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| To Amandus.
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Letter LV.
To Amandus.
A very interesting letter. Amandus a presbyter of
Burdigala (Bourdeaux) had written to Jerome for an explanation of three
passages of scripture, viz. Matt. vi. 34, 1 Cor. vi. 18, 1 Cor. xv.
25, 26, and had in the same
letter on behalf of a ‘sister’ (supposed by Thierry to have
been Fabiola) put the following question: ‘Can a woman who has
divorced her first husband on account of his vices and who has during
his lifetime under compulsion married again, communicate with the
Church without first doing penance?’ Jerome in his reply gives
the explanations asked for but answers the farther question, that
concerning the ‘sister,’ with an emphatic negative. Written
about the year 394 a.d.
1. A short letter does not admit of long explanations;
compressing much matter into a small space it can only give a few words
to topics which suggest many thoughts. You ask me what is the meaning
of the passage in the gospel according to Matthew, “take no
thought for the morrow. Sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof.”1622
In the holy
scriptures “the morrow” signifies the time to come. Thus in
Genesis Jacob says: “So shall my righteousness answer for me
to-morrow.”1623
Again when the
two tribes of Reuben and Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh had built
an altar and when all Israel had sent to them an embassy, they made
answer to Phinehas the high priest that they had built the altar lest
“to-morrow” it might be said to their children, “ye
have no part in the Lord.”1624
You may
find many similar passages in the old instrument.1625
| 1625 Instrumentum—a
legal term introduced by Tertullian. He uses it both of the Christian
dispensation and of its written record. | While then Christ forbids us to take
thought for things future, He has allowed us to do so for things
present, knowing as He does the frailty of our mortal condition. His
remaining words “sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof” are to be understood as meaning that it is sufficient
for us to think of the present troubles of this life. Why need we
extend our thoughts to contingencies, to objects which we either cannot
obtain or else having obtained must soon relinquish? The Greek word
κακία rendered in the
Latin version “wickedness” has two distinct meanings,
wickedness and tribulation, which latter the Greek call κακωσίν and in this
passage “tribulation” would be a better rendering than
“wickedness.” But if any one demurs to this and insists
that the word κακία
must mean “wickedness” and not “tribulation” or
“trouble,” the meaning must be the same as in the words
“the whole world lieth in wickedness”1626
and as in the Lord’s prayer in the
clause, “deliver us from evil:”1627
the purport of the passage will then be
that our present conflict with the wickedness of this world should be
enough for us.
2. Secondly, you ask me concerning the passage in the
first epistle of the blessed apostle Paul to the Corinthians where he
says: “every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he
that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.”1628
Let us go back a little farther and
read on until we come to these words, for we must not seek to learn the
whole meaning of the section, from the concluding parts of it, or, if I
may so say, from the tail of the chapter.1629
| 1629 Capitulum,
“Passage.” The present division of the Bible into chapters
did not exist in Jerome’s time. It is ascribed by some to Abp.
