Letters 137.1–137.20

I have read your letter, in which I saw the sample of a great dialogue contained with praiseworthy brevity. I ought, then, to reply, and not to put forward any excuse for delay. For it happened opportunely that I had a little leisure from other people's business. What I had decided to spend this leisure in dictating I have put off a little, thinking it by no means right that I should put off the inquirer whom I myself had urged to inquire. For which of us who, as best we can, minister the grace of Christ, on reading your words, would wish you to be instructed in Christian teaching only so far as is enough for your salvation, not in this life, which the divine word has taken care to warn us is very like a vapor appearing for a little while and then at once vanishing and perishing, but that salvation for the sake of which we are Christians, to attain it and hold it for ever? It is too little for us, then, that you be instructed so far as suffices for your being set free. For your talent and eloquence, so excellent and so brilliant, ought to benefit others also, against whose slowness or perversity the dispensation of so great a grace must most fittingly be defended, a grace which proud little souls count for nothing, souls that are too eager to have great power and have no power to heal or even restrain their own vices.

You ask, then, whether the Lord and ruler of the world filled the body of an undefiled woman; whether the mother endured those long ten months of discomfort and yet, a virgin, gave birth with the usual solemnity of childbearing, and after this her virginity remained inviolate; whether he who is scarcely thought equaled by the universe lay hidden within the little body of a wailing infant, endured the years of childhood, grew up, was strengthened in youth; whether that ruler was absent so long from his seat and the care of the whole world was transferred to one little body; then whether he was overcome by sleep, nourished by food, felt all the affections of mortals, and no fitting signs made the marks of so great a majesty shine out, since that casting out of evil spirits, the healing of the sick, life restored to the dead, if we think of others too, are small things for God. You write that this question was raised at a gathering of friends by one of the many who were present, but that you interrupted him as he inquired further, broke up the gathering, and deferred the matter to the merits of better knowledge, lest, while secrets were rashly profaned, an innocent error should turn into fault.

Then you direct the aim of your letter to me, and after this confession of ignorance you admonish me to recognize what is desired from my side. You add also that it concerns my reputation that you should come to know what was asked, since ignorance may somehow be tolerated in other priests without loss to divine worship, but when one comes to me as bishop, whatever happens to be unknown is wanting to our religion. First, then, I ask you to lay aside this opinion of me, so readily presumed, and to loosen and put off that state of mind, however most kindly disposed toward me, and to believe me about myself rather than anyone else, if you return my love. For such is the depth of the Christian Scriptures that I would make progress in them daily if I were trying to learn them alone from early boyhood to decrepit old age, with the greatest leisure, the utmost zeal, and a better talent. Not that one comes with such difficulty to what is necessary for salvation in them; but when someone has held fast there to the faith without which one does not live devoutly and rightly, so many things, shadowed by such manifold veils of mysteries, remain to be understood by those who advance, and so great a depth of wisdom lies hidden not only in the words in which they were spoken but also in the realities to be understood, that it happens to the oldest, the keenest, and those most burning with desire to learn, as that same Scripture says in one place: "When a man has finished, then he begins."

But why say more of this? We must come rather to the matter you ask about. Here first I want you to know that Christian teaching does not hold that God was so poured into the flesh in which he was to be born of the virgin that he either abandoned or lost the care of governing the universe, or transferred it, as if contracted and gathered up, to that little body. That is the notion of people who can think of nothing but bodies, whether the grosser ones, such as water and earth, or the finer, such as air and light, but bodies nonetheless; none of which can be whole everywhere, since through innumerable parts it must have one part in one place and another in another, and however great a body or however small a little body it may be, it occupies a space and so fills that place that it is not whole in any part of it. And so to be condensed and rarefied, contracted and expanded, ground into tiny pieces and enlarged into a mass belongs only to bodies. The nature of the soul is far other than that of the body; how much more that of God, who is the creator of both soul and body! God is not said to fill the world as water does, as air does, as light itself does, so that he fills a smaller part of the world with a smaller part of himself and a larger with a larger. He knows how to be whole everywhere and to be contained in no place; he knows how to come without departing from where he was; he knows how to go away without abandoning the place to which he had come.

The human mind wonders at this, and because it does not grasp it, perhaps it does not believe it either. Let it first examine itself and wonder at itself; let it raise itself a little, if it can, from the body and from the things it usually perceives through the body, and see what it is itself, that uses the body. But perhaps it cannot; for it takes a great mind, as someone says, to call the mind away from the senses and to draw thought away from habit. Let it, then, examine the bodily senses themselves somewhat more unusually and attentively. There are certainly five bodily senses, which cannot exist either without a body or without a soul, since perceiving belongs only to a living thing, and the body has life from the soul; nor do we see, hear, or use the other three senses without bodily instruments, as it were vessels and organs. Let the rational soul attend to these things and consider the bodily senses not with the bodily senses but with the mind and reason itself. Certainly a person cannot perceive unless he lives; and he lives in the flesh until death separates the two. How then does the soul, which lives only in its own flesh, perceive things that are outside its flesh? Are not the stars in the sky very far from its flesh? Does it not see the sun in the sky? Is seeing not perceiving, since sight excels the others among the five senses? Does it then live in the sky too, since it perceives in the sky also, and perception cannot exist where there is no life? Or does it perceive even where it does not live, since, though it lives only in its own flesh, it perceives also in those places, outside its flesh, which contain the things it touches with its gaze? Do you see how obscure this is in so conspicuous a sense as the one called sight? Consider hearing too. For it also in a way pours itself out from the flesh. Why else do we say, "It sounds outside," unless we perceive there, where it sounds? So there too we live outside our flesh. Or can we perceive even where we do not live, though perception cannot exist without life?

The other three senses perceive within themselves, though there might be some doubt about smell. About taste and touch there is no dispute, since what we taste and touch we perceive nowhere but in our flesh. Let these three senses therefore be set aside from this consideration. Sight and hearing raise an astonishing question: either how the soul perceives where it does not live, or how it lives where it is not. For it is nowhere but in its flesh; yet it perceives even outside its flesh. For it perceives where it sees, since seeing too is perceiving; it perceives where it hears, since hearing too is perceiving. Either, then, it lives there too, and so is there too; or it perceives even where it does not live; or it lives even where it is not. All these things are wonderful; none of them can be affirmed without some apparent absurdity; and we are speaking of a perishable sense. What then is the soul itself beyond the bodily sense, that is, in the mind with which it considers these things? For it does not judge the bodily senses themselves by a bodily sense. And do we think something incredible is said to us about God's omnipotence when it is said that the Word of God, through whom all things were made, took a body from the virgin and appeared to the senses of mortals in such a way that he did not corrupt his immortality, did not change his eternity, did not diminish his power, did not abandon the government of the world, did not withdraw from the bosom of the Father, that is, from the secret place where he is with him and in him!

Understand the Word of God, through whom all things were made, in such a way that you do not think anything of him passes away, or that what was future becomes past. He remains as he is, and he is whole everywhere. He comes, however, when he is made manifest, and departs when he is hidden. Yet he is present whether hidden or manifest, as light is present to the eyes both of one who sees and of one who is blind; but to one who sees it is present as present, to the blind as absent. A voice too is present to ears that hear, and present also to the deaf; but to the former it is open, to the latter hidden. What is more wonderful than what happens in our voices and spoken words, a thing that passes away so swiftly? For when we speak, there is no room even for the second syllable unless the first has ceased to sound; and yet, if one hearer is present, he hears the whole of what we say, and if two are present, both hear just as much, and it is whole to each of them; and if a silent multitude listens, they do not divide the sounds among themselves piecemeal like food, but all that sounds is whole to all and whole to each. Is it not, then, rather incredible if the abiding Word of God does not do for things what the passing word of a human being does for ears: that just as the latter is heard at the same time whole even by each one, so the former should be at the same time whole everywhere?

There is no need, then, to fear the little body of the infant, as though so great a God might seem to have suffered confinement in it. For God is great not in bulk but in power: he who gave to little ants and bees a sense more like foresight than to asses and camels; who creates the great size of the fig tree from the tiniest grain of seed, while many far smaller plants spring from much larger seeds; who enriched the little pupil of the eye with so keen a sight that, flashing out through the eyes, it surveys almost half the sky in an instant; who from a point, as it were the center of the brain, spreads out all the senses in a fivefold distribution; who by the heart, so small an organ, distributes the vital motion through all parts of the body. By these and such things he suggests great things through the least, he who is not small in small things. For this very greatness of his power, which feels no confinement in a narrow space, made the virgin's womb fruitful with a birth not brought in from outside but native to it; this power joined to itself a rational soul and through it also a human body, and the whole man, to be changed for the better, while it was in no way changed for the worse, graciously taking from him the name of humanity and generously giving him that of divinity. The same power brought forth the infant's limbs through the inviolate virginal womb of his mother, which afterward brought in the young man's limbs through closed doors. If a reason is sought here, it will not be wonderful; if an example is demanded, it will not be unique. Let us grant that God can do something that we confess we cannot investigate. In such matters the whole reason for the deed is the power of the doer.

Next, the fact that he was overcome by sleep and nourished by food and felt all human affections convinces human beings that he was a man, whom he certainly did not consume but assumed. See, so it was done, and yet certain heretics, perversely admiring and praising his power, refused altogether to acknowledge human nature in him, in which lies the whole commendation of the grace by which he saves those who believe in him, containing deep treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and imbuing with faith the minds he brings to the eternal contemplation of unchangeable truth. What if the Almighty had created a man formed somewhere else, not from a mother's womb, but brought him suddenly before people's eyes? What if he had passed through no ages from infancy to youth, and taken no food and no sleep? Would he not have confirmed that erroneous opinion, and would it not have been believed that he had by no means taken a true man, and, while doing everything wonderfully, would he not have taken away what he did mercifully? But now he appeared as mediator between God and men in such a way that, joining both natures in the unity of one person, he both raised the ordinary by the extraordinary and tempered the extraordinary by the ordinary.

But what does God not do that is wonderful in all the movements of creation, had they not grown cheap through daily habit? How many common things are trampled underfoot which, when considered, astonish us! Take the very power of seeds: what numbers it has, how living, how effective, how secretly powerful, how great the things it accomplishes in a small space: who can reach it with the mind, who can express it in speech? He, then, wrought a man for himself without seed, who in the nature of things works even seeds without seeds; he kept in his own body the numbers of times and the measures of ages, who without any change in himself weaves together by change the order of the ages. For what began in time grew in time; but the Word in the beginning, through whom times were made, chose the time in which to take flesh, and did not yield to time so as to be turned into flesh. For man came to God; God did not depart from himself.

Some people, however, demand to be given an account of how God was mingled with man so as to become the one person of Christ, when this had to happen only once, as if they themselves could give an account of something that happens daily, how the soul is mingled with the body so as to become the one person of a human being. For just as in the unity of a person the soul uses a body so that there is a man, so in the unity of a person God uses a man so that there is Christ. In the one person, then, there is a mingling of soul and body; in this person there is a mingling of God and man; provided, however, that the hearer withdraws from the habit of thinking in terms of bodies, by which two liquids are usually so mixed that neither keeps its integrity, although even among bodies light is mixed with air without being corrupted. So the person of a man is a mingling of soul and body, but the person of Christ is a mingling of God and man; for when the Word of God was mingled with a soul having a body, he took at once both the soul and the body. The one happens daily for the begetting of human beings; the other happened once for the setting free of human beings. And yet the mingling of two incorporeal things ought to have been more easily believed than that of one incorporeal and the other corporeal. For if the soul is not deceived about its own nature, it understands itself to be incorporeal; much more incorporeal is the Word of God; and so a mingling of the Word of God and a soul ought to have been more credible than that of a soul and a body. But the latter we experience in ourselves; the former we are commanded to believe in Christ. If, however, both were equally unknown to our experience and we were commanded to believe them, which of these would we believe more readily? How would we not admit that two incorporeal things could have been mingled more easily than one incorporeal and one corporeal, if indeed the word "mixing" or "mingling" is not unfittingly admitted for these things, given our habit of thinking of bodily things, which are of a very different condition and a very different origin?

The Word of God, then, who is also the Son of God, coeternal with the Father, the same power and wisdom of God, reaching mightily from the highest limit of rational creation to the lowest limit of bodily creation and ordering all things sweetly, present and hidden, nowhere enclosed, nowhere divided, nowhere swollen, but without bulk whole everywhere, in a way far different from that in which he is present to other creatures, took a man and made himself and that man one Jesus Christ, the mediator between God and men: equal to the Father according to his divinity, but less than the Father according to the flesh, that is, according to the man; unchangeably immortal according to the divinity equal to the Father, and the same changeable and mortal according to the weakness akin to ours. In this Christ, at the time which he knew to be most fitting and had arranged before the ages, there came to human beings teaching and help for laying hold of everlasting salvation. Teaching: so that the things usefully and truly said here before, not only by the holy prophets, who said all things truly, but also by philosophers and the poets themselves and authors of every kind of literature (who would doubt that they mixed many truths with falsehoods?), might be confirmed by the authority of him present even in the flesh, for the sake of those who could not see and distinguish them in the inmost truth itself; and that truth he himself was, even before he took a man, to all who were able to share in him. But above all by the example of his incarnation he persuaded human beings, for their salvation, of this: since many people, eager for divinity, thought they must make their way to God through heavenly powers whom they took to be gods, and through various rites, not of lawful sacred worship but of sacrilege, more proudly than devoutly (and in this matter demons, by kinship in pride, put themselves forward to them in place of the holy angels), people were to know that God, to whom they sought to make their way as though he were far off, through intermediary powers, is so near to the devotion of human beings that he deigned to take a man and to be united with him in such a way that the whole man was joined to him as the body is to the soul, except for the changeable concretion, into which God is not turned, and which we see that both body and soul have. Help: because without the grace of faith, which is from him, no one can overcome vicious desires and be cleansed by pardoning remission from whatever remnants of them he has not overcome. As regards his teaching, then, what utter simpleton now, or what lowly little woman, does not believe in the immortality of the soul and a life to come after death? When Pherecydes the Syrian first argued this long ago among the Greeks, the novelty of that argument so moved Pythagoras of Samos that it turned him from an athlete into a philosopher. Now, then, as Maro says and we all see, "Assyrian amomum springs up everywhere." And as regards the help of the grace that is in Christ, he is wholly the one under whose leadership, "if any traces of our crime remain, made void, they will free the lands from perpetual fear."

"But," they say, "no fitting signs made the marks of so great a majesty shine out, since that casting out of evil spirits, the healing of the sick, life restored to the dead, if others are considered too, are small things for God." We too admit that the prophets did some such things. For among these signs what is more excellent than the dead coming back to life? Elijah did this; Elisha did this. As for the miracles of magicians, whether they also raised the dead, let those see to it who are trying to convict Apuleius, who defends himself very fully against the charge of magical arts, not by accusing him but by praising him. We read that the magicians of the Egyptians, most skilled in these arts, were overcome by Moses, the servant of God, when they did certain wonders by wicked arts and he, simply calling on God, overturned all their devices. But Moses himself and the other most truthful prophets prophesied the Lord Christ and gave him great glory, and foretold that he would come, not as their equal, nor as superior in the same power of miracles, but plainly as the Lord God of all, and made man for the sake of men. He therefore willed to do such things himself also, lest it be absurd that he should not do himself what he had done through them. Yet he also had to do something of his own: to be born of a virgin, to rise from the dead, to ascend into heaven. Whoever thinks this too little for God, I do not know what more he expects.

For I think they are demanding such things as he ought to have done while bearing a man. "For in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and all things were made through him." Ought he, having taken a man, to have made another world, so that we might believe him to be the one through whom the world was made? But neither a greater world nor one equal to this could be made in this world. And if he made a lesser one, beneath this one, this too would likewise be thought too little. Since, then, it was not fitting that he should make a new world, he made new things in the world. For a man born of a virgin, raised from the dead to eternal life, and exalted above the heavens is perhaps a mightier work than the world. Here perhaps they reply that they do not believe this was done. What, then, is to be done with people who despise the lesser things and do not believe the greater? Life restored to the dead is believed because others have done it, and it is too little for God; his own flesh created from a virgin and raised from death to eternal life above the heavens is not believed because no one has done it, and it is what befits God. And so each one accepts calmly what he thinks easy, not to do but to grasp, and regards what is beyond these as fictions and holds them false. Do not be like them, I beg you.

These matters are discussed more widely, and all the recesses of the necessary questions are explored, examined, and laid open. But faith opens the way to understanding; unbelief closes it. Whom would not the very order of events from the beginning, so great as it is, move to believe, and the very connection of the ages, which gives credibility to the present from the past and confirms the earlier by the later and the ancient by the more recent? One man from the nation of the Chaldeans is chosen, endowed with most faithful piety, to whom divine promises are revealed, to be fulfilled in the last times after so long a series of ages, and it is foretold that in his seed all nations will receive blessing. So, worshiping the one true God, creator of the universe, he begets a son in his old age from a wife whom barrenness and age had already made wholly without hope of bearing. From him is propagated a most numerous people, multiplied in Egypt, to which the divine plan, growing ever clearer through promises and their fulfilment, had brought that stock from the eastern regions. A strong nation is led out of slavery in Egypt with dreadful signs and miracles, and when the ungodly nations had been driven out it is brought into the land of promise, settled there, and even exalted to a kingdom. Then, as sin prevailed, offending most often by sacrilegious acts the true God who had conferred such benefits on it, chastised by various disasters and consoled by times of prosperity, it is brought on to the incarnation and manifestation of Christ. All the promises of that nation, all its prophecies, priesthoods, sacrifices, temple, and absolutely all its sacraments proclaimed this Christ: that he, the Word of God, the Son of God, God, would come in the flesh, would die, would rise again, would ascend into heaven, would have peoples dedicated to him by his most mighty name among all nations, and that in him there would be remission of sins and eternal salvation for those who believe.

Christ came too, and in his birth, life, deeds, sayings, sufferings, death, resurrection, and ascension all the proclamations of the prophets are fulfilled. He sends the Holy Spirit; he fills the faithful gathered in one house, awaiting this very promise with prayer and desire. Filled with the Holy Spirit, they suddenly speak in the languages of all nations, boldly refute errors, preach the most wholesome truth, exhort to repentance for a former guilty life, and promise pardon from divine grace. Fitting signs and miracles follow the preaching of piety and true religion. Savage unbelief is stirred up against them; they endure what was foretold, hope for what was promised, teach what was commanded. Few in number, they are scattered throughout the world, convert peoples with wonderful ease, increase among enemies, grow by persecutions, and through the straits of afflictions spread to the ends of the earth. From the most unlearned, the most despised, the fewest, they become enlightened, ennobled, multiplied. They bring under Christ the most brilliant talents, the most cultivated eloquence, and the wonderful skill of the keen, the eloquent, and the learned, and turn them to preaching the way of piety and salvation. Through alternating adversity and prosperity they watchfully exercise patience and temperance; and as the world declines to its end and by its exhaustion testifies that it is in its last age, they await the eternal happiness of the heavenly city with much more confidence, since this too was foretold. And amid all these things the unbelief of the ungodly nations rages against the church of Christ; she overcomes by suffering and by professing an unshaken faith amid the savagery of her opponents. As the sacrifice of the revealed truth, which had long been veiled by mystical promises, succeeds, those sacrifices by which it was prefigured are removed by the overthrow of the temple itself. The very nation of the Jews, rejected for its unbelief, is uprooted from its homeland and dispersed everywhere throughout the world, so that it carries the holy books everywhere, and thus the testimony of prophecy, by which Christ and the church were foretold, is produced by our very adversaries, lest it be thought to have been invented by us for the occasion; and in that prophecy it was also foretold that they themselves would not believe. The temples and images of demons and the sacrilegious rites are overthrown little by little and by turns, according to the prophetic predictions. Heresies against the name of Christ, yet under the veil of the name of Christ, spring up as they were foretold, to exercise the teaching of holy religion. All these things, as they are read to have been foretold, so they are seen to be fulfilled; and from these, so many and so great, the rest that remain are awaited to be fulfilled. What mind, then, eager for eternity and moved by the shortness of the present life, would contend against the light and height of this divine authority?

What disputations, what writings of any philosophers, what laws of any states can in any way be compared with the two commandments on which Christ says the whole law and the prophets depend? "You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul and with your whole mind, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself." Here is physics, since all the causes of all natures are in God the creator; here is ethics, since a good and honorable life is formed in no other way than when the things that are to be loved are loved as they are to be loved, that is, God and neighbor; here is logic, since the truth and light of the rational soul is none but God; here too is the praiseworthy well-being of the state, for the best state is not founded and preserved except on the foundation and bond of faith and firm concord, when the common good is loved, which is God, the highest and truest good, and in him people love one another most sincerely, when they love one another for the sake of him from whom they cannot hide the spirit in which they love.

And the very manner of speaking in which holy Scripture is woven, how accessible it is to all, though penetrable by very few! What it contains openly it speaks, like a familiar friend, without pretense to the heart of the unlearned and the learned; what it hides in mysteries it does not raise up in proud eloquence, which a slow and uneducated mind would not dare approach, like a poor man approaching a rich one, but it invites all by lowly speech, to feed them not only with the plain truth but also to exercise them with the hidden, having in the obvious what it has in the obscure. But lest the plain things should be despised, the same things, hidden again, are desired; once desired, they are in a way renewed; once renewed, they are sweetly impressed. By these, perverse minds are healthfully corrected, small minds nourished, and great minds delighted. That mind is hostile to this teaching which either, by erring, does not know that it is most wholesome, or, being sick, hates the medicine.

You see what a long letter I have written. If, then, anything troubles you and you think it worth discussing between us, do not let the customary length of ordinary letters cramp you, as if it were a limit to be kept; for you know very well how long the ancients made their letters when they were dealing with something they could not explain briefly. And even if the custom of authors of other literature were different, the authority of our own authors would be offered to us as more worthy of imitation in this matter. Look, then, at the length of the apostolic letters, or of those who have expounded those divine words, and do not hesitate either to put forward many questions, if many trouble you, or to turn over what you ask somewhat longer, so that, as far as can be done by people such as we are, no cloud of doubt may remain to obstruct the light of truth.

For I know that Your Excellency endures the most obstinate contradictions of certain people who think, or wish it to be thought, that Christian teaching is not compatible with the welfare of the state, because they want the state to stand not by the firmness of virtues but by the impunity of vices. But it is not with God as with a human king or any ruler of a city, that whatever sins many commit go unpunished. His mercy and grace, however, preached to human beings through the man Christ, but bestowed through God, the Son of God, the same Christ, do not abandon those who live by faith in him and worship him devoutly, whether they endure the evils of this life patiently and bravely or use its goods mercifully and temperately; they will receive an eternal reward for both in the city above, the divine city, where calamity need no longer be borne with distress nor desire curbed with labor, but only the love of God and neighbor kept without any difficulty and with perfect freedom. May the most merciful omnipotence of God keep you safe and ever happier, my illustrious lord, deservedly distinguished and most excellent son. I greet most respectfully, as your merits deserve, your holy mother, most worthy of honor in Christ, whose prayers for you may God hear. My holy brother and fellow bishop Possidius sends many greetings to Your Excellence.