Homilies on Jeremiah 8.0–8.9

Homily 8. On “The Lord who made the earth by his strength” as far as “Every man has become foolish, without knowledge.”

The prophet takes, as it were, three virtues of God, his strength, his wisdom, and his understanding, and assigns to each of them a work proper to it: to strength the earth, to wisdom the inhabited world, and to understanding the heaven. For hear the text saying: “The Lord who made the earth by his strength, who set upright the inhabited world by his wisdom, and by his understanding stretched out the heaven.” And we too, with regard to our own earth (for it was said to Adam, “You are earth”), need the strength of God; without the power of God we cannot accomplish the things that are not according to “the mind of the flesh.” But when “the members that are on the earth have been put to death,” what is according to the will of the Spirit will come about, since “by the Spirit the deeds of the flesh” are put to death, according to the apostle. “The Lord,” then, “who made the earth by his strength.” And if you come also to this earth, if you can see what is written in Job, as we have found in the more accurate copies, that he set it “upon nothing,” you will see that it lies in the very middle by the strength of God. I come also to the inhabited world. I know a soul that is inhabited, I know a soul that is desert. For if it does not have God, if it does not have Christ, who said, “I and my Father will come to him and make our dwelling with him,” if the soul does not have the Holy Spirit, it is desert. But it is inhabited when it is filled with God, when it has Christ, when the Holy Spirit is in it. That the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are in the human soul is said in the Scriptures in various and different ways. David, at any rate, in the psalm of confession, asks the Father about these spirits, saying, “Establish me with a ruling spirit,” “Renew a right spirit within me,” “and do not take your Holy Spirit from me.” What are these three spirits? The ruling one is the Father, the right one is Christ, and the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit. These things are said to show that the inhabited world is set upright in no other way than by the wisdom of God; for “wisdom will help the wise man more than ten rulers who are in the city.” “But he who despises wisdom and instruction is wretched, and his hope is empty, and his labors unprofitable, and his works useless,” says the Wisdom that bears the name of Solomon. For this reason, as far as we can, since the inhabited world is set upright by the wisdom of God, let us too wish our own inhabited world, which has perhaps fallen, to be set upright. For this inhabited world fell when we came into the place of affliction; this inhabited world fell when “we sinned, we acted impiously, we did wrong”; and it needs to be set upright. So God is the one who set upright the inhabited world. But if you do not take “who set upright the inhabited world” in this way, but understand the inhabited world more generally, seek from what he set the inhabited world upright; seek the fall of the inhabited world, so that, having found its fall, you may see its setting upright. If there is anyone in this inhabited world, if you understand the inhabited world in this way, before being set upright he had fallen. If he has fallen, clearly he needs to be set upright; and no one needs to be set upright who has not fallen. If he was set upright, clearly each of those in the inhabited world had fallen through sin. And it is the Lord “who sets upright those who are cast down” and “upholds all who are falling”; “in Adam all die,” and so the inhabited world has fallen and needs to be set upright, so that “in Christ all” may be made alive. So I have given two explanations of the inhabited world, in one showing for each person how every soul is either inhabited or desert, in the other applying the saying to the inhabited world itself.

“And by his understanding he stretched out the heaven.” Not by chance did he take understanding for the heaven; for you will find it said in Proverbs: “God founded the earth by wisdom, and prepared the heavens by understanding.” So there is an understanding of God, which you must seek nowhere but in Christ Jesus. For all such things of God are Christ. He is the wisdom of God, he is the power of God, he is the righteousness of God, he is sanctification, he is redemption; so too he is the understanding of God. But the subject is one, while the many names, by the different aspects, apply to different things. And you do not understand the same thing about Christ when you understand him as wisdom and when you understand him as righteousness. When you take him as wisdom, you take the knowledge of things divine and human; when as righteousness, the power in the universe that assigns to each according to worth; and when as sanctification, what brings it about that those who believe and are dedicated to God become holy. So too you will understand him as understanding, when it is the knowledge of good and evil and of what is neither. Since, then, it is separated for those who dwell in heaven, or for those who bear the heavenly man, † separating the evil from the good, so that that heaven may no longer be defiled, because the heaven has been stretched out by the understanding of God, nor the righteous man who is a heaven (for the righteous man too is a heaven, as has been said): “And he stretched out the heaven by his understanding.” How, then, is the heaven stretched out? Wisdom stretches it out. And that wisdom stretches out is shown in “Since I stretched out words and you did not heed,” and it speaks of a certain stretching out of words; so the heaven is stretched out. And in the hundred and third Psalm it is said, “stretching out the heaven like a skin.” And our soul too is stretched out, which before was contracted, so that it may be able to contain the wisdom of God. But let us return to our subject. We were speaking of the heaven having come into being by understanding. And we say that those who bear the heavenly man are themselves also a heaven. For if it is said to the sinner, “You are earth, and to earth you will go,” would it not be said to the righteous man, whose is the kingdom of heaven, “You are heaven, and to heaven you will go”? Or will it be said, because of the man of dust, to the one who bears “the image of the man of dust,” “You are earth, and to earth you will go,” but, because of the heavenly man, when you bear “the image of the heavenly,” will it not then be fitting to say, “You are heaven, and to heaven you will go”? Each of us, then, has heavenly works and earthly works. Earthly works are those which bring down to the earth akin to them the one who lays them up as treasure on earth and not in heaven. Again, deeds done according to virtue lead up to the regions in heaven akin to those works the one who lays up treasure in heaven, who has borne “the image of the heavenly.”

