Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 40–64

Since, then, something may be born of something else even not in such a way as to be its son, and again not everyone called a son is born of him whose son he is called, surely this way in which Christ was born of the Holy Spirit not as a son, and of the virgin Mary as a son, suggests to us the grace of God, by which a man, with no preceding merits, at the very beginning of his nature when he began to be, was joined to God the Word in such unity of person that the same one was the Son of God who was the son of man, and the son of man who was the Son of God; and so in the taking up of human nature grace itself became in a certain way natural to that man, so that it could admit no sin. This grace had to be signified through the Holy Spirit because he is properly God in such a way as to be called also the gift of God. To speak of this sufficiently (if indeed it can be done) would require a very long discussion.

Begotten or conceived, then, with no pleasure of carnal concupiscence, and therefore contracting no sin by origin; and by the grace of God joined and united in a wonderful and ineffable way, in unity of person, to the only-begotten Word of the Father, a Son not by grace but by nature, and therefore himself committing no sin: yet because of the likeness of sinful flesh in which he had come, he too was called sin, since he was to be sacrificed to wash away sins. For in the old Law sacrifices for sins were called sins; and this he truly became, of whom those were shadows. Hence the apostle, having said, “We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God,” at once added and said: “Him who knew no sin he made sin for us, that we might be the righteousness of God in him.” He does not say, as is read in some faulty manuscripts, “He who knew no sin did sin for us,” as though Christ himself sinned for us; but he says, “Him who knew no sin,” that is, Christ, God, to whom we are to be reconciled, “made sin for us,” that is, a sacrifice for sins, through which we might be reconciled. He, then, was made sin, that we might be righteousness, not ours but God's, not in us but in him; just as he showed, by the likeness of sinful flesh in which he was crucified, that he was sin, not his own but ours, not established in himself but in us: so that, since there was no sin in him, he might in a certain way die to sin by dying to the flesh in which there was the likeness of sin; and, since he himself had never lived according to the oldness of sin, he might by his resurrection signify our new life, reviving from the old death by which we had been dead in sin.

This is what is celebrated in us, the great sacrament of baptism: that all who belong to this grace die to sin, as he is said to have died to sin because he died to the flesh, that is, to the likeness of sin; and live by being reborn from the washing, as he lived by rising from the tomb, whatever the age of their body.

For from the infant just born to the decrepit old man, as no one is to be barred from baptism, so there is no one who does not die to sin in baptism: infants only to original sin, but older people also to all the sins which by living badly they have added to that which they contracted by being born.

But even these are often said to die to sin, in the singular, although without doubt they die not to one sin but to many, to all those which they have already committed themselves, whether in thought, word, or deed; because the plural number is often signified by the singular, as the poet says, “And they fill the belly with armed soldiery,” although they did this with many soldiers. And in our Scriptures we read, “Pray, then, to the Lord, that he may take away the serpent from us”: he does not say “serpents,” which the people were suffering, though he meant this; and there are countless such cases. But when that one original sin is signified by the plural number, as when we say that infants are baptized “for the remission of sins” and do not say “for the remission of sin,” that is the converse expression, by which the singular number is signified by the plural. So in the Gospel, when Herod had died, it was said, “For those who sought the child's life are dead”; it was not said “he is dead.” And in Exodus: “They made for themselves,” it says, “gods of gold,” when they had made one calf, of which they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt”: here too putting the plural for the singular.

Yet even in that one sin which entered the world through one man and passed to all men, on account of which even infants are baptized, many sins can be understood, if that one is divided, as it were, into its separate members. For there is pride in it, because man loved to be in his own power rather than in God's; and sacrilege, because he did not believe God; and murder, because he cast himself headlong into death; and spiritual fornication, because the integrity of the human mind was corrupted by the serpent's persuasion; and theft, because forbidden food was seized; and avarice, because he desired more than ought to have sufficed him; and whatever else can be found in this one offense by careful consideration.

