Letters 121.10–121.11

What does the same apostle wish to be understood by what he writes to the Colossians: "Let no one defeat you, wishing in humility of mind and in the religion of angels, walking in what he has not seen, vainly puffed up by the sense of his flesh, and not holding the head, from which the whole body, supplied and built up through its joints and connections, grows with the growth of God," and the rest? — What we have often said, that Paul said "even if unskilled in speech, yet not in knowledge" not out of humility but from the truth of his conscience, we prove again now. For his tongue does not unfold his deep and hidden meanings, and though he himself understands what he says, he cannot transfer it into others' ears in clear speech. Though he is most eloquent in his native tongue, being a Hebrew of the Hebrews, trained at the feet of Gamaliel, a man most learned in the law, when he wishes to render himself into another language he becomes entangled. And if this happens to him in the Greek language, which he had imbibed from an early age, raised in Tarsus of Cilicia, what is to be said of the Latins, who, trying to render word for word, make his thoughts more obscure, as growing weeds choke the abundance of the crops? We shall try, then, to unfold his sense by paraphrase (παραφραστικῶς) and to restore the tangles of his involved speech to their proper order and connection, so that the threads of the words may run on a simple warp and the fabric of the apostle's speech may grow on a clean weft. "Let no one defeat you": let no one receive the prize against you. For this is what is said in Greek, καταβραβευέτω, when someone placed in a contest loses the prize (βραβεῖον) and the palm owed to him through the injustice of the umpire or the plots of the trainers. There are many words that the apostle uses familiarly according to the custom of his city and province; of these a few should be given as examples: "But to me it is a very small thing to be judged by a human day," that is, ἀπὸ ἀνθρωπίνης ἡμέρας; and οὐ κατενάρκησα ὑμᾶς, that is, "I did not burden you"; and what is now said, μηδεὶς ὑμᾶς καταβραβευέτω, that is, "let no one receive the prize against you." The Cilicians use these and many other words to this day. Nor should we wonder at this in the apostle, if he uses the idiom of the language in which he was born and raised, since Virgil, a second Homer among us, following the custom of his native region, calls cold "wicked." "Let no one, then, defeat and overcome you, wishing to follow the humility of the letter and the religion and worship of angels, so that you serve not the spiritual understanding but the patterns of things to come, which he who wishes to overcome you has not seen" (or "has seen," for both readings are found in the Greek), "especially since he walks swollen and goes about puffed up, displaying the pride of his mind even in his bodily bearing" (for this is what ἐμβατεύων means), "but he is vainly puffed up and swells with the sense of his flesh, understanding everything carnally and searching out the ravings of Jewish traditions, and not holding the head of all the Scriptures," that head of which it is said, "The head of the man is Christ"; he is the head and principle of the whole body, of those who believe, and of all spiritual understanding. From this head the body of the church, through its joints and connections, receives the sap of heavenly teaching, so that all the members are gradually invigorated, and the purified blood of the food is poured through the hidden passages of the veins and is supplied and increases, or rather the balance of the body is maintained, so that the limbs, watered from the fountain of the head, grow to the perfection of God, and the Savior's prayer is fulfilled: "Father, I will that, as I and you are one, so these too may be one in us," so that, after Christ has handed us over to the Father, God may be all in all. Something similar, in words, in meaning, and in manner of expression, he writes very obscurely to the Ephesians: "But speaking the truth in love, let us grow up in all things into him who is the head, Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together through every joint of supply, according to the working in the measure of each member, makes the growth of the body for its own upbuilding in love." On this we spoke more fully in our commentaries on that letter. He says all this against those who, believing from among the Jews in the Lord Savior, wished to observe the Jewish ceremonies; on this matter no small question was raised in the Acts of the Apostles too. Hence Paul said above: "Let no one judge you" (of those who boast that they are teachers of the law) "in food and drink," that some are clean and others unclean, "or in the matter of a festival," so as to think some days festal and others not (for us who believe in the risen Christ the festival is continual and eternal), "or of a new moon," that is, of the calends and the new month, when the waning moon ends and is covered by the shadows of night (for the light of Christians is eternal and is always lit by the rays of the sun of righteousness), "or of sabbaths," so as to do no servile work and carry no burdens, because we have been given the freedom of Christ and have ceased to carry the burdens of sins. "All these," he says, "are a shadow of things to come," and images of future happiness, so that in the things in which the Jews stick fast according to the letter and are held on earth, we according to the spirit may pass over to Christ, who, in contrast to the shadows, is now called the body. For