Miscellanies 3.6.45–3.10.70

To those who, under the fair name of self-control, act impiously toward creation and the holy Creator, the Almighty, the only God, and teach that marriage and the begetting of children must not be accepted, nor others brought into the world to be unhappy, nor food supplied to death, we must say this. First, the words of the apostle John: “And now many antichrists have come, from which we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us.” Then we must also turn them around, refuting what they put forward in this way. When Salome asked, “How long will death have power?” the Lord said, “As long as you women bear children,” not as though life were evil and creation wicked, but teaching the natural sequence; for decay always follows birth.

The law, then, has chosen to lead us away from luxury and all disorder, and this is its goal: to lead us from injustice to justice, choosing self-restrained marriages, begetting of children, and ways of life. And the Lord comes not to destroy the law but to fulfill it: to fulfill it not as though it were lacking, but in that the prophecies according to the law were accomplished by his coming; since the ways of right conduct were proclaimed through the Word even to those who lived justly before the law. The many, then, who do not know self-control live by the body, not by the spirit; and the body without the spirit is earth and ashes. The Lord, for example, judges adultery from the intention. What then? Is it not possible to use marriage with self-control too, and not try to dissolve what God has joined? For such things are taught by those who divide the union, because of whom the Name is blasphemed. And these who say that intercourse is polluted, having themselves received their existence from intercourse, how would they not be polluted?

And the seed of those who have been sanctified is, I think, holy too. For not only our spirit ought to be sanctified, but also our character, life, and body. Otherwise, for what reason does the apostle Paul say that the wife is sanctified by the husband or the husband by the wife? And what is it that the Lord said to those who asked about the certificate of divorce, whether it is lawful to put away a wife, since Moses permitted it? “Because of your hardness of heart,” he says, “Moses wrote these things. But have you not read that God said to the first-formed man, ‘You two shall be one flesh’? So whoever puts away his wife except for the reason of sexual immorality makes her commit adultery.” “But after the resurrection,” he says, “they neither marry nor are given in marriage.” For it has also been said about the belly and foods: “Foods are for the belly and the belly for foods; but God will do away with both it and them”; rebuking those who think they may live like boars and goats, so that they may not eat and mate without fear.

If, at any rate, they have received the resurrection, as they themselves say, and for this reason reject marriage, let them neither eat nor drink; for the apostle said that the belly and foods are done away in the resurrection. How, then, do they hunger and thirst and suffer the things of the flesh, and the other things which the one who has received through Christ the perfect resurrection that is awaited will not suffer? Besides, even idol-worshipers abstain from food and from sexual intercourse. “But the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking,” it says. Indeed the Magi too take care to abstain at once from wine, from meat, and from sexual intercourse, while they serve angels and demons. But as humility is gentleness, not ill-treatment of the body, so self-control is a virtue of the soul, not in the open, but in secret.

There are some who say plainly that marriage is sexual immorality, and teach that it was handed down by the devil; and these boasters say that they imitate the Lord, who neither married nor acquired anything in the world, boasting that they have understood the gospel better than others. But Scripture says to them: “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” And they do not know the reason why the Lord did not marry. First, he had his own bride, the church; then, he was not an ordinary man, so as to need a helper according to the flesh; nor was it necessary for him to beget children, since he remains forever and is the only Son of God. This same Lord says: “What God has joined, let no man separate.” And again: “As it was in the days of Noah, they were marrying and giving in marriage, building and planting; and as it was in the days of Lot, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.” And to show that he is not speaking to the Gentiles, he adds: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” And again: “Woe to those who are pregnant and those who are nursing in those days,” though these things too are allegorized. For this reason he did not define the times which the Father has set in his own authority, so that the world might continue through the generations.

And as for “Not all can receive this saying; for there are eunuchs who were born so, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven; let the one who can receive it receive it,” they do not know that after his saying about divorce, when some asked, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is not expedient to marry,” then the Lord said: “Not all can receive this saying, but those to whom it is given.” For what the questioners wished to learn was whether he allowed a man to marry another wife when his wife had been condemned for sexual immorality and put away. They say that not a few athletes too abstain from sexual intercourse, exercising self-control for bodily training, such as Astylus of Croton and Crison of Himera. And Amoebeus the lyre-singer, though newly married, abstained from his bride. And Aristotle of Cyrene alone disdained Lais when she loved him.

Having sworn to the courtesan that he would take her to his homeland if she helped him in something against his rivals, when she had done it, he fulfilled the oath wittily: he had a portrait of her painted, as lifelike as possible, and set it up in Cyrene, as Istrus relates in his work On the Peculiarity of Contests. So not even the eunuchate is virtuous unless it comes about through love of God. Indeed, about those who abhor marriage the blessed Paul says: “In later times some will depart from the faith, paying attention to deceiving spirits and teachings of demons, forbidding to marry, commanding to abstain from foods.” And again he says: “Let no one disqualify you by self-made worship of humility and severity to the body.” The same writer also writes this: “Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be released. Are you released from a wife? Do not seek a wife.” And again: “Let each one have his own wife, so that Satan may not tempt you.”

What then? Did not the righteous of old partake of creation with thanksgiving? Some of them even married and begot children with self-control. Ravens brought Elijah bread and meat for food; and Samuel the prophet brought and gave Saul to eat the leg that he had kept back from what he ate. But those who say that they surpass even these in conduct and life will not be able even to be compared with their deeds. “Let the one who does not eat not despise the one who eats, and let the one who eats not judge the one who does not eat; for God has accepted him.” Besides, the Lord says of himself: “John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’” Or do they reject the apostles too?

For Peter and Philip had children, and Philip also gave his daughters to husbands; and Paul does not hesitate in one letter to address his own yokefellow, whom he did not take about with him for the sake of the convenience of his ministry. He says, then, in one letter: “Do we not have the right to take about a sister as wife, as the other apostles also do?” But these, devoting themselves, as befitted their ministry, to preaching without distraction, took their wives about not as wives but as sisters, to be fellow ministers to the women who kept at home, through whom the Lord's teaching entered even the women's quarters without scandal. For we know also what the noble Paul lays down about women deacons in the other letter to Timothy. And this same man cried out that “the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking,” nor indeed abstaining from wine and meat, “but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Which of them goes about with a sheepskin and a leather belt, like Elijah? Who is clothed in sackcloth, naked otherwise and barefoot, like Isaiah? Or only in a linen loincloth, like Jeremiah? And who will imitate John's knowing way of life? Yet the blessed prophets, living so, gave thanks to the Creator.

The “justice” of Carpocrates and of those who pursue licentious community equally with him is refuted in this way. For at the same time as saying, “Give to the one who asks you,” he adds, “and do not turn away from the one who wishes to borrow,” teaching this kind of sharing, not the lustful kind. And how can there be one who asks, receives, and borrows, if there is no one who has, gives, and lends? And what of when the Lord says: “I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you took me in, naked and you clothed me”? Then he adds: “Inasmuch as you did it to one of these least, you did it to me.” And does he not lay down the same things in the old covenant too? “The one who gives to the poor lends to God,” and, “Do not refrain from doing good to the needy,” it says.

And again he said: “Let not acts of mercy and faithfulness fail you.” “Poverty humbles a man, but the hands of the vigorous make rich.” And he adds: “Behold a man who did not give his money at interest: he is acceptable.” And “a man's own wealth is judged the ransom of his soul.” Does he not make it plain? As, then, the world consists of opposites, as of hot and cold, dry and wet, so too of those who give and those who receive. And again, when he says, “If you wish to be perfect, sell your possessions and give to the poor,” he convicts the one who boasted of having kept all the commandments from his youth; for he had not fulfilled “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Then, being perfected by the Lord, he was taught to share out of love.

So he has not forbidden being rich rightly, but being rich unjustly and insatiably; for “property hastily gained with lawlessness becomes less.” For “there are those who sow and make more, and those who gather and become less.” About them it is written: “He scattered, he gave to the poor; his righteousness remains forever.” For the one who sows and gathers more is the one who, through earthly and temporary sharing, acquires the heavenly and eternal things; but the other is the one who shares with no one, but vainly stores up treasure on earth, where moth and rust destroy (about whom it is written, “He who gathered wages gathered them into a bag with holes”). The Lord says in the Gospel that this man's land bore well, and then, wishing to store the fruits, he was going to build bigger barns, and said to himself, in the personification: “You have many goods laid up for many years; eat, drink, be merry.” “Fool,” he said, “this night they demand your soul from you; the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”

Human self-control, then, I mean that of the Greek philosophers, professes to fight against desire and not to serve it in deeds; but ours is not to desire at all, not that one should desire and hold out, but that one should exercise self-control even over desiring. And it is not possible to gain this self-control except by the grace of God. That is why he said, “Ask and it will be given to you.” Moses too received this grace, though clothed in a needy body, so that for forty days he was neither hungry nor thirsty. And as it is better to be healthy than to discourse about health while sick, so it is better to be light than to talk about light, and true self-control is better than that taught by the philosophers. For where light is, there is no darkness; but where desire sits within, even if it is alone, and even if it is quiet in its activity through the body, it has intercourse in memory with what is not present.

In general, let our account go forward about marriage, food, and the rest: to do nothing from desire, but to will only what is necessary. For we are children not of desire but of will. And the one who has married for the begetting of children must practice self-control, so as not even to desire his own wife, whom he ought to love, begetting children with a reverent and self-restrained will. For we have learned not to make provision for the flesh to fulfill its desires, but to walk decently as in the day, in Christ and in the Lord's enlightened way of life, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in strife and jealousy.

But self-control should be seen not only in one kind of thing, that is, sexual pleasures, but also in the other things that our soul, living luxuriously, desires, not content with necessities but busy about luxury. Self-control is to despise money, to look down on luxury, possessions, and shows, to control the mouth, and to master evil thoughts. Indeed some angels, becoming without self-control and caught by desire, have fallen from heaven to here. And Valentinus, in his letter to Agathopus, says: “Enduring all things, he was self-controlled; Jesus practiced divinity; he ate and drank in a peculiar way, not giving back the food. Such was the power of his self-control that the food was not even corrupted in him, since he himself did not have corruption.” We, then, embrace self-control through love for the Lord and for the sake of the good itself, sanctifying the temple of the Spirit. For it is good, for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, to make oneself a eunuch from all desire, and “to cleanse the conscience from dead works to serve the living God.”

But those who, out of hatred for the flesh, long ungratefully to be rid of union in marriage and of partaking of the proper foods, are ignorant and godless, exercising self-control irrationally, like most of the other nations. The Brahmans, at any rate, neither eat meat nor drink wine; some of them take food every day, as we do, and some every three days, as Alexander Polyhistor says in his Indica. They despise death and count living as nothing, for they are persuaded that there is rebirth … and they worship Heracles and Pan. Those of the Indians called Holy Men live naked their whole life; they practice truth, foretell the future, and worship a certain pyramid under which they think the bones of some god lie. Neither the gymnosophists nor the so-called Holy Men have to do with women; for they think this contrary to nature and unlawful, and for this reason they keep themselves pure; and the Holy Women too remain virgins. They seem to observe the heavenly bodies and by their signs to foretell some future things.

Since those who introduce indifference, forcing a few Scriptures, think that they support their self-indulgence, especially this one, “For sin will not have dominion over you; for you are not under law but under grace” (and some others like it, which it is not reasonable to mention in such a connection, for I am not fitting out a pirate ship), come, let us cut through their attempt briefly. For the noble apostle himself, adding to the saying just quoted, will dispose of the charge: “What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means.” So, in an inspired and prophetic way, he at once destroys the sophistical art of pleasure.

They do not understand, it seems, that “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive through the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad,” so that each may receive back what he did through the body. “So if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation,” no longer sinful; “the old things have passed away”; we have washed away the old life; “behold, new things have come”: purity from sexual immorality, self-control from lack of self-control, justice from injustice. “For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What agreement has Christ with Beliar? What portion has a believer with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? Having, then, these promises, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.”

Those who, under the fair name of self-control, oppose God's creation also cite the words spoken to Salome, which we mentioned before; they are found, I think, in the Gospel according to the Egyptians. For they say that the Savior himself said, “I came to destroy the works of the female”: by “female” meaning desire, and by “works” birth and decay. What, then, would they say? Has this order been destroyed? They would not say so; for the world remains under the same arrangement. But the Lord did not lie; for he truly destroyed the works of desire: love of money, love of strife, love of glory, madness for women, the corruption of boys, gluttony, profligacy, and the like. The birth of these is the decay of the soul, if indeed we become “dead in trespasses”; and this “female” was lack of self-control. But birth and decay in creation must go on in their proper course until the complete separation and restoration of the elect, through which the substances mixed up with the world are also assigned to what is proper to them.

Fittingly, then, when the Word had spoken about the consummation, Salome says, “How long will men die?” Scripture speaks of man in two ways: the visible one and the soul; and again the one who is saved and the one who is not. And sin is called the death of the soul. That is why the Lord answers carefully, “As long as women bear children,” that is, as long as desires are active. “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and through sin death spread to all men, because all sinned; and death reigned from Adam to Moses,” says the apostle. By the natural necessity of the divine arrangement, death follows birth, and the dissolution of soul and body follows their union. And if birth is for the sake of learning and knowledge, dissolution is for the sake of restoration. As woman is considered a cause of death because she bears children, so for the same reason she will be called the leader of life.

Indeed, the woman who began the transgression was called Life, because she became the cause of the succession both of those born and of those who sin, mother of the righteous and the unrighteous alike, each of us either justifying himself or, conversely, making himself disobedient. So I for my part do not think that the apostle loathes life in the flesh when he says: “But with all boldness, as always, so now too Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain. If it is to live in the flesh, this is fruit of labor for me; and 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.” For by these words, I think, he clearly showed that the perfection of love toward God is departure from the body, and that presence in the flesh is thankful endurance for the sake of those who need to be saved.

And why do those who follow anything rather than the true gospel rule not also cite what follows in the words to Salome? For when she said, “Then I did well in not bearing children,” as though birth were not properly accepted, the Lord answers, saying: “Eat every plant, but do not eat the one that has bitterness.” For by these words too he signifies that either self-control or marriage rests with us, and not by necessity through a prohibiting commandment, and he makes clear besides that marriage cooperates in some way with creation.

Let no one, then, think marriage according to reason a sin, unless he supposes the rearing of children bitter (for to many, on the contrary, childlessness is most grievous); nor, if the begetting of children seems bitter to someone because it draws him away from divine things through necessary occupations, yet he cannot easily bear the single life, let him desire marriage; since what is pleasing with self-restraint is harmless, and each of us is master of his choice about begetting children. And I see how, on the pretext of marriage, some who abstained from it not in accordance with holy knowledge have flowed over into hatred of mankind, and love has departed from them; while others, entangled in it and indulging themselves by the law's indulgence, as the prophet says, “have become like the beasts.”

Who are the two or three gathered in the name of Christ, among whom the Lord is in the midst? Does he not mean by the three a husband, a wife, and a child, since a wife is joined to a husband through God? But if someone wishes to be unencumbered, not choosing to beget children because of the occupation it involves, “let him remain unmarried as I am,” says the apostle. For they explain that the Lord means that with the many is the Creator, the God who causes birth, but with the one, the elect one, is the Savior, clearly the son of another God, the good one. But this is not so; rather, God through the Son is with those who marry with self-restraint and beget children, and the same God is likewise with the one who exercises self-control according to reason. The three might also be, in another way, anger, desire, and reason; and in another sense flesh, soul, and spirit.

Perhaps the triad just mentioned also hints at the calling, the election second, and third the race ranked in the first honor; with whom the all-overseeing power of God is present, divided without division. The one, then, who uses the natural activities of the soul as he should desires what is suitable and hates what is harmful, as the commandments prescribe: “For you will bless the one who blesses,” it says, “and curse the one who curses.” But when he rises above these too, anger and desire, and in deed loves the creation for the sake of God, the God and Maker of all, he will live in the way of knowledge, having acquired an effortless state of self-control according to his likeness to the Savior, uniting knowledge, faith, and love, being one henceforth in judgment and truly spiritual, altogether and entirely closed to thoughts arising from anger and desire; perfected according to the Lord's image by the Craftsman himself, a perfect man, now worthy to be called a brother by the Lord; this man is at once friend and son. So the two and the three are gathered into one, the man who knows.

The concord of the many, counted from the three with whom the Lord is, would also be the one church, the one man, the one race. Or was not the Lord with the one, the Jew, when he gave the law; but when he was already prophesying and sending Jeremiah to Babylon, and also calling those from the Gentiles through prophecy, he gathered the two peoples; and the third was the one being created from the two into one new man, in whom he walks and dwells, in the church itself? The law and the prophets, together with the gospel, are gathered in the name of Christ into one knowledge. So those who do not marry out of hatred, or who use the flesh indifferently out of desire, are not in the number of those saved with whom the Lord is.