Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 1–19

It is impossible to say, my dearest son Laurentius, how much your learning delights me, and how much I desire you to be wise: not one of those of whom it is said, “Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?” but one of those of whom it is written, “The multitude of the wise is the health of the world,” and such as the apostle wishes those to be to whom he says, “I want you to be wise in what is good, and simple in what is evil.” [But as no one can exist of himself, so no one can be wise of himself, but only by the enlightening of him of whom it is written, “All wisdom is from God.”]

Now man's wisdom is godliness. You have this in the book of holy Job; for there we read that Wisdom herself said to man, “Behold, godliness is wisdom.” If you ask what godliness he meant in that place, you will find it more distinctly in the Greek, theosebeia, that is, the worship of God. For in Greek godliness is also called by another word, eusebeia, which signifies good worship, although this too refers chiefly to the worship of God. But nothing is more fitting than the name by which the worship of God is plainly expressed, when it was being said what wisdom is for man. Do you want anything said more briefly, you who ask me to speak of great things briefly? Or perhaps you desire this very thing to be briefly opened to you and gathered into a brief discourse: how God is to be worshipped?

Here, if I answer that God is to be worshipped by faith, hope, and love, you will surely say that this is said more briefly than you would like, and will then ask that the things belonging to each of these three be explained to you briefly: that is, what is to be believed, what hoped for, what loved. When I have done this, all the things you set down as questions in your letter will be there; if you have a copy of it with you, it is easy for you to turn back and reread them; if not, recall them as I mention them.

For you want, as you write, a book to be made by me which you may have as what they call an enchiridion, a handbook, and which may never leave your hands, containing what you ask: namely, what is chiefly to be followed; what, because of the various heresies, is chiefly to be avoided; how far reason supports religion, or what does not belong to reason, since there faith stands alone; what is to be held first and what last; what is the sum of the whole definition; what is the certain and proper foundation of the catholic faith. All these things you ask you will without doubt know by diligently knowing what ought to be believed, what hoped for, what loved. For these are chiefly, indeed solely, to be followed in religion. Whoever contradicts them is either wholly a stranger to the name of Christ or a heretic. These are to be defended by reason, whether reason that begins from the bodily senses or reason discovered by the understanding of the mind. But those things which we have neither experienced by bodily sense nor been, or are, able to reach by the mind must be believed without any doubt on the word of those witnesses by whom the Scripture that has now deservedly been called divine was composed; who, divinely helped, were able, whether through the body or through the mind, to see or even to foresee them.

But when the mind has been imbued with the beginning of faith, which works through love, it strives by living well to arrive also at sight, where there is the ineffable beauty known to holy and perfect hearts, the full vision of which is the highest happiness. This, surely, is what you ask, what is to be held first and what last: to begin with faith, to be completed in sight. This is also the sum of the whole definition. But the certain and proper foundation of the catholic faith is Christ: “For no one can lay another foundation,” says the apostle, “than that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus.” Nor is it to be denied that this is the proper foundation of the catholic faith because it may be thought that some heretics have this in common with us. For if the things that pertain to Christ are carefully considered, Christ is found in name among all the heretics who wish to be called Christians, but in reality he is not among them. To show this would be too long, since all the heresies would have to be mentioned, those that have been, those that are, and those that could have been under the Christian name, and how true this is would have to be shown in each one. That discussion would take so many volumes as to seem endless.

But you ask of us an Enchiridion, that is, a handbook, something something that can be held in the hand, not something to load bookcases. To return, then, to those three by which we said God is to be worshipped, faith, hope, and love: it is easy to say what is to be believed, what hoped for, what loved; but how this is to be defended against the calumnies of those who think otherwise belongs to more laborious and fuller teaching, to have which one must not fill the hand with a brief handbook but kindle the heart with great zeal.

