Letters 4.130–4.149

To Hypatius. [What it is to offer oneself as common and what as equal; what it is to dispute and not to quarrel; and what it is to be gladdened and what to be pleased.] Many people, not only of those who compete in the contests outside the Church, but also of those who try to interpret the divine Scriptures, become causes of many and varied evils because they do not offer themselves as hearers in the right way. Some, caring nothing for the truth, applaud to please the speakers, as if they were fans of charioteers or dancers; others hiss from enmity; and this often without even hearing exactly what is said, let alone understanding it. And as a result, some of those who speak neither wisely nor well, perhaps even badly, not considering that it was the goodwill of their hearers, or their friendship toward them, or their enmity toward their opponents, for which they were applauded, are not only given wings by the applause but are drunk with self-love and mastered by prejudice as well; and they often lay down disreputable and ridiculous doctrines, and then try to establish what they ought not even to have uttered. Those who attend such discourses, then, knowing that the danger concerns the soul and that nothing is more important than truth, and considering the evils born of enmity and prejudice, must offer themselves as common hearers to both speakers, but not as equal ones; for this is not the same thing, as some think. One must listen to both in common, but not allot the same to each; rather, more to the wiser and less to the more ignorant; and to the wise man praise, and to the uneducated man blame, if he can be corrected by blame; if not, silence. So much about the hearers. As for the speakers, I say it is more fitting for them to dispute, but not to provoke. Friends often dispute with friends; it is enemies who quarrel. In this way the meeting will be finest and most beneficial for speakers and hearers alike. For the speakers would thus be most highly esteemed among their hearers, though not praised. To be esteemed properly means to be found worthy of acceptance in the souls of the hearers, which cast their votes without deception and incorruptibly; to be praised is to be eulogized in speech that often breathes flattery and says nothing true. And the hearers would most be gladdened, though not pleased. To be gladdened is to learn something of the finest things and to sharpen one's understanding for the better; to be pleased is what happens when one eats or does some such thing through the body. Let these things be judged, defined, and kept; and there will be great progress, not only for the hearers in virtue, but also for those who try to speak in philosophy. [Letter 4.131] [That it was not to our advantage to have knowledge of all things.] I shall try to resolve briefly a whole swarm of problems. I say, then, that the hunt for knowledge of what we are to do or what will happen to us in this life, even if, as you said, it were attainable and could be caught, is entirely useless and perilous. If what is foreknown cannot be guarded against, it takes from us the virtue that ought to be prepared for what befalls. For nothing usually gives composure against what befalls unexpectedly as the practice of virtue does. And those who have banished every good hope from their soul will not be eager to do anything they ought because of what they have learned in advance.

To Leontius the bishop. The neglect of the reading of the divine Scriptures, and each person's preferring his own passions to the divine oracles, has been the cause of so many tragedies. For a truceless and undeclared war has fallen upon those who should be the arbiters of peace. They would most gladly devour one another if they could; they would make it their whole business to kill the living, anathematize the buried, raze their houses, and obliterate every memorial of them. So they arm themselves against one another and weave their devices, they who have learned that Christ marked out his own disciples not by signs but by love. That, I think, is why those under them do not follow them either. They are no longer disposed toward them as pupils toward teachers, but as judges toward the condemned, thinking, wretchedly and miserably indeed, yet still thinking, that they have in the negligence of their teachers a defence for their own faults. What then must be done, you say? If possible, correct it; if not, keep quiet.

To Hierax, most illustrious. The teachings of the law and the prophets are preliminary schooling for the new philosophy of the gospel. For they legislate for the hand, it for the soul; they direct and steer action, it intention; they are like an elementary teacher, it like a consummate philosopher.

To James the reader. [On "He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward."] The saying, "He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward," means in brief this: it is not the case, my good friend, that if someone honours what is good for some other need or pretext he will at once share in the glory of the good; rather, he will be glorified together with the good who honours the good for its own sake. For many honour prophets or righteous men either for human glory or for worldly gain. There are some who give money to those who pursue such things, and no one would say that they receive a prophet's reward. But if anyone, without such cloaks, looks to the good with a naked soul and honours the saints, such a one will rightly be glorified together with the saints.

