On the Grace of Christ and On Original Sin 2.30–2.48

Let us not, then, divide the times as Pelagius and his disciples do, saying that righteous men lived first by nature, then under the law, and third under grace: by nature, that is, from Adam through that long age in which the law had not yet been given. 'For then,' they say, 'the Creator was known by the guidance of reason, and how one should live was carried written in hearts, not by the law of the letter but by that of nature. But when morals had been corrupted,' they say, 'and nature, now discolored, began not to be enough, the law was added to it, by which, as by a moon, it might be restored to its original brightness, the rust rubbed off. But after,' as they argue, 'the excessive habit of sinning prevailed, which the law could not heal, Christ came and, as for a most desperate disease, the physician himself came to its aid, not through disciples but through himself.'

By arguing this they try to exclude the righteous of old from the grace of the mediator, as though the man Christ Jesus was not the mediator between God and those men, because, not yet having taken flesh from the virgin's womb, he was not yet a man when those righteous lived. If this were so, the apostle would by no means say, 'Through a man came death, and through a man the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive'; since, according to these people's empty talk, those righteous of old, their nature being sufficient for them, neither needed the man Christ as mediator, through whom they might be reconciled to God, nor will be made alive in him, to whose body and members, in respect of his having become man for men's sake, they are shown not to belong. But if, as the Truth says through his apostles, 'as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive,' because through that man came death and through this man the resurrection of the dead, what Christian would dare to doubt that even those righteous who pleased God in the more ancient times of the human race will come to the resurrection of eternal life, not of eternal death, because they will be made alive in Christ; that they will be made alive in Christ because they belong to the body of Christ; that they belong to the body of Christ because Christ is their head too; and that Christ is their head too because there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus? This he would not have been for them unless they had believed in his resurrection through his grace. And how would this have happened if they had not known that he would come in the flesh, and had not lived righteously and piously from this faith? For if the incarnation of Christ did not benefit them because it had not yet taken place, then neither does Christ's judgment of the living and the dead benefit us, because it has not yet taken place. But if we, through faith in this judgment, not yet done but to come, will stand at Christ's right hand, surely they, through faith in his incarnation, then not yet done but to come, are members of Christ.

Nor should it be thought that only the divinity of Christ, which always existed, benefited the righteous of old, and not also his humanity, which did not yet exist but was revealed to them. For in what the Lord Jesus says, 'Abraham longed to see my day, and he saw it and was glad,' if he meant 'his day' to be understood as his time, he certainly bore witness to Abraham that he was imbued with faith in his incarnation. For in respect of this he has time; but his divinity exceeds all time, because through it all times were made. And even if someone thinks it should be taken of the everlasting day, which is ended by no tomorrow and preceded by no yesterday, that is, of that eternity in which he is coeternal with the Father, how would Abraham truly long for this, unless he knew of the future mortality of him whose eternity he sought? Or if someone narrows the sense of these words so as to say that in the Lord's saying 'he sought my day' nothing is to be understood but 'he sought me, who am the abiding day, that is, the unfailing light' (as when we speak of the life of the Son, of which the Gospel speaks, saying, 'So he has granted the Son also to have life in himself,' we do not understand the Son to be one thing and his life another, but the same Son to be the life, who said, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life,' and of whom it was said, 'He is the true God and eternal life'), so that Abraham desired to see this divinity of his, equal to the Father, without any foreknowledge of his incarnation, as even some philosophers sought him, who learned nothing of his flesh: will anyone rightly understand in any other way the fact that Abraham bids his servant put his hand under his thigh and swear by the God of heaven, except that Abraham knew that the flesh in which the God of heaven was to come would be propagated from that thigh?

Of this flesh and blood Melchizedek too, when he blessed Abraham himself, brought forward a testimony very well known to faithful Christians, so that so long afterward it was said to Christ in the Psalms (something not yet done but still to come, yet sung by the one faith of the fathers, which is also ours): 'You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.' For to those who find death in Adam, Christ is of benefit in this respect, that he is mediator for life; but he is not mediator in the respect in which he is equal to the Father. For in that respect he is as far from us as the Father is. And how will there be a middle where the distance is the same? That is why the apostle does not say, 'one mediator between God and men, Christ Jesus,' but 'the man Christ Jesus.' He is mediator, then, in the respect in which he is man: lower than the Father in that he is nearer to us, higher than we in that he is nearer to the Father. This is said more plainly thus: lower than the Father because in the form of a servant, higher than we because without the stain of sin.

Therefore whoever contends that human nature at any age does not need the physician, the second Adam, because it was not corrupted in the first Adam, is convicted of being an enemy of the grace of God, not in some question where one may doubt or err without harm to the faith, but in the very rule of faith by which we are Christians. And what of the fact that these people praise the human nature that existed before the law as though it were still less corrupted by evil conduct? They do not consider that men were then sunk in sins so great and so intolerable that, apart from one man of God and his wife and three sons and as many daughters-in-law, the whole world was destroyed by the flood, by the just judgment of God, as the small land of Sodom was later destroyed by fire. From the time, then, when 'through one man sin entered the world, and through sin death, and so it passed to all men, in whom all sinned,' the whole mass of perdition certainly became the possession of the destroyer. And so no one, absolutely no one, has been or is or will be freed from it except by the grace of the Redeemer.

Whether before Abraham the righteous or their little ones were marked with some bodily and visible sacrament, Scripture does not state. But Abraham himself received the sign of circumcision, 'a seal of the righteousness of faith,' and received it in such a way that thereafter he was commanded to circumcise all the little ones of his house too, fresh from their mothers' wombs, on the eighth day of their birth, so that even those who could not yet believe with the heart unto righteousness might nevertheless receive the seal of the righteousness of faith. This was commanded under such great terror that God said that that soul would perish from his people whose foreskin had not been circumcised on the eighth day. If the justice of so terrible a penalty is asked, will not all their argumentation about free choice and the praiseworthy soundness and purity of nature, however subtle, be beaten back, broken, and shattered? For what evil, I ask, did a little one commit by his own will, that when another neglected to circumcise him, he himself should be condemned with so severe a condemnation that that soul should perish from his people? For it was not the terror of temporal death that was struck into them, since of the righteous, when they died, it was rather said, 'And he was gathered to his people,' or 'He was gathered to his fathers'; for no temptation is thereafter feared for a man that might separate him from his people, if his people is the people of God.

What, then, is the meaning of so great a condemnation for no fault of one's own will? For it is not, as some think following the Platonists, that each infant's soul is repaid for what it committed by its own will before this life, when before this body it had free choice of living well or badly; since the apostle Paul says most plainly that those not yet born had done nothing good or evil. Why, then, is an infant rightly punished with that perdition, except because it belongs to the mass of perdition and is rightly understood, as born of Adam, to be condemned by the bond of the ancient debt, unless it has been freed from it, not according to what is owed but according to grace? And what grace but the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, whom, among the other sacraments of the ancients, the circumcision of the foreskin itself also prophesied? For the eighth day, in the recurring cycle of weeks, is the Lord's day, on which the Lord rose; and 'the rock was Christ.' Hence the knife of circumcision is of stone, and the flesh of the foreskin is the body of sin.

The sacraments have therefore been changed, since he has come whom they signified was to come; but the help of the mediator has not been changed, who even before he came in the flesh freed his ancient members by faith in his incarnation. And we, when we were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of our flesh, have been made alive together with Christ, in whom we have been circumcised with the circumcision not made with hands, which the circumcision made with hands prefigured, so that the body of sin with which we were born from Adam might be done away. The propagation of a condemned origin condemns us, unless we are cleansed by the likeness of sinful flesh, in which he was sent without sin, who nevertheless condemned sin by sin; for he was made sin for us. Hence the apostle says: 'We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. Him who knew no sin he made sin for us, so that we might be the righteousness of God in him.' God, then, to whom we are reconciled through him, made him sin for us, that is, a sacrifice through which our sins might be forgiven, since sacrifices for sins are called sins. And indeed he was sacrificed for our sins, he alone among men having no blemish, such as was required even then in animals, by which it was signified that one without blemish would come to heal blemishes. On whatever day of his birth, then, an infant is baptized in Christ, he is as it were circumcised on the eighth day, since he is circumcised in him who rose on the third day after he was crucified, but on the eighth day in the weeks. And he is circumcised for the stripping off of the body of the flesh, that is, so that the grace of spiritual regeneration may release the debt which the contagion of carnal generation contracted. For no one is clean from filth (from what filth, I ask, but that of sin?), not even an infant whose life on earth is one day old.

But they argue thus, saying: 'Then marriage is evil, and the man whom marriage begets is not the work of God?' As if the good of marriage were the disease of concupiscence, in which those who do not know God love their wives, which the apostle forbids; and not rather conjugal chastity, by which carnal lust is brought back to the good use of begetting children in an orderly way. Or as if a man could be anything but the work of God, not only one begotten of marriage but also one begotten of fornication or adultery. But in this question, where the issue is not for what the Creator is necessary but for what the Savior is necessary, we must look not at what good there is in the procreation of nature but at what evil there is in sin, by which it is certain that nature has been corrupted. Both are propagated together, the nature and the fault of nature, of which one is good and the other evil. The one is received from the generosity of the Creator; the other is contracted from the origin of condemnation. The cause of the one is the good will of the supreme God; the cause of the other the evil will of the first man. The one shows God as the founder of the creature; the other shows God as the punisher of disobedience. Finally, the same Christ, for the creating of the one, is the maker of man; for the healing of the other, he was made man.

Marriage, then, is good in all the things that are proper to marriage. And these are three: the ordinance of begetting, the fidelity of chastity, and the sacrament of wedlock. For the ordinance of begetting it is written, 'I want the younger women to marry, to bear children, to be mothers of families'; for the fidelity of chastity, 'The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband; likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife'; for the sacrament of wedlock, 'What God has joined, let not man separate.' We remember having discussed these things sufficiently, as far as we could with the Lord's help, in other works of ours which are not unknown to you. Because of all these, 'marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled.' For in so far as marriage is good, so far it does very much good even from the evil of lust; for it is not lust that makes good use of lust, but reason. Lust is in that law of the disobedient members warring against the law of the mind, which the apostle points out; but reason making good use of lust is in the law of marriage. For if no good could come from evil, God would not create a man from an adulterous union. Just as, then, the damnable evil of adultery, when a man is born even from it, is not imputed to God, who certainly does a good work of his own in the evil work of men, so whatever is shameful in that disobedience of the members, at which they blushed who after sin covered those same members with fig leaves, is not imputed to marriage, on account of which conjugal intercourse is not only lawful but also useful and honorable, but is imputed to the sin of disobedience, whose penalty followed: that man, disobedient to God, should feel his own members disobedient to himself. Blushing at them, because they were moved not at the choice of his will but at the incitement of lust, as if by their own choice, he took care to cover what he judged shameful. For man should not have been ashamed of the work of God, nor were the things which the Creator saw fit to establish in any way created to be blushed at. And so that simple nakedness displeased neither God nor man when there was nothing to be ashamed of, because nothing had gone before to be punished.

There would without doubt have been marriage even if sin had not come first, for it was for no other reason that not another man but a woman was made as a helper for the man; and those words of God, 'Increase and multiply,' are not a prediction of sins to be condemned but a blessing of fruitful marriage. For by these ineffable words of his, that is, by the divine reasons in the truth of his wisdom, through which all things were made, he implanted in the first human beings the power of seed. But if nature had not been dishonored by sin, far be it from us to suppose that marriage in paradise would have been such that in it the genital members would be moved to sow offspring not at the bidding of the will, as the foot is moved to walk, the hand to work, the tongue to speak, but by the heat of lust; or that, as now happens, the integrity of virginity would be violated for the conception of offspring by the force of a turbulent ardor; rather, it would obey the command of the most tranquil love, and so there would be no pain and blood of the virgin in intercourse, just as there would be no groaning of the mother in giving birth. These things are not believed because they have not been experienced in this condition of mortality. For nature, changed for the worse by the fault, finds no example of that first purity. But we speak to believers, who know how to believe the divine words even when no examples of experienced truth are brought forward. For how could I now show a man made from dust without any parents, and a wife made for him from his side? And yet what the eye no longer finds, faith believes.

So too the tranquillity of the first marriage without the passion of lust, and the movement of the genital members, like that of the other members, not at the incitement of unbridled heat but at the choice of the will (such as marriage would have continued to be had the disgrace of sin not intervened), cannot now be shown, but can not unreasonably be believed from what is written by divine authority. For just as I do not now find anyone having intercourse without itching lust, so I do not find anyone giving birth without pain and groaning, or anyone born without future death; and yet, according to the truth of the holy Scriptures, neither the groaning of the woman in labor nor the death of man would have existed had sin not come first. So neither would that at which they blushed who covered those members; for this too is written in the same holy Scriptures as having followed after sin had come first. For unless an unseemly movement had announced those members as things to be noticed to their eyes, which were certainly not closed, but not opened to this, that is, not attentive to it, they would have felt nothing in their body shameful and needing to be veiled, since God had made the whole of it praiseworthy; because, had the crime not gone before which disobedience dared to commit, the disgrace would not have followed which modesty wished to hide.

It is clear, then, that this is not to be imputed to marriage, since even if it did not exist, there would still be marriage, whose good is not taken away by this evil; rather, by marriage even this evil is turned to good use. But since in the present condition of mortals intercourse and lust now go together, it comes about that when lust is blamed, lawful and honorable conjugal intercourse is also thought to be blamed by those who either will not or cannot distinguish these things. They do not notice that the good of marriage is that in which marriage glories, that is, offspring, chastity, and the sacrament, while the other is not an evil of marriage but of carnal concupiscence, at which even marriage blushes. But since the good of marriage, that is, the propagation of children, cannot be accomplished without that evil, when it comes to a work of this kind, privacy is sought, witnesses are removed, even the presence of the couple's own children, if any have already been born of it, is avoided once they have begun by their age to perceive such things; and so marriage is allowed to do what is lawful in such a way that it does not neglect to hide what is unseemly. Hence it is that even infants, who cannot sin, are nevertheless not born without the contagion of sin, not from what is lawful but from what is unseemly. For from what is lawful nature is born; from what is unseemly, the fault. Of the nature that is born God is the author, who created man and who joined man and woman by the law of marriage; but of the fault the author is the cunning of the deceiving devil and the will of the consenting man.

In this God did nothing except that by just judgment he condemned man, sinning by his will, together with his stock; and therefore whatever was not yet born was rightly condemned there in the transgressing root. In that condemned stock carnal generation holds man, and only spiritual regeneration frees him from it. Therefore in regenerated parents, if indeed they persevere in the same grace, this lust will without doubt do no harm, because of the forgiveness of sins that has taken place in them, unless they use it badly, not only in all unlawful corruptions but even with their own spouses, when they give themselves to the work of begetting children not with the will to propagate but serve the satisfying of desire with the pleasure of wantonness. This the apostle grants to husbands and wives, to avoid fornications, that they should not defraud one another except by consent for a time, so as to devote themselves to prayer, by way of concession, not of command. For clearly, while he grants pardon, he indicates fault. But conjugal intercourse, which the marriage contracts too declare to take place for the sake of procreating children, is good in itself, absolutely, not merely in comparison with fornication. And although, because of the body of death, which has not yet been renewed by the resurrection, it cannot take place without a certain animal movement at which human nature blushes, yet the intercourse itself is not sin, where reason uses lust for good and is not overcome by it for evil.

This concupiscence of the flesh would do harm merely by being present, were it not that the forgiveness of sins so benefits us that, while it is present both in one who is born and in one who is reborn, in the one born it can both be present and do harm, but in the one reborn it can be present but not do harm. And it harms those who are born to such a degree that, unless they are reborn, nothing can benefit them, even if they are born of the reborn. For the fault of origin remains in the offspring so as to make it guilty, even if in the parent the guilt of that same fault has been washed away by the forgiveness of sins, until every fault by consenting to which one sins is consumed by the final regeneration, that is, by the renewal of the flesh itself, which is promised in its future resurrection, where we shall not only commit no sins but shall not even have any vicious desires by consenting to which we might sin. To this blessed perfection one comes by the grace of the holy washing now given. For by the merit of that regeneration of the spirit through which all sins are now forgiven, there will also come about the regeneration of the flesh for eternal life, by which, in that very flesh rising incorruptible, the incitements of all sins will be healed. But that salvation has so far been brought about in hope; it is not held in reality nor possessed as present, but is awaited through patience. And therefore not only all sins, whose forgiveness now takes place in baptism, which make people guilty when vicious desires are consented to and sin is committed, but also the vicious desires themselves, which, if not consented to, contract no guilt of sin, and which will not exist in the other life though they do in this one, are all cleansed by the same washing of baptism.

The guilt of that fault of which we are speaking will therefore remain in the carnal offspring of the regenerated until there too it is washed away by the washing of regeneration. For a regenerated man does not regenerate children of the flesh but generates them, and therefore passes on to them not what he is as regenerated but what he is as generated. So, then, whether a guilty unbeliever or an acquitted believer, neither generates acquitted children, but guilty ones; just as not only the seeds of the wild olive but also those of the olive produce not olives but wild olives. So the first birth holds man in condemnation, from which only the second frees him. The devil holds, Christ frees; the deceiver of Eve holds, the son of Mary frees; he holds who came to the husband through the wife, he frees who was born of a wife who had not known a husband; he holds who brought the cause of lust to the woman, he frees who was conceived in a woman without lust. He could hold all men absolutely through one, and none frees from his dominion but the one whom he could not hold. Finally, the very sacraments of the church, which it celebrates by the authority of so ancient a tradition that these people, although they think that in little ones they are performed as a pretense rather than truly, nevertheless do not dare to reject them by open disapproval: the very sacraments of the holy church, I say, show clearly enough that little ones, even those most newly born, are freed from the service of the devil through the grace of Christ. For besides the fact that they are baptized for the forgiveness of sins by a mystery that is not deceptive but faithful, the opposing power is first exorcised in them and breathed out, and they answer, by the words of those who carry them, that they renounce it. By all these sacred and evident signs of hidden realities they are shown to pass from the worst captor to the best redeemer, who, having taken on weakness for us, bound the strong man in order to seize his goods; because the weakness of God is stronger not only than men but also than angels. God, then, freeing small and great, shows in both what the Truth spoke through the apostle; for he rescues not only those older in age but also little ones from the power of darkness, to transfer them into the kingdom of the Son of his love.

Nor should anyone wonder and say: 'Why then does the goodness of God create what the malice of the devil possesses?' For he bestows this on the seeds of his creature out of that goodness by which he also makes his sun rise on the good and the evil and sends rain on the just and the unjust. By this goodness he blessed the seeds themselves, or established them by blessing. This blessing of a praiseworthy nature a damnable fault did not take away; though it had such force, through the justice of God punishing it, that men are born with the fault of original sin, it did not have such force that men are not born; just as in those older in age any vices of sins do not take man away from man, but God's good work remains in however great evil works of the ungodly. For although 'man, placed in honor and not understanding, is compared to the beasts and becomes like them,' he does not become so like them as to be a beast. For he is compared through a fault, not through nature; not through the fault of a beast, but of nature. For man is of such excellence in comparison with a beast that the fault of a man is the nature of a beast; and yet the nature of man is not therefore turned into the nature of a beast. And therefore God condemns man for the fault by which his nature is dishonored, not for the nature, which is not taken away by the fault. But far be it from us to think that beasts are liable to the punishment of condemnation, which it is just should be free from misery, since they cannot share in happiness. What wonder, then, or what injustice is it that man is made subject to an unclean spirit, not because of his nature but because of his uncleanness, which, coming not from the divine work but from the human will, he contracted in the stain of his origin; since that unclean spirit itself is good in that it is a spirit, evil in that it is unclean? The former is from the work of God, the latter from its own will. So the stronger nature, that is, the angelic, holds the lower nature, the human, in subjection through fellowship in fault. Therefore the mediator, stronger than the angels, was made weak for men's sake; so the pride of the captor is destroyed by the humility of the redeemer, so that he who glories over the sons of men in angelic strength is conquered by the Son of God, who took up human weakness.

But now, as we are about to conclude this book too, we think we ought to have Ambrose, the bishop of God, whose faith Pelagius especially proclaims as most sound among the church writers of the Latin tongue, answer the slanderous talk of these people on original sin, as we did on grace; for in the blotting out of original sin grace itself is commended more evidently. In the work Saint Ambrose wrote on the resurrection he says: 'I fell in Adam, I was cast out of paradise in Adam, I died in Adam; how does he call me back, unless he has found me in Adam, liable to guilt and owed to death in him, and so justified in Christ?' Again, writing against the Novatianists, he says: 'All of us men are born under sin, and our very origin is in fault, as you have read where David says: Behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins my mother bore me. That is why Paul's flesh was a body of death, as he himself says: Who will deliver me from the body of this death? But Christ's flesh condemned sin, which he did not experience in being born and which he crucified in dying, so that in our flesh there might be justification through grace where before there was defilement through guilt.' Again, the same man, expounding the prophet Isaiah, says, speaking of Christ: 'Therefore, as a man, he was tempted in all things, and in the likeness of men he endured everything; but as born of the Spirit he abstained from sin. For every man is a liar, and no one is without sin but God alone. It has been kept, therefore, that no one born of man and woman, that is, through that union of bodies, is seen to be free from sin. But he who is free from sin is free also from this kind of conception.' Again, expounding the Gospel according to Luke, he says: 'For no male intercourse opened the secrets of the virgin's womb, but the Holy Spirit poured immaculate seed into the inviolate womb. For of those born of woman the Lord Jesus alone is holy in every respect, who by the newness of his immaculate birth did not experience the contagion of earthly corruption and by his heavenly majesty repelled it.'

Yet Pelagius contradicts these words of the man of God, whom he himself praised with such acclaim, and says that 'as we are begotten without virtue, so also without vice.' What remains, then, but that Pelagius either condemn this error of his or regret having so praised Ambrose? But since blessed Ambrose said these things according to the Catholic faith, as a Catholic bishop, it follows that Pelagius, straying from this way of faith, has deservedly been condemned together with his disciple Caelestius by the authority of the Catholic Church, unless he repents, not of having praised Ambrose, but of having thought contrary to Ambrose. I know that you read insatiably what is written for the building up or strengthening of the faith; nevertheless this book, however useful for that purpose, must now at last be brought to an end.