Tractates 1.1.1–1.1.6

The greatest happiness of Christian fidelity is to know the nature of faith, which is such and so great that it is not lent to anyone by another, but is born of his own will. Otherwise, if, as some think, it hangs on the mouth of a teacher, then without doubt it is used up when that same teacher either falls silent or teaches otherwise. Add to this that unless faith, girded with all devotion, goes before and embraces the instruction of the law, a faith that by believing gives effect both to itself and to the law, the instruction will be empty, because it cannot give the fruit of a believer to an unbeliever. Indeed, Abraham pleased God by believing without the law, and the Jewish people displeased God by unbelief with the law. Hence there is no doubt that the law cannot exist without faith, but faith can without the law; otherwise this countless crowd, happier in its simplicity, would still lie under the dominion of death, if only those learned in the law had been found worthy to be justified. But since it is written, 'The letter kills, but the spirit gives life,' because we are not under law but under grace, which compels us to love God and to serve him alone in the sacrament of the one Trinity once believed, not by argument, not by necessity, but by will, I think it most evident that the simple man is better than the over-clever: for the simple man simply believes all the words of God, while the clever man, made foolish by too much wisdom, confounds himself with vain inquiries.

But someone will say: if this is so, then the law profits no one. Far from it. It profits, and indeed very much: for through it God's will is made known to the peoples; through it heavenly discipline is gathered and held; through it, I say, every kind of sin is exposed, so that no one may perish through not knowing. It never ceases to warn, so that no one may excuse guilt by ignorance; now stern, now gentle, it shows the reward, it shows the sword too, ready to give each what he has chosen, so that it may rightly fulfil what it bears. From those who come to it, it demands only the profession of belief, because it cannot see their faith; and if it finds that faith absent from their conduct, at once in anger it punishes as faithless the one it taught; and it testifies that it was promulgated for no other reason than that faith might be avenged on the unfaithful. In short, take away sin, and the rule of the law ceases. For the law, as it is written, is not laid down for the just but for the sinner, because the just man lives by faith, the unfaithful unjustly. So whoever thinks that disputation about the law is faith is mistaken; whoever confuses two different things into one. For disputation, as it cultivates the law, so, if it is crafty, uproots faith, because there is certainly no faith where faith is being searched for. Then, because the law is common, but faith private; because the law always flows from its native book, but faith clings tenaciously to its own purpose alone. The law passes from one to another; faith dies if it ever turns aside from its own state in any way or toward anyone. The law can only reproach a man's conscience, but cannot see it; faith cleanses the conscience to the marrow, so that it owes no guilt even within; for he who does not fear his own conscience is the one who does not fear God. Add that the law is learned and taught in parts. Add that it is neither understood nor kept as a whole. Add that it is asserted by arguments by anyone according to the quality of his wit. Add that it is sought by all and fulfilled by none. Add that it is a sign of God's will, not of God's origin or nature.

It follows that we must know whether we should assert that the treatise belongs to faith, or faith to the treatise. If we say the treatise belongs to faith, we shall be badly mistaken: for the nature of faith does not allow itself to be subjected to the craft of talkativeness; it labours for nothing else than to be approved by its own virtues alone; for that cannot be perfect which expects anything it needs from elsewhere. But if we begin to say that faith belongs to the treatise, it will surely be neither ours, nor its own, nor even his whose it is said to be: because the treatise, when it builds faith up, by that very thing by which it builds it up, tears it down; and it will give no one what it does not have, but rather is still searching so as not to have it. Moreover I see, as the names of their champions show (take these away and there is no quarrel left by chance), that there have been many treatises, many faiths, and new ones at that, nourished by the toil and favour of litigation: and since the true one can hardly be found, I think they were set out for sale so that the peoples should not suffer want. Yet which of all these is to be chosen cannot be known or grasped, because what has a state always uncertain will be neither one's own nor firm: since the choice of one is the rejection of another; or if all of them altogether must be embraced, so that a man has as many faiths as he lacks words, he will have far more nothing, because the treatise that bore them, or bears them daily, can still bear more; provoked from the other side, it consumes them again by retracting and refuting them according to the strength of wits and arguments. But if, as is necessary, there is one faith, that noble and ancient one, which (I will not say by a treatise, but by its very birth) is greater than the law, which merited God from God by believing, and which did not learn to believe but took it for granted; then let this pernicious invention of the treatise tell me what its fighting gains. 'So that faith may not perish,' it says, 'when it is wrongly believed or taught.' How bad this reasoning is we shall soon see.

Now I wish to know whether faith consists in teaching, or in believing, or in both. If it consists in teaching, then those who do not know letters do not have faith; nor do those who know them, because they can by no means bring the knowledge and keeping of the law to perfection. If in believing, it needs no interpretation, because as it is believed once, so once, from the very fact that it has been believed, faith is complete and is neither lessened nor increased. But if in both, the faith of the patriarchs is half-eaten, and for that reason the books of our ordinance would have to be assigned to them so that they could be perfect. O how wretched is a faith that words put together! O how weak, whose limbs are daily torn apart by various arguments! O how defenceless, that needs from moment to moment the patronage of kings, judges, the rich, and sometimes even, what is worse, of the Gentiles! O how shameful and slippery, a faith which another's opinion plays with! O how adulterous, that does not acknowledge by whose authorship it was born! O how ridiculous, that when two Christians are in conflict is called by one of them perfidy if it is not won over, and faith once it has been won over! O how untrue, if it is strong through factions! O how public, whose secrets even the profane gossip about! O how presumptuous, that would rather its own new tradition be believed than antiquity, than God the Lord, who says: 'You reject the commandment of God to establish your traditions.' But I do not say this to make the benefit of teaching thankless, but so that each may know that faith is one thing and the treatise another, and that faith cannot be given, or known, or destroyed by a treatise. It cannot be given, because if it can be given by words, it could also be taken away by words. Likewise it cannot be known, because it can happen that one carries one thing on his lips and another in the depths of his heart. Similarly it cannot even be destroyed, because if it is true faith, it cannot be other than what it is. Since, then, it is not within human power to see the secrets of faith, your curiosity, brother, gains nothing anywhere, your fighting gains nothing, because the man you think most faithful even among your own zealous followers is unfaithful, and the one you think unfaithful is faithful. Perhaps someone may think himself more faithful if he speaks cleverly, when in fact the truly faithful man is the one who in sacred preaching has not stretched the edge of his mind beyond what is lawful; for things have come to this, that our faith is sought out to the injury of God. Solomon foretold that this would happen and taught what is to be avoided in these words: 'Better is he who lacks understanding with fear than he who abounds in cleverness and transgresses the law.' And again: 'Do not be very wise, and do not argue more than you ought.' Likewise Paul: 'Do not be high-minded, but fear.'

Since this is so, why do you tear law apart with law? Why, under the appearance of faith, do you lay faith aside? Why do you try to drain the very fountain of divinity with philosophical arguments? If you wish to show your skill in the law, clear away the clouds of the readings. Teach that it is not contrary to itself; teach that all it sings is to be believed. Otherwise, if you approve part of it and reject part, how do you seek faith through it, when you make it guilty of unbelief, since you do not believe the whole? But if you are skilled in the faith of the spirit, show some power. Command the mountains to move themselves. Let the rage of lions vanish with fawning jaws in admiration of you. Let the wave of the sea, thickening under your steps, be made solid with a marble stiffness. Let the whale as a boat faithfully carry your faith amid the anxious hollows of the seething sea. Rein in the course of the sun and moon by the bridle of prayer, from the shelter of the western prison. Let the fire raging out of the panting furnace, its nature conquered, itself feel refreshment through you and with you. Breathe into the souls of the dead brought back to life by right of return. Drive away diseases from the suffering, cure weaknesses, rejoice in temptations and in torments for the name of the Lord. If hard things come, show that you have faith as a grain of mustard seed. But if, which is more, under the sound of the law and of faith, inflamed by love of worldly boasting, you presume to be able by arguments to compel, examine, measure and distinguish the inestimable and incomprehensible eternity of the divinity of God born of God and of the Holy Spirit, by the very right by which it is from itself; here I dare not answer you: for it is safer to seem unskilled than to be sacrilegious. And yet I have one who will stand against you for me: for the law, by which you would compel me, perhaps less skilled, to sin, will itself greatly beat you back, refute and confound you, as Solomon says: 'Do not seek things too high for you, and do not search out things too strong for you. What God has commanded you, think on these always; and in his many works you will not be curious: for their conjecture has led many astray and held their minds in vanity.' Likewise Paul writes back to the curious man, saying: 'O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and how untraceable his ways! For who has known the mind of God?' And you seek his nature? But in another place too he plainly expressed the matter at hand, when he speaks to Timothy, to instruct him, in these words: 'I urged you to charge certain persons not to use perverse teaching, nor to attend to fables and endless genealogies, which promote questions rather than the true plan of God, which is in faith. The end of the command is love from a pure heart and a good conscience, from simple faith.'

So if you are a servant of God, avoid foolish and ignorant questions, knowing that they breed quarrels. A servant of God must not quarrel, because a quarrel is the enemy both of love and of faith; and whoever has lost these surely knows neither divine nor human things. If you are religious, keep these things; if truly God-fearing, guard them; avoid disputing about what exceeds the measure of human understanding. Whoever defends God in a way denies God: for defence is given only to the weak; nor can a man revere him whom he thinks owes it to his own wit that he is esteemed. But this is the true nobility of faith: to serve God faithfully; to place trust in him alone; to know that one is called faithful from fidelity and trust; to live with blameless conduct; to presume that one is known by a good conscience, not by talkativeness, which is surely the mother of sin; and not to violate but to honour the one fullness of power of the Trinity, which is grasped by one mind and one belief.