Questions on the Old and New Testament 83.1–90.1

No one who shows mercy ought to be slandered. For it is in the power of the giver when and how much he wishes to show mercy. Such a one should be encouraged and called forth by prayers, not called back from a good work by contention. Perhaps there would be no objection if some return were made to him for this mercy. Would anyone blame a physician who spends his medicines and his service free of charge, or will his slowness be accused by those by whom he was not sought?

These things we have said according to reason; but the Savior’s goodness does not take account of them, because of human weakness, for he follows his own nature in showing mercy. Therefore he came when he ought to come, following the reason of his own will, not of our merits. For if you weigh merits, he ought not to have come. He came, then, when he knew both that help ought to be given and that the benefit would be welcome. For if someone threatened by need is helped beforehand, it will indeed be welcome, yet he will not be able to know well what has been granted him; but if you bring help to one already placed in the need, he will know what kind of benefit he has obtained. For one rescued from tribulation will return greater thanks, just as when you offer bread to someone hungry; but if you offer it when he is not hungry, it will certainly not be as welcome.

Therefore it was rightly done that the Lord did not come earlier. For first he let the human race use its own will, not without witness to himself, since he willed his divinity to be understood and feared from the very fabric of the world and from the yearly gifts which he decreed to be presented for human use through the ministry of the elements; and indeed knowledge of him was also on earth by descent from the first man, then through Enoch and Noah. But when, through a certain languor of the human race, the knowledge of God among men had begun to grow obsolete and morals were changing, he deigned to choose Abraham, in whom there would be a pattern of renewed knowledge of God and of morals. And when reverence was still sluggish, he afterward gave the law in writing through Moses, so that it would not grow obsolete and would strike more fear. For fear is greater where authority is manifest. And because, once the law had been received, the nations spurned it, not submitting to it, and those who received it did not keep it, the Lord, moved by mercy, sent his Son, who, offering himself for them and destroying death, with forgiveness of sins given to all, might present them justified to God the Father. For he could not descend to the underworld except through death; neither order nor reason required that one who had not died should enter the gates of Tartarus.

If someone wishes to deceive barbarians in their own land, does he not change into their dress, so as to be thought one of them, and so find out how to overthrow them? So it was done to the devil as well. Since by an evil device he had overthrown man, so that man remained in death, a remedy was found by which he would lose those whom he wrongly held: he was to be entered upon unawares, and the one whom he thought he had killed as a man he was to find in the underworld to be God. When this was done, he was found guilty and lost all whom he held, and thereafter the way to heaven was opened.

See how much the Savior’s coming profited, so that people, knowing from what danger they have been set free, may give him thanks without ceasing! But perhaps it will be objected: “If many before the law and after the law, weighed down by sins, gave themselves wholly to the flesh and deserved to remain in Tartarus, without doubt there were also some who, by devotion and reverence toward the Creator, bridled their life by the law of nature. Were not these too held in the underworld once removed from this life? But if he had come earlier, after the death of Adam, then by setting free Adam, who sinned first, he would have opened the way to heaven for the rest, so that those who had lived well and acknowledged the Creator would be received into heaven when they died. It is a loss, then, that Christ did not come earlier.” That it is a loss is plain; but ask whether it is just or unjust. For losses are often just, and one may not complain about them. Has a thief who was caught and condemned to repay fourfold according to the law ever dared to complain? And so the loss the human race suffered was justly done, which is why it was permitted.

This is why the Savior ought not to have come at the very beginning either. For when the devil grew proud, man, made by God, was set up as his enemy, so that, fortified by God’s help, since he was unequal to him, he might resist him, having received a commandment. But the devil, with his usual subtlety, pretended not to know what God had commanded, and found Eve unsteady; then, promising them that if they touched what was forbidden he would grant them deity, he got the better of them. Then the devil, having overcome man, triumphed, and man, conquered, made his race subject to sin. For this reason it would have been unjust to take the spoils from the victor by force, since what God does he does justly, especially since man sinned grievously. For by consenting, against the Creator’s commandment, to become a god, he committed idolatry, by which he sinned against God; and therefore he ought not to have been helped at once, especially since he did not repent. Nor would mercy have been welcome if he had not known what he deserved. For although God can do all things, he does what agrees with reason, so that he may remain beyond reproach.

Far be it that Christians should be said to venerate the stars, Christians to whom a spiritual worship has been granted, so that, despising the things that are seen, they may be joined to those that are invisible and above the heavens, and so transcend all these things, since they will be with the angels of God. For worshippers of the stars will either be with them or beneath them; how can anyone be above the things he worships? So the pagans do not observe the reckoning of the moon; they venerate the moon itself as a goddess, and thinking they have grasped the effects of its courses, what must be done or avoided on certain days, they have made decrees, subjecting their life and conduct in a fixed order to its rule; and because they have dared to usurp these things outside God’s ordering, we often find them deceived. For God set these lights as signs of the times, which is why we too keep the number of the moon, not worship the moon itself: so that from the fourteenth moon, which for us according to the law is the first, we observe the reckoning of Pascha. For God established all things complete; and therefore from the fourteenth to the twenty-first, in these seven days, we are allowed to celebrate Pascha, so that within these seven days are included the days from the Preparation to the Lord’s resurrection, so that the passion does not fall on the thirteenth nor the resurrection on the fourteenth or the fifteenth, lest Christ’s passion come before what is for us the first moon, or his resurrection fall on any day but the first day, on which the world was begun.

For all the times of the world are counted by the courses of one week, in which God put together the members and ornaments of the world. For in six days he fitted out the world, and on the seventh he rested, which he called the Sabbath. In these seven days the whole reckoning and number of the world is contained. For, always returning upon themselves, they multiply the number of times. After the Sabbath it always begins again from the first day up to the seventh, that is, the Sabbath, so that the Lord’s resurrection may be learned to have taken place on the first day of the world’s beginning, which is called the Lord’s day. For the Lord made it “one,” and when it has run on in the evening to the number seven, it begins again, so as to be first after the week. This was so decreed from the beginning because of the mystery of the Lord’s incarnation and passion and resurrection. For in the Lord’s body almost the whole world rose again and was renewed.

It is settled that we do not worship the moon but keep the number that was established by the moon’s course. But the devil, who is Satan, in order to lend some authority to his deceit and colour his lies with invented truth, in the first month, in which he knows the Lord’s mysteries are to be celebrated, instituted mysteries for the pagans to observe (for he is of no mean power), so as to keep their souls in error for two reasons: first, that because falsehood came before the truth, the truth might seem falsehood, as if antiquity prejudged the truth; and second, that because in the first month, in which the Romans have the equinox just as we do, that very observance is kept by them, so that they too say that expiation is made through blood, as we say it is through the cross. By this cunning he holds the pagans in error, so that they think our truth seems an imitation rather than the truth, as though invented by a kind of superstition out of rivalry. “For what was found later,” they say, “cannot be reckoned true.” But because with us the truth is certain and has been from the beginning, the signs of mighty works and wonders bear witness, so that by the testimony of power the devil’s wickedness becomes known. For since power alone easily persuades of these things, it has been set against the devil’s cunning and his anticipation, to reveal his pretence. No one, even among our enemies, would dare deny that the truth is there where power appears.

Nothing should seem credible except that the evangelist followed the sense of the law, and therefore these were not undeservedly removed by the evangelist from the number of the others. For their impiety continued in such a way that their wickedness had no interval. The wickedness begun from Joram ran on unbroken down to Uzziah son of Amaziah, so that there was no support on either side by which any of them might remain in the number of the kings on account of a father’s merit. For Joram, acting wickedly, was left in the number because of the merit of Jehoshaphat, and Uzziah was kept in the number because of the merit of Jotham; but the wickedness of those three against God was continuous. Solomon too was left in the kingdom because of his father’s merit, and Rehoboam son of Solomon, acting wickedly, was left in the number of the kings because of the merit of Asa. But those three, acting wickedly, were shut in between evils; therefore they were erased. For it is a worse example, to the ruin of a race, when wickedness spreads itself without a break. And to speak precisely: they were passed over because Joseph does not descend from their line. For the evangelist followed the generation, from Abraham, of those from whom Joseph draws his origin, to whom Mary was betrothed and bore Christ.

We bring forward the word of a fit witness. For the angel says to Mary, among other things: “And the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” How would David be called his father by a fit witness, if Mary were not of the seed of David?

Almost nothing new; for the Trinity is preached in such a way that one God is believed. So nothing has been added, but the mystery of the one God has been revealed. It ought not to have been made manifest at the very beginning, because first there must be preaching, and afterward what was preached must be revealed, so that you may know that the Father is the one from whom all things are, that the Son is said to be the one through whom all things are, and that the Holy Spirit is called the one through whom all things, which are from the Father but through the Son, are regenerated to faith in the one God. These, then, are indeed three, but one Godhead. Reason, then, makes them three, not more or fewer. For every number reaches up to nine, because three, while they are in one another, make nine in number, since three are in one and three in one. For whoever sees one sees three, since one differs in nothing from another. Three, then, are one, and three times three are one; that is, perfection lies in the number nine, so far as number is concerned, because all things are from one. For when one is added, from whom or in whom the three who are counted make nine, the result is ten or twenty. Yet one always comes up to nine and one is added, because nine are one, so that the perfection of unity may be full.

As the case required, so the Lord showed himself. To the prophet he appeared as a king rebuking the people, and he showed himself as what he was; for the cause of his deity was at peace. But that he appeared standing to Stephen was brought about by the false accusation of the Jews. In Stephen the Savior’s cause was suffering violence; therefore, with God the judge seated, he appeared standing, as one pleading a case, and because his cause is good, he was at the right hand of the judge. For everyone who pleads a case must stand.

Since neither the Jews nor the worldly powers believed the Savior (for he willed to be manifested not only to men but also to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places, as the apostle teaches in the letter to the Ephesians), he showed that after his passion the Holy Spirit would prove that he had spoken the truth. And this is “to convict the world”: to show it that what it refused to believe is true. For it refused to believe that the Savior had come from God. But the Savior, keeping righteousness, did not fear to return to him who had sent him, and by going back he proved that he had come from there, because no one ascends to God except the one who descended from God. Seeing him ascend, then, the powers were confounded, seeing that what they had spurned as false was true. So this righteousness convicts them, by which he was proved righteous, because he went back to where he had come from. And he convicts them of sin in this way, that they not only refused to believe him but also killed him. Of judgment he rebuked them in this way, by showing that the ruler of the world was made guilty and restrained by him in whose faith they had no share. For seeing souls going from the underworld into heaven, they recognized that the ruler of this world had been condemned, so that, made guilty in the Savior’s case, he lost what he held.

These things were indeed seen when the Savior ascended, but when the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples they were made manifest openly and plainly. For the true rebuke came then, when after the passion, as testimony to the Savior, the faithless saw publicly the dead rising, the lame running, lepers cleansed, paralytics strengthened, the blind seeing, the deaf hearing, the mute speaking, the demon-possessed cleansed, and the sick giving thanks with their health restored. In this way the Holy Spirit convicts the world, because in the name of the Savior, who was rejected by the world, he worked the powers of every kind of healing.

“Devil” is not a proper name but a common one. In whomever the works of the devil are found, he must without doubt be called a devil; for it is the name of a work, not of a nature. So in this place he signifies Cain as the father of the Jews, whose imitators the Jews wished to be when they killed the Savior. He says that this man did not stand in the truth, because he stained himself with the murder of a kinsman and made himself guilty of death. From him the pattern of fratricide was given. He means this same man when he says that when he speaks a lie he speaks of his own, to show that each one sins only by his own will. But because he is an imitator of the devil, he added: “because he is a liar, as is his father too.” For the devil, in order to condemn the first man to death, pretended not to know what God had commanded. Likewise Cain too, when asked, pretended not to know where his brother Abel was, whom he had killed. So in this place he called Cain the devil, and the devil, whose works he followed, his father; for the devil’s son is a devil. But that devil who is also Satan has no father in his wickedness; he is the author of evil to himself. For he sinned first, and therefore whoever imitate him will be called his sons, and he their father. For we too have Abraham as father in faith, because he first believed God, and therefore we are reckoned by his name; we are called faithful as he was.