The Conferences 23.11–24.1

“And they delight in the law of God according to the inner man, which, going beyond all visible things, strives always to be united to God alone; but they see another law in their members, that is, implanted in the nature of the human condition, which, fighting against the law of their mind, drags their mind captive by the violent law of sin, forcing it, that is, to leave that chief good and submit to earthly thought. Although this may seem necessary and useful when it is spent in the management of some religious necessity, yet in comparison with that good which delights the gaze of all the saints it is judged by them evil and to be fled, because through it they are in some way, even for a short time, drawn back from the joy of that perfect blessedness. For truly it is the law of sin which the transgression of its author brought upon the human race, through the fault of him on whom that sentence of the most just judge was passed: ‘Cursed is the ground in your works; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and in the sweat of your face you shall eat your bread.’ This, I say, is the law implanted in the members of all mortals, which fights against the law of our mind and keeps it from the divine vision; and this ground, cursed in our works after the knowledge of good and evil, began to bring forth thorns and thistles of thoughts, by whose prickles the natural seeds of the virtues are choked, so that we cannot eat without the sweat of our face that bread of ours which came down from heaven and strengthens the heart of man. The whole human race, then, is subject to this law generally, without any exception. For there is no one, however holy, who does not receive the bread just mentioned with the sweat of his face and anxious attention of heart. But many rich men, as we see, eat that common bread without any sweat of their face.”

“The blessed apostle also declares this law spiritual, saying, ‘For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin.’ For this law which commands us to eat that true bread which came down from heaven in the sweat of our face is spiritual; but that selling under sin makes us carnal. What, I ask, is this sin, and whose? Without doubt Adam’s, by whose transgression, and, so to speak, ruinous bargain and fraudulent trade, we have been sold. For, seduced by the serpent’s persuasion, he sold all his offspring by taking the forbidden food and delivered them to the yoke of perpetual slavery. For this custom is usually kept between seller and buyer: one who wishes to hand himself over to another’s ownership receives from his buyer a price for the loss of his own liberty and his delivery into perpetual slavery. We see this most plainly fulfilled between Adam and the serpent. For, receiving from the serpent, as the price of his liberty, the eating of the forbidden tree, he departed from his natural liberty and chose to give himself up in perpetual slavery to the one from whom he had received the deadly price of the forbidden fruit. Bound thereafter by this condition, he not without reason subjected the whole offspring of his posterity to perpetual service to the same one whose slave he had become. For what else can a slave marriage produce but slaves? What then? Did that cunning and crafty buyer snatch the right of ownership from the true and lawful Lord? Not so. For he did not so seize all God’s property by the trickery of a single fraud that the true Lord lost the power of his dominion, who holds down under the yoke of slavery even that buyer himself, fugitive and rebel though he is. But since the Creator had granted freedom of choice to all rational creatures, he ought not to call back against their will to their inborn liberty those who had sold themselves, against what is right, by the transgression of greedy desire. For whatever is contrary to goodness and fairness is abhorrent to that author of justice and devotion. It would have been evil if he had revoked the benefit of the liberty he had granted; unjust if, crushing and capturing free man by his power, he had not allowed him to exercise the right of the liberty he had received. He reserved his salvation for ages to come, so that the fullness of the appointed time might be completed in right order. For his offspring had to remain under their ancestral condition until the grace of their former Lord, freeing them from their original bonds, restored them to their ancient state of liberty at the price of his own blood. He could have saved them even then, but would not, because fairness did not allow him to break the sanction of his own decree. Do you wish to know the cause of your sale? Hear your Redeemer himself proclaiming it most plainly through the prophet Isaiah: ‘What is the bill of your mother’s divorce, with which I put her away? Or who is my creditor, to whom I sold you? Behold, you were sold for your iniquities, and for your crimes I put away your mother.’ Do you also wish to know plainly why he would not redeem you by the power of his might when you had been delivered to the yoke of slavery? Hear what he added to the preceding words, in which he reproaches those same slaves of sins with the cause of their voluntary sale: ‘Is my hand shortened and made small, so that I cannot redeem? Or is there no power in me to deliver?’ But the same prophet shows what has always stood in the way of his most powerful mercy: ‘Behold,’ he says, ‘the hand of the Lord is not shortened, so that it cannot save, nor is his ear dulled, so that it cannot hear; but your iniquities have made a division between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he does not hear.’”

