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Letter CLXIX.
(a.d. 415.)
Bishop Augustin to Bishop
Evodius.
Chap. I.
1. If acquaintance with the treatises which
specially occupy me, and from which I am unwilling to be turned
aside to anything else, is so highly valued by your Holiness, let
some one be sent to copy them for you. For I have now finished
several of those which had been commenced by me this year before
Easter, near the beginning of Lent. For, to the three books on the
City of God, in opposition to its enemies, the worshippers
of demons, I have added two others, and in these five books I think
enough has been said to answer those who maintain that the
[heathen] gods must be worshipped in order to secure prosperity in
this present life, and who are hostile to the Christian name from
an idea that that prosperity is hindered by us. In the sequel I
must, as I promised in the first book,2784
| 2784 De Civitate Dei, lib. I. ch. xxxvi. | answer those who think that the
worship of their gods is the only way to obtain that life after
death with a view to obtain which we are Christians. I have
dictated also, in volumes of considerable size, expositions of
three Psalms, the 68th, the 72d, and the 78th. Commentaries on the
other Psalms—not yet dictated, nor even entered on—are eagerly
expected and demanded from me. From these studies I am unwilling to
be called away and hindered by any questions thrusting themselves
upon me from another quarter; yea, so unwilling, that I do not wish
to turn at present even to the books on the Trinity, which I have
long had on hand and have not yet completed, because they require a
great amount of labour, and I believe that they are of a nature to
be understood only by few; on which account they claim my attention
less urgently than writings which may, I hope, be useful to very
many.
2. For the words, “He that is ignorant shall
be ignored,”2785
were not
used by the apostle in reference to this subject, as your letter
affirms; as if this punishment were to be inflicted on the man who
is not able to discern by the exercise of his intellect the
ineffable unity of the Trinity, in the same way as the unity of
memory, understanding, and will in the soul of man is discerned.
The apostle said these words with a wholly different design.
Consult the passage and you will see that he was speaking of those
things which might be for the edification of the many in faith and
holiness, not of those which might with difficulty be comprehended
by the few, and by them only in the small degree in which the
comprehension of so great a subject is attainable in this life. The
positions laid down by him were,—that prophesying was to be
preferred to speaking with tongues; that these gifts should not be
exercised in a disorderly manner, as if the spirit of prophecy
compelled them to speak even against their will; that women should
keep silence in the Church; and that all things should be done
decently and in order. While treating of these things he says:
“If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him
know the things which I write to you, for they are the commands of
the Lord. If any man be ignorant, he shall be ignored;” intending
by these words to restrain and call to order persons who were
specially ready to cause disorder in the Church, because they
imagined themselves to excel in spiritual gifts, although they were
disturbing everything by their presumptions conduct. “If any man
think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him know,” he
says, “the things which I write to you, for they are the commands
of the Lord.” If any man thinks himself to be, and in reality is
not, a prophet, for he who is a prophet undoubtedly knows and does
not need admonition and exhortation, because “he judgeth all
things, and is himself judged of no man.”2786
Those persons, therefore, caused
confusion and trouble in the Church who thought themselves to be in
the Church what they were not. He teaches these to know the
commandments of the Lord, for he is not a “God of confusion, but
of peace.”2787
But “if
any one is ignorant, he shall be ignored,” that is to say, he
shall be rejected; for God is not ignorant—so far as mere
knowledge is concerned—in regard to the persons to whom He shall
one day say, “I know you not,”2788
but their rejection is signified
by this expression.
3. Moreover, since the Lord says, “Blessed
are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,”2789
and that
sight is promised to us as the highest reward at the last, we have
no reason to fear lest, if we are now unable to see clearly those
things which we believe concerning the nature of God, this defective
apprehension should bring us under the sentence, “He that is
ignorant shall be ignored.” For when “in the wisdom of God the
world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of
preaching to save those who believed.” This foolishness of
preaching and “foolishness of God which is wiser than man”2790
draws many
to salvation, in such a way that not only those who are as yet
incapable of perceiving with clear intelligence the nature of God
which in faith they hold, but even those who have not yet so
learned the nature of their own soul as to distinguish between its
incorporeal essence and the body as a whole with the same certainty
with which they perceive that they live, understand, and will, are
not on this account shut out from that salvation which that
foolishness of preaching bestows on believers.
4. For if Christ died for those only who with
clear intelligence can discern these things, our labour in the
Church is almost spent in vain. But if, as is the fact, crowds of
common people, possessing no great strength of intellect, run to
the Physician in the exercise of faith, with the result of being
healed by Christ and Him crucified, that “where sin has abounded,
grace may much more abound,”2791
it comes in wondrous ways to pass,
through the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God
and His unsearchable judgments, that, on the one hand, some who do
discern between the material and the spiritual in their own nature,
while pluming themselves on this attainment, and despising that
foolishness of preaching by which those who believe are saved,
wander far from the only path which leads to eternal life; and, on
the other hand, because not one perishes for whom Christ died,2792
many
glorying in the cross of Christ, and not withdrawing from that same
path, attain, notwithstanding their ignorance of those things which
some with most profound subtlety investigate, unto that eternity,
truth, and love,—that is, unto that enduring, clear, and full
felicity,—in which to those who abide, and see, and love, all
things are plain.
Chap. II.
5. Therefore let us with steadfast piety
believe in one God, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit;
let us at the same time believe that the Son is not [the person]
who is the Father, and the Father is not [the person] who is the
Son, and neither the Father nor the Son is [the person] who is the
Spirit of both the Father and the Son. Let it not be supposed that
in this Trinity there is any separation in respect of time or
place, but that these Three are equal and co-eternal, and
absolutely of one nature: and that the creatures have been made,
not some by the Father, and some by the Son, and some by the Holy
Spirit, but that each and all that have been or are now being
created subsist in the Trinity as their Creator; and that no one is
saved by the Father without the Son and the Holy Spirit, or by the
Son without the Father and the Holy Spirit, or by the Holy Spirit
without the Father and the Son, but by the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit, the only one, true, and truly immortal (that is,
absolutely unchangeable) God. At the same time, we believe that
many things are stated in Scripture separately concerning each of
the Three, in order to teach us that, though they are an
inseparable Trinity, yet they are a Trinity. For, just as when
their names are pronounced in human language they cannot be named
simultaneously, although their existence in inseparable union is at
every moment simultaneous, even so in some places of Scripture
also, they are by certain created things presented to us
distinctively and in mutual relation to each other: for example,
[at the baptism of Christ] the Father is heard in the voice which
said, “Thou art my Son;” the Son is seen in the human nature
which, in being born of the Virgin, He assumed; the Holy Spirit is
seen in the bodily form of a dove,2793
—these things presenting the
Three to our apprehension separately, indeed, but in no wise
separated.
6. To present this in a form which the
intellect may apprehend, we borrow an illustration from the Memory,
the Understanding, and the Will. For although we can speak of each
of these faculties severally in its own order, and at a separate
time, we neither exercise nor even mention any one of them without
the other two. It must not, however, be supposed, from our using
this comparison between these three faculties and the Trinity, that
the things compared agree in every particular, for where, in any
process of reasoning, can we find an illustration in which the
correspondence between the things compared is so exact that it
admits of application in every point to that which it is intended
to illustrate? In the first place, therefore, the similarity is
found to be imperfect in this respect, that whereas memory,
understanding, and will are not the soul, but only exist in the
soul, the Trinity does not exist in God, but is God. In the
Trinity, therefore, there is manifested a singleness
[simplicitas] commanding our astonishment, because in this
Trinity it is not one thing to exist, and another thing to
understand, or do anything else which is attributed to the nature
of God; but in the soul it is one thing that it exists, and another
thing that it understands, for even when it is not using the
understanding it
still exists. In the second place, who would dare to say that the
Father does not understand by Himself but by the Son, as memory
does not understand by itself but by the understanding, or, to
speak more correctly, the soul in which these faculties are
understands by no other faculty than by the understanding, as it
remembers only by memory, and exercises volition only by the will?
The point, therefore, to which the illustration is intended to
apply is this,—that, whatever be the manner in which we
understand, in regard to these three faculties in the soul, that
when the several names by which they are severally represented are
uttered, the utterance of each separate name is nevertheless
accomplished only in the combined operation of all the three, since
it is by an act of memory and of understanding and of will that it
is spoken,—it is in the same manner that we understand, in regard
to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, that no created thing
which may at any time be employed to present only one of the Three
to our minds is produced otherwise than by the simultaneous,
because essentially inseparable, operation of the Trinity; and
that, consequently, neither the voice of the Father, nor the body
and soul of the Son, nor the dove of the Holy Spirit, was produced
in any other way than by the combined operation of the Trinity.
7. Moreover, that sound of a voice was
certainly not made indissolubly one with the person of the Father,
for so soon as it was uttered it ceased to be. Neither was that
form of a dove made indissolubly one with the person of Holy
Spirit, for it also, like the bright cloud which covered the
Saviour and His three disciples on the mount,2794
or rather like the tongues of
flame which once represented the same Holy Spirit, ceased to exist
as soon as it had served its purpose as a symbol. But it was
otherwise with the body and soul in which the Son of God was
manifested: seeing that the deliverance of men was the object for
which all these things were done, the human nature in which He
appeared was, in a way marvellous and unique, assumed into real
union with the person of the Word of God, that is, of the only Son
of God,—the Word remaining unchangeably in His own nature,
wherein it is not conceivable that there should be composite
elements in union with which any mere semblance of a human soul
could subsist. We read, indeed, that “the Spirit of wisdom is
manifold;”2795
but it is
as properly termed simple. Manifold it is, indeed, because there
are many things which it possesses; but simple, because it is not a
different thing from what it possesses, as the Son is said to have
life in Himself, and yet He is Himself that life. The human nature
came to the Word; the Word did not come, with susceptibility of
change, into the human nature;2796
| 2796 Homo autem Verbo accessit, non Verbum in hominem
convertibiliter accesit. | and therefore, in His union to the
human nature which He has assumed, He is still properly called the
Son of God; for which reason the same person is the Son of God
immutable and co-eternal with the Father, and the Son of God who
was laid in the grave,—the former being true of Him only as the
Word, the latter true of Him only as a man.
8. Wherefore it behoves us, in reading any
statements made concerning the Son of God, to observe in reference
to which of these two natures they are spoken. For by His
assumption of the soul and body of a man, no increase was made in
the number of Persons: the Trinity remained as before. For just as
in every man, with the exception of that one whom alone He assumed
into personal union, the soul and body constitute one person, so in
Christ the Word and His human soul and body constitute one person.
And as the name philosopher, for example, is given to a man
certainly with reference only to his soul, and yet it is nothing
absurd, but only a most suitable and ordinary use of language, for
us to say the philosopher was killed, the philosopher died, the
philosopher was buried, although all these events befell him in his
body, not in that part of him in which he was a philosopher; in
like manner the name of God, or Son of God, or Lord of Glory, or
any other such name, is given to Christ as the Word, and it is,
nevertheless, correct to say that God was crucified, seeing that
there is no question that He suffered this death in his human
nature, not in that in which He is the Lord of Glory.2797
9. As for the sound of the voice, however, and
the bodily form of a dove, and the cloven tongues which sat upon
each of them, these, like the terrible wonders wrought at Sinai,2798
and like
the pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night,2799
were produced only as symbols, and
vanished when this purpose had been served. The thing which we must
especially guard against in connection with them is, lest any one
should believe that the nature of God—whether of the Father, or
of the Son, or of the Holy Spirit—is susceptible of change or
transformation. And we must not be disturbed by the fact that the
sign sometimes receives the name of the thing signified, as when
the Holy Spirit is said to have descended in a bodily form as a
dove and abode upon Him; for in like manner the smitten rock is
called Christ,2800
because it
was a symbol of Christ.
Chap. III.
10. I wonder, however, that, although you
believe it possible for the sound of the voice which said, “Thou
art my Son,” to have been produced through a divine act, without
the intermediate agency of a soul, by something the nature of which
was corporeal, you nevertheless do not believe that a bodily form
and movements exactly resembling those of any real living creature
whatsoever could be produced in the same way, namely, through a
divine act, without the intermediate agency of a spirit imparting
life. For if inanimate matter obeys God without the instrumentality
of an animating spirit, so as to emit sounds such as are wont to be
emited by animated bodies, in order to bring to the human ear words
articulately spoken, why should it not obey Him, so as to present
to the human eye the figure and motions of a bird, by the same
power of the Creator without the instrumentalist of any animating
spirit? The objects of both sight and hearing—the sound which
strikes the ear and the appearance which meets the eye, the
articulations of the voice and the outlines of the members, every
audible and visible motion—are both alike produced from matter
contiguous to us; is it, then, granted to the sense of hearing, and
not to the sense of sight, to tell us regarding the body which is
perceived by this bodily sense, both that it is a true body, and
that it is nothing beyond what the bodily sense perceives it to be?
For in every living creature the soul is, of course, not perceived
by any bodily sense. We do not, therefore, need to inquire how the
bodily form of the dove appeared to the eye, just as we do not need
to inquire how the voice of a bodily form capable of speech was
made to fall upon the ear. For if it was possible to dispense with
the intermediate agency of a soul in the case in which a voice, not
something like a voice, is said to have been produced, how much
more easily was it possible in the case in which it is said that
the Spirit descended “like a dove,” a phrase which
signifies that a mere bodily form was exhibited to the eye, and
does not affirm that a real living creature was seen! In like
manner, it is said that on the day of Pentecost, “suddenly there
came a sound from heaven as of a mighty rushing wind, and there
appeared to them cloven tongues like as of fire,”2801
in which
something like wind and like fire, i.e. resembling these
common and familiar natural phenomena, is said to have been
perceived, but it does not seem to be indicated that these common
and familiar natural phenomena were actually produced.
11. If, however, more subtle reasoning or more
thorough investigation of the matter result in demonstrating that
that which is naturally destitute of motion both in time and in
space [i.e. matter] cannot be moved otherwise than through
the intermediate agency of that which is capable of motion only in
time, not in space [i.e. spirit], it will follow from this
that all those things must have been done by the instrumentality of
a living creature, as things are done by angels, on which subject a
more elaborate discussion would be tedious, and is not necessary.
To this it must be added, that there are visions which appear to
the spirit as plainly as to the senses of the body, not only in
sleep or delirium, but also to persons of sound mind in their
waking hours,—visions which are due not to the deceitfulness of
devils mocking men, but to some spiritual revelation accomplished
by means of immaterial forms resembling bodies, and which cannot by
any means be distinguished from real objects, unless they are by
divine assistance more fully revealed and discriminated by the
mind’s intelligence, which is done sometimes (but with
difficulty) at the time, but for the most part after they have
disappeared. This being the case in regard to these visions which,
whether their nature be really material, or material only in
appearance but really spiritual, seem to manifest themselves to our
spirit as if they were perceived by the bodily senses, we ought
not, when these things are recorded in sacred Scripture, to
conclude hastily to which of these two classes they are to be
referred, or whether, if they belong to the former, they are
produced by the intermediate agency of a spirit; while, at the same
time, as to the invisible and immutable nature of the Creator, that
is, of the supreme and ineffable Trinity, we either simply, without
any doubt, believe, or, in addition to this, with some degree of
intellectual apprehension, understand that it is wholly removed and
separated both from the senses of fleshly mortals, and from all
susceptibility of being changed either for the worse or for the
better, or to anything whatever of a variable nature.
Chap. IV.
12. These things I send you in reference to
two of your questions,—the one concerning the Trinity, and the
other concerning the dove in which the Holy Spirit, not in His own
nature, but in a symbolical form, was manifested, as also the Son
of God, not in His eternal Sonship (of which the Father said:
“Before the morning star I have begotten Thee”2802
), but in
that human nature which He assumed from the Virgin’s womb, was
crucified by the Jews: observe that to you who are at leisure I
have been able, notwithstanding immense pressure of business, to
write so much. I have not, however, deemed it necessary to discuss
everything which you have brought forward in your letter; but on these two
questions which you wished me to solve, I think I have written as
much as is exacted by Christian charity, though I may not have
satisfied your vehement desire.
13. Besides the two books added to the first
three in the City of God, and the exposition of three
psalms, as above mentioned,2803
I have also written a treatise to
the holy presbyter Jerome concerning the origin of the soul,2804
asking
him, in regard to the opinion which, in writing to Marcellinus of
pious memory, he avowed as his own, that a new soul is made for
each individual at birth, how this can be maintained without
overthrowing that most surely established article of the Church’s
faith, according to which we firmly believe that all die in Adam,2805
and are
brought down under condemnation unless they be delivered by the
grace of Christ, which, by means of His sacrament, works even in
infants. I have, moreover, written to the same person to inquire
his opinion as to the sense in which the words of James,
“Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point,
he is guilty of all,” are to be understood.2806
In this letter I have also stated
my own opinion: in the other, concerning the origin of the soul, I
have only asked what was his opinion, submitting the matter to his
judgment, and at the same time discussing it to some extent. I
wrote these to Jerome because I did not wish to lose an opportunity
of correspondence afforded by a certain very pious and studious
young presbyter, Orosius, who, prompted only by burning zeal in
regard to the Holy Scriptures, came to us from the remotest part of
Spain, namely, from the shore of the ocean, and whom I persuaded to
go on from us to Jerome. In answer to certain questions of the same
Orosius, as to things which troubled him in reference to the heresy
of the Priscillianists, and some opinions of Origen which the
Church has not accepted, I have written a treatise of moderate size
with as much brevity and clearness as was in my power. I have also
written a considerable book against the heresy of Pelagius,2807
| 2807 The work on Nature and Grace, addressed to
Timasius and Jacobus—translated in the fourth volume of this
series, Antipelagian Writings, i. 233. | being
constrained to do this by some brethren whom he had persuaded to
adopt his fatal error, denying the grace of Christ. If you wish to
have all these, send some one to copy them all for you. Allow me,
however, to be free from distraction in studying and dictating to
my clerks those things which, being urgently required by many,
claim in my opinion precedence over your questions, which are of
interest to very few.
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