On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants 1.55–1.68

Since these things are so, sound faith and sound doctrine have never thought that any of those who have come to Christ through baptism is excepted from the grace of the forgiveness of sins, nor that anyone can have eternal salvation apart from his kingdom. For this salvation is ready to be revealed in the last time, that is, in the resurrection of the dead who belong not to eternal death, which is called the second death, but to eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised to his saints and faithful; and all will be made partakers of this life only in Christ, just as in Adam all die. For just as absolutely all who belong to the generation of the will of the flesh die only in Adam, in whom all sinned, so of these, absolutely all who belong to the regeneration of the will of the Spirit are made alive only in Christ, in whom all are justified; because as through one all are brought to condemnation, so through one all are brought to justification. Nor is there any middle place for anyone, so that he who is not with Christ can be anywhere but with the devil. Hence the Lord himself, wishing to remove from the hearts of those who believe wrongly that middle state, whatever it is, which some try to assign to unbaptized infants, so that, as it were by the merit of innocence, they would be in eternal life, but, because they are not baptized, would not be with Christ in his kingdom, pronounced a decisive sentence to stop these mouths, where he says: “He who is not with me is against me.” Take, then, any infant: if he is already with Christ, why is he baptized? But if, as the truth has it, he is baptized so that he may be with Christ, then surely the unbaptized is not with Christ; and because he is not with Christ, he is against Christ; for we neither ought nor are able to weaken or change so manifest a sentence of his. From what, then, is he against Christ, if not from sin? For it is not from body and soul, both of which are God's creation. Further, if from sin, what sin at that age except the original and ancient one? For there is one flesh of sin, in which all are born to damnation, and one flesh in the likeness of the flesh of sin, through which all are freed from damnation. Nor was “all” said in the sense that all those who are born in the flesh of sin are understood to be cleansed, the same persons, through the flesh like the flesh of sin (for not all have faith); but that all who belong to the generation of carnal marriage are born only in the flesh of sin, and all who belong to the generation of spiritual marriage are cleansed only through the flesh like the flesh of sin; that is, the former through Adam to condemnation, the latter through Christ to justification. It is as if we should say, for example: there is one midwife in this city who delivers all, and here there is one teacher of letters who teaches all; there “all” can be understood only of those who are born, and here only of those who learn; yet not all who are born learn letters, but it is clear to anyone that there it is rightly said, “She delivers all,” since apart from her hands no one is born, and here it is rightly said, “He teaches all,” since apart from his teaching no one learns.

When all the divine testimonies are considered which I have recalled, whether arguing about each one singly or heaping many together, or any similar ones I have not recalled, nothing is found except what the whole church holds, which must keep watch against all profane novelties: that every man is separated from God except one who is reconciled to God through Christ the mediator; that no one can be separated except by sins shutting him out; that he is therefore not reconciled except by the forgiveness of sins, through the one grace of the most merciful Savior, through the one victim of the most true priest; and so that all the children of the woman who believed the serpent, so that she was corrupted by lust, are not freed from the body of this death except through the son of the virgin who believed the angel, so that she conceived without lust.

The good of marriage, then, is not the heat of concupiscence, but a certain lawful and honorable manner of using that heat, suited to propagating offspring, not to satisfying lust. That will, not that pleasure, is what belongs to marriage. What therefore moves disobediently in the members of the body of this death, and tries to draw the whole mind, cast down, to itself, and neither rises when the mind does not will it nor subsides when the mind wills it: this is the evil of sin, with which every man is born. But when it is restrained from unlawful corruptions and permitted only for the orderly propagation of the replenishment of the human race, this is the good of marriage, through which man is born in an ordered society. But no one is reborn in the body of Christ unless he is first born in the body of sin. Just as to use a good thing badly is evil, so to use an evil thing well is good. These two, then, good and evil, and the other two, good use and bad use, joined together, make four differences. He uses a good thing well who dedicates continence to God; he uses a good thing badly who dedicates continence to an idol; he uses an evil thing badly who lets concupiscence loose in adultery; he uses an evil thing well who restrains concupiscence in marriage. As, then, it is better to use a good thing well than to use an evil thing well, since both are good, so “he who gives his virgin in marriage does well, and he who does not give her does better.” On this question I have discussed much more fully and much more adequately, as far as the Lord granted, according to the smallness of my strength, in two books, one On the Good of Marriage, the other On Holy Virginity. Let those, then, not defend the evil of concupiscence by means of the good of marriage, who extol the flesh and blood of the transgressor against the flesh and blood of the Redeemer; let them not be lifted up in the pride of another's error, those from whose little age the Lord has given us an example of humility. He alone was born without sin, whom a virgin conceived without a man's embrace, not by the concupiscence of the flesh but by the obedience of the mind; she alone could bear the medicine for our wound, who brought forth the shoot of holy offspring not from the wound of sin.

Now let us examine more carefully, as far as the Lord helps, that very passage of the gospel where he says: “Unless one is reborn of water and the Spirit, he will not enter the kingdom of God.” If these men were not moved by this statement, they would judge that infants should not be baptized at all. But because, they say, he did not say, “Unless one is reborn of water and the Spirit, he will not have salvation or eternal life,” but only said, “he will not enter the kingdom of God,” infants are to be baptized for this, that they may also be with Christ in the kingdom of God, where they will not be if they have not been baptized; although, if infants die even without baptism, they will have salvation and eternal life, since they are bound by no bond of sin. In saying this, first, these men never explain by what justice the image of God, having no sin, is separated from the kingdom of God. Next, let us see whether the Lord Jesus, the one and only good teacher, in this very gospel reading did not signify and show that it is only through the forgiveness of sins that the baptized come to the kingdom of God; although for those who understand rightly what was said should have sufficed: “Unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God,” and “Unless one is reborn of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” For why should he be born anew unless he needs to be renewed? From what renewed, unless from oldness? From what oldness, unless that in which our old man was crucified together with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed? Or why does the image of God not enter the kingdom of God unless the obstacle of sin prevents it? Yet, as we proposed, let us look attentively and carefully, as far as we can, at the whole context of that gospel reading which bears on the matter in hand.

“There was a man,” it says, “of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. He came to him by night and said to him: Rabbi, we know that you have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him. Jesus answered and said to him: Amen, amen, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus says to him: How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter his mother's womb a second time and be born? Jesus answered: Amen, amen, I say to you, unless one is reborn of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, You must be born anew. The Spirit blows where he wills, and you hear his voice; but you do not know where he comes from or where he goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit. Nicodemus answered and said to him: How can these things be? Jesus answered and said to him: You are a teacher in Israel, and you do not know these things? Amen, amen, I say to you, we speak what we know and testify to what we have seen, and you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you have not believed, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world may be saved through him. He who believes in him is not judged; but he who does not believe has already been judged, because he does not believe in the name of the only-begotten Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light; for their works were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works be exposed; but he who does the truth comes to the light, that his works may be made manifest, because they have been done in God.” Up to this point that whole connected discourse bears on the matter we are investigating; after this the narrator turns to something else.

When, then, Nicodemus did not understand what was being said, he asked the Lord how these things could be. Let us see what the Lord answers to this. For surely, if he deigns to answer the question “How can these things be?”, he is going to say how spiritual regeneration can come about for men who come from carnal generation. So, having briefly noted the inexperience of one who set himself above others in the office of teacher, and having rebuked the unbelief of all such people for not receiving the testimony of the truth, he added that he had told them earthly things and they had not believed, asking, or wondering, how they would believe heavenly things. Yet he goes on and answers, so that others may believe even if they do not believe, the question he was asked, how these things can be: “No one,” he says, “has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven.” Thus, he says, spiritual generation will come about, so that men will be heavenly from earthly, which they will not be able to attain unless they are made my members, so that he himself who descended may ascend, because no one ascends except he who descended. Unless, then, all who are to be changed and raised up run together into the unity of Christ, so that Christ who descended himself ascends, reckoning his body, that is his church, as nothing other than himself (because it is more truly understood of Christ and the church, “The two will be in one flesh,” of which he himself said, “Therefore they are no longer two, but one flesh”), they will not be able to ascend at all, because “no one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven.” For although he became the Son of Man on earth, yet he did not think his divinity, by which, remaining in heaven, he descended to earth, unworthy of the name of Son of Man, just as he thought his flesh worthy of the name of Son of God; lest two Christs, as it were, be understood, one God and the other man, but one and the same God and man: God, because “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God”; man, because “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” And so, by the distinction between divinity and weakness, the Son of God remained in heaven, the Son of Man walked on earth; but by the unity of person, by which both substances are one Christ, both the Son of God walked on earth and the same Son of Man remained in heaven. Faith in more credible things thus arises from believing more incredible ones. For if the divine substance, far more distant and higher by an incomparable difference, could for our sake so take up human substance that it became one person, and so the Son of Man, who was on earth by the weakness of the flesh, was himself in heaven by the divinity in which the flesh shared, how much more credibly do other men, his saints and faithful, become one Christ with the man Christ, so that, while all ascend through this grace and fellowship of his, the one Christ himself, who descended from heaven, ascends into heaven! So too the apostle says: “As in one body we have many members, but all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ.” He did not say “so also are Christ's,” that is, the body of Christ or the members of Christ, but “so also is Christ,” calling head and body one Christ.

Great and wonderful is this condescension! And since it cannot come about except through the forgiveness of sins, he goes on and says: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” We know what happened then in the desert: many were dying from the bites of serpents. Then the people, confessing their sins, besought the Lord through Moses to take this poison away from them. And so Moses, by the Lord's command, lifted up a bronze serpent in the desert and admonished the people that whoever was bitten by a serpent should look at it lifted up; those who did this were at once healed. What is the lifted-up serpent but the death of Christ, by that mode of signifying in which what is produced is signified by what produces it? For death came from the serpent, who persuaded man to the sin by which he deserved to die. The Lord, however, did not transfer sin into his flesh like the serpent's poison, but he did transfer death, so that in the likeness of the flesh of sin there might be punishment without guilt, whereby in the flesh of sin both guilt and punishment might be loosed. As, then, whoever then looked at the lifted-up serpent was both healed from the poison and freed from death, so now whoever is conformed to the likeness of Christ's death through faith and his baptism is freed both from sin through justification and from death through resurrection. For this is what he says: “that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” What need is there, then, for an infant to be conformed to the death of Christ through baptism, if he has not been poisoned at all by the serpent's bite?

Next, if, as he says in what follows, “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life,” an infant would perish and would not have eternal life if he did not believe in the only-begotten Son of God through the sacrament of baptism; while meanwhile he came in such a way “not to judge the world, but that the world may be saved through him”; especially since he goes on and says: “He who believes in him is not judged; but he who does not believe has already been judged, because he does not believe in the name of the only-begotten Son of God.” Where, then, do we place baptized infants except among the faithful, as the authority of the whole church everywhere proclaims? Therefore among those who have believed (for this is acquired for them by the power of the sacrament and the response of those who present them); and for this reason those who have not been baptized among those who have not believed. Further, if those who have been baptized are not judged, these, because they lack baptism, are judged. And as to what he adds, “And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light”: whence has the light come into the world, unless he speaks of his own coming? Without the sacrament of his coming, how are infants said to be in the light? Or how do those not also have this in their love of darkness who, just as they do not believe themselves, so do not think their infants should be baptized, even when they fear bodily death for them? He says that the works of him who comes to the light have been done in God, because he understands that his justification belongs not to his own merits but to the grace of God. “For it is God,” says the apostle, “who works in us both to will and to work, for his good will.” In this way, then, the spiritual regeneration of all who come to Christ from carnal generation takes place. He himself disclosed this, he himself showed it, when he was asked how these things could be; he left no one free to use human argument in this matter. Let infants not be estranged from the grace of the forgiveness of sins; there is no other way of passing over to Christ; no one can otherwise be reconciled to God and come to God except through Christ.

What shall I say of the very form of the sacrament? I wish one of these men who hold contrary views would bring me an infant to be baptized. What does my exorcism do in him, if he is not held in the household of the devil? He himself, certainly, would have had to answer me on behalf of the infant he carried, because the infant could not answer for himself. How, then, would he say that the child renounces the devil, of whom there was nothing in him? How that he turns to God, from whom he had not turned away? That he believes, among other things, in the forgiveness of sins, when none would be ascribed to him? For my part, if I thought he held views contrary to these, I would not even allow him to come in with the infant to the sacraments; and how he would present himself in this to men with what face, and to God with what mind, I do not know, nor do I wish to say anything harsher. Some of them, then, have seen that nothing more execrable and detestable can be said or thought than that a false or deceitful form of baptism is given to infants, in which the forgiveness of sins would seem to be spoken of and done, and yet none would take place. Accordingly, as regards the baptism of infants, that it is necessary for them, they grant that they too need redemption, as is contained in a very short little book by one of them, who nevertheless would not there express more openly the forgiveness of any sin. But, as you yourself told me in your letter, they now admit, as you say, that in infants too forgiveness of sins takes place through baptism. No wonder; for redemption could not be understood in any other way. Yet, they say, it is not from their origin, but in their own life, after they were born, that they began to have sin.

So you see how far apart they now are from those against whom I have long and much argued in this work, one of whom I have even read a book containing the views which I have refuted as best I could. Between these, then, as I had begun to say, who maintain that infants are altogether pure and free from all sin, both original and personal, and those who think that once born they have contracted sins of their own, from which they believe they must be cleansed through baptism, you see how great the difference is. Accordingly, the latter, by looking at the Scriptures, at the authority of the whole church, and at the form of the sacrament itself, have seen rightly that forgiveness of sins takes place in infants through baptism; but that whatever is in them is original, they either will not say or cannot see. The former, however, have seen rightly in human nature itself, which is ready at hand for all to consider (which was easy), that that age could not have contracted any sin in its own life; but, so as not to confess original sin, they say that there is no sin at all in infants. In the things, then, which each of them says truly, let them first agree among themselves, and it will follow that they disagree with us in no part. For if the former grant the latter that forgiveness of sins takes place in baptized infants, and the latter grant the former that infants, as nature itself cries out in silent infants, have not yet contracted any sin of their own life, let both grant us that nothing remains except original sin, to be loosed in infants through baptism.

Or are we to inquire about this too, dispute about it, and spend time on it, to prove and teach how infants, who for this reason are called innocent by all, have committed no evil by their own will, without which there can be no sin of one's own life? Does not so great a weakness of mind and body, such ignorance of things, so complete an incapacity for a commandment, no sense or motion of either natural or written law, no use of reason in either direction, proclaim and declare this by a silence far more eloquent than our speech? Let the evidence itself have some force to persuade of itself; for nowhere do I so fail to find what to say as where the matter spoken of is plainer than anything that is said.

Yet I should like whoever holds this view to say what sin he has seen or thought of in an infant fresh from the womb, for whose redemption he now admits baptism is necessary; what evil it has committed in this its own life through its own mind or body. If perhaps it is that he cries and is a nuisance to his elders, it would be strange if this were to be counted to iniquity rather than to misfortune. Or is it that he is not stopped from crying by any reason of his own or any prohibition of anyone? But this belongs to the ignorance in which he lies most deeply, by which, too, when after a little time he has the strength, he will strike his mother in anger, and often her very breasts, which he demands when hungry. These things are not only tolerated but even loved in little ones; and with what affection but a carnal one, by which laughter and jest also delight us, seasoned as it were by the very absurdity of even clever men? If a jest were felt in the sense in which it is said, they would be laughed at not as witty but as fools. We see fools themselves, whom the common people call morons, brought in for the entertainment of sensible men, and valued as slaves at a higher price than the sensible: so strong is the carnal affection even of those who are least foolish in delighting in another's misfortune. For although another's folly is pleasant to a man, he himself would not have wished to be such; and if a father, who gladly expects and provokes such things from his little son when he prattles, foreknew that he would be such when grown, he would not doubt at all that he was more pitiably to be mourned than if dead. But while there is hope of growth, and the light of intelligence is believed to be coming with the coming of age, it happens that the insults of little ones even against their parents are not only not injurious but even pleasing and delightful. No prudent person would approve that they are not only not prevented from sayings or deeds of this kind when they can now be prevented, but are even incited to them by the eagerness for laughter and the vanity of their elders. For generally that age, once it recognizes father and mother, dares not speak ill of either of them unless permitted or ordered by one of them or by both. But these things belong to those little ones who are already bursting into words and can already express the motions of their mind by some signs of the tongue. Let us look rather at that most profound ignorance of the newly born, from which, advancing towards knowledge and speech, they have come by progress to this passing, stammering folly.

Let us consider, I say, that darkness of a mind that is certainly rational, in which they are altogether ignorant even of God, whose sacraments they resist even when they are baptized; I ask whence and when they were plunged into it. Is it really so, that they contracted it here, and in this their own life forgot God through excessive negligence, whereas they lived wisely and devoutly in their mothers' wombs? Let those say this who dare, let those hear it who wish, let those believe it who can; but I think that all whose mind is not clouded by obstinacy in defending their own opinion cannot hold these things. Or is ignorance no evil at all, and therefore not to be cleansed either? And what does that voice mean: “Do not remember the offenses of my youth and of my ignorance”? For although the sins committed by those who know are more damnable, yet, if there were no sins of ignorance, we would not read what I have recalled: “Do not remember the offenses of my youth and my ignorance.” Into that thickest darkness of ignorance, then, where the soul of an infant fresh from the womb, certainly the soul of a man, certainly a rational soul, lies not only untaught but even unteachable, why, or when, or whence was it thrust? If it is of man's nature to begin so, and this nature is not already flawed, why was Adam not created so? Why was he capable of a commandment, and able to give names to his wife and to all the animals? For of her too he said, “She shall be called woman”; and “Whatever Adam called a living soul, that is its name.” But this one, not knowing where he is, what he is, by whom created, from whom begotten, already guilty of offense, not yet capable of a commandment, wrapped and weighed down in so deep a fog of ignorance that he cannot be roused as from sleep so as at least to recognize these things when shown them, but a time must be awaited in which he may digest this strange drunkenness, as it were, not in one night, as even the heaviest usually is, but gradually through some months and years; and until this happens, we tolerate in little ones so many things which we punish in adults that they cannot be counted at all: if little ones, already born in this life, have contracted this so great evil of ignorance and weakness, where, when, how, by committing some great impiety, were they suddenly wrapped in such darkness?

Someone will say: If these are the beginnings not of a pure but of a flawed nature, because Adam was not created so, why did Christ, far more excellent and certainly born of a virgin without any sin, nevertheless appear begotten in this weakness and this age? To this proposition we answer that Adam was not created so because, with no sin of a parent preceding, he was not created in the flesh of sin; we are so because, his sin preceding, we were born in the flesh of sin; Christ was so because, in order to condemn sin concerning sin, he was born in the likeness of the flesh of sin. For the question about Adam is not what concerns the size of the body, since he was not made a little one but with the full bulk of his limbs (for it can be said that cattle too were created so, and yet it was not by their sin that their young were born small; what this means we do not now inquire); but the question is about a certain strength of his mind and use of reason, by which Adam, being teachable, could grasp the command of God and the law of the commandment, and could easily keep it if he willed. But now man is born in such a way that he cannot do this at all, because of a dreadful ignorance and weakness, not of the flesh but of the mind, since we all admit that in the infant a rational soul lives, not of another substance but of the same substance as was in the first man. And yet even this great weakness of the flesh shows, as I think, something or other penal. For it is a question whether, if those first men had not sinned, they would have had such children as could use neither tongue nor hands nor feet. For perhaps because of the capacity of the womb it would have been necessary that little ones be born; although, since a rib is a small part of the body, God did not for that reason make for the man a little wife, whom he built into a woman. Hence the omnipotence of the Creator could also have made her children grown as soon as they were born.