Confessions 12.42–13.22

So when one says, "He meant what I mean," and another, "No, what I mean," I think it more religious to say: Why not both, if both are true; and if anyone sees a third, and a fourth, and anything else at all that is true in these words, why should he not be believed to have seen all of them, he through whom the one God tempered the sacred writings to the understandings of many who would see things true and different? I at least, and I declare it fearlessly from my heart, if I were writing something to have the highest authority, would rather write so that my words would echo whatever truth each person could grasp about these things, than set down one true meaning so plainly as to exclude the others, which, not being false, could not offend me. So, my God, I do not want to be so rash as not to believe that that man deserved this from you. He certainly meant and thought in these words, when he wrote them, whatever truth we have been able to find here, and whatever we have not been able or not yet been able to find, and yet can be found in them.

Finally, Lord, you who are God and not flesh and blood, if a man saw less, could anything be hidden from "your good Spirit, who will lead me into the right land," that you yourself were going to reveal in these words to later readers, even if he through whom they were spoken perhaps thought of only one of the many true meanings? If that is so, then let the one he thought of be higher than the rest; but to us, Lord, show either that one or any other true one you please, so that whether you reveal to us what you revealed to that man of yours or something else on the occasion of the same words, it may be you who feed us, and not error that deceives us. See, Lord my God, how much we have written about a few words, how much, I pray you! What strength of ours, what time, would suffice for all your books in this way? Let me, then, confess to you more briefly about them, and choose some one meaning which you inspire, true, certain, and good, even if many occur, where many can occur; in this faith of my confession, that if I say what your minister meant, I say it rightly and best (for that is what I must attempt); but if I do not attain it, I may still say what your Truth willed to say to me through his words, which also said to him what it willed.

I call upon you, my God, my mercy, who made me and did not forget me when I had forgotten you. I call you into my soul, which you are preparing to receive you by the desire you have breathed into it. Do not forsake me now when I call upon you, you who went before me before I called, and pressed upon me with voices growing more frequent and of many kinds, so that I might hear from afar and be converted and call upon you who were calling me. For, Lord, you blotted out all my evil deserts, so as not to repay my hands, by which I fell away from you; and you went before all my good deserts, so as to repay your own hands, by which you made me; because before I was, you were, and I did not exist for you to grant me existence; and yet see, I exist out of your goodness, which went before all this that you made me and that from which you made me. For you had no need of me, nor am I such a good that you might be helped by it, my Lord and my God: not that I should serve you as if to keep you from tiring in your work, or lest your power be less without my service; nor that I should worship you as one cultivates land, so that you would be uncultivated if I did not worship you; but that I should serve you and worship you so that it may be well with me from you, from whom I have my being, as one to whom it can be well.

For it was out of the fullness of your goodness that your creation came to be, so that a good which would be of no benefit to you, and which, not being from your substance, would not be equal to you, should nevertheless not be lacking, since it could be made by you. For what had heaven and earth, which you made in the beginning, deserved of you? Let them say what they deserved of you, the spiritual and bodily natures which you made in your Wisdom, so that there should depend on it even things only begun and formless, each in its own kind, spiritual or bodily, tending toward unboundedness and far unlikeness to you (the formless spiritual being superior to a formed body, and the formless bodily superior to nothing at all); and so the formless things would hang upon your Word unless through the same Word they were called back to your unity and formed, and all were very good from you, the one supreme good. What had they deserved of you, that they should exist even as formless, since they would not even be this except from you?

What had bodily matter deserved of you, that it should exist even as invisible and unformed, since it would not even be this unless you had made it? And so, because it did not exist, it could not deserve of you to exist. Or what had the beginning of spiritual creation deserved of you, that it should even float in darkness like the abyss, unlike you, unless through the same Word it were turned to the same by whom it was made, and, enlightened by him, became light, although not equal to, yet conformed to, the Form that is equal to you? For just as for a body to be is not the same as to be beautiful (otherwise it could not be ugly), so too for a created spirit to live is not the same as to live wisely; otherwise it would be unchangeably wise. But it is good for it always to cling to you, lest the light it gained by turning toward you it lose by turning away, and slip back into a life like the dark abyss. For we too, who in our soul are a spiritual creation, having turned away from you, our light, were once darkness in that life, and we labor in the remains of our obscurity until we become your justice in your only Son, like the mountains of God; for we have been your judgments, like a great abyss.

But what you said in the first acts of creation, "Let there be light, and there was light," I understand not unfittingly of the spiritual creation, because there was already some kind of life for you to enlighten. But as it had not deserved of you to be such a life as could be enlightened, so neither, once it existed, did it deserve of you to be enlightened. For its formlessness would not have pleased you unless it became light, not by existing, but by looking upon the Light that enlightens it and cleaving to it; so that both its living in any way at all and its living happily it owes to nothing but your grace, having been turned by a change for the better toward that which can be changed neither for better nor for worse. That is you alone, because you alone simply are, for whom it is not one thing to live and another to live happily, since you are your own happiness.

What, then, would be lacking to you for the good which you are to yourself, even if these things either did not exist at all or remained formless? You made them not out of need but out of the fullness of your goodness, restraining them and turning them toward form, not so that your joy might be completed by them. For you, being perfect, are displeased by their imperfection, so that they may be perfected by you and please you; but not as if you were imperfect and were to be perfected by their perfection. For your good Spirit "was borne over the waters," not borne up by them, as if resting on them. For those in whom your Spirit is said to rest, he makes to rest in himself. But your incorruptible and unchangeable will, sufficient in itself for itself, was borne over that life which you had made; for which to live is not the same as to live happily, since it lives even while floating in its own obscurity; for which it remains to be turned to him by whom it was made, and to live more and more by "the fountain of life," and "in his light to see light," and to be perfected and enlightened and made happy.

See, the Trinity appears to me in a riddle, which you are, my God; for you, Father, in the Beginning of our wisdom, which is your Wisdom born of you, equal to you and coeternal, that is, in your Son, made heaven and earth. And we have said much about the heaven of heaven, and about the invisible and unformed earth, and about the dark abyss, in view of the wandering failings of spiritual formlessness, unless it were turned to him from whom it had life of whatever kind, and by enlightenment became a beautiful life and the heaven of that heaven which was made afterward between water and water. And I already held the Father in the name of God, who made these things, and the Son in the name of the Beginning, in whom he made them; and believing my God to be a Trinity, as I did believe, I searched in his holy words, and see, "your Spirit was borne over the waters." See the Trinity, my God, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, Creator of all creation.

But what was the reason, O truthful Light (to you I bring my heart, lest it teach me vain things; scatter its darkness and tell me, I beseech you by our mother, Love, I beseech you, tell me), what was the reason why, after heaven and the invisible and unformed earth and darkness over the abyss had been named, only then did your Scripture name your Spirit? Was it because he had to be introduced in such a way as to be said to be borne over? This could not be said unless that were first mentioned over which your Spirit could be understood to be borne. For he was not borne over the Father or the Son, nor would he rightly be said to be borne over if he were borne over nothing. So first it had to be said over what he was borne, and then he, who was not to be mentioned otherwise than as being said to be borne over. Why, then, was it not fitting for him to be introduced otherwise than as being said to be borne over?

From here let whoever can follow with understanding your apostle, who says that "your love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us," and who teaches concerning spiritual gifts and shows "a way of love" that is "supereminent," and "bends the knee" for us to you, that we may know "the supereminent knowledge of the love of Christ." And so from the beginning he, supereminent, "was borne over the waters." To whom shall I speak, and how shall I speak, of the weight of desire drawing us down into the steep abyss, and of the lifting up by love through your Spirit, who "was borne over the waters"? To whom shall I speak? How shall I speak? For these are not places in which we sink and rise. What is more like, and what more unlike? They are affections, they are loves: the uncleanness of our spirit flowing down through love of cares, and your holiness raising us up through love of security, so that we may have our heart lifted up to you, where your Spirit "was borne over the waters," and may come to the supereminent rest when our soul has passed through "the waters that are without substance."

