On Nature and Grace 64–80

How, then, against his reasoning, can these two goods created by the good God be contrary to each other in men who are not baptized? Or will he regret having said this too, which he said from some feeling of Christian faith? For when he said, “How can it be that the flesh is contrary to anyone already baptized?”, he indicated that the flesh can be contrary to the unbaptized. For why did he add “already baptized”, when without adding this he could have said, “How can it be that the flesh is contrary to anyone?”, and then put forward that reasoning of his to prove it, that both are good, made by a good author, and so cannot be contrary to each other? If, then, the unbaptized, to whom he certainly admits the flesh is contrary, press him with his own questions and say, “Who made the spirit for man?”, he will answer, “God.” And they again: “Who created the flesh?” He answers: “The same, I believe: God.” They a third time: “Is God, who created both, good?” And he: “No one doubts it.” And they ask the one thing that remains: “And is each thing that the good author created good?” He will admit it. Then they will cut his throat with his own sword, drawing his conclusion and saying: “If, then, the spirit is good and the flesh is good, as made by a good author, how can it be that two good things can be contrary to each other?” Here perhaps he will answer: “Forgive me; I ought not to have said that the flesh cannot be contrary to anyone baptized, so as in this way to admit that it is contrary to you, the unbaptized; but I ought to have said without any exception that the flesh is contrary to no one.” See what he is driving himself into, not knowing what he says, he who will not cry out with the apostle: “Who will deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” “But why,” he says, “should I cry out, already baptized in Christ? Let those cry out who have not yet received such a benefit, whose voices the apostle represented in his own person”; if indeed they say even this. But this defense of nature does not allow even them to cry out with this voice. For nature is not in the baptized and absent from the unbaptized. Or if it is granted that in them at least it is corrupted, so that they cry out not without cause, “Wretched man! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?”, and are helped by what follows, “The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord,” let it at last be granted that human nature needs Christ as physician.

But I ask where nature lost the liberty it longs to be given, when it says, “Who will deliver me?” For in that saying it does not accuse the substance of the flesh, when it says it desires to be delivered from the body of this death, since the nature of the body, like that of the soul, must be attributed to God as its good author; but it certainly speaks of the vices of the body. For death separates us from the body; but the vices contracted from it cling to us, to which just punishment is due, which even that rich man found in hell. From this he certainly could not deliver himself, who says, “Who will deliver me from the body of this death?” But wherever it lost this liberty, if that possibility of nature is certainly inseparable, if it has the “can” through natural endowment and the “will” through free choice, why does it seek the sacrament of baptism? Is it for past sins committed, only that they may be pardoned, since they cannot be made undone? Let the man go; let him cry what he was crying. For he does not desire only to be unpunished for the past by pardon, but also to be strong and firm for the future in not sinning. For he delights in the law of God according to the inner man, but sees another law in his members warring against the law of his mind; he sees that it is, he does not recall that it was; he is pressed by present things, he does not remember past ones. And he sees it not only warring but taking him captive in the law of sin which is in his members, not which was. Hence he cries out: “Wretched man! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?” Let him be allowed to pray; let him be allowed to beg the help of the most powerful physician. Why is he contradicted? Why is he shouted down? Why is the wretched man forbidden to ask the mercy of Christ, and that by Christians? For those too were walking with Christ who forbade the blind man to ask for light by crying out; but even amid the tumult of those who contradicted, he hears the one who cries. Hence the answer is given to this man: “The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Moreover, if we obtain from them even this much, that those not yet baptized should implore the help of the Savior's grace, this is not a small thing against that false defense of nature as sufficient for itself and of the power of free choice; for one who says, “Wretched man! Who will deliver me?” is not sufficient for himself; nor is he to be said to have full liberty who still asks to be delivered. But let us also see whether those who have been baptized do the good they will, with no lust of the flesh opposing. What we should say on this he himself mentions, where, concluding this passage, he says: “As we have said, that verse which contains ‘the flesh lusts against the spirit’ must be understood not of the substance of the flesh but of its works.” We too say that this was said not of the substance of the flesh but of the works that come from carnal lust, that is, from sin, concerning which he commands that it should not reign in our mortal body so that we obey its desires.

But let him notice too that it was said to those already baptized: “The flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, so that you do not do the things you will.” And lest he make them slack in the fight itself, and seem by this sentence to have given license to sin, he adds: “But if you are led by the Spirit, you are no longer under the law.” For he is under the law who feels that he abstains from the work of sin through fear of the punishment the law threatens, not through love of righteousness; not yet free, nor estranged from the will to sin. For he is guilty in the very will by which he would prefer, if it were possible, that there were nothing to fear, so that he might do freely what he secretly desires. “So if you are led by the Spirit,” he says, “you are no longer under the law,” certainly the law that strikes fear, not the law that gives love; which love of God has been poured out in our hearts, not through the letter of the law, but through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. This is the law of liberty, not of slavery, because it is certainly of love, not of fear; of which the apostle James too says: “But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty.” Hence that man too was no longer terrified by the law of God as a slave, but delighted in it according to the inner man; yet he still sees another law in his members warring against the law of his mind. So here too: “If you are led by the Spirit,” he says, “you are not under the law.” In so far as anyone is led by the Spirit, he is not under the law; because in so far as he delights in the law of God, he is not under the fear of the law; for fear has torment, not delight.

So if we think rightly, just as we ought to give thanks for members that are healed, so we ought to pray for those still to be healed, that we may enjoy the most complete health, to which nothing can be added, the perfect sweetness of God, and full liberty. For we do not deny that human nature can be without sin, nor ought we in any way to deny that it can be made perfect, since we do not deny that it can make progress; but by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. We say that it is by his help that it comes to be righteous and blessed, by whom it was created so as to exist. So what he says is objected to him by some is easily refuted: “The devil opposes us.” To this objection we answer entirely in the same words he answered: “Let us resist him, and he will flee. ‘Resist the devil,’ says the blessed apostle, ‘and he will flee from you.’ From this we must consider what he can do to harm those from whom he flees, or what strength he must be understood to have, who can prevail only over those who do not resist.” These are my words too; for nothing truer can be said. But this is the difference between us and them: that we not only do not deny but even proclaim that the help of God must be asked even when the devil is resisted; while they attribute so much power to the will that they take prayer away from piety. For it is certainly so that we may resist the devil and he may flee from us that we say in prayer, “Lead us not into temptation”; and so too we have been admonished, as soldiers by a general exhorting them and saying: “Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation.”

As for his arguing against those who say, “And who would not wish to be without sin, if this were placed in the power of man?”, he rightly argues that by this very fact it is not impossible, because many or all wish it. But let him confess from where it is possible, and there is peace. For this is the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, by which he nowhere wishes to say that we are helped, when we pray, not to sin. And if perhaps he holds it secretly, let him forgive those who suspect otherwise. For he himself causes this, who, while suffering so much ill will on this matter, wishes to hold it and does not wish to confess or profess it. What great thing was it for him to say this, especially since he undertook to treat and explain it as an objection raised against him in the person of his opponents? Why did he wish there to defend nature alone, and assert that man was so created that he could not sin if he did not wish to sin, and hence define that the possibility by which, if he does not wish to sin, he does not sin, belongs to the grace of God because he was so created; and did not wish to say anything of the fact that this very nature is either healed by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, because it is corrupted, or helped, because it does not suffice for itself?

For whether in this world there has been, or is, or can be anyone living so righteously as to have no sin at all may be some question among true and pious Christians; but whoever doubts that it can be so after this life is foolish. But I do not wish to contend even about this life. For although it does not seem to me that what is written, “No one living will be justified in your sight,” and any similar sayings, should be understood otherwise, still, would that it could be shown either that these testimonies can be better understood otherwise, or that perfect and full righteousness, to which absolutely nothing is to be added, both was in someone yesterday, while he lived in this body, and is today, and will be tomorrow; provided that there are far more who, while they do not doubt that it is necessary for them until the last day of this life to say truly, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors,” still trust that their hope in Christ and in his promises is true, certain, and firm! But whoever denies that anyone at all attains to the fullest perfection, or anyone to any progress whatever in true and pious righteousness, except by the help of the grace of Christ crucified, the Savior, and by the gift of his Spirit, I do not know whether he can rightly be counted among Christians of any kind.

And so the testimonies which he has set out, not indeed from the canonical Scriptures but from certain little works of Catholic writers, wishing to meet those who said that he alone defended these views, are so neutral that they are neither against our opinion nor against his. Among them he wished to include something from my books too, counting me as one who seemed worthy to be mentioned with them. So I ought not to be ungrateful, and with more friendly affection I do not want him who has paid me this honor to go astray. The first passages he set out, since I did not read there the name of the one who said them, whether because he did not write it or because the copy you sent, perhaps by some fault, did not have it, what need is there to discuss them? Especially since I am free in the writings of any such men, for I owe unreserved assent only to the canonical ones. What he set out from the writings of that author, whose name I did not find there, hardly troubles me: “It was fitting that the master and teacher of virtue should become most like man, so that by conquering sin he might teach that man can conquer sin.” How it was said, the author of this sentence may see how he can explain it, provided that we do not doubt at all that Christ had no sin in himself to conquer, who was born “in the likeness of the flesh of sin,” not in the flesh of sin. He set down another saying of the same author thus: “And again: that, having subdued the desires of the flesh, he might teach that to sin is not a matter of necessity but of purpose and will.” For my part I take “desires of the flesh”, if unlawful lusts are not meant here, to be such things as hunger, thirst, the refreshment of weariness, and anything of that kind. For through these some fall into faults, although they are themselves without fault; which was far from that Savior, even though we see from the testimony of the Gospel that these things were in him because of the likeness of the flesh of sin.

As for the blessed Hilary, whose words he set down, “For only when we have been perfected in spirit and changed by immortality, which has been appointed for the pure in heart alone, shall we see what is immortal in God,” I do not know what he said against what we say, or how it helps this man, except that he testified that a man can be pure in heart. Who denies that? But by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, not by freedom of choice alone. Likewise what he records him as saying: “What writings had Job read, that he kept himself from every evil thing? Because he worshipped God with a mind unmixed with vices; and to worship God is the proper duty of righteousness.” He says what Job did, not what he perfected in this world, or what he did or perfected without the grace of the Savior, whom he even prophesied. For even one who has sin, which he does not allow to reign in him, keeps himself from every evil thing, when a thought that deserves rejection creeps up on him and he does not allow it to reach the completion of the deed. But it is one thing not to have sin, another not to obey its desires; it is one thing to fulfill what is commanded, “You shall not covet,” and another, by some effort of abstinence, at least to do what is also written, “Do not go after your lusts”; and yet to know that one cannot rightly do any of these without the grace of the Savior. To do righteousness, then, in the true worship of God, is to fight with an inner struggle against the inner evil of concupiscence; but to perfect it is to have no adversary at all. For one who fights is still in danger, and is sometimes struck, even if he is not laid low; but one who has no adversary rejoices in full peace. And he is most truly said to be without sin in whom no sin dwells, not one who, through abstaining from the evil deed, says: “It is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me.”

For Job himself is not silent about his sins; and certainly this friend of ours is rightly pleased that humility must in no way be placed on the side of falsehood. Hence what Job confesses, since he is a truthful worshipper of God, he without doubt confesses truly. And Hilary himself, when he was explaining the place in the psalm where it is written, “You have spurned all who depart from your statutes,” says: “For if God spurned sinners, he would certainly spurn all, since no one is without sin. But he spurns those who depart from him, whom it calls apostates.” You see how he did not say that no one has been without sin, as if speaking of the past, but that no one is without sin. On this, as I said, I do not contend; for whoever does not yield to the apostle John, who himself also does not say, “If we say that we have not had sin,” but “that we have no sin,” how will he yield to Bishop Hilary? I cry out for the grace of Christ, without which no one is justified, as though the free choice of nature were enough. Indeed he himself cries out for it; let us yield to him when he says: “Without me you can do nothing.”

Saint Ambrose indeed, in the place this man mentions, resists those who say that a man cannot be without sin in this life. To say this he took occasion from Zechariah and Elizabeth, because they are recorded in the Gospel to have walked in all the statutes of the law without blame. But does he deny that this is done by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord? By faith in him, it is beyond doubt, the righteous lived even before his passion; he who gives the Holy Spirit, through whom love is poured out in our hearts, by which alone whoever is righteous is righteous. This Spirit the same bishop admonishes us to obtain even by prayers (so far is the will, not helped by God, from being enough for him), where in his hymn he says: “And to earnest prayers he grants to receive the Holy Spirit.”

I too will mention something from this same work of Saint Ambrose, from which this man cited what he thought should be cited: “‘It seemed good to me,’ he says. What he declares seemed good to him can have seemed good not to him alone. For it seemed good not by human will only, but as it pleased him who, he says, speaks in me, Christ, who works so that what is good may seem good to us too; for whom he pities he also calls. And so one who follows Christ, if asked why he wished to be a Christian, can answer, ‘It seemed good to me.’ When he says this, he does not deny that it seemed good to God; for the will of men is prepared by God. For that God is honored by a saint is the grace of God.” See what this man should think, if he delights in the words of Ambrose: that the will of men is prepared by God; and it is no question, or no great question, who is made perfect or when, provided there is no doubt at all that this cannot come about without the grace of Christ. Then how much it would have taken for him to notice one line of the words of Ambrose which he set down! For when Ambrose had said, “For since the church has been gathered from the Gentiles, that is, from sinners, how can the spotless come from the spotted, unless first it has been washed of sin by the grace of Christ, and then abstains from sins by the quality of not sinning?”, he added what it is plain why this man did not wish to add; for he says: “Not spotless from the beginning (for this is impossible for human nature), but by the grace of God and by its own quality, because it no longer sins, it comes about that it appears spotless.” Who does not understand why this man did not add these words? This is certainly what is being done now in this world: that the holy church may reach that most spotless purity which all the saints desire, which in the world to come, with no evil men mixed with it and no law of sin in it resisting the law of the mind, may lead a most pure life in divine eternity. Yet let this man notice what Bishop Ambrose said according to the Scriptures: “Not spotless from the beginning; for this is impossible for human nature.” Certainly he says “from the beginning”, meaning from our birth from Adam. For Adam himself was without doubt made spotless; but in those who are by nature children of wrath, deriving from him what was corrupted in him, he declared it impossible for human nature to be spotless from the beginning.