Stephen Langton and by others to Card. Hugh de St. Cher. |
“The body is not for fornication but for the Lord; and the Lord
for the body. And God hath both raised up the Lord and will also raise
up us [with Him] by his own power. Know ye not that your bodies are the
members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ, and make
them the members of an harlot? God forbid. What! Know ye not that he
which is joined to an harlot is one body? For two, saith he, shall be
one flesh. But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. Flee
fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he
that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body,”1630
and so on. The holy apostle has been
arguing against excess and has just before said “meats for the
belly and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them.”1631
Now he comes to treat of fornication. For
excess in eating is the mother of lust; a belly that is distended with
food and saturated with draughts of wine is sure to lead to sensual
passion. As has been elsewhere said “the arrangement of
man’s organs suggests the course of his vices.”1632
Accordingly all such sins as theft,
manslaughter, pillage, perjury, and the like can be repented of after
they have been committed; and, however much interest may tempt him,
conscience always smites the offender. It is only lust and sensual
pleasure that in the very hour of penitence undergo once more the
temptations of the past, the itch of the flesh, and the allurements of
sin; so that the very thought which we bestow on the correction of such
transgressions becomes in itself a new source of sin. Or to put the
matter in a different light: other sins are outside of us; and whatever
we do we do against others. But fornication defiles the fornicator both
in conscience and body; and in accordance with the words of the Lord,
“for this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall
cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh,”1633
he too becomes one body with a harlot
and sins against his own body by making what is the temple of Christ
the body of a harlot. Not to pass over any suggestion of the Greek
commentators, I shall give you one more explanation. It is one thing,
they say, to sin with the body, and another to sin in the body. Theft,
manslaughter, and all other sins except fornication we commit with our
hands outside ourselves. Fornication alone we commit inside ourselves
in our bodies and not with our bodies upon others. The preposition
‘with’ denotes the instrument used in sinning, while the
preposition ‘in’ signifies the sphere of the passion is
ourselves. Some again give this explanation that according to the
scripture a man’s body is his wife and that when a man commits
fornication he is said to sin against his own body that is against his
wife inasmuch as he defiles her by his own fornication and causes her
though herself free from sin to become a sinner through her intercourse
with him.
3. I find joined to your letter of inquiries a short
paper containing the following words: “ask him, (that is me,)
whether a woman who has left her husband on the ground that he is an
adulterer and sodomite and has found herself compelled to take another
may in the lifetime of him whom she first left be in communion with the
church without doing penance for her fault.” As I read the case
put I recall the verse “they make excuses for their
sins.”1634
We are all human and all indulgent
to our own faults; and what our own will leads us to do we attribute to
a necessity of nature. It is as though a young man were to say,
“I am over-borne by my body, the glow of nature kindles my
passions, the structure of my frame and its reproductive organs call
for sexual intercourse.” Or again a murderer might say, “I
was in want, I stood in need of food, I had nothing to cover me. If I
shed the blood of another, it was to save myself from dying of cold and
hunger.” Tell the sister, therefore, who thus enquires of me
concerning her condition, not my sentence but that of the apostle.
“Know ye not, brethren (for I speak to them that know the law,)
how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth? For the
woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband, so long
as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of
her husband. So then, if, while her husband liveth, she be married to
another man, she shall be called an adulteress.”1635
And in another place: “the wife is
bound by the law as long as her husband liveth; but if her husband be
dead, she is at liberty to be married to whom she will; only in the
Lord.”1636
The apostle has thus cut away
every plea and has clearly declared that, if a woman marries again
while her husband is living, she is an adulteress. You must not speak
to me of the violence of a ravisher, a mother’s pleading, a
father’s bidding, the influence of relatives, the insolence and
the intrigues of servants, household losses. A husband may be an
adulterer or a sodomite, he may be stained with every crime and may
have been left by his wife because of his sins; yet he is still her
husband and, so long as he lives, she may not marry another. The
apostle does not promulgate this decree on his own authority but on
that of Christ who speaks in him. For he has followed the words of
Christ in the gospel: “whosoever shall put away his wife, saving
for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and
whosoever shall marry her that is divorced, committeth
adultery.”1637
Mark what he
says: “whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth
adultery.” Whether she has put away her husband or her husband
her, the man who marries her is still an adulterer. Wherefore the
apostles seeing how heavy the yoke of marriage was thus made said to
Him: “if the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good
to marry,” and the Lord replied, “he that is able to
