, and the one is either honored or scorned in the other. And this very thing the Lord attested, saying: 'As the Father raiseth the dead and quickeneth them, so also the Son quickeneth whom He will.'
'For neither doth the Father judge any man, but hath given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son honoreth not the Father who sent Him.' The honor is not distinguished, the outrage is not divided: equal reverence toward each is expected, and injury to one is the contempt of both. Thus, since in the one both are scorned who are both one in Godhead through glory, they are likewise both one in reverence through honor. So that now those who gathered together against the Lord gathered together also against His Christ: and those whom He that dwelleth in heaven derides, these the Lord also mocks. Not that the Lord was not also always in heaven, since indeed He testified of Himself:
'No man hath ascended into heaven, but He that descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven.' He is therefore not absent from heaven, because, although He descended from heaven, remaining and speaking as the Son of Man, He was nevertheless, while He spoke these things, in heaven. Indeed the Son of Man had descended, but by the power of His nature the Son of God was not absent from that whence He had descended, nor had He, when He was born a man, consumed away from that which He was before; nor, having become the Son of Man, had He ceased to be the Son of God. But the Son of Man is so far the Son of God that, descending from heaven as the Son of God, by the substance of His power that same Son of Man was in heaven. But the prophet, wishing under the person
— to signify by this distinction the Father, who, while His Son subsisted on earth even in the Son of Man, remained in that His eternal and blessed abode and rested without any dispensation of descent — says: 'He that dwelleth in the heavens shall deride them, and the Lord shall mock them': so that through Him who, dwelling in heaven, derided, the Lord too might be understood, who from heaven would mock. But to mock and to deride do not differ; for each is effected by the office of the mouth according to the disposition of the will.
For according to our understanding, the meaning of divine things is set forth through bodily figures, so that mocking and laughter should be named in the confounding of those who had gathered together against the Lord and against His Christ — not that any relaxation or contraction of the mouth befell the incorporeal God, but that from the custom of our own nature we might recognize with what judgment of the divine will scorn was cast upon the impious. They were therefore mocked and derided. For those who had suborned false witnesses, who had bargained for His betrayal, who had taken His blood upon themselves and their children, who had cried 'Crucify,' who said:
'Come down from the cross, if thou be the Son of God,' who had sealed the sepulcher, who had bought from the soldiers silence about the resurrection and the report of a stolen body — these lost all the labor of their impiety. He is God whom they had fixed to the cross: eternal is He whose sepulcher they had sealed. Impiety is derided, while it strives after things unlawful, while it seeks what is not permitted, while it loses what it hoped to have obtained, while it acknowledges Him to be God whom it condemns as a man. On this account there fittingly follows: 'Then shall He speak to them in His wrath, and in His indignation shall He trouble them.'
For after that, upon the rising from the dead of God, into whom death had fallen through the appearance of the body which He assumed, the rashness of fruitless impiety was derided, God speaks to those whom He had mocked and troubles them in His indignation. And before we show what that word of His is and what this disturbance of indignation may be, readers and hearers ought to be admonished not to believe that any changes of passions or disturbances of emotions fall upon God. For nothing new befalls that eternal and perfect nature: nor can He who so is that He is ever such as He is — lest at any time He be not the same — be made to be anything other than what He always is.
It is earthly and imperfect causes that have this property of their kind, that they become changeable by a conversion of nature, when grief disturbs joy, wrath disturbs gentleness, offense disturbs benevolence, envy disturbs equanimity, anxiety disturbs security: and through these we are at times something other than we were, when a stirring of some other craving, creeping in through our inconstancy and weakness, disquiets that disposition of mind which is present, and a sudden conversion changes us from what we were into what we are. But God, blessed and perfect, needs no advancement, for He lacks nothing: He is not made new by any change, who is without an origin. HE IS, who, what He is, is not from elsewhere:
He is in Himself, He is with Himself, He is from Himself, He is His own to Himself and Himself is all things to Himself, lacking all change of novelty, who has left nothing else that could befall Him, since He, wholly, is Himself the whole to Himself. From this best and benevolent blessedness of His, therefore, through our Lord Jesus Christ, all the creations of things heavenly and invisible have proceeded, the constitutions of things spiritual and corporeal — not that He might acquire for Himself any advancement from those to whom He imparted origin. For no one is in need of that which He bestows from Himself, nor advances through that of which He is the author for its very being. But it is outward things that bring advancement, since those things which remedy want are foreign to us.
