On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants 1.69–2.14

But, to leave this aside, he could certainly have done what he granted to many cattle too, whose young, although they are little and do not advance in mind as their bodies grow, since they do not have a rational soul, yet even when very small both run and recognize their mothers, and are not brought to suck the udders by another's care and help, but know them themselves, though placed in a hidden part of the mother's body, with wonderful ease. A human child, on the contrary, when born has neither feet fit for walking nor even hands able to scratch; and unless by the work of the nurse the nipple of the breast is put to their unmoving lips, they do not perceive where it is, and, with the breasts lying beside them, they can cry when hungry rather than suck. So this complete weakness of body is consistent with the weakness of mind. Nor would the flesh of Christ have been in the likeness of the flesh of sin, unless this were the flesh of sin, by whose weight the rational soul is so burdened, whether it too is derived from the parents, or created there, or breathed in from above, which I put off inquiring into now.

In infants, certainly, by the grace of God through the baptism of him who came in the likeness of the flesh of sin, this is accomplished: that the flesh of sin is made void. It is made void, however, not so that the concupiscence mixed and inborn in the living flesh itself is suddenly consumed and ceases to be, but so that what was present in him when born does no harm to him when dead. For if after baptism he lives and is able to reach the age capable of a commandment, there he has something to fight with and to overcome with God's help, if he has not received his grace in vain, if he does not wish to be reprobate. For not even to adults is this granted in baptism (except perhaps by an ineffable miracle of the almighty Creator), that the law of sin which is in the members, warring against the law of the mind, is completely extinguished and ceases to be; but that whatever evil a man has done, said, or thought, when his mind was subject to that concupiscence and served it, is wholly abolished and held as though it had not been done; while concupiscence itself, the bond of guilt being loosed by which the devil held the soul through it, and the barrier being destroyed by which it separated man from his Creator, remains in the struggle in which we chastise our body and bring it into subjection, whether it is to be relaxed for lawful and necessary uses or restrained by continence. But since human life has been foreknown and foretold by the divine Spirit, who knows all the past, present, and future things of the human race far better than we, to be such that “no living person will be justified in the sight of God,” it happens that, through ignorance or weakness, not exerting all the strength of the will against it, we yield to it even in some unlawful things, the more and the oftener the worse we are, the less and the more rarely the better we are. But since on this question, in which it is asked whether a man can be, or whether there is, has been, or will be, a man without sin in this life, except him who said, “Behold, the prince of the world comes and will find nothing in me,” we must discuss somewhat more carefully, let this be the limit of this volume, so that we may take up that question from another beginning.

On the baptism of infants, dearest Marcellinus, that it is given them not only for attaining the kingdom of God but also for attaining salvation and eternal life, which no one can have without the kingdom of God and without fellowship with Christ the Savior, into which he redeemed us by his blood, we have argued sufficiently, I think, in the former book. In this one I have undertaken to discuss and unravel, with as much diligence and ability as he himself gives, whether anyone lives, or has lived, or will live in this world without any sin at all, except the one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a redemption for all. If into this discussion the question of the sin or the baptism of infants should now and then insert itself by some necessity or occasion, it will not be surprising, nor to be avoided, that in those places we answer, as we are able, everything that demands our reply.

The solution of this question about a human life without any stealthy approach or surprise of sin is most necessary because of our daily prayers too. For there are some who presume so much on the free choice of the human will that they think we need not even be helped by God not to sin, once free choice of will has been granted to our nature. From this it follows that we ought not even to pray that we may not enter into temptation, that is, that we may not be overcome by temptation, whether when it deceives us and takes us unawares, or when it presses and harries us in our weakness. How harmful this is, how ruinous and contrary to our salvation which is in Christ, and how violently opposed to the very religion in which we have been instructed and to the piety with which we worship God, that we should not ask the Lord to receive such a benefit, and should think that in the Lord's Prayer itself, “Do not bring us into temptation,” is set down in vain, we cannot explain in words.

They seem to themselves to speak shrewdly, as though anyone of us did not know this, that if we do not will it, we do not sin, and that God would not command man what was impossible for the human will. But this they see less clearly: that to overcome some things, whether things wrongly desired or things wrongly feared, there is sometimes need of the great and entire strength of the will, which he foresaw we would not apply perfectly in all things, who willed it to be truly said through the prophet: “No living person will be justified in your sight.” So the Lord, foreknowing that we would be such, deigned to give certain healthful remedies, and to make them effective, against the guilt and bonds of sins even after baptism, namely works of mercy, when he says: “Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.” For who would depart from this life with any hope of attaining eternal salvation, while that sentence stands, that whoever keeps the whole law but stumbles in one point has become guilty of all, unless there followed soon after: “So speak and so act as those who are beginning to be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to him who does not show mercy; but mercy exults over judgment”?

Concupiscence, then, as the law of sin remaining in the members of the body of this death, is born with infants; in baptized infants it is loosed from guilt, is left for the contest, and pursues with no damnation those who die before the contest; unbaptized infants it binds as guilty and, as children of wrath, drags to condemnation, even if they die as infants. But in baptized adults, already using reason, in whom whatever the mind has consented to that concupiscence for sinning belongs to their own will, when all sins have been blotted out and the guilt too has been loosed by which it held them bound by origin, it remains for the contest for the time being, doing no harm at all to those who do not consent to it for unlawful things, until death is swallowed up in victory and, in perfect peace, nothing exists to be conquered. But those who consent to it for unlawful things it holds guilty, and, unless they are healed by the medicine of repentance and by works of mercy through the heavenly priest interceding for us, it leads them to the second death and damnation. For this reason the Lord too, in teaching us to pray, admonished us among other things to say: “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors; and do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” For evil remains in our flesh, not by nature, in which man was created by God, but by the flaw into which he fell by his will, where, having lost his strength, he is not healed with the same ease of will with which he was wounded. Of this evil the apostle says: “I know that good does not dwell in my flesh.” And he commanded us not to obey this evil, when he says: “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, so that you obey its desires.” If, then, we have consented to these desires of the concupiscence of the flesh by an unlawful inclination of the will, to heal this we say, “Forgive us our debts,” applying a remedy from the work of mercy in what we add, “as we also forgive our debtors.” But so that we may not consent to it, we pray for help, saying, “and do not bring us into temptation” (or, as some manuscripts have it, “do not lead us into temptation”); not that God himself tempts anyone with such temptation (for God is not a tempter to evil, and he himself tempts no one), but so that, if perhaps we begin to be tempted by our own concupiscence, we may not be abandoned by his help, so that in it we may be able to conquer and not be drawn away, enticed. Then we add what will be accomplished at the end, when what is mortal will be swallowed up by life: “but deliver us from evil.” For then there will be no such concupiscence to fight against and to be commanded not to consent to. So all this, set in three benefits, can be briefly asked thus: pardon us the things in which we have been drawn away by concupiscence; help us not to be drawn away by concupiscence; take concupiscence away from us.

For we are not helped by God to sin; but we cannot do what is just, or fulfil the command of righteousness in every part, unless we are helped by God. For just as the eye of the body is not helped by light to turn away from that same light when closed or averted, but is helped by it to see, and cannot do this at all unless the light helps it, so God, who is the light of the inner man, helps the gaze of our mind, so that we may do some good not according to our own righteousness but according to his. But if we turn away from him, that is ours; and then we are wise according to the flesh, then we consent to the concupiscence of the flesh for unlawful things. God, then, helps those who are turned toward him and forsakes those who are turned away. But he also helps us to be turned, which that light certainly does not do for the eyes of the body. When, then, he commands us, saying, “Turn to me, and I will turn to you,” and we say to him, “Turn us, O God of our healings,” and “O God of hosts, turn us,” what else do we say than “Give what you command”? When he commands, saying, “Understand, then, you who are senseless among the people,” and we say to him, “Give me understanding, that I may learn your commandments,” what else do we say than “Give what you command”? When he commands, saying, “Do not go after your desires,” and we say, “We know that no one can be continent unless God gives it,” what else do we say than “Give what you command”? When he commands, saying, “Do righteousness,” and likewise says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled,” from whom ought we to ask the food and drink of righteousness, if not from him who promises its fullness to those who hunger and thirst for it?

Let us therefore drive from our ears and minds those who say that, once free choice of will has been received, we ought not even to pray that God may help us not to sin. Not even that Pharisee was blinded by such darkness, who, although he erred in thinking that nothing was to be added to his righteousness and supposed himself filled with its fullness, yet gave thanks to God that he was not like other men, unjust, robbers, adulterers, like that tax collector, that he fasted twice in the week, that he gave tithes of all that he possessed. He no longer asked that anything be added to his righteousness, but yet, by giving thanks to God for what he had, he confessed that he had received everything from him. And yet he was disapproved, both because, as though filled, he no longer asked to receive any of the food of righteousness, and because he was eager to prefer himself, as if insulting him, to the tax collector who hungered and thirsted for it. What then will become of those who, even if they admit that they do not have righteousness, or do not have it in full, yet presume that it is to be had from themselves, not to be prayed for from their Creator, where his storehouse and his fountain are? Yet it does not follow that this matter is to be handled by prayers alone, so that the efficacy of our will too is not brought in for living well. For God is called our helper, and no one can be helped except one who also makes some effort of his own accord; for God does not work our salvation in us as in senseless stones, or as in those in whose nature he did not establish reason and will. But why he helps one and does not help another, helps one so much and another so much, this one in that way and that one in this way, rests with him, the reason of an equity so secret and the excellence of his power.

As for those who say that there can be a man without sin in this life, they are not to be opposed at once with incautious rashness. For if we deny that there can be, we shall detract both from the free choice of man, who seeks this by willing it, and from the power or mercy of God, who brings it about by helping. But it is one question whether there can be, another whether there is; another, if there is not although there can be, why there is not; another whether there not only is anyone who has never had any sin at all, but also whether there could ever be or can be. In this fourfold set of questions, if I am asked whether a man can be without sin in this life, I will confess that he can, by the grace of God and his free choice, not doubting that free choice itself also belongs to the grace of God, that is, to God's gifts, not only that it exists but also that it is good, that is, that it turns to doing the Lord's commandments; and so the grace of God not only shows what is to be done but also helps so that what it has shown can be done. For what do we have that we have not received? Hence Jeremiah too says: “I know, O Lord, that man's way is not in himself, nor is it for a man to walk and direct his steps.” Hence too in the Psalms, when someone had said to God, “You have commanded your commandments to be kept exceedingly,” he did not at once presume on himself, but wished that he might do it: “Oh that my ways may be directed to keep your ordinances! Then I shall not be put to shame, when I look on all your commandments.” But who wishes for what he has in his power in such a way that he needs no help to do it? And from whom he wishes it, since not from fortune or fate or anyone else besides God, he shows sufficiently in what follows: “Direct my paths according to your word, and let no iniquity rule over me.” From slavery to this accursed mistress those are freed to whom, receiving him, the Lord Jesus gave power to become children of God. From this horrible domination those were to be freed to whom he says: “If the Son sets you free, then you will be truly free.” By these and innumerable other testimonies of this kind I cannot doubt that God has not commanded anything impossible for man, and that nothing is impossible for God in aiding and helping so that what he commands may be done. And for this reason a man can, if he wills, be without sin, helped by God.

But if it is asked, as I had put in second place, whether there is such a man, I do not believe there is. For I rather believe the Scripture which says: “Do not enter into judgment with your servant, for no living person will be justified in your sight.” And therefore there is need of the mercy of God, which exults over judgment, and which will not be for him who does not show mercy. And the prophet, when he said, “I said, I will declare my offense against myself to the Lord, and you forgave the ungodliness of my heart,” at once added, “For this every holy one will pray to you at a fitting time”: not, then, every sinner, but every holy one; for it is the voice of the holy: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Hence in the Apocalypse of the same apostle, those hundred and forty-four thousand saints who did not defile themselves with women (for they remained virgins), in whose mouth no lie was found, because they are blameless, are surely blameless for this reason, that they truly blamed themselves; and no lie was found in their mouth for this reason, that, if they had said that they had no sin, they would have deceived themselves and the truth would not be in them; and certainly there would be a lie where the truth was not; since the righteous man, when he is his own accuser at the beginning of his speech, certainly does not lie.

