You ask many things of a man much occupied, and — what is more grievous — you think that things ought to be dashed off by dictation which are so difficult that, even when dictated or written with great diligence, they can scarcely be brought within the understanding of such men as you yourself are. To this is added that not you and such as you alone are going to read what we have written, but assuredly also those who, endowed with a less keen and less exercised mind, are nevertheless borne by such zeal to gaining acquaintance with our writings, whether in a friendly or a hostile spirit, that they cannot at all be kept from them. Considering these things, you perceive how great care there ought to be in writing, especially concerning matters so great that even great minds labour over them.
But if, when I have something in hand, it must be set aside and deferred, that reply may rather be made to those things which come upon me and demand attention, what will happen if, even while these are being answered, still others come upon me? Does it please you that these too should be laid aside and those taken up, and that the later ones which spring up should always be made the earlier, and that only those should chance to be finished which, while they are being written, no other question has come upon to be asked? That this should befall me is most difficult; but I do not suppose this pleases you. I ought not, therefore, to have interrupted other matters when yours came upon me, just as neither should I interrupt yours, if others in turn should burst in. And yet I am not suffered to keep this justice;
for behold, in order to write back to you these very things, whereby I would give you this warning, I have set aside what I was doing and have turned my mind away from another great intention to this letter. But it was easy, as I judge, to send you this excuse, laid in the letter and not unjust, whereas to answer your inquiries is not so easy; and I think that in the very works which now hold me most intently occupied there will not be wanting certain passages where I shall unfold these very things which you seek, if the Lord grant it. Indeed, even to these questions which you have just now sent, many things have been resolved in those books which I have not yet published, whether on the Trinity or on Genesis.
Although, if you should re-read even those things which have long been known to you, or, unless I am mistaken, were known — since perhaps you have forgotten what I wrote at your prompting and while conversing with me, whether on the Greatness of the Soul or on Free Will — you would find whence you might resolve your doubts even without my help, applying, of course, some labour of thought, so that to those things which have there been brought to a clear and certain understanding the consequences may be linked; you have also, in the book On Religion, things which, if you would recall and closely examine them, it would never seem to you that God is compelled by reason to exist, or that it can be brought about by reasoning that God ought to exist; since indeed, in the reason of numbers, which we certainly employ in daily use, if we say:
'Seven and three ought to be ten,' we speak with too little consideration; for they ought not to be ten, but they are ten. Concerning what things, therefore, it is rightly said that they ought to be — whether they already are, or in order that they may be — we have, as I reckon, sufficiently disputed in those books which I have mentioned. For a man ought to be wise, if he is, that he may remain so; if he is not yet, that he may become so; but God ought not to be wise — He is wise. Those things too concerning visions which I most recently wrote to you, and which you mention as subtly said, but declare that you have entangled yourself in greater questions — go over them again and again and think more diligently: let your consideration not pass through them but dwell in them, and thence perhaps you will somehow conjecture in what manner the soul is present or absent.
For in those visions the soul lingers in sleep, when it is away from that sense and presence of seeing which the waking man affords to his eyes; but this absence from the eyes — that is, as it were, from the luminaries of the body — of the soul, which comes about when we sleep, if a greater force should increase it, so that the whole of what the soul is should be withdrawn thence, is death. As, therefore, the soul withdraws from the sense of seeing to the visions of dreams not with any body — unless perhaps we shall suppose those things which are seen in dreams to be corporeal, and ourselves to be carried to and fro among them, hither and thither, with some body, which I think now no longer seems so to you — so, if it be wholly and utterly withdrawn and absent, which happens in death, it must not be thought to carry away with it any body out of the body.
For if it did carry it away, surely even when we sleep and it withdraws from the eyes, in so far as it leaves them, in so far would it carry the eyes away with it — however more subtle, yet corporeal — which it does not do. Yet nevertheless it does carry away with it certain things most like the eyes, but not corporeal, whereby it discerns in dreams visions most like real things, but these too not corporeal. Further, if anyone should grant that even the visions of dreams, which appear similar to bodies, are nothing but corporeal, he may seem to himself to be saying something. Nor is this slowness of wit easily refuted; for it belongs to many, even to men not moderately acute, since they attend too little to how much the images of bodies avail, which come to be in the spirit and are by no means bodies at all.
But when they are compelled to contemplate them, if they rightly attend and discover that these are not corporeal but most like bodies, they are nevertheless not straightway able to render a reason concerning them — by what causes and in what manner they come to be, and finally by what nature of their own they subsist, or in what subject they are: whether they come to be in the mind as letters of ink upon a parchment, where each substance exists, namely both the parchment and the ink; or as a seal in wax, or any figure whatever, for which the wax is the subject, the figure being in the subject; or whether these things come to be in our spirit in both ways, at one time thus, at another time otherwise.
For it moves us, not only that we think of those things which are absent from the senses of the body and are found in our memory, or which we ourselves, as it pleases us, make, arrange, enlarge, diminish, and vary by position, disposition, motion, and by innumerable qualities and forms — such perhaps as are also those things by which we are deluded when sleeping, when we are not divinely admonished, save that these we do willingly, those we suffer against our choice — not only do these things move us, which one may perhaps not absurdly think come to be in the mind out of the mind itself (although this too by more hidden causes, whereby it is brought about that this rather than that comes into the sight of the mind), but also what the prophet says:
'And the angel that spoke in me said to me' — for it must not be believed that the voices came from without to the bodily ears of the prophet, since he says 'who spoke in me,' not 'to me' — whether the voices were made of spirit, similar to bodily ones, such as we produce when among ourselves in silence we run over many things by memory, often even by singing, but yet uttered by an angel, which by marvellous means he perceived to be suggested to him by another than he himself was; and what is written in the Gospel:
'Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying' — for in what manner did there appear either an angelic body to closed eyes (for to Abraham indeed, while waking, they so appeared that he even perceived them by touch, when he washed their feet), or a spirit to the spirit of a sleeper under some appearance similar to a body, just as we ourselves seem to ourselves, under such a figure, to be moved even through places while dreaming, far otherwise than our limbs lying on the couch. These things move us and are therefore wonderful, because they have a more hidden reason than can be seen or rendered by man to man. For these are the causes of wonder, when either the reason of anything lies hidden, or that same thing is not usual, because it is either singular or rare.
From that cause, then, of the hidden reason, I said in the letter which you recall having read — when I was answering those who deny that it is to be believed that a virgin bore Christ and remained a virgin — 'If a reason is sought, it will not be wonderful.' For this was said, not because the matter lacks a reason, but because it lies hidden from those to whom God willed this to be wonderful. But from another cause of wonder — which exists for this reason, that something unaccustomed occurs — it is written of the Lord that He marvelled at the faith of the centurion; for no reason of any matter could lie hidden from Him, but the wonder was set down in place of praise of him whose equal had not appeared among the Hebrew people. Whence that wonder itself is sufficiently explained when the Lord says:
'Amen I say to you, I have not found so great faith in Israel.' But as to what I added in the same letter — '(If an example is demanded, it will not be unique)' — it was in vain that you seemed to yourself to have found examples, as it were, of the little worm which is born in the apple, and of the spider, which brings forth the thread of its weaving from a body as though intact. For some things are said, for the sake of a certain likeness, cleverly — some more remotely, some more fittingly; but Christ alone was born of a virgin. Whence you now understand, as I reckon, why I said this to be without an example. All things, therefore, have their own causes and right and blameless reasons, which God works, whether things usual or unusual. But these causes and reasons, when they lie hidden, we wonder;
but when they are open, we consequently say that these things come to be fittingly and suitably, and that it is not to be wondered at that those things were done which reason demanded should be done; or, if we do wonder, we wonder not by being stupefied at the unexpected, but by praising the excellence — the kind of wonder with which that centurion was praised. Nor for that reason is the sentence to be reprehended in which it was said: 'If a reason is sought, it will not be wonderful,' since there is another kind of wonder, even when the reason is manifest to him who wonders; for neither on that account is the sentence blamed in which it was said, 'God tempteth no man,' since there is another kind of temptation, on account of which it was rightly likewise said, 'The Lord your God tempteth you.'
