On Nature and Grace 24–44

He says that punishment would be matter for sin if the sinner was weakened so as to sin more; and he does not consider how deservedly the light of truth deserts the transgressor of the law. Deserted by it, he is certainly blind, and must stumble the more, and in falling be bruised, and, bruised, not rise, so that he hears the voice of the law only to be admonished to implore the grace of the Savior. Or is there no punishment for those of whom the apostle says: “For although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks, but became futile in their thinking, and their foolish heart was darkened”? Certainly this darkening was already retribution and punishment; and yet through this punishment, that is, through the blindness of heart that comes when the light of wisdom deserts, they fell into more and grave sins. “For claiming to be wise, they became fools.” This is a heavy punishment, if one understands it; and see where this punishment led them: “And they exchanged,” he says, “the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed beasts and serpents.” These things they did as a result of the punishment of sin, by which their foolish heart was darkened. And yet because of these things, since, though penal, they are themselves sins too, he adds and says: “Therefore God gave them up to the desires of their heart, to uncleanness.” See how God condemned them more heavily, giving them up to the desires of their heart, to uncleanness. See also what they do as a result of this punishment: “that they dishonor,” he says, “their bodies among themselves.” And since this is a punishment of iniquity while it is also iniquity, he makes it plainer, saying: “Who exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever, amen. For this reason,” he says, “God gave them up to shameful passions.” See how often God punishes, and from that same punishment more and graver sins arise: “For their women exchanged the natural use for that use which is against nature; and likewise the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their desire for one another, men committing shameless acts with men.” And to show that these sins are such that they are also punishments of sins, he added to these as well: “and receiving in themselves the due recompense of their error.” See how often he punishes, and what sins the same punishment brings forth and makes to sprout. Notice further: “And since they did not see fit to have God in their knowledge,” he says, “God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do what is not fitting; filled with all iniquity, fraud, malice, avarice, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, whisperers, slanderers, hateful to God, insolent, proud, boastful, inventors of evils, disobedient to parents, foolish, disorderly, without affection, without mercy.” Let this man now say here: “Sin ought not to have been punished in such a way that the sinner through the punishment committed more.”

Perhaps he may answer that God does not compel them to these things, but only abandons those who deserve to be abandoned. If he says this, he says what is most true; for, abandoned, as I said, by the light of righteousness, and so darkened, what do they bring forth but all these works of darkness that I have mentioned, until it is said to them, if they obey the word: “Rise, you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ will enlighten you”? The Truth calls them dead (hence also that saying, “Let the dead bury their own dead”); the Truth, then, calls dead those whom this man says could not be harmed or corrupted by sin, because, you see, he has learned that sin is not a substance. No one says that man was made in such a way that he could go from righteousness into sin but could not return from sin to righteousness; but for going into sin, free choice, by which he corrupted himself, is enough; while for returning to righteousness he needs a physician, since he is not healthy; he needs one who gives life, since he is dead. Of this grace he says nothing at all, as though he could heal himself by his will alone, because it alone could corrupt him. We do not tell him that the death of the body has power to cause sin, where it is only punishment (for no one sins by dying in the body); but the death of the soul has power to cause sin, the soul which its life, that is, its God, has deserted, and which must do dead works until it comes to life again by the grace of Christ. Far be it from us to say that hunger and thirst and the other bodily troubles impose a necessity of sinning; exercised by these troubles, the life of the righteous has shone more brightly, and by overcoming them through patience has gained greater glory; but helped by the grace of God, helped by the Spirit of God, helped by the mercy of God; not exalting itself with a proud will, but earning strength by humble confession. For it knew how to say to God: “For you are my patience.” Of this grace and help and mercy, without which we cannot live well, I do not know why this man says nothing at all; indeed, by defending nature as sufficient for itself for righteousness if only the will is present, he most openly contradicts the grace of Christ, by which we are justified. Why the death of the body remains for the exercise of faith once the guilt of sin has been loosed by grace, even though it came from sin, I have already discussed, as well as I could, in those books to Marcellinus of holy memory.

As for his saying that the Lord could die without sin: for him, even to be born was a matter of the power of mercy, not of the condition of nature; so also he died by his power, and this is our price, by which he redeemed us from death. And this too their argument strives to make void, when human nature is so defended by them that free choice may not need this price in order to be transferred from the power of darkness and of him who has the power of death into the kingdom of Christ the Lord. And yet when the Lord went to his passion, he said: “Behold, the prince of this world is coming, and he will find nothing in me” (certainly no sin, for which he who has the power of death might act by his own right to destroy him); “but that all may know,” he says, “that I do the will of my Father, rise, let us go from here”; that is, because I do not die by the necessity of sin, but by the will of obedience.

He says that no evil is the cause of any good; as if punishment were a good, by which, however, many have been corrected. There are, then, evils that do good, by the wonderful mercy of God. Did he suffer anything good who said: “You turned your face from me, and I was troubled”? Certainly not; and yet this trouble was in a way medicinal for him against pride. For he had said in his abundance, “I shall not be moved forever,” and was attributing to himself what he had from the Lord. For what did he have that he had not received? So it had to be shown him from where he had it, so that, humble, he might receive back what, proud, he had lost. Therefore he says: “Lord, in your will you gave strength to my beauty. In my abundance I said, ‘I shall not be moved,’ though this came to me from you, not from myself. Then you turned your face away, and I was troubled.”

The proud mind does not understand this at all; but the Lord is great, who can persuade him of it in the way he himself knows. For we are more inclined to look for what we may answer against the things objected to our error than to consider how wholesome they are, so that we may be free of error. So with these men we must deal not so much by arguments as by prayers for them, as for ourselves. For we do not say to them what he set up as an objection to himself, that sin was necessary so that there might be a cause for God's mercy (would that there had been no misery, so that this mercy would not be necessary!); but that the iniquity of sin was the graver the more easily man could have avoided sinning, since no weakness yet held him; and a most just punishment followed, so that he received in himself the due recompense of his sin, losing the obedience, in a way, of his own body placed beneath him, since he himself had despised obedience, the chief obedience, to his own Lord. And since we are now born with that same law of sin which in our members wars against the law of the mind, we ought neither to murmur against God nor to dispute against a most evident fact, but to seek his mercy for our punishment and to pray for it.

Notice carefully how he has said: “God indeed applies his mercy to this part too, if ever it is necessary, because man must be helped in this way after sin, not because God desired the cause of this necessity.” Do you see how he does not say that God's mercy is necessary in order that we may not sin, but because we have sinned? Then he adds: “But the physician too ought to be ready to treat one who is already wounded; he ought not to wish that a healthy man be wounded.” If this comparison fits the matters we are discussing, then certainly human nature cannot be wounded by sin, since sin is no substance. So just as one who limps, say, from a wound, is treated so that, when the past harm has been healed, his future walking may be set straight, so the heavenly physician heals our evils not only so that they may no longer exist, but so that we may walk rightly from then on; which even when healthy we shall not be able to do except with his help. For a human physician, when he has healed a man, leaves him thereafter to God, to be sustained by the bodily elements and foods, so that the same health may grow strong and last with suitable support; God provides these to those living in the flesh, and to him belonged also the things the physician applied while he was treating him. For no physician heals anyone with things he himself has created, but with the resources of him who creates all things necessary for the healthy and the sick. But God himself, when through the Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, he heals the sick spiritually or gives life to the dead, that is, justifies the ungodly, and when he has brought him to perfect health, that is, to perfect life and righteousness, does not desert him, if he is not deserted, so that he may always live piously and righteously. For as the eye of the body, even when entirely healthy, cannot see unless helped by the brightness of light, so a man, even when most perfectly justified, cannot live rightly unless he is divinely helped by the eternal light of righteousness. God heals, then, not only to blot out what we have sinned, but also to grant that we may not sin.

He treats cleverly, turns over, and, as he thinks, refutes and overturns what is said to them: that it was even necessary for man, in order to remove the occasion of pride or glory, that he should not be able to be without sin. For he thinks it most absurd and most foolish that there should have been sin so that there would not be sin, since pride itself is certainly sin; as though an ulcer did not also consist in pain, and surgery cause pain, so that pain is removed by pain. If we had not experienced this, and heard of it in some lands where such things had never happened, we would without doubt laugh, and perhaps even use this man's words and say: “It is most absurd that pain should have been necessary so that there would not be the pain of an ulcer.”

“But God,” they say, “can heal all things.” He certainly does this, so as to heal all things; but he does it by his own judgment, and does not take the order of healing from the sick man. For without doubt he wished to make the apostle most strong, to whom, however, he says, “Power is made perfect in weakness,” and does not take away from him, though he prayed so often, some thorn or other in the flesh, which he says was given him lest he be exalted by the greatness of the revelations. For the other vices have power only in evil deeds; but pride alone must be guarded against even in deeds rightly done. So those are warned, lest by attributing God's gifts to their own power and exalting themselves they perish more grievously than if they did no good at all, to whom it is said: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to work, for his good will.” Why, then, “with fear and trembling” and not rather with security, if God works, unless because, on account of our will, without which we cannot work well, it can quickly creep into the human mind to think that what it does well is its own alone, and to say in its abundance, “I shall not be moved forever”? Therefore he who by his will had given strength to his beauty turned away his face a little, so that he who had said this might be troubled; since that is the swelling that must be healed by pains.

So it is not said to man, “It is necessary to sin so that you may not sin,” but it is said to man, “God deserts you somewhat in the thing you are proud of, so that you may know it is not yours but his, and learn not to be proud.” For what of that saying of the apostle! Is it not so astonishing that it would not be credible, except that he himself says it, whom it is impious to contradict when he speaks the truth? For which of the faithful does not know that the first persuasion to sin came from Satan, and that he is the first author of all sins? And yet some are delivered to Satan “that they may learn not to blaspheme.” How then is the work of Satan shut out by the work of Satan? Let him consider these and such things, lest things seem too acute to him that sound rather clever but, when examined, are found blunt. What of his even using comparisons, by which he rather suggests what ought to be answered him? “What more shall I say,” he says, “except that it can be believed that fires are put out by fires, if it can be believed that sins are cured by sins?” What if no one can put out fires by fires, and yet, as I have shown, pains can be cured by pains? Poisons too, if he inquires and learns, can be driven out by poisons. And if he notices also that the heat of fevers is sometimes broken by certain medicinal heats, perhaps he will even grant that fires can be put out by fires.

“How,” he says, “shall we separate pride itself from sin?” What is he pressing with this, when it is clear that it too is sin? “To sin,” he says, “is as much to be proud as to be proud is to sin. For ask what any sin is, and see whether you will find any sin without the name of pride.” He develops and tries to prove this opinion thus: “Every sin,” he says, “unless I am mistaken, is contempt of God, and all contempt of God is pride. For what is so proud as to despise God? So all sin is also pride, as Scripture also says: ‘The beginning of all sin is pride.’” Let him search carefully, and he will find that in the law the sin of pride is sharply distinguished from other sins. For many sins are committed through pride; but not all things that are done wrongly are done proudly: certainly not those done by the ignorant, by the weak, and often by those who weep; and pride, though it is itself a great sin, exists so much by itself without others that often, as I said, it comes upon us and creeps in with swifter foot not in sins but in the very things done rightly. But the saying which he understood otherwise was most truly said, “The beginning of all sin is pride,” since it cast down the devil, from whom the origin of sin arose, and, envy following, overthrew man, while he stood, from the place from which the devil himself had fallen. For certainly that serpent sought the door of boasting by which to enter, when he said, “You will be as gods.” Therefore it was said, “The beginning of all sin is pride,” and, “The beginning of man's pride is to fall away from God.”

And what does he mean when he says: “Then how can he be subject to God for the guilt of that sin which he knows is not his own? For it is not his,” he says, “if it is necessary. Or if it is his, it is voluntary; and if it is voluntary, it can be avoided.” We answer: it is entirely his; but the fault by which it is committed has not yet been healed in every part; and that it grew in at all came from health not rightly used. From this fault, being now in poor health, whether by weakness or by blindness, he commits more sins; and for this he must pray to be healed and thereafter to live in lasting health, not be proud, as though a man were healed by the same power by which he was corrupted.

I would say this, however, in such a way as to confess that I do not know the deeper judgment of God, why he does not quickly heal even pride itself, which lies in wait for the human mind even in deeds rightly done; for whose healing pious souls pray to him with tears and great groanings, that he may stretch out his right hand to them as they strive to overcome it and in a way to trample and crush it. For when a man has rejoiced that in some good work he has overcome even pride, from that very joy it lifts up its head and says: “Look, I am alive; why do you triumph? And I am alive because you triumph.” For perhaps it pleases one to triumph over it, as if it were conquered, before the time, when its last shadow will be swallowed up, as I think, in that noonday which is promised as Scripture says: “And he will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your judgment as the noonday,” if what is written above is done: “Reveal your way to the Lord, and hope in him, and he himself will do it”; not, as some think, that they themselves do it. For he seems to have had in view no one else, when he said, “and he himself will do it,” than those who say, “We do it,” that is, we ourselves justify ourselves. Here indeed we too work; but we work together with him as he works, because his mercy goes before us. It goes before us that we may be healed, and it will also follow us that, once healed, we may grow strong; it goes before us that we may be called, it will follow us that we may be glorified; it goes before us that we may live piously, it will follow us that we may live with him always, because without him we can do nothing. For both are written: “My God, his mercy will go before me,” and, “Your mercy will follow me all the days of my life.” Let us, then, reveal our way to him by confession, not praise it by defending it. For if it is not his way but ours, it is without doubt not right. Let us reveal it by confessing, since it is not hidden from him even if we try to cover it. “And it is good to confess to the Lord.”

For so he will give us what pleases him, if what displeases him in us displeases us too. He will turn aside, as it is written, our paths from his way, and will make that way ours which is his, since it is granted by him to those who believe in him and hope in him that he himself will do it. For this is the righteous way, of which those are ignorant who “have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge, and, seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes,” who said, “I am the way.” Yet the divine voice has frightened those who already walk in it, lest they exalt themselves as if by their own strength in it. For to those to whom the apostle says for this reason, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to work, for his good will,” for this very reason the psalm too says: “Serve the Lord in fear, and rejoice with trembling. Lay hold of discipline, lest the Lord be angry and you perish from the righteous way, when his wrath is kindled in a short time against you.” He does not say, “lest the Lord be angry and not show you the righteous way, or not bring you into the righteous way,” but could so frighten those already walking there as to say, “lest you perish from the righteous way.” Why, unless because pride, as I have said so often and must say often, must be guarded against even in things rightly done, that is, in the righteous way itself, lest a man, while he counts as his own what is God's, lose what is God's and return to what is his own? So let us do what that psalm concludes with: “Blessed are all who trust in him,” that is, that he himself may do it; that he himself may show his way, to whom it is said, “Show us, O Lord, your mercy”; that he himself may give salvation, so that we may be able to walk, to whom it is said, “And give us, O Lord, your salvation”; that he himself may lead us in the same way, to whom it is said, “Lead me, O Lord, in your way, and I will walk in your truth”; that he himself may bring us to those promises to which the way leads, to whom it is said, “For there your hand will lead me, and your right hand will bring me”; that he himself may feed there those who recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of whom it is said, “He will make them recline, and will pass by and serve them.” For when we mention these things we do not take away the choice of the will, but proclaim the grace of God. For whom do these things profit but one who wills, but wills humbly, not exalting himself on the strength of his will as though it alone sufficed for the perfection of righteousness?

But far be it from us to say to him what he says is said against him by some, that man is being compared to God if it is asserted that he can be without sin; as if an angel, who is without sin, were compared to God. I for my part think this: that even when there is such righteousness in us that nothing at all can be added to it, the creature will not be made equal to the Creator. But if some think that our change will be so complete that we shall be turned into the substance of God and become entirely what he is, let them see how they establish their opinion; I confess that I am not persuaded of it.

Here I strongly support the author of this book, in that against those who say, “What you assert seems reasonable, but it is proud to say that a man can be without sin,” he answers that if it is true, it must in no way be called proud. For he says most acutely and most truly: “On which side should humility rather be placed? Doubtless on the side of falsehood, if what is proved to be on the side of truth is pride.” And so it pleases him, and rightly pleases him, that humility should rather be placed on the side of truth, not on the side of falsehood. From this it follows that there can be no doubt at all that he who said, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us,” spoke the truth, lest he seem to have said something false for the sake of humility. For this is why he added, “and the truth is not in us,” when perhaps it would have been enough to say, “we deceive ourselves,” had he not noticed that some might think that “we deceive ourselves” was said because even one who praises himself for a true good is puffed up. By adding, then, “and the truth is not in us,” he shows plainly, as this man too very rightly approves, that it is not true at all if we say that we have no sin; lest humility, placed on the side of falsehood, lose the reward of truth.

Moreover, in thinking that he is pleading God's cause by defending nature, he does not notice that by saying that this same nature is healthy he rejects the mercy of the physician. But he who is its Creator is its Savior. We must not, then, so praise the Creator that we are forced, or rather truly convicted, to say that the Savior is superfluous. Let us therefore honor the nature of man with fitting praises, and refer those praises to the glory of the Creator; but let us be so grateful that he created us that we are not ungrateful that he heals us. Our faults, indeed, which he heals, let us attribute not to the divine work but to the human will and to its just punishment; but as we confess that it was in our power that they should not happen, so let us confess that their being healed lies more in his mercy than in our power. This mercy and healing help of the Savior this man places only in this, that he pardons past sins, not that he helps us to avoid future ones. Here he is most perniciously deceived; here, though unknowingly, he forbids us to watch and pray that we may not enter into temptation, when he contends that it lies in our power alone that this should not happen to us.

