The Conferences 22.15–23.10

Germanus: “Many hold that this passage of the apostle should be understood in such a way that they maintain he said it not in his own person but in that of sinners: namely, those who wish to abstain from bodily enticements and pleasures, but, bound by their former vices and captivated by the delight of carnal passions, cannot restrain themselves, since, crushed by the ingrained habit of vices as by the dominion of a harsh tyranny, they cannot breathe again to the freedom of chastity. For how can this fit the blessed apostle, who certainly reached the highest summit of all perfection: ‘For I do not do the good that I want, but the evil that I hate, that I do’; and what he adds, ‘But if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me’; and also this: ‘For I delight in the law of God according to the inner man, but I see another law in my members fighting against the law of my mind and leading me captive in the law of sin which is in my members’? In what way can these be fitted to the person of the apostle? For what good is there that he could not fulfil, and on the other hand what evil is there that he committed against his will, not wanting it and hating it, under the compulsion of nature? To what law of sin could the chosen vessel, in whom Christ the Lord spoke, be led captive? When he had taken captive all disobedience and every height that exalts itself against God, he declared of himself with confidence, ‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; for the rest there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on that day.’”

Theonas: “As I enter the safest harbor of silence, you try to call me back again to the immense sea of a most profound question. But, embracing the opportunity of a safe anchorage, having run the course of so long a conference, we will cast here for the present the anchor of silence, so that tomorrow, if no force of storm prevents it, having tested the breeze of a favorable wind, we may spread the sails of discussion.”

When daylight returned and the old man was pressed by us with the greatest urgency to search into the depth of the apostle’s question, he spoke thus. “The testimonies by which you try to prove that the apostle Paul spoke not in his own person but on behalf of sinners, ‘For I do not do the good that I want, but the evil that I hate, that I do,’ or, ‘But if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me,’ or what follows, ‘For I delight in the law of God according to the inner man, but I see another law in my members fighting against the law of my mind and leading me captive in the law of sin which is in my members,’ show on the contrary that these things can by no means fit the person of sinners, but that what is said belongs only to the perfect and suits only the chastity of those who follow the merits of the apostles. For how can this fit the person of sinners: ‘For I do not do the good that I want, but the evil that I hate, that I do’? Or this either: ‘But if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me’? For which offender defiles himself with adulteries and sexual immorality against his will? Who lays snares for his neighbor unwillingly? Who is forced by unavoidable necessity to crush a man by false witness, or to cheat him by theft, to covet another’s goods, or to shed blood? On the contrary, as it is written, the human race is diligently intent on wickedness from its youth. For all who burn with love of vices so long to fulfil what they desire that, watching with sleepless care for an opportunity to commit crime, they even fear that they may be too slow to enjoy their lusts to the full; and, glorying in their disgrace and the heap of their crimes, according to the sentence of the rebuking apostle, they seek a kind of praise for themselves from their shame. The prophet Jeremiah too declares that they commit their shameful crimes not only not unwillingly, nor with rest of heart and body, but that they sweat with such laborious efforts to accomplish them that they are not called back from the deadly appetite for crimes even by the steep difficulties that stand in their way, saying, ‘They labored to act wickedly.’ And who would say that this fits sinners: ‘So then I myself with the mind serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin,’ when it is plain that they serve God neither with the mind nor with the flesh? Or how can those who sin with the body serve God with the mind, when the flesh conceives the tinder of vices from the heart, and the author of both natures himself declares that the source and origin of sins flows from there, saying, ‘From the heart proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, acts of sexual immorality, thefts, false witness,’ and so on? So it is clearly shown that this can in no way be understood of the persons of sinners, who not only do not hate evil but love it, and serve God so little with either mind or flesh that they sin in the mind before the flesh, and before they fulfil the pleasure of the body are overtaken by the sin of their mind and thoughts.”