It is also said, not improbably, that infants are bound by the sins of their parents, not only of the first humans but also of their own, from whom they themselves were born. For that divine sentence, “I will repay the sins of the fathers on the children,” certainly holds them before they begin to belong to the New Testament through regeneration. This Testament was prophesied when it was said through Ezekiel that sons would not bear the sins of their fathers, and that that proverb would no longer be used in Israel: “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.” For each one is reborn precisely so that whatever sin there is with which he is born may be loosed in him. For the sins that are committed afterwards by doing evil can also be healed by repentance, as we see happens even after baptism. And therefore regeneration was instituted only because generation is faulty; so much so that even one procreated in lawful marriage says, “I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins my mother nourished me in the womb.” Nor did he say here “in iniquity” or “sin,” though this too could rightly be said; but he preferred to say “iniquities” and “sins.” For both in that one sin, which passed to all men and is so great that by it human nature was changed and turned into the necessity of death, many sins are found, as I argued above; and there are also other sins of the parents, which, though they cannot change nature in this way, still bind the children by guilt, unless the free grace and mercy of God come to their aid.

But about the sins of the other ancestors, through whom each one descends in succession from Adam himself down to his own father, it may not unreasonably be debated whether he who is born is entangled in the evil acts and multiplied original offenses of all of them, so that each one is born the worse the later he is born; or whether God threatens their descendants to the third and fourth generation for the sins of the parents because, in the moderation of his compassion, he does not extend his wrath any further as regards the faults of the ancestors, lest those on whom the grace of regeneration is not conferred should be pressed by too heavy a burden in their very eternal condemnation, if they were compelled to contract by origin the sins of all their preceding parents from the beginning of the human race and to pay the penalties owed for them; or whether something else about so great a matter can or cannot be found by more diligent searching and treatment of the holy Scriptures: I do not dare rashly to affirm.

Yet that one sin, which was committed in a place and state of such great happiness that in one man the whole human race was condemned by origin and, so to speak, at the root, is not loosed and washed away except through the one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who alone could be so born that he had no need to be reborn.

For those who were baptized with the baptism of John, by whom he himself was also baptized, were not reborn; but by a certain forerunning ministry of him who said, “Prepare the way of the Lord,” they were prepared for this one in whom alone they could be reborn. For his baptism is not in water only, as John's was, but also in the Holy Spirit, so that whoever believes in Christ may be regenerated by that Spirit by whom Christ was generated and therefore needed no regeneration. Hence that voice of the Father which came over him when he had been baptized, “Today I have begotten you,” pointed not to that one day of time on which he was baptized but to the day of unchangeable eternity, to show that that man belonged to the person of the Only-begotten. For where a day is neither begun by the end of yesterday nor ended by the beginning of tomorrow, it is always today. He willed, then, to be baptized in water by John, not that any iniquity of his might be washed away, but that great humility might be commended. For baptism found nothing in him to wash away, as death found nothing to punish; so that the devil, overcome and conquered by the truth of justice, not by the violence of power, since he had most unjustly killed him without any desert of sin, might through him most justly lose those whom he held by desert of sin. Both, then, baptism and death, were taken up by him for the sake of a definite dispensation, not from pitiable necessity but rather from a pitying will, so that one might take away the sin of the world as one had sent sin into the world, that is, into the whole human race.

Except that that one man sent one sin into the world, but this one took away not only that one but all those together that he found added to it. Hence the apostle says: “Not as through one who sinned is the gift: for the judgment was from one to condemnation, but grace from many offenses to justification.” For certainly that one sin which is contracted by origin, even if it is alone, makes men liable to condemnation; but grace justifies from many offenses the man who, besides that one sin which he contracted by origin in common with all, has also committed many of his own.

Yet what he says a little later, “As through the offense of one to all men to condemnation, so also through the righteousness of one to all men to justification of life,” sufficiently indicates that no one born of Adam is anything but held in condemnation, and no one is freed from condemnation except one reborn in Christ.

Having spoken of punishment through one man and grace through one man, as much as he judged sufficient in that place of his letter, he then commended the great mystery of holy baptism in the cross of Christ in such a way that we understand baptism in Christ to be nothing else than a likeness of Christ's death, and the death of Christ crucified nothing else than a likeness of the remission of sin; so that as in him a true death took place, so in us a true remission of sins, and as in him a true resurrection, so in us a true justification. For he says, “What then shall we say? Shall we remain in sin, that grace may abound?” For he had said above, “For where sin abounded, grace superabounded.” And therefore he put the question to himself whether one should remain in sin in order to obtain abundance of grace. But he answered, “Far from it,” and added, “If we have died to sin, how shall we live in it?” Then, to show that we have died to sin, he says, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death?” If, then, we are shown to have died to sin from the fact that we have been baptized into the death of Christ, surely infants too who are baptized into Christ die to sin, because they are baptized into his death. For it was said with no exception, “All of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death.” And it was said in order to prove that we have died to sin. But to what sin do infants die by being reborn, except that which they contracted by being born? And therefore what follows also pertains to them: “We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death, so that as Christ rose from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, so that the body of sin might be done away, that we might no longer serve sin. For he who has died has been justified from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him, knowing that Christ, rising from the dead, dies no more; death will no longer have dominion over him. For in that he died to sin, he died once; but in that he lives, he lives to God. So you also consider yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” For he had begun to prove from this that we must not remain in sin that grace may abound; and he had said, “If we have died to sin, how shall we live in it?” And to show that we have died to sin, he had added, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death?” So he closed this whole passage as he began it. For he so set forth the death of Christ as to say that he too died to sin. To what sin, except the flesh, in which there was not sin but the likeness of sin, and which was therefore called by the name of sin? To those baptized, then, into the death of Christ, into which not only older people but also infants are baptized, he says, “So you too,” that is, as Christ, “so you too consider yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

Whatever, then, was done in the cross of Christ, in his burial, in his resurrection on the third day, in his ascension into heaven, in his seat at the right hand of the Father, was so done that the Christian life which is lived here might be conformed to these things, not only spoken of mystically but also done. For because of his cross it is said: “But those who belong to Jesus Christ have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires.” Because of his burial: “We were buried with Christ through baptism into death.” Because of his resurrection: “So that as Christ rose from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life.” Because of his ascension into heaven and his seat at the right hand of the Father: “But if you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; set your mind on the things that are above, not on things on earth; for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

But what we confess of Christ as future, that he will come from heaven to judge the living and the dead, does not pertain to our life which is lived here, because it is not among the things he has done but among those to be done at the end of the age. To this pertains what the apostle added next: “When Christ, your life, appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.”

That he will judge the living and the dead can be taken in two ways: either we understand by the living those whom his coming will find not yet dead but still living in this flesh, and by the dead those who have departed or will depart from the body before he comes; or by the living the just, and by the dead the unjust, since the just too will be judged. For sometimes God's judgment is used in a bad sense, whence the saying, “But those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment”; sometimes also in a good sense, according to what was said, “O God, save me by your name, and judge me by your power.” For it is through God's judgment that the very separation of good and evil takes place, so that the good, to be freed from evil and not destroyed with the evil, are set apart at the right hand. For this reason the psalmist cried, “Judge me, O God,” and, as if explaining what he had said, “and distinguish my cause from an unholy nation.”

