Letters 120.8–120.10

What is meant by what is written in the evangelist Matthew: "And Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, gave up his spirit. And the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, and the earth was shaken, and the rocks were split, and the tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep rose, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many"? — We have discussed this passage too in the same commentaries. First it must be said that it is a sign of divine power to lay down one's life when one wills and to take it up again. Thus the centurion, seeing that he had said to the Father, "Into your hands I commend my spirit," and at once of his own accord had given up his spirit, was moved by the greatness of the sign and said: "Truly this was the Son of God." The veil of the temple was torn in two, so that what Josephus reports might be fulfilled, that the powers who presided over the temple said: "Let us depart from these seats." But in the gospel written in Hebrew letters we read not that the veil of the temple was torn, but that the lintel of the temple, of wonderful size, collapsed. "The earth," he says, "was shaken" (unable to bear its Lord hanging) "and the rocks were split" (to show the hardness of the Jews, who refused to recognize the Son of God when he was present) "and the tombs were opened" (as a sign of the future resurrection) "and many bodies of the saints, coming out of their tombs, went into the holy city and appeared to many." By the holy city we must understand Jerusalem, as distinct from all the cities that then served idols; for in it alone were the temple, the worship of the one God, and true religion. And they did not appear to all, but to many, those who received the risen Lord. Then, according to the anagogical sense (ἀναγωγή), it must be said that, as Jesus cried out and gave up his spirit, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom and all the mysteries of the law were uncovered, so that what had formerly been kept hidden might be made known to all nations. "In two": into the old and the new instrument; "from top to bottom": from the beginning of the world, when man was created, with all that sacred history narrates as done in between, to the consummation of the world. And we must ask which veil of the temple was torn, the outer or the inner. It seems to me that in the Lord's passion that veil was torn which was placed outside, both in the tabernacle and in the temple, and was called the outer veil, because now we see in part and know in part; but when what is perfect has come, then the inner veil too is to be torn, so that we may see all the mysteries of the house of God that are now hidden from us: what the two cherubim mean, what the oracle, what the golden vessel in which the manna was stored. For now we see through a mirror, in an image; and though the veil of history has been torn for us, so that we may enter the court of God, yet we cannot know his secrets and all the mysteries that are kept shut up in the heavenly Jerusalem. So in the Lord's passion the earth was shaken, according to what is written in Haggai: "Once more I will shake heaven and earth, and the one desired by all nations will come," so that they may come from east and west and recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. "And the rocks were split": the hard hearts of the Gentiles; or the rocks are all the oracles of the prophets, who themselves, with the apostles, received the name of rock from Christ the rock, so that whatever was shut up in them by the hard veil of the law might be split open and lie open to the Gentiles. The tombs too, of which it is written, "You are sepulchres whitewashed on the outside, which inside are full of dead men's bones," were opened for this purpose, that there might come out of them those who had formerly been dead in unbelief, that they might live with Christ risen and living, enter the heavenly Jerusalem, have their citizenship not on earth but in heaven, and, dying with the earthly Adam, rise with the heavenly Adam. Further, according to the letter, let no one think it forced that Jerusalem is called the holy city after the Savior's death, since until its destruction the apostles always entered the temple and, so as not to give offense to those of the Jews who had believed, practiced the ceremonies of the law. The Lord loved Jerusalem so much that he wept and lamented over it and, hanging on the cross, said: "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing." So he obtained what he had asked, and many thousands of the Jews at once believed, and until the forty-second year a time for repentance was granted. After that, as they persisted in blasphemy, two bears came out of the forests of the Gentiles, the Romans Vespasian and Titus, and killed and tore to pieces the blaspheming boys who mocked with one voice the true Elisha as he went up into the house of God (for that is what Bethel means). From that time Jerusalem is not called the holy city, but, losing both its holiness and its former name, is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt, so that a new city may be built in its place, which the rushing river makes glad, and from whose midst there comes out a spring that has sweetened the bitterness of the whole world; so that wretched Israel may lament the ruins of the temple with bared arms, while the new crowd of believers in Christ sees the roofs of the church rising daily, and Zion says, "The place is too narrow for me," and what is written in Isaiah is fulfilled: "And his tomb shall be glorious."

How is it that, according to John, the Savior breathes the Holy Spirit on the apostles, and according to Luke says that he will send him after the ascension? — The solution of this question is very easy if, taught by the apostle Paul, we know the diverse graces of the Holy Spirit. For he writes in the first letter to the Corinthians: "There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and varieties of ministries, but the same Lord; and varieties of workings, and the same God, who works all in all. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for what is profitable. To one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing in the one Spirit, to another faith in the same Spirit, to another the working of powers, to another prophecy, to another discernment of spirits, to another kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of speech. But all these are worked by one and the same Spirit, dividing to each as he wills." So the Lord, who after his resurrection had said according to Luke's gospel, "Behold, I will send the promise of my Father upon you; but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high," and according to the same writer in the Acts of the Apostles commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem but to wait for the promise of the Father, "which you have heard from my mouth; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now," is again narrated at the end of the gospel according to John to have come in to the apostles through closed doors on the day on which he had risen, that is, the Lord's day, and to have said to them a second time, "Peace be with you," and to have added: "As the Father has sent me, so I send you." "And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them: Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven them; whose you retain, they are retained." On the first day of his resurrection, then, they received the grace of the Holy Spirit by which they might forgive sins, baptize, make children of God, and bestow the spirit of adoption on believers, as the Savior himself said: "Whose sins you forgive, they will be forgiven them, and whose you retain, they are retained." But on the day of Pentecost more was promised them: that they would be baptized with the Holy Spirit and clothed with power, by which they would preach the gospel of Christ to all nations, according to what we read in the sixty-seventh psalm: "The Lord will give the word to those who preach the good news with much power," so that they might have the working of powers and the gift of healings and, being about to preach to many nations, might receive kinds of tongues, so that it might already then be known which apostles were to preach to which nations. Thus the apostle Paul, who preached from Jerusalem to Illyricum and from there hastens to go by way of Rome to Spain, thanks God that he speaks in tongues more than all the apostles. For he who was to preach to many nations had received the gift of many tongues. This promise of the Holy Spirit was fulfilled on the tenth day after the Savior's ascension, as Luke reports, writing: "When the day of Pentecost was being fulfilled, they were all together in the same place, and suddenly there came from heaven a sound as of a violent wind coming, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them divided tongues as of fire, and it sat upon each of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Holy Spirit gave them to speak." Then was fulfilled what is read in Joel: "And it shall be in the last days, says the Lord, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions." The word "pour out" signifies the lavishness of grace and expresses the very thing the Lord promised: "But you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now." For they were baptized with the Holy Spirit to such a degree that the whole house where they were sitting was filled, and the fire of the Holy Spirit found in them the dwelling it desired and divided the tongues and, as with Isaiah, who had said that he had unclean lips, purified their lips, so that they might preach the gospel of Christ more purely. In Isaiah indeed the lintel of the temple is said to have been shaken and the whole house filled with smoke, that is, with error and darkness and ignorance of the truth. But at the beginning of the gospel the church is filled with the Spirit, so that by his grace and fervor the sins of all believers may be purged, and by the fire of the Holy Spirit, whom the Lord had said he would send, the tongue that was to preach Christ might be healed. John and Luke, therefore, do not disagree, as if what the one indicates was given on the first day of the resurrection the other describes as having come on the fiftieth day; it is rather the apostles' progress: those who had first received the grace of forgiving sins afterwards received the workings of powers and all the kinds of gifts which, as we have mentioned, the apostle describes, and, what was more necessary, the variety of the languages of all nations, so that, when they proclaimed Christ, they would need no interpreter. Hence in Lycaonia too, when they heard Paul and Barnabas speaking their own language, they believed that gods had turned into men. And truly the clothing of power is the grace of the Holy Spirit; possessing it they did not fear the tribunals of judges or the purple of kings. For the Lord had promised before he suffered, saying: "But when they hand you over, do not think how or what you are to speak; for what you are to speak will be given you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you." I declare boldly and with complete freedom that from the time when the apostles believed in the Lord they always had the Holy Spirit and could not have done signs without the grace of the Holy Spirit, but according to their measure and degree. Hence the Savior cried out in the temple, saying: "Let him who thirsts come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture says, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." This he said of the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive. And in the same place he adds: "For the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified." This is not because the Holy Spirit did not exist, since the Lord Savior says, "But if I cast out demons by the Holy Spirit," but because he who was in the Lord did not yet dwell wholly in the apostles. For that reason they are frightened away at his passion, deny him, and swear that they do not know Christ. But after they are baptized in the Holy Spirit and the grace of the Holy Spirit is poured out on them, then they speak freely to the rulers of the Jews: "Must one obey God rather than men?" They raise the dead, rejoice amid scourgings, shed their blood, and are crowned by their sufferings. So the Spirit was not yet in the apostles, nor did spiritual graces flow from their belly, because the Lord had not yet been glorified. What that glory is he himself says in the gospel: "Father, glorify me with the glory which I had with you before the world was." The Savior's glory is the gibbet of one who triumphs. He is crucified as man, glorified as God. So the sun flees, the moon is changed into blood, the earth trembles with an unusual earthquake, the underworld is opened, the dead walk, the rocks are rent. This is the glory of which he spoke in the psalm: "Awake, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp." And the glory itself, the economy of the flesh he assumed, answered for itself: "I will awake at dawn," so that the title of the twenty-first psalm might be fulfilled: "For the taking-up at morning." We say this not because we believe that the God is one and the man another and make two persons in the one Son of God, as a new heresy falsely charges; rather, one and the same is Son of God and Son of Man, and of whatever he says we refer some things to his divine glory and some to our salvation. For our sake he did not count it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, becoming obedient to the Father unto death, even death on a cross; and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. I am amazed, however, that Montanus and his mad women, those abortive prophets, say that what the Lord promised when he said, "I go, and I will send you another Paraclete," and what the evangelist Luke afterwards narrates the apostles received, was fulfilled in themselves long afterwards. For it was promised to the apostles: "I will send the promise of my Father upon you, and you will stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high"; and when he rose he breathed on the face of the apostles, and not of Montanus, Priscilla, and Maximilla, and said to them: "Whose sins you forgive, they will be forgiven, and whose you retain, they are retained." It was the apostles, I say, whom he commanded not to leave Jerusalem but to wait for the promise of the Spirit. And afterwards we read that what was promised was fulfilled: "They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Holy Spirit gave them to speak." For the Holy Spirit breathes where he wills; and when the Lord says, "I will send you another Paraclete," he shows that he too is a Paraclete, which means "Comforter." Hence God the Father too is known by this name: "the God of mercies and of all comfort." But if the Father is Comforter, the Son is Comforter and the Holy Spirit is Comforter; and believers are baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, which is understood as God. Since they have one name of divinity and of Comforter, they have also one nature. This Holy Spirit was not only in the apostles but also in the prophets; David prayed about him, saying: "Do not take your Holy Spirit from me." Daniel is said to have had the Spirit of God, and David, speaking in the Spirit, says that the Lord said to his Lord: "Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet." Nor did the prophets prophesy without the Holy Spirit; by the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and all their power by the Spirit of his mouth. Whatever belongs to the Father and the Son belongs also to the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit himself, since he is sent by the Father and comes in place of the Son, is called in different places the Spirit of God the Father and the Spirit of Christ. Hence in the Acts of the Apostles those who had been baptized with John's baptism and believed in God the Father and in Christ, because they did not know the Holy Spirit, are baptized again, or rather then receive true baptism, for without the Holy Spirit the mystery of the Trinity is incomplete; and in the same book Peter is said to have told Ananias and Sapphira that in lying to the Holy Spirit they had lied not to men but to God.

What is meant by the apostle Paul's argument when he writes to the Romans: "What then shall we say? Is there injustice with God? Far from it," up to the place where he says: "Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left us seed, we would have become like Sodom and been made like Gomorrah"? — The whole letter to the Romans indeed needs interpretation and is wrapped in such obscurities that to understand it we need the help of the Holy Spirit, who dictated these very things through the apostle; but especially this passage, in which some, wishing to safeguard the justice of God, say that it was for preceding causes that Jacob was chosen in Rebecca's womb and Esau rejected, just as Jeremiah and John the Baptist are chosen in the womb, and the apostle himself is predestined for the gospel before he is born. But nothing pleases us except what belongs to the church and what we are not afraid to say publicly in the church, lest, following Pythagoras and Plato and their disciples, who under the Christian name bring in the doctrine of the Gentiles, we should say that souls have fallen from heaven and, according to the difference of their merits, pay in these or those bodies the penalties of former sins. It is much better simply to confess ignorance and, among the other things we do not know, to shrink also from the obscurity of this passage, than, while wishing to prove God's justice, to defend the heresy of Basilides and Mani and follow Iberian trifles and Egyptian monstrosities. Let us speak, then, as we can, and, following the traces of the apostle's intention, let us not depart from his thoughts even by a point or, as they say, a nail's breadth. He had wept above and called the Holy Spirit to witness his grief and his conscience, because his brothers and kinsmen according to the flesh, that is, the Israelites, had not received the Son of God, they to whom belonged the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the worship and the promise, from whom also Christ himself according to the flesh was born of the virgin Mary; and he is so tormented by unceasing grief of heart that he himself wishes to be accursed from Christ, that is, to perish alone, so that the whole Israelite race may not perish. And because he had said this, he at once foresees the question coming from the other side: "What then do you say? Have all who are from Israel perished? And how is it that you yourself and the other apostles and an endless multitude of the Jewish people have received Christ, the Son of God?" He resolves it thus: Israel is spoken of in two ways in the Holy Scriptures and is divided into two sons: one who is according to the flesh, and another who is according to the promise and the spirit. Abraham had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. Ishmael, who was born according to the flesh, did not receive his father's inheritance; Isaac, who was born of Sarah by promise, is called the seed of God. For it is written: "In Isaac shall your seed be called," that is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are reckoned as seed. And we show that this happened not only with Ishmael and Isaac but also with the two sons of Rebecca, Esau and Jacob, of whom one was rejected and the other chosen. He says all this to signify that in the elder brothers, Ishmael and Esau, the Jewish people was rejected, and in the younger ones, Isaac and Jacob, the people of the Gentiles was chosen, or those of the Jews who were to believe in Christ. And since, wishing to prove this, he had put forward the testimony of the twins Esau and Jacob at their birth, of whom it is written, "The elder shall serve the younger," and in Malachi we read, "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated," he raises, in his usual way, a question coming from the side, discusses it, and, having solved it, returns to what he had begun to discuss. If Esau and Jacob were not yet born and had done nothing good or evil to win God's favor or to offend him, and their election and rejection show not the merits of each but the will of the one who chooses and rejects, "What then shall we say? Is God unjust?", according to the example he gives from God's word to Moses: "I will have mercy on whom I have had mercy, and I will show mercy to whom I will have mercy." "If," he says, "we accept this, that God does whatever he wills and, without merit and works, either chooses or condemns someone, then it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy," especially since the same Scripture, that is, the same God, says to Pharaoh: "For this very purpose I raised you up, to show my power in you and that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth." If this is so, and at his will he has mercy on Israel and hardens Pharaoh, then it is in vain that he complains and accuses us of not having done good or of having done evil, since it lies in his power and will to choose or reject someone without good or evil works, especially since human frailty cannot resist his will. This strong question, woven from the reasoning of the Scriptures and almost insoluble, the apostle solves in a brief word, saying: "O man, who are you to answer back to God?" And the sense is: by the very fact that you answer God and bring false charges and search out so much from the Scriptures in order to speak against God and inquire into the justice of his will, you show that you have free choice and do what you will, whether to be silent or to speak. For if you think that you were created by God like an earthen vessel and cannot resist his will, consider this: an earthen vessel does not say to the potter, "Why have you made me thus?" (for the potter has power to make from the same clay and the same lump one vessel for honor and another for dishonor); but God created all with an equal lot and gave them freedom of choice, so that each may do what he wills, whether good or evil. And he gave all such power that an impious voice argues against its creator and scrutinizes the reasons for his will. "But if God, wishing to show his wrath and make known his power, endured with much patience the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction, in order to show the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he prepared for glory, even us whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles, as he says in Hosea: 'I will call those who were not my people my people, and her who was not beloved beloved; and in the place where it was said to them, You are not my people, there they shall be called sons of the living God,'" and the rest that follows. If, he says, the patience of God hardened Pharaoh and put off for a long time the punishment of Israel, so that he might more justly condemn those whom he had borne so long, it is not the patience and infinite clemency of God that is to be blamed, but the hardness of those who abused God's goodness to their own ruin. The heat of the sun is one, and according to the substances beneath it, it melts some things and hardens others, loosens some and binds others; wax is melted and clay is hardened, and yet the nature of the heat is not different. So too the goodness and clemency of God hardens the vessels of wrath that are fitted for destruction, that is, the people of Israel; but the vessels of mercy, which he prepared for glory and which he also called, that is, us, who are not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles, he does not save irrationally and without true judgment, but for preceding causes, because some did not receive the Son of God, while others were willing of their own accord to receive him. These vessels of mercy are not only the people of the Gentiles but also those of the Jews who were willing to believe, and one people of believers has been made. From this it is shown that it is not nations that are chosen but the wills of human beings; and so it came about that what was said through Hosea was fulfilled: "I will call those who were not my people my people," that is, the people of the Gentiles, and those to whom it was formerly said, "Not my people," are now called sons of the living God. And lest he seem to speak only of the Gentiles, he also calls those of the multitude of Israel who believed vessels of mercy and of election. For Isaiah cries out on behalf of Israel: "Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant will be saved"; that is, even if the multitude does not believe, yet a few will believe. For God, in his equity, weighed out a word completed and cut short, so that by the humility and incarnation of Christ he might save those who were willing to believe in him. Isaiah says the same thing in another place: "Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left us seed, we would have become like Sodom and been made like Gomorrah." And having set out the testimonies by which the twofold calling, of the Gentiles and of the Jewish people, is foretold, he passes to the connected argument and says that the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, attained righteousness because they were not proud but believed in Christ, while a great part of Israel fell because it stumbled on the stone of stumbling and the rock of offense, was ignorant of the righteousness of God, and, seeking to establish its own righteousness, would not submit to the righteousness of God, which is Christ. I have read in someone's commentaries that the apostle answered in such a way as to entangle the question rather than solve it. For to what he had proposed, "What then shall we say? Is there injustice with God?" and "It is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy" and "He has mercy on whom he wills, and he hardens whom he wills" and "Who can resist his will?", the apostle, he says, answered thus: "O man, you who are earth and ashes, do you dare to question God, and do you, a fragile earthen vessel, rebel against your potter? Can the thing formed say to him who formed it, 'Why have you made me thus?' Or does the potter not have power over the clay to make from the same lump one vessel for honor and another for dishonor? Be silent, then, in eternal silence, know your frailty, and raise no question against God, who has done what he willed, so as to be merciful to some and severe to others."