“It remains, then, that we measure the force of the meaning by the inmost disposition of the speaker, and examine what the blessed apostle called good, and what by comparison with it he declared evil, not by the bare meaning of the words but with the same insight as he, and search out his understanding according to the dignity and merit of the one speaking. For we shall be able to grasp sayings uttered by God’s inspiration according to his purpose and will only when, weighing the state and merit of those by whom they were delivered, we put on, not in word but by experience, a disposition like theirs, according to whose character all meanings are without doubt conceived and sayings uttered. So let us inquire more carefully what is chiefly the good which the apostle could not accomplish when he wished. For we know many goods which we cannot deny that the blessed apostle and all men of his merit both had by nature and acquired by grace. Chastity is good, self-restraint praiseworthy, prudence admirable, kindness generous, sobriety circumspect, temperance modest, mercy devout, justice holy. There is no doubt that all these were so full and perfect in the apostle Paul and his companions that religion was taught by them through mastery of virtues rather than of words. What of the fact that they were always consumed by constant care and sleepless anxiety for all the churches? How great a good of mercy this is, how great a perfection, to burn for those who are made to stumble, to be weak with the weak! Since, then, the apostle abounded in such goods, we shall not be able to recognize what that good is whose perfection he lacked unless we advance into the disposition in which he himself spoke. So all the virtues we said he had, though they are like most splendid and precious gems, yet, if they are compared with that splendid and outstanding pearl which the merchant of the Gospel, seeking it, longs to buy by selling all that he possesses, their worth becomes so cheap and despised that, when they are sold without hesitation, the possession of a single good enriches the seller of innumerable goods.”

“What, then, is that one thing which is so incomparably preferred to those so great and innumerable goods that, when all are scorned and cast away, it alone should be possessed? It is surely that best part, whose grandeur and perpetuity is proclaimed by the Lord when Mary had chosen it, leaving the duty of hospitality and service: ‘Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; but few things are needed, or even one. Mary has chosen the good part, which will not be taken away from her.’ The one thing, then, is theoria, that is, the contemplation of God, in comparison with whose merit all the merits of righteous acts and all the pursuits of virtues are set lower. And all those things which we said shone in the apostle Paul are not only good and useful but also great and splendid. But just as, for example, the metal tin, which was thought to be of some use and beauty, becomes very cheap when silver is seen, and again the worth of silver vanishes in comparison with gold, and gold itself is despised when compared with gems, and a multitude of gems, however remarkable, is surpassed by the brightness of a single pearl, so all those merits of holiness, though they are not only good and useful for the present but also gain the gift of eternity, will yet be counted cheap and, so to speak, saleable if compared with the merits of divine contemplation. And so that the authority of the Scriptures may confirm this same comparison: does not Scripture declare of all things created by God in general, ‘And behold, all things that God made were very good,’ and again, ‘All things that God made are good in their time’? These things, then, which are declared in the present not only simply good but, with an addition, very good (for they are truly suited to us while we live in this world, either for the use of life or for the healing of the body or for some purpose of usefulness unknown to us; or indeed they are very good in this too, that they make us see the invisible things of God, understood from the creation of the world through the things that have been made, and contemplate his eternal power and divinity from the so great and so ordered building of the world’s fabric and of all things that exist in it), all these will still not keep the name of good if they are compared with that future age, where there is no change of goods and no corruption of true blessedness to be feared. The blessedness of that world is described thus: ‘The light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, as the light of seven days.’ So these things, great and splendid and wonderful to behold, if compared with the promises of the future held by faith, will at once appear as vanity, as David says: ‘They will all grow old like a garment, and like a cloak you will change them, and they will be changed; but you are the same, and your years will not fail.’ Since, therefore, nothing is stable in itself, nothing unchangeable, nothing good except the Godhead alone, and every creature obtains the blessedness of eternity or unchangeableness not by its own nature but by participation in its Creator and by his grace, created things cannot keep the merit of goodness when compared with their Creator.”

“And if we wish to establish the reason of this sentence by still plainer testimonies: although we read that many things are called good in the Gospel, a good tree, a good treasure, a good man, and a good servant (‘for a good tree cannot bear bad fruit,’ and ‘a good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things,’ and ‘Well done, good and faithful servant’), and there is no doubt that all these are good in themselves, yet if we look to the goodness of God, none of them will be called good, as the Lord says, ‘No one is good but God alone.’ In view of this even the apostles themselves, who by the merit of their election had surpassed the goodness of the human race in many ways, are said to be evil, when the Lord says to them, ‘If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him.’ Finally, just as our goodness is turned to evil in view of the heavenly goodness, so our righteousness too, compared with the divine righteousness, is reckoned like a menstrual rag, as the prophet Isaiah says: ‘All our righteousnesses are like a menstrual rag.’ And to bring in something still clearer: even the life-giving precepts of the law itself, which is said to have been given through angels by the hand of a mediator, and of which the same apostle says, ‘So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good,’ are declared by the divine oracle to be not good at all if compared with the perfection of the Gospel. For he says, ‘And I gave them precepts that were not good, and ordinances by which they shall not live.’ The apostle too declares that the glory of the law is so dimmed by the light of the New Testament that in comparison with the brightness of the Gospel it should not even be called glorious, saying, ‘For what was made glorious is not glorious in this respect, because of the surpassing glory.’ Scripture keeps this comparison on the opposite side as well, that is, in weighing the deserts of sinners, so that it justifies those who have sinned much less by comparison with the impious, saying, ‘Sodom is justified by you,’ and again, ‘For what did your sister Sodom sin?’ and, ‘Faithless Israel has justified her soul in comparison with treacherous Judah.’ In the same way, then, the merits of all the virtues I listed above, though good and precious in themselves, are darkened by comparison with the brightness of contemplation. For they draw back and delay the saints, however much engaged in good works, if still in earthly pursuits, from the contemplation of that sublime good.”

