書信集（CSEL） 第 1 章 第 57/85 段

Nor indeed, as eloquent translators do, have I rendered word for word, nor counted out the money which you had given me in portions, but weighed it out as a whole, so that nothing might be lacking from the sense, though something be lacking from the words. Your letter, moreover, I have therefore turned into Latin and prefixed to this volume, that all who read it may know that I undertook this burden beyond my strength not from rashness and boasting, but by the commands of your Beatitude. Whether I have attained it, I leave to your judgement. Certainly, if you reprove my weakness, you will grant pardon to my goodwill. CXV. TO AUGUSTINE. To the truly holy and most blessed pope Augustine, Jerome, greeting in Christ.

When I anxiously inquired of our holy brother how you were faring, I rejoiced to hear that you were safe. Again, when I was not, I will not say hoping for, but demanding your letters, he said that you had set out from Africa without his knowing it. And so I render to you through him the offices of greeting, who embraces you with a singular love; and at the same time I beseech you to pardon my modesty, in that I could not for long refuse to answer one who bade me write back. Nor did I answer you, but a cause answered a cause. And if there is any fault in having answered — I ask you to hear me patiently — much greater is the fault of having provoked. But let complaints of this sort be gone; let there be pure brotherhood between us, and henceforth let us send to one another writings not of controversies, but of charity.

The holy brethren who serve the Lord with us greet you abundantly. The holy ones who with you draw the light yoke of Christ, especially the holy and to-be-received pope Alypius, I pray that you may greet in my stead by my homage. May Christ our God almighty keep you safe and mindful of me, truly holy and most blessed pope. If you have read the book of my expositions on Jonah, I think that you will not admit the ridiculous question of the gourd. But if the friend who first attacked me with the sword has been repelled by the pen, let it belong to your humanity and justice to reprove the accuser, not the respondent. Let us play, if it please you, in the field of the Scriptures without hurt to one another. CXVI. LETTER OF AUGUSTINE TO JEROME.

To the most beloved lord, to be honoured in the bowels of Christ, the holy brother and fellow-presbyter Jerome, Augustine, greeting in the Lord. Long ago I sent to your Charity a lengthy letter in answer to that one of yours which you recall having sent through your holy son Asterius — now not only my brother, but also my colleague. Whether it has deserved to come into your hands, I do not yet know, except that through the most sincere brother Firmus you write, 'If he who first attacked you with the sword has been repelled by the pen, let it belong to my humanity and justice to reprove the accuser, not the respondent.' By this one very slight indication I somehow conjecture that you have read that letter of mine.

For in it I lamented that so great a discord had arisen between you, of whose great friendship, wherever fame had spread it abroad, brotherly charity used to rejoice. This I did not by way of reproving your brotherliness — of any fault in you in this matter I would not dare to say that I had come to know — but by grieving over human misery, in which the persistence, in the keeping of friendships by mutual charity, however great that charity may be, is uncertain. But I had rather have known from your reply whether you had granted me the pardon which I had asked. Which I desire to have made known to me more openly, although a certain more cheerful countenance of your letter seems to signify that I have obtained even this — if, however, it was sent after that letter of mine had been read, which does not at all appear in it.

You ask, or rather with the confidence of charity bid, that we play in the field of the Scriptures without hurt to one another. For my part, so far as pertains to me, I would rather that we did this in earnest than in play. But if it pleased you to use this word on account of its easiness, I confess I expect something greater from the kindness of your powers and from a prudence so learned and leisured, so seasoned by years, so studious, so ingenious in its diligence — the Holy Spirit not only granting but even dictating these things to you — that in great and laborious questions you would aid me, not as one playing in the field of the Scriptures, but as one panting on the mountains.

But if, on account of the cheerfulness which becomes dearest friends discoursing together, you thought you must say 'let us play' — whether the matter of which we converse be open and plain, or steep and difficult — teach me this very thing, I beseech you, in what way we may be able to attain it: that when perchance something moves us which, even if not heeded too cautiously, is at least, when understood too slowly, not approved by us, and we try to assert against it what seems to us, if we say this with somewhat freer liberty, we may not fall into the suspicion of childish boasting, as though we sought fame for our own name by accusing illustrious men; and if something harsh, drawn forth by the necessity of refuting, be surrounded with gentler eloquence to make it tolerable, we may not be judged to draw a sword smeared with honey — unless perhaps that is the way in which we may guard against both this fault and the suspicion of the fault: if we so dispute with a more learned friend that, whatever he says, it be necessary to approve, nor even for the sake of inquiry be it permitted to resist a little.