When we have said of Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, our Lord, what belongs to the brevity of the Creed, we add that we believe also in the Holy Spirit, so that the Trinity which is God may be completed; then the holy Church is mentioned. From this we are given to understand that the rational creature belonging to the free Jerusalem was to be placed after the mention of the Creator, that is, of that supreme Trinity. For whatever was said of the man Christ belongs to the unity of the person of the Only-begotten. The right order of the Creed, then, required that the Church be placed after the Trinity, as the house after its inhabitant, the temple after its God, the city after its founder. This Church is to be understood here as a whole, not only in the part that sojourns on earth, praising the name of the Lord from the rising of the sun to its setting and, after the captivity of the old life, singing a new song, but also in that part which in heaven has always clung to God from the time it was founded and has experienced no evil of a fall of its own. This part persists in happiness in the holy angels, and helps its sojourning part as it should; because both will be one in the fellowship of eternity, and are now one in the bond of love, the whole Church having been instituted to worship the one God. Hence neither the whole nor any part of it wishes to be worshipped instead of God, nor to be God to anyone belonging to the temple of God, which is built of the gods whom the uncreated God makes. And therefore, if the Holy Spirit were a creature, not the Creator, he would certainly be a rational creature, for that is the highest creature. And so he would not be placed in the rule of faith before the Church, because he too would belong to the Church, in that part of it which is in heaven. Nor would he have a temple, but he would himself be a temple. But he has a temple, of which the apostle says: “Do you not know that your bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God?” Of these bodies he says in another place: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?” How, then, is he not God, who has a temple? Or how is he less than Christ, whose members he has as his temple? For his temple is not one thing and God's temple another, since the same apostle says, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God?” and, to prove this, adds, “And the Spirit of God dwells in you.” God, then, dwells in his temple: not the Holy Spirit only, but also the Father and the Son; and the Son, speaking of his body, through which he was made head of the Church that is among men, so that he might have the first place in all things, says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The temple of God, then, that is, of the whole supreme Trinity, is the holy Church, namely the whole Church in heaven and on earth.

But of that Church which is in heaven, what can we affirm except that no one in it is evil, nor has anyone since then fallen from it or will fall, from the time when God did not spare the angels who sinned, as the apostle Peter writes, but, thrusting them down into the prisons of the darkness of the underworld, delivered them to be kept for punishment at the judgment?

But how that most blessed and heavenly society is ordered; what differences of rank there are there, so that, while all are called angels as by a general name (as we read in the Letter to the Hebrews, “For to which of the angels did he ever say, Sit at my right hand?”, for in this way he signified that all are universally called angels), there are nevertheless archangels there; and whether the same archangels are called Powers, so that it was said, “Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his powers,” as if it were said, “Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his archangels”; and how those four names differ from one another by which the apostle seems to have included the whole heavenly society itself, saying, “whether thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or authorities”: let those say who can, if they can prove what they say; I confess that I do not know these things. Nor am I even certain whether the sun and moon and all the stars belong to the same society, although to some they seem to be shining bodies, without sense or understanding.

Likewise, who could explain with what kind of bodies angels have appeared to men, so that they were not only seen but also touched; and again how, not by solid bodily substance but by spiritual power, they present certain visions, not to bodily eyes but to spiritual eyes or minds, or say something not to the ear from outside but within the soul of a man, being themselves present there too, as it is written in the book of the Prophets, “And the angel who spoke in me said to me”? For he does not say “who spoke to me” but “in me.” Or how they appear in dreams too, and converse in the manner of dreams; for we have in the Gospel, “Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying.” For in these ways the angels seem to indicate that they do not have bodies that can be handled; and they raise a most difficult question: how the patriarchs washed their feet, and how Jacob wrestled with an angel with such solid handling. When these things are inquired into, and each conjectures as he can, minds are not unprofitably exercised, if the discussion is moderate and the error of those who think they know what they do not know is absent. For what need is there for these and similar things to be affirmed or denied or defined at our peril, when they may be unknown without blame?

There is more need to judge and recognize when Satan transforms himself as if into an angel of light, lest by deceiving he lead us astray into something harmful. For when he deceives the bodily sense but does not move the mind from the true and right judgment by which each one leads a faithful life, there is no danger in religion; or when, pretending to be good, he does or says things that befit good angels, even if he is believed good, it is not a dangerous or sickly error of Christian faith. But when through these things that are not his own he begins to lead us to his own, then to recognize him and not to go after him requires great and necessary vigilance. But how many men are fit to escape all his deadly snares, unless God rules and protects them? And the very difficulty of this is useful for this purpose: that no one may be his own hope, nor one man another's, but God the hope of all his own. For that this is rather expedient for us no pious person at all doubts.

This Church, then, which is in the holy angels and Powers of God, will become known to us as it is when we have been joined to it at the end, to have eternal happiness together. But this part, which sojourns on earth away from it, is better known to us because we are in it, and because it consists of men, which we too are. This Church has been redeemed from all sin by the blood of the Mediator who had no sin, and its voice is, “If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all.” For Christ did not die for the angels. But whatever of mankind is redeemed through his death and freed from evil is done for the angels too, because men in a certain way return into favor with them after the enmities that sins had caused between men and the holy angels, and by the very redemption of men the losses of that angelic ruin are repaired.

And certainly the holy angels, taught by God, in the eternal contemplation of whose truth they are happy, know how great a number the completeness of that city awaits from the human race to make it up. For this reason the apostle says that all things are restored in Christ, the things in heaven and the things on earth, in him. For the things in heaven are restored when what fell from there among the angels is made good from men; and the things on earth are restored when the men themselves who have been predestined to eternal life are renewed from the oldness of corruption. And so through that singular sacrifice in which the Mediator was offered, which one sacrifice the many victims in the Law prefigured, heavenly things are made at peace with earthly, and earthly with heavenly. For, as the same apostle says, “In him it pleased all the fullness to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things to himself, making peace through the blood of his cross, whether things on earth or things in heaven.”

This peace, as it is written, surpasses all understanding, and cannot be known by us except when we have come to it. For how are heavenly things brought to peace except with us, that is, by coming into harmony with us? For there there is always peace, both among all the intellectual creatures themselves and with their Creator. This peace surpasses, as has been said, all understanding; but certainly ours, not the understanding of those who always see the face of the Father. But we, however great human understanding may be in us, know in part and see now through a mirror in an enigma; but when we shall be equal to the angels of God, then we too, as they do, shall see face to face; and we shall have as great peace toward them as they have toward us, because we shall love them as much as we are loved by them. So their peace will be known to us, because ours too will be of such a kind and so great, nor will it then surpass our understanding. But the peace of God which is there toward them will without doubt surpass both our understanding and theirs. For every rational creature that is happy is happy from him, not he from it. Hence on this view it is better to take what is written, “The peace of God which surpasses all understanding,” so that in saying “all” not even the understanding of the holy angels can be excepted, but only God's; for his peace does not surpass his own understanding.

The angels are in harmony with us even now, when our sins are forgiven. Therefore, after the mention of the holy Church, the forgiveness of sins is placed in the order of the Creed. For by this the Church that is on earth stands; by this what had been lost and is found does not perish. For apart from the gift of baptism, which was given against original sin, so that what was contracted by generation may be removed by regeneration (and yet it also takes away actual sins, whatever it finds committed in heart, word, or deed): apart, then, from this great pardon, from which man's renewal begins, in which all guilt, both inborn and added, is loosed, the rest of life too, once the age of reason is reached, however strong it may be in the fruitfulness of righteousness, is not lived without the forgiveness of sins. For the sons of God, as long as they live mortally, are in conflict with death. And although it is truly said of them, “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God,” yet they are so stirred by the Spirit of God, and as sons of God advance toward God, that by their own spirit too, especially as the corruptible body weighs it down, as sons of men they fall back upon themselves through certain human impulses, and so sin. It matters indeed how much: for though every crime is a sin, not every sin is a crime. So we say that the life of holy men, as long as it is lived in this mortal state, can be found without crime; but “if we say that we have no sin,” as so great an apostle says, “we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”