Latin original · 40 verses · some words can be tapped for a gloss · long chapter, split into parts; this part covers 1:2441–1:2480 (3306 verses in all)
'We are made a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men.' Finally, he recounts in what follows: 'For when we had come into Macedonia, our flesh had no rest, but we were afflicted with every tribulation: without were fightings, within were fears. But God, who comforts the humble, comforted us by the coming of Titus; and not only by his coming, but also by the consolation.' Therefore, for this reason, taking his leave of the Trojans or Troadians, he set out for Macedonia, that he might there find Titus and have the solace of interpretation and of the Gospel — whom we understand to have been found not there, but to have come after the tribulations and persecutions of the Apostle.
Therefore, before Titus came, having suffered many things, he gives thanks to almighty God in Christ Jesus, whom he preached to the Gentiles, because He had chosen him as worthy, in whom He might conduct the triumph of His Son. The triumph of God is the passion of the martyrs, the shedding of blood for the name of Christ, and joy amid torments. For when anyone has seen the martyrs stand with such perseverance and be tortured and glory in their torments, the savor of the knowledge of God is scattered abroad among the nations, and a silent thought steals in: that unless the Gospel were true, it would never be defended with blood. For it is no soft confession, devoted to riches and secure, but one made in prisons, in scourgings, in persecutions, in hunger and nakedness and thirst.
This is the triumph of God and the victory of the apostles. But a hearer could reply: 'How then did not all believe?' Therefore, before he asks, he resolves the counter-objection, and, after his manner, whatever another can object, before it is objected he explains. And the meaning is: We are unto God a sweet savor of the name of Christ in every place, and the fragrance of our preaching breathes far and wide.
But because men have been left to their own free choice — for they do not do good by necessity but by will, so that believers may receive the crown and the unbelieving be handed over to punishments — therefore our savor, which is good in itself, passes over into life or death by the virtue or the vice of those who receive it or do not receive it, so that those who have believed may be saved, and those who have not believed may perish. Nor is this to be wondered at concerning the Apostle, since even concerning the Lord we have read: 'Behold, this one is set for the fall and rising again of many, and for a sign that shall be spoken against'; and the rays of the sun shine upon places clean as much as unclean, and thus upon flowers as upon dung, and yet the sun's rays are not polluted.
So too the sweet savor of Christ, which can never be changed nor lose its nature, is life to believers, death to unbelievers. But death not that common one by which we die together with beasts and cattle, but that death of which it is written: 'The soul that has sinned, it shall die.' Therefore life too is not to be thought that by which we breathe and walk and run to and fro, but that of which David speaks: 'I believe I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living.' For God is the God of the living and not of the dead, and our life is hidden with Christ in God; but when Christ shall appear, who is our life, then shall we also appear with Him in glory. 'Nor let it seem,'
he says, 'O Corinthians, let it not seem to you a small thing, if, when we preach the truth, some believe and others do not believe, some die a true death and others live that life which says: I am the life.' For unless we had spoken, neither would death follow the unbelieving nor life the believing; because a worthy herald of the virtues of Christ can hardly be found, who in proclaiming them seeks not his own glory but that of Him whom he preaches.
Now in the fact that he denies himself to be like the many who peddle the word of God, he shows that there are very many who think that godliness is a means of gain and do everything for the sake of filthy lucre, who devour the houses of widows; but that he himself, of sincerity, as one sent by God and in the presence of Him who sent him, speaks all things in Christ and for Christ, so that the cause of the preaching of God may be the triumph of Christ and His glory. And it is to be noted that the mystery of the Trinity is shown at the end of this chapter: for 'of God' — in the Holy Spirit — 'before God' — the Father — 'in Christ we speak.' And to prove that from Troas he went on into Macedonia, I will cite the testimony from the Acts of the Apostles:
'And when they had passed through Mysia, they came down to Troas. And a vision was shown to Paul in the night: there was a certain man of Macedonia standing and beseeching him and saying, Come over into Macedonia and help us. And when he had seen it, immediately we sought to set out for Macedonia, being assured that God had called us to preach the Gospel to them.' As for what he writes in the First Epistle to the Thessalonians: 'And may the God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless without complaint unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.' — A famous question, but to be treated in a brief discourse. Above he had said:
'Quench not the Spirit'; and if this is understood, we shall immediately know who this Spirit is that is to be preserved together with soul and body in the day of the Lord's coming. For who could believe that, like a flame which, when quenched, ceases to be what it was, the Holy Spirit should be quenched and undergo His own abolition — He who once was in Israel, when through Isaiah and Jeremiah and each of the prophets He could say, 'Thus says the Lord,' and now in the Church, through Agabus, speaks, 'Thus says the Holy Spirit'? 'Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are diversities of ministries, but the same Lord; and there are diversities of operations, but the same God, who works all in all.'
'And to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for that which is profitable. To one indeed is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit; to another faith in the same Spirit; to another the grace of healings in the one Spirit; to another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another the discerning of spirits. But all these one and the same Spirit works, dividing to each one as He wills.' Concerning this Spirit, lest it be taken from him, David prayed, saying, 'Take not thy Holy Spirit from me.' When it is taken away, it is quenched not in its own substance, but in respect of him from whom it is taken. I think that 'Quench not the Spirit' and what he writes in another place, 'fervent in spirit,' signify one and the same thing.
For in him in whom the fervor of the Spirit does not grow lukewarm through multiplied iniquity and the cooling of love, in him the Spirit is by no means quenched. 'May the God of peace therefore sanctify you wholly,' or in all things, or make you full and perfect; for this is rather what the word holoteleis conveys. Now He is called the God of peace, because through Christ we have been reconciled to Him, who is our peace, who has made both one, who in another place is also called 'the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, which guards the hearts and thoughts of the saints.' But he who is sanctified or made perfect in all things — in him both spirit and soul and body are preserved in the day of the Lord.
The body, if it uses the functions of its several members — for example, if the hand works, the foot walks, the eye sees, the ear hears, the teeth grind the food, the stomach digests it, the belly excretes — or if it is maimed in no part of its members: and can anyone believe that the Apostle prays on behalf of believers that at the day of judgment Christ may find the whole body of all intact, when the bodies of all are either dissolved by death or, if — as some maintain — they be found still breathing, they have their infirmities, and especially the martyrs and those who for the name of Christ have either their eyes gouged out, or their noses cut off, or their hands severed?
Therefore the whole body is that of which we spoke in another question, namely, 'not holding fast the Head, from whom the whole body, knit together and compacted, receives increase for the administration of Christ.' This body is the Church, and whoever holds fast the Head of this body and keeps the other members, will have a whole body, as far as human nature can receive it. In like manner the integrity of the soul also is to be preserved, which can say, 'Bless the Lord, O my soul, who heals all thy infirmities,' and of which it is written: 'He sent His word and healed them.'
The spirit also is preserved whole in us, when we do not err in spiritual things, but live by the Spirit, acquiesce in the Spirit, and by the Spirit mortify the works of the flesh, and bring forth all its fruits: love, joy, peace, and the rest. In another sense: We are commanded, Solomon saying, 'But do thou describe them in a threefold way in counsel and knowledge, that thou mayest answer words of truth to those who propose them to thee.' There is in our heart a threefold description and rule of the Scriptures: the first, that we understand them according to the history; the second, according to the tropology; the third, according to the spiritual understanding. In the history the order of the things that are written is preserved;
in tropology we rise from the letter to greater things, and whatever was done carnally in the former people, we interpret according to the moral sense and turn to the profit of our soul; in spiritual contemplation (theoria) we pass over to more sublime matters, we dismiss earthly things, and we discourse concerning the blessedness of things to come and heavenly things, so that the meditation of the present life may be a shadow of the future blessedness. Those such as Christ shall find, that both in body and soul and spirit they be preserved whole and have the perfect truth of the threefold knowledge in themselves — these He will sanctify with His peace and make to be perfect. Many understand this passage simply of the resurrection, that both spirit and soul and body may be preserved intact at the coming of the Lord.
Others, from this passage, wish to affirm a threefold substance in man: of spirit, by which we perceive; of soul, by which we live; of body, by which we walk. There are those who, arguing that man subsists of soul and body only, would have the spirit in him understood as a third thing, not a substance, but a faculty, through which both the mind in us and sense and thought and reason (animus) are named; and assuredly there are not as many substances as there are names. And when this is objected to them, 'Bless the Lord, ye spirits and souls of the righteous,' they do not receive the Scripture, saying that it is not found in the Hebrew.
But we, in the present passage, as we said above, take the spirit which is preserved whole together with soul and body to be not the substance of the Holy Spirit, which cannot perish, but His graces and gifts, which by our own virtue or vice are both kindled and quenched in us. CXXI. To Algasia, a Book of Eleven Questions. 1. Why does John send his disciples to the Lord, to ask Him, 'Art thou He that is to come, or do we look for another?' when he had previously said of the same Lord, 'Behold the Lamb of God, behold Him who takes away the sins of the world'? 2. What is the meaning of what is written in Matthew: 'A bruised reed He shall not break, and smoking flax He shall not quench'? 3.
What sense there is in what is written in the evangelist Matthew: 'If any man will come after me, let him deny himself.' What is this denial of self, or how does one who follows the Saviour deny his own self? 4. What is meant by what is written in the same Matthew: 'Woe to them that are with child and that give suck in those days,' and: 'Pray that your flight be not in winter or on the sabbath'? 5. What is intended by what is written in the Gospel according to Luke: 'And they received him not, because his face was set as though he would go to Jerusalem.' 6. Who is the steward of iniquity who was praised by the voice of the Lord. 7. In what sense we are to take what we read in the Epistle to the Romans: 'For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man some would even dare to die.' 8.
What is meant by what the apostle writes to the Romans: 'Sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence.' 9. Why the apostle Paul writes in the same Epistle to the Romans: 'For I myself could wish that I were accursed from Christ for my brethren,' and the rest? 10. What is to be understood by what the same apostle writes to the Colossians: 'Let no man beguile you, of his own will, in humility of mind and in the worship of angels,' and the rest? 11. What is it that the same apostle writes to the Thessalonians: 'Unless there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed,' and the rest?
My son Apodemius, who has fulfilled the meaning of his name by coming to us on a long voyage, and who from the ocean's shore and the utmost bounds of the Gauls, passing by Rome, sought out Bethlehem, that in it he might find the heavenly bread and, being filled, might belch forth in the Lord and say: 'My heart hath uttered a good word; I speak my works to the king' — he brought me on a little scrap of paper the greatest questions, which he said were set by you and to be handed on to me. On reading them I understood that the zeal of the queen of Sheba was fulfilled in you, who came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon.
Not indeed that I am Solomon, who both before and after himself is preferred above all men in wisdom; but you are to be called queen of Sheba, in whose mortal body sin does not reign, and who, wholly turned toward the Lord with all your mind, shall hear from him: 'Return, return, O Shulamite.' For 'Sheba' in our tongue means 'conversion.'
At the same time I noticed that your little questions, drawn only from the Gospel and from the Apostle, show that you either do not read the Old Scripture enough, or do not understand it enough — that Scripture which is wrapped in such great obscurities and in figures of things to come that it all stands in need of interpretation; and that the eastern gate, from which the true light rises and through which the high priest goes in and out, is always shut and lies open to Christ alone, who has the key of David, opens and no man shuts, shuts and no man opens, so that, when he unbars it, you may enter into his chamber and say: 'The king hath brought me into his chamber.'
Besides, I marveled not a little why, when the purest fount is near us, you have sought the streams of so distant a brook, and, passing over the waters of Siloe that go softly, should long for the waters of Sior, which are befouled by the muddy vices of this world. You have there the holy man Alethius the presbyter, who by the living voice, as they say, and by prudent and eloquent discourse, can resolve what you ask — unless perchance you desire foreign wares, and, for variety of taste, our seasonings too delight you as nourishment. To some the sweet is pleasing, some are delighted by the slightly bitter, the stomachs of these are refreshed by the sour, of those sustained by the salty.
I myself have seen nausea and dizziness of the head often cured by the antidote which is called 'pikra' (the bitter), and, according to Hippocrates, that contraries are the remedies of contraries. Therefore heal our bitterness with the nectar-like honey of that man, and cast into Marah the wood of the cross, and check senile phlegm with youthful austerity, that you may joyfully sing: 'How sweet are thy words to my throat, above honey to my mouth.' Why does John send his disciples to the Lord to ask him: 'Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?' — when he himself had earlier said of that same one: 'Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who taketh away the sins of the world'?