The angel flowed down, the soul of man flowed down, and they showed the abyss of the whole spiritual creation in dark depths, unless you had said from the beginning, "Let there be light," and there had been light, and every obedient intelligence of your heavenly city had clung to you and rested in your Spirit, who is borne unchangeably over everything changeable. Otherwise even the heaven of heaven would be a dark abyss in itself; but now it is "light in the Lord." For even in the wretched restlessness of spirits flowing down and showing their darkness, stripped of the garment of your light, you show clearly how great a rational creation you made, for which nothing less than you suffices for happy rest, and therefore not even itself. For you, our God, "will enlighten our darkness"; from you comes our clothing, and "our darkness will be as the noonday." Give me yourself, my God, give yourself back to me: see, I love, and if it is too little, let me love more strongly. I cannot measure so as to know how much love I lack to be enough, so that my life may run into your embraces and not turn away until it is hidden "in the hiding place of your face." This only I know: that it is bad for me without you, not only outside me but also within me, and all abundance which is not my God is poverty to me.

Was it not the Father or the Son who was borne over the waters? If it is taken as in a place, like a body, then neither was the Holy Spirit; but if it means the pre-eminence of unchangeable divinity over everything changeable, then Father and Son and Holy Spirit were borne over the waters. Why, then, was this said only of your Spirit? Why was a kind of place, where he was, spoken of only in his case, who is not a place, he of whom alone it is said that he is your gift? In your gift we rest; there we enjoy you. Our rest is our place. Love lifts us up there, and "your good Spirit" raises our lowliness "from the gates of death." In your good will is our peace. A body tends by its weight toward its own place. Weight does not tend only downward, but to its own place. Fire tends upward, a stone downward. They are moved by their weights; they seek their own places. Oil poured under water rises above the water; water poured on oil sinks below the oil: they are moved by their weights; they seek their own places. Things not in order are restless; they are set in order and are at rest. My weight is my love; by it I am carried wherever I am carried. By your gift we are set on fire and carried upward; we burn and we go. We "climb the ascents in our heart" and sing "the song of ascents." With your fire, your good fire, we burn and go, because we go upward to the peace of Jerusalem, for "I rejoiced at those who said to me: We will go to the house of the Lord." There good will will place us, so that we will want nothing else but to remain there for ever.

Blessed is the creation which has known nothing else, though it was itself something else, except to be lifted up by your gift, which is borne over everything changeable, as soon as it was made, without any interval of time, in that calling by which you said, "Let there be light," and there was light. For in us it is distinguished by time, that we were darkness and are made light; but of that creation it is said what it would have been unless it had been enlightened; and it is said as if it had first been fluid and dark, so that the cause might appear by which it came to be otherwise, that is, so that, turned to the unfailing light, it became light. Let whoever can, understand; let him ask of you. Why should he trouble me, as if I "enlighten every man coming into this world"?

Who will understand the almighty Trinity? And who does not speak of it, if indeed it is of it that he speaks? Rare is the soul which, whenever it speaks of it, knows what it is saying. And they argue and fight, and no one sees this vision without peace. I would like men to think about these three things in themselves. These three are far other than that Trinity; but I say them as something in which they may exercise themselves and test themselves and perceive how far away they are. I mean these three: to be, to know, to will. For I am, and I know, and I will: I am knowing and willing, and I know that I am and that I will, and I will to be and to know. In these three, then, how inseparable a life there is, and one life, one mind, one essence; how inseparable a distinction, and yet a distinction: let him who can see it. Certainly it is before him; let him look into himself and see, and tell me. But when he has found something in these and spoken of it, let him not think that he has found that which is above them, the Unchangeable, which unchangeably is and unchangeably knows and unchangeably wills. And whether there is a Trinity there because of these three, or whether these three are in each Person so that each is threefold, or whether both are true in wonderful ways, simply and manifoldly, with an infinite end in itself and to itself, by which it is and is known to itself and is sufficient to itself unchangeably, the Selfsame, in the abundant greatness of unity, who can easily conceive? Who can say it in any way? Who would rashly pronounce on it in any way?

Go forward in confession, my faith; say to your Lord: Holy, holy, holy, Lord my God, in your name we have been baptized, Father and Son and Holy Spirit; in your name we baptize, Father and Son and Holy Spirit; because among us too, in his Christ, God made heaven and earth, the spiritual and carnal members of his church; and our earth, before it received the form of teaching, was invisible and unformed, and we were covered with the darkness of ignorance, because "for iniquity you have chastened man," and "your judgments are a great abyss." But because your Spirit "was borne over the water," your mercy did not abandon our misery, and you said, "Let there be light": "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Repent; let there be light. And because "our soul was troubled within us, we remembered you, Lord, from the land of the Jordan" and from the mountain equal to you, but made small for our sake; and our darkness displeased us, and we turned to you, and there was light. And see, "we were once darkness, but now we are light in the Lord."

And yet still by faith, not yet by sight. "For in hope we have been saved; but hope that is seen is not hope." Still "deep calls to deep," but now "in the voice of your cataracts." Still even he who says, "I could not speak to you as to spiritual people, but as to carnal," does not yet consider himself to have laid hold, and, "forgetting what lies behind, reaches out to what lies ahead," and groans under his burden, and "his soul thirsts for the living God, as the deer for the springs of water," and he says, "When shall I come?", "longing to be clothed over with his dwelling which is from heaven"; and he calls to the lower deep, saying, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be reformed in the newness of your mind," and "Do not be children in understanding, but in malice be infants, that you may be perfect in understanding," and "O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?" But now not in his own voice, but in yours, who sent your Spirit from on high through him who "ascended on high" and opened the cataracts of his gifts, so that "the rush of the river might make glad your city." For him "the friend of the bridegroom" sighs, having now "the first fruits of the Spirit" with him, but still "groaning within himself, waiting for adoption, the redemption of his body." For him he sighs, for he is a member of the bride; and for him he is jealous, for he is a friend of the bridegroom; he is jealous for him, not for himself, because it is in the voice of your cataracts, not in his own voice, that he calls to the other deep, for which in his jealousy he fears lest, "as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, so their minds should be corrupted from the chastity" that is in our Bridegroom, your only Son. What is that light of sight, when "we shall see him as he is," and the tears shall have passed away which "have been my bread day and night, while it is said to me daily, Where is your God?"

And I too say: My God, where are you? See, there you are. I breathe a little in you, when I pour out my soul above myself "with the voice of exultation and confession, the sound of those keeping festival." And still it is sad, because it slips back and becomes an abyss, or rather feels that it is still an abyss. My faith, which you kindled in the night before my feet, says to it: "Why are you sad, my soul, and why do you trouble me? Hope in the Lord"; "his word is a lamp to your feet." Hope and persevere, until the night passes, the mother of the wicked, until the wrath of the Lord passes, whose children we too once were, who were darkness, whose remnants we drag along in the body, "dead because of sin," "until the day breathes and the shadows are removed." "Hope in the Lord": "in the morning I will stand before you and contemplate"; I will always confess to him. In the morning I will stand and see "the salvation of my countenance, my God," who "will give life even to our mortal bodies through the Spirit who dwells in us," because he was mercifully borne over our dark and fluid interior. From him we have received in this pilgrimage a pledge that we are already light, while we are still "saved in hope," and "children of light and children of the day, not children of the night or of darkness," which yet we were. Between them and us, in this still uncertain state of human knowledge, you alone divide, you who "test our hearts" and "call the light day and the darkness night." For who distinguishes us but you? "And what do we have that we have not received" from you, vessels made for honor from the same lump from which others too were made for dishonor?

Or who but you, our God, made for us a firmament of authority over us in your divine Scripture? For "the heaven will be folded up like a book," and now it is "stretched out over us like a skin." For your divine Scripture has a more sublime authority now that those mortals through whom you dispensed it to us have undergone this death. And you know, Lord, you know how you clothed men with skins when they became mortal through sin. Therefore you have stretched out like a skin the firmament of your book, your words in harmony, which you set over us through the ministry of mortals. For by their very death the solid firmament of authority in your words, published through them, is stretched out sublimely over all things that are beneath it, which, while they lived here, was not so sublimely stretched out. You had not yet stretched out the heaven like a skin; you had not yet spread abroad everywhere the fame of their death.

Let us look, Lord, at "the heavens, the works of your fingers"; clear from our eyes the cloud with which you have covered them. There is your "testimony, giving wisdom to little ones." Perfect, my God, your praise "out of the mouth of infants and sucklings." For we know no other books that so destroy pride, so destroy "the enemy and the defender" who resists your reconciliation by defending his own sins. I do not know, Lord, I do not know any other such pure words, which so persuaded me to confession and softened my neck to your yoke and invited me to worship you freely. Let me understand them, good Father; grant this to me, who am placed beneath them, because for those placed beneath them you have made them firm.