Then indeed, without any fear of offence, one plays as it were in a field; but it is a wonder if one is not mocked. For I — I confess to your Charity — have learned to render this fear and honour to those books of the Scriptures alone which are now called canonical, that I most firmly believe no author of them erred in anything in writing; and if I come upon anything in those letters which seems contrary to truth, I do not doubt that it is nothing else than that either the codex is faulty, or the translator did not attain what was said, or that I did not in the least understand it.

But others I so read that, however much they excel in holiness and doctrine, I do not for that reason think a thing true because they themselves so held it, but because they were able to persuade me, either through those canonical authors or by probable reasoning, that it does not depart from the truth. Nor do I think, my brother, that you feel otherwise; nay, I say, I by no means suppose that you wish your books to be read as though they were the writings of prophets or apostles, of whose writings to doubt that they are free from every error is impious. Far be this from your pious humility and from a truthful estimation of yourself, without which you were endowed you would surely not say: 'Would that we might be worthy of your embraces, and by mutual conference either teach something or learn!'

But if I believe that you have said this of yourself, in consideration of your life and character, not feignedly nor deceitfully, how much more just is it for me to believe that the apostle Paul felt nothing other than what he wrote, where he says of Peter and Barnabas: 'When I saw that they walked not uprightly toward the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter before them all: If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of the Gentiles and not as the Jews do, why compellest thou the Gentiles to Judaize?' For of whom shall I be certain that he does not deceive me in writing or speaking, if the apostle deceived his own sons, whom he was again in travail with until Christ — that is, the truth — should be formed in them, to whom he had first said, premising:

'Now the things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not' — and yet he was not writing truthfully, but was deceiving them by some sort of dispensatory pretence, that he had seen Peter and Barnabas not walking uprightly toward the truth of the gospel and had withstood Peter to his face for no other reason than that he was compelling the Gentiles to Judaize?

'But it is better to believe that the apostle Paul wrote something not truly, than that the apostle Peter did something not rightly.' If this is so, let us say — which be far from us — that it is better to believe that the Gospel lies, than that Christ was denied by Peter; and that the Book of Kingdoms lies, than that so great a prophet, so excellently chosen by the Lord God, committed adultery in coveting and carrying off another man's wife, and so horrible a homicide in slaying her husband.

Nay rather, let me read the holy Scripture, set upon the highest and heavenly summit of authority, certain and secure concerning its truth, and let me truthfully learn in it of men either approved or corrected or condemned, rather than that, while I fear at times to believe that human deeds in certain persons of praiseworthy excellence are to be reproved, the divine oracles themselves should everywhere be suspect to me. The Manichees contend that very many of the divine Scriptures — by which their nefarious error is convicted with the clearest transparency of their sentences, because they cannot wrest them to another meaning — are false; yet in such a way that they attribute this same falsity not to the apostles who wrote them, but to I know not what corrupters of the codices.

Yet because they have never been able to prove this either by more numerous or more ancient copies, or by the authority of the preceding language from which the Latin books were translated, they depart, overcome and confounded by the truth well known to all. Does not your holy prudence perceive how great an occasion for their malice lies open, if we say that the apostolic letters were falsified not by others, but that the apostles themselves wrote what is false? 'It is not credible,' you say, 'that Paul reproved in Peter this very thing which Paul himself had done.' I do not now ask what he did; I ask what he wrote.

This pertains especially to the question which I have undertaken: that the truth of the divine Scriptures, committed to memory for the building up of our faith, not by any writers whatsoever but by the apostles themselves, and through this received into the canonical summit of authority, should persist in every part truthful and beyond doubt. For if Peter did this which he ought to have done, then Paul lied in that he wrote that he saw him not walking uprightly toward the truth of the gospel. For whoever does what he ought to do certainly acts rightly, and therefore he who says that he acted not rightly speaks falsely of him, since he knew that he ought to have done it. But if Paul wrote the truth, then it is true that Peter was not then walking uprightly toward the truth of the gospel;

he was therefore doing what he ought not to do. And if Paul himself had already done any such thing, I would rather believe that he too, having been corrected, could not neglect the correction of his fellow-apostle, than that he had put anything falsely in his epistle — and in any epistle whatever, how much more in that one in which he said beforehand: 'Now the things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not.' For my part, I believe that Peter so acted as to compel the Gentiles to Judaize. For this I read that Paul wrote, whom I do not believe to have lied. And therefore Peter was not acting rightly in this; for it was against the truth of the gospel, that those who believed in Christ should think they could not be saved without those old sacraments.

