For if you concede that atoms exist, if you concede also that by a chance concourse they drive and agitate themselves, is it also lawful to concede to them that atoms concurring by chance among themselves should so fashion some thing as to shape it with form, determine it with figure, polish it with evenness, illumine it with color, quicken it with soul? All which things anyone sees can in no way come about except by the art of divine providence, whoever loves to see with the mind rather than with the eyes, and seeks this from Him by whom he was made. For neither is it to be conceded in any way that atoms themselves exist, which—setting aside the subtlety which is handed down by the learned concerning the division of bodies—see how easily it can be shown, according to their own opinion. For they themselves certainly say that all things which are, are natures,
that these are nothing other than bodies and void, and whatever happens to these—by which I believe he means motion and impulse and the resulting forms. Let them say, then, in what class they place the images which they suppose flow off from more solid bodies, being themselves least solid, so that they cannot be perceived except by the touch of the eyes when we see, and of the mind when we think, if they too are bodies. For thus they hold, that they can go out from a body and come to the eyes or to the mind, which they nonetheless say is corporeal. I ask, do images also flow off from the atoms themselves? If they flow off, how are they now atoms, from which some bodies are separated?
If they do not flow off, then either something can be thought of without images—which they vehemently do not want—or from where do they know the atoms, which they could not even think of? But now I am ashamed to refute these things, since they were not ashamed to hold them; but when they have dared even to defend them, I am ashamed no longer of them but of the human race itself, whose ears could bear these things.
Since therefore so great is the blindness of minds through the gluttony of sins and the love of the flesh, that even these monstrosities of opinions could be worn away by learned men in their leisure by disputing—will you doubt, Dioscorus, or anyone endowed with a wakeful intellect, that in no way could better counsel have been taken for the human race, for the following of truth, than that a man, taken up by Truth itself ineffably and wondrously, and bearing on earth the person of that very Truth, should by commanding right things and doing divine things wholesomely persuade men to believe what could not yet prudently be understood?
To His glory we are servants; to Him we exhort you to believe unmovably and constantly, through whom it has come to pass that not a few, but even whole peoples—who cannot judge these things by reason—should by faith deride them, until, supported by saving precepts, they may escape from these perplexities into the airs of the purest and most sincere truth. To whose authority it behooves us to submit the more devoutly, the more we see that no error now dares to raise itself up to gather to itself crowds of the unlearned, unless it seeks out the veils of the Christian name; and that those alone of the ancients, apart from the Christian name, continue somewhat more frequently in their conventicles.
They hold to those Scriptures through which the Lord Jesus Christ himself was announced, yet they feign not to understand or see him there. Furthermore, those who, though they are not in the unity and communion of the Catholic Church, nevertheless glory in the name of Christian, are compelled to set themselves against believers, and they dare to lead the unlearned astray under the pretext of reason — precisely at a time when the Lord came with this very medicine, that he might command faith to the peoples. But they are compelled to do this, as I have said, because they perceive that they lie utterly cast down if their authority is compared with the authority of the Catholic Church. They attempt, therefore, to overcome the most stable authority of the most firmly founded Church under the name and promise, as it were, of reason. For this rashness is, so to speak, the very rule of all heretics.
But that most merciful Emperor of faith both fortified the Church through the most renowned assemblies of peoples and nations, and through the very seats of the apostles as a citadel of authority, and, through fewer men who were devoutly learned and truly spiritual, he armed her also with the most abundant equipment of unconquerable reason. Yet this is the most upright discipline: that into the citadel of faith the weak be received above all, so that on their behalf, once they are most safely established, the battle may be fought with the strongest reason.
But the Platonists — who at that time, when the errors of false philosophers were barking on every side, had no divine person by whom to command faith, and preferred to keep their opinion veiled to be sought out rather than to bring it forth to be defiled — when now the name of Christ was growing frequent, with earthly kingdoms marveling and troubled, began to emerge, so as to set forth and open up what Plato had thought. Then the school of Plotinus flourished at Rome and had many fellow-disciples, men most keen and skillful. But some of them were corrupted by curiosity for the magic arts; others, coming to recognize that the Lord Jesus Christ bore the person of that very Truth and unchangeable Wisdom which they were striving to attain, passed over into his soldiery.
And so the whole summit of authority and the light of reason has been established in that one saving Name and in his one Church, for the re-creating and reforming of the human race. That I have spoken with you at such great length in this letter — even though perhaps you would have preferred other things — I do not in the least regret. For you will approve these things the more, the more you advance in the truth; and then you will approve my counsel, which you now think has served the interest of your studies too little. Although even to those very questions of yours I have replied as best I could by briefly annotating — not only to certain ones in this letter, but also to almost all the rest, on the very sheets of parchment on which you sent them.
If you judge that in these I have done too little, or something other than you wished, you do not think rightly, my Dioscorus, considering from whom you have now sought these things. But all the questions from the Orator and the books On the Orator I have passed over. For I seemed to myself to be some trifler if I were to pursue the expounding of them. For concerning the others I could even fittingly be questioned, if someone were to bring me the matters themselves to be treated and resolved — not from the books of Cicero, but in their own right; but in those the matters themselves are now less suited to our profession. And I would not do all this, had I not, after the illness in which I was when your man had come, withdrawn myself somewhat from Hippo. In those same days I was again beset by a disturbance of health and by fevers.
Hence it came about that these were sent to you later than they might have been. In what manner you have received them, I demand to be told in a reply. CXIX. TO THE HOLY AND MOST BLESSED PAPA AUGUSTINE, FROM CONSENTIUS. Indeed I had already suggested the nature of my petition in a brief word to your brother Alypius the bishop — a man to be admired by me with all the powers of my soul — hoping that he might deign to be a helper of my prayers with you. But since the cause that compelled you to go to the country estate cheated me of your presence, I preferred to insert my prayer into a letter rather than let the expectation of my mind waver — especially since, if you perceive that what I ask ought to be granted to me,
the very solitude of the place in which you now abide may avail, as I judge, to aid your mind as it searches out the deepest mysteries. I therefore, since within myself I have altogether determined that the truth of a divine matter ought to be grasped rather from faith than from reason — for if the faith of the holy Church were apprehended from the reasoning of disputation, and not from the piety of belief, no one except philosophers and orators would possess blessedness; but because it pleased God, who chose the weak things of this world to confound the strong, to save believers through the foolishness of preaching — not so much is reason to be sought concerning God as the authority of the saints is to be followed.
For surely neither would the Arians, who suppose the Son (whom we confess to be begotten) to be younger, persist in this impiety, nor would the Macedonians, so far as in them lies, thrust down the Holy Spirit — whom we believe to be neither begotten nor unbegotten — from the citadel of divinity, if they had preferred to accommodate their faith to the holy Scriptures rather than to their own reasonings. Nevertheless you, O admirable man, if that Father of ours, alone privy to secrets, who holds the key of David, has granted you with the most serene gaze of your heart to penetrate the vault of the heavens and, with unveiled face, as it is written, to behold the glory of the Lord — insofar as he who gave you a thought of this kind has granted you the faculty of bringing it forth — declare to us some portion of the ineffable substance, and strive, with his help, to express in words, as far as you can, an image of his likeness; for unless you are present as leader and master of so great a matter, our thought dreads to look upon it, as with bleary eyes, driven back by the flashing brilliance of so great a light.
Enter therefore into that most obscure cloud of God's mysteries which shuts out our gazing, and into those little questions in the resolving of which I recognize that I have gone astray — I who wish rather to follow the authority of your holiness by faith than to be corrupted by the false image of a reason conceived in the heart — and correct me, first in myself, then in my books. For I indeed, in a very circumspect simplicity, hearing and believing that the Lord of laws is light from light — as it is written: 'Proclaim well the day: his salvation from day to day,' and in the Wisdom of Solomon:
'For he is the brightness of the eternal light' — I believed God to be (what, though it is permitted to believe it, I was not able to conceive worthily) the infinite magnitude of a certain inestimable light, whose quality the human mind, however loftily it thinks, could not assess, nor measure its quantity, nor fashion its appearance; yet that it is a certain Something, whatever it is, to which belongs an incomparable form, to which belongs an inestimable beauty, upon which even Christ gazes at least with bodily eyes. When, therefore, near the end of the first book — as, without doubt, you deign to remember — desiring to prove that Christ the Lord of laws, that is, the assumed man, so possesses the divine power that the matter of human flesh, which he had taken on,
might endure — since I had taught that in those vitals nothing other than weakness had perished — that knot of a question was thrown at me: 'If,' one says, 'that man whom Christ assumed was turned into God, then he ought not to have been local; why then, after the resurrection, did he say: Touch me not; for I have not yet ascended to my Father?' I therefore, laboring to prove that Christ is everywhere by power, not by body, by divinity, not by flesh, wrote words of this kind concerning the unity of God and the trinity of persons: 'God,' I said, 'is one; the persons are three. God is undivided; the persons are distinct.
God is within all things and beyond all things; he contains the last things, fills the middle things, transcends the highest; he is diffused beyond all and through all. But the persons, subsisting in themselves, are distinguished by property, not mingled by confusion. God therefore is one and is everywhere, because there is no other besides him, and there is no empty place where another could be. All things are full of God, and besides God there is nothing. He himself is in the Father, he himself in the Son, he himself in the Holy Spirit; and through this the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are not many gods, but he himself is the one God; and he is not the Father who is the Son, nor the Son who is the Holy Spirit.
The Father is in the Son, the Son in the Father, and in both the Holy Spirit; because in three distinct in number, not in order — that is, in persons, not in power — one and indivisible God dwells. All things that are the Father's are the Son's, and the things that are the Son's are the Father's, and the things that are of both are the Holy Spirit's; because they possess not, as it were, an equal, but the same — that is, a united, not a separated — substance of Godhead. And therefore neither in majesty nor in age does one precede another, because that which is full cannot be divided, nor is there in fullness anything that could separate the fullness and make a greater portion for one and a lesser for another.
But in the persons it is not so, because the person of the Father is not that of the Son, nor is the person of the Son the same as that of the Holy Spirit. There is one power, which a threefold power possesses; there is one substance, in which there are three that subsist. The Father therefore and the Son and the Holy Spirit are everywhere in majesty, because they are one; they are within themselves as persons only, because they are three.' And weaving on with more of this kind, I brought the matter to this point: that the persons are indeed present and everywhere, but that in majesty — that majesty which above the heavens, beyond the seas, below the depths, is one and the same — I might establish it. From which I showed that it must be understood that the man whom Christ assumed, though turned indeed into God, did not lose the nature he had taken on, yet cannot be believed to be, as it were, a fourth person.
But you, O man to whom, as I judge, it has been granted by the subtlety of your thoughts to enter heaven itself — for truthful is he who says: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God — raising above all the stars the height of a pure heart to that very contemplation, you say that God ought not to be conceived as though he were some body; for even if someone should fashion in his mind a light a thousand times clearer and greater than that of this sun, no likeness of God could be grasped there, because everything that can be seen is body; but just as we cannot conceive justice or piety as corporeal — unless perchance, in pagan vanity, we imagine for ourselves some feminine bodies — so also God is to be conceived, as far as we can, without any counterfeit of fantasy.
But to me, who can scarcely at all grasp with my heart the subtlety of your disputation, it seemed that nothing living according to substance is present in justice, and therefore I cannot yet conceive God — that is, a living nature like to justice — because justice lives not in itself but in us; nay rather, we live according to justice, while justice itself in and of itself by no means lives — unless perhaps it be asserted that not this human equity, but that which is God, alone is justice. Wherefore I should wish to be confirmed by you, from all things, not only by your present words but even by a fuller letter. For it is not right that only our feet should, at your admonition, be called back from that way of error on which many of us walk.
For since many, on the islands in which we dwell, while making straight for the way along the right causeway, run into the winding by-path of this error, will there be there any Augustine to whose authority they may yield, to whose teaching they may give credence, by whose genius they may be overcome? Or perhaps, out of that fatherly affection, would you rather direct me by a hidden admonition than rebuke me as a companion of a crooked journey?
But to me, who desire to run for the profit of my soul rather than for the praise of the world, your rebuke is not useless, and accordingly also not bitter — especially since it is destined to bring forth for me and for others at once both life and praise; for no one can be so unjust a judge as to prefer to brand me as foolish because I once followed byways, rather than hesitate to judge me prudent because I have chosen the right. For those are not to be reckoned foolish whom the Apostle Paul admonished, lest they should run into uncertainty, saying: So run, that you may obtain.
Wherefore this way on which we run must not only be left behind by us, but also barred off and cut short by you, lest perchance it also deceive others by a false semblance of love. For you have been chosen, unless I am mistaken, not as a reader of books already published by me, but as an emender of books to be approved. For in that letter which I set before those little books of mine as a kind of little preface, words of this kind were written: 'It has pleased me,' I said, 'to steady the wavering skiff of our faith by the judgment of the blessed bishop Augustine.' Why then, O man who are the summit of that teaching which is in Christ, do you hesitate openly to reprove your son, to be corrected henceforth, when the anchor of your judgment, unless it bites in more deeply, cannot the more surely steady us?
For it is no light fault or question in which not only have I made no progress, but even, as was said by you most forcibly, the blindness of our thought has incurred the charge, as it were, of a certain idolatry. This I should wish to be examined by you cautiously and prudently, that the serenity of your teaching and genius may so wipe away the mist of our mind that what we now cannot conceive we may be able to see with the eyes of the heart, once it is made clear by the light of your understanding. Whole and blessed, and mindful of us forever, may you possess the heavenly kingdoms, holy and most blessed papa. CXX. TO CONSENTIUS, MY DEAREST BROTHER AND TO BE HONORED IN THE BOWELS OF CHRIST, AUGUSTINE, GREETING IN THE LORD.
I asked you to come to us for this reason, because in your books I was greatly delighted by your genius. Accordingly, I wished that you should read certain of our little works, which I judged to be necessary for you, not placed far from us but rather with us, so that whatever you had perhaps understood too little you might, being present, question without difficulty, and that from our conversation and mutual discourse — as far as the Lord had granted both to us to bring forth and to you to receive — you might yourself recognize what in your books needed to be emended, and yourself emend it. For you are of such capacity that you can explain what you have thought, and moreover of such integrity and humility that you deserve to think true things.
And now I am in the same opinion, which ought not to displease you either — whence I recently admonished you that, in those things which, worked out by us, you read at your place, you should make marks at those passages which move you, and come to me with these, and inquire about each one. What you have not yet done, I exhort you to do. For you would rightly be ashamed, and it would irk you to do this, if you had wished it even once and had found me difficult. This too I had said, when I had heard from you that you were being wearied by most faulty manuscripts, that you should read among ours, which you could find more corrected than the rest.
But as to what you ask — that I should cautiously and prudently discuss the question of the Trinity, that is, of the unity of the Godhead and the distinction of the persons, so that the serenity of my teaching and genius (as you say) may so wipe away the mist of your mind that what you now cannot conceive, once made clear by the light of my understanding, you may in some manner be able to see with your eyes — see first whether this petition accords with your own earlier definition. For above, in that same letter in which you ask this, you say that within yourself you have determined that truth ought to be perceived rather from faith than from reason.
'For if the faith,' you say, 'of the holy Church were apprehended from the reasoning of disputation and not from the piety of belief, no one except philosophers and orators would possess blessedness. But because it pleased God,' you say, 'who chose the weak things of this world that he might confound the strong, to save believers through the foolishness of preaching, not so much is reason to be sought as the authority of the saints is to be followed.' See therefore, according to these your own words, whether you ought not rather, most of all in this matter, in which especially our faith consists, to follow only the authority of the saints, and not to seek from me the reason for understanding it.
For when I shall have begun to introduce you, however I can, into the understanding of so great a secret — which, unless God aids within, I shall be utterly unable to do — I shall in discoursing be doing nothing other than rendering a reason, as best I can. And if you demand this of me, or of any teacher, not unreasonably — that you may understand what you believe — correct your definition: not so as to spurn faith, but so that those things which you already hold by the firmness of faith you may also behold by the light of reason. For far be it that God should hate in us that in which he created us more excellent than the other living beings. Far be it, I say, that we should believe in such a way as not to receive or seek a reason, since we could not even believe unless we had rational souls.
So then, that in certain matters pertaining to saving doctrine, which we are not yet able to perceive by reason but shall one day be able, faith should precede reason — the faith by which the heart is cleansed, that it may receive and endure the light of a great reason — this too is assuredly a matter of reason. And therefore it was reasonably said through the prophet: Unless you believe, you shall not understand. Where without doubt he distinguished these two and gave counsel by which we should first believe, that we might be able to understand what we believe. Accordingly, that faith should precede reason was reasonably commanded. For if this precept is not reasonable, then it is unreasonable; far be it.
If therefore it is reasonable that faith should go before a certain great reason which cannot yet be grasped, then without doubt however small a reason, by which this is urged upon us, itself also goes before faith. For this cause the Apostle admonishes that we ought to be ready to give an answer to everyone who demands of us a reason concerning our faith and hope; since, if an unbeliever demands of me a reason of my faith and hope, and I see that, before he believes, he cannot grasp it, I render him this very reason, in which, if it can be done, he may see how preposterously he demands, before faith, the reason of those things which he cannot grasp;
but if one already faithful demands a reason, that he may understand what he believes, his capacity must be regarded, so that according to it, once a reason is rendered, he may take up as much understanding of his faith as he can — more if he grasps more, less if less — provided nevertheless that he not withdraw from the road of faith until he arrive at the fullness and perfection of knowledge. Hence it is that the Apostle says: And if you are minded otherwise in anything, this also God will reveal to you; nevertheless, in that whereto we have attained, let us walk therein.
If therefore we are faithful, we shall come to the way of faith, which if we do not forsake, we shall without doubt come not only to so great an understanding of incorporeal and unchangeable things as in this life cannot be grasped by all, but even to the summit of that contemplation which the Apostle calls face to face.
For some, though walking even in the least degree yet most perseveringly on the way of faith, arrive at that most blessed contemplation; but others, already in some measure knowing what the invisible, unchangeable, incorporeal nature is, yet refusing to hold the way which leads to so great a dwelling of blessedness — because it seems foolish to them, which is Christ crucified — cannot arrive at the inmost sanctuary of that repose, by whose light their mind, as though radiant in the distance, is already dazzled. But there are certain things which, when we have heard them, we do not accord them faith, and when a reason has been rendered to us we recognize as true things which we were not able to believe. And all the miracles of God are for this reason not believed by unbelievers, because their reason is not seen.
And in truth there are things of which a reason cannot be rendered — yet it is not the case that there is none; for what is there in the nature of things that God has done unreasonably? But it is even expedient that the reason of certain of his wondrous works be for a while hidden, lest, among minds languid with disdain, they grow cheap through knowledge of that same reason. For there are also — and these are many — who are held more by admiration of things than by knowledge of causes, where miracles cease to be marvelous; and it is needful that they be roused by visible wonders to faith in invisible things, so that, cleansed by purity, they may arrive there where, through familiarity with truth, they cease to marvel. For in the theaters too men marvel at a rope-dancer, and are delighted by musicians;
in the former, difficulty astonishes; in the latter, pleasantness holds and feeds them. These things I have said in order to exhort your faith to the love of understanding, to which true reason leads and for which faith prepares the mind. For that reasoning which persuaded, in that Trinity which is God, that the Son is not coeternal with the Father, or is of another substance and in some part unlike and thus inferior, and likewise the Holy Spirit — and again that which persuaded that the Father and the Son are of one and the same substance, but the Holy Spirit of another — must be said to be avoided and detested not because it is reason, but because it is false reason. For if it were true reason, it would certainly not have erred.
Wherefore, just as you ought not to avoid all speech because there is also false speech, so you ought not to avoid all reason because there is also false reason. This I would say also of wisdom; for wisdom is not to be shunned merely because there is also a false wisdom, to which Christ crucified — who is the power of God and the wisdom of God — is foolishness; and therefore through this foolishness of preaching it pleased God to save believers, since that which is foolish of God is wiser than men. To certain philosophers and orators, following not the true way but one resembling the truth, and deceiving in it themselves and others, this could not be persuaded; but to certain of them it could.
And to those to whom it could, Christ crucified is neither a stumbling-block nor foolishness; for they are among those to whom, being called, both Jews and Greeks, he is the power of God and the wisdom of God. In which way — that is, in the faith of that Christ crucified — those who through the grace of God were able to grasp his rightness, even if they were called philosophers or orators, surely with humble piety confessed that in that way there had gone before them, far more excellently, fishermen, not only in the firmest strength of believing but even in the most certain truth of understanding.
For when they had learned that the foolish and weak things of the world had been chosen for this, that by wisdom the strong things also might be confounded, and had come to know that they themselves had savored deceitfully and prevailed feebly, they, confounded, were made wholesomely foolish and weak, so that through the foolish and weak thing of God, which is wiser and stronger than men, they might, among the chosen foolish and weak things, become truly wise and effectively strong. But to what, if not to the truest reason, does faithful piety blush to yield?