— On this question we have spoken more fully in the commentaries on Matthew — from which it appears that you, who ask these things, do not possess those very volumes —; yet it must be touched on briefly, lest we seem to have kept altogether silent. John was sending his disciples while he himself was set in chains, so that, seeking for himself, he might learn from them, and, being about to be beheaded, might teach that he was to be followed whom by his questioning he confessed to be the master of all. For he could not be ignorant of him whom he had pointed out to the ignorant, and of whom he had said: 'He that hath the bride is the bridegroom,' and: 'Whose shoes I am not worthy to bear,' and: 'He must increase, but I must decrease'; and he had heard God the Father thundering: 'This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.' But as to what he says:
'Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?' — this too can bear this sense: 'I know that thou art he who hast come to take away the sins of the world; but because I am about to descend to those below, I ask this also, whether thou thyself wilt descend there too, or whether it be impious to believe this of the Son of God, and thou wilt send another. But this I desire to know, so that, as I have announced thee to men on earth, I may announce thee also among those below, if perchance thou art to come. For thou art he who hast come to release captivity and to loose those who were held in chains.'
The Lord, understanding his inquiry, answered by works rather than by speech, and bade it be announced to John that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise, and — what is greater than these — the poor are evangelized: the poor, whether by humility or by riches, so that there is no difference of salvation between poor and rich, but all are called equally. And what he adds: 'Blessed is he who shall not be offended in me' — this strikes not John, but his disciples, who had earlier come to him saying: 'Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but thy disciples do not fast?' and had said to John:
'Master, he to whom thou gavest testimony beyond Jordan, behold, his disciples baptize, and more come to him.' By this saying they signify a spite arising from the greatness of the signs and from the gnawing of envy: why does he who was baptized by John himself dare to baptize, and why does a far greater crowd run to him than had earlier come to John? And lest perchance the ignorant people should think, by this saying, that John was being slighted, he delivers a discourse in praise of him and begins to say of John to the surrounding crowds: 'What went ye out into the desert to see? A reed shaken by the wind? And what went ye out into the wilderness to see? A man clothed in soft garments?' and the rest. Of which saying this is the sense:
'Did you go out into the wilderness for this, to see a man swaying this way and that, like a reed, at the blast of the winds — so that he whom he had earlier praised he should now doubt about, and concerning whom he had before said, 'Behold the Lamb of God,' he should now ask whether he himself or another is he who has come or is to come? And because every false preaching pursues gain and seeks human glory, so that through glory profits may accrue, he asserts that this man, clothed in the hairs of camels, could yield to no flattery, and that one who feeds on locusts and wild honey does not seek wealth, and that a rigid and austere life shuns the courts of the palace, which those seek who are clothed in fine linen and silk and soft raiment.'
And he says that he is not only a prophet, who is wont to foretell things to come, but more than a prophet, because him whom the others said was to come, this man showed had already come, saying: 'Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world' — especially since he attained to the summit of prophetic dignity as baptist: the privilege that he to whom he had said, 'I ought to be baptized by thee,' baptized him — not by presumption of a greater, but by the obedience of a disciple and with servile fear. And when he asserts that among those born of women none greater than John has arisen, he intimates that he who was begotten of a virgin is greater, or that every angel who is least in heaven surpasses all men on earth.
For we advance into angels, and not angels into us, as some, snoring in deepest slumber, dream. Nor does this suffice for the praises of John, unless he himself, preaching the baptism of repentance, be reported to have first said: 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.' Whence from the days of his preaching the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, so that he who is born a man desires to be an angel, and the earthly animal seeks a heavenly habitation. For the law and the prophets prophesied until John — not that John is the end of the prophets and of the law, but he who was proclaimed by John's testimony.
But John, according to the mystery which is written in Malachi, is himself Elijah who is to come — not that the same soul, as the heretics suspect, was both in Elijah and in John, but that he had the same grace of the Holy Spirit: girded with a girdle like Elijah, living in the wilderness like Elijah, suffering persecution from Herodias as that one endured from Jezebel; so that, as Elijah is the forerunner of the second coming, so John announced the Saviour, the Lord about to come in the flesh, not only in the wilderness but even in his mother's womb, by the leaping and exultation of his body. What is signified by what is written in Matthew: 'A bruised reed he shall not break, and smoking flax he shall not quench.'
— For the exposition of this passage, the whole testimony which Matthew took from the prophet Isaiah must be set down, together with the very words of Isaiah according to the Septuagint translators and according to the Hebrew itself, with which Theodotion, Aquila and Symmachus agree. Thus, then, of the four evangelists Matthew alone set down: 'But Jesus, knowing it, withdrew from thence, and many followed him, and he healed them all, and charged them that they should not make him known, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying: Behold my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved in whom my soul is well pleased. I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall announce judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not strive nor cry, neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets.'
'A bruised reed he shall not break, and smoking flax he shall not quench, till he send forth judgment unto victory; and in his name shall the Gentiles hope.' In place of which, in Isaiah according to the Septuagint translators, it is thus written: 'Jacob my servant, I will uphold him; Israel my chosen, my soul hath received him. I have given my spirit upon him, he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor send forth, nor shall his voice be heard without. A broken reed he shall not crush, and smoking flax he shall not quench, but shall bring forth judgment in truth. He shall shine and not be broken, till he set judgment upon the earth; and in his name shall the Gentiles hope.' But we from the Hebrew have thus translated:
'Behold my servant, I will uphold him, my chosen, in whom my soul is well pleased. I have given my spirit upon him; he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor accept a person, neither shall his voice be heard without. A bruised reed he shall not crush, and smoking flax he shall not quench; in truth he shall bring forth judgment. He shall not be sad nor turbulent, till he set judgment in the earth; and the isles shall wait for his law.' From which it appears that Matthew the evangelist, not constrained by the authority of the old translation, did not abandon the Hebrew truth, but, as a Hebrew of the Hebrews and most learned in the law of the Lord, brought forth to the Gentiles those things which he had read in the Hebrew. For if it is to be taken as the Septuagint translators published it:
'Jacob my servant, I will uphold him; Israel my chosen, my soul hath received him' — how do we understand that to be fulfilled in Jesus which is written of Jacob and of Israel? This we read that the blessed Matthew did not only in this testimony, but also in another: 'Out of Egypt have I called my son,' in place of which the Septuagint rendered: 'Out of Egypt he called his sons.' Which surely, unless we follow the Hebrew truth, plainly does not pertain to the Lord the Saviour. For it follows: 'And they themselves sacrificed to the Baals.' But as for what in the testimony adopted in the Gospel is lacking:
'He shall shine and not be broken, till he set judgment upon the earth' — it seems to me to have happened through the error of the first copyist, who, reading that the earlier sentence ended in the word 'judgment,' thought that the last word of the following sentence was also 'judgment,' and passed over the few words which were in the middle, that is, between 'judgment' and 'judgment.' And again, what among the Hebrews is read, 'and the isles shall hope in his law,' Matthew, interpreting the sense rather than the words, put in place of 'law' and 'isles' the words 'name' and 'Gentiles.'
And this must be observed more carefully not only in the present passage, but wherever the evangelists and apostles brought forth testimonies from the Old Testament: that they did not follow the words, but the sense; and where the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew, they expressed the Hebrew sense in their own words. The servant, therefore, of God almighty, according to the dispensation of the flesh he assumed, by which he is sent to us, was called Saviour. To whom also in another place the Father says: 'It is a great thing for thee to be called my servant, that thou mayest gather together the tribes of Jacob.' This is the vineyard of Sorech, which is interpreted 'chosen'; this the most beloved Son, in whom the soul of God is well pleased — not that God has a soul, but that in the soul every affection of God is shown forth.
And it is no wonder if a soul be named in God, since all the members of the human body are said, according to the laws of tropology and the various understandings, to be in him. He also put his spirit upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and piety and the fear of God, which descended upon him in the likeness of a dove — concerning which John the Baptist also relates that he heard from God the Father: 'Upon whom thou shalt see the Holy Spirit coming and remaining on him, that is he.' And he shall announce judgment to the Gentiles, of which we also read in the Psalms: 'Give the king thy judgment, O God, and thy righteousness to the king's son.' Who also himself speaks in the Gospel:
'For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son.' 'He shall not strive,' like a lamb led to the slaughter; he shall not strive to the subversion of his hearers. 'Neither shall he cry,' according to that which Paul the apostle writes: 'Let all clamor and wrath and bitterness be taken away from you.' 'He shall not cry,' because Israel did not do judgment, but an outcry. 'Neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets,' or without. For all the glory of the king's daughter is from within, and strait and narrow is the way that leads to life. Whence in the streets his voice shall not be heard, in which wisdom acts confidently, not entering upon the broad and spacious way, but reproving and condemning. Whence also to those who were without he spoke not in his own voice, but through parables: