Tractates on the Psalms 138.11–138.34

That he was to complete a defined and prescribed journey is shown when he says: "I have glorified you on earth; I have finished the work you gave me." He who finishes the work given him has fulfilled the measure of the prescribed work. And he knows that what he must do has been set for him, when he says to Peter, resisting with a sword those who had come to seize him: "The cup my Father has given me, shall I not drink it?" teaching that he would drink the cup of the passion prescribed for him by the Father. He knows too that he has completed his path and measured way when, having drunk the vinegar, about to give up his spirit, he says: "It is finished!" and at once gave up his spirit.

This path and measured way of his, then, the Father searched out. He searched it out when he prophesied through the prophet about the lot for his garment, as it is written: "And for my garment they cast lots"; and again, when concerning his being handed over and hanged among robbers the prophecy was recognized that says: "And he was reckoned with the lawless"; or when it was foretold about the unbroken bone and the inflicted wound: "You shall not break a bone of his," and: "They will look on him whom they pierced." These things, then, all prescribed for him in the passion, were searched out by God, so that they were also prophesied. And lest anything he did and suffered should be thought unknown to the Father, he embraced everything in general, saying: "And you have foreseen all my ways." But he who foresaw saw before the thing existed. He foresaw this too: "for there is no deceit in my tongue"; for he is, by his own declaration, the truth, the way, the life. Truth does not admit deceit; for he did not lie or deceive: his whole tongue performed the office of truth, he who says: "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away." He proclaims God the Father, and confesses that he himself is Son both of man and of God. This preaching, which declared things about himself and about the honor of him who sent him, had no deceit.

Then the speech, begun from the man, gradually advances and is raised to signify the heavenly nature in him, when he says: "Behold, you, O Lord, have known all things, the last and the ancient: you formed me and laid your hand upon me. Your knowledge has been made wonderful from me; it is strengthened, I cannot attain to it." It does not suit the person of the prophet that he should seem to have said of himself, "Your knowledge has been made wonderful from me," as though the wonderful knowledge of God had been made from him, since Moses had earlier spoken the knowledge of God to us in the books of the law. But not even to Moses himself could this have been proper, who did not know God before he saw the burning bush, religious indeed in his belief in the people chosen in Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, yet not having obtained familiar knowledge of God before this time. But this whole speech belongs to him who says: "Father, I have manifested your name to men," and who says: "And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." But we shall pursue these things more fully in their place.

We must go down to this according to the order of the words: "Behold, you, O Lord, have known all things, the last and the ancient." The last things are when you proved, when you knew, and the rest that are proper to the man whom he assumed. The ancient things are those that have no measure, that signify the antiquity of indefinite time: "In the beginning was the Word," and "all things were made through him."

Then, as God knew the last and the ancient things, so in what follows, "You formed me and laid your hand upon me," he signifies both: that his forming is the ancient, and his laying on of the hand the last. That he was formed according to the nature of divinity the apostle teaches, saying: "Who, though he was in the form of God"; for what is in a form is formed into a form, and indeed into the form of the Father's nature and divinity. And I do not know whether his being formed in the form of a servant can be referred to the Father, so that he was formed by him: for Wisdom herself built herself a house. But this is not the time or the question for saying more. And that "you laid your hand upon me" ought properly to be referred to the bodily birth, we are taught thus from the person of the Father: "I have found David my servant; with my holy oil I have anointed him. For my hand will help him, and my arm will strengthen him. The enemy will gain nothing against him, and the son of iniquity will not again harm him." And there is no doubt that this whole psalm is to be referred to the person of the Lord, since everything is in it that is both proper to his divinity and at odds with the weakness of our nature.

And since in both times, that is, the last and the ancient, either by preaching himself or by speaking in the apostles and prophets, he made the knowledge of God wonderful from himself, he says: "Your knowledge has been made wonderful from me." But wonderful how? Surely when all things are taught to be within God, while God is proclaimed to be in all things, while a boundless and incomprehensible nature, remaining within and without, exceeds all places by which it could be contained. It is wonderful that God is everywhere and nowhere absent; that he is in all things and whole, and always outside places and times by his infinity and eternity. This is wondrous, this strengthened, that is, made firm without the opinion of a weak understanding any longer.

But what is this that is said: "I cannot attain to it"? The Only-begotten says: "All that the Father has is mine"; and: "As the Father has life in himself, so he has given the Son also to have life in himself"; and: "As the Father raises the dead, so the Son also gives life to whom he will, likewise"; and: "I and the Father are one." There is no distinction of power in the words, for there is no difference of might in the deeds. Many of the irreligious have referred "we are one" only to agreement of will. But when it is said, "Or believe my works, that the Father is in me and I in the Father," not only unity of will but also of divine power is shown. Since, then, the Son does all that the Father does (for he does the same things likewise), we must ask what it is that is said: "I cannot attain to it." But when I hear, "The Father is greater than I," and again, "The Son can do nothing of himself except what he sees the Father doing," these suggest to me the understanding of this saying, "I cannot attain to it." For the Father is greater than the Son, but as Father than Son, by generation, not by kind: for he is the Son and came forth from him. And although the property of the name of Father differs, yet the nature does not differ: for God born from God is not unlike the begetting substance. He cannot, then, attain to him from whom he is: for although each remains in the other through the uniform and like glory of the same nature, yet he does not seem able to be made equal to him from whom he was begotten in this, that he begot.

And let us see whether this, that he cannot attain to it, has been referred to the dignity of confessing the Father. For there follows: "Where shall I go from your Spirit, and where shall I flee from your face? If I ascend into heaven, you are there; if I descend into hell, you are present; if I take my wings before the light and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand will lead me, and your right hand will hold me." The Son does not exceed the Father's infinity; nor does he who is in the bosom pass beyond the nature that is beyond all places. Though he be in heaven, though in hell, and fly beyond the uttermost parts of the sea, yet he is present everywhere who is everywhere; nor can one escape from him within whom all things are and who is in all things.

And lest we irreligiously form opinions to the affront of the unchangeable and impassible substance from the saying, "Or where shall I flee from your face?", as though he seemed to have thought of flight for fear of suffering, the reasoning of the words must be learned, so that these things may be understood to have been necessarily mentioned with his dignity unharmed. None of those who dwell in the study of heavenly teaching can doubt that we confess our Lord Jesus Christ as God and man: man in time, but God always, both before the man and after the man, and both, that is, God and man, only when he was in the man. For he was in the form of God and took the form of man; and again he is in the glory of God the Father, the form of a servant advancing into the glory of him in whose form he remained before, the nature of corruption, namely, being swallowed up by advance into incorruption.

Since, then, we remember that this psalm began in the person of the man whom he assumed, we must look carefully so as to understand what must be fitted to his divinity and what to the man: and that in such a way that we apply our sense to the words rather than subject the words to our sense through the opinion of a deceptive understanding. For he says: "Where shall I go from your Spirit, or where shall I flee from your face?" The meaning of Spirit and of face is different. From the Spirit I shall go away, but from the face I shall flee. Then follows: "If I ascend into heaven, you are there; if I descend into hell, you are present." The ascent into heaven is not the same as the descent into hell. Then the third: "If I take my wings before the light and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand will lead me, and your right hand will hold me." This is no longer the voice of a man: to take wings, to take his own wings, to dwell beyond the ocean, to be led there by God's hand, to be held by God's right hand: this belongs to a superior nature. And who this is who says these things confidently, the very reasoning of the words will show.

The only-begotten God, then, showing that confession of wonder at the Father which was made wonderful through him and to which he cannot attain, signifies in himself both times and both natures, namely that in which he taught remaining both in spirit and in body. For when he says, "Where shall I go from your Spirit," he shows that time in which he too, being spirit, remained in the Spirit of the Father's glory before the assumption of the man. For one who is spirit cannot be absent anywhere from the Spirit: because neither can this one be deceived nor that one fail. But when he says, "Or where shall I flee from your face," he taught the age of the weakness he assumed: for human weakness cannot bear meeting the face of God, since it was said to Moses: "Who is the man who will see my face and live?" What we cannot bear, we flee; for it belongs to human weakness to flee the meeting of an invisible nature. And he flees indeed as far as concerns the inability to bear the vision. But since, according to the prophet, the face of God is against those who do evil, it belongs also to human nature that it cannot flee the judgment of God, which is signified in the face. For he who knew no sin did not speak as a sinner, so as to flee; but having taught before in the Spirit the Father's infinity remaining beyond all things, he now shows it also from the person of a man, who could nowhere flee from God.

There follows also a like reasoning of the words, so that he spoke each from the fact that he was both man and God. "If I ascend into heaven, you are there": this is proper to divinity. For no one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven. For the nature of an earthly body does not obtain this ascent unless changed into heavenly glory. "If I descend into hell, you are present": this is the law of human necessity, that when bodies are buried, souls descend to the underworld. This descent the Lord did not refuse, to complete his being a true man. But "where shall I go or where shall I flee," and "you are there" and "you are present" pertain to the meaning of his teaching, which was made wonderful from him, through which God has been known to be all things and to be in all things: so that, although man flees the face of God because he cannot bear it, although by the law of death he descends from above to the underworld, yet God is always everywhere and in all things.

And since through these preceding verses he spoke separately from each kind of nature in which he was, that is, of God and of man, in the third he shows the unity of the nature now advancing in him, saying: "If I take my wings before the light and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand will lead me, and your right hand will hold me." When he has taken wings, he is no longer weighed down by the body. When he has taken his own, he teaches that this power of flying away always belonged to him. When he has taken them before the light, he shows the time of the resurrection. When he is in the uttermost parts of the sea, as God he goes beyond the places of human dwelling. When he is led by the hand, he does not fear. When he is held by God's right hand, he is not changed nor does he fall: "God gave him the name that is above every name, that at his name every knee should bend, of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father." For in that the name above every name is given him, the man taken up is assumed into the Father's glory by the hand and power of God the Father.

That wings refer to the change of earthly bodies into a spiritual and eternal nature is prophetic authority, when it is said to one poor in faith and needy in good works: "Do not stretch yourself out, since you are poor, to the rich man, but refrain in your thought; for he has prepared wings for himself like an eagle, and he will return to the house of him who is over him." It rebukes the poor man who stretches himself toward the hopes of the rich, because he would make the poverty of his unbelief equal to the wealth of the faithful. For the rich man, not by human riches but by heavenly treasures, prepares wings for himself, by which he may return to the house of him who is over him. For he will return whence he fell, whence he was expelled in the sin of the first man. And who is he whose house this is and who is over him? Surely he who said: "Amen I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise." He recalls it elsewhere too, when treating of the now untiring eternity of spiritual beings: "They will take wings like eagles," being about to take the nature of flying to heaven in the change of the resurrection. But here he takes wings to fly, not another's, not new, but anticipated by the claim of his own property: because after the mystery of his voluntary passion he had wings both of nature and of power to carry himself to heaven.

The same order of words follows, and the speech runs on from the understanding of both natures, of man and of God. For he says: "And I said: Perhaps darkness will trample me." This voice is thought to be the man's, because to some, either irreligious or unskilled, he seems to tremble in that timidity of the passion: as if now this speech contained a profession of some fear, and did not rather signify the will to undergo death, no fear or terror of it being shown. For he does not say, "Darkness will trample me," but, "Perhaps darkness will trample me." In adding "perhaps," he mocked the uncertain error of human opinion about him, by which he was believed to fear the underworld. For no one who is certain he will be trampled is at the same time uncertain whether he will be trampled.

So that what he said, "Perhaps darkness will trample me," might not be understood of a trembling of his nature, but might signify the uncertainty of an impious understanding about him, he at once added: "And night is illumination in my delights." For how is he trampled by darkness for whom death will be illumination in delights? To the Lord, then, this passion is delights, as he breaks the gates of bronze, shatters the iron bars, despoils every power, triumphs over them in himself, redeems him whom he had made in his image, and restores him to the delights of paradise. In these pleasures and delights of the passion, then, night is illumination to him, and illumination for this reason, "because darkness will not be darkened by you." Through unity of nature and the unchangeable likeness of divinity, the Father is in the Son; and, the works themselves testifying that the Father is in him, he says confidently, "It will not be darkened by you," for we remember it said in the psalms in the person of the Father: "I am with him in tribulation." And the Lord himself in the Gospels, speaking of the apostles' fear, says: "Behold, the hour comes when each of you will be scattered and you will leave me alone; but I am not alone, for the Father is with me." Whether by the power by which he can do the like of the Father, or by the kind of nature and divinity by which he was born God from God, the Father is with him. He says confidently, then: "For darkness will not be darkened by you." For unchangeable power does not feel darkness, and the true light does not suffer the night of the underworld. For there follows: "And night will be lit up as the day; as its darkness, so also its light." All this refers to what was said, "by you": darkness will not be darkened by you, and night will be lit up as the day, and as its darkness, so also its light. "By you," said once, refers to several things. Night is in delights for this reason, because it will be lit up as the day. And it will be lit up for this reason, that, as darkness, so also light is from God, since the maker of darkness is able to make light in darkness. And let us hear the evangelist teaching this thus: "And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it": he being able to make light be in darkness, the darkness being unable, by the night of its obscurity, to comprehend the light of unfailing light.

Then follows: "For you, O Lord, have possessed my reins; you took me up from my mother's womb. I will confess to you, for I have been made terribly wonderful." Even now he keeps the order of both meanings, so as to teach that he is both man and God. For when his reins are possessed by God and he is taken up from his mother's womb, a bodily condition is shown in him. For in the reins is the cause of pleasure. But he whose reins are possessed by God does not go out into the pleasures of the body by the incitements of wantonness. And he who is taken up from his mother's womb, taken up by God, does not go out into the works of the world. All his will and labor, then, is to proclaim the Father, to fulfil the Father's will, to drink the cup received from the Father. For these are the duties of his man whom he assumed. But when he says, "I will confess to you, for I have been made terribly wonderful," he renders the whole confession of terrible wonder at himself to the glory of his divine substance. For he was made wonderful because God possessed his reins, because he was taken up from his mother's womb. For through the fact that his will and work were devoted to God, he deserved to be made terribly wonderful. And he was made terribly wonderful when in the hours of the cross there was darkness, when the earth trembled, when the rocks split, when the tombs opened, when the dead rose, when he himself was seen in the same body, when, the doors being shut, he stood among them by an entrance passable only to himself, when he was raised to the heavens, when the apostles spoke in the languages of the nations, when their shadows healed diseases, when running was given to the lame who asked for money, when a dead woman was restored by the alms of the poor, when persecutors became preachers, when, chains loosed, there was singing in prison, when in martyrdom he was seen by a martyr in the heavens, when finally in the body in which he was raised he sits at the right hand of God, in whose glory and majesty he remains.

All that dignity in which he was made terribly wonderful he refers to the work of him whose will he obeyed, saying: "Wonderful are your works, and my soul knows it well." "That I have been made terribly wonderful," he says, "is your work." The same reasoning has been kept in the Gospels too: though he said, to show his power, "Whatever the Father does, the Son also does likewise," and again, "As the Father gives life to the dead, so the Son also gives life to whom he will," yet he gives the dignity of all the works to the Father, saying: "The Son can do nothing of himself except what he sees the Father doing." He subjected the power he had testified of himself, through the honor of reverence, to him to whom he remembered all things were to be confessed, not taking from himself that he could do the like of the Father, but showing him through whom he could do the like. These things, then, by which he was made terribly wonderful, although they belonged to his own power, since he was able, yet he ascribed them all to the Father's works, saying: "Wonderful are your works, and my soul knows it well." This is not the voice of human weakness, to boast that it knows God's wonderful works well. It belongs only to him who says: "No one knows the Father except the Son." For he knows not in any way whatever, not lightly; he knows well, by that confidence with which he says, "The Father is in me and I in the Father." For in saying "well" he shows the perfect knowledge of intimate understanding.

And since his soul knows well all the wonderful works of God, he recalls the instruction of his teaching toward us, by which the mysteries of the Father's working are no longer hidden from us, saying: "My bone was not hidden from you, which you made in secret." That the bone of Christ is the church is both prophetic and apostolic authority. For when the apostle was treating of Adam and Eve according to what is said in Genesis, "This now is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh," he added to explain this saying: "This mystery is great; but I speak of Christ and the church." And that by the mercy of God the Father these hidden things were not hidden from the church, the Lord himself testified in the Gospel, when he says: "I confess to you, Lord, Father of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to little ones; yes, Father, for so it was pleasing before you." By him, then, what was done in secret is not hidden from us. From us indeed they were not hidden, but for the prudent of this world they were done in secret.

That all the mysteries of the church's hope were in secret, the apostle too testifies, saying: "As you are able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which in other times was not made known to the sons of men as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit: that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body and fellow partakers of his promise in Christ." And again: "according to the dispensation of God which was given to me for you, to fulfil the word of God, the mystery which was hidden from the ages and from generations, but now has been made manifest to his saints, to whom he willed to show the riches of the glory of the mystery of God among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." The mystery, then, was hidden which has been revealed: that the Gentiles are fellow heirs to God and fellow members and fellow partakers of his promise in Christ. Hidden too is the mystery, to those to whom he willed to show the riches of the glory of the mystery of God among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

This mystery, then, was hidden, that Christ is in us: this the Father revealed. For it was said to Peter: "Flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father who is in heaven." And it has been revealed that Christ is in us: in the poor in spirit, in the troubled of heart, in the lowly of the earth, in the refuse of the world, in the lowest of the church. For the lowest of the church is that which is subdued in all humility. This hidden mystery, then, has been revealed, which is Christ in us. Not only through the apostle does the Lord say these things, but also in this same psalm he speaks thus: "My bone was not hidden from you, which you made in secret, and my substance in the lower parts of the earth." Not "in hell," as above, when he was treating of the passion, but "in the lower parts of the earth," when he was proclaiming what had been hidden and was revealed by the Father. What had been hidden was that Christ is in you, that is, "my substance in the lower parts of the earth," namely in the lowest offices of all humility.

Then the speech of the psalm proceeds according to the advance of the Gospel, when it says: "Your unperfected one my eyes have seen, and in your book all will be written: by day they will be filled, and no one in them." And so that we may understand everything according to heavenly teaching, what brings difficulty must be resolved. What the Latin translators rendered "unperfected" is written in the Greek books as ἀκατέργαστον. Nor do we complain of the translators; for I fear it could not have been expressed otherwise by them. But the Greek ἀκατέργαστον means what remains without working: so that it is the thing itself, though it has not been made. But "unperfected" with us shows what has been begun and not completed. But if we handle the force of this word more inwardly, it may indeed not differ from the proper sense of the Greek. And it can be proper to God alone that he both is and is unmade: because what is has no need to be made; but what is made does not exist before it is made. But he who is eternal remains and was not made. This "unperfected," then, and, if we may dare to say it for the advance of understanding, this "unwrought" of God his eyes have seen.

"For your unperfected one my eyes have seen." But which eyes, pray? Surely not those spiritual eyes with which the Only-begotten alone sees God the Father? But these have no need of what follows: "and in your book," it says, "all will be written: by day they will be filled, and no one in them." That unchangeable nature of the only-begotten God does not seek advancement. And what advancement will there be for him, that all his eyes should be written in a book, be filled by day, have no one in them? It is insulting and shameless to think all this.

But as to his bone, in which the body of the church is shown, the hidden things are not hidden, so too his eyes have seen what is the unperfected of God. We pointed out above that the bone refers to the church, which is the body of Christ. And no one doubts that in the body the eyes have the principal function and power. And since the eyes are superior to the other members, we must not doubt that the apostles are signified in them, through whom the light of the church and the divine mysteries of its workings are offered. This the Lord plainly showed in the Gospels. For when he had called the apostles the salt of the earth, the light of the world, and the lamp of the house on a lampstand, because of the excellent and visible works of their faith (as an example of comparison), again calling them away from earthly and corruptible treasures and the gains of the world, he said that they are the eyes of the body, thus: "The lamp of your body is your eye. If your eye is single, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is evil, your whole body will be dark. If, then, the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness itself!" This passage is beyond bodily understanding; and therefore it is to be understood spiritually. The apostles, then, who are the eyes of the church, that is, of the body of Christ, are commanded to be bright and single, the whole body remaining bright while these are single, but if they are evil, the whole body necessarily becoming dark: no hope of light being left to the darkness if the light itself is in darkness. In what enormous danger, then, are priests, who are the eyes of the church, when they are occupied with the business of the world, cares for money, the increase of household property, and the luxuries of banquets! For they are the light of the church, that is, the eyes of the body. And if the light itself grows dark in the night of avarice and wantonness, how much more darkness will be brought upon the body, that is, the church, which by its nature is darkness, from the example of a darkened light? These eyes of his, then, have seen the unperfected of God. And we said that the unperfected of God is what has not been made and remains: in which the eternity of unmade divinity is shown.