Nor let anyone suppose that it can therefore be deservedly said that the Father is seen by the Son with corporeal eyes, rather than the Son by the Father, on the ground that those who think this can themselves also say, when they fail in rendering a reason: 'If a reason is sought, it will not be wonderful' — for this was said, not because there is no reason, but because it lies hidden. But whoever undertakes to refute those who opine such a thing ought to demonstrate that there is no reason — not of a miracle, but of an error. For just as there is no reason by which the nature of God should die, or be corrupted, or sin — and when we say that God cannot do this, we do not derogate from His power, but praise His eternity and truth — so when we say that He cannot be seen with corporeal eyes, it does not lie hidden,
but the reason lies open to those who understand well, whereby it is clear that God is not a body, nor can anything be discerned by corporeal eyes save what is discerned by the interposition of some interval; and that this is nothing but a body, and that substance which is less in a part than in the whole — which it ought to be unlawful to believe concerning God, even for those who are not yet able to understand this. There lies hidden the reason of the diverse changes of swiftness and slowness in the motions of bodies and of corporeal qualities. Hence is the whole forest of visible marvels.
Yet does it therefore lie hidden that bodies exist, that we have a body, that there is no little corpuscle, however small, which does not according to its own manner occupy a space of place, and is not wholly everywhere in that which it occupies, but is less in a part than in the whole? Since these things do not lie hidden, to them are to be woven the consequences — which now it would be too long to do — whereby it may be shown that the reason does not lie hidden, but that there is no reason at all whereby it should be believed, or can be understood, that God, who is wholly everywhere and is not diffused through spaces of places by a corporeal mass, in which He must needs consist of greater and lesser parts, can be discerned with corporeal eyes.
Whence I would say more, had I undertaken this in this letter, into whose length I have proceeded without perceiving it, having almost forgotten my occupations, so that perhaps — what I did not think — I have satisfied your attention, you who, being briefly admonished, are able to think out the many further things that are fitting; but I have not likewise satisfied the attention of those into whose hands these things may come not without profit, if they were to be discussed more diligently and more copiously. Now men labour in learning, when they are neither able to understand brief things nor love to read lengthy ones; and they labour likewise in teaching, who vainly heap few things upon the slow and many upon the sluggish. Send also a copy of that letter, which, gone astray among us, could not be found. May you be well and vigorous in the Lord, mindful of us.
163. Bishop Evodius to Bishop Augustine. Some time ago I sent to your Holiness one question concerning reason and God — I think through Iobinus, who serves the handmaids of God; another concerning the body of the Saviour, of which it is reckoned that it sees the substance of God; a third I now put: the rational soul, which the Saviour assumed together with a body — is it from one of those opinions which are set forth when the origin of the soul is inquired into, if there be any of them that can be supported by truth; or, although it be rational, will it nevertheless not be of those kinds which are said concerning the human soul? A fourth I ask: who are those spirits, concerning whom in his epistle Peter gives testimony, saying of the Lord:
'Put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit, in which also he preached to the spirits that were in prison,' and the rest — inserting this, that they were in hell, and that Christ, descending, preached the gospel to all and freed all from darkness and punishments through grace, so that from the time of the Lord's resurrection the judgment is awaited, hell having been emptied out? What, then, may seem to your Holiness in this matter, I long to know. 164. To the most blessed lord, brother and fellow-bishop Evodius, Augustine sends greeting in the Lord. The question which you have proposed to me from the epistle of the apostle Peter is wont — as I think is not hidden from you — most vehemently to disturb us, as to how those words are to be taken as though spoken concerning those in hell.
I therefore lay the same question back before you, so that, whether you yourself are able, or find someone who is able, you may remove from it and put an end to my doubt. But if I shall be able first, when the Lord grants it, and shall have power to impart it to you, I will not defraud your love; but now I will make known what things move me in that place, so that according to these you may either yourself reflect upon those apostolic words, or consult whomever you shall find suitable. When he had said that Christ was put to death in the flesh,
quickened in the spirit, he immediately subjoined that in that same spirit, coming to the spirits who were shut up in prison, He preached — spirits who had once been unbelieving in the days when the patience of God still waited, in the days of Noah, when the ark was being built, in which few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water. Then he added and said: 'Which also now, in like form, baptism saves you.' It therefore moves me that, if the Lord, among those in hell when He died, preached to the spirits shut up in prison, what good did they alone deserve who were then unfaithful when the ark was being built.