And for this reason those are much deceived, through not considering the Scriptures enough, by what is written, “He who is born of God does not sin and cannot sin, because his seed remains in him,” and by anything else said in that way. For they do not notice that people become children of God in so far as they begin to be in newness of spirit and to be renewed in the inner man according to the image of him who created them. For not from the hour in which anyone is baptized is all his old weakness consumed; but renewal begins from the forgiveness of all sins, and in so far as each one who is already wise is wise in spiritual things; but the other things have been done in hope, until they are done in reality as well, up to the renewal of the body itself into the better state of immortality and incorruption with which we shall be clothed in the resurrection of the dead. For the Lord calls this too a regeneration, not indeed such as takes place through baptism, but one in which what is now begun in the spirit will be perfected in the body too: “In the regeneration,” he says, “when the Son of Man sits on the throne of his majesty, you too will sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” For in baptism, although the forgiveness of sins is entire and full, yet if the change of the man into eternal newness also took place at once entire and full (I do not say in the body too, which it is certainly plain still tends to the old corruption and to death, to be renewed afterwards at the end, when there will truly be entire newness; but, the body excepted, if in the mind itself, which is the inner man, a perfect newness took place in baptism), the apostle would not say: “Even though our outer man is being corrupted, yet the inner is being renewed day by day.” For surely he who is still being renewed day by day is not yet wholly renewed; and in so far as he is not yet renewed, so far he is still in oldness. Accordingly, in so far as they are still in oldness, although already baptized, in that respect they are still children of this world; but in so far as they are in newness, that is, by the full and perfect forgiveness of sins, and by whatever measure they are spiritually wise and live in a manner fitting to it, they are children of God. For inwardly we put off the old man and put on the new, since there we lay aside lying and speak the truth, and the other things by which the apostle explains what it is to put off the old man and to put on the new, who is created according to God in righteousness and holiness of truth. And he exhorts those already baptized and faithful to do this; and they would not need to be admonished if this had already been done perfectly in baptism. And yet it has been done, as we also have been saved; for he saved us through the washing of regeneration. But in another place he says how this has been done: “And not only so, but we ourselves too, having the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan within ourselves, awaiting adoption, the redemption of our body. For in hope we have been saved. But hope that is seen is not hope; for what anyone sees, why does he hope for it? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”

The full adoption of children, then, will take place in the redemption of our body too. So we now have the firstfruits of the Spirit, by which we have already been made children of God in reality itself; but in other respects, just as we are saved in hope and renewed in hope, so also children of God in hope; but in reality itself, because not yet saved, therefore not yet fully renewed, and not yet children of God either, but children of this world. We advance, then, in renewal and righteous life by that by which we are children of God, and by this we cannot sin at all, until the whole is transformed into this, including that by which we are still children of this world; for by this we can still sin. So it comes about both that he who is born of God does not sin, and that, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. What we are as children of the flesh and of this world will therefore be consumed, and what we are as children of God, reborn of the Spirit, will be perfected. Hence the same John says: “Beloved, we are children of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be.” What is this “we are” and “we shall be,” except that we are in hope and shall be in reality? For he goes on to say: “We know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” Now, then, we have already begun to be like him, having the firstfruits of the Spirit, and we are still unlike him through the remnants of oldness. Accordingly, in so far as we are like him, so far we are children of God by the regenerating Spirit; but in so far as we are unlike him, so far we are children of the flesh and of this world. On the one side, then, we cannot sin; on the other, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, until the whole passes into adoption, and the sinner is no more, and you seek his place and do not find it.

In vain, therefore, do some also argue thus: If a sinner begot a sinner, so that the guilt of original sin is loosed in his infant when he receives baptism, a righteous man too should have begotten a righteous child. As though anyone begot carnally by virtue of being righteous, and not rather by virtue of what moves in his members with concupiscence, and of the law of sin being turned by the law of the mind to the use of propagation. He begets, then, by virtue of what he still draws that is old among the children of this world, not by virtue of what he has advanced into newness among the children of God; for “the children of this world beget and are begotten.” Hence what is born is also such, because “what is born of the flesh is flesh.” But only the children of God are righteous. In so far as they are children of God, they do not beget by the flesh, because they themselves too were born of the Spirit, not of the flesh. But those of them who beget, beget by the flesh by virtue of this, that they have not yet changed all the remnants of oldness into perfect newness. Hence whatever son is born from this old and weak part must himself also be old and weak; and therefore he too must be renewed by the Spirit into another generation through the forgiveness of sin. If this does not take place in him, a righteous father will profit him nothing; for the father is righteous by the Spirit, by which he did not beget him. But if it does take place, even an unrighteous father will do him no harm; for the one by spiritual grace has made the passage into the hope of eternal newness, while the other with a carnal mind has remained wholly in oldness.

The testimony, then, by which it was said, “He who is born of God does not sin,” is not contrary to the testimony by which it is said to those already born of God: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” For as long as a man, although wholly renewed in hope, and already in part in reality, by spiritual regeneration, still carries a body which is corrupted and weighs down the soul, we must distinguish, even in one man, what belongs where and from what each thing is said. For, as I think, the Scripture of God does not easily bear so great a testimony of righteousness to anyone as to three of his servants, Noah, Daniel, and Job, who, the prophet Ezekiel says, alone could be delivered from a certain impending wrath of God; in those three men prefiguring three kinds of men to be delivered: in Noah, as I think, righteous leaders of peoples, because of his governing of the ark as of the church; in Daniel, righteous continent people; in Job, righteous married people; and perhaps there is some other interpretation, which there is no need to inquire into now. Yet how preeminent these men were in righteousness is sufficiently plain from this prophetic testimony and from other divine testimonies. Nor for that reason would any sober person say that drunkenness is not a sin, which nevertheless stole upon so great a man; for Noah, as we read, was once drunk, though far be it from us to say that he was a drunkard.

Daniel, after the prayer which he poured out to God, says of himself: “When I was praying and confessing my sins and the sins of my people to the Lord my God.” For this reason, unless I am mistaken, it is said through the Ezekiel mentioned above to a certain most proud man: “Are you wiser than Daniel?” Nor can one say here what some argue against the Lord's Prayer: that, although the holy and already perfect apostles, having no sin at all, prayed it, they said, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors,” not for themselves but for the imperfect and those still sinners, so that by saying “our,” they say, they showed that both those who still had sins and they themselves, who were already free from sin in every respect, were in one body. This certainly cannot be said of Daniel, who, I believe, foreseeing as a prophet that this presumption would one day arise, although he had often said “we have sinned” in his prayer, explained to us why he said it, not in such a way that we should hear from him, “When I was praying and confessing the sins of my people to the Lord my God,” nor again with the distinction blurred, so that it would be uncertain, because of the fellowship of one body, if he said, “When I was confessing our sins to the Lord my God”; but altogether so distinctly, as though taking pains over the distinction itself and commending it most emphatically: “my sins,” he says, “and the sins of my people.” Who contradicts this evidence, except one who takes more pleasure in defending what he thinks than in finding out what ought to be thought?

But let us see what Job himself says after so great a testimony of God to his righteousness. “In truth,” he says, “I know that it is so. For how will a man be righteous before the Lord? For if he wishes to contend with him, he will not be able to obey him.” And a little later he says: “Who will oppose his judgment? Even if I am righteous, my mouth will speak ungodly things.” Again, a little later he says: “I know that he does not let me go unpunished. Since I am ungodly, why have I not died? Even if I am purified with snow and cleansed with clean hands, you have dipped me enough in filth.” Likewise in another of his discourses he says: “For you have written bitter things against me, and clothed me with the sins of my youth, and put my foot in restraint; you have watched all my works and looked into the soles of my feet, which grow old like a wineskin or like a garment eaten by the moth. For man born of woman is of short time and full of wrath; and like a flower when it has bloomed, it falls; he departs like a shadow and does not remain. Have you not made the care of this one too come into your judgment? For who will be clean from filth? No one, not even if his life is of one day.” And a little later he says: “You have numbered my necessities, and nothing of my sins has escaped you; you have sealed up my sins in a bag, and noted whatever I committed unwillingly.” See, Job too confesses his sins and says that he knows in truth that no one is righteous before the Lord. And he knows this in truth because, if we say that we have no sin, the truth itself is not in us. Accordingly, God bears him so great a testimony of righteousness according to the measure of human conduct; but he himself, measuring himself by that rule of righteousness which he beholds, as far as he can, in God, knows in truth that it is so, and adds: “For how will a man be righteous before the Lord? For if he wishes to contend with him, he will not be able to obey him”; that is: if, when about to be judged, he wishes to show that nothing can be found in him to condemn, he will not be able to obey him; for he loses even that obedience by which he could obey him when he commands that sins be confessed. Hence he rebukes some, saying: “Why do you wish to contend with me in judgment?” Guarding against this, the other says: “Do not enter into judgment with your servant, for no living person will be justified in your sight.” Therefore Job too says: “Who will oppose his judgment? Even if I am righteous, my mouth will speak ungodly things”; for this is: if I call myself righteous against his judgment, where that perfect rule of righteousness convicts me as unrighteous, surely my mouth will speak ungodly things, because it will speak against the truth of God.