“Since, then, that first curse of God made us carnal and condemned us to thorns and thistles, and our father sold us by such an unjust bargain that we cannot do the good we want, since, torn from the remembrance of the most high God, we are forced to think of the things of human frailty, and, while burning with love of purity, we are often pricked even against our will by natural incitements which we would wish to know nothing of at all, ‘we know that good does not dwell in our flesh,’ that is, the lasting and continual tranquillity of the contemplation and purity we have spoken of. Instead, there has come about in us this most evil and mournful divorce: though we wish to serve the law of God with the mind, never, of course, wishing to turn our gaze from the divine brightness, yet, surrounded by carnal darkness, we are forced by a kind of law of sin to be torn away from what we know to be good, falling from that height of mind to earthly cares and thoughts, to which the law of sin, that is, the sentence of God which the first offender received, has not without reason condemned us. And so the blessed apostle, while he confesses most plainly that he and all the saints are bound by the inescapable necessity of this sin, yet boldly declares that none of them is to be condemned for it, saying, ‘There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed me from the law of sin and death’; that is, the daily grace of Christ absolves all his saints from this law of sin and death, into which they are constantly forced to fall against their will, when they pray to the Lord for the forgiveness of their debts. You see, then, that the blessed apostle uttered this sentence not in the person of sinners but in that of those who are truly holy and perfect: ‘For I do not do the good that I want, but the evil that I hate, that I do. 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.’”

Germanus: “We say that this cannot fit the persons either of those who are entangled in capital crimes or of the apostle and those who have advanced to his measure; but we think it should properly be understood of those who, after the grace of God and the knowledge of the truth, wishing to abstain from carnal vices, are still dragged to the ingrained desire of their passions by their old habit, which rules most violently in their members like a natural law. For the practice and frequency of sinning becomes as it were a natural law, which, implanted in the members of human weakness, carries off captive to vices the affections of a soul not yet trained in the full pursuit of the virtues but still of a raw and, so to speak, tender chastity; and, subjecting them to death by the old law, delivers them to the yoke of reigning sin, not allowing them to attain the good of purity they love, but rather forcing them to do the evil they abhor.”

Theonas: “Your opinion has made no small progress, since you yourselves have now begun to maintain that this cannot stand at all in the person of those who are altogether sinners, but properly fits those who strive to abstain from carnal vices. Since you have now separated these from the number of sinners, it follows that you will gradually place them among the companies of the faithful and holy. For what kinds of sins do you say these can commit from which, if they are entangled in them after the grace of baptism, they are freed again by the daily grace of Christ? Or of what body of death is the apostle to be believed to have said, ‘Who will deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord’? Is it not plain, as the truth has forced you yourselves to admit, that he speaks not of those members of capital crimes by which the wages of eternal death are earned, that is, murder, sexual immorality, adulteries, drunkenness, thefts, and robberies, but of that body just mentioned which the daily grace of Christ helps? For whoever, after baptism and the knowledge of God, falls into that body of death, let him know that he must be cleansed not by the daily grace of Christ, that is, by the easy forgiveness which our Lord, when entreated, is wont to grant our errors at every moment, but either by the long affliction of repentance and penal sorrow, or else be delivered for them to the punishments of eternal fire in the future; as the same apostle declares: ‘Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor men who lie with males, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will possess the kingdom of God.’ Or what is this law at war in our members, which fights against the law of our mind, and, when it has led us away resisting and captive in the law of sin and death and made us serve it with the flesh, nonetheless allows us to serve the law of God with the mind? For I do not think that the law of sin here means shameful deeds, or can be understood of the crimes mentioned above; whoever commits these does not serve the law of God with the mind, since he must first fall away from it in spirit before he commits any of them in the flesh. For what is it to serve the law of sin but to fulfil what sin commands? What kind of sin is it, then, by which such holiness and perfection feels itself taken captive, and yet does not doubt that it is to be freed by the grace of Christ, saying, ‘Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord’? What law, I say, will you assert is in our members which, drawing us away from the law of God and taking us captive in the law of sin, makes us wretched rather than guilty, so that we are not delivered to eternal punishments, but sigh as if over an interrupted joy of blessedness, and, seeking a helper to draw us back to it, cry out with the apostle, ‘Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?’ For what else is being led captive in the law of sin but remaining in the effect and work of sin? Or what other chief good will be given which the saints cannot fulfil, except that in comparison with which, as we said above, all things are not even good? We know indeed that there are many goods in this world, especially chastity, self-restraint, sobriety, humility, justice, mercy, temperance, and devotion; but all these cannot equal that highest good, and can be accomplished, I will not say by the apostles, but even by ordinary men; and those by whom they have not been fulfilled are either punished with eternal punishment or, as was said above, freed by the great labor of repentance, not by the daily grace of Christ. It remains, then, that we must admit that this sentence of the apostle rightly fits the person of the saints alone, who, falling daily into this law, as we said, of sin, not of crimes, are not hurled into wickedness, being sure of the state of their salvation, but, as has often been said, rolled down from divine contemplation to the misery of bodily thoughts, are often cheated of the good of that true blessedness. For if they felt themselves bound by daily crimes through this law of their members, they would surely complain not of the loss of happiness but of innocence; and the apostle Paul would not say, ‘Wretched man that I am,’ but, ‘impure’ or ‘wicked man that I am’; nor would he wish to be freed from the body of this death, that is, from the mortal condition, but from the shameful deeds and crimes of this flesh. But because he felt himself taken captive through the condition of human frailty, that is, drawn away to the anxieties and carnal cares that the law of sin and death produces, groaning over this law of sin into which he had fallen against his will, he runs back at once to Christ and is saved by the ever-present redemption of his grace. Whatever of anxiety, then, that law of sin, which naturally produces the thorns and thistles of thoughts and mortal cares, has sprouted even in the soil of the apostle’s breast, this law of grace at once plucks out. ‘For the law,’ he says, ‘of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed you from the law of sin and death.’”

“This, then, is the inescapable body of death, in which all the perfect who have tasted how sweet the Lord is, rolled back daily, feel with the prophet how evil and bitter it is for them to depart from the Lord their God. This is the body of death which, drawing them back from the heavenly vision, leads them down to earthly things; which makes them, while they sing psalms or lie prostrate in prayer, go over human images, or words, or business, or superfluous acts. This is the body of death by which, though they emulate the holiness of the angels and wish to cleave to the Lord continually, they cannot find the perfection of this good, because the body of death stands in the way; but they do the evil they do not want, that is, they are carried away in mind even to things that do not belong to the progress of the virtues and perfection. Finally, so that the blessed apostle might plainly show that he said this of the saints and the perfect and those like himself, pointing, as it were, with his finger at himself alone, he at once adds, ‘So then I myself’: that is, I who declare these things lay open the hidden places of my own conscience, not another’s. The apostle is accustomed to use this form of speech when he wishes to point to himself especially, as there: ‘I myself, Paul, beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ’; and again, ‘except that I myself did not burden you’; and again, ‘But be it so; I myself did not burden you’; and elsewhere, ‘I myself, Paul, say to you: if you are circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing’; and to the Romans, ‘For I myself could wish to be anathema from Christ for my brothers.’ It can also, not absurdly, be taken so that ‘So then I myself’ is spoken more expressly and with emphasis: that is, I whom you know to be the apostle of Christ, whom you revere with all respect, whom you believe to be the highest and perfect, and in whom Christ speaks, though I serve the law of God with the mind, yet confess that I serve the law of sin with the flesh; that is, through the distraction of the human condition I am sometimes rolled down from heavenly to earthly things, and the height of my mind slips down to cares of lowly things. Through this law of sin I feel myself taken captive at every moment, so that, although I persevere in an unshaken desire for the law of God, I feel I can in no way escape the force of this captivity unless I always flee to the grace of the Savior.”

“And so all the saints, pricked with daily sighs over this frailty of their substance, as they search the varieties of their thoughts and the hidden places and inner chambers of their conscience, cry out in supplication, ‘Do not enter into judgment with your servant, for no one living will be justified in your sight’; and, ‘Who will boast that he has a chaste heart? Or who will be confident that he is clean from sin?’; and again, ‘There is no righteous man on earth who does good and does not sin’; and also, ‘Who understands his offenses?’ And they have judged human righteousness so weak and imperfect and always in need of God’s mercy that one of them, whose iniquities and sins God cleansed by sending the burning coal of his word from the altar, said, after that wonderful contemplation of God, after the sight of the exalted Seraphim and the revelation of heavenly mysteries: ‘Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people that has unclean lips.’ As I think, he would perhaps not have felt the uncleanness of his lips even then, had he not been counted worthy to know the true and complete purity of perfection through the contemplation of God, at the sight of which he suddenly recognized his uncleanness, unknown to him before. For when he says, ‘Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips,’ what follows shows that he confessed this of the uncleanness of his own lips, not the people’s: ‘and I dwell in the midst of a people that has unclean lips.’ But even when, praying, he confesses the uncleanness of sins as though universal, he embraces in a general supplication the people not of the wicked only but also of the righteous, saying, ‘Behold, you were angry, and we sinned; in them we have always been, and we shall be saved. We have all become like one unclean, all our righteousnesses like a menstrual rag.’ What, I ask, can be plainer than this sentence, in which the prophet embraced not one but all our righteousnesses, and, looking around at all things judged either unclean or horrible, because he could find nothing filthier or more impure in human life, chose to compare them to a menstrual rag? In vain, then, is the point of a thorny objection set against the plainest truth, as you said a little while ago: if no one is without sin, no one is holy; if no one is holy, then no one will be saved. For the knot of this question can be untied by this testimony of the prophet: ‘Behold,’ he says, ‘you were angry, and we sinned’; that is, when, turning away from the pride or negligence of our heart, you stripped us of your help, at once the whirlpool of sins swallowed us, as if someone were to say to the most brilliant element of the sun, ‘Behold, you have set, and at once dark obscurity has covered us.’ And yet, though he says here that the saints sinned, and not only sinned but always remained in their sins, he does not despair of salvation altogether, but adds, ‘In them we have always been, and we shall be saved.’ I will compare this sentence, ‘Behold, you were angry, and we sinned,’ to that of the apostle, ‘Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?’ Again, what the prophet adds, ‘In them we have always been, and we shall be saved,’ agrees with the apostle’s following words, ‘The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ Likewise that saying of the same prophet, ‘Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people that has unclean lips,’ seems to mean the same as the words above, ‘Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?’ And what follows in the prophet, ‘And behold, one of the Seraphim flew to me, and in his hand was a live coal (or a pebble), which he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: Behold, this has touched your lips, and your iniquity will be taken away, and your sin will be cleansed,’ is such that it seems to have been uttered by the mouth of Paul, who says, ‘The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ You see, then, how all the saints truly confess themselves sinners, not so much in the person of the people as in their own, and yet by no means despair of their salvation, but count on the fullness of justification, which, because of the condition of human frailty, they do not trust they can attain, from the grace and mercy of the Lord.”

“The teaching of the Savior also shows us that no one in this life, however holy, is free from the debts of sins. Handing on to his disciples the form of perfect prayer, among those other sublime and most sacred commands, which, since they were given only to the holy and perfect, cannot fit the wicked and unbelievers, he ordered this to be inserted: ‘And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.’ If, then, this prayer is offered truly by the saints too, as we must believe without doubt, who can be found so stubborn and presumptuous, so puffed up with the pride of diabolical madness, that, declaring himself to be without sin, he not only believes himself greater than the apostles but even accuses the Savior himself, as it were, of ignorance or vanity, as if either he did not know that some could be free from debts, or he taught in vain those whom he knew did not need the remedy of this prayer? But since all the saints without exception, keeping the precepts of their King, say daily, ‘Forgive us our debts,’ if they speak the truth, truly no one is free from fault; and if they pretend, it is equally true that they are not free from the sin of lying. And so that most wise Ecclesiastes, running over in mind all human actions and pursuits, declares without any exception, ‘For there is no righteous man on earth who does good and does not sin’; that is, no one on this earth so holy, so diligent, so intent, has ever been or will ever be found who can cleave so continually to that true and unique good that he does not feel daily that he has sinned by being distracted from it. Yet though he is declared unable to be free from fault, he is not denied to be righteous.”

“Whoever, then, ascribes anamartēsia, that is, sinlessness, to human nature, let him contend with us not with empty words but with the testimony and proof of his own conscience; and only then let him declare himself without sin, when he feels that he has not been torn away from this highest good. Or rather, whoever, considering his conscience, finds that he has celebrated, not to say more, even one synaxis without any interruption of word, deed, or thought, let him declare himself without sin. So, since we admit that the swift excursions of the human mind cannot be free from all these idle and superfluous things, we therefore truly confess, as a consequence, that we are not without sin. For with whatever circumspection each one strives to keep his heart, he will never guard it according to the desire of his spirit, since the condition of the flesh resists. For the more the human mind advances and reaches a purer contemplation, the more unclean it will see itself, as in the mirror of its purity; for it must be that, while the soul stretches itself to a more sublime vision and, looking forward, longs for greater things than it does, it always despises the things in which it is as lower and cheaper. For a purer gaze marks more things, and an irreproachable life produces for itself a greater sorrow of self-reproach, and amendment of conduct and an attentive emulation of the virtues multiply groans and sighs. For no one can be content with the stage he has reached; and the purer someone is in mind, the filthier he sees himself and the more he finds reasons for humility rather than pride; and the more swiftly he has climbed to higher things, the more he sees there is still left for him to reach toward. Finally, that outstanding apostle whom Jesus loved, lying on his breast, uttered this sentence as if from the Lord’s heart: ‘If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.’ So if, when we say that we have no sin, we do not have the truth, that is, Christ, in us, what else do we gain but to prove ourselves, by this very profession, from sinners to be criminals and impious?”

“Finally, if you wish to explore more truly whether it is possible for human substance to possess sinlessness, from whom could we learn this more plainly than from those who have crucified their flesh with its vices and desires, and to whom the world is truly crucified? Although they have not only torn all vices out of their hearts by the roots but are even trying to shut out the thoughts and memory of sins, they nevertheless faithfully profess every day that they cannot be free from the stain of sin even for one hour.”

“Yet we ought not to keep ourselves away from the Lord’s communion because we recognize that we are sinners; rather, we should hasten to it more and more eagerly for the healing of the soul and the purification of the spirit, but with such humility of mind and faith that, judging ourselves unworthy to receive so great a grace, we seek rather remedies for our wounds. Otherwise not even a yearly communion could be worthily ventured, as some do who, living in monasteries, measure the dignity, sanctification, and merit of the heavenly sacraments in such a way that they think they should be received only by the holy and spotless, and not rather that they make us holy and clean by our sharing in them. Such people incur a greater presumption of arrogance than they seem to themselves to avoid, since, at least when they receive them, they judge themselves worthy of receiving them. It is much more right that, with the humility of heart by which we believe and confess that we can never touch those holy mysteries by our merit, we should take them every Lord’s day as a remedy for our illnesses, than that, puffed up by the vain persuasion of the heart, we should believe ourselves worthy to share in them even after a year. So that we may understand these things and hold them fruitfully, let us implore more earnestly the mercy of the Lord to help us to carry them out. For these things are learned not, like the other human arts, by a preceding theory of words, but rather with action and experience going before; and unless they are both frequently examined and polished in the conferences of spiritual men and anxiously sifted by proofs and daily experience, they either grow obsolete through neglect or perish through idle forgetfulness.”

This twenty-fourth conference, of Abba Abraham, is now brought forth with Christ’s favor, closing the traditions and precepts of all the elders. When it has been completed through your prayers, corresponding mystically to the number of those twenty-four elders who are said in the holy Apocalypse to offer their crowns to the Lamb, we believe we shall be released from the debts of all our promises. So if these twenty-four elders of ours have been crowned with any glory for the merit of their teaching, they will offer it with bowed heads to the Lamb who was slain for the salvation of the world. For it is he who, for the honor of his name, deigned to give both them so excellent a meaning and us such speech as we have, by which so great a depth is attained. And the merits of his gift must be referred to the author of all good things, to whom more is owed the more is paid. To this Abraham, then, we brought with anxious confession the assault of our thoughts, by which we were pressed with daily surges of soul to go back to our province and see our relatives again. For the greatest occasion of these desires arose from this: we remembered that our relatives were endowed with such devotion and piety that we presumed they would by no means hinder our purpose; and we kept turning over in our minds that we would gain more progress from their constant support, and would be occupied with no anxiety for bodily things and no distraction of providing food, since they would gladly and amply supply everything our needs required. Besides this, we were feeding our souls with the hope of empty joys, believing that we would reap the greatest fruit from the conversion of many who would be directed to the way of salvation by our example and warnings. Then, too, the situation of the very places where our forebears had their ancestral property, and the pleasant charm of those regions, was painted before our eyes: how pleasantly and suitably it stretched out in expanses of solitude, so that the secret places of the woods could not only delight a monk but also provide a very great supply of food. When we had simply laid all this before the old man, in keeping with the faith of our conscience, and had testified with abundant tears that we could no longer bear the force of the assaults unless God’s grace helped us through his medicine, he was silent for a long time and hesitated, and at last, groaning deeply, said: