On the Christian Struggle 21–35

Nor let us listen to those who confess the Trinity in one eternal substance, but dare to say that the man himself, who was taken up in the temporal dispensation, did not have a human mind, but only a soul and a body. This is to say: he was not a man, but had the members of a human body. For beasts too have a soul and a body, but they do not have reason, which is proper to the mind. But if those are to be detested who deny that he had a human body, which is the lowest thing in man, I wonder that these are not ashamed who deny that he had what is best in man. For the human mind is greatly to be mourned if it is conquered by its own body, if indeed it was not re-formed in that man in whom the human body itself has already received the dignity of a heavenly form. But far be it from us to believe what rash blindness and proud talkativeness has invented.

Nor let us listen to those who say that the man who was born of the virgin was taken up by that eternal Wisdom in the same way as other men who are perfectly wise are made wise by it. For they do not know the mystery proper to that man, and think that he had only this more than the other most blessed people, that he was born of a virgin. If they considered this rightly, perhaps they would believe that he merited this beyond the others precisely because this taking-up too has something proper to it beyond the others. For it is one thing merely to be made wise by the Wisdom of God, and another to bear the very person of the Wisdom of God. For although the body of the church is of the same nature, who does not understand that there is a great difference between the head and the other members? For if the head of the church is that man by whose taking-up 'the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,' the other members are all the saints, by whom the church is perfected and completed. Just as, then, the soul animates and gives life to our whole body, but in the head perceives by seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching, while in the other members only by touching, and therefore all the members are subject to the head for working, while it is placed above them for directing, because the head in a certain way bears the person of the soul itself, which directs the body (for there every sense appears), so the head of the whole people of the saints, as of one body, is the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. And therefore the Wisdom of God, the Word in the beginning, through whom all things were made, did not take up that man as it did the other saints, but far more excellently and far more sublimely, as it was fitting that he alone should be taken up in whom Wisdom would appear to men, as it was fitting for it to be shown visibly. Therefore all other men who are or could have been or will be wise are wise in one way, and that one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, in another, who not only has the benefit of that Wisdom through which any men are made wise, but also bears its person. For of other wise and spiritual souls it can rightly be said that they have in themselves the Word of God, through whom all things were made; but of none of them can it rightly be said that 'the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,' which is said most rightly of our Lord Jesus Christ alone.

Nor let us listen to those who say that only a human body was taken up by the Word of God, and so understand what was said, 'And the Word was made flesh,' as to deny that that man had either a soul or anything human except flesh alone. For they err greatly and do not understand that flesh alone was named in the words 'The Word was made flesh' because only flesh could appear to the eyes of men, for whose sake that taking-up took place. For if it is absurd and most unworthy that that man should not have had a human spirit, as we discussed above, how much more absurd and unworthy that he should have had neither spirit nor soul, but had only that which is the lowest and meanest thing even in cattle, that is, the body! Let this impiety too, then, be excluded from our faith, and let us believe that the whole and perfect man was taken up by the Word of God.

Nor let us listen to those who say that our Lord had a body of the kind that appeared in the dove which John the Baptist saw descending from heaven and remaining on him as a sign of the Holy Spirit. For in this way they try to persuade people that the Son of God was not born of a woman, because, if he had to be shown to carnal eyes, he could, they say, have taken up a body in the same way as the Holy Spirit did. 'For that dove was not hatched from an egg,' they say, 'and yet it could appear to human eyes.' To them we must first answer that we read that the Holy Spirit appeared to John in the form of a dove in the same place where we also read that Christ was born of a woman; and one must not believe the Gospel in part and in part not believe it. For how do you believe that the Holy Spirit was shown in the form of a dove, except because you read it in the Gospel? So I too believe that Christ was born of a virgin because I read it in the Gospel. And the reason why the Holy Spirit was not born of a dove as Christ was born of a woman is this: the Holy Spirit had not come to free doves, but to signify to men innocence and spiritual love, which was figured visibly in the form of a dove. But the Lord Jesus Christ, who had come to free human beings, among whom both males and females belong to salvation, did not disdain males, since he took up a male, nor females, since he was born of a female. To this is added a great mystery: that, since death had come to us through a woman, life should be born to us through a woman, so that the devil, conquered by both natures, female and male, might be tormented, since he rejoiced in the overthrow of both; for it would have been too little for his punishment if both natures were freed in us, unless we were also freed through both. Nor do we say this as though we said that the Lord Jesus Christ alone had a true body, while the Holy Spirit appeared deceptively to the eyes of men; we believe both those bodies to be true bodies. For just as it was not fitting that the Son of God should deceive men, so it was not fitting that the Holy Spirit should deceive men. But for almighty God, who fashioned the whole creation from nothing, it was not difficult to form the true body of a dove without the agency of other doves, just as it was not difficult for him to fashion a true body in Mary's womb without male seed, since bodily creation served the Lord's command and will both in a woman's womb to form a man and in the world itself to form a dove. But foolish and wretched men do not believe that almighty God could do what they themselves either cannot do or have never seen in their lives.

Nor let us listen to those who want to force us to count the Son of God among creatures because he suffered. For they say, 'If he suffered, he is changeable; and if he is changeable, he is a creature, because the substance of God cannot be changed.' With them we too say both that the substance of God cannot be changed and that a creature is changeable. But it is one thing to be a creature and another to take up a creature. The only-begotten Son of God, then, who is the power and wisdom of God and the Word through whom all things were made, since he cannot be changed at all, took up the human creature, which he deigned to raise up when it had fallen and to renew when it had grown old. Nor was he himself changed for the worse in it by the passion; rather he changed it for the better by the resurrection. Nor, on that account, is it to be denied that the Word of the Father, that is, the only Son of God, through whom all things were made, was born and suffered for us. For we also say that the martyrs suffered and died for the kingdom of heaven; and yet in that suffering and death their souls were not killed. For the Lord says, 'Do not fear those who kill the body but can do nothing to the soul.' Just as, then, we say that the martyrs suffered and died in the bodies they bore, without the killing or death of their souls, so we say that the Son of God suffered and died in the man he bore, without any change or death of his divinity.

Nor let us listen to those who deny that the Lord's body rose such as it was laid in the tomb. For if it had not been such, he himself would not have said to the disciples after the resurrection, 'Handle me and see, for a spirit does not have bones and sinews as you see that I have.' For it is sacrilegious to believe that our Lord, since he himself is the Truth, lied in anything. Nor should it trouble us that it is written that he suddenly appeared to the disciples when the doors were shut, so that we should deny on that account that it was a human body, because we see that entering through shut doors is against the nature of this body. For all things are possible to God. For walking on the water too is clearly against the nature of this body; and yet not only did the Lord himself walk on it before the passion, but he also made Peter walk. So also after the resurrection he did with his body what he willed. For if before the passion he could make it glorious like the brightness of the sun, why could he not also after the passion reduce it in a moment of time to whatever subtlety he wished, so that he could enter through shut doors?

Nor let us listen to those who deny that our Lord took his very body up with him into heaven, and cite what is written in the Gospel, 'No one ascends into heaven except him who descended from heaven,' and say that because the body did not descend from heaven, it could not ascend into heaven. For they do not understand that the body did not ascend into heaven; for the Lord ascended, but the body did not ascend; it was lifted up into heaven by him who ascended. For if someone, for example, comes down a mountain naked, and when he has come down, clothes himself and goes up again clothed, we rightly say, 'No one goes up except him who came down,' and we do not take account of the clothing that he took up with him, but say that he alone who was clothed went up.

Nor let us listen to those who deny that the Son sits at the right hand of the Father. For they say, 'Does God the Father have a right side or a left side, as bodies do?' Nor do we think this of God the Father; for God is not defined and enclosed by any bodily form. But the right hand of the Father is the everlasting happiness that is promised to the saints, just as his left hand is most rightly called the everlasting misery that is given to the ungodly; so that right and left are understood, in the way we have said, not in God himself but in creatures. For the body of Christ too, which is the church, will be at that right hand, that is, in that happiness, as the apostle says, 'He has raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places.' For although our body is not yet there, our hope is already there. That is why the Lord himself after the resurrection ordered the disciples, whom he found fishing, to cast their nets on the right side. When they had done so, they caught fish that were all large, that is, they signified the righteous, to whom the right hand is promised. This is signified also by what he said about the judgment, that he would set the lambs at his right hand and the goats at his left.

Nor let us listen to those who deny that there will be a day of judgment, and cite what is written in the Gospel, that whoever believes in Christ is not judged, but whoever does not believe in him has already been judged. For they say, 'If both he who believes will not come into judgment and he who does not believe has already been judged, where are those whom he is going to judge on the day of judgment?' They do not understand that the Scriptures speak in such a way as to use the past tense for the future; as we said above that what the apostle said of us, that 'he has made us sit together in the heavenly places,' has not yet happened, but because it is most certainly going to happen, it was said as if it had already happened. So too the Lord himself said to the disciples, 'All that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you,' and a little later he says, 'I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.' How then had he said, 'All that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you,' unless because he spoke of what he was most certainly going to do through the Holy Spirit as if he had already done it? So, then, when we hear, 'Whoever believes in Christ will not come into judgment,' let us understand that he will not come to condemnation. For judgment is used for condemnation, as the apostle says, 'Let him who does not eat not judge him who eats,' that is, let him not think ill of him. And the Lord says, 'Do not judge, lest you be judged.' For he does not take from us the understanding needed to judge, since the prophet too says, 'If you truly love righteousness, judge rightly, sons of men,' and the Lord himself says, 'Do not judge by persons, but judge righteous judgment.' But in that place where he forbids judging, he warns us not to condemn anyone whose thoughts are not open to us or of whom we do not know what he will be afterward. So, then, when he said, 'He will not come into judgment,' he said this because he will not come to condemnation; and 'whoever does not believe has already been judged,' he said this because he has already been condemned by the foreknowledge of God, who knows what hangs over unbelievers.

Nor let us listen to those who say that the Holy Spirit, whom the Lord promised to the disciples in the Gospel, came either in the apostle Paul, or in Montanus and Priscilla, as the Cataphrygians say, or in some Manes or Manichaeus, as the Manichaeans say. For these people are so blind that they do not understand plain Scriptures, or so careless of their salvation that they do not read them at all. For who, having read it, will not understand what is written in the Gospel after the Lord's resurrection, where the Lord says, 'I send the promise of my Father upon you; but sit here in the city until you are clothed with power from on high'? And in the Acts of the Apostles, after the Lord departed from the disciples' eyes into heaven, when ten days had passed, on the day of Pentecost, do they not notice that the Holy Spirit came most plainly, and, when they were in the city as he had told them beforehand, filled them, so that they spoke in tongues? For the various nations that were present then each understood their own language as they heard. But these men deceive those who, neglecting the Catholic faith, do not want to learn their own faith, which is plain in the Scriptures, and, what is more grievous and much to be lamented, while they live carelessly within the Catholic Church, lend an attentive ear to heretics.

Nor let us listen to those who deny that the holy church, which is the one Catholic Church, is spread throughout the world, but think that it flourishes in Africa alone, that is, in the party of Donatus. So deaf are they to the prophet who says, 'You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession,' and to many other things written in the books of the Old and New Testaments, which declare most plainly that the church of Christ is spread throughout the world. When we put this to them, they say that all these things were already fulfilled before there was a party of Donatus, but they contend that afterward the whole church perished and its remnants remained in the party of Donatus alone. O proud and wicked tongue! And not even if they truly lived in such a way as to keep peace at least among themselves afterward! But as it is, they do not notice that in Donatus himself there has already been fulfilled what was said: 'With the measure with which you measure, it will be measured back to you.' For just as he tried to divide Christ, so he himself is divided by his own followers in daily splitting. To this also belongs what the Lord says: 'For whoever strikes with the sword will die by the sword.' For the sword in that place, since it is set in a bad sense, signifies the quarrelsome tongue with which that unhappy man struck the church at that time, but did not kill it. For the Lord did not say, 'Whoever kills with the sword will die by the sword,' but 'Whoever uses the sword,' he says, 'will die by the sword.' So he struck the church with a contentious tongue, by which he himself is now being cut to pieces, so that he may perish and die altogether. And yet the apostle Peter had done that deed then not from pride but from love of the Lord, though a carnal love. And so, when admonished, he put back his sword; but this man did not do so even when defeated, since when he pleaded his case against Bishop Caecilian before the bishops at Rome, whom he himself had asked for, he could prove none of his charges; and so he remained in schism, to die by his own sword. And his people, when they do not listen to the prophets and the Gospel, in which it is most plainly written that the church of Christ is spread among all nations, and listen to schismatics who seek not God's glory but their own, show clearly enough that they are slaves, not free, and have had their right ear cut off. For Peter, erring in his love for the Lord, cut off the right ear of a slave, not of a free man. By this he signifies that those who are struck by the sword of schism are both slaves of carnal desires, not yet brought out into the freedom of the Holy Spirit so as no longer to trust in man, and do not hear what is right, that is, the glory of the Lord spread most widely through the Catholic Church, but hear the left-handed error of human conceit. Yet since the Lord says in the Gospel that when the gospel has been preached to all nations, then the end will come, how do these people say that all the other nations have already fallen from the faith and the church has remained in the party of Donatus alone, when it is plain that since this party was cut off from unity some nations have believed, and there are still some that have not yet believed, to whom the gospel does not cease to be preached daily? Who would not be amazed that there is anyone who wants to be called a Christian and is carried away against the glory of Christ by such impiety as to dare to say that all the peoples of the nations who are still now coming to the church of God and hastening to believe in the Son of God act in vain, because no Donatist baptizes them? Without doubt men would detest these things and leave them without delay, if they sought Christ, if they loved the church, if they were free, if they kept their right ear whole.

Nor let us listen to those who, although they rebaptize no one, have nevertheless cut themselves off from unity and have preferred to be called Luciferians rather than Catholics. In understanding that the baptism of Christ is not to be repeated, they do rightly. For they perceive that the sacrament of the holy washing exists nowhere except from the Catholic Church, but that the cut-off branches keep with them the form which they received on the vine itself before they were cut off. For these are the people of whom the apostle says, 'having the form of piety, but denying its power'; for the great power of piety is peace and unity, because God is one. This they do not have, because they are cut off from unity. And so, if any of them come to the Catholic Church, they do not repeat the form of piety that they have, but receive the power of piety that they do not have. For the apostle teaches most plainly that branches cut off can be grafted in again if they do not remain in unbelief. When the Luciferians understand this and do not rebaptize, we do not disapprove; but that they too chose to be cut off from the root, who does not recognize is to be detested? And all the more because what displeased them in the Catholic Church is what belongs to truly Catholic holiness. For nowhere ought the bowels of mercy to be so vigorous as in the Catholic Church, so that, like a true mother, she neither proudly insults her sinning children nor is slow to forgive them when corrected. For it is not without reason that among all the apostles Peter bears the person of this Catholic Church; for the keys of the kingdom of heaven were given to this church when they were given to Peter. And when it is said to him, it is said to all: 'Do you love me? Feed my sheep.' The Catholic Church, then, ought gladly to forgive her children when they are corrected and strengthened in piety, since we see that to Peter himself, who bore her person, pardon was granted when he wavered on the sea, when he carnally tried to call the Lord back from his passion, when he cut off the slave's ear with the sword, when he denied the Lord himself three times, and when afterward he fell into superstitious pretence; and that he, corrected and strengthened, came to the glory of the Lord's passion. And so after the persecution carried out by the Arian heretics, once peace, which indeed the Catholic Church holds in the Lord, had been restored also by the rulers of the world, many bishops who had consented to the perfidy of the Arians in that persecution, being corrected, chose to return to the Catholic Church, condemning either what they had believed or what they had pretended to believe. These the Catholic Church received into her motherly bosom, like Peter after his weeping for the denial when he was admonished by the cock's crow, or like the same Peter corrected by Paul's voice after his wrong pretence. The Luciferians, proudly receiving this mother's love and impiously finding fault with it, because they did not rejoice with Peter as he rose after the cock's crow, deserved to fall with Lucifer, who rose in the morning.

Nor let us listen to those who deny that the church of God can forgive all sins. And so the wretches, while they do not understand the rock in Peter and do not want to believe that the keys of the kingdom of heaven were given to the church, have themselves let them fall from their hands. These are the people who condemn widows as adulteresses if they marry, and proclaim themselves purer than the apostolic teaching. If they were willing to recognize their own name, they would call themselves worldly rather than pure. For, unwilling to be corrected if they sin, they have chosen nothing else than to be condemned with this world. For those to whom they deny forgiveness of sins they do not keep in any health, but withdraw medicine from the sick; and they force their widows to burn, whom they do not permit to marry. For they are not to be thought more prudent than the apostle Paul, who says, 'I would rather they marry than burn.'

Nor let us listen to those who deny that there will be a resurrection of the flesh, and cite what the apostle Paul says, 'Flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God,' not understanding what the same apostle says: 'This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.' For when this has been done, it will no longer be flesh and blood, but a heavenly body. The Lord too promises this when he says, 'They will neither marry nor take wives, but will be equal to the angels of God.' For they will no longer live for men but for God, when they have been made equal to the angels. Flesh and blood, then, will be changed and will become a heavenly and angelic body; for 'the dead will rise incorruptible, and we shall be changed,' so that it is true both that the flesh will rise and that flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God.

Suckled on this simplicity and sincerity of faith, let us be nourished in Christ, and while we are little ones let us not crave the food of our elders, but let us grow in Christ on most wholesome nourishment, with good conduct and Christian righteousness added, in which the love of God and neighbor is perfected and made firm, so that each of us may triumph within himself over the devil, the enemy, and his angels, in Christ, whom he has put on. For perfect love has neither desire for the world nor fear of the world, that is, neither desire to acquire temporal things nor fear of losing temporal things. Through these two doors the enemy enters and reigns, and he must be driven out first by the fear of God, then by love. We ought therefore to seek the most open and evident knowledge of the truth all the more eagerly, the more we see ourselves advancing in love and having a heart cleansed by its simplicity, because the truth is seen by that inner eye ('Blessed are the pure in heart,' he says, 'for they shall see God'), so that, rooted and grounded in love, we may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know also the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that we may be filled with all the fullness of God; and after these contests with the invisible enemy, since to those who are willing and loving the yoke of Christ is easy and his burden light, we may merit the crown of victory.