For this was what those at Antioch who had believed from among the circumcised were contending, and against them Paul persistently and sharply fights. Yet Paul himself did not do this — whether when he circumcised Timothy, or fulfilled his vow at Cenchreae, or, when advised by James at Jerusalem, undertook together with those who had made a vow to carry out those legal observances — in order that he might seem to hold that Christian salvation was also granted through those sacraments; but rather that he might not be thought to be condemning, as though it were the idolatry of the Gentiles, those things which God had commanded to be done in earlier times, as was fitting, amid the shadows of things to come.

For this is what James said had been heard about him — that he was teaching a departure from Moses — which is certainly impious: that those who believe in Christ should break away from the prophet of Christ, as though detesting and condemning his teaching; concerning whom Christ himself says: 'If you believed Moses, you would believe me also, for he wrote of me.' Attend, I beg you, to the very words of James: 'You see, brother,' he says, 'how many thousands there are in Judaea who have believed in Christ, and these are all zealous for the law. Now they have heard about you that you teach a departure from Moses to those Jews who are among the Gentiles, saying that they ought not to circumcise their sons nor to walk according to custom. What then is to be done?'

Certainly the multitude must come together, for they will hear that you have arrived. So do this which we tell you: we have four men who have taken a vow upon themselves. Take these, and purify yourself with them, and be at expense for them so that they may shave their heads; and all will know that the things they have heard about you are false, but that you yourself also walk in observance of the law. But concerning the Gentiles who have believed, we have sent our judgment that they should keep nothing of this kind, except that they abstain from what is offered to idols, and from blood, and from fornication.'

It is not, I think, obscure that James gave this counsel for this reason: that those who, although they had believed in Christ from among the Jews, were nevertheless zealous for the law, might know that the things they had heard about him were false — namely, lest through the teaching of Christ those things which had been administered to the fathers through Moses should be thought to be condemned as sacrilegious and as written without God's command.

For this charge against Paul was not made by those who understood in what spirit those observances ought at that time to be kept by the faithful Jews — namely, for the sake of commending the divine authority and the prophetic sanctity of those sacraments, not for the sake of obtaining salvation, which was already being revealed in Christ and administered through the sacrament of baptism. Rather, those men spread this about Paul who wished those observances to be kept in such a way as though without them there could be no salvation for believers in the Gospel. For they had perceived that he was the most vehement preacher of grace, and one who most opposed their design, teaching that a man is not justified through those observances, but through the grace of Jesus Christ, for the sake of whose foreannouncing those shadows were commanded in the law.

And therefore those men, striving to stir up hatred and persecution against him, accused him as an enemy of the law and of the divine commandments. He could not more suitably escape the odium of this false accusation than by himself celebrating those very things which he was thought to be condemning as sacrilegious, and thus showing that the Jews were not at that time to be forbidden them as though they were impious deeds, nor the Gentiles to be compelled to them as though they were necessary. For if he had really disapproved of them in the way that had been heard about him, and yet undertook to celebrate them so that by a feigned action he might conceal his true opinion, James would not have said to him, 'and all will know,' but he would have said:

'and all will suppose' that the things they heard about you are false — especially since at Jerusalem itself the apostles had already decreed that no one should compel the Gentiles to Judaize, though they had not decreed that anyone should at that time forbid the Jews to Judaize, even though Christian teaching did not now compel even them. Accordingly, if after this decree of the apostles Peter engaged in that dissimulation at Antioch by which he was compelling the Gentiles to Judaize — since he himself was not being compelled, though he was not forbidden, for the sake of commending the oracles of God which were entrusted to the Jews — what wonder is it if Paul constrained him to assert freely what he remembered having decreed at Jerusalem together with the other apostles?

But if, as I rather think, Peter did this before that council at Jerusalem, even so it is no wonder that Paul wished him not timidly to conceal, but confidently to assert, what he now knew Peter likewise held — whether because he had conferred the Gospel with him, or because in the calling of Cornelius the centurion he had learned that Peter too had even been divinely admonished about this matter, or because, before those whom he had feared had come to Antioch, he had seen him eating together with the Gentiles. For we do not deny that Peter was already of the same opinion in which Paul also was.

