On Faith and Works 1–16

Some people think that all without distinction should be admitted to the washing of regeneration which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, even if they are unwilling to change a bad and shameful life marked by the most evident crimes and disgraceful acts, and have even declared by open profession that they will persist in it. For example, if someone is living with a prostitute, he should not first be told to leave her and then come to baptism; rather, even while staying with her and confessing, or even professing, that he will stay, he should be admitted and baptized, and not be prevented from becoming a member of Christ, even if he persists in being a member of a prostitute; afterwards he should be taught how evil this is, and, once baptized, be instructed about changing his conduct for the better. For they think it perverse and backward first to teach how a Christian ought to live, and then to baptize. They hold that the sacrament of baptism ought to come first, so that the teaching about life and conduct may follow afterwards. If he is willing to hold to and keep it, he will have done something useful; but if he is unwilling, then, having kept the Christian faith, without which he would perish for ever, he will be saved, though he remains in any crime and impurity whatever, as through fire, as one who has built on the foundation, which is Christ, not gold, silver, and precious stones, but wood, hay, and straw, that is, not righteous and chaste conduct, but wicked and unchaste.

They seem to have been driven to this argument because they were troubled that those men are not admitted to baptism who have put away their wives and married others, or those women who have put away their husbands and married others; for the Lord Christ testifies without any doubt that these are not marriages but adulteries. Since they could not deny that it is adultery, which the Truth without ambiguity confirms to be adultery, and yet wished to support the admission to baptism of those whom they saw so caught in this kind of snare that, if they were not admitted to baptism, they would rather live or even die without any sacrament than be freed by breaking the bond of adultery, they were moved by a certain human compassion to take up their cause in such a way as to hold that, together with them, all criminals and wrongdoers should be admitted to baptism, even though restrained by no prohibition, corrected by no instruction, changed by no repentance. They think that if this were not done they would perish for ever, but if it were done they would be saved through fire even while persisting in those evils.

In answering them, I say this first: let no one take those testimonies of the Scriptures which indicate that there is, or foretell that there will be, a mixture of good and bad in the church in such a way as to think that the strictness or care of discipline is to be completely relaxed and abandoned; for he would think so not taught by those writings but deceived by his own opinion. For although Moses, the servant of God, bore with great patience the mixture in the first people, he did not for that reason fail to punish many even with the sword; and Phinehas the priest pierced adulterers found together with an avenging blade. This signified that it was to be done in this time by degradations and excommunications, when in the discipline of the church the visible sword would cease. Nor, although the blessed apostle groans with great forbearance among false brothers and even allows some, driven by the devilish goads of envy, still to preach Christ, does he therefore think that the man should be spared who had his father's wife, whom he commands to be handed over to Satan, with the church assembled, for the destruction of the flesh, so that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Nor did he for that reason refrain from handing others over to Satan, that they might learn not to blaspheme. Nor does he say in vain: “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people; not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy, or robbers, or idolaters, since then you would have had to go out of this world. But now I have written to you not to associate with anyone who is called a brother if he is sexually immoral, or an idolater, or greedy, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a robber; not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging those outside? Is it not those inside whom you judge? God will judge those outside. Remove the evil from among yourselves.” Some understand “from among yourselves” to mean that each should remove the evil from himself, that is, be good himself. But whichever way it is understood, whether that the wicked are to be rebuked by the church's strictness through excommunications, or that each should remove the evil from himself by rebuking and correcting himself, what is said above has no ambiguity: he commands not to associate with those brothers who are named in any of the vices listed above, that is, who are known and notorious. And with what spirit and with what love this merciful strictness is to be applied he shows clearly, not only in the place where he says, “so that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus,” but elsewhere too, saying: “If anyone does not obey our word in this letter, note that man, and do not associate with him, that he may be ashamed; and do not regard him as an enemy, but rebuke him as a brother.”

And the Lord himself, a unique example of patience, who bore with the devil among the twelve apostles until his passion, and who said, “Let both grow until the harvest, lest perhaps, while you want to gather the weeds, you uproot the wheat along with them,” and who foretold that those nets, in the likeness of the church, would hold good and bad fish until the shore, that is, until the end of the age, and whatever else he said, either openly or through likenesses, about the mixture of good and bad, did not for that reason think that the church's discipline should be abandoned. On the contrary, he urged that it be applied, when he said: “Take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins against you, go and rebuke him between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take with you one or two others, so that every word may be established by the mouth of two or three witnesses. If he does not listen to them, tell the church. And if he does not listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” Then he added the most grave terror of that strictness, saying in that very place: “Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.” He also forbids giving what is holy to dogs. Nor is the apostle contrary to the Lord when he says, “Rebuke those who sin before all, so that the rest may have fear,” while the Lord says, “Rebuke him between you and him.” For both are to be done, as the difference in weakness of those demands whom we have taken up certainly not to be lost but to be corrected and cured; and one is to be healed in one way, another in another. So there is a reason for overlooking and tolerating the wicked in the church; and there is again a reason for chastening, rebuking, not admitting, or removing from communion.

But people go wrong by not keeping to the measure; and when they have begun to go headlong in one direction, they do not look at the other testimonies of divine authority by which they could be called back from that course and stand firm in the truth and moderation that is tempered from both; and not only in this matter, which is now in question, but in many others too. For some, looking at the testimonies of the divine writings by which it is taught that one God is to be worshiped, thought that the Father is the same as the Son and the Holy Spirit; others again, laboring as it were under the opposite disease, attending to the passages in which the Trinity is declared, and unable to understand how there is one God, since the Father is not the Son, nor the Son the Father, nor the Holy Spirit either the Son or the Father, thought that they should even assert differences of substance. Some, looking at the praise of holy virginity in the Scriptures, condemned marriage; others again, pursuing the testimonies in which chaste marriage is praised, made virginity equal to marriage. Some, reading, “It is good, brothers, not to eat meat nor drink wine,” and some similar passages, thought that God's creation and whatever foods they chose were unclean; but others, reading, “Every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected that is received with thanksgiving,” fell into gluttony and drunkenness, unable to rid themselves of vices without falling into others as great or greater on the opposite side.

So too in this case which we have in hand: some, looking at the commands of strictness, by which we are warned to rebuke the unruly, not to give what is holy to dogs, to hold one who despises the church as a Gentile, to tear from the structure of the body a member that causes offense, so disturb the peace of the church that they try to separate the weeds before the time, and, blinded by this error, are themselves rather separated from the unity of Christ. Such is our case against the schism of Donatus; and this not with those who know that Caecilian was attacked with charges not true but slanderous and yet, out of deadly shame, do not abandon their pernicious opinion, but with those to whom we say: “Even if those on whose account you are not in the church had been wicked, you ought still to have remained in the church, bearing with those whom you could not at all correct or separate.” Others, on the contrary, running into danger when they have seen that the mixture of good and bad in the church is shown or foretold, and have learned the commands of patience (which make us so steadfast that, even if weeds seem to be in the church, neither our faith nor our love is hindered, so that we should leave the church because we see weeds in it), think that the church's discipline should be abandoned, granting to those in charge a most perverse sort of security: that it is their business only to say what is to be avoided or what is to be done, but not to care what anyone does.

We, however, think it belongs to sound teaching to govern our life and judgment by both sets of testimonies, so that we both tolerate dogs in the church for the sake of the church's peace, and do not give what is holy to dogs where the peace of the church is safe. When, then, whether through the negligence of those in charge, or through some excusable necessity, or through hidden stealth, we find wicked people in the church whom we cannot correct or restrain by church discipline, then, lest an ungodly and pernicious presumption rise in our hearts, by which we might think we must separate from them so as not to be defiled by their sins, and so try to draw after us disciples supposedly clean and holy, cut off from the structure of unity as though from the company of the wicked, let those likenesses from the Scriptures come to mind, and the divine oracles and most certain examples, by which it has been shown and foretold that the wicked will be mixed with the good in the church until the end of the age and the time of judgment, and that they will do no harm to the good who, in unity and participation in the sacraments, have not consented to their deeds. But when those by whom the church is governed have, with the peace of the church safe, the power to exercise discipline against the wicked or criminal, then again, lest we sleep in sloth and idleness, we must be roused by the other goads of the commands that belong to the strictness of restraint; so that, directing our steps in the way of the Lord by both sets of testimonies, with him as our leader and guardian, we may neither grow sluggish under the name of patience nor rage under the pretext of diligence.

Keeping, then, to this moderation according to sound teaching, let us see what is in question: that is, whether people are to be admitted to receive baptism in such a way that no care is exercised there that what is holy is not given to dogs; so much so that not even those who have committed most open adultery and profess that they will persist in it should seem to be kept away from the sacrament of such great holiness. They would certainly not be admitted if, during the very days in which, having given in their names to receive that grace, they are purified by abstinence, fasts, and exorcisms, they professed that they would sleep with their lawful and true wives and would keep no continence in this matter, which is lawful at another time, during those few solemn days. How, then, is an adulterer who refuses correction admitted to those holy things, to which a married man who refuses observance is not admitted?

“But let him first be baptized,” they say, “and then be taught what belongs to a good life and conduct.” This is done when perhaps someone's last day presses him, so that he believes a very few words, in which, however, everything is contained, and receives the sacrament, so that if he departs from this life he may go out freed from the guilt of all past sins. But if he asks for it in good health and there is time to learn, what more fitting time can be found for him to hear how he ought to become and live as one of the faithful than when, with more attentive mind and held in suspense by religion itself, he asks for the sacrament of the most saving faith? Or do we so shut our eyes to our own experience that we do not remember how attentive and anxious we were about what those who catechized us commanded, when we were asking for the sacraments of that font and were therefore called “competents”? Or do we not look at others who each year hasten to the washing of regeneration, what they are like during the very days in which they are catechized, exorcized, and examined, with what watchfulness they come together, with what zeal they burn, with what care they hang on every word? If that is not the time to say what life befits so great a sacrament as they desire to receive, when will it be? Or when they have received it, while they remain in such great crimes even after baptism, not new men but old offenders? So that, with marvelous perversity, you would first say to them, “Put on the new man,” and when they have put it on, it would afterwards be said, “Put off the old”; whereas the apostle, keeping the sound order, says, “Put off the old and put on the new,” and the Lord himself cries out, “No one sews a new patch on an old garment, and no one puts new wine into old wineskins.” And what else is the whole time for, during which they hold the place and name of catechumens, but that they may hear what the faith and what the life of a Christian ought to be, so that, when they have examined themselves, they may then eat from the Lord's table and drink from the cup? For whoever eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks judgment on himself. And what is done through the whole time during which, as has been wholesomely established in the church, the rank of catechumens receives those who come to the name of Christ, is done much more diligently and urgently in those days when they are called competents, when they have already given in their names to receive baptism.

“What,” they say, “if a virgin unknowingly marries another woman's husband?” If she never knows it, she will never on this account be an adulteress; but if she comes to know it, she begins to be one from the time when she knowingly lies with another woman's husband. Just as in the law of landed property someone is quite rightly called a possessor in good faith as long as he does not know that he possesses another's property, but when he has come to know it and does not withdraw from the other's property, then he is said to be in bad faith, then he is justly called unjust. Far be it, then, that with a feeling plainly not human but plainly vain we should grieve, when disgraceful acts are corrected, as if marriages were being dissolved; especially in the city of our God, on his holy mountain, that is, in the church, where not only the bond but also the sacrament of marriage is so commended that a husband is not permitted to hand over his wife to another, which Cato is said to have done in the Roman commonwealth of that time, not only without blame but even with praise. Nor is there any need to argue further about this now, since even those whom I am answering do not dare to affirm that this is no sin, nor deny that it is adultery, lest they be clearly shown to oppose the Lord himself and the holy gospel. But since they hold that such people should first be admitted to receive the sacrament of baptism and to the Lord's table, even if they have refused correction in the plainest words, and indeed that they should not be warned about this at all, but taught afterwards, so that, if they accept the observance of the commandment and correct their fault, they may be counted among the wheat, but if they despise it, they may be tolerated among the weeds, they show clearly enough that they are not defending these crimes or treating them as light or as nothing. For what Christian of good hope would think adultery no crime or a small one?

Yet they think they draw from the holy Scriptures the order in which these things are to be corrected or borne in others, when they say that the apostles acted so, and cite certain testimonies from their letters, where they are found first to have taught the doctrine of faith and then to have handed on the commands about conduct. And from this they want it understood that only the rule of faith is to be taught to those to be baptized, but that afterwards, to those already baptized, the commands for changing life for the better are to be handed on; as though they read some letters of the apostles addressed to those to be baptized, where they discussed faith, and others to the baptized, containing commands about avoiding evil and establishing good conduct. Since, then, it is certain that they wrote their letters to Christians already baptized, why are these woven of both kinds of discourse, that which concerns faith and that which concerns a good life? Or perhaps it now seems right that we give neither to those to be baptized, and both to the baptized? If that is absurd to say, then let them admit that the apostles put their teaching, complete in both parts, into their letters, but that for the most part they taught faith first and then added what concerns a good life, because in man himself too a good life cannot follow unless faith goes before. For whatever a man does that seems right should not be called right unless it is referred to the godliness that is toward God. And if some foolish and very ignorant people thought that the apostles' letters were addressed to catechumens, they would surely admit that the commands about conduct befitting the faith must be taught to the not yet baptized together with the rules of faith; unless perhaps these people drive us by their argument to the necessity of wanting the first parts of the apostolic letters, where they speak of faith, to be read to catechumens, and the later parts, where it is commanded how Christians ought to live, to the faithful. If that is most foolish to say, then there is no proof of this opinion from the apostles' letters, why we should think that those to be baptized are to be instructed about faith alone and the baptized about conduct, on the ground that the apostles commended faith in the first parts of their letters and afterwards, as a consequence, exhorted the faithful to live well. For though the one comes first and the other later, yet very often both are to be preached, in one connected discourse, to catechumens and to the faithful, to those to be baptized and to the baptized, whether to instruct them or so that they may not forget, whether so that they may profess or so that they may be confirmed, with most sound and careful teaching. So the letters of Peter and the letters of John, from which they cite some testimonies (let them add those of Paul and the other apostles too), must be taken on the principle by which they noticed that faith is spoken of first and conduct afterwards, which I have explained, unless I am mistaken, most plainly.

“But in the Acts of the Apostles,” they say, “Peter so addressed those who, having heard the word, were baptized, three thousand in one day, that he preached to them only the faith by which they should believe in Christ.” When they had said, “What shall we do?”, he answered them: “Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Why, then, do they not notice what was said, “Repent”? For there is the stripping off of the old life, so that those who are baptized may put on the new. And for whom is repentance fruitful, the repentance that is done for dead works, if he persists in adultery and in other crimes in which the love of this world is wrapped up?

“But,” they say, “he wanted them to repent only of their unbelief, in that they had not believed in Christ.” A strange presumption (I do not want to say anything harsher), that when one hears what was said, “Repent,” it is said to be a repentance for unbelief alone, when the gospel teaching was handing on that life must be changed from the old to the new; in which, of course, there is also what the apostle puts in that passage, “Let him who used to steal steal no longer,” and the rest, in which he sets out what it is to put off the old man and put on the new. But in these very words of Peter they have something by which they could have been warned, had they been willing to pay careful attention. For when he had said, “Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For this promise is for us and for our children and for all who are far off, whomever the Lord our God calls,” the one who wrote the book at once added: “And with many other words he testified, saying: Rescue yourselves from this crooked generation. And they, receiving his words most eagerly, believed and were baptized; and there were added that day three thousand souls.” Who does not understand here that with “many other words,” which are passed over by the writer because of their length, Peter was urging them to rescue themselves from this crooked generation, since the sentence itself, to persuade them of which Peter was pressing with many words, is briefly inserted? For the sum of it is set down when it is said, “Rescue yourselves from this crooked generation”; but Peter testified with many words so that this might be done. In those words was the condemnation of the dead works that the lovers of this world wickedly do, and the commendation of the good life that those who rescue themselves from this crooked generation should hold to and pursue. So now, if they please, let them try to affirm that he rescues himself from this crooked generation who merely believes in Christ, even if he persists in whatever disgraceful acts he likes, even to the point of professing adultery. But if it is wicked to say that, let those to be baptized hear not only what they ought to believe, but also how they may rescue themselves from this crooked generation. For it is there that they must hear how believers ought to live.

“The eunuch,” they say, “whom Philip baptized, said nothing more than, ‘I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God,’ and on this profession he was baptized at once.” Do they want, then, that people should answer only this and be baptized at once? Is nothing to be said by the catechist, and professed by the believer, about the Holy Spirit, nothing about the holy church, nothing about the forgiveness of sins, nothing about the resurrection of the dead, and finally nothing about the Lord Jesus Christ himself except that he is the Son of God: nothing about his incarnation from the virgin, about his passion, the death of the cross, the burial, the resurrection on the third day, the ascension and the seat at the right hand of the Father? For if, when the eunuch had answered, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God,” this seemed sufficient for him to be baptized at once and go away, why do we not follow this? Why do we not imitate it and take away the rest, which we think it necessary to express by questioning, even when shortness of time presses for baptism, so that the one to be baptized may answer to everything, even if there has been no time to commit it to memory? But if Scripture kept silent about the rest that Philip did with that eunuch in baptizing him and left it to be understood, and by saying, “Philip baptized him,” wanted it understood that everything was fulfilled which, though passed over in the Scriptures for the sake of brevity, we know by the sequence of tradition must be fulfilled, then in the same way, in what is written, that Philip preached the Lord Jesus to the eunuch, there is no doubt at all that those things too were said in the instruction which concern the life and conduct of one who believes in the Lord Jesus. For this is to preach Christ: to say not only what is to be believed about Christ, but also what is to be observed by one who comes into the structure of Christ's body; indeed, to say everything that is to be believed about Christ, not only whose Son he is, whence he was begotten according to divinity and whence according to the flesh, what he suffered and why, what the power of his resurrection is, what gift of the Spirit he promised and gave to the faithful, but also what kind of members he, as their head, seeks, forms, loves, frees, and leads to eternal life and honor. When these things are said, sometimes more briefly and concisely, sometimes more fully and richly, Christ is preached; and yet not only what concerns faith but also what concerns the conduct of the faithful is not left out.

This can be understood also from what they mention that the apostle Paul said: “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” They think this was said as though nothing else had been taught them, so that they would first believe and then, once baptized, learn whatever concerns life and conduct. “This,” they say, “was more than enough for the apostle, who told them that even if they had many tutors in Christ, they did not have many fathers, since he himself had begotten them in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” If, then, he who begot them through the gospel, though he gives thanks that he baptized none of them except Crispus and Gaius and the household of Stephanas, taught them nothing more than Christ crucified, what if someone should say that they had not even heard that Christ rose again when they were begotten through the gospel? Why, then, does he say to them, “For I delivered to you first of all that Christ died according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose on the third day according to the Scriptures,” if he had taught nothing but the crucified? But if they do not understand it so, but contend that this too belongs to Christ crucified, let them know that people learn many things in Christ crucified, and above all that our old man has been crucified with him, so that the body of sin may be done away with and we may no longer serve sin. Hence he also says of himself: “Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.” So let them pay attention and see how Christ crucified is taught and learned, and let them know that it belongs to his cross that we too are crucified to the world in his body; in which is understood every restraint of evil desires. And so it cannot be that professed adulteries are permitted to those who are being formed by the cross of Christ. For the apostle Peter too, speaking of the sacrament of that cross, that is, of Christ's passion, warns that those who are consecrated by it should cease to sin, speaking thus: “Since Christ, then, suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same thought, for he who has died in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live the rest of his time in the flesh no longer for human desires but for the will of the Lord God,” and the rest, in which he shows as a consequence that he belongs to Christ crucified, that is, to Christ who suffered in the flesh, who lives well through the gospel, with carnal desires crucified in his body.

What of the fact that they think even those two commandments, on which the Lord says the whole law and the prophets hang, support their opinion? They cite them in such a way that, since the first commandment is stated, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,” and the second is like it, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” they believe that the first, where love of God is commanded, belongs to those to be baptized, and the second, where the conduct of human life seems to be, to the baptized; forgetting what is written: “If you do not love your brother whom you see, how can you love God whom you do not see?” and that other saying in the same letter of John: “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” And to what do all the disgraceful acts of evil conduct belong but to the love of this world? And so that first commandment, which they think belongs to those to be baptized, can in no way be kept without good conduct. I do not want to dwell on this at length; for when carefully considered, these two commandments are found to be so bound to each other that neither can there be love of God in a man if he does not love his neighbor, nor love of neighbor if he does not love God. But for the matter now in hand, what we have said about these two commandments is enough.