God therefore, from whom are all things, needs none of those to whom He has bestowed that they be what they are: but He created all things unto the advancement of those that were to be begotten. And since the discourse will be long, if it be begun also concerning things heavenly and invisible, let us treat of ourselves, to whom the psalm of prophecy pertains. Man He established, not because He had any need of his service, but because He is good, and He constituted him a partaker of His own blessedness, and perfected the rational animal in life and sense for the enjoyment of His own eternity bestowed upon him; and this is understood plainly from His own words. For He says:
'But now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but that thou fear the Lord thy God, and walk in all His ways, and love Him, and serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and keep the commandments of the Lord thy God and His ordinances, which I command thee this day, that it may be well with thee?' God demands of us no obedience save that of innocence and religion and faith. He requires that He be loved by us — not indeed that He Himself receives for His own sake any fruit of our love toward Him, but that the love itself will rather profit us, who shall love Him.
For He expects to be loved by us, and that we obey Him, in order that it may be well with us, so that we may be judged worthy of the gift of His blessedness and goodness through the merit of our love and obedience toward Him. But the use of goodness, like the splendor of the sun, like the light of fire, like the fragrance of a juice, profits not the one who offers it, but the one who uses it. What we are, therefore, is our advancement rather than that of Him who established us in what we are; because God, not begrudging those good things which are eternal in Himself, takes us up into the sense and use of His own blessed goodness. But being perfect and good, He has used His goodness and blessedness toward us not without reason and measure.
For to each of us He granted the freedom of life and sense, not fastening necessity upon one course or the other, so that a law should compel each one to be good or evil by nature: but He who had created us through benevolence for the enjoyment of His blessedness appointed for us advancement thereto through the merit of an innocent and honorable life. For what honor and reward would the necessity of goodness deserve, when a certain force joined to us would not permit us to be evil? Goodness, then, was committed to the will, so that the will might acquire for itself the reward of goodness, and that there might be for us an advancement and use of this eternal blessedness by merit, not an undiscerning necessity through law.
etquamquamnosaduoluntatembonitatis, idestadbenehonestequeuiuendumperspempromerendaeetutendsesuaebonitatisinliceret, poenamtamendeuitataeetcontemptaebonitatisadiecit: ut. cumlibertatemnobisuoluntatisadbonitatempromerendamreliquisset, quiameritumnatursenecessitasnonhaberet, libertatemipsamcotidiepropositusecontrariopoenaeterrorargueret. atqueitaetperrationemsequiatqueiustiadmeritumpraemiipermissalibertasestetperbonitatemdeiiuslibertatismetuconstitutionisartatumest, utbeneuellemeritispesmoneret, malumnollepropositaeultionispoenasuaderet.
And although He would allure us to the will of goodness, that is, to living well and honorably, through the hope of meriting and using His goodness, He nevertheless added a penalty for goodness shunned and despised: so that, while He had left us the freedom of the will unto meriting goodness — since necessity of nature would have no merit — the terror of penalty set on the contrary side might daily reprove that very freedom. And thus both, through reason, the freedom permitted to the just was to follow unto the merit of reward, and, through the goodness of God, the right of freedom was constrained by fear of the ordinance, so that the hope of merit might counsel us to will good, and the penalty of the appointed vengeance might persuade us to be unwilling of evil.
And so, for those to whom, out of the freedom of the will, malice was more pleasing, the vengeance appointed is believed to be the wrath of God — not because that unchangeable and quiet nature of God grows hot with the motion of a turbulent impulse, but because he who, through the appointment of the penalty, abides in the penalty, feels that the author of this appointment is angry with him. For the penalty of the one who suffers is believed to be the wrath of the one who decrees it. And thus God is angry, when those who are punished feel, through the pain of the penalty, that the wrath of the decree is upon them — a wrath which is not through a change of nature stirred to anger from calmness, but a wrath that arises from the appointment of the penalty for those to be punished. And that this appointment of penalty is called and is 'wrath,' John shows in the Gospel, saying: