On Christian Doctrine 1.22–1.39

Among all these things, then, only those are to be enjoyed which we have described as eternal and unchangeable; the rest are to be used, so that we may arrive at the full enjoyment of those. We, then, who enjoy and use other things, are ourselves things of a kind. For man is a great thing, made in the image and likeness of God, not insofar as he is enclosed in a mortal body, but insofar as he surpasses the beasts by the dignity of a rational soul. So it is a great question whether human beings ought to enjoy themselves, or use themselves, or both. For we are commanded to love one another; but the question is whether a human being is to be loved by a human being for his own sake or for the sake of something else. For if for his own sake, we enjoy him; if for the sake of something else, we use him. It seems to me that he is to be loved for the sake of something else. For what is to be loved for its own sake is that in which the happy life consists; and even if we do not yet have the reality of it, the hope of it comforts us at present. But “cursed is he who puts his hope in man.”

But if you consider clearly, no one ought to enjoy even himself, because no one ought to love himself for his own sake, but for the sake of him who is to be enjoyed. For a human being is at his best when his whole life moves toward the unchangeable life and clings to it with all his affection; but if he loves himself for his own sake, he does not refer himself to God, but, turned toward himself, he is not turned toward something unchangeable. And so he already enjoys himself with some deficiency, because he is better when he clings wholly and is bound fast to the unchangeable good than when he slackens from it even toward himself. If, then, you ought to love yourself not for your own sake but for the sake of him in whom your love finds its most rightful end, let no other person be angry if you love him too for the sake of God. For this is the rule of love laid down by God: “You shall love your neighbor,” he says, “as yourself,” but God “with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind”; so that you devote all your thoughts, all your life, and all your understanding to him from whom you have the very things you devote. When he says “with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind,” he leaves no part of our life which ought to be idle and, as it were, make room for wishing to enjoy something else; but whatever else comes into the mind to be loved should be swept on to where the whole current of love is running. Whoever, then, loves his neighbor rightly ought so to act with him that he too loves God with all his heart, all his soul, all his mind. For in this way, loving him as himself, he refers the whole love of himself and of his neighbor to that love of God which allows no rivulet to be drawn off from itself by which it would be diminished.

But not all things that are to be used are to be loved, but only those that are either related to God together with us in a certain fellowship, such as a man or an angel, or that, being related to us, need God's kindness through us, such as the body. For certainly the martyrs did not love the crime of their persecutors, which they nevertheless used to win favor with God. Since, then, there are four things to be loved, one that is above us, a second that we are, a third that is beside us, a fourth that is below us, no commandments needed to be given about the second and the fourth. For however far a man falls away from the truth, love of himself and love of his body remain with him. For the soul that flees from the unchangeable light which reigns over all does so in order that it may reign over itself and its body; and so it cannot but love both itself and its body. And it thinks it has gained something great if it can also lord it over its fellows, that is, other human beings. For it is in the nature of a vicious soul to desire above all, and to claim for itself as its due, what is properly due to God alone. Such self-love is better called hatred. For it is unjust, because it wants what is beneath it to serve it while it refuses to serve what is above it; and it is most rightly said, “He who loves iniquity hates his own soul.” And so the soul becomes weak and is tormented by the mortal body. For it must love the body and be weighed down by its corruption. For the immortality and incorruption of the body arise from the health of the soul; and the health of the soul is to cling most firmly to the better, that is, to the unchangeable God. But when it aims to lord it even over those who are by nature its equals, that is, human beings, it is altogether intolerable pride.

No one, then, hates himself. And on this point indeed there has never been any dispute with any sect. But neither does anyone hate his own body; for what the Apostle says is true: “No one ever hated his own flesh.” And when some say that they would rather be without a body altogether, they are completely mistaken; for it is not their body but its corruption and heaviness that they hate. So what they want is not no body at all, but an incorruptible and very swift body; but they think that, if it were such, it would not be a body, because they think that the soul is something of that kind. As for the fact that they seem, as it were, to persecute their bodies by a certain self-restraint and by labors, those who do this rightly do not aim at having no body, but at having it subdued and ready for necessary works. For they seek to extinguish, through a kind of laborious discipline of the body itself, the lusts that use the body badly, that is, the habits and inclinations of the soul toward enjoying lower things. For they are not killing themselves; they are taking care of their health. But those who do this perversely make war on their body as if it were by nature their enemy. In this they are misled by what they read: “The flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other.” For this was said because of untamed carnal habit, against which the spirit lusts, not to destroy the body, but so that, having tamed its lust, that is, its bad habit, it may make it subject to the spirit, as the natural order requires. For since after the resurrection it will be so that the body, wholly subject to the spirit in perfect peace, will flourish immortally, this should also be practiced in this life, so that carnal habit may be changed for the better and not resist the spirit with disordered motions. Until this happens, “the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh”: the spirit resists not by hatred but by rule, because it wishes what it loves to be subject to what is better; and the flesh resists not by hatred but by the chain of habit, which, grown old even through descent from our parents, has become ingrained by the law of nature. So what the spirit does in taming the flesh is to dissolve, as it were, the perverse agreements of bad habit and to bring about the peace of good habit. Yet not even those who, corrupted by false opinion, detest their bodies would be ready to lose one eye, even without feeling pain, even if as much power of sight remained in the other as there had been in the two, unless something that was to be preferred pressed them to it. By this and similar evidence it is shown clearly enough to those who seek the truth without obstinacy how certain the statement of the Apostle is, where he says, “For no one ever hated his own flesh.” He also added, “But he nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the Church.”

A way of loving, then, must be prescribed for man, that is, how he is to love himself so as to benefit himself. That he does love himself and wishes to benefit himself only a madman would doubt. He must also be taught how to love his body, so as to take care of it in an orderly and prudent way. For that he loves his body too, and wishes to have it safe and whole, is equally obvious. Yet someone can love something more than the health and soundness of his body. For many are found to have willingly undergone pains and the loss of some limbs, but in order to obtain other things which they loved more. So no one should be said not to love the health and safety of his body because he loves something more. For even a miser, though he loves money, still buys himself bread; and when he does so, he gives up money which he loves dearly and wants to increase, but because he values more highly the health of his body, which that bread sustains. It is superfluous to argue at length about something so obvious, but the error of the ungodly often forces us to do so.

Since, then, there is no need of a commandment for each person to love himself and his body, that is, since we love what we are, and what is beneath us but still belongs to us, by an unshakable law of nature which has been laid down even for the beasts (for beasts too love themselves and their bodies), it remained for us to receive commandments about what is above us and what is beside us. “You shall love,” he says, “the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” So “the end of the commandment is love,” and that twofold, that is, of God and of neighbor. And if you understand yourself as a whole, that is, your soul and your body, and your neighbor as a whole, that is, his soul and his body (for a human being consists of soul and body), no kind of thing that is to be loved has been left out of these two commandments. For although the love of God comes first, and the measure of that love is plainly prescribed, so that everything else flows into him, nothing seems to have been said about love of yourself; but when it is said, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” at the same time your love of yourself has not been left out.

He lives justly and holily who is an unbiased judge of things; and he is one who has an ordered love, so that he does not love what is not to be loved, or fail to love what is to be loved, or love more what is to be loved less, or love equally what is to be loved less or more, or love less or more what is to be loved equally. No sinner, insofar as he is a sinner, is to be loved; and every human being, insofar as he is a human being, is to be loved for the sake of God, but God for his own sake. And if God is to be loved more than any human being, each person ought to love God more than himself. Likewise another human being is to be loved more than our own body, because all these things are to be loved for the sake of God, and another human being can enjoy God together with us, which the body cannot, since the body lives through the soul by which we enjoy God.

All people are to be loved equally; but since you cannot do good to all, you must take thought chiefly for those who, through the circumstances of place and time or of anything else, are joined more closely to you, as if by a kind of lot. For suppose you had a surplus of something that ought to be given to someone who lacked it, and it could not be given to two; if two people met you, neither of whom surpassed the other either in need or in any tie to you, you could do nothing more just than choose by lot to whom to give what could not be given to both. So among human beings, since you cannot take thought for all of them, you must take it as a kind of lot according as each is able to be more closely bound to you in the circumstances of time.

Of all those who can enjoy God together with us, we love some whom we help, some by whom we are helped, some whose help we need and whose need we relieve, and some to whom we give no benefit and from whom we expect none to be given to us. Yet we ought to wish that all should love God together with us, and all the help we give them or receive from them is to be referred to that one end. For if in the theaters, those dens of wickedness, a man who loves some actor and enjoys his art as a great or even the highest good loves all who love him along with himself, not for their own sake but for the sake of the one they love in common; and the more fervent he is in his love for him, the more he does whatever he can to have him loved by more people, and the more people he wants to show him to; and if he sees someone rather cool, he stirs him up as much as he can by praising the actor; and if he finds someone opposed, he fiercely hates in him his hatred of his favorite, and presses in whatever way he can to remove it: what is it fitting for us to do in the fellowship of the love of God, to enjoy whom is to live happily, from whom all who love him have both their being and their love for him, about whom we have no fear that he could displease anyone who knows him, and who wishes to be loved, not that anything may be given to him, but that an eternal reward may be given to those who love him, that is, himself whom they love? From this it follows that we love even our enemies. For we do not fear them, because they cannot take away from us what we love; rather we pity them, because the more they hate us, the more they are separated from him whom we love. If they turn to him, they must love both him as the good that makes them happy and us as partners in so great a good.

At this point some question arises about the angels. For they too are happy by enjoying him whom we too desire to enjoy; and the more we enjoy him in this life, whether “through a mirror” or “in an enigma,” the more tolerably we bear our pilgrimage and the more ardently we long to end it. But it can not unreasonably be asked whether the love of angels also belongs to those two commandments. For that he who commanded us to love our neighbor excepted no human being is shown both by the Lord himself in the Gospel and by the apostle Paul. For when the man to whom he had set out those two commandments, and to whom he had said that the whole Law and the Prophets hang on them, asked him, “And who is my neighbor?”, he told of a certain man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho who fell among robbers and, badly wounded by them, was left injured and half dead; and he taught that no one was a neighbor to him except the one who showed himself merciful in reviving and caring for him, so that the questioner, being questioned himself, admitted it. To him the Lord said, “Go and do likewise,” so that we should understand that our neighbor is the one to whom the duty of mercy is to be shown if he needs it, or would have to be shown if he needed it. From this it follows that the one by whom this is to be shown to us in turn is also our neighbor. For the word “neighbor” is relative, and no one can be a neighbor except to a neighbor. And who does not see that no one is excepted to whom the duty of mercy may be denied, when it is extended even to enemies, as the same Lord says: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you”? So also the apostle Paul teaches when he says: “For ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not covet,’ and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love works no evil to a neighbor.” Whoever, then, thinks that the Apostle did not give this commandment about every human being is forced to admit what is utterly absurd and wicked: that the Apostle thought it no sin if anyone committed adultery with the wife of a non-Christian or of an enemy, or killed him, or coveted his property. And if it is madness to say this, it is clear that every human being is to be counted a neighbor, since evil is to be worked against no one.

Now if the one to whom the duty of mercy is to be shown, or by whom it is to be shown to us, is rightly called a neighbor, it is clear that the holy angels too are included in this commandment by which we are bidden to love our neighbor, since they bestow on us such great duties of mercy as can easily be seen in many places of the divine Scriptures. For this reason even our God and Lord himself willed to be called our neighbor. For the Lord Jesus Christ signifies that it was he himself who helped the man lying half dead on the road, wounded and abandoned by the robbers. And the prophet says in prayer, “As a neighbor, as our brother, so I pleased.” But since the divine substance is more excellent than our nature and above it, the commandment …

So there still seems to be some ambiguity when we say that we enjoy the thing we love for its own sake, and that only the thing by which we are made happy is to be enjoyed, while all others are to be used. For God loves us, and the divine Scripture commends his love toward us very much. How, then, does he love us? So as to use us, or so as to enjoy us? But if he enjoys us, he needs our good, which no sane person would say. For all our good is either himself or from himself. And to whom is it obscure or doubtful that light does not need the brightness of the things it has itself lit up? The prophet too says most plainly, “I said to the Lord, You are my God, for you do not need my goods.” So he does not enjoy us, but uses us. For if he neither enjoys nor uses us, I do not find how he loves us.

But neither does he use us as we use things. For we refer the things we use to this end, that we may enjoy the goodness of God; but God refers his use of us to his own goodness. For because he is good, we exist; and insofar as we exist, we are good. And further, because he is also just, we are not evil with impunity; and insofar as we are evil, to that extent we also exist less. For he exists supremely and primarily who is wholly unchangeable, and who could say most fully, “I am who I am,” and, “You shall say to them, He who is has sent me to you,” so that all other things that exist could not exist except from him, and are good to the extent that they have received being. That use, then, which is called God's, by which he uses us, is referred not to his advantage but to ours, and with regard to him only to his goodness. When we pity someone and take thought for him, we do it for his advantage and keep that in view; but somehow our own advantage also follows, since God does not leave without reward the mercy we spend on the needy. And this is the highest reward: that we enjoy him, and that all of us who enjoy him enjoy one another in him.

For if we do this in ourselves, we remain on the way and place the hope of our happiness in a man or an angel. This is what a proud man and a proud angel claim for themselves, rejoicing that the hope of others is placed in them. But a holy man and a holy angel, when we are weary and wish to rest and remain in them, rather refresh us, either with the provision they have received for our sake or with what they have received for their own (but received nonetheless), and, once we are refreshed, urge us to go on to him by enjoying whom we are equally happy. For the Apostle too cries out, “Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” and, “Neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase.” And the angel warns the man who worships him to worship rather him under whom, as Lord, he too is a fellow servant. When you enjoy a man in God, you enjoy God rather than the man. For you enjoy him by whom you are made happy, and you will rejoice to have reached him in whom you place your hope of coming. Hence Paul says to Philemon, “Yes, brother, may I enjoy you in the Lord.” If he had not added “in the Lord,” and had said only “may I enjoy you,” he would have placed the hope of his happiness in him. Yet “to enjoy” is also used in a very close sense for “to use with delight.” For when what is loved is present, it must bring delight with it; if you pass through it and refer it to that in which you are to remain, you are using it, and you are said to enjoy it loosely, not properly. But if you cling to it and remain in it, placing in it the end of your joy, then you are truly and properly said to enjoy it; and this is to be done only in that Trinity, that is, in the supreme and unchangeable good.

See how, although the Truth itself, the Word through whom all things were made, became flesh that he might dwell among us, the Apostle nevertheless says, “Even though we once knew Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” For he who willed to offer himself not only as the possession of those who arrive but also as the way for those who are coming to the beginning of the ways willed to take flesh; hence too the saying, “The Lord created me in the beginning of his ways,” so that those who wished to come might begin from there. The Apostle, then, although he was still walking on the way and following God who called him to the prize of the heavenly calling, nevertheless, “forgetting what lies behind and stretching out to what lies ahead,” had already passed the beginning of the ways; that is, he no longer needed that from which, nevertheless, the journey must be undertaken and begun by all who desire to reach the truth and remain in eternal life. For so he says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life”; that is, by me one comes, to me one arrives, in me one remains. For when one arrives at him, one arrives also at the Father, because the one to whom he is equal is known through the equal; the Holy Spirit binding and, as it were, gluing us together, so that we can remain in the supreme and unchangeable good. From this it is understood how no thing ought to hold us on the way, when not even the Lord himself, insofar as he deigned to be our way, willed to hold us, but to have us pass on; so that we should not cling weakly to temporal things, even those taken up and done by him for our salvation, but rather run eagerly through them, that we may deserve to be carried forward and carried through to him who freed our nature from temporal things and set it at the right hand of the Father.