just as in the body there is truth and in the body's shadow falsehood, so in the spiritual understanding every food and drink is clean, and a whole festival, perpetual new moons, and eternal rest are to be awaited. We ask what he meant by "in humility and the religion of angels," or what sense it has. From the time when the Lord said to the disciples, "Rise, let us go hence," and, "Your house will be left to you desolate," and "the place in which our Lord was crucified is spiritually called Egypt and Sodom," all the worship of the Jewish observances has been destroyed, and whatever victims they offer, they offer not to God but to renegade angels and unclean spirits. Nor is it surprising that they do this after the Lord's passion, since through the prophet Amos too it is said to them: "Did you offer me victims and sacrifices forty years in the desert, O house of Israel? And you took up the tent of Moloch and the star of the god Rephan, the figures that you made to worship them." Stephen the martyr, expounding this more fully before the Jewish assembly and unrolling the ancient history, spoke thus: "And they made a calf in those days and offered sacrifice to the idol and rejoiced in the works of their hands. But God turned and handed them over to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets." The host of heaven means not only the sun and moon and the glowing stars, but also the whole angelic multitude and their army, which in Hebrew are called Sabaoth, that is, of the powers or hosts. Hence we read in the gospel according to Luke: "And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will." For God makes his angels spirits and his ministers a burning fire. And that we may know that those who always worshiped idols, even though they seemed to offer victims in the temple, offered them not to God but to angels, we learn more fully through Ezekiel: "I gave them statutes that were not good and commandments that were not good." For God does not seek the blood of goats and bulls, but the sacrifice of the Lord is a troubled spirit; a contrite and humbled heart God does not despise. And therefore those who made the calf in Horeb and worshiped the star of the god Rephan (which we have discussed more fully on the prophet Amos) adored figures which they themselves had made, and God handed them over to serve the host of heaven, which the apostle now calls the religion of angels. For "humility" the Greek has ταπεινοφροσύνη, that is, humility of mind or sense. For truly it is a lowly sense and a pitiable notion to believe that God delights in the blood of goats and bulls and in the smoke of incense, which we men often avoid. As for what follows, "If you have died with Christ from the elements of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you decree: Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle, things which all perish in the very using, according to the precepts and teachings of men? These have indeed a reputation of wisdom in superstition and humility, and not in sparing the body, not in any honor for the satisfying of the flesh," it seems to us to have this sense. Let us run through each point and, with Christ opening them, lay bare the obscurity of the meanings and words. If you have been baptized in Christ and have died with Christ in baptism, and died from the elements of the world (in place of "to the elements"), why do you not say with me, "But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to me and I to the world"? And have you not heard the Lord saying to the Father, "They are not of the world, as I also am not of the world," and, "The world hates them, because they are not of the world, as I also am not of the world"? But on the contrary, as though living in the world, you decree: "Do not touch the body of a dead man, nor the garment and stool on which a menstruating woman has sat; do not taste the flesh of pigs and hares, of cuttlefish and squid, of the moray and the eel, and of all fish that do not have scales and fins," all of which are in corruption and destruction by their very use and are digested into dung? For food is for the belly and the belly for food, and everything that enters through the mouth does not defile a man, but the things that come out of us. "According to the precepts," he says, "and teachings of men," according to what Isaiah says: "This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching the doctrines and precepts of men." Hence the Lord too rebukes the Pharisees, saying: "You have made void the commandment of God to establish your traditions. For God said: Honor father and mother, and: He who curses father or mother, let him die the death. But you say: Whoever says to father or mother, Whatever gift is from me will profit you, and does not honor his father or his mother," and the rest. To which he adds: "And you have made void the commandment of God because of your tradition." How many traditions the Pharisees have, which today they call δευτερώσεις, and how like old wives' tales they are, I cannot recount; for the size of the book does not allow it, and most of them are so shameful that I blush to tell them. Yet I will tell one, to the disgrace of the hostile nation: they have the wisest men placed over the synagogues, assigned to a foul task, that if they cannot tell by sight whether the blood of a virgin or of a menstruating woman is clean or unclean, they test it by taste. Moreover, since it is commanded that on the sabbath days each should sit in his house and not go out nor walk from the place where he lives, whenever we begin to press them according to the letter, that they should not lie down, not walk, not stand, but only sit, if they wish to keep the precepts, they usually answer: "Barachibas and Simeon and Hillel, our teachers, handed down to us that we may walk two thousand feet on the sabbath," and other things of this kind, preferring the doctrines of men to the doctrine of God. Not that we say that one must always sit on the sabbath and never move from the place where one happens to be occupied, but that what is impossible for the law, in that it is weak through the flesh, is to be fulfilled by spiritual observance. There follows: "which have indeed a reputation of wisdom." In this place the conjunction "indeed" is superfluous, as we find the apostle has done in many places through lack of skill in grammar; for neither "but" nor any other conjunction follows that usually answers a clause in which "indeed" has been placed. The Jewish observances, then, seem to the unskilled and the base common people to have an appearance of reason and human wisdom; hence their teachers are called σοφοί, that is, wise men. And when on certain days they expound their traditions, they usually say to their disciples: οἱ σοφοὶ δευτεροῦσιν, that is, "the wise men teach traditions." For "superstition" the Greek has ἐθελοθρησκεία, that is, false religion, and for "humility" ταπεινοφροσύνη, which usually denotes a virtue rather than a vice; but here ταπεινοφροσύνη must be understood as meaning that they think lowly and earthly things. ἀφειδία σώματος, for which Latin has no single word, we render "not sparing the body." The Jews do not spare their bodies in taking food, sometimes despising what they have and seeking what they do not have (from which necessity they sometimes contract weaknesses and diseases); nor do they honor themselves, although all things are clean to the clean and nothing can be polluted that is received with thanksgiving, and it was created by the Lord for this purpose, to invigorate and sustain the human limbs by the satisfying and filling of the flesh. The elements of the world, from which, or rather to which, we have died, are to be understood as the law of Moses and the whole Old Testament, by which, as by elements and first beginnings of religion, we learn the Lord. For just as the letters by which we join syllables and words, and proceed by long practice to weave speech, are called elements; and the art of music too has its elements, and geometry begins from the elements of lines, and dialectic and medicine have their introductions (εἰσαγωγαί); so by the elements of the Old Testament the infancy of holy men is instructed, that they may come to the fullness of the gospel. Hence the hundred and eighteenth psalm too, and all the others that are marked with letters, lead us through ethics to theology, and make us pass from the elements of the killing letter, which is destroyed, to the life-giving spirit. We, then, who have died to the world and its elements, ought not to observe the things of the world; for in the one is the beginning, in the other the perfection.

What is meant by what the same apostle writes to the Thessalonians: "Unless the falling away comes first and the man of sin is revealed," and the rest? — In the first letter to the Thessalonians he had written: "But concerning the times and seasons, brothers, you have no need that I write to you; for you yourselves know accurately that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. For when they say, Peace and security, then sudden destruction will come upon them like labor pains on a woman with child, and they will not escape." And above he had written to them: "This we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left at the coming of the Lord, shall not go before those who have fallen asleep; for the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a command and with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead who are in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words." The Macedonians, hearing this, did not understand whom the apostle calls living with him, and who are said to be left and are caught up with him in the clouds to meet the Lord, but thought that Christ would come in his majesty while Paul was still in the body and before he tasted death. The apostle, hearing this, asks and adjures them by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ not to be quickly shaken, either by spirit or by word or by letter as though written by him, as though the day of the Lord were at hand. That there are two comings of the Lord Savior all the books of the prophets and the faith of the gospels teach: that he came first in humility and will come afterwards in glory. The Lord himself declares what will happen before the consummation of the world and how the Antichrist will come, when he says to the apostles: "When you see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (let him who reads understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let him who is on the roof not come down to take anything from his house." And again: "Then, if anyone says to you, Look, here is the Christ, or there, do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will arise and will give great signs and wonders, so as to lead into error, if possible, even the elect. Behold, I have told you beforehand. If, then, they say to you, Look, he is in the desert, do not go out; Look, he is in the inner rooms, do not believe it. For as the lightning comes from the east and shines to the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man." And then: "Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with great power and majesty. And he will send his angels with a trumpet and a loud voice, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from the height of the heavens to their ends." And again he speaks of the Antichrist to the Jews: "I have come in my Father's name, and you did not believe me; if another comes in his own name, him you will receive." So the minds of the Thessalonians had been moved and disturbed, either by a letter they did not understand, or by a feigned revelation that had deceived them in their sleep through a dream, or by the conjecture of some who interpreted the words of Isaiah and Daniel and the gospels foretelling the Antichrist as referring to that time, so that they expected Christ to come in his majesty then. The apostle heals this error and explains what must be awaited before the coming of the Antichrist, so that, when they see those things happen, they may then know that the Antichrist is about to come, that is, the man of sin and son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above everything that is called god or that is worshiped, and who sits in the temple of God. "Unless," he says, "the falling away comes first" (in Greek ἀποστασία), so that all the nations that are subject to the Roman empire withdraw from it, "and he is revealed," that is, shown, whom the words of all the prophets foretell, "the man of sin," in whom is the fountain of all sins, "and the son of perdition," that is, of the devil, for he is the perdition of all, "who opposes" Christ and is therefore called Antichrist, "and exalts himself above everything that is called god," so as to trample underfoot the gods of all nations, or all approved and true religion, "and sits in the temple of God," either in Jerusalem, as some think, or in the church, as we judge more truly, "showing himself as though he himself were" Christ and the Son of God. "Unless," he says, "the Roman empire has first been laid waste and the Antichrist has come before, Christ will not come," who will come for this very purpose, to destroy the Antichrist. "You remember," he says, "that these very things which I now write in a letter I told you in person when I was with you, and I said to you that Christ would not come unless the Antichrist had come first. And now you know what restrains, that he may be revealed in his own time"; that is, "you know very well what is the reason that the Antichrist does not come at present." He does not wish to say openly that the Roman empire is to be destroyed, which its rulers think eternal. Hence, according to John's Apocalypse, on the forehead of the purple-clad harlot is written a name of blasphemy, that is, "Eternal Rome." For if he had said openly and boldly, "The Antichrist will not come unless the Roman empire is first destroyed," it would then have seemed a just cause for persecution to rise against the newly dawning church. And what follows, "For the mystery of iniquity is already at work; only he who now holds, let him hold, until he is taken out of the way; and then that wicked one will be revealed," has this sense: through the many evils and sins with which Nero, the most impure of the Caesars, oppresses the world, the coming of the Antichrist is being brought to birth, and what the Antichrist will do afterwards is in part already fulfilled in Nero; only let the Roman empire, which now holds all nations, withdraw and be taken out of the way, and then the Antichrist will come, the fountain of iniquity, whom the Lord Jesus will slay with the breath of his mouth, that is, by divine power and by the command of his majesty, for whom to have commanded is to have done: not by a multitude of armies, not by the strength of soldiers, not by the help of angels, but as soon as Christ has come, the Antichrist will be slain. And as darkness is put to flight by the coming of the sun, so the Lord will destroy and blot him out by the brightness of his coming. His works are the works of Satan; and as in Christ the fullness of the divinity dwelt bodily, so in the Antichrist there will be all powers and signs and wonders, but all of them lies. For as the magicians resisted with their lies the signs of God which he worked through Moses, and Moses' rod swallowed their rods, so the truth of Christ will swallow the lie of the Antichrist; but those who are prepared for perdition will be seduced by his lie. And because a silent question could be raised, "Why did God allow him to have all power and signs and wonders, by which even God's elect may be seduced, if it were possible?" he forestalls the question with its solution and answers what could be objected before it is objected. "He will do all these things," he says, "not by his own power but by God's permission, because of the Jews, so that those who would not receive the love of the truth," that is, Christ (for the love of God has been poured into the hearts of believers, and he himself says, "I am the truth," and of him it is written in the psalms, "Truth has sprung from the earth"), those, then, who did not receive the love and the truth so as to be saved by receiving the Savior, God sends them not the worker but the working itself, that is, the fountain of error, "that they may believe the lie," because he is a liar, and his father. And if the Antichrist had been born of a virgin and had come first into the world, the Jews could have had an excuse and said that they thought him the truth and so received the lie for the truth; but as it is, they are to be judged, or rather without doubt condemned, because, having despised Christ the truth, they will afterwards receive the lie, that is, the Antichrist.