Tractates on the Psalms 138.35–138.47

But perhaps it is bold to assert that that beginningless eternity of God the Father was seen by the apostles, especially since it is said: "No one has ever seen God except the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father." But we say nothing of our own, we proclaim nothing bold; let him say it who said: "He who sees me sees the Father also," not signifying that he himself is the Father. For to Philip, who asked him to show him the Father, he did not answer, "I am the Father," but said, "He who sees me sees the Father also." Through the power of an undifferentiated nature he answered that he about whom the question was, the Father, is seen and is in him; and he added this still more completely: "How do you say: Show us the Father? Do you not believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak of myself; but the Father who abides in me, he does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me; or else believe for the sake of the works." He rebukes one who did not understand, still asked about the Father, and did not behold the power of the Father in the Only-begotten through the effecting of the works. For the Father abides in him, since he was begotten from him. In him there is not the foreign nature of a new creation. He is Son in power, Son in divinity, Son in substance, Son in generation. The works testify, the powers speak, that through the offspring of nature the Father is in the Son and through the substance of a lawful origin the Son is in the Father. This nobility born from the unbegotten does not differ from him: both are one. The Father is seen in the Son, and seen not through contemplation of a nature invisible to us, but through wonder at the works. For the works of the Son are the works of the Father, the Son being neither weak for accomplishing them nor different in power of nature, but the Son accomplishing whatever he from whom he was begotten accomplishes. And therefore, since the Son can be contemplated in the majesty of the works, the Father too is seen in the Son.

For these eyes, then, which behold the eternity of the Father's power in the Son, that is, for the apostles, he prays that they may be written in God's book, that is, remain in eternal memory; for them he prayed in the Gospels with such a prayer: "Father, I have manifested your name to the men whom you gave me out of the world; they were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they have known that all that you gave me I have given them, and they have received and known truly that I came forth from you, and they have believed that you sent me. I pray for them; I do not pray for the world, but for those whom you have given me." He prays for them, then, that they may be written in God's book. And if anyone perhaps doubts why they are not written in the book of the living, it seems to me of greater dignity to be written in the book of God; because sinners are blotted out of the book of the living, but the righteous are written in the book of God. Both are signified under these words: "Let them be blotted out of the book of the living and not be written with the righteous." For according to the diversity of the resurrection, in which star differs from star in glory, many will be in the book of the living. But the righteous will be written in the book of God, because sinners will not only not be written with the righteous, but will not even be left in the book of the living.

But we must consider what the advancement is of those who will be written in God's book. Surely this: "By day they will be filled, and no one in them." In some manuscripts we read thus: "By day they will be formed." To be filled and to be formed do not differ much. For we are formed so as to be conformed to the glory of God's body. And the apostle's saying is: "My little children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you." And we are filled according to the prophet's saying: "We shall be filled with the richness of your house." By day, then, they will be filled, that is, with the true light (for Christ is light: for he was the true light that enlightens every man coming into this world), no longer held by the night of ignorance nor blind in the darkness of this world, but enlightened by the light of truth and filled with day. And what is full receives nothing besides that with which it is full. For night does not penetrate one who is filled with day, according to that saying of the apostle: "For what fellowship has light with darkness?" Nor does the spirit of the world approach the seat of the Spirit of Christ, as it is written: "For you have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit who is from God." Nor does he who is dead to the world live to himself, as the apostle teaches: "For I live, yet no longer I, but Christ lives in me." He who is filled with day has only day in himself; and therefore it says: "By day they will be filled, and no one in them." No one will be in them besides the day with which they are filled: not the heat of money, not the goad of pleasures, not the fire of ambition, not the malice of hatreds, not the sting of envy, not the fury of insults, not the madness of pride, not the other weapons and powers of the devil, but the true light, the day alone, with which they are filled; and they have become incapable of other things. And rightly do these, who are full of day alone, receive testimony.

For there follows: "But to me your friends, O God, are exceedingly honored; their principalities are exceedingly strengthened. I will count them, and they will be multiplied above the sand." What has a man in common with these words, that he should count those who will be multiplied above the sand? This belongs only to him who has knowledge of a numberless number without reckoning and calculation. His friends are exceedingly honored; "exceedingly" (nimis) is not to be understood according to Latin custom. For with us nimis usually signifies what exceeds the necessary measure uselessly; but what our translators rendered nimis the Greeks expressed as σφόδρα, in which "very much" rather than "too much" is contained. His friends, then, are very much honored. And we know that Abraham was a friend to God. The law said that Moses too was a friend to God. But the Gospels signify that there are now many friends to God, the Lord saying: "I no longer call you servants, because the servant does not know what his master wills; but I call you friends, because you have continued with me in all my temptations." These, then, whom he now calls friends, he confessed, as we showed above, were both given to him by the Father and are the Father's; and according to his saying, "And all mine are yours, and yours mine," he says they are friends of the Father. And not only are they themselves honored, but their principalities too are strengthened. They themselves are honored when they are friends, when they are full of day, when no one is in them. But their principalities are strengthened: the churches, namely, begun by them, taking their beginnings from them, which, founded on the rock throughout the world, have stood firm on strong beginnings.

And so that this might necessarily be understood to refer to the peoples of the church, he added: "I will count them, and they will be multiplied above the sand." Is the number of those written in God's book uncertain? There is no difficulty, then, in the number of those whose truth remains in writing. But some have thought that what is said, "they will be multiplied above the sand," is not to be referred to men only, because it was said to Abraham, "And your seed will be as the sand of the sea," so that, since Abraham's seed is as the sand of the sea, to make it "above the sand" the multitude of the angelic host is added to the friends of God. For they thought "as the sand of the sea" and "above the sand of the sea" could not otherwise agree unless the abundance of angels were counted with the multitude of men. But we do not contradict anyone's sense; but what we perceive according to the gift of spiritual grace we shall treat without insult to anyone.

We find in Genesis that there were two promises to Abraham. One before the begetting of Ishmael, God saying: "For all the land which you see I will give to you and to your seed for ever, and I will make your seed like the sand of the sea. If anyone can count the sand of the sea, so your seed also will be counted." But when Isaac was born and, so far as Abraham was concerned, offered as a burnt offering, this second promise followed: "Surely blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the shore of the sea." And if, according to the apostle, these are two covenants, one according to Ishmael bearing into slavery, the other according to Isaac bringing forth into freedom of our mother Jerusalem, which is in heaven, it is necessary that the number of two seeds be proclaimed, in the stars and in the sands. The friends of God, then, are counted above the sand of the sea. For who will doubt that, as regards the church, numerous throughout the world, the multitude of the Jewish nation is surpassed by the abundance of those who believe in Christ? And therefore they will be multiplied above the sand, because they will be more numerous than those who, from the impious people of the law, earthly and dry, are signified in the sands.

Then follows: "I have risen, and I am still with you." "I have risen" looks to the glory of the resurrection, but according to God's foreknowledge it speaks of what is future as past, because to God, by knowledge and power, things to come have been done, just as we ourselves think those things done which we confidently trust will be. But "and I am still with you" signifies that it is not yet the time; that he should rise, since it is not yet the time of the passion, while he declares that he is still with God. For he himself says: "I came forth from God and have come." "I am still with you," then, because it is not yet time for me to come from you and come into the world, to fulfil what has been prophesied.

But as to his saying, "If you slay the sinner, O God": does he who came to save what was lost and to redeem the sinner pray that the sinner be slain? Far be it that he wishes him slain. But the sinner is slain when he dies to the world, when he dies with Christ so as to live in Christ. The blessed apostle says, "I die daily," and again, "I died to the law, that I might live to Christ." We die in this way, that the sins destroyed in us through faith die. And let us hear further how God slays sinners, through what is said: "Put to death, then, your members which are on earth: sexual immorality, uncleanness, lust, evil desire, and avarice." So the sinner is slain when the begetting of spiritual life is renewed by the death of all vices and sins.

Then follows: "Men of blood, turn aside from me; for you say in thought: They will receive their cities in vanity." The Latin translation, not knowing the force of the saying, has brought great obscurity, not distinguishing the proper sense of an ambiguous word. For what with us is written "for you say in thought" is with the Greeks thus: ὅτι ἐρεῖς ἐν διαλογισμῷ, and that ἐρεῖς is distinguished in pronunciation, so that it may be understood either as "you say" or as "strife": for both are signified under the same letters in this saying. But those who have attained knowledge of the Hebrew language have reported not "you say" but "strifes" for what was translated ἐρεῖς. And reason and understanding will show that this is indeed so.

"Men of blood," he says, "turn aside from me." I remember that it is said in Ezekiel that bishops will be guilty of blood, by whose flattering silence many have fallen into destruction: "Behold, son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel, and you will hear the word from my mouth and you will warn; and if you have not warned him nor spoken to warn the wicked man to turn from his ways and live, that wicked man will die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand." And I find another man of blood too, of whom it is said: "The man of blood and deceit God will abhor." As, then, those are men of blood whose teaching is flattering, so too those are men of blood whose teaching is deceitful.

The deceitful teaching is that of the heretics: blasphemous under the name of God, impious under the pretext of religion, false under the appearance of truth; in whose mind and thought only the zeal for strife persists. They labor for nothing toward men's salvation, they acquire nothing toward hope, they think nothing peaceable, so that all their labor is in strifes and they meditate battle. These unhappy men extinguish souls and gather churches to themselves in vain, which, by frequent and abundant authority, are called cities of God according to prophetic and Gospel usage. This, then, is signified by these words: "Men of blood, turn aside from me; for strifes are in their thought: they will receive their cities in vain." They are men of blood because of the guilt of souls lost; they are commanded to turn aside because strifes are in their thought; they receive the cities of God in vain, making assemblies of fruitless churches through the divisions of schisms.

But plainly, since he is peace and righteousness and truth, he shows his disposition toward them, saying: "Did I not hate those who hate you, O Lord, and pine away over your enemies? With perfect hatred I hated them; they have become enemies to me." There is a religious hatred whenever he is hateful to us who hates God. We are commanded to love our enemies; but ours, not God's as well. For, next to God, it is devout to hate father and mother and wife and children and brothers. He hates, then, those who hate God, pines away with hatred of the enemies, hates with perfect hatred, and they have become enemies to him. For the Son is not different from the Father, so that one who is not an enemy to the one should become an enemy to both.

Then he concludes with the confidence of his freedom and at the same time, to show that what he had recalled as done through foreknowledge was now to be done at the appointed time, says: "Prove me, O God, and know my heart; question me and know my paths. And see if there is a way of iniquity in me, and lead me in the eternal way." This confidence does not belong to human nature: to wish to be proved, to ask that its heart be known, to expect its paths to be learned, not to fear being examined whether there is a way of iniquity in it, so as to be led on this condition into the eternal way. This voice can be his alone who said: "Behold, the prince of this world comes, and finds nothing in me." For only our Lord Jesus Christ is without sin, who is blessed for ever and ever. Amen.