The sum, then, of all that has been said since we began treating of things is this: that it be understood that the fulfillment and the end of the Law and of all the divine Scriptures is love of the thing that is to be enjoyed and of the thing that can enjoy it together with us; for no commandment is needed that each should love himself. In order that we might know and be able to do this, the whole temporal dispensation was made for our salvation by divine providence. We ought to use it, not with a lasting kind of love and delight, but with a passing one, as we use a road, or vehicles, or any other instruments, or whatever more fitting term can be found; so that we love the things by which we are carried for the sake of that to which we are carried.

Whoever, then, thinks that he has understood the divine Scriptures, or any part of them, in such a way that by that understanding he does not build up this twofold love of God and neighbor, has not yet understood them. But whoever draws from them a meaning that is useful for building up this love, and yet does not say what the author he is reading will be shown to have meant in that place, is not deceived in a harmful way, nor is he lying at all. For in a liar there is the will to say what is false; and so we find many who want to lie, but no one who wants to be deceived. Since, then, a man does the one knowingly and suffers the other unknowingly, it is clear enough that in one and the same matter the one who is deceived is better than the one who lies, since it is better to suffer injustice than to do it. And everyone who lies does injustice; and if it seems to anyone that a lie is sometimes useful, it can seem that injustice is sometimes useful. For no one who lies keeps faith in that in which he lies; for he certainly wants the one he lies to to have faith in him, which faith he nevertheless does not keep toward him by lying. And everyone who violates faith is unjust. Either, then, injustice is sometimes useful, which cannot be, or a lie is always useless.

But whoever understands something in the Scriptures other than what the writer meant is deceived, though they do not lie. Yet, as I had begun to say, if he is deceived by a meaning that builds up love, which is the end of the commandment, he is deceived as if someone, leaving the road by mistake, still went on through the field to the place where that road also leads. Nevertheless he must be corrected, and it must be shown how much more useful it is not to leave the road, lest by the habit of straying he be forced to go off sideways or the wrong way.

For by rashly asserting what the author he is reading did not mean, he often runs into other things that he cannot reconcile with that meaning; and if he agrees that these are true and certain, what he had thought cannot be true; and it happens to him, somehow, that by loving his own opinion he begins to be more offended at Scripture than at himself. If he lets this evil creep on, he will be overthrown by it. “For we walk by faith, not by sight”; and faith will stagger if the authority of the divine Scriptures wavers; and when faith staggers, love itself also grows faint. For if anyone falls from faith, he must also fall from love; for he cannot love what he does not believe exists. Further, if he both believes and loves, by doing good and obeying the commandments of good conduct he brings it about that he also hopes to come to what he loves. So these are the three things which all knowledge and prophecy serve: faith, hope, love.

But faith will be succeeded by sight, which we shall see; and hope will be succeeded by happiness itself, at which we shall arrive; but love, even when these pass away, will rather be increased. For if by believing we love what we do not yet see, how much more when we begin to see? And if by hoping we love where we have not yet arrived, how much more when we have arrived? For there is this difference between temporal and eternal things: something temporal is loved more before it is possessed, but grows cheap when it comes, for it does not satisfy the soul, whose true and certain home is eternity; but the eternal is loved more ardently when obtained than when desired. For no one who desires it is allowed to think more of it than it is, so that it should grow cheap to him when he finds it less; but however highly anyone can think of it while coming, he will find more when he arrives.

A person, then, who is supported by faith, hope, and love, and holds them unshakably, does not need the Scriptures except to instruct others. And so many live by these three even in solitude without books. In them, I think, what was said has already been fulfilled: “Whether there be prophecies, they shall pass away; whether tongues, they shall cease; whether knowledge, it shall pass away.” Yet by these, as by scaffolding, so great a structure of faith, hope, and love has risen in them that, holding something perfect, they do not seek what is in part; perfect, of course, as far as is possible in this life; for in comparison with the life to come, the life of no just and holy person here is perfect. Therefore, he says, “there remain faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love,” because even when anyone has arrived at eternal things, and those two have passed away, love will remain greater and more certain.