So then Paul was not at that time teaching him what was true in that matter, but was rebuking his dissimulation, by which the Gentiles were being compelled to Judaize — for no other reason than that all those things were being done in a feigned manner, as though what those men said were true, who supposed that without circumcision of the foreskin and the other observances of the shadow of things to come, believers could not be saved. Therefore he circumcised Timothy for this reason: lest to the Jews, and especially to Timothy's maternal kindred, those who had believed in Christ from among the Gentiles should seem to detest circumcision as idolatry is to be detested — whereas God had commanded the one to be done, but Satan had persuaded to the other;

and for this reason he did not circumcise Titus: lest he should give occasion to those who said that without that circumcision believers could not be saved, and lest, to the deceiving of the Gentiles, they should boast that Paul too held this view. This he himself sufficiently indicates where he says: 'But not even Titus, who was with me, though he was a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised; and that because of false brethren secretly brought in, who had crept in to spy out our liberty, that they might reduce us to servitude — to whom we did not yield in subjection even for an hour, that the truth of the Gospel might continue with you.' Here it appears what he understood them to be aiming at, so that he did not do what he had done in the case of Timothy, since he could do so by that liberty;

by which he might show that those sacraments ought neither to be sought after as necessary, nor to be condemned as sacrilegious. But we must beware, evidently, in this discussion, lest, like the philosophers, we call certain human deeds 'intermediate' between a right action and a sin, deeds which are reckoned neither among right actions nor among sins; and lest we be pressed by the argument that the observing of the ceremonies of the law cannot be a matter of indifference, but must be either good or evil — so that if we call it good, we too are compelled to observe them; but if evil, we must believe they were observed by the apostles not truly, but in pretense.

But for my part I do not so much fear, in the case of the apostles, the example of the philosophers — since even they say something true in their disputation — as that of forensic advocates, who lie in pleading other men's causes. If the likeness of such advocates has, in the very exposition of the Epistle to the Galatians, been thought fittingly introduced to confirm a pretense on the part of Peter and Paul, why should I fear before you the name of the philosophers — who are 'vain' not because they say everything falsely, but because they trust in most things that are false, and, where they are found to say true things, are estranged from the grace of Christ, who is Truth itself?

But why should I not say that those precepts of the ancient sacraments were neither good — because men are not justified by them (for they are shadows foreannouncing the grace by which we are justified) — nor yet evil, because they were divinely commanded, suited to the time and the persons? Especially when I am aided also by the prophetic saying in which God declares that he had given to that people precepts that were not good. For perhaps he did not call them 'evil,' but only 'not good' — that is, not such as would make men good by them, or such that without them men could not be good. I would that your kind sincerity might teach me: does any holy man of the East dissemble when, on coming to Rome, he fasts on the Sabbath, except on that day of the Paschal vigil?

For if we say this is evil, we shall condemn not only the Roman church, but also many churches near it and some rather more remote, where the same custom is held and continues. But if we think it is not evil to fast on the Sabbath, with what rashness shall we accuse so many churches of the East and by far the greater part of the Christian world! Does it please you that we should say it is something intermediate — which nevertheless is acceptable in the case of one who does this not in pretense, but with fitting fellowship and observance? And yet we read of nothing on this matter commanded to Christians in the canonical books.

How much more do I not dare to call evil that which I cannot deny that God commanded — by the very Christian faith by which I have learned that I am justified not by it, but by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord! I say therefore that the circumcision of the foreskin and other things of this kind were divinely given to the former people through the testament that is called the Old, as a signification of things to come which had to be fulfilled through Christ. And when these things had arrived, those observances remained to be read by Christians only for the understanding of the prophecy that had gone before, and not to be done as necessary, as though the revelation of faith which was signified in them as about to come were still to be awaited.

But although they were not to be imposed upon the Gentiles, they were nevertheless not to be taken away from the custom of the Jews in such a way as though they were to be detested and condemned.

Accordingly, gradually and little by little — while the preaching of the grace of Christ was fervent, by which alone believers knew that they were justified and saved, not by those shadows of things once future but now already coming and present — so that in the calling of those Jews whom the presence of the Lord in the flesh and the apostolic times had thus found, that whole activity of the shadows might be brought to completion, this sufficed for its commendation: that it should not be avoided as detestable and like idolatry, yet should go no further, lest it should be thought necessary, as though salvation were either from it or could not be without it — which the heretics supposed, who, while they wish to be both Jews and Christians, could be neither Jews nor Christians.

