On True Religion 12–24

In this way life becomes carnal and earthly, and for this reason is even called flesh and earth; and as long as it is so, it will not possess the kingdom of God, and what it loves will be snatched from it. For it loves what is even less than life, because it is body; and because of the sin itself, what is loved becomes corruptible, so that by flowing away it deserts its lover, because he too, by loving it, deserted God. For he neglected the precepts of him who said: “Eat this, and do not eat that.” So he is drawn to punishments: because by loving lower things he is set, in want of his pleasures and in pains, among those below. For what is the pain that is called bodily but the sudden corruption of the soundness of that thing which the soul, by using it badly, made liable to corruption? And what is the pain called mental but to lack the changeable things which it enjoyed or had hoped it could enjoy? And this is the whole of what is called evil, that is, sin and the punishment of sin. But if, while the soul spends its time in this race-course of human life, it conquers the desires which it nourished against itself by enjoying mortal things, and believes that it is helped by the grace of God to conquer them, serving him with its mind and good will, it will without doubt be restored, and will return from the many changeable things to the one unchangeable, re-formed through the Wisdom which is not formed but through which all things are formed, and it will enjoy God through the Holy Spirit, who is the Gift of God. So man becomes spiritual, judging all things while he himself is judged by no one, loving the Lord his God with his whole heart, with his whole soul, with his whole mind, and loving his neighbor not carnally but as himself. And he loves himself spiritually who loves God with all that lives in him. For on these two commandments hang the whole Law and the Prophets. From this it will follow that after bodily death, which we owe to the first sin, in its own time and order this body will be restored to its original stability, which it will have not of itself but through the soul made stable in God. And the soul again is made stable not of itself but through God whom it enjoys; and therefore it will flourish more than the body: for the body will flourish through the soul, and the soul through the unchangeable truth, who is the only Son of God; and so the body too will flourish through the Son of God himself, because all things are through him. By his Gift too, which is given to the soul, that is, the Holy Spirit, not only does the soul to which it is given become safe and at peace and holy, but the body itself also will be given life, and will be most pure in its nature. For he himself said: “Cleanse what is within, and what is outside will be clean.” And the Apostle says: “He will give life also to your mortal bodies because of the Spirit dwelling in you.” When sin is taken away, then, the punishment of sin will also be taken away; and where is evil? “Where, O death, is your strife? Where, O death, is your sting?” For being conquers nothing, and so death is swallowed up in victory.

Nor will the evil angel, who is called the devil, harm the sanctified in any way; for he too, insofar as he is an angel, is not evil, but insofar as he is perverted by his own will. For it must be admitted that the angels too are changeable by nature, if God alone is unchangeable; but by that will by which they love God more than themselves, they remain firm and stable in him, and enjoy his majesty, most gladly subject to him alone. But that angel, loving himself more than God, refused to be subject to him, and swelled with pride, and fell away from the supreme essence, and fell; and for this reason he is less than he was, because he wished to enjoy what was less, when he wished to enjoy his own power rather than God's. For although he did not exist supremely, yet he existed more fully when he enjoyed that which supremely is, since God alone supremely is. But whatever is less than it was is evil, not insofar as it is, but insofar as it is less. For by being less than it was, it tends toward death. And what wonder if from defect comes want, and from want envy, by which the devil is indeed the devil?

But if this defect which is called sin seized one against his will, like a fever, the punishment which follows the sinner, and which is called condemnation, would rightly seem unjust. But in fact sin is so much a voluntary evil that it is in no way sin if it is not voluntary; and this is so evident that neither the few who are learned nor the crowd of the unlearned disagree with it. Therefore either it must be denied that sin is committed, or it must be admitted that it is committed by will. But one does not rightly deny that the soul has sinned who admits both that it is corrected by repentance, and that pardon is given to the penitent, and that one who persists in sins is condemned by the just law of God. Finally, if we do not do evil by will, no one at all is to be rebuked or admonished; and if these are taken away, the Christian law and all the discipline of religion must be taken away. It is by will, then, that sin is committed. And since there is no doubt that sin is committed, I see that this too is not to be doubted: that souls have free choice of the will. For God judged that his servants would be better if they served him freely, which could in no way happen if they served not by will but by necessity. The angels, then, serve God freely, and this profits not God but themselves. For God does not need the good of another, since he is from himself. And what is begotten of him is the very same as he, because it is not made but begotten. But the things that have been made need his good, namely the supreme good, that is, the supreme essence. And they are less than they were when through the sin of the soul they are moved less toward him; yet they are not wholly separated, for then they would be nothing at all. What happens to the soul in its affections happens to the body in place: for the soul is moved by will, the body by space. And as for what is said to have been urged on man by the perverse angel, to this too he certainly consented by will. For if he had done it by necessity, he would be held by no charge of sin.

And that the body of man, which before sin was the best of its kind, after sin was made weak and destined to death, although it is a just punishment of sin, still shows more of the Lord's clemency than of his severity. For in this way we are persuaded that our love ought to be turned from the pleasures of the body to the eternal essence of truth. And the beauty of justice is in harmony with the grace of kindness, so that, since we were deceived by the sweetness of lower goods, we are instructed by the bitterness of punishments. For divine providence has so moderated even our punishments that even in this so corruptible body we may strive toward justice, and, laying aside all pride, bend our neck to the one true God, trust nothing to ourselves, and commit ourselves to him alone to be ruled and protected. So, with him as guide, the man of good will turns the troubles of this life to the use of fortitude; in the abundance of pleasures and the prosperous successes of temporal things he tests and strengthens his temperance; in temptations he sharpens his prudence, so that he is not only not led into them, but becomes even more watchful and more ardent in the love of truth, which alone does not deceive.

Though God heals souls in every way according to the opportunities of the times, which are ordered by his wonderful wisdom (about which either nothing should be said, or it should be discussed only among the pious and perfect), in no way did he provide more beneficently for the human race than when the very Wisdom of God, that is, the only Son, consubstantial and coeternal with the Father, deigned to take up the whole man, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. For so he showed to carnal men, who were unable to behold truth with the mind and were given over to the bodily senses, how high a place human nature holds among creatures, in that he appeared to men not only visibly (for he could have done that in some ethereal body tempered to what our sight can bear) but in a true man: for the very nature that was to be freed had to be taken up. And lest either sex should think itself despised by its Creator, he took up a man, born of a woman. He did nothing by force, but everything by persuading and admonishing. For the old servitude being over, the time of freedom had dawned, and man was now fittingly and wholesomely persuaded with how free a choice he had been created. By miracles he won faith for the God he was, by his passion for the man he bore. So, speaking to the crowds as God, he refused to acknowledge his mother when she was announced to him; and yet, as the Gospel says, as a boy he was subject to his parents. For in teaching he appeared as God, in the stages of life as man. Again, about to turn water into wine as God, he says: “Woman, depart from me: what have I to do with you? My hour has not yet come.” But when the hour had come in which he was to die as man, from the cross he acknowledged his mother and commended her to the disciple whom he loved above the others. The peoples, servants of pleasures, ruinously sought riches: he chose to be poor. They gaped after honors and power: he refused to be made king. They thought children of the flesh a great good: he scorned such marriage and offspring. They most proudly shrank from insults: he bore every kind of insult. They thought injuries intolerable: what greater injury than for a just and innocent man to be condemned? They abhorred bodily pains: he was scourged and tortured. They feared to die: he was punished with death. They thought the cross the most ignominious kind of death: he was crucified. All the things in desiring to have which we did not live rightly, he made worthless by going without them. All the things in desiring to avoid which we turned aside from the pursuit of truth, he cast down by enduring them. For no sin can be committed except when either those things are sought which he despised, or those are fled which he endured. So his whole life on earth, through the man whom he deigned to take up, was a discipline of morals. And his resurrection from the dead showed sufficiently that nothing of human nature perishes, since all things are safe with God, and how all things serve their Creator, whether for the punishment of sins or for the liberation of man, and how easily the body serves the soul when the soul is subject to God. When these things are accomplished, not only is no substance evil, which can never be, but no substance is even affected by any evil, which could happen through sin and its punishment. And this is the natural discipline, worthy of full faith for Christians who understand less, but for those who understand, purged of all error.

Moreover, the very method of the whole teaching, partly most plain, partly in likenesses, in words, in deeds, in sacraments, adapted to every instruction and exercise of the soul, what else has it fulfilled but the rule of rational discipline? For the exposition of the mysteries too is directed to those things which have been said most plainly. And if there were only those things which are most easily understood, truth would neither be sought with zeal nor found with delight. Nor, if there were sacraments in the Scriptures, and in the sacraments there were no signs of truth, would action sufficiently agree with knowledge. But now, since piety begins with fear and is perfected by love, the people bound by fear in the time of servitude under the old Law were burdened with many sacraments. For this was useful for such people to make them desire the grace of God, which was sung by the prophets as to come. When it came, a few most wholesome sacraments were established by the very Wisdom of God, by whom a man was assumed and by whom we have been called into freedom, to hold together the society of the Christian people, that is, of a free multitude under the one God. But many things which had been imposed on the Hebrew people, that is, a multitude fettered under the same one God, have been removed from practice, but remained in faith and interpretation. So now they do not bind slavishly, and they exercise the mind freely.

Whoever, then, denies that both Testaments can be from the one God because our people is not bound by the same sacraments by which the Jews were bound or are still bound, might as well say that it cannot be that one most just father of a family commands one thing to those for whom he judges a harsher servitude useful, and another to those whom he deigns to adopt to the rank of sons. And if the precepts of life trouble anyone, because in the old Law they are lesser and in the Gospel greater, and therefore both are thought not to belong to the one God, he who thinks this might be disturbed if one physician prescribes some things through his assistants to the weaker, and other things himself to the stronger, to restore or keep health. For as the art of medicine, though it remains the same and is in no way changed itself, changes its prescriptions for the sick, because our health is changeable, so divine providence, though itself wholly unchangeable, yet comes to the aid of the changeable creature in various ways, and according to the diversity of diseases orders or forbids different things at different times, so as to bring back and make firm in their own nature and essence, from the vice in which death begins and from death itself, those things which are failing, that is, tending to nothing.

But you say to me: Why do they fail? Because they are changeable. Why are they changeable? Because they do not exist supremely. Why do they not exist supremely? Because they are inferior to him by whom they were made. Who made them? He who supremely is. Who is he? God, the unchangeable Trinity, since he both made them through supreme Wisdom and preserves them with supreme kindness. Why did he make them? That they might be. For to be, in whatever degree, is good, because the supreme good is to be supremely. From what did he make them? From nothing. Since whatever is must have some appearance, however slight, so even if it is the least good, it will still be good, and will be from God. For since the supreme appearance is the supreme good, the least appearance is the least good. And every good either is God or is from God. Therefore even the least appearance is from God. Indeed, what can be said of appearance can be said of form too. For not in vain are both ‘most comely’ and ‘most shapely’ used in praise. That, then, from which God made all things is what has no appearance and no form, which is nothing other than nothing. For what is called formless in comparison with perfect things, if it has anything of form, however slight, however incipient, is not yet nothing, and so it too, insofar as it is, is only from God. Therefore even if the world was made from some formless matter, this matter itself was made wholly from nothing. For what is not yet formed, but is yet in some way begun so that it can be formed, is formable by God's benefit: for it is good to be formed. So even the capacity for form is some good; and therefore the author of all goods, who gave form, himself made the possibility of being formed. So everything that is, insofar as it is, and everything that is not yet, insofar as it can be, has it from God. Which is said in another way thus: every formed thing, insofar as it is formed, and everything not yet formed, insofar as it can be formed, has it from God. And no thing keeps the integrity of its nature unless it is sound in its own kind. And all soundness is from him from whom is every good; and every good is from God: so all soundness is from God.

From this, anyone whose mind's eyes are open, and not darkened and disturbed by the pernicious pursuit of vain victory, easily understands that all things that are corrupted and die are good, although corruption itself and death itself are evil. For unless they were deprived of some soundness, corruption or death would not harm them; but if corruption did not harm, it would in no way be corruption. If then corruption opposes soundness, and soundness, as no one doubts, is good, all things are good which corruption opposes; and those which corruption opposes are themselves corrupted: so the things that are corrupted are good; but they are corrupted because they are not supreme goods. Because, then, they are good, they are from God; because they are not supreme goods, they are not God. The good that cannot be corrupted, therefore, is God. And all other goods are from him, which of themselves can be corrupted, because of themselves they are nothing; but through him they are partly kept from corruption, partly healed when corrupted.

The first vice of the rational soul is the will to do those things which the supreme and inmost truth forbids. So man was expelled from paradise into this world, that is, from eternal things to temporal, from abundance to want, from firmness to weakness; not, then, from substantial good to substantial evil, because no substance is evil, but from eternal good to temporal good, from spiritual good to carnal good, from intelligible good to sensible good, from the supreme good to the lowest good. There is, then, a certain good which the rational soul sins in loving, because it is ranked below the soul; so the sin itself is evil, not the substance which is loved in sinning. So that tree which is written to have been planted in the middle of paradise is not evil, but the transgression of the divine precept. And since this has just condemnation following it, from that tree which was touched against the prohibition there comes the discernment of good and evil: because when the soul has become entangled in its sin, by paying the penalty it learns the difference between the precept which it would not keep and the sin which it committed; and in this way the evil which it did not learn by avoiding it, it learns by feeling it; and the good which by not obeying it loved less, it loves more ardently by comparison. The vice of the soul, then, is what it has done, and the difficulty resulting from the vice is the punishment which it suffers; and this is the whole of evil. But doing and suffering are not a substance; therefore substance is not evil. So neither water is evil, nor an animal that lives in the air; for these are substances; but evil is the voluntary plunge into water and the suffocation which the drowned man suffers. An iron stylus is skillfully made, with one end with which we write and another with which we erase, and is beautiful in its kind and suited to our use. But if someone wanted to write with the end with which one erases, and erase with the end with which one writes, he would in no way make the stylus evil, though the act itself would rightly be blamed; and if he corrects it, where will the evil be? If someone suddenly looks at the noonday sun, his eyes will be struck back and disturbed: will either the sun or the eyes be evil on that account? In no way; for they are substances; but the evil is the disordered looking, and the disturbance itself that follows; and this evil will not exist when the eyes have been restored and look at their own light fittingly. Nor, when that same light which belongs to the eyes is worshiped in place of the light of wisdom which belongs to the mind, does it itself become evil; but the superstition is evil by which the creature is served rather than the Creator; and this evil will not exist at all when the soul, having recognized the Creator, has subjected itself to him alone, and has perceived that other things are subjected to it through him. So all bodily creation, if it is merely possessed by a soul that loves God, is the lowest good, and beautiful in its kind, since it is held together by form and appearance; but if it is loved by a soul that neglects God, not even so does it itself become evil; but because the sin by which it is so loved is evil, it becomes penal to its lover, entangles him in miseries, and feeds him with deceitful pleasures, because they neither last nor satisfy, but torture with pains. For when the beautiful changeableness of the times runs its course, the coveted form deserts its lover, departs from the senses with the torment of the one who perceives it, and drives him about with errors; so that he thinks that this is the first form which is the lowest of all, namely that of bodily nature, which the flesh, wrongly delighted, has reported through the slippery senses; so that when he thinks something, he believes he understands, deluded by the shadows of phantasms. And if ever, not holding the whole discipline of divine providence but thinking he holds it, he tries to resist the flesh, he gets as far as the images of visible things, and in thought vainly forms immense spaces of this light which he sees bounded by fixed limits; and he promises himself this appearance as his future dwelling, not knowing that he is drawn by the lust of the eyes, and wishes to go with this world outside the world; which he does not think to be this world because he stretches its brighter part to infinity by false thought. This can very easily be done not only with this light but also with water, finally with wine, with honey, with gold, with silver, even with the flesh or blood or bones of any animals, and other things of this kind. For there is nothing bodily which, though seen as one, cannot be thought of as countless, or, though seen in a small space, cannot by the same faculty of imagination be spread out to infinity. But it is very easy to curse the flesh, very hard not to think carnally.

By this perversity of the soul, then, which comes about through sin and punishment, the whole of bodily nature becomes what is said through Solomon: “Vanity of those who are vain, and all is vanity. What abundance has man in all his labor at which he labors under the sun?” For not in vain was ‘of those who are vain’ added, because if you take away the vain, who pursue the last things as if they were first, body will not be vanity; but in its own kind it will show beauty, though the lowest, without any error. For the multiplicity of temporal forms has scattered man, fallen from the unity of God, through the carnal senses, and multiplied his affection with changeable variety: so there has arisen a laborious abundance, and, if one may say so, a plentiful want, while he pursues one thing after another and nothing remains with him. So “from the time of his grain, wine and oil he has been multiplied,” so that he does not find the selfsame, that is, the unchangeable and singular nature, following which he would not err, and having attained which he would not grieve. For he will have, as a consequence, also the redemption of his body, which will no longer be corrupted. But now “the body which is corrupted weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the mind that thinks many things,” because the lowest beauty, that of bodies, is swept along in the order of succession. For it is the lowest precisely because it cannot have all things at once; but while some things give way and others succeed, they complete the number of temporal forms in one beauty.

And all this is not evil because it passes. For so a verse too is beautiful in its kind, although two syllables can in no way be said at once. For the second is not pronounced unless the first has passed; and so the end is reached in order, so that when the last alone sounds, without the earlier ones sounding with it, yet, woven together with those that are past, it completes the metrical form and grace. Yet the art itself by which the verse is made is not so subject to time that its beauty is spread out through measures of duration; but it has all things at once, by which it makes a verse that does not have all things at once but replaces the earlier parts by the later; yet the verse is beautiful because it displays the last traces of that beauty which the art itself keeps constantly and unchangeably.

So, as some perverse people love the verse more than the art itself by which the verse is made, because they have given themselves more to the ears than to the intelligence, so many love temporal things and do not seek divine providence, the founder and ruler of the times; and in their very love of temporal things they do not want what they love to pass, and are as absurd as if someone, at the recitation of a famous poem, wanted to hear one single syllable perpetually. But such hearers of poems are not found; yet everything is full of such judges of things; because there is no one who cannot easily hear not only a whole verse but a whole poem; but no man can perceive the whole order of the ages. Add to this that we are not parts of the poem, but we have been made parts of the ages by condemnation. The poem, then, is sung under our judgment; the ages are carried through by our labor. To no defeated man are the athletic games pleasing, yet they are graceful even with his disgrace: for this too is a certain imitation of truth. And we are forbidden such spectacles for no other reason than lest, deceived by the shadows of things, we stray from the very things of which they are shadows. So the condition and governance of this universe displeases only impious and condemned souls; but even with their misery, it pleases many, whether victors on earth or spectators without danger in heaven: for nothing just displeases the just.

Therefore, since every rational soul is either miserable through its sins or happy through its right deeds, and every irrational soul either yields to a more powerful one, or obeys a better, or is matched with an equal, or exercises one who strives, or harms one condemned; and every body serves its soul as far as is permitted according to the soul's merits and the order of things: there is no evil to universal nature, but to each his own fault becomes evil. Moreover, when the soul, regenerated by the grace of God, restored to wholeness, and now subject to him by whom it was created, with its body also restored to its original firmness, begins not to be possessed with the world but to possess the world, there will be no evil for it: because that lowest beauty of temporal changes, which used to run its course with it, will run its course beneath it; and there will be, as it is written, a new heaven and a new earth, not for souls laboring in a part, but reigning in the whole. “For all things are yours,” says the Apostle, “and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's”; and, “The head of the woman is the man, the head of the man is Christ, and the head of Christ is God.” Since, then, the vice of the soul is not its nature but against its nature, and is nothing else than sin and the punishment of sin, it is understood from this that no nature, or, if it is better put so, no substance or essence is evil. Nor does it follow from the sins and punishments of the soul that the universe is disfigured by any deformity. For the rational substance which is pure of all sin, subject to God, rules over the other things subject to it. But that which has sinned is ranked where it is fitting that such should be, so that, with God as founder and ruler of the universe, all things are seemly. And the beauty of the whole creation is blameless through these three: the condemnation of sinners, the exercise of the just, and the perfection of the blessed.

Therefore the very medicine of the soul too, which is carried out by divine providence and ineffable kindness, is most beautiful in its steps and distinctions. For it is divided into authority and reason. Authority demands faith and prepares man for reason. Reason leads to understanding and knowledge. Yet reason does not wholly abandon authority, when it is considered whom one should believe; and certainly the highest authority belongs to truth itself once known and clearly seen. But since we have fallen into temporal things and are hindered from eternal things by love of them, a certain temporal medicine, which calls to salvation not those who know but those who believe, comes first not in the order of nature and excellence but in the order of time itself. For wherever one has fallen, there one must lean in order to rise. So we must strive, by means of the very carnal forms by which we are held back, toward knowing those which the flesh does not report. And I call those carnal which can be perceived through the flesh, that is, through the eyes, through the ears, and the other bodily senses. To cleave with love to these carnal or bodily forms is necessary for children, and nearly necessary for adolescents; but from then on, as age advances, it is not necessary.