To Alypius. [How the kingdom of heaven suffers violence.] The prizes, being greater than all human worth and far surpassing the reward owed to labours ("for the sufferings of the present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us," said the vessel of election), also overpower the weakness of nature. That is why it was said, "The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent seize it." What violent men? Those who force their own body by fasting, chastity, and every other virtue, subject it to the laws of the Spirit, and make it obedient and a base of operations for virtue. [Letter 4.137] [On what is written: "Wise as serpents and innocent as doves."] Examples are not taken in every respect; otherwise they would not be examples but identity. Even though he commanded us to imitate the dove's innocence and guilelessness, one must still avoid its senselessness, which is to fly for refuge to those who are eager to hunt it. For even if one must do no harm, it is not right to be harmed in vital matters either, or to run to those from whom release is the greatest gain. If you want clear testimony to what is said, hear the prophet saying, "And Ephraim was like a senseless dove, without heart." And if you seek the reason too, he adds at once: "He called upon Egypt and went to the Assyrians." Of two nations, he says, sick with tyranny, with hatred, and with ancient greed, he called on the one for help, and fled to the other as if he would find salvation. Who, then, he says, could be more senseless than one who rushes to those who dream of his captivity and slavery?

To Alypius. [On "In the world you will have tribulation."] Arm yourself splendidly with the hope of the goods to be given to those who have set up trophies against vice, fence yourself well on every side, make this wall strong with prayers, and beat off the onset of despondency. For it is a terrible thing, able to master even a noble soul, unless the soul constantly dreams of the crowns and so endures what is painful.

To Theognostus. [On "But if you warn the lawless man and he does not turn from his lawlessness, the lawless man shall die in his lawlessness, and you will have delivered your soul."] The wicked, being more numerous and spreading evil talk, have often numbed those who rebuke vice, so that they do not check faults with frankness. One must therefore mix gentleness with frankness, blend love with reproof, and so admonish. But if even so those people are not helped, and even denounce wickedly those who are worthy of the greatest crowns, who will surely be proclaimed by God and accepted by those of understanding, let those who correct evils bear it nobly, and let them grieve, not over their own situation (that nothing has come of it for them except to seem loathsome), but over the perversity and madness of those people, who are so incurably sick that they even revile their physicians. [Letter 4.140] [On reading, against the Greeks. On the grace of the divinely inspired Scriptures and the benefit that comes from them.] Many of those outside have written many things that bring neither benefit to those who are persuaded nor loss to those who do not listen; but the divine Scriptures bring the greatest gain to those who are persuaded, and give birth to no small harm for those who disobey. For those writers wrote hunting for glory, but the Scriptures look to the salvation of their hearers. [Letter 4.141] [Why the law commanded lepers, or others suffering from involuntary diseases, to be outside the sacred precincts.] It is likely that a bad constitution of the body and loathsome diseases befall many people from the incontinence of their parents; but not that incontinence always comes from a bad constitution. (Whether a leper begets a leper, and a man with a discharge a child with a discharge, I cannot say exactly; but that a gouty man begets a gouty son, all would agree.) The lawgiver's word, then, as I think (for one must not pronounce on unclear matters, but leave the judgment to the hearers), was about incontinence, that they should not come together at every time, since the harm would pass to those who would be born from them. That this is not off the mark is shown by the fact that the gouty were not shut out from the sacred precincts. For those who first contracted this disease got it not from a bad constitution but from a bad diet, luxury, sloth, and idleness, and were punished by it for this; but those born from them were not prevented from sharing in the sacred assemblies, since they had necessarily inherited their parents' bad constitution, not their incontinence. But those who bore in their bodies the stamp of their parents' licentiousness were not punished (for he did not command them to be stoned, since the affliction was involuntary), but were dishonoured for the correction of their parents. If anyone thinks this was not reasonably legislated, what would he say about death, that when one woman sinned (I mean Eve), the whole race was condemned to death, though many were approved and did not follow the faults of their forebears? If there, when the root had died, the branches too necessarily shared its affliction, as heirs of the sentence, what wonder if here too the branch was dishonoured because of the root, and so necessarily passed the affliction back to the root? For the root's pain is not less than that of the dishonoured branch. The mother who prayed to see her branch excellent, when she perceives that