He says, like one of sound mind, that the examples of certain men whom we read to have sinned were not written in order to serve for despair of not sinning and seem in a way to offer us security in sinning, but so that we might learn either the humility of repentance or that even in such falls salvation is not to be despaired of. For some who have fallen into sins perish the more through despair, and not only neglect the medicine of repentance, but become slaves of lusts and wicked desires in order to satisfy shameful and abominable longings; as if they would lose something if they did not do what lust urges, since certain damnation already awaits them. Against this very dangerous and deadly disease the recollection of the sins into which even righteous and holy men have fallen is of value.

But he seems to ask acutely how we are to believe these saints departed from this life, with sin or without sin; so that, if the answer is “with sin”, it may be thought that damnation followed them, which it is impious to believe; but if it is said that they left this life without sin, he may prove that a man, at least as death approached, was without sin in this life. Here, acute as he is, he pays too little attention to the fact that it is not in vain that even the righteous say in prayer, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors,” and that the Lord Christ, when he had explained this same prayer in teaching it, most truly added: “For if you forgive men their sins, your Father will forgive you your sins.” For by this daily spiritual incense, as it were, which is offered before God on the altar of the heart, which we are admonished to have lifted up, even if one does not live here without sin, one may die without sin, since what is committed from time to time through ignorance or weakness is blotted out from time to time by pardon.

Next he mentions those who are recorded not only not to have sinned but also to have lived righteously: Abel, Enoch, Melchizedek, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Joshua son of Nun, Phinehas, Samuel, Nathan, Elijah, Elisha, Micaiah, Daniel, Hananiah, Azariah, Mishael, Ezekiel, Mordecai, Simeon, Joseph to whom the Virgin Mary was betrothed, John. He adds also women: Deborah, Hannah the mother of Samuel, Judith, Esther, the other Anna, daughter of Phanuel, Elizabeth; and even the mother of our Lord and Savior, whom he says piety must confess to have been without sin. Excepting, then, the holy Virgin Mary, concerning whom, for the honor of the Lord, I wish no question at all to be raised when we are dealing with sins (for how do we know what more grace was conferred on her to conquer sin in every respect, who merited to conceive and bear him who certainly had no sin?): excepting this Virgin, then, if we could gather all those holy men and women, when they lived here, and ask them whether they were without sin, what do we think they would have answered? Whether what this man says, or what the apostle John says? I ask you: however great the excellence of holiness they had in this body, if they could have been asked this, they would have cried with one voice: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Or would they perhaps have answered this more humbly than truly? But he is already pleased, and rightly pleased, not to place the praise of humility on the side of falsehood. So if they said this truly, they would have sin, and since they confessed it humbly, the truth would be in them; but if they lied in saying it, they would nonetheless have sin, because the truth would not be in them.

“Perhaps they will say,” he says, “‘Could Scripture record the sins of all?’” And whoever says this to him will say what is true. Nor do I see that he answered anything strong against it, though I see he was unwilling to keep silent. For notice, I beg you, what he said: “This can rightly be said of those of whom Scripture records neither good nor evil deeds; but of those whose righteousness it remembers, it would without doubt have remembered their sins too, if it had perceived that they sinned in anything.” Let him say, then, that the great faith of those did not belong to righteousness who, in a great multitude going before and following with praises of the Lord's colt, even among enemies raging at why they did this, cried out: “Hosanna, son of David, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” Let this man dare to say, then, if he can, that there was no one in that great multitude who had any sin at all. And if this is most absurd to say, why did Scripture record none of their sins, when it took care to record so great a good of their faith?

But perhaps he saw this too, and so added and said: “But granted that at other times Scripture declined to put together the sins of all because of the great number of the crowd; at the very beginning of the world, where there were only four people, what,” he says, “shall we say? Why did it not wish to record the faults of all? Was it because of an immense multitude, which did not yet exist, or because it remembered only those who had committed them, but could not remember him who had committed none?” He adds further words by which this opinion is established more fully and plainly: “Certainly,” he says, “in the first time, Adam and Eve, from whom Cain and Abel were born, are said to have been only four people. Eve sinned: Scripture has told this. Adam too offended: the same Scripture has not kept silent. And Scripture likewise testified that Cain sinned; of these it indicates not only the sins but even the nature of the sins. And if Abel had sinned, Scripture would without doubt have said so; but it did not say so; therefore he did not sin; indeed it shows that he was righteous. Let us believe, then, what we read, and let us hold it impious to assert what we do not read.”