“For who, while rescuing the needy from the hand of those stronger than he, and the poor and destitute from those who plunder him, who, while breaking the jaws of the unjust and wresting the plunder from their teeth, can look up with a quiet mind, in the very work of intercession, to the glory of the divine majesty? Who, while supplying food to the poor or receiving crowds of visitors with kindly hospitality, can at the very moment when he is distracted with anxious mind by the needs of the brothers gaze on the immensity of the heavenly blessedness, and, while he is shaken by the distresses and cares of the present life, look forward to the state of the world to come with a heart raised above earthly contagions? So blessed David, defining this as the only good for man, longs to cleave continually to God, saying, ‘But it is good for me to cleave to God, to put my hope in the Lord.’ Ecclesiastes too declares that this cannot be accomplished by any of the saints without fault: ‘For there is no righteous man on earth who does good and does not sin.’ For who, however eminent among all the righteous and holy, bound with the chains of this body, can be believed ever to have possessed this highest good in such a way that, never departing from divine contemplation, he could be thought never to have been drawn away even for a short time by earthly thoughts from him who alone is good? Who has never had any care for food, clothing, or other carnal things, never been anxious about receiving brothers, changing his place, or building his cell, never desired any help from human assistance, or, troubled by the barrenness of want, never incurred that sentence of the Lord’s rebuke, ‘Do not be anxious for your soul, what you will eat, nor for your body, what you will put on’? Finally, we confidently maintain that even the apostle Paul himself, who surpassed the labor of all the saints by the number of his sufferings, could by no means fulfil this, as he himself testifies to his disciples in the Acts of the Apostles: ‘You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my needs and to those who are with me’; or when, writing to the Thessalonians, he testifies that he worked in labor and weariness night and day. Although great rewards of merit were being prepared for him by these things, still his mind, however holy and exalted, could not fail to be torn away at times from that heavenly contemplation by attention to earthly work. Then, when he saw himself enriched with such great fruits of action, and on the other hand weighed in his heart the good of contemplation, and, as it were, weighed in one pan the gain of such great labors and in the other the delight of divine contemplation, after he had long, as it were, adjusted the balance in his breast, while on this side the immense rewards of labor delighted him, and on that side the desire of union and of inseparable fellowship with Christ invited him even to the release of the flesh, he at last cried out in anxiety, ‘What I shall choose I do not know. I am hard pressed between the two, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for your sake.’ So although he had in many ways preferred the excellence of this good even to all the fruits of his preaching, he yet submits out of consideration of love, without which no one earns the Lord, and for the sake of those to whom, like a nurse, he was still giving milk from the breasts of the Gospel, he does not refuse a separation from Christ harmful to himself but necessary for others. For he is driven to choose this above all by that exceeding power of devotion by which, for the salvation of his brothers, he wishes, if it were possible, to incur even the ultimate evil of anathema: ‘For I could wish,’ he says, ‘that I myself were anathema from Christ for my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites’; that is, I would wish to be given over not only to temporal but even to eternal punishments, provided that all men, if it could be, enjoyed the fellowship of Christ; for I am sure that the salvation of all is more profitable to Christ and to me than my own. So, that the apostle might perfectly attain this highest good, that is, to enjoy the sight of God and to cleave to Christ continually, he longs to be released from this body, which, weak and hindered by the many needs of its frailty, cannot fail to be torn from the fellowship of Christ. For it is impossible for a mind distracted by such frequent cares and hindered by such varied and troublesome anxieties always to be fixed on the divine vision. For what zeal of the saints can be so persistent, what purpose so steep, that that cunning plotter does not sometimes mock it? Who has so sought out the secret places of solitude and shunned the company of all mortals that he never slipped into superfluous thoughts and never fell away, through the sight of things or the occupation of earthly affairs, from that contemplation of God which alone is truly good? Who has ever been able to keep such fervor of spirit that he was not sometimes carried away by slippery thoughts even from the very attention of prayer and suddenly fell from heavenly things to earthly? Which of us, to pass over other times of wandering, does not, even at the very moment when he raises his mind on high in supplication to God, sink into a kind of stupor and so, even unwillingly, offend by the very thing by which he hoped for pardon of his offenses? Who, I say, is so alert and watchful that, while he sings a psalm to God, his mind is never drawn away from the meaning of Scripture? Who is so familiar with God and so joined to him that he can rejoice at having carried out even for one day that apostolic command by which he bids us pray without ceasing? Although all these things may seem light and almost free from sin to some who are wrapped in grosser vices, yet to those who know the good of perfection even a multitude of the smallest things is very heavy.”

“Suppose we put into some large house, crowded with many bundles, tools, and vessels, two men together: one keen-sighted with the full sharpness of his vision, the other whose eyesight has been dulled by bleary eyes. Will not the one whose dim sight prevents him from seeing everything declare that there is nothing there but cupboards, beds, benches, and mangers, and whatever meets not so much the eyes of one looking as the hands of one groping; while on the other hand the one who, with the brightest light of the eyes, has searched out even hidden things, will declare that there are many very small things there, which could scarcely be counted, and which, if they were gathered into one heap, would equal or even perhaps exceed by their number the size of the few things the other had felt? So too the saints, those who, so to speak, see, whose highest zeal is for perfection, shrewdly detect in themselves and most sharply condemn even those things which the dark gaze of our mind does not see; so much so that those who, as it seems to our carelessness, have not darkened the whiteness of their, as it were, snowy body with even a slight blemish of sin, see themselves spattered with many stains, if, I will not say the wickedness of an idle thought has crept into the halls of the mind, but even the memory of a psalm that is to be said turns aside the attention of one praying at the time of prayer. ‘For if,’ they say, ‘when we petition some exalted man, I will not say for our life and safety but even for the sake of some gain, we fix on him the whole sharpness of flesh and mind and hang on his nod in anxious expectation, fearing greatly lest some unsuitable or unfitting word turn away the mercy of the hearer; and then, if, when we stand in the forum and before the tribunals of secular judges, with our adversary standing opposite, in the very midst of the prosecution and conflict a cough, a spitting, a laugh, a yawn, or sleep creeps upon us, with what ill will will the most watchful enemy stir up the judge’s severity to our ruin: how much more, when we petition that knower of all hidden things in the imminent danger of eternal death, especially when the cunning seducer and accuser stands on the other side, must the mercy of the judge be implored with intent and anxious prayer! And not unjustly will one be bound, not with a light sin but with the gravest crime of impiety, who, while pouring out prayer to God, suddenly departs from his presence, as if from the eyes of one who neither sees nor hears, following the vanity of a wicked thought.’ But those who cover the eyes of their heart with a thick veil of vices, and, according to the Savior’s saying, seeing do not see and hearing do not hear nor understand, scarcely see in the recesses of their breast even the great and capital crimes. They cannot see with purified vision any stealthy approaches of thoughts, nor those slippery and hidden itchings in themselves that prick the mind with a fine and subtle suggestion, nor the captivities of their soul. Always wandering with shameless thoughts, they neither know how to grieve when they are drawn away from that contemplation which is unique, nor have anything they grieve to have lost, since, opening their mind to thoughts that rush in as they please, they have no purpose that they hold chiefly or desire in every way.”

“The cause that hurls us into this error is that, being utterly ignorant of the virtue of anamartēsia, that is, sinlessness itself, we think we can contract no fault at all from these idle and slippery wanderings of thoughts. Stupefied by dullness and as if struck with blindness of the eyes, we see nothing in ourselves but capital crimes, and believe that only those are to be avoided which are also condemned by the severity of secular laws; and if we feel ourselves even a little free from these, we at once think there is no sin in us. So, separated from that number of those who see, because we do not see the small particles of the many kinds of filth heaped up within us, we are by no means stung with wholesome compunction if the illness of dejection has disturbed our mind; nor do we grieve at being struck by the suggestion of vainglory; nor do we weep over a prayer offered too slowly or too lukewarmly; nor do we count it a fault that, while we were singing psalms or praying, something other than the prayer or psalm itself came to mind; nor do we shudder that we do not blush to conceive in the heart, even for an hour, many things which we are ashamed to say or do before men, though we know it lies open to the divine sight; nor do we cleanse the pollution of shameful dreams with an abundant washing of tears; nor do we mourn that in the very devotion of almsgiving, when we help the needs of the brothers or supply food to the poor, a covetous hesitation clouds the serenity of our cheerfulness; nor do we believe we are struck by any loss when, forgetting God, we think of what is temporal and corruptible. So that saying of Solomon fits us quite well: ‘They struck me, but I did not feel pain; and they mocked me, but I did not know it.’”

“On the contrary, those who place the sum of all their pleasure, joy, and blessedness in the contemplation of divine and spiritual things alone, when they are drawn away from it even a little against their will by violent thoughts, punish it with the penalty of immediate repentance as a kind of sacrilege. Lamenting that they have preferred to their Creator the very cheap creature to which the gaze of their mind was turned aside, they charge themselves, I might almost say, with the crime of impiety. And although they turn the eyes of their heart with the greatest eagerness to behold the brightness of the divine glory, yet, unable to bear even the briefest darkness of carnal thoughts, they abhor whatever draws the gaze of the mind away from that true light. Finally, when the blessed apostle John wished to instill this disposition in all, he said: ‘Little children, do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of God is not in him; for all that is in the world is the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the pride of life, which is not from the Father but from the world. And the world is passing away, and its desire; but he who does the will of God abides forever.’ The saints, then, loathe all the things by which this world subsists, but it is impossible that they should not be carried off to them by a brief excursion of thoughts; and no man as yet, except our Lord and Savior, has kept the natural wandering of the mind so always fixed in the contemplation of God that he never sinned by being carried away from it by love of some worldly thing. For Scripture says, ‘Even the stars are not clean in his sight,’ and again, ‘If he does not trust in his saints, and found wickedness in his angels’; or, as the more correct translation has it, ‘Behold, among his saints none is unchangeable, and the heavens are not clean in his sight.’”

“I would rightly say, then, that the saints, who, holding steadily to the remembrance of God, are carried along as if with a suspended step on lines stretched high, are to be compared with schoenobatae, whom people commonly call rope-walkers. They place the whole of their safety and life on the very narrow path of that little rope and do not doubt that they will at once meet a most dreadful death if their foot strays with even a slight stumble or goes beyond the measure of that saving straightness. While, by a wonderful art, they make their airy steps through empty space, if they do not keep that path, narrower than their footprint, with cautious and careful control, the earth, which is as it were the natural base for all and the most solid and safest foundation for everyone, becomes for them an immediate and certain ruin; not because its nature is changed, but because they fall headlong to it by the weight of the flesh. So too that unwearied goodness and unchangeable substance of God harms no one itself; but we, by turning away from the heights and tending to the depths, bring death upon ourselves; indeed, the very turning away becomes death to the one who turns away. For ‘woe to them,’ he says, ‘because they have gone away from me; they will be laid waste, because they have transgressed against me’; and again, ‘Woe to them when I depart from them.’ ‘For your own wickedness will reprove you, and your turning away will rebuke you. Know and see how evil and bitter it is to have forsaken the Lord your God.’ ‘For each one is bound by the cords of his own sins.’ To them the Lord’s rebuke is addressed quite fittingly: ‘Behold, all you who kindle a fire, girded with flames, walk in the light of your fire and in the flames that you have kindled’; and again, ‘He who kindles wickedness,’ he says, ‘will perish by it.’”

“Since, then, the saints feel themselves daily weighed down by the burden of earthly thought and falling from that height of mind, and being carried over, unwillingly or even unknowingly, into the law of sin and death, and, to pass over other things, being called away from the sight of God at least by those works I listed above, good and righteous indeed but still earthly, they certainly have reason to groan continually to the Lord. They have reason, truly humbled and pricked to the heart, to declare themselves sinners not only in words but in disposition, and, constantly asking pardon from the grace of the Lord for all that they incur daily when overcome by the frailty of the flesh, to pour out unceasingly true tears of repentance. For they see themselves entangled even to the very end of life in the same surges for which they are troubled with constant grief, and unable to offer even their very supplications without anxiety of thoughts. Having learned by experience, then, that by human strength, with the burden of the flesh resisting, they cannot reach the end they long for, nor be joined to that chief and highest good according to the desire of their heart, but are led away captive from its sight to worldly things, they fly to the grace of God, who justifies the ungodly, and protest with the apostle: ‘Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ.’ For they feel that they cannot accomplish the good they want, but always fall into the evil they do not want and hate, that is, the movements of thoughts or cares for carnal things.”