You have most kindly deigned to admonish me to beware of their opinion, though I have never held it. It was into no consent to this opinion, but into a pretense of it out of fear, that Peter had fallen — so that Paul most truly wrote of him that he had seen him not walking uprightly toward the truth of the Gospel, and most truly said to him that he was compelling the Gentiles to Judaize. Which Paul certainly was not compelling, since he truly observed those ancient things, where there was need, in order to show that they were not to be condemned, yet insistently preaching that the faithful are saved not by them, but by the revealed grace of faith — lest he should compel anyone to take them up as though necessary.

Thus I believe that the apostle Paul did all those things truly, and yet I neither compel nor permit anyone who has now become a Christian from a Jew to celebrate such things truly — just as you, to whom it seems that Paul dissembled in them, do not compel or permit such a one to dissemble such things. Or do you wish that I too should say that this is the sum of the question, or rather of your opinion: that after the Gospel of Christ believing Jews do well if they offer the sacrifices which Paul offered, if they circumcise their sons, if they observe the Sabbath, as Paul did in the case of Timothy and as all the Jews observed — provided only that they do these things in pretense and deceitfully?

If this is so, we fall not into the heresy of Ebion, nor of those whom people commonly call the Nazareans, nor into any other ancient heresy, but into I know not what new one, which is the more pernicious in that it comes not from error, but from deliberate purpose and a deceitful will.

But if you answer, in order to clear yourself of this opinion, that the apostles then dissembled these things laudably, lest the weak should be scandalized — many of whom had believed from among the Jews and did not yet understand that these things were to be rejected — but that now, when the teaching of Christian grace has been confirmed through so many nations, confirmed also through all the churches of Christ by the reading of the Law and the Prophets, in order that they may be understood to be recited, not observed, so that whoever should wish to do these things in pretense would be mad: why is it not lawful for me to say that the apostle Paul and other Christians of right faith ought, at that time, to have truly commended those ancient sacraments by observing them a little, lest those observances of prophetic signification, kept by the most devout fathers, should be thought to be detested by their descendants as diabolical sacrileges?

For now, when faith had come — which, previously foreannounced by those observances, was revealed after the Lord's death and resurrection — they had lost, as it were, the life of their function; yet nevertheless, like the dead bodies of dear ones, they had in a certain manner to be conducted to burial, and that not in pretense but reverently, and were not to be abandoned at once, or to be cast off to the detractions of enemies like the bites of dogs. Accordingly, now whoever among Christians — even though he be from among the Jews — should wish to celebrate them in like manner, would be, as one digging up ashes that have been put to rest, not a devout conductor or bearer of the body, but an impious violator of the burial.

I frankly admit that in that which my letter contains — namely, that Paul had undertaken to celebrate the sacraments of the Jews, when he was already the apostle of Christ, in order to teach that they were not pernicious to those who wished to keep them as they had received them from their parents through the law — I put too little, in that I did not add 'at that time only, when the grace of faith was first revealed'; for then this was not pernicious. But as time went on, those observances were to be abandoned by all Christians, lest, if they were done then, there should be no distinction between what God commanded to his people through Moses, and what the unclean spirit instituted in the temples of demons. Accordingly, my negligence is rather to be blamed, because I did not add this, than that your rebuke is warranted.

Nevertheless, long before I received your letter, when writing against Faustus the Manichaean, I explained that same passage, however briefly, and did not there pass over this point; and your kindness will be able to read it, if you do not disdain, and from our dearest friends, through whom I have now sent these writings, you may be assured, in whatever way you wish, that I dictated that earlier.

And believe me concerning my own mind, which — speaking in the presence of God — I entreat you by the right of charity: it has never seemed to me that even now Christians made from Jews ought to celebrate those ancient sacraments with any affection or in any spirit whatever, or that it is in any way lawful for them; since I have always thought thus concerning Paul, from the time his letters became known to me — just as it does not seem to you that these things are to be dissembled by anyone at this time, although you believe the apostles did this.

Accordingly, just as you, on the contrary, speak, and — though, as you write, the world protests — with free voice declare that the ceremonies of the Jews are both pernicious and deadly to Christians, and that whoever observes them, whether from among the Jews or from among the Gentiles, has been plunged into the pit of the devil: so I wholly confirm this voice of yours, and I add: whoever observes them, not only truly, but even in pretense, has been plunged into the pit of the devil. What more do you seek?