Letters (CSEL) 1 part 66/85

'Perhaps someone might even dare to die' — and by a wavering step he tempered the sentence, hinting that some can be found who would dare to die for the Gospel — he shows that it is not to be taken so, but that the sense of this passage must be treated from what precedes and what follows. For when Paul the apostle says that he glories in tribulations, because tribulation works patience, patience trial, trial hope, and hope does not confound, which has from this a sure promise, because 'the love of God is poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who is given to us' — according to that which God had said through the prophet:

'I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh' — he marvels at the goodness of Christ, that he willed to die for the weak and the impious and sinners, and to die at an opportune time, of which he himself says: 'At an acceptable time I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you'; and again: 'Behold now the acceptable time, behold now the day of salvation.' When all had sinned and together become unprofitable, there was none who did good, there was none, even up to one. Incredible, then, is the goodness and unheard-of the clemency, to die for the impious — for scarcely does anyone pour out his blood for a just and good man, when the fear of death terrifies all things;

for it is found sometimes that someone would dare to die for a just and good cause — but the love of God, which he had toward us, is hence most especially proved, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us; and his life was taken up from the earth, and for the iniquities of the people he was led to death, and he bore our sins, and his soul was delivered up in death, and he was reckoned with the wicked, that he might make us, the impious and weak and sinners, godly and strong and just. Some interpret it thus: 'If he died for us who were impious and sinners, how much more ought we, without any doubt, to lay down our lives for Christ who is just and good!'

But let us not think that 'just' and 'good' are different, nor that they properly signify some person, but absolutely a just thing and a good thing, for which sometimes with difficulty someone can be found who would pour out his blood. What does the apostle mean by what he writes to the Romans: 'Sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all concupiscence'? Let us set down the whole testimony and, discussing the particulars with Christ's help, let us simply indicate what seems to us, not prejudging your understanding, what you wish to understand, but briefly explaining our own opinion. What then do we say? Is the Law sin? God forbid. But I did not know sin except through the Law. For I would not have known concupiscence, unless the Law had said:

'You shall not covet.' But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all concupiscence. For without the Law sin was dead. But I lived once without the Law; yet when the commandment came, sin revived, but I died; and the commandment which was unto life was found by me to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and through it slew me. Therefore the Law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. What is good, then, has it become death to me? God forbid. But that sin might appear sin, it wrought death in me through what is good, that sin might become sinful beyond measure through the commandment.

For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I do, I do not understand; for I do not do what I will, but what I hate, that I do. But if I do what I do not will, I consent to the Law, that it is good. Now, then, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that there dwells in me — that is, in my flesh — no good. For to will is present with me, but to accomplish the good, by no means. For I do not do the good that I will, but the evil that I do not will, that I do. But if I do what I do not will, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells in me. I find, then, a law, when I wish to do good, that evil is present with me.

For I delight in the Law of God according to the inner man; but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and leading me captive in the law of sin, which is in my members. Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Just as medicine is not the cause of death if it points out deadly poisons, although wicked men abuse them unto death and either kill themselves or lay snares for their enemies, so the Law was given to point out the poisons of sins and to restrain, with the bridle of the Law, the man who wickedly abuses his freedom — who before was borne along improvident and slipped down a headlong path — and to teach him to walk with composed steps, so that we may serve in newness of spirit and not in oldness of the letter; that is, that we may live under the commandment, we who before, after the manner of brute animals, used to say: 'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die.' But if, when the Law had crept in,

which teaches what we ought to do and forbids what we ought not to do, and we, by our own vice and incontinence, are carried against the ordinances of the Law, the Law seems to be the cause of sin, which, while it forbids concupiscence, is in a certain way known to inflame it. There is a worldly saying among the Greeks: 'Whatever is permitted is less desired.' Therefore, on the contrary, whatever is not permitted takes fuel for desire. Hence Tullius (Cicero) denies that Solon wrote anything concerning the punishments of parricides among the Athenians, lest he should seem not so much to forbid as to remind them of it.

Therefore the Law, among those who despise it and trample on the precepts of the laws, seems to be an occasion of offenses, since, by forbidding what it does not wish to be done, it binds with the chains of commandments those who before, sinning without the Law, were not held guilty of crimes. These things we have said understanding the Law which was given through Moses. But since in what follows it is written of 'the Law of God, and the law of the flesh and of the members, which fights against the law of our mind and leads us captive in the law of sin,' and since I recognize that four laws contending against one another are written down in one place, I think it not beside the point if I inquire how many kinds of law are recorded to be in the holy Scriptures.

It is called 'law' — that which was given through Moses, according to that which is written to the Galatians: 'For as many as are of the works of the Law are under a curse. For it is written: Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the Law, to do them.' And again in the same epistle: 'The Law was placed on account of transgressions, until the seed should come to whom the promise was made, ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator.' And again: 'So the Law was our schoolmaster in Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith came, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For you are all sons of God through faith, which is in Christ Jesus.'

History too, which does not contain precepts but relates what was done, is called 'law' by the apostle: 'Tell me, you who wish to be under the Law, have you not heard the Law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one of the bondwoman and the other of the free. But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, while he who was of the free was by promise.' But the Psalms too are called 'law': 'That the word might be fulfilled which is written in their Law: They hated me without cause.' The prophecy of Isaiah also the apostle calls 'law': 'In the Law it is written: In other tongues and with other lips I will speak to this people, and not even so will they hear me, says the Lord.' Which, according to the Hebrew and Aquila, I found written in Isaiah.

The mystical understanding of the Scriptures is also called 'law': 'We know that the Law is spiritual.' And beyond all these, the same apostle teaches that there is a natural law written in our hearts: 'For when the Gentiles, who do not have the Law, do by nature the things that are of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness to them.' This law, which is written in the heart, contains all nations, and there is no man who is ignorant of this law. Hence all the world is under sin, and all men are transgressors of the law; and therefore just is the judgment of God, who writes in the heart of the human race: 'What you would not have done to yourself, do not do to another.'

Who is ignorant that murder, adultery, theft, and every concupiscence is evil, from the fact that he would not wish these things to be done to himself? For if he did not know them to be evil, he would never grieve when they were inflicted on him. Through this natural law even Cain recognized his own sin, saying: 'My cause is greater than that I should be forgiven.' And Adam and Eve recognized their sin, and therefore they hid themselves under the tree of life. Pharaoh too, before the Law was given through Moses, goaded by the law of nature, confesses his crimes and says: 'The Lord is just, but I and my people are impious.' This law childhood does not know, infancy is ignorant of, and one sinning without the commandment is not held by the law of sin.

He curses his father and beats his parents, and, because he has not yet received the law of wisdom, sin is dead in him. But when the commandment comes — that is, the time of understanding that seeks good things and shuns evil ones — then sin begins to revive, and he to die and to become guilty of sin. And so it comes about that the time of understanding, in which we come to know God's commandments so that we may attain to life, works death in us, if we act too negligently and the occasion of wisdom

seduces us and supplants us and leads us to death — not because understanding is sin (for the law of understanding is holy and just and good), but through the understanding of sins and of virtues sin is born to me, which, before I understood it, I had not known to be sin. And so it has come about that what was given to me for good is, by my own vice, changed into evil; and — to speak hyperbolically and use a new word to explain my meaning — sin, which, before I had understanding, was without sin, begins, by the transgression of the commandment, to become more sinful to me. First let us ask what that concupiscence is of which the Law says: 'You shall not covet.' Some think it is that commandment which is written in the Decalogue:

'You shall not covet your neighbor's goods.' But we suppose that by 'concupiscence' are signified all the perturbations of the soul, by which we grieve and are pained, fear and desire. And this the apostle, the vessel of election, whose body was the temple of the Holy Spirit and who said: 'Do you seek a proof of Christ who speaks in me?' and in another place: 'Christ redeemed us,' and again: 'I live, yet now not I, but Christ lives in me' — he speaks not of himself, but of one who after sins wishes to do penance, and under his own person he describes the frailty of the human condition, which endures the wars of two men, the inner and the outer, fighting against each other.

The inner man consents both to the written and to the natural law, that it is good and holy and just and spiritual; but the outer man says: 'I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I do, I know not; and I do not what I will, but what I hate.' But if the outer man does what he does not will and works what he hates, he shows that the commandment is good and that he does not himself work what is evil, but the sin dwelling in his flesh — that is, the incentives of the body and the desires of pleasure, which for the sake of posterity and offspring were implanted in human bodies and, if they have gone beyond their bounds, are turned into sin.

Let each one consider himself and, as his own accuser, weigh the incitements of the vices—how often, both in speech and in thought and in the heat of the body, he speaks and thinks and endures what he does not will; I am unwilling to say 'does,' lest I seem to accuse holy men, of whom it is written: 'That man was true, spotless, a just worshipper of God, withdrawing from every evil work' (Job 1:1), and of Zacharias and Elisabeth: 'And they were both just before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord without blame' (Luke 1:6). And it was commanded to the apostles: 'Be perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect' (Matt 5:48). But he would never lay this charge upon the apostles unless he knew that a man could be perfect.

Unless perhaps we should say that 'withdrawing from every evil' signifies amendment, and a passing from the errors of childhood and the vices of a wanton age to correction and virtues; and that the righteousness too which is proclaimed in Zacharias and Elisabeth is something external, while the concupiscence, which is now said to dwell in our members, is engaged within. But it is enjoined not upon boys but upon the apostles—men indeed of robust age—that they take up perfection, which we too confess to be perfect in a mature age.

Nor in saying these things do we flatter the vices, but we follow the authority of the Scriptures, that no man is without sin, and that 'God hath concluded all under sin, that he may have mercy upon all' (Rom 11:32)—except him alone 'who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth' (1 Pet 2:22; Isa 53:9). Whence also it is said through Solomon that the traces of the serpent are not found upon the rock (Prov 30:19). And the Lord himself concerning himself: 'Behold,' he says, 'the prince of this world cometh, and findeth nothing in me' (John 14:30)—that is, nothing of his own work or of his own footprint.

For this cause it is commanded us not to reproach a man returning from his sins, and not to abhor the Egyptian, because we too were once in Egypt and out of mud and bricks built cities for Pharaoh, and because we were led captive into Babylon by the law of sin which lodged in our members. And when it seemed the utmost despair—nay, an open confession—that every man is ensnared in the devil's nets, the apostle, turned upon himself—nay rather the man in whose person the apostle speaks—gives thanks to the Saviour, that he has been redeemed by his blood and has laid aside his filth in baptism and put on the new garment of Christ, and, the old man being dead, has been born a new man who says:

'Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I give thanks to God through Jesus Christ our Lord' (Rom 7:24-25), who has delivered me from the body of death. But if to anyone it does not seem that under his own person the apostle says this of others, let him explain how Daniel, whom we know to have been just, speaks as though of himself while he prays for others: 'We have sinned, we have done wickedly, we have dealt unjustly, we have acted impiously, and we have departed and turned aside from thy commandments and judgments, and we have not hearkened to thy servants the prophets, who spoke in thy name to our kings and princes and fathers and to all the people of the land. To thee, O Lord, belongeth justice, but to us confusion' (Dan 9:5-7). That also which is said in the thirty-first psalm:

'I have made my sin known unto thee, and my iniquity I have not hidden. I said: I will confess against myself my injustice unto the Lord; and thou hast forgiven the impiety of my sin. For this shall every holy one pray unto thee in a fitting time' (Ps 31:5-6). This suits not David and a just man and—to speak plainly—the prophet whose words are related, but a sinner. And when the just man had poured forth such things under the person of a penitent, he deserves to hear from God: 'I will make thee to understand, and I will teach thee in this way in which thou shalt walk; I will fix mine eyes upon thee' (Ps 31:8). In the thirty-seventh psalm too, whose title is 'For a remembrance,' that it may teach us that we ought always to be mindful of our sins and to do penance, we read something like this:

'There is no peace in my bones because of the face of my sins. For mine iniquities are gone over my head; as a heavy burden they are grown grievous upon me. My sores are putrefied and corrupted because of my foolishness. I am afflicted and bowed down exceedingly' (Ps 37:4-7). This whole passage of the apostle, both in what precedes and in what follows—nay, his whole epistle to the Romans—is wrapped in exceeding obscurities; and if I should wish to expound the whole, by no means one book, but many great volumes, would have to be written by me.

Why does the apostle Paul write in the same epistle to the Romans: 'I myself wished to be anathema from Christ for my brethren and my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites; whose is the adoption and the glory and the testaments and the giving of the law and the worship and the promises; whose are the fathers, of whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all things God blessed for ever, Amen' (Rom 9:3-5)? Truly a weighty question: how the apostle, who above had said, 'Who shall separate us from the charity of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or the sword?' (Rom 8:35), and again:

'But I am confident that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the charity of God which we have in Christ Jesus our Lord' (Rom 8:38-39)—how does he now confirm it under oath and say: 'I speak the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great sadness and continual sorrow in my heart; for I myself wished to be anathema from Christ for my brethren and my kinsmen according to the flesh' (Rom 9:1-3), and the rest.

For if he is of so great a love toward the Lord that neither by fear of death, nor hope of life, nor persecution, nor famine, nor nakedness, nor danger, nor sword can he be separated from his charity—and if angels too and powers, and things present or things to come, and all the powers of the heavens, and the heights alike and the depths, and the whole creation together should assail him (which can by no means come to pass)—yet he would not be separated from the charity of God which he has in Christ Jesus: what is this so great change, nay this unheard-of prudence, that for the love of Christ he should be unwilling to have Christ?

And lest perhaps we should not believe him, he swears and affirms in Christ and invokes the Holy Spirit as witness of his conscience, that he has a sadness not light and casual but great and incredible, and that he has sorrow in his heart—not one that pricks for an hour and passes, but one that abides continually in the heart. Whither tends this sadness? To what avails this ceaseless sorrow? He wishes to be anathema from Christ and to perish, that others may be saved. But if we consider the voice of Moses praying to God for the people of the Jews and saying: 'If thou forgive them their sin, forgive; but if thou wilt not, blot me out of thy book which thou hast written' (Ex 32:32), we shall discern the same affection, in both Moses and Paul, toward the flock committed to them.

For 'the good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep; but the hireling, when he seeth the wolf coming, fleeth, because they are not his sheep' (John 10:11-13). And this is the very thing to say: 'I wished to be anathema from Christ,' and: 'Blot me out of the book which thou hast written.' For those who are blotted out of the book of the living and are not written with the just become anathema from the Lord. And observe at the same time the apostle, of how great a charity in Christ he is, that he desires to die for him and alone to perish, provided only that the whole race of men might believe in him—to perish, however, not for ever, but for the present. For 'he that shall lose his life for Christ, shall save it' (Matt 16:25). Whence also from the forty-third psalm he takes an example:

'For thy sake we are put to death all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter' (Ps 43:22). The apostle therefore wishes to perish in the flesh, that others may be saved in the spirit—to shed his own blood, that the souls of many may be preserved. That 'anathema' sometimes means slaughter can be proved by many testimonies of the Old Testament. And lest we think the sadness slight and the cause of sorrow small, he joins and says: 'for my brethren and my kinsmen according to the flesh.' When he calls them kinsmen and brethren according to the flesh, he shows them estranged from himself in the spirit. 'Whose is,' he says, 'the adoption'—which in Greek is more significantly called huiothesia—of whom the Lord once spoke: 'Israel is my firstborn son' (Ex 4:22), and:

'I have begotten and raised up sons' (Isa 1:2), now he says: 'The strange children have lied unto me' (Ps 17:46). And 'whose is the glory'—that out of all nations they were chosen to be God's peculiar people. And 'whose are the testaments'—one in the letter, the other in the spirit—so that those who before had served in the flesh the ceremonies of the abolished law might afterward serve in the spirit the commandments of the everlasting gospel. And 'the giving of the law' answers to both, both of the new and of the old testament. And 'the worship,' that is, true religion. And 'the promises,' that whatsoever was promised to the fathers might be fulfilled in the sons. And—what is greater than all—'of whom is Christ,' begotten of the Virgin Mary. And that we might know who this Christ is, he comprehends the causes of his sorrow in one saying:

'Who is over all things God blessed for ever, Amen'—that it might be perceived that so great and such a one was not received by those from whose stock he was begotten. And nonetheless he praises the truth of the judgment, lest God's sentence upon the brethren and kinsmen should seem displeasing, and either harsh or excessive. In those, therefore, in whom there had been so great goods, he grieves why there now are so great evils. What does the same apostle wish to be understood when he writes to the Colossians: 'Let no man seduce you, willing in the humility of mind and religion of angels, walking in the things which he hath not seen, in vain puffed up by the sense of his own flesh, and not holding the head, from which the whole body, by joints and bands supplied and knit together, groweth unto the increase of God' (Col 2:18-19), and the rest.

That which we have often said—'though rude in speech, yet not in knowledge' (2 Cor 11:6)—that Paul said this by no means out of humility, but out of the truth of his conscience, we now again affirm. For the tongue does not unfold deep and hidden meanings, and though he himself perceives what he speaks, he cannot transfer it into others' ears in pure discourse. And though in his native tongue he is most eloquent—being indeed 'a Hebrew of the Hebrews' (Phil 3:5) and instructed 'at the feet of Gamaliel' (Acts 22:3), a man most learned in the law—yet in wishing to interpret himself he becomes entangled.

But if this befalls him in the Greek tongue, which, brought up in Tarsus of Cilicia, he had imbibed from an early age, what is to be said of the Latins, who, trying to render word for word, make his sentences more obscure, as by the growing weeds they choke the abundance of the crops? We shall therefore try, by way of paraphrase, to unfold his meaning, and to restore the tangles of his involved eloquence to their own order and connection, so that the threads may run down upon a simple warp of words, and the fabric of the apostolic discourse may grow up with a pure woof. 'Let no man seduce you': that is, 'let no man carry off the prize against you.'

For this in Greek is said katabrabeuetō, when one placed in a contest, through the unfairness of the presiding judge of the games or the plots of the trainers, loses the prize (brabeion) and the palm due to him. And there are many words which the apostle uses more familiarly according to the custom of his own city and province. Of these a few must, by way of example, be set down: 'But to me it is a very small thing to be judged by man's day' (1 Cor 4:3), that is apo anthrōpinēs hēmeras; and: ou katenarkēsa hymas, that is, 'I was not burdensome to you' (2 Cor 12:13); and what is now said: mēdeis hymas katabrabeuetō, that is, 'let no man take the prize against you.' These and many other words the Cilicians use to this day.

Nor let us wonder at this in the apostle, if he uses the idiom of that tongue in which he was born and reared, since Virgil, that second Homer among us, following the custom of his own homeland, calls the cold 'accursed.'

Let no man, therefore, seduce and overcome you, willing to follow the humility of the letter and the religion and cult of angels, so that you serve not the spiritual understanding but the patterns of things to come, which he himself has not seen who desires to overcome you—or does see, for both readings are found in the Greek—especially since he walks swelling and struts puffed up, and displays the pride of his mind by the gesture of his body—for this is what eikē physioumenos means—and is vainly inflated and swollen with the sense of his own flesh, understanding all things carnally, and searching out the ravings of the Jewish traditions, and not holding the head of all the Scriptures, that of which it was said:

'The head of the man is Christ' (1 Cor 11:3)—the head and beginning of the whole body and of those who believe, and of all spiritual understanding. From which head the body of the Church, through its frames and joints, receives the sap of heavenly doctrine, so that all the members are gradually quickened, and through the hidden passages of the veins the purified blood of the foods is poured forth and administered and grows up—nay, is held in the temperance of the body—so that the limbs, watered from the fountain of the head, may grow into the perfection of God, that the Saviour's prayer may be fulfilled: 'Father, I will that, as I and thou are one, so these also may be one in us' (John 17:21-22), that, after Christ has delivered us to the Father, God may be 'all in all' (1 Cor 15:28).

He writes something similar, both in words and in meanings and in the manner of expression, most obscurely to the Ephesians: 'But doing the truth in charity, let us grow up in him in all things, who is the head, Christ; from whom the whole body, being compacted and fitly joined together by every joint of supply, according to the operation in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in charity' (Eph 4:15-16). On which we have spoken more fully in the commentaries on that same epistle. He speaks all these things against those who, believing from among the Jews in the Lord the Saviour, desired to observe the Jewish ceremonies. On which matter no small question was stirred up in the Acts of the Apostles also.