“And he brought up clouds from the end of the earth.” This text came up recently in the psalm as well, and we were saying how God “brought up clouds from the end of the earth.” It needs to be repeated: for those who know it, as a clarification and reminder of what was said; for those who have forgotten or were not present, to make it clear, whether it was revealed and made plain or understood in some way. We were saying that the saints are clouds. For “your truth reaches to the clouds” cannot be referred to lifeless clouds; but the truth of God reaches to the clouds, which hear God's command and know where to send rain and from whom to withhold it. For it is written, as of clouds whom God commands not to rain, or to rain: “I will command the clouds not to rain rain upon it.” With these clouds, when there is to be no rain, God does not command the clouds not to rain on the vineyard or the land, but no cloud appears at all, as is written in the third book of Kingdoms, where during the time of drought no cloud appeared; but when, according to the word of Elijah's prophecy, the rain was to come, a trace of cloud appeared “like the track of a man,” and a cloud came that made the rain. But as of clouds that exist, yet are commanded not to rain when the soul is unworthy of the rain, it is said, “I will command the clouds not to rain rain upon it.” So each of the saints is a cloud. Moses was a cloud, and as a cloud he said: “Give heed, O heaven, and I will speak; and let the earth hear the words of my mouth. Let my utterance be awaited like rain.” If he had not been a cloud, he would never have said, “Let my utterance be like rain, and let my words come down like dew.” As a cloud he says: “like a shower on the grass, and like snow on the hay; for I have called on the name of the Lord.” So too Isaiah says as a cloud: “Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken.” And since he too was a cloud, he called those who prophesied with him clouds, saying in prophecy: “I will command the clouds not to rain rain upon it.”

If we have understood who the clouds are, let us see how God brings up “clouds from the end of the earth.” How “from the end of the earth”? The Savior says: “Whoever wishes to be first among you shall be last of all.” Paul kept this commandment and was last in this world. That is why he says: “For I think God has displayed us apostles as last, as men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men.” If, then, someone keeps the Savior's commandment and becomes last with regard to this life, he becomes a cloud. And God brings up clouds not from the first of the earth; he does not bring up clouds from consuls, he does not bring up clouds from governors, nor from the rich; for “blessed are the poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” Do you see how God brings up and gives body to the clouds from the last? So if we wish to become clouds to which the truth of God reaches, let us become last of all and say by our deeds and our disposition, “For I think God has displayed us apostles as last.” Even if I am not an apostle, I may become last, so that God, bringing up clouds “from the end of the earth,” may bring me up. “And he made lightnings for rain.” Those skilled in these matters say that lightning is produced from clouds rubbing against one another. For what happens with flints on earth, so that fire is produced when two stones strike each other, they say happens with clouds too: when clouds strike each other in storms, lightning comes about. That is why lightning generally comes with thunder, the thunder showing the sound of the clouds' collision, the lightning producing the light.

If you have understood the example, see for me the spiritual cloud as well. Moses was a cloud, Joshua the son of Nun was a cloud. They converse with each other, and from their words lightning comes. Jeremiah was a cloud, Baruch was a cloud. They talk with one another, and lightning came from the words of Jeremiah and the words of Baruch. So, if you can, gather from the Scriptures how lightning comes. In the New Testament too Paul and Silvanus were two clouds. They came together, and the lightning of the letter came about. So God “made lightnings for rain, and brought out winds from his treasuries.” Are these winds, then, in treasuries? Or is it not plain how the nature of these, blowing on the earth, comes to be? But there are certain treasuries of winds, treasuries of spirits: “the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and godliness,” “the spirit of the fear of God,” “the spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.” And you can yourself gather these winds from the Scriptures. These spirits are in treasuries. What are the treasuries? “In whom are hidden the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” These treasures are in Christ. From there, then, come these winds, these spirits, so that one may be wise, another faithful, another have knowledge, another receive some other gift of God: “For to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit.”

“He brought up,” then, “clouds from the end of the earth, and made lightnings for rain, and brought out winds from his treasuries.” And we hope, through God, to arrive at these treasuries. And since there are many treasuries, perhaps there will be resting places in God's treasuries according to those who rise again. What I mean is this. The resurrection of the dead takes place in certain ranks; for the apostle says, “But each in his own rank.” And since the ranks are not mixed up at random, this rank will be in one treasury of God, and that rank in another treasury of God, and a third, different rank will be in another treasury. Yet all these treasuries have one treasury in which they dwell. That is why it is said by Paul: “In whom are hidden the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge.” And as I acquire “the one pearl of great price” through the many pearls, so I come to the treasure of treasures, the Lord of lords, the King of kings, when I become worthy of the spirits from God's treasuries; for “he brought out winds from his treasuries.”

“Every man has become foolish, without knowledge.” If every man has become foolish, without knowledge, and Paul is a man, then Paul has become foolish, without knowledge: “knowing in part,” he has become foolish, without knowledge, “seeing through a mirror,” seeing and grasping a very small part, and, if one may say so, an infinitesimal part, of things. You will understand “Every man has become foolish, without knowledge” from its opposite. There are sins of Jerusalem, and sins of Sodom too; but by comparison with the worse sins of Jerusalem, the sins of Sodom are righteousness; for it says, “Sodom has been justified by you.” As, then, the sins of Sodom are not righteousness, but are righteousness in comparison with the greater injustice, so, conversely, knowledge, Paul's knowledge, compared with that knowledge which is in the heavens, compared with perfect knowledge, is foolishness. That is why “every man has become foolish, without knowledge.” I think the Preacher said something like this, grasping it: “I said, I will become wise; but it went farther from me than it was, and deep, deep; who will find it?”

The Word is about to venture something and say that what came to dwell in this life emptied itself, so that by its emptying the world might be filled. And if what came to dwell in this life emptied itself, that emptying was wisdom. “For the foolishness of God is wiser than men.” If I had said “the foolishness of God,” how the fault-finders would have accused me! How they would have blamed me! How, while other things that they too thought well said had been said, I would have been accused over this, as they think, not well said, because I said “the foolishness of God”! But as it is, Paul, as a wise man with apostolic authority, dared to call all the wisdom on earth, the wisdom in himself and in Peter and in the apostles, all the wisdom that came to dwell in the world, “the foolishness of God.” For compared with that wisdom which no place on earth can contain, compared with that wisdom above the heavens, above the world, this that came to dwell here is the foolishness of God. But this “foolishness of God is wiser than men.” Than what men? I do not mean the foolish; it is wiser even than wise men. Even if you speak of the wise of this age, whether rulers or prophets, “the foolishness of God” that I have described “is wiser” than the rulers of this age, “than men.”

The Word is about to say something paradoxical: that “the wisdom of the world is foolishness with God,” and “God has made foolish the wisdom of the world.” Did he make the wisdom of the world foolish by wisdom? And can the wisdom of the world contain wisdom, so as to be shown to be foolish? Does the wisdom of God contend with the wisdom of the world in order to refute it? No; there is need of something small, which is a little foolishness of God, so that by this slight foolishness of God the wisdom of the world may be made foolish and refuted; for the wisdom of this world could not bear the wisdom of God. For example, so that you may understand that “the foolishness of God” “made foolish the wisdom of the world”: suppose I, who am thought to know many things and more, must contend with someone senseless and uneducated, who understands nothing and does not contend for noble arguments of any kind. Do I need dialectic against him, or deeper speculations, if his thoughts are foolish? Do I not need a single little phrase, a little sharper than his own words, to be able to refute his foolishness? So, in order that the wisdom of this world may be made foolish, there is no need of the wisdom of God contending with it (for it is below), but the foolishness of God is enough, since “the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” And my Savior and Lord took on all the opposites, so that by opposites he might undo opposites, and we might be made strong by the weakness of Jesus and made wise by the foolishness of God, and, having been brought in through these, might be able to go up to the wisdom, to the strength of God, Christ Jesus, to whom be the glory and the power for ever. Amen.