For indeed after the times of Noah many thousands of so many nations, down to the passion of Christ, died, whom He could find among those in hell — not, of course, of those who had believed in God (as the prophets and patriarchs of the stock of Abraham, as Noah himself of old and his whole household, which was saved through water, save perhaps one son, who was afterwards reprobated; as also, besides the offspring of Jacob, there were others believing in God, as Job, as the city of Nineveh, and if there are any others who either
appear in the Scriptures or lie hidden in the human race) — but I mean of those many thousands of men who, ignorant of God and given over to the worship of demons or of idols, from the times of Noah down to the passion of Christ passed out of this life, whom Christ, finding among those in hell, how did He not preach to them, but only to those who had been unbelieving in the days of Noah, when the ark was being built? Or, if He preached to all, why did Peter commemorate those alone, passing over the multitude, so innumerable, of the rest? And that the Lord, put to death in the flesh, came into hell is sufficiently established. For neither can the prophecy be contradicted, which said:
'For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell' — which, lest anyone should presume to understand it otherwise, the same Peter expounds in the Acts of the Apostles; or by those words of the same Peter, whereby he asserts that He loosed the pains of hell, in which it was impossible that He should be held. Who, then, save an unbeliever, would deny that Christ was among those in hell? But if it moves you in what manner it is to be understood that the pains of hell were loosed by Him — for He had not begun to be in them as if in bonds, and so loosed them as if He had loosed the chains by which He had been bound — it is easy to understand that they were so loosed as the snares of hunters can be loosed, that they may not hold, not because they held;
and it can also be so, that we may believe He loosed those pains by which He Himself could not be held, but by which others were held, whom He knew were to be set free. But who exactly these are, it is rash to define.
For if we were to say that absolutely all who were found there were then set free, who would not rejoice, if we could demonstrate this—especially on account of certain men who have become dear to us through their literary labour, whose eloquence and genius we admire: not only poets and orators, who in many passages of their works showed that these very false gods of the nations were to be despised and derided, and who sometimes even confessed one true God, although they still worshipped those superstitious deities along with the rest; but also those who said these things not by singing or declaiming but by philosophizing; and many too whose writings we do not possess, but of whom we have learned in the writings of others that their lives were in a certain manner praiseworthy—so that, apart from the worship of God, in which they went astray by worshipping vain things which were publicly appointed for worship, and by serving the creature rather than the Creator, in their other conduct, of thrift, self-restraint, chastity, sobriety, contempt of death for the safety of the fatherland, and fidelity kept not only to fellow citizens but even to enemies, they are with good reason set forth as worthy of imitation?
Yet all these things, when they are not referred to the end of upright and true piety but to the empty pride of human praise and glory, in a certain manner themselves become empty and are rendered barren. Nevertheless, by a certain disposition of the mind they so delight us that we should wish those in whom they existed to be delivered from the torments of hell, either especially or along with the rest, were it not that human feeling stands otherwise and the justice of the Creator otherwise. Since these things are so, if the Saviour loosed all from there and, as you wrote in your inquiry, emptied out the nether regions, so that thereafter only the last judgment might be awaited, these are the things which in this matter not without reason trouble me, which for the present are wont to occur to me as I ponder: first, by what authority that opinion is confirmed.
For that which is written—that in the death of Christ the pangs of hell were loosed—can be understood to pertain to Himself, namely that He loosed them so far, that is, made them of no effect, so that He should not be held by them, especially since there follows:
'For it was impossible that He should be held by them'; or, if the reason is asked why He willed to come down into hell, where those pangs were by which He who could in no way be held—He who was, as it is written, 'free among the dead,' in whom the prince and overseer of death found nothing that was owed to punishment—this, then, which is written, 'the pangs of hell being loosed,' can be taken not of all but of certain ones, whom He judged worthy of that deliverance; so that He is neither thought to have descended thither in vain, as though profiting none of those who were held shut up there, nor yet does it follow that what divine mercy and justice granted to some must be supposed to have been granted to all.
And as for that first man, the father of the human race, that He loosed him from that same place, almost the whole Church agrees; and it is to be believed that she did not believe this vainly, from whatever source it was handed down, even if the express authority of the canonical Scriptures be not brought forward on this point—although that which is written in the book of Wisdom: 'She preserved him who was first formed, the father of the world, when he alone was created, and brought him out of his sin, and gave him power to hold sway over all things,' seems to make more for this opinion than for any other interpretation.
Some add that this benefit was granted also to the ancient saints—Abel, Seth, Noah and his house, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the other patriarchs and prophets—so that, when the Lord came into hell, they were loosed from those pangs. But in what manner it is to be understood that Abraham, into whose bosom even that devout poor man was received, was in those pangs, I for my part do not see; let those who can perhaps explain it. But that only two, that is Abraham and Lazarus, were in that bosom of memorable rest before the Lord descended into the nether regions, and that it was said of these two only to that rich man:
'Between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who wish to pass from here to you cannot, nor can any pass from there to us here'—I do not know whether there is anyone to whom this does not seem absurd. Further, if more than two were there, who would dare to say that the patriarchs and prophets were not there, to whom in the Scripture of God so signal a testimony of righteousness and piety is borne? What benefit, then, He conferred on these by loosing the pangs of hell, in which they were not, I do not yet understand—especially since I have not been able to find the nether regions themselves called good anywhere in the Scriptures.
But if this is nowhere read in the divine authorities, then surely that bosom of Abraham, that is, some dwelling-place of a certain secret rest, is not to be believed to be a part of the nether regions. Indeed, in these very words of so great a Master, where He says that Abraham said, 'Between us and you a great chasm has been fixed,' it appears sufficiently, as I think, that the bosom of so great a felicity is not some part and, as it were, member of the nether regions. For what is a great chasm but a certain gulf greatly separating those things between which it not only exists but is even fixed fast? Wherefore, if Holy Scripture had said that Christ dead came into that bosom of Abraham, without naming hell and its pangs, I marvel whether anyone would dare to assert that He descended into the nether regions.
But since manifest testimonies mention both hell and the pangs, no reason occurs why it should be believed that the Saviour came thither, except that He might make them safe from those pangs; but whether all whom He found in them, or only certain ones whom He judged worthy of that benefit, I still inquire. Yet that He was among the nether regions and conferred this benefit on those set in their pangs, I do not doubt.
Hence, as for those righteous ones who were in the bosom of Abraham, I have not yet found what He conferred on them when He descended into the nether regions—those from whom, according to the beatifying presence of His divinity, I never see that He departed; just as on that very same day on which He died He promised to the thief that he would be with Him in paradise, when He was about to descend to loose the pangs of hell. Assuredly, then, He was already even beforehand both in paradise and in the bosom of Abraham by His beatifying wisdom, and among the nether regions by His judging power; for where is that divinity not, which is confined to no place?
Yet according to the created nature which, by assuming it at a certain time, God remaining God became man—that is, according to the soul—Scripture plainly declares that He was among the nether regions, both foretold through prophecy and sufficiently set forth through apostolic understanding, by which it was said: 'Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell.' I know that it seems to some that by the death of the Lord Christ such a resurrection was already granted to the righteous as is promised to us at the end, since it is written that in that earthquake, by which at His passion the rocks were rent and the tombs opened, many bodies of the saints arose and were seen with Him, when He rose, in the holy city.
But if these, having their bodies laid to rest again, did not fall asleep once more, it must be considered in what manner Christ is understood to be 'the firstborn from the dead,' if so many preceded Him in that resurrection.
But if it is answered that this was said by anticipation—so that the tombs are indeed to be understood as opened by that earthquake while Christ hung on the cross, but the bodies of the righteous rose not then, but when He had first risen, although (as I said) by anticipation it had been joined to that moment—so that Christ may without ambiguity be believed the firstborn from the dead, and it was granted to those righteous ones straightway that, with Him going before into eternal incorruption and immortality, they should rise: there still remains that which troubles me, namely how it could be said by Peter (which was assuredly said most truly, since through that prophecy he affirmed that not David but Christ had been foretold) that His flesh saw no corruption, and how he added concerning David that his tomb was among them.
For thereby he certainly would not have convinced them, if His body were already no longer there; because, even if He had risen earlier in His recent death, and His flesh had not seen corruption, nonetheless that tomb could still remain. But it seems hard that David should not have been in that resurrection of the righteous, if eternity has already been given to them—David, from whose seed Christ is so frequently and with such evidence and such honour commended. That also which is said to the Hebrews concerning the ancient righteous will be endangered, namely that 'they provided some better thing for us, that they should not be made perfect without us,' if they are already established in that incorruption of resurrection which is promised to us to be perfected at the end.