Likewise John, bishop of Constantinople, whose opinion he set down, says that sin is not a substance but an evil act. Who denies this? And that because it is not natural, therefore the law was given against it, and that it comes from freedom of choice. Who denies this too? But the question here is not about human nature as it is in this life; the question is about the grace of God, by which it is healed through Christ the physician; which it would not need if it were healthy; the nature which this man defends as able not to sin, as though healthy or sufficient for itself through the choice of the will.

Again, what Christian does not know what he records that the most blessed Xystus, bishop of the Roman church and martyr of the Lord, said: “God permitted men the freedom of their choice, so that by living purely and without sin they might become like God”? But it belongs to that same choice to hear him who calls, to believe, and to ask of him in whom one believes help not to sin. For certainly when he says “they may become like God”, they will be like God through the love of God, which has been poured out in our hearts, not by the possibility of nature or the free choice that is in us, but through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. And as to what the same martyr says, “A pure mind is a holy temple for God, and a clean heart without sin is the best altar for him,” who does not know that a clean heart must be brought to this perfection while the inner man is renewed day by day, yet not without the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord? Likewise when he says, “A chaste man without sin has received power from God to be a son of God,” he certainly warned us, lest, when anyone has become so chaste and without sin (where and when this is brought to perfection in him is something of a question, but it is rightly asked among the pious, among whom it is agreed that it can come about and that it cannot come about without the Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus); yet, as I had begun to say, Xystus wisely warned, lest, when anyone has become such and on that account is rightly counted among the sons of God, it should be thought to have been of his own power, which he received from God by grace, since he did not have it in nature, now corrupted and depraved; as we read in the Gospel: “But as many as received him, to them he gave power to become sons of God”; which they certainly were not by nature, nor would they be at all, unless by receiving him they had received such power through his grace. This is the power which the strength of love claims for itself, which is not in us except through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

And what did the venerable presbyter Jerome say, in the words he records him as saying, when he was explaining what is written, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”? “Those whom no consciousness of sin accuses”; and he added: “The pure one is seen by the pure heart; the temple of God cannot be polluted.” This is certainly being done in us, by striving, laboring, praying, obtaining, so that we may be brought by his grace through Jesus Christ our Lord to that perfection in which we may see God with a pure heart. Likewise what he says was said by the same presbyter: “God created us with free choice; we are not drawn by necessity either to virtue or to vices; otherwise, where there is necessity there is no crown.” Who does not recognize this, who does not accept it with his whole heart, who denies that human nature was created otherwise? But in doing right there is no bond of necessity precisely because there is the liberty of love.

Return, then, to the apostle's sentence: “The love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” By whom, but by him who “ascended on high, led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men”? And that there is a certain necessity of sinning from the faults of nature, not from the constitution of nature, let man hear; and, that this same necessity may cease, let him learn to say to God: “Bring me out of my necessities”; for in prayer of this kind too there is a contest against the tempter, who fights against us with that very necessity. And so, with the help of grace through our Lord Jesus Christ, both the evil necessity will be removed and full liberty will be granted.

Let us come to ourselves. “Likewise,” he says, “Bishop Augustine in his books On Free Choice: ‘Whatever this cause of the will is, if it cannot be resisted, one yields to it without sin; but if it can, let one not yield to it, and one will not sin. Does it perhaps deceive the unwary? Then let him beware so as not to be deceived. Or is the deceit so great that it cannot be guarded against at all? Then there are no sins. For who sins in what can in no way be guarded against? But sin is committed; therefore it can be guarded against.’” I recognize them; they are my words. But let him also deign to recognize all that has been said above. For the question concerns the grace of God, which helps us as medicine through the Mediator, not the impossibility of righteousness. That cause, then, whatever it is, can be resisted; it plainly can. For it is for this that we ask help, saying, “Lead us not into temptation”; which help we would not ask if we believed it could in no way be resisted. Sin can be guarded against, but with the help of him who cannot be deceived. For this very thing also belongs to guarding against sin, if we say truly: “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” For even in the body the evil of disease is guarded against in two ways: both that it may not happen, and that, if it has happened, it may be quickly healed. That it may not happen, let us guard against it by saying, “Lead us not into temptation”; that it may be quickly healed, let us guard against it by saying, “Forgive us our debts.” Whether, then, it threatens or is present, it can be guarded against.