receive it, let him receive it.” And immediately by the instance of the three
eunuchs he shows the blessedness of virginity which is bound by no
carnal tie.1638
4. I have not been able quite to determine what it is
that she means by the words “has found herself compelled”
to marry again. What is this compulsion of which she speaks? Was she
overborne by a crowd and ravished against her will? If so, why has she
not, thus victimized, subsequently put away her ravisher? Let her read
the books of Moses and she will find that if violence is offered to a
betrothed virgin in a city and she does not cry out, she is punished as
an adulteress: but if she is forced in the field, she is innocent of
sin and her ravisher alone is amenable to the laws.1639
Therefore if your sister, who, as she
says, has been forced into a second union, wishes to receive the body
of Christ and not to be accounted an adulteress, let her do penance; so
far at least as from the time she begins to repent to have no farther
intercourse with that second husband who ought to be called not a
husband but an adulterer. If this seems hard to her and if she cannot
leave one whom she has once loved and will not prefer the Lord to
sensual pleasure, let her hear the declaration of the apostle:
“ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils: ye
cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table and of the table of
devils,”1640
and in another
place: “what communion hath light with darkness? and what concord
hath Christ with Belial?”1641
What I am
about to say may sound novel but after all it is not new but old for it
is supported by the witness of the old testament. If she leaves her
second husband and desires to be reconciled with her first, she cannot
be so now; for it is written in Deuteronomy: “When a man hath
taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no
favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her; then
let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and
send her out of his house. And when she is departed out of his house,
she may go and be another man’s wife. And if the latter husband
hate her, and write her a bill of divorcement and giveth it in her
hand, and sendeth her out of his house; or if the latter husband die
which took her to be his wife; her former husband, which sent her away
may not take her again to be his wife, after that she is defiled; for
that is abomination before the Lord: and thou shalt not cause the land
to sin, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.”1642
Wherefore, I beseech you, do your best to
comfort her and to urge her to seek salvation. Diseased flesh calls for
the knife and the searing-iron. The wound is to blame and not the
healing art, if with a cruelty that is really kindness a physician to
spare does not spare, and to be merciful is cruel.1643
5. Your third and last question relates to the passage
in the same epistle where the apostle in discussing the resurrection,
comes to the words: “for he must reign, till he hath put all
things under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith, all
things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did
put all things under him. And when all things shall be subdued unto
him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all
things under him that God may be all in all.”1644
I am surprised that you have resolved to
question me about this passage when that reverend man, Hilary, bishop
of Poictiers, has occupied the eleventh book of his treatise against
the Arians with a full examination and explanation of it. Yet I may at
least say a few words. The chief stumbling-block in the passage is that
the Son is said to be subject to the Father. Now which is the more
shameful and humiliating, to be subject to the Father (often a mark of
loving devotion as in the psalm “truly my soul is subject unto
God”1645
) or to be crucified and made the
curse of the cross? For “cursed is everyone that hangeth on a
tree.”1646
If Christ then for our sakes was
made a curse that He might deliver us from the curse of the law, are
you surprised that He is also for our sakes subject to the Father to
make us too subject to Him as He says in the gospel: “No man
cometh unto the Father but by me,”1647
and “I, if I be lifted up from the
earth, will draw all men unto me.”1648
Christ then is subject to the Father in
the faithful; for all believers, nay the whole human race, are
accounted members of His body. But in unbelievers, that is in Jews,
heathens, and heretics, He is said to be not subject; for these members
of His body are not subject to the faith. But in the end of the world
when all His members shall see Christ, that is their own body,
reigning, they also shall be made subject to Christ, that is to their
own body, that the whole of Christ’s body may be subject unto God
and the Father, and that God may be all in all. He does not say
“that the Father may be all in all” but that
“God” may be, a title which properly belongs to the Trinity
and may be referred not only to the Father but also to the Son and to
the Holy Ghost. His meaning
therefore is “that humanity may be subject to the Godhead.”
By humanity we here intend not that gentleness and kindness which the
Greeks call philanthropy but the whole human race. Moreover when he
says “that God may be all in all,” it is to be taken in
this sense. At present our Lord and Saviour is not all in all, but only
a part in each of us. For instance He is wisdom in Solomon, generosity
in David, patience in Job, knowledge of things to come in Daniel, faith
in Peter, zeal in Phinehas and Paul, virginity in John, and other
virtues in others. But when the end of all things shall come, then
shall He be all in all, for then the saints shall severally possess all
the virtues and all will possess Christ in His entirety.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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