the affliction passed into it from her own licentiousness, will be tormented here by her own thoughts, and there by the judgment as well. Whether God, foreknowing that they would be wicked, restrained them in advance with these bonds and bridled their passions, I cannot say exactly; but that these diseases have been the cause of crowns for many, I would confidently affirm. And if the law had a shadow of the good things to come and not the very image of the realities, I think that by the leper it signified the changeable and villainous man; by the one with a discharge, the sexually immoral and licentious man; by the one unclean through a human soul, that is, through touching a dead body, the one who works with and helps a soul that sins; and by the mourner, the one who mourns and laments over misfortunes; and that it decreed these should be banished from the sacred assembly of the blameless and from the Church. [Letter 4.142] To Elias the deacon. [On "In the beginning was the Word."] The timeless, eternal, and unmediated procession of Christ from the Father, beyond all speech and mind, the Scriptures call begetting, not to describe a passion but to establish that he is consubstantial; for what is begotten is truly consubstantial with what begets. And so that he may not be thought younger, they say, "In the beginning was the Word." Then they proclaim his relation to the Father: "and the Word was with God." Then also his dignity: "and the Word was God." From "Son" we learn his consubstantiality; from "Word," his impassibility; from his being "in the beginning," his co-eternity; from his being "with God," his closeness to the Father; from his being "God," his dignity; and from each name we reject the unfitting idea that suggests itself, such as being younger, from "Son," and being without subsistence, from "Word"; so let us know and worship him as God eternal, consubstantial, proceeding from the Father impassibly and timelessly. [Letter 4.143] To Basilius. Those for whom ruling has been lawfully established will surely also have good fortune following; and they will fare well when piety is made strong, the highest of goods and the summary of the divine commands, which right belief about God and sincere confession establish, which fear of God and love for him make manifest, and love and sympathy toward our own kind; on these hang the whole law and the prophets. This, in governments too, is something above the world, what is pre-eminent and best. This is lawful governance and care for the advantage of all subjects; just as, on the contrary, tyranny is a self-willed power pursuing only the advantage of the tyrant. All, then, who have been allotted to administer this rule, binding on piety like a crown of gold set with precious stones, and putting on justice like a purple robe, will strive to rule in God and to hold a truly just rule. For they show in themselves the truth of the sacred oracle that says, "By me kings reign, and rulers decree righteousness." For they know that "the beginning of a good way is to do what is just." [Letter 4.144] [Without heading.] Having learned the honoured command of our pious and God-appointed great emperor, first through the imperial envoy (apocrisiarius), and the health and safety in the Lord of your pious majesty, we were filled with the greatest joy, earnestly sent up glory and thanksgiving to our God, recovered from our sickness, and were filled with great eagerness. On reading the honoured command, I found how the matter of the peace had proceeded under those who governed before. We had already heard about this in part a little while ago; but we were at a loss to give it our assent in our minds, knowing that they had dared to do a daring thing which no Christian has ever undertaken, nor has it even entered the mind of any of our predecessors. It seems to us to have come about either from great inexperience and ignorance of Christian doctrine, or from great unbelief and contempt for God's commandments. For if they had listened to the divine oracles, they would have guarded the venerable character of our holy and blameless religion, and would not have allowed the heathen and irrational to touch our holy and venerable things; nor would they themselves have shared in the pollutions and abominations of the heathen in their accursed and outlandish oaths. For what difference is there, if a Christian and a heathen, trusting in the same oaths and the same customs, think they are confirming one another in things at which we know God is angry and wrathful? For the God and Master of all has commanded through his holy Scriptures, "Do not turn aside from what is written, to the right or to the left." [Letter 4.145] [On "Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master will set?"] Having satirized, blessed friend, the folly, or rather the madness, of those who throw themselves into an impossible task or accept it lightly, I do not know how you left out what shows it most. What is that? Not all people are caught by the same diseases, nor do all yield to the same treatment; but since the passions are many, varied, and of every kind, the remedies must be more numerous and more varied. If what I say troubles you, wait a little, and the trouble that now holds you will turn into pitying them the more. Since the ailments are many and of every kind, it is hard, first, for one who is only a man to discern them, and then, once he has learned them, to know what medicine fits. For not the same remedies fit all, nor are all healed by the same things; what helped this one harmed another, and what suited one ruined someone else. And so that I may not seem to you to be saying something paradoxical, let what I say be laid bare. Those who are led by reason are not also corrected by example; but one is brought to a better state by this, another by that. Nor do those who need the goad also tolerate the bridle; but those who are sluggish and slow to move toward the good are roused by the stroke of reason, while those who are hotter than they should be and hard to hold, rushing like colts far from the turning post, are helped by being curbed and checked. Some are corrected by praise, others by blame, if both come at the right time; but the result will turn to the opposite if they come out of season. Some yield to exhortation, others to rebuke; some rub off their defects when reproved in assemblies, others when admonished in private. For some, when corrected by public rebuke, tend to despise those who speak with them, while others, stripping themselves rather for public reproofs, shake off their shame; they are trained to compliance by the secrecy and sympathy of the rebuke. Some must be watched in everything, those whom the thought of escaping notice has puffed up as cleverer, since that is what they contrive; but in others some things must even be overlooked, lest they be provoked to callousness and in the end become uncontrollable in everything, having rubbed off shame, the greatest medicine for persuasion. And one must be angry where it is needed without being angry, overlook without overlooking, and despair without despairing; heal some with gentleness and others by separation; defeat some, and with others seem to be defeated, where this is profitable. Since, then, the ailments and the remedies are so many, and all do not yield to the same things, but are even provoked by them to the opposite and to worse faults, who, unless his soul has been enlightened by the divine Spirit, will be able to know them or be equal to them? But they dare to rule, if they even think the office suitable for them, neither considering its difficulty nor hearing the Master's voice, which shows its rarity so plainly that it even uses a questioning expression: "Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the Lord will set over his household, to give them their measure of grain?" [Letter 4.146] To Isidore the bishop. ["And deliver those."] You asked what is meant by "and deliver those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lifetime." Listen, then. It is not death, my good friend, but the court after death that turns people away from sins. The impious, thinking the soul a spark, at whose extinction, as they said, the body would turn to ash, and thinking that they would only die and not be judged (they said this in the book entitled the Wisdom of Solomon, as you know; and if you do not, take the book in hand and you will know), left nothing undone. As though they would no longer exist after death, they set about doing everything that deserves shame, death, and punishment, saying, "This is our portion, and this our lot." So the Saviour came, along with all else that he accomplished, to deliver people from this supposition too. For he defined the immortality of the soul by saying, "but cannot kill the soul"; he proclaimed the resurrection of bodies by saying, "In the resurrection of the dead they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but will be like angels"; and he showed the judgment by many other sayings and by saying, "Fear him who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna"; and so he freed all from that supposition, or, to speak more truly, from that slavery. For those who keep the divine court in mind and fix their eye on it as on a target would not dare to do anything base. I think the saying has been made clear. But if you want it paraphrased as well, I would say: since, expecting to die, they served sins unsparingly (for the fear of death, looking grim to them and begetting the thought of no longer existing, delivered them over to every slavery of sin), for this reason Christ came, to deliver them from this slavery too. If even so it is not understood, it will be said more clearly; for the Apostle's thought is not easily caught by many. He will deliver them, he says, from the fear of death, which brings them to non-existence, and lead them to think of the incorruptible court after the end here. For these people would run gladly on the road that leads to virtue, given wings by the hope of crowns, and would flee sin from fear of the punishments to come. Whether the Apostle's mind also looks to another idea is for your understanding to judge. It is likely that he also shows something like this: since many, fearing death as sending them into non-existence, submitted to doing and suffering many shameful things, even against their will, so as not to be punished by the more powerful (for those who desired someone and did not attain their aim contrived deceits and plots that brought death, as the stories of Joseph and of Susanna show), he came to teach people that death is preferable to vice, and that one should accept it rather than do or suffer anything most shameful. For death will be extinguished by the resurrection, while those things end in punishments. [Letter 4.147] [On what is written: "For if Joshua had given them rest."] The divine Paul's word is not about the rest of the Hebrews that came about in Palestine through the generalship of Joshua the son of Nun; he takes no account of that; he looks to the rest expected to come, and the aim of his thought is directed to that. That this is true he himself shows, interpreting himself: "For if Joshua (clearly the son of Nun) had given them rest, he would not afterward have spoken of another day. So there remains a sabbath rest for the people of God." For if he had given them rest, he says, David, discoursing about rest many generations later, would not have said, "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the provocation." Therefore, he says, the true rest is laid up for the people of God, that is, for those who have lived worthily after believing, and it has been prepared not in Palestine but in the Jerusalem above the world. [Letter 4.148] [On "And the one who does wrong is blessed."] You asked what is meant by "And the one who does wrong is blessed." Listen, then. "Is blessed" is said here from "being well spoken of": that is, he is praised and eulogized by those who flatter him and inflame his vice, and who will not give him a sense of his disease by keeping silent. That is why such a man is found incurable: since he has no sense of his affliction, he neither seeks nor admits treatment. And this is the most terrible thing of all, when vice is praised and not even thought to be vice. So one must above all, if possible, correct such a man; if not, neither flatter him nor inflame the affliction, but give him a sense of his wickedness by silence. And if one is not willing to do even this, one must flee headlong, lest, being seen to share in his injustice through flattery, one be found to share his punishments too. For just as one who leads another toward virtue is crowned even if he achieves nothing (for he has fulfilled his own part), so one who spurs another on to injustice is punished even if he prevails in nothing; for he too has done his own part.

To Elias the deacon. [On "Once God has spoken," in Psalm 61.] The quarry, my good friend, that you long to hunt is hard to catch for the more intelligent and impossible to catch for the duller. For you asked, "What is meant by 'Once God has spoken; these two things I have heard'?" I think, then (since one must open the doors of the thought, and leave it to the more intelligent to look into the inner shrine of the saying), that it is said as someone might say, "So-and-so met me once, but spoke about different matters." This is the obvious sense. The deeper and purer sense is scattered through all the Scriptures; I shall take one or two instances and speak of them, though the thought can be turned to many interpretations that keep to the Psalmist's greatness of mind. When God said to Adam, "You are earth, and to earth you will go," but did not add, "You will vanish," or, "You will not return," I, because these words were passed over in silence, heard the resurrection implied. For he gave the exile a hope of return. The sentence, which seems to have a single sense, shows a king's love for humankind and gives birth to a hope of return. And the Ninevites, barbarian men, who received what was almost an unqualified sentence, suffered nothing barbarous; but perceiving that "Yet three days, and Nineveh will be overthrown" shows God's love for humankind (for the sentence, full of an inexorable threat, held a hidden choice concealed in the delay joined to it: it did not say, "After three days," but something like, "I bear with you three days"), they acknowledged their fault, warded off destruction, and reaped salvation. For the sentence did not hold one thing only, but two: either punishment for the unrepentant or salvation for the repentant. And the outcome showed this, following the interpretation of the sentence rather than its letter. [Letter 4.150] [First Corinthians. Why Paul said, "For I decided to know nothing among you except Christ and him crucified."] Why, you ask, did Paul pass over the solemn and splendid things that he proclaimed about Christ, and write to the Corinthians, "I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified"? I think, then, that even the things counted shameful teemed with the greatest power and honour; that is why he said this, all but crying out: "I bring the athlete forward in chains, so that when he has become an Olympic victor I may proclaim him the more loudly; I dedicate to the general a panoply most cheap and full of insult, so that the one sick with the worship of many gods may groan the more, defeated by cheap weapons." [Letter 4.151] [What is meant by "Does not he who dwells on high look down?"] You wrote wishing to learn what is meant by the words, "Does not he who dwells on high look down?" Listen, then. He who dwells on high (for this is the meaning of ναίων, from which comes νεώς, that is, ναός, temple; just as "to dwell" comes from "house," so ναίειν comes from ναός) looks down on all things, and nothing escapes him. "Does he not look down, then," he says, "he who dwells on high?" Meaning, "Yes, he looks down." The Psalmist said this more clearly: "Who dwells on high and looks upon what is lowly." And the three young men most clearly of all: "Blessed are you who look upon the depths, seated upon the cherubim." For you who are above the hosts on high, he says, do not overlook our lowliness, but, being master of the invisible powers, govern even the things in the depths with the gentlest nods.