For see, here are the Creed and the Lord's Prayer: what is heard or read more briefly? What is more easily committed to memory? For because the human race was weighed down by sin with grievous misery and needed divine mercy, the prophet, foretelling the time of God's grace, says, “And it shall be that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved”: hence the Prayer. But the apostle, when he had cited this prophetic testimony to commend that very grace, at once added, “But how shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?”: hence the Creed. In these two see those three: faith believes, hope and love pray. But they cannot exist without faith; and so faith too prays. For this reason indeed it was said, “How shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?”

But what can be hoped for that is not believed? On the other hand, something that is not hoped for can be believed. For which of the faithful does not believe in the punishments of the ungodly? Yet he does not hope for them; and whoever believes that they threaten him and shrinks from them with a movement of the mind to flee is more rightly said to fear than to hope. Distinguishing these two, a certain poet says: “Let him who fears be allowed to hope.” But another poet, though a better one, did not speak properly: “If I could have hoped for so great a grief.” Indeed some in the art of grammar use this word as an example to show improper diction, and say, “He said ‘hope’ for ‘fear.’” Faith, then, is both of evil things and of good, because both good and evil things are believed, and this with good faith, not bad. Faith is also of things past, present, and future. For we believe that Christ died, which is now past; we believe that he sits at the right hand of the Father, which is now; we believe that he will come to judge, which is future. Likewise faith is of one's own concerns and of others'. For each believes that he began to be at some time and was certainly not eternal, and believes the same of others and of other things; and we believe many things pertaining to religion not only about other men but also about angels. But hope is only of good things, and only of future ones, and of things pertaining to him who is said to hold the hope of them. Since this is so, for these reasons faith will have to be distinguished from hope both by name and by a reasoned difference. For as to not seeing, whether the things believed or the things hoped for, this is common to faith and hope. For in the Letter to the Hebrews, whose witness illustrious defenders of the catholic rule have used, faith is said to be “the conviction of things that are not seen.” And yet when someone says that he has believed, that is, given faith, not to words, nor to witnesses, nor finally to any arguments, but to the evidence of things present, he does not seem so absurd that he can rightly be faulted in his wording and told, “You saw; so you did not believe”; hence it can be thought that it does not follow that whatever is believed is not seen. But we do better to call faith what the divine oracles have taught, namely faith of things that are not seen. Of hope too the apostle says: “Hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” When, then, good things are believed to be coming to us, this is nothing else than hoping for them. What, now, shall I say of love, without which faith profits nothing? But hope cannot exist without love. Finally, as the apostle James says, “Even the demons believe, and tremble”; yet they neither hope nor love, but rather, believing that what we hope for and love will come, they dread it. For this reason the apostle Paul approves and commends the faith that works through love, which certainly cannot exist without hope. So neither is there love without hope, nor hope without love, nor either without faith.

When, then, it is asked what is to be believed that pertains to religion, the nature of things is not to be searched into as it is by those whom the Greeks call physici; nor is it to be feared that a Christian may be ignorant of something about the force and number of the elements, the motion, order, and eclipses of the stars, the shape of the heavens, the kinds and natures of animals, plants, stones, springs, rivers, mountains, the extents of places and times, the signs of impending storms, and six hundred other things about the matters which they have found or think they have found. For not even they, so excellent in talent, burning with zeal, abounding in leisure, investigating some things by human conjecture and searching out others by historical experience, have discovered everything; and in the things they boast of having found they hold opinions more than knowledge. It is enough for a Christian to believe that the cause of created things, whether heavenly or earthly, visible or invisible, is nothing but the goodness of the Creator, who is the one and true God; that there is no nature which is not either himself or from him; and that he is a Trinity, namely the Father, and the Son begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeding from the same Father, but one and the same Spirit of the Father and of the Son.

By this supremely, equally, and unchangeably good Trinity all things were created; and they are not supremely, nor equally, nor unchangeably good, but they are good even taken singly, and all together very good, because from all of them consists the wonderful beauty of the universe.

In this universe even what is called evil, well ordered and set in its place, sets off the good more eminently, so that good things please more and are more praiseworthy when compared with evils. For almighty God, “who has supreme power over things,” as even unbelievers confess, since he is supremely good, would in no way allow anything evil to be in his works, were he not so almighty and good as to make good even out of evil. For what is that which is called evil but the privation of good? For as in the bodies of animals to be affected by diseases and wounds is nothing else than to be deprived of health (for when a cure is applied, the aim is not that those evils that were present, the diseases and wounds, should withdraw from there and be elsewhere, but that they should not exist at all; for a wound or disease is not a substance but a defect of the fleshly substance, since the flesh itself is the substance, certainly a good, to which these evils happen, that is, privations of the good which is called health), so too whatever vices there are in souls are privations of natural goods; and when they are healed they are not transferred somewhere else, but those that were there will be nowhere when they are not in that health.

All natures, then, are good, since the Maker of absolutely all natures is supremely good; but because they are not, like their Maker, supremely and unchangeably good, the good in them can be diminished and increased. But for good to be diminished is evil; although, however much it is diminished, something must remain (if it is still a nature) by which it is a nature. For, whatever the kind and however small the nature, the good by which it is a nature cannot be consumed unless the nature itself is consumed. Rightly indeed is an uncorrupted nature praised; and further, if it is also incorruptible, unable to be corrupted at all, it is without doubt much more praiseworthy. But when it is corrupted, its corruption is evil precisely because it deprives it of some good; for if it deprives it of no good, it does no harm; but it does harm; therefore it takes away good. As long, then, as a nature is being corrupted, there is good in it of which it may be deprived; and therefore if something of the nature remains that can no longer be corrupted, the nature will certainly be incorruptible, and through corruption it will arrive at so great a good. But if it does not cease to be corrupted, it certainly does not cease to have good of which corruption can deprive it. And if corruption consumes it utterly and wholly, there will be no good in it, because there will be no nature. Therefore corruption cannot consume the good except by consuming the nature. Every nature, then, is good: a great good if it cannot be corrupted, a small one if it can; but that it is good cannot be denied except foolishly and ignorantly. And if it is consumed by corruption, neither will the corruption itself remain, since there will be no nature in which it can exist.

And therefore there is nothing that is called evil if there is no good. But a good wholly without evil is an entire good; one in which there is evil is a flawed or faulty good; nor can there ever be any evil where there is no good. Hence a strange result follows: since every nature, in so far as it is a nature, is good, when a faulty nature is called an evil nature, nothing else seems to be said than that what is good is evil, and that nothing is evil except what is good, since every nature is good, and nothing would be evil if the thing itself that is evil were not a nature. There cannot, then, be evil except some good. Though this seems absurd to say, the connection of this reasoning compels us, as if inevitably, to say it. And we must beware of falling under that prophetic sentence where we read: “Woe to those who call good evil and evil good; who call darkness light and light darkness; who call sweet bitter and bitter sweet.” And yet the Lord says: “The evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil things.” But what is an evil man but an evil nature, since man is a nature? Further, if man is some good because he is a nature, what is an evil man but an evil good? Yet when we distinguish these two, we find that he is not evil because he is a man, nor good because he is unrighteous; but good because a man, evil because unrighteous. Whoever, then, says, “It is evil to be a man,” or, “It is good to be unrighteous,” himself falls under that prophetic sentence, “Woe to those who call good evil and evil good.” For he blames God's work, which is man, and praises man's vice, which is unrighteousness. Every nature, therefore, even if it is faulty, is good in so far as it is a nature, and evil in so far as it is faulty.

Therefore, in those contraries which are called evil and good, that rule of the dialecticians fails by which they say that two contraries cannot be present in any one thing at the same time. For no air is at once dark and bright; no food or drink at once sweet and bitter; no body at once white where it is black, nor beautiful where it is deformed. And this is found in many and almost all contraries, that they cannot be in one thing at the same time. But though no one doubts that good and evil are contraries, not only can they exist at the same time, but evils cannot exist at all without goods and except in goods, though goods can exist without evils. For a man or an angel can be not unrighteous; but no one can be unrighteous except a man or an angel; and it is good that he is a man, good that he is an angel, evil that he is unrighteous. And these two contraries are so together that, if there were no good in which evil could be, evil could not exist at all; for corruption would have no place to abide nor source to arise from unless there were something to be corrupted; and unless it were good, it would not be corrupted, since corruption is nothing else than the destruction of good. Evils, then, arose from goods, and exist only in some goods; nor was there any other source from which any nature of evil could arise. For if there were, in so far as it was a nature it would certainly be good; and either it would be an incorruptible nature, a great good, or, even as a corruptible nature, it would in no way exist unless it were some good, which good corruption could harm by corrupting it.

But when we say that evils arose from goods, let this not be thought to contradict the Lord's saying, “A good tree cannot bear evil fruit.” For, as the Truth says, grapes cannot be gathered from thorns, because grapes cannot grow from thorns; but from good ground we see that both vines and thorns can grow. And in the same way, as an evil tree, an evil will cannot produce good fruits, that is, good works; but from the good nature of man both a good will and an evil one can arise; nor was there at all any source from which an evil will first arose except the good nature of angel and man. The Lord himself showed this most plainly in the same place where he spoke of the tree and the fruits; for he says, “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree evil and its fruit evil,” sufficiently warning that evil fruits cannot grow from a good tree, nor good fruits from an evil one, yet that from the very ground to which he was speaking either tree can grow.

Since this is so, when that verse of Maro pleases us, “Happy he who could know the causes of things,” let it not seem to us to pertain to attaining happiness if we know the causes of the great bodily motions in the world, which lie hidden in nature's most secret recesses, “whence comes the trembling of the earth, by what force the deep seas swell, bursting their barriers, and sink back again into themselves,” and other things of this kind; but we ought to know the causes of good and evil things, and only so far as it is granted to man in this life, so full of errors and troubles, to know them for escaping those very errors and troubles. For we must strive toward that happiness where we shall be shaken by no trouble and deceived by no error. For if the causes of bodily motions were to be known by us, we ought to know none more than those of our own health. But since, being ignorant of these, we seek physicians, who does not see with how much patience we must remain ignorant of what is hidden from us of the secrets of heaven and earth?

For although error is to be avoided with all the care we can, not only in greater things but also in lesser, and one cannot err except from ignorance of things, yet it does not follow that whoever does not know something at once errs, but whoever thinks he knows what he does not know; for he approves the false as true, which is the mark of error. Yet it matters very much in what matter each one errs. For in one and the same matter right reason prefers the one who knows to the one who does not know, and the one who does not err to the one who errs. But in different matters, that is, when one knows some things and another others, and the one more useful things, the other less useful or even harmful ones, who would not, in the things the latter knows, prefer to him the one who does not know them? For there are some things which it is better not to know than to know. Likewise erring has sometimes profited some, but on the road for the feet, not on the road of morals. For it happened to us ourselves that we went wrong at a fork in the road and did not go through the place where an armed band of Donatists had lain in wait for our passing; and so it came about that we reached where we were going by a roundabout way, and, having learned of their ambush, we rejoiced to have erred and therefore gave thanks to God. Who, then, would hesitate to prefer the traveler erring in this way to the robber not erring in this way? And perhaps this is why in that greatest poet a certain wretched lover says, “As I saw, how I perished, how evil error carried me away!” because there is also a good error, which not only does no harm but even does some good. But when the truth is more carefully considered, since to err is nothing else than to think true what is false and false what is true, or to hold the uncertain as certain or the certain as uncertain, whether it is false or true; and since this is as deformed and unseemly in the mind as we feel it beautiful and becoming, in speaking or in assenting, to say “Yes, yes; no, no”: surely for this very reason this life we live is wretched, that sometimes error is necessary to it so that it may not be lost. Far be it that that other life should be such, where truth itself is the life of our soul, where no one deceives and no one is deceived. But here men deceive and are deceived; and they are more wretched when they deceive by lying than when they are deceived by believing liars. Yet so much does rational nature flee from falsehood, and shun error as much as it can, that even those who love to deceive do not wish to be deceived. For he who lies does not think that he errs, but that he leads into error another who believes him. And indeed he does not err in the matter which he covers with a lie, if he himself knows what is true; but he is deceived in this, that he thinks his lie does not harm him, since every sin harms the doer more than the one it is done to.

But here there arises a most difficult and obscure question, on which we have already completed a large book, when the need to answer pressed us: whether it ever belongs to the duty of a just man to lie. For some go so far as to contend that sometimes even to commit perjury, and to say something false about matters pertaining to the worship of God and about the very nature of God, is a good and pious work. To me, however, it seems that every lie is indeed a sin, but that it makes a great difference with what intent and about what things each one lies. For he who lies with the will to help does not sin as he does who lies with the will to harm; nor does he who by lying sends a traveler on a different road do as much harm as he who by a deceiving lie perverts the way of life. Certainly no one is to be judged a liar who says something false that he thinks true, since, as far as he is concerned, he does not deceive but is deceived. So he is to be charged not with lying but sometimes with rashness, who holds as true false things too incautiously believed. And rather, on the contrary, as far as he is concerned, that man lies who says something true that he thinks false. For as regards his mind, because he does not say what he thinks, he does not say what is true, although what he says is found to be true; nor is he in any way free from lying who with his mouth unknowingly speaks the truth but in his will knowingly lies. Not considering, then, the things themselves of which something is said, but only the intention of the speaker, he who unknowingly says something false, because he thinks it true, is better than he who knowingly bears the intent to lie, not knowing that what he says is true. For the one does not have one thing in his mind and another in his word; but the other, whatever what he says may be in itself, has one thing shut in his breast and another ready on his tongue, which is the evil proper to the liar. But in considering the things said, it makes so much difference in what matter each is deceived or lies that, although to be deceived is a lesser evil than to lie as far as the will of man is concerned, yet it is far more tolerable to lie in matters separate from religion than to be deceived in those without belief in or knowledge of which God cannot be worshipped. To illustrate this by examples, let us consider what it would be if someone, lying, announced that a dead man was alive, and another, deceived, believed that Christ would die again after however long a time: is it not incomparably better to lie in the first way than to be deceived in the second, and much less evil to lead someone into the first error than to be led by someone into the second?

In some matters, then, we are deceived with great evil, in some with small, in some with none, and in some even with some good. For a man is deceived with great evil when he does not believe what leads to eternal life, or believes what leads to eternal death. But he is deceived with small evil who, by approving the false as true, falls into some temporal troubles, which, however, by applying faithful patience to them, he turns to good use, as when someone, thinking a man good who is evil, suffers some evil from him. But he who believes an evil man good in such a way that he suffers no evil from him is deceived with no evil; nor does that prophetic denunciation fall on him, “Woe to those who call evil good.” For it is to be understood as said of the very things by which men are evil, not of the men. Hence he who calls adultery good is rightly rebuked by that prophetic voice. But he who calls a man good whom he thinks chaste, not knowing that he is an adulterer, is deceived not in the doctrine of good and evil things but in the hidden matters of human conduct: he calls a man good in whom he thinks there is what he does not doubt is good, and calls an adulterer evil and a chaste man good; but he calls this man good not knowing that he is an adulterer, not chaste. Further, if by error someone escapes destruction, as I said above happened to us on a journey, something good is even conferred on a man by error. But when I say that in some matters someone is deceived with no evil, or even with some good, I do not call the error itself no evil or some good, but I mean the evil that is not reached, or the good that is reached, by erring, that is, what does not happen or what comes about from the error itself. For error in itself, whether great in a great matter or small in a small one, is always an evil. For who but one in error would deny that it is evil to approve false things as true, or reject true things as false, or hold uncertain things as certain, or certain things as uncertain? But it is one thing to think a man good who is evil, which belongs to error; and another not to suffer a further evil from this evil, if the evil man who was thought good does no harm. Likewise it is one thing to think a road the right one when it is not; and another to gain some good from this evil of error, such as being freed from the ambush of evil men.