Sermons to the People 1.1–4.2

Whoever remembers his debt, and the apostle's saying, "Owe no one anything, except to love one another," ought to compel himself to pay it. And indeed, however loudly the terror of the collectors may press upon debtors, love demands far more strongly: it takes the weight of fear out of the demand and lays a greater weight on one's sense of shame. I remember that I promised your Charity that, so far as the Lord deigns to grant, a reply from us to the foolish and pernicious slanders of the Manichees, with which they lie in wait for the Old Testament, would not be lacking. Pay attention, then, and see the serpent's snares, and so put your necks, drawn out of them, under the yoke of Christ. For they dare to hold out snares of this sort to the unwary, saying that the Scriptures of the New and the Old Testament are at odds with each other, so that one cannot keep both with a single faith; and, trying to persuade people that the very beginnings of the book of Genesis and of the Gospel according to John are hostile to each other, they set them against one another as though face to face in battle.

"Moses," they say, "says, 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth,' and does not name the Son, through whom all things were made; whereas John says, 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made.'" Is this a contradiction, or are they rather in contradiction with themselves, who have preferred to find fault blindly with what they do not understand rather than to seek it with reverence? For what will they say when I answer that the Beginning itself, in which Genesis says that God made heaven and earth, is the Son of God? Or perhaps I shall not be able to prove this, when I know that I have witnesses ready to hand from the New Testament itself, to which, like it or not, they bow, their proud neck broken? For the Lord says to the unbelieving Jews, "If you believed Moses, you would believe me also; for he wrote of me." Why then should I not understand the Lord himself to be the Beginning in which God the Father made heaven and earth? For Moses certainly wrote, "In the beginning God made heaven and earth," and that he wrote of the Lord is confirmed by the voice of the Lord himself. Or is he perhaps not also himself the Beginning? We need not doubt this either, for the Gospel says that when the Jews asked the Lord who he was, he answered, "The Beginning, who also speak to you." See the Beginning in which God made heaven and earth. God therefore made heaven and earth in the Son, through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made; so that, with the Gospel agreeing with Genesis, we may hold the inheritance in accordance with the agreement of both Testaments, and leave the quarrelsome slanders to the disinherited heretics.

But it ought in no way to disturb your good sense that, whereas John the evangelist did not say, "All things were made in him," but "All things were made through him," we do not read in Genesis, "Through the beginning God made heaven and earth," but "In the beginning God made heaven and earth." For the Apostle says, "That he might make known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in him, in the dispensation of the fullness of times, to restore all things in Christ, the things in heaven and the things on earth, in him." Just as here, then, you hear him say "in him" in such a way that you also understand "through him," so in John's words, "All things through him," you are obliged to understand "in him" as well. And just as here I am not robbed of the understanding by which I take all things to have been made in him, when I read "through him," so in Genesis, when I read that heaven and earth were made in him, who forbids me to understand "through him" too? Unless perhaps the Manichees shift the quarrel away from the two Testaments and set it up between the most blessed witnesses of the New Testament, that is, between Paul and John, because the one says "in him" and the other "through him." But just as we do not believe that Paul and John contradict each other, so we compel them to confess the agreement of Moses and Paul as well.

And since, just as these two agree with each other, so John also agrees with both (for he said "through him" in such a way as not to forbid our understanding "in him"), all the divine writings stand at peace among themselves. But just as it commonly happens that when we watch clouds passing through the darkness of the night our sight is so confused by their gloom that the stars seem to us to run the opposite way, so these heretics, because they find no peace in the cloud of their own error, think that the divine Scripture is quarrelling.

Perhaps they will say that "In the beginning God made heaven and earth" was not said of the Word of God. Suppose it so: suppose it is not "in the beginning" which is the only-begotten, but that what is written, "In the beginning God made heaven and earth," is to be understood as said of the beginning of time; not because time already existed before there was any creature (for no one would say that time is coeternal with God, who is the maker of times), but because time began to exist with heaven and earth. If anyone understands it this way, provided he recognizes the distance between the creature and the Creator and does not say that what God made is coeternal with the God who made it, then at least in that saying the number of the persons will shine out, where it is said, "Let us make man in our image and likeness," and "God made man in the image of God." Yet even if it did not appear, and the Trinity were conveyed to those who understand under the name of unity, the beginning of the Gospel ought not on that account to have seemed contrary to the beginning of Genesis to the wise; indeed it could seem so only to the unwise. For we have countless examples of such expressions in the Scriptures. The Lord himself says, "But I say to you, do not swear at all, neither by heaven, for it is the throne of God, nor by the earth, for it is the footstool of his feet." Will they perhaps deny, because he does not name himself there, that Christ sits in heaven? Again, the Apostle says, "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Or who has first given to him, and it shall be repaid him? For from him and through him and in him are all things: to him be glory for ever and ever." Here too no mention of the Son is made by name. The Apostle says that there is one God and Lord, from whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things. Why, then, did these people choose Moses to set against John the evangelist, and were unwilling to set the apostle Paul against him? Plainly because they wanted to persuade the unlearned that the two Testaments are contrary to each other, so that they might use one witness and reject the other. For that is what their error professes. For if there were someone else whose utterly demented frenzy tried to show the unlearned that the New Testament itself contradicts itself, what else would he do but set Paul and John before them as enemies and quarrellers, just as these men do with Moses and John? But just as the most sincere and true faith commends the agreement of Paul and John, and in the blessed Paul's words, "From him and through him and in him are all things," teaches us to understand not only the Father but also the Son and the Holy Spirit, so the faith that looks at the peace between Moses and John, in Moses' words, "In the beginning God made heaven and earth," either recognizes, if it takes "beginning" as the beginning of time, nothing else in the word "God" than the unity of the Trinity, or without hesitation embraces the Son himself as the Beginning in which God made heaven and earth. There are many other things that we could mention according to these rules of expression of the divine Scriptures; but so as not to burden the memory of your Holiness, let it suffice to have mentioned these. We urge you to look for the rest yourselves, or to notice them when the Scriptures are read, and to consider and discuss them among yourselves in harmony. Turning to the Lord, etc.

The well-known devotion of our father Abraham has been brought back to our memory by the reading just now; and it is indeed so wonderful that no heart should be thought so forgetful that it could ever slip from it. Yet somehow, whenever it is read, it moves the minds of the hearers as though it were happening then. Great faith, great devotion, not only toward God but also toward his only son himself, to whom the father believed no harm could come, whatever he who created him had ordered concerning him. For Abraham could be the father of his son by the working of the flesh, but not his creator and maker by the working of majesty. And indeed, as the Apostle says, Isaac was born to Abraham not according to the flesh but by promise: not because Abraham had not begotten him in the flesh, but because he had received him out of utter hopelessness; and had God who promised not been present, so old a man would not have dared to hope for any offspring from the womb of his aged wife. But he believed that he would be born, and he does not mourn that he is to die. His right hand is chosen for the sacrifice, that the son might die, whose heart was chosen for faith, that the son might be born. Abraham did not tremble to believe when the son was promised; he did not tremble to offer him when he was demanded; and the devotion of the believer was not contrary to the devotion of the one who obeyed. I say this: Abraham did not say to himself, "God spoke to me; when he promised a son, I believed that God would give me offspring; and what offspring? Such that he said to me, 'In Isaac shall your seed be called'; and lest perhaps my seed should be called in Isaac in such a way that my son should die before me, he said, 'In your seed all nations shall be blessed.' So he who spoke to me promised a son, and does he himself demand that I kill him?" He did not raise a question for himself, as though about contrary and conflicting words of God, who promised that a son would be born and afterwards said, "Kill your son for me"; but in his heart was a faith always unshaken and in no way failing. For Abraham reasoned that God, who had granted that he who did not exist should be born of old people, could also restore him from death. For what God had already done was greater, when Abraham saw a son given to him who had not existed, after so great a hopelessness, and, if you consult human weakness, impossibly. So he set his mind to faith; he did not believe that anything was impossible for the Creator. Having received his son as he had believed, he afterwards believed God when he commanded: in the son he had received he had already proved God. He believed when he was to receive his son; he believed when he was to kill him. Faithful everywhere, cruel nowhere. He led his son all the way to the place of sacrifice; he even armed his right hand with the knife. You notice who is striking and whom he is striking: notice who is commanding. Abraham, then, is devoted in obeying; what is God in commanding? Let not the one who commanded displease minds that are weak, not to say sacrilegious. But if the one who obeyed pleases, how can the one who commanded displease? For if Abraham did well in obeying, God did much better, far better, incomparably better, in commanding.

Perhaps the hidden meaning will be sought. For God would not have commanded this for nothing; or else it is to be taken carnally, this reading that has perhaps disturbed the hearts of some who understand less. "God tempted Abraham," it says. Is God, then, so ignorant of things, so unaware of the human heart, that he finds a man out by tempting him? Far from it: it is so that the man may find himself out. First, then, brothers, on account of those who oppose the old Law, holy Scripture (for some who do not understand would sooner attack what they do not understand than seek to understand it, and become not humble inquirers but proud slanderers): on account of these, then, who want to accept the Gospel and reject the old Law, thinking they can be on God's way and walk properly on one foot, since they are not scribes trained in the kingdom of God, who bring out of their treasure things new and old; on account of such people, then, in case any are hiding here, or, if they are not here, so that those who are present may have an answer to give such people, this question must be briefly resolved. We say to such people: You accept the Gospel and do not accept the Law; but we say that the same one who is the most merciful giver of the Gospel was also the fearsome giver of the Law. For by the Law he terrified, and by the Gospel he healed those who had turned, whom he had terrified with the Law so that they might turn. An emperor gave a law, and many offenses were committed against the law; the law that the emperor gave knew only how to punish offenders; so it remained that he who had sent the law ahead should himself come with pardon to wipe out their offenses. But what does the perverse heart say, which says it accepts the Gospel but rejects the Law? Why does it reject it? "Because it is written," he says, "'God tempted Abraham.' Am I to worship a God who tempts?" Worship Christ, whom you have in the Gospel. He himself calls you back to understand the Law. But because they did not pass over to Christ, they remained in their own phantom. For they do not worship Christ as he is preached in the Gospel, but such a Christ as they had invented for themselves. Therefore on top of the veil of their natural folly they add another veil of perverse opinion. And when, through a double veil, will they be able to see what shines in the Gospel? If God tempting displeases you, let Christ tempting displease you. But since Christ tempting pleases you, let God tempting please you. For Christ too, the Son of God, is God; with the Father, Christ is one God. Where then do we read of Christ tempting? The Gospel says it: he says to Philip, "Where shall we buy bread, so that these may eat?" And the Evangelist continues: "But he said this tempting him; for he himself knew what he would do." Now turn your mind to God tempting Abraham. For God too said this tempting Abraham: for he himself knew what he would do. Christ is recognized as a tempter, God is recognized as a tempter: let the heretic tempter be corrected. For the heretic does not tempt as God tempts. God tempts in order to open a man to himself; the heretic tempts in order to shut God out from himself.

Let your Charity know, then, that by temptation God does not act in order that he himself may come to know something he did not know before, but in order that, by his tempting, that is, his questioning, what is hidden in a man may be brought out. For a man is not as well known to himself as to his Creator, nor is a sick man as well known to himself as to his doctor. A man is sick; he is the one who suffers; the doctor does not suffer; and the one who suffers waits to hear from the one who does not suffer. That is why in the Psalm a man cries out, "Cleanse me from my hidden faults, Lord." For there are things in a man hidden from the very man in whom they are; and they do not come out, nor are they opened, nor found, except in temptations. If God stops tempting, the teacher stops teaching. But God tempts in order to teach; the devil tempts in order to deceive. Yet unless the one who is tempted gives him room, his temptation is empty and is driven off with scorn. That is why the Apostle says, "Do not give room to the devil." And people give room to the devil out of their own desires. For people do not see the devil with whom they fight; but they have an easy remedy. Let them conquer themselves within, and they triumph over him outside. Why do we say this? Because a man does not know himself unless he learns himself in temptation. But once he has learned himself, let him not neglect himself. If he neglected himself when he was hidden, let him not neglect himself now that he is known.

What, then, do we say, brothers? Even if Abraham knew himself, we did not know Abraham. He had to be brought out either to himself or certainly to us: to himself, that he might know what to give thanks for; to us, that we might know either what to ask of the Lord or what to imitate in a man. What, then, does Abraham teach us? To put it briefly, that we should not put what God gives before God. This is meanwhile at the level of the letter of the events, before the hiding place of the sacred sign is examined, that is, what lies hidden in this mystery in which Abraham was ordered to kill his only son. So do not put even what God grants you as a great gift before him who granted it; and when he wishes to take it from you, let him not become cheap to you: for God is to be loved freely. For what reward from God is sweeter than God himself?

God is said to learn when he makes us learn. So when Abraham had fulfilled the obedience of his devotion, he hears from God, "Now I know that you fear God." This is understood to mean that God made Abraham known to himself. Just as when a prophet speaks (I am speaking to Christians, to those advancing in God's school; what I say is not raw or new, but most familiar and most obvious to your Holiness and to us): when a prophet speaks, what do we say? "God said," we plainly say. We also say, "The prophet said." And we say both rightly, and we find both in the authoritative writings. And the apostles understood the prophets so that they said, "God said," and in another place, "Isaiah said." Both are true, because we find both in the Scriptures. Let a Christian solve for me the question I have just put, and he will solve for himself the question I put a little earlier. How? Because what a man says by God's gift, God says, according to the words, "For it is not you who speak," and the rest; and again, "Behold, I Paul say to you"; and again, "Christ who speaks in me." Apply this rule, then, brothers, to what once seemed crooked, and it will be straight.

Let us all, then, look to him, that he who was hungry for our sake may feed our hungry souls; who, though he was rich, became poor, that by his poverty we might be made rich. A little while ago we fittingly sang to him: "All things wait upon you, that you may give them food in due season." If all things, then all people; if all people, then us too. So if we are to give anything good in this sermon, we shall not be the ones giving it, but he from whom we all receive, because we all wait upon him. It is time: let him give. But let us do what he said, so that he may give; that is, let us wait upon him and look to him with the heart; for as the eyes and ears of the body are turned to us, so the eyes and ears of the heart are turned to him. With the ear of the heart open, hear a great sacred mystery. All the mysteries of the divine Scriptures are indeed great and divine; yet some are more striking and more important, which require us to be most attentive, and which more than the others build up the fallen and satisfy the hungry: they are not so satisfied that they feel disgust, but so that there is satisfaction without disgust, driving out want without bringing in contempt. Whom would it not move that an only son was ordered to be sacrificed by him who had promised him? And above all, the thing happening as we have heard makes minds eager to seek the explanation of the mystery.

Before everything, however, brothers, we urge and command this in the name of the Lord as strongly as we can: that when you hear the hidden meaning of a passage of Scripture that narrates events being explained, you first believe that what was read happened as it was read; lest, with the foundation of the actual event taken away, you try to build as if in the air. Our father Abraham was a man faithful in those times, believing God, justified by faith, as Scripture says, both old and new. He received a son from Sara his wife when both were already in old age, out of great hopelessness, but hopelessness by human reckoning. For what is not to be hoped for from God, to whom nothing is difficult; who makes great things as he makes small ones, who raises the dead as he creates the living? If a painter paints a mouse by the same art as an elephant (different works, but one art), how much more God, who spoke, and they were made; who commanded, and they were created? What does he do with difficulty, who does it by a word? With the same ease with which he created the angels above the heavens, he created the lights in the heavens, the fish in the sea, the trees and animals on the earth: great things with the same ease as small ones. Is it to be wondered at, then, that he for whom it was entirely easy to make all things from nothing gave a son to old people? Such were the men, such the human beings, that God had in that time, and such heralds had he made of them for the Son who was to come, that Christ is to be sought and found not only in what they said but also in what they did, or in what happened to them. Whatever Scripture says of Abraham both happened and is prophecy; as the Apostle says in one place, "For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and the other by a free woman; which things are an allegory. For these are the two covenants."

So it is not unwise of us to say that Isaac was both born to Abraham and signified something. So too, when Abraham was ordered to sacrifice his son, he obeys God, leads him to the place, arrives on the third day, leaves his two servants with the donkey, and goes himself where God had commanded; he lays the wood on the altar, lays his son on the wood. Before the son comes to the place of sacrifice, he carries the wood on which he is to be laid. Then, when he was almost struck, a voice sounds that he should be spared; and yet they do not leave without a sacrifice and without blood shed. A ram appears caught by its horns in a thorn bush; it is sacrificed, the sacrifice is completed. When the sacrifice was completed it is said to Abraham: "I will make your seed like the stars of heaven and the sand of the sea; and your seed shall possess the cities of their enemies; and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice." See, then, when it was done, and when the remembrance of the deed itself takes place. When that Ram says, "They have pierced my hands and my feet," and the rest; when that sacrifice in the Psalm was accomplished, then in the same Psalm it was said, "All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship in his sight; for the kingdom is his, and he shall rule over the nations." If "they shall remember" was said, then what we now see happening was signified beforehand at some time.

Let us see, then, how it was fulfilled, and from what source it was fulfilled, and by what preceding sacrifice there was fulfilled what was said to Abraham, "In your seed all nations shall be blessed." Happy the nations, which did not hear that, and now, reading it, have believed what he who heard it believed. For "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness, and he was called the friend of God." That he believed God, within, in the heart, lies in faith alone; but that he led his son to be sacrificed, that he fearlessly armed his right hand, that he would have struck had he not been held back by the voice, is certainly great faith and a great work; and God praised the work itself when he said, "Because you have obeyed my voice." Why then does the apostle Paul say, "We hold that a man is justified by faith without the works of the Law," and in another place, "And faith which works through love"? How does faith work through love, and how is a man justified by faith without the works of the Law? How? Pay attention, brothers. Someone believed, received the sacraments of faith on his bed, and died: he lacked time to work. What do we say? That he was not justified? We plainly say that he was justified, believing in him who justifies the ungodly. So this man was justified and did not work; and the saying of the Apostle is fulfilled, "We hold that a man is justified by faith without the works of the Law." The thief who was crucified with the Lord believed with the heart unto righteousness and confessed with the mouth unto salvation. For faith which works through love, even if it has nothing in which to work outwardly, is still kept glowing in the heart. For there were some under the Law who boasted of the works of the Law, which perhaps they did not out of love but out of fear; and they wanted to seem righteous and to be preferred to the Gentiles, who had not done the work of the Law. But the Apostle, preaching faith to the Gentiles, when he saw that those who were coming to the Lord were justified by faith, so that those who had believed might then work well, not that they should earn believing because they had worked well, cried out confidently and said that a man can be justified by faith without the works of the Law: so that rather those were not righteous who did what they did out of fear, since faith works through love in the heart, even if it does not go out in a work.

For carnal benefits were promised because spiritual ones were not grasped. That earthly kingdom and earthly life were utterly cast down and handed over to subjection to enemies. They hoped for everything from the Lord carnally, and served him for the sake of these things. Let Christians be questioned, whether there are none such now. Such people belong to the Old Testament. For I am not asking about the name, but about the life. From such as these come heresy and schism. She fled from Sara's presence, and Sara afflicted her. What is surprising in that? She afflicted her bodily. If Donatus's party has suffered any affliction, it is because of its pride, as Hagar the slave woman suffered from Sara. Let Hagar hear the voice of the angel: "Return to your mistress." "But as then he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now." We do not find that Isaac was bodily persecuted by Ishmael; only that the Apostle spoke of persecution. Note where he said, "But as then he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now." But what does Scripture say? "Cast out the slave woman and her son; for the son of the slave woman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman." So let us look where Scripture says this. What does it say in Genesis? "And it happened, when Ishmael and Isaac were playing, she saw them playing." Who persecuted? Whom did he persecute? Sara saw them playing and said, "Cast out the slave woman and her son." Why? Because she saw them playing. But Paul calls that play persecution, because that play was mockery. If it was mockery, it is seduction and deception. Every game of children is an imitation of some greater business; and when an older child plays with a younger one, as if to be led on, knowing that he has other business he is aiming at, he also pretends certain things to the child, that is, to the weak one, while he plays with him. Ishmael was older and strong in malice; but playing with the child Isaac, he was leading Isaac astray, and practising certain frauds in his play with the weak one. His mother saw that this play was persecution. Understanding it so, Sara his mother said of that play: "Cast out the slave woman and her son; for the son of the slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac." And the Church says: "Cast out the heresies and their sons; for heretics shall not be heirs with Catholics." But why will they not be heirs? Are they not born of the seed of Abraham? And how do they have the Church's baptism? They have baptism: the seed of Abraham would make them heir, if pride did not shut them out of the inheritance. You are born of the same word, of the same sacrament; but you do not come to the same inheritance of eternal life unless you return to the Catholic Church. You are born of the seed of Abraham; but the son of the slave woman is outside because of pride.

We remember that we are debtors for yesterday's reading; but just as we owe a sermon, so you owe a hearing. That reading, indeed, sounds carnal; but whoever has received the Spirit of God understands it spiritually. For the Apostle said, "To be carnally minded is death." And for this purpose the Lord promised the Paraclete, the Spirit of truth. So, just as he promised, he also sent him, so that each one who has now received that Spirit may not be a slave of temporal pleasures, but, made master of his body and servant of the Creator, may direct himself into the way of God's commandments: that his steps may not falter nor his eyes waver, but that he may advance in the purpose of faith, so as to come to that which "eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it gone up into the heart of man": which is believed before it is seen, so that when it comes, he who believed may not be put to shame. Let him then press on, walking in hope, hoping for what he does not yet hold, believing what he does not yet see, loving what he does not yet cleave to. The exercise of the soul in faith, in hope and in love makes him fit to receive what is to come.

So while Peter was still minded carnally, troubled by the question of a servant girl, he denied the Lord three times. For the doctor had foretold to the sick man what would happen in him; the sick man did not know the course of his illness and had presumed too much about himself, but the true doctor saw it. For he had said that he would die with the Lord and for the Lord. But he could not yet do so, because he was weak. But when the Holy Spirit afterwards came, sent from heaven, and strengthened those to whom he came, Peter, filled with spiritual confidence, began to be truly ready to die for the one he had denied before. Filled with this confidence, all the martyrs, holding the right faith, dying and suffering not for a false faith, not for an empty phantom, not for a vain hope, not for an uncertain thing, but for the promise of the truth, holding it certain that he who promised is able to perform, despised all present things and burned for the things to come, which, when they become present to them, will never become past.