Letters 167.1–168.1

When I wrote to you, Jerome, my brother honored in Christ, asking about the human soul (if new souls are still being made, one for each person born, where do they contract the bond of sin, which we do not doubt must be loosed through the sacrament of Christ's grace even in newborn infants?), the letter grew into no small volume, and I did not wish to burden it with any other question. But a matter that presses more sharply must be neglected far less. So I ask you, and I implore you by the Lord, to explain to me, as I think will profit many, or, if you already have it explained either by yourself or by someone else, to send us the explanation of how we are to understand what is in the letter of the apostle James: “For whoever keeps the whole law but stumbles in one point has become guilty of all.” This matter is of such kind and weight that I very much regret not having written to you about it long ago.

For this question concerns the conduct of the present life, how we may come to eternal life, not an inquiry into the past, which oblivion has buried deep, as is the question I thought should be asked about the soul. A neat story is told that fits this matter quite well. A man had fallen into a well where there was enough water to catch him, so that he did not die, but not so much as to choke him, so that he could not speak. Another came up and, seeing him, said with pity: “How did you fall in here?” And he said: “I beg you, think how to get me out of here, not how I fell in.” So, since we confess and hold by the Catholic faith that the soul even of a little infant must be freed by the grace of Christ from the guilt of sin, as from a well, it is enough for it that we know the way in which it is saved, even if we never know how it came into that evil. But I thought the question should be asked so that we might not incautiously hold one of those opinions about the soul's embodiment which would contradict the need to free the infant's soul, by denying that it is in this evil at all. Holding most firmly, then, that the infant's soul must be freed from the guilt of sin and can be freed in no other way than by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, if we can also know the cause and origin of that evil, we resist the empty talkers, who are not debaters but quarrelers, with more readiness and better equipment; but if we cannot, the work of mercy ought not to grow slack because the beginning of the misery is hidden. Against those who think they know what they do not know, we are the safer for not being ignorant of our own ignorance. For it is one thing not to know what it is bad not to know, another not to know what either cannot be known, or need not be known, or makes no difference to the life we seek. But what I now ask about the writing of the apostle James concerns the very conduct in which we live and in which we strive to please God so that we may live forever.

How then, I beg you, is “whoever keeps the whole law but stumbles in one point has become guilty of all” to be understood? Is the one who has committed theft, or rather the one who has said to the rich man, “Sit here,” but to the poor man, “You stand there,” guilty of murder, adultery, and sacrilege? And if not, how has the one who stumbles in one point become guilty of all? Or does what I said about the rich man and the poor man not belong to those things in any one of which, if someone stumbles, he becomes guilty of all? But we must recall where this sentence came from, what preceding words gave birth to it, and on what it depends by connection. “My brothers,” he says, “do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ of glory with partiality. For if a man with a gold ring and in bright clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and you pay attention to the one wearing the splendid clothing and say, ‘You sit here in a good place,’ but say to the poor man, ‘You stand there,’ or, ‘Sit under my footstool,’ have you not judged among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my dearest brothers: has not God chosen the poor in this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom that God promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor man”: namely the one to whom it was said, “You stand there,” when to the one with the gold ring it had been said, “You sit here in a good place.” And then he goes on, turning over and unfolding that very thought more broadly: “Do not the rich oppress you by their power, and themselves drag you into court? Do they not blaspheme the good name that has been invoked over you? If indeed you fulfill the royal law according to the Scriptures, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you do well; but if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.” See how he calls those who say to the rich man, “Sit here,” and to the poor man, “Stand there,” transgressors of the law. Then, lest they think it a contemptible sin to transgress the law in this one thing, he went on to add: “But whoever keeps the whole law but stumbles in one point has become guilty of all. For he who said, ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ also said, ‘You shall not murder.’ If you do not murder but commit adultery, you have become a transgressor of the law,” on account of what he had said: “convicted by the law as transgressors.” Since this is so, it seems to follow, unless it is shown that it must be understood in another way, that whoever says to the rich man, “Sit here,” and to the poor man, “Stand there,” giving the one greater honor than the other, must be judged an idolater and a blasphemer and an adulterer and a murderer and, not to list everything, which would be long, guilty of all crimes; for by stumbling in one point he has become guilty of all.

“But,” someone says, “whoever has one virtue has all, and whoever lacks one has none.” If this is true, the sentence is confirmed. But I want it explained, not confirmed; for us it stands on its own, firmer than all the authorities of the philosophers. And even if that saying about virtues and vices is true, it does not follow that all sins are therefore equal. For the inseparability of the virtues, unless perhaps I am mistaken, was held, if I remember rightly (and I barely remember), by all the philosophers who said that the same virtues are necessary for the conduct of life. But the equality of sins only the Stoics dared to argue, against all the sense of mankind. That emptiness of theirs you refuted most clearly from the Holy Scriptures in the case of that Jovinian, who was a Stoic in this opinion but an Epicurean in hunting out and defending pleasures. In that most delightful and brilliant disputation of yours it appeared plainly enough that our authors, or rather the Truth itself that spoke through them, did not hold that all sins are equal. But how it can be that, even if this is true of the virtues, we are not therefore forced to admit the equality of all sins, I shall try to show as far as I can with the Lord's help. If I succeed, you will approve; where I fall short of the case, you will make up the lack.

Certainly they argue that whoever has one virtue has all, and that all are lacking to one who lacks one, on this ground: that prudence can be neither cowardly nor unjust nor intemperate, for if it were any of these it would not be prudence. Moreover, if it will be prudence only when it is also brave, just, and temperate, then wherever it is, it has the others with it. So too courage cannot be imprudent, or intemperate, or unjust; so temperance must be prudent, brave, and just; so justice does not exist unless it is prudent, brave, and temperate. Thus where any one of them is true, the others are likewise present; but where the others are lacking, that one is not true, even if in some way it seems similar.

For there are, as you know, some vices opposed to virtues by an obvious difference, as imprudence to prudence; but there are others opposed only because they are vices, while resembling the virtues by a deceptive appearance, as, to the same prudence, not imprudence but cunning. I now mean by cunning what is more usually understood and so called among the malicious, not as our Scripture is accustomed to speak, which often uses cunning in a good sense; hence “cunning as serpents,” and “to give cunning to the innocent.” And yet among them too the most eloquent writer of the Roman tongue said, “Yet he did not lack guile or cunning for taking precautions,” using cunning in a good sense; but among them this is very rare, while among ours it is very frequent. Likewise, in the parts of temperance, extravagance is plainly opposed to thrift; but what is commonly called stinginess is indeed a vice, yet resembles thrift not in nature but by a most deceptive appearance. Again, injustice is opposed to justice by an evident unlikeness; but the lust for revenge usually imitates justice, as it were, yet it is a vice. Cowardice is clearly opposed to courage; but hardness differs in nature while deceiving by its likeness. Constancy is a part of virtue; inconstancy is far removed from it and undoubtedly opposed to it; but obstinacy affects to be called constancy and is not, because the one is a virtue, the other a vice.

So that I need not repeat the same things again, let us take one example from which the rest can be understood. Catiline, as those who could know him wrote of him, could bear cold, thirst, and hunger, and endured fasting, cold, and sleeplessness beyond what anyone would believe; and so to his followers and to himself he seemed endowed with great courage. But this courage was not prudent, for it chose evil instead of good; it was not temperate, for he was defiled by the foulest debaucheries; it was not just, for he had conspired against his country. And therefore it was not courage at all, but hardness, which gave itself the name of courage in order to deceive fools. For if it were courage, it would be not a vice but a virtue; and if it were a virtue, it would never be abandoned by the other virtues, its inseparable companions.

Therefore, when the question is asked about the vices too, whether they likewise are all present where one is, or none where one is not, it is hard to show, because two vices are usually set against one virtue: the one plainly contrary, and the one that is shadowed by an appearance of likeness. Hence in Catiline it was easier to see that his courage was not courage, since it did not have the other virtues with it; but that it was cowardice, where there was a practice of suffering and enduring the heaviest hardships beyond what anyone would believe, can hardly be made convincing. But perhaps to those who look more sharply that very hardness appears as cowardice, because he had neglected the labor of good studies by which true courage is acquired. Nevertheless, since there are bold men who are not timid, and again timid men who are far from boldness, while both are vices (for whoever is brave with true virtue neither dares rashly nor fears unadvisedly), we are forced to admit that the vices are more numerous than the virtues.

Hence sometimes one vice is removed by another, as love of money by love of praise; sometimes one gives way so that several may succeed it, as when a drunkard learns to drink moderately out of stinginess and ambition. Vices, then, can give way even to vices that succeed them, not to virtues, and so they are more numerous. But wherever one virtue enters, since it brings the others with it, all the vices that were present will surely give way; for not all were present, but sometimes an equal number, sometimes more succeeded fewer, or fewer succeeded more.

Whether these things are so must be examined more carefully. For this too is not a divine sentence, which says: “Whoever has one virtue has all, and he has none who lacks one.” It seemed so to men, very gifted, studious, and at leisure indeed, but men all the same. For my part, I do not know how I could say, I will not say of a man (from whom virtue is said to be named), but even of a woman who keeps faith with her husband's bed, if she does so because of God's command and promise and is first of all faithful to him, that she does not have chastity, or that it is no virtue or a small one; and so too of a husband who keeps the same toward his wife. And yet there are very many such people, none of whom would I say is without some sin, and that sin, whatever it is, certainly comes from some vice. Hence conjugal chastity in religious men and women, though it is without doubt a virtue (for it is not either nothing or a vice), does not have all the virtues with it. For if all were there, there would be no vice; if no vice, no sin at all; but who is without some sin? Who then is without some vice, that is, a kind of tinder or root, as it were, of sin, when he who reclined on the Lord's breast cries out: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us”? There is no need to dwell on this longer with you; I say it for the sake of others who may perhaps read this. For you, in that same splendid work against Jovinian, diligently proved this too from the Holy Scriptures, where you also cited from this very letter, whose words we are now seeking to understand, what is written: “For we all stumble in many things.” For he does not say “you stumble” but “we stumble,” though he was speaking as an apostle of Christ; and while in this passage he says, “Whoever keeps the whole law but stumbles in one point has become guilty of all,” there he said that not in one point but in many, and not some but all, stumble.

God forbid that any believer should think that so many thousands of Christ's servants, who truthfully say that they have sin, lest they deceive themselves and the truth not be in them, have no virtue, since wisdom is a great virtue. And he said to man: “Behold, piety is wisdom.” God forbid, then, that we should say that so many and such great faithful and godly men of God do not have piety, which the Greeks call either eusebeia or, more expressly and fully, theosebeia. And what is piety but the worship of God? And how is he worshiped except by love? For love from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith is a great and true virtue, because it is also “the end of the commandment.” It is rightly said to be “strong as death,” either because no one overcomes it, just as no one overcomes death, or because in this life the measure of love reaches to death, as the Lord says, “Greater love than this no one has, that someone lay down his life for his friends,” or rather because, as death tears the soul from the senses of the flesh, so love tears it from fleshly desires. Knowledge serves it when knowledge is useful; for without love it puffs up; but where love has filled by building up, knowledge will find nothing empty there to puff up. He showed what useful knowledge is by defining it, when, having said, “Behold, piety is wisdom,” he at once added, “but to abstain from evil is knowledge.” Why then do we not say that whoever has this virtue has all, since love is the fullness of the law? Or is it that the more of it there is in a person, the more he is endowed with virtue, and the less there is, the less virtue is in him, because it is itself virtue; and the less virtue is in him, the more vice there is? Where, then, it is full and perfect, nothing of vice will remain.

Hence the Stoics seem to me to be mistaken in that they refuse to allow that a man making progress in wisdom has any wisdom at all, but say he has it only when he has become entirely perfect in it. They do not deny his progress, but say that unless he suddenly shoots up, as if emerging from some depth, into the free air of wisdom, he is in no part wise. For just as it makes no difference to the drowning of a man whether he has water many furlongs deep above him or only a hand's breadth or a finger's, so they say that those who are striving toward wisdom do make progress, like men rising from the bottom of a whirlpool toward the air; but unless by progress, as by emerging, they escape the whole of folly, like water pressing them down, they have no virtue and are not wise; but once they have escaped, they at once have it whole, and nothing of folly remains from which any sin at all could arise.

This comparison, in which folly is set as water and wisdom as air, so that the mind, as if emerging from the drowning of folly into wisdom, suddenly breathes, does not seem to me well suited to the authority of our Scriptures. Better is the comparison in which vice or folly is likened to darkness, and virtue or wisdom to light, so far as such likenesses can be carried over from bodily things to intelligible ones. So a person does not, like one rising from the water into the air, suddenly breathe in as much as suffices once he has passed its surface; rather, like one going out of darkness into light, he is enlightened gradually as he advances. Until this is fully accomplished, we nevertheless say that he is like one coming out of a very deep cave, touched by the nearness of the light the more, the nearer he comes to the exit; so that what shines in him comes from the light toward which he advances, and what is still dark comes from the darkness out of which he is coming. And so “no one living will be justified in God's sight,” and yet “the righteous lives by faith”; the saints are clothed with righteousness, one more, another less; and no one here lives without sin, and this too one more, another less; and the best is he who sins least.

But what am I doing? As if forgetting whom I am addressing, I have become like a teacher, though I set out what I wish to learn from you. But since I had decided to put forward my opinion on the equality of sins for you to examine, because the question arose from there in what I was treating, I will now at last conclude it. Even if it is true that whoever has one virtue has all, and whoever lacks one has none, sins are not therefore equal; for where there is no virtue, nothing indeed is right, yet one wrong thing is not thereby kept from being more wrong than another, and one crooked thing more crooked. But if, as I think truer and more in keeping with the sacred writings, the intentions of the soul are like the members of the body (not because they are seen in places but because they are felt in affections), and one is lit more, another less, and another lacks light altogether and is overshadowed by a dark obstacle, then surely, just as each person is touched by the illumination of godly love more in one act, less in another, and not at all in another, so he can be said to have one virtue and not another, or to have a virtue more or less. For we can rightly say that love is greater in this man than in that, and that there is some in this one and none in that one, as far as concerns the love which is piety; and, in one and the same man, that he has greater chastity than patience, and greater today than yesterday if he is making progress, and that he does not yet have self-control but has no small mercy.

And to sum up generally and briefly the notion I have of virtue, as far as it concerns living rightly: virtue is love, by which what ought to be loved is loved. This is greater in some, less in others, and in others absent; but in its fullest form, which can no longer be increased, it is in no one as long as a person lives here; and as long as it can be increased, whatever is less than it ought to be comes from vice. Because of this vice, “there is no righteous man on earth who will do good and not sin”; because of this vice, “no one living will be justified in God's sight”; on account of this vice, “if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us”; on account of it too, however much we have progressed, we must say, “Forgive us our debts,” though all words, deeds, and thoughts were already forgiven in baptism. So whoever sees rightly sees where, when, and from what source that perfection is to be hoped for to which nothing can be added. But if there were no commandments, there would certainly be nowhere for a person to look at himself more surely and see from what he should turn away, toward what he should strive, for what he should give thanks, and for what he should pray. Great, then, is the usefulness of the commandments, if only so much is granted to free choice that the grace of God may be honored the more.

If these things are so, how does one who has kept the whole law become guilty of all if he stumbles in one point? Is it perhaps because love is the fullness of the law, love by which God and neighbor are loved, on which commandments of love the whole law and the prophets hang, that the one who acts against that love, on which all things hang, rightly becomes guilty of all? And no one sins except by acting against it. For “You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and any other commandment there may be, is summed up in this word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love of neighbor works no evil; but love is the fullness of the law.” And no one loves his neighbor unless he loves God, so that he may bestow on the neighbor whom he loves as himself, as far as he can, this: that the neighbor too may love God. If he himself does not love God, he loves neither himself nor his neighbor. And so whoever has kept the whole law, if he stumbles in one point, becomes guilty of all, because he acts against love, on which the whole law hangs. He becomes guilty of all, then, by acting against that on which all things hang.

Why then are sins not called equal? Perhaps because the one who sins more gravely acts more against love, and the one who sins more lightly acts less against it; and by the very fact that it admits of more and less, though one does become guilty of all, yet the one who sins more gravely or in more things is more guilty, and the one who sins more lightly or in fewer things is less guilty: with a greater guilt the more he has sinned, a lesser the less; yet, even if he stumbles in one point, he is guilty of all, because he acts against that on which all things hang. If this is true, in this way that saying too is resolved which a man of apostolic grace made: “For we all stumble in many things.” We do stumble, but one more gravely, another more lightly; the more or less each has sinned, the greater he is in committing sin, the less in loving God and neighbor; and again, the less in the perpetration of sin, the greater in the love of God and neighbor. So he is the fuller of iniquity, the emptier of love; and he will be most perfect in love when nothing remains of weakness.

Nor, I think, should it be supposed a light sin to hold the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ with partiality, if we refer that difference between sitting and standing to the honors of the church. For who would tolerate a rich man being chosen for a seat of honor in the church while a poor man better instructed and holier is despised? But if he is speaking of daily seating, who does not sin here, if indeed he sins, unless he judges inwardly in himself that the one man seems to him better than the other in proportion as he is richer? This is what he seems to have meant by saying: “Have you not judged among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?”

The law of liberty, then, is the law of love, of which he says: “If indeed you fulfill the royal law according to the Scriptures, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you do well; but if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.” And after that sentence so hard to understand, about which I have said enough of what I thought should be said, he mentions the same law of liberty: “So speak and so act as those who are beginning to be judged by the law of liberty.” And since he knows what he said a little earlier, that “we all stumble in many things,” he suggests the Lord's medicine as a daily remedy for daily, though lighter, wounds. “For judgment,” he says, “is without mercy to the one who has not shown mercy.” For hence also the Lord says: “Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.” “But mercy exults over judgment.” It does not say “mercy conquers judgment,” for it is not opposed to judgment; but it “exults over” it, because more are gathered in through mercy, but those who have shown mercy. “For blessed are the merciful, for God will have mercy on them.”

And it is certainly just that they be forgiven because they have forgiven, and be given to because they have given. For in God there is both mercy when he judges and judgment when he shows mercy. That is why it is said to him: “Of mercy and judgment I will sing to you, O Lord.” For whoever, as if too righteous, awaits judgment without mercy as though secure, provokes a most just wrath, which he feared who said: “Do not enter into judgment with your servant.” Hence it is said to a stubborn people: “Why do you wish to contend with me in judgment?” “For when the righteous king sits on his throne, who will boast that he has a chaste heart? Or who will boast that he is clean from sin?” What hope is there, then, unless mercy exults over judgment, but toward those who have shown mercy, saying truthfully, “Forgive us, as we also forgive,” and giving without grumbling? “For God loves a cheerful giver.” Finally, holy James speaks from this point on about works of mercy, to console those whom that sentence had greatly frightened, when he reminds them how even daily sins, without which no one lives here, are expiated by daily remedies; lest a person, who becomes guilty of all when he stumbles in one point, by stumbling in many (since we all stumble in many things) should carry a great heap of his guilt, gathered little by little, to the tribunal of so great a Judge, and not find the mercy he did not show, but rather, by forgiving and giving, may merit to have his debts forgiven and the promises fulfilled to him.

I have said much, by which I may perhaps have caused you weariness, since you do not expect to learn these things, which you nevertheless approve, being accustomed to teach them. But if there is anything in them, as far as the matters themselves are concerned (for I do not care much in what style they have been set out), if, then, there is anything in them that offends your learning, please warn me by writing back, and do not be reluctant to correct me. For unhappy is the one who does not both duly honor such great and holy labors of your studies and give thanks for them to the Lord our God, by whose gift you are what you are. Hence, since I ought more gladly to learn from anyone what I am unprofitably ignorant of than to teach anyone readily what I know, how much more justly do I claim this debt of love from you, by whose learning, in the name and with the help of the Lord, church literature in the Latin language has been helped as never before! Above all, however, if your love knows any better way in which this sentence can be explained, “Whoever keeps the whole law but stumbles in one point has become guilty of all,” I implore you by the Lord, be so kind as to share it with us.

The grace of God, ministered through your word, has so refreshed and restored us that we can say with complete truth, “He sent his word and healed them,” most blessed lord and deservedly venerable father. We have found that Your Holiness sifted the text of that little book with such care that we are amazed at the answers given to every point, both in the things a Christian ought to refute, abhor, and flee, and in those in which the author is not found to have erred greatly, although with some cunning or other he believed that even in these the grace of God should be suppressed. But one thing affects us in so great a benefit: that this splendid gift of God's grace shone forth late, since it has happened that some have gone away, to whose blindness this illumination of so clear a truth was owed. Yet we do not despair that the same grace will reach them, though later, by the favor of God, “who wills all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” As for us, although long ago, taught by the spirit of love that is in you, we cast off subjection to that error, we give thanks even now for this: that what we believed before, we have now learned to open to others, as the fuller discourse of Your Holiness lays out the way for us with ease. [And in another hand:] May the mercy of our God keep Your Blessedness safe and mindful of us, and glorify you forever.