There are other waters above this firmament, I believe, immortal and set apart from earthly corruption. Let them praise your name, let the peoples of your angels above the heavens praise you, who have no need to look up at this firmament and know your word by reading. For they "always see your face," and there they read, without syllables of time, what your eternal will wills. They read, they choose, and they love; they always read, and what they read never passes away. For by choosing and loving they read the very unchangeableness of your counsel. Their book is not closed nor their scroll folded up, because you yourself are this to them, and are so for ever; because you set them above this firmament, which you made firm over the weakness of the lower peoples, where they might look up and know your mercy proclaiming in time you who made times. For "your mercy, Lord, is in heaven, and your truth reaches to the clouds." The clouds pass, but the heaven remains. The preachers of your word pass from this life to another life, but your Scripture is stretched out over the peoples until the end of the world. But "heaven and earth will pass away, but your words will not pass away"; since the skin will be folded up, and the grass over which it was stretched will pass away with its glory, "but your word remains for ever." Now it appears to us in the riddle of the clouds and through the mirror of the heaven, not as it is; because we too, although we are loved by your Son, "it has not yet appeared what we shall be." He looked through the lattice of the flesh, and caressed us and set us on fire, and "we run after his fragrance." But "when he appears, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is": as he is, Lord, our seeing, which is not yet ours.

For as you absolutely are, you alone know; since you are unchangeably, and know unchangeably, and will unchangeably; and your essence knows and wills unchangeably, and your knowledge is and wills unchangeably, and your will is and knows unchangeably. Nor does it seem right in your sight that, as the unchangeable Light knows itself, so it should be known by the changeable thing it enlightens. And so "my soul is like earth without water before you," because as it cannot enlighten itself from itself, so it cannot satisfy itself from itself. For so with you is "the fountain of life," as "in your light we shall see light."

Who gathered the embittered into one society? For they all have the same end of temporal and earthly happiness, for the sake of which they do everything, although they toss about in countless varieties of cares. Who, Lord, but you, who said that "the waters should be gathered into one gathering and the dry land appear," thirsting for you? For "the sea is yours, and you made it, and your hands formed the dry land." For it is not the bitterness of wills but the gathering of the waters that is called the sea. For you restrain even the evil desires of souls and fix the limits of how far the waters may go, so that their waves may break upon themselves; and so you make the sea by the order of your rule over all things.

But souls that thirst for you and appear before you, set apart by another end from the society of the sea, you water from a hidden and sweet spring, so that the earth too may yield its fruit. And it yields its fruit, and at your command, the Lord its God, our soul sprouts works of mercy according to its kind, loving the neighbor in relieving bodily needs, having in itself "seed according to its likeness," since from our own weakness we have compassion to help the needy, aiding them in the same way as we would want help to be brought to us if we were in the same need; not only in easy things, as in the seed-bearing plant, but also in the protection of help with strong force, like the fruit-bearing tree, that is, a kindness that rescues one who suffers injury from the hand of the powerful, and offers the shelter of protection by the strong force of just judgment.

So, Lord, so, I pray you, let it spring up, as you do, as you give cheerfulness and ability: "let truth spring up from the earth, and justice look down from heaven," and let there be "lights in the firmament." Let us "break our bread to the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into our house, clothe the naked, and not despise those of our own flesh." When these fruits have been born on earth, see that it is good; and let "our light break forth in its season"; and from this lower fruit of action, gaining the delights of contemplation, holding on to the word of life above, let us "appear as lights in the world," clinging to the firmament of your Scripture. For there you discuss with us, so that we may divide between intelligible and sensible things as between day and night, or between souls given, some to intelligible things, others to sensible things; so that now not you alone, in the secret of your judgment, as before the firmament was made, divide between light and darkness, but your spiritual ones too, placed and distinguished in the same firmament, now that your grace has been made manifest throughout the world, may shine upon the earth and divide between day and night and signify the times; because "the old things have passed away; see, new things have come," and because "our salvation is nearer than when we believed," and because "the night is far gone, and the day is at hand," and because "you bless the crown of your year," sending "laborers into your harvest," in the sowing of which "others have labored," sending them also into another sowing, whose harvest is at the end. So you grant the prayer of him who asks, and bless the years of the just; but you are the same, and in "your years, which do not fail," you prepare a granary for the passing years. For by your eternal counsel, at their proper