On the Trinity, Book 13

In the previous book, the twelfth of this discussion, we sufficiently distinguished the rational mind’s function in temporal things, involving our actions as well as knowledge, from the same mind’s higher function, contemplating eternal things, and limited to knowledge alone. I think it will be more helpful to add something from Holy Scripture to make the distinction easier. John the Evangelist begins his Gospel this way: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and nothing was made without Him. What was made in Him was life; and the life was the light of humanity. And the light shines in darkness; and the darkness did not grasp it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify about the Light, so that everyone might believe through him. He was not that Light, but was sent to testify about that Light. That was the true Light, which illuminates every person coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. To all who received Him He gave power to become God’s children, to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of a man’s will, but of God. The Word became flesh and lived among us (and we saw His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth.” The whole passage I have quoted from the Gospel begins with what is unchanging and eternal, contemplating which makes us happy; the later parts mention eternal things mixed with temporal things. Some things in it therefore belong to knowledge and others to wisdom, according to the distinction we made in Book 12. The words “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and nothing was made without Him. What was made in Him was life; and the life was the light of humanity. And the light shines in darkness, and the darkness did not grasp it:” require a contemplative life, and must be perceived by the intellectual mind; the more someone advances in this, the wiser that person will undoubtedly become. Because of the words, “The light shines in darkness, and the darkness did not grasp it,” faith was certainly needed, to believe what was not seen. By “darkness” he meant mortal hearts turned away from this kind of light and hardly able to see it; that is why he adds, “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify about the Light, so that everyone might believe through him.” Here we come to something done in time, belonging to the knowledge that consists in awareness of historical facts. We picture the man John through a mental image impressed on our memory from our knowledge of human nature. People picture this in the same way whether they believe or not. Both alike know what a human being is; the outer part, the body, they have learned about through bodily eyes; they know the inner part, the soul, within themselves, because they too are human and interact with other human beings. They can therefore picture the words, “There was a man, whose name was John,” since they also know names through speaking and listening. The other words there, “sent from God,” are held by faith by those who accept them; those who do not accept this by faith either hesitate in doubt or mock it in unbelief. Yet both, unless they are among those utterly foolish people who say in their hearts “There is no God,” think about both things when hearing these words, what God is and what being sent from God means; even if their thoughts do not match the actual realities, they think about them as well as they can. Faith itself is known differently: someone sees it present in their own heart if they believe, or absent if they do not; not as we know bodies, which we see with bodily eyes and think about even when absent through their images retained in memory; nor as things we have not seen, but form in thought as best we can from what we have seen and commit to memory, to return to them whenever we wish and perceive them there likewise through recollection, or rather perceive their images, whatever images we have fixed there; nor as a living person, whose soul we do not see but infer from our own, and whose bodily movements also enable us to picture the living person in thought, as we have learned about that person through sight. A person does not see faith in their own heart in this way; rather, completely certain knowledge grasps it, and conscience proclaims it. Although we are therefore commanded to believe for this reason, because we cannot see what we are commanded to believe, we nevertheless see faith itself within us when it is present; faith in absent things is present, faith in things outside us is within us, and faith in unseen things is itself seen. Yet faith itself comes into human hearts in time; if people cease believing and become unbelievers, it disappears from them. Sometimes faith is placed even in falsehoods; we sometimes say, I put faith in him, and he deceived me. This kind of faith, if it should be called faith at all, disappears from the heart without blame when the discovery of truth drives it out. Faith in true things, however, passes as we should wish into the things themselves. We must not say that faith perishes when what was believed is seen. Should it still be called faith when the letter to the Hebrews defines faith as the evidence of things not seen? In the words that follow, “He came as a witness to testify about the Light, so that everyone might believe through him;” the action takes place in time, as we said. Even testifying about something eternal, such as the light grasped by understanding, takes place in time. John came to testify about this, he who “was not that Light, but was sent to testify about that Light.” The evangelist adds “That was the true Light, which illuminates every person coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.” Those who know Latin understand all these words from things they know. Some of these things become known to us through bodily senses, such as a human being or the world itself, whose vastness we see so clearly; or the sounds of the words themselves, since hearing too is a bodily sense. Others become known through the mind’s reason, such as the words, “And His own did not receive Him;” this means that they did not believe in Him; we do not know what belief is through any bodily sense, but through the mind’s reason. We have also learned the meanings of the words themselves, rather than their sounds, partly through bodily perception and partly through the mind’s reason. We have not heard these words for the first time now; we had heard them before. We retained them as known things in memory and recognized them here, not only the words themselves but their meanings. When the two-syllable word mundus is spoken, something certainly physical, since it is a sound, becomes known through the body, through the ear. What it means also becomes known through the body, through bodily eyes. As far as the world is known to us, we know it through sight. The four-syllable word crediderunt reaches us in its sound, since that is physical, through the bodily ear; its meaning is known through no bodily sense, but through the mind’s reason. Unless we knew through the mind what the word crediderunt meant, we would not understand what those people failed to do, of whom it says, “And His own did not receive Him.” The word’s sound therefore strikes bodily ears from outside and reaches the sense called hearing. We also know human appearance within ourselves, and it is externally presented to our bodily senses in other people: to our eyes when seen, to our ears when heard, to touch when held and touched; it also has an image in our memory, nonphysical, but resembling the body. Finally, the world’s own wonderful beauty is externally present both to our gaze and to the sense called touch, if we touch any part of it; it too has an image within our memory, to which we return when thinking about it either enclosed in a room or in darkness. We have already said enough in Book 11 about these images of physical things, nonphysical themselves but resembling bodies, and belonging to the outer person’s life. We are now discussing the inner person and that person’s knowledge, knowledge concerning temporal, changing things. When anything is taken into its attention and scope, even something belonging to the outer person, it must be taken for this purpose: to teach something from it that helps rational knowledge. The rational use of things we share with irrational animals therefore belongs to the inner person; we cannot rightly say that this rational use is shared with irrational animals.

Our arrangement of the subject requires us to discuss faith at greater length in this book: the faith whose possessors are called believers and those lacking it unbelievers, like those who did not receive God’s Son when He came to His own. Although faith is produced in us through hearing, it does not belong to the bodily sense called hearing, since it is not a sound; or to our bodily eyes, since it is neither color nor bodily shape; or to touch, since it has no physical bulk; or to any bodily sense at all, since it belongs to the heart rather than the body. It is not outside and apart from us but deep within us; no one sees it in another person, but each within themselves. Finally, faith can be counterfeited through pretense and thought present in someone who does not have it. Everyone therefore sees their own faith within themselves; they believe, rather than see, that it is present in someone else; they believe this more firmly the better they know its fruits, which faith regularly produces through love. This faith is therefore shared by all those of whom the evangelist adds, “To all who received Him He gave power to become God’s children, to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of a man’s will, but of God;” shared, I mean, not as a physical object’s form is shared visually by everyone’s eyes when the object is present to them, since the same single form somehow shapes the gaze of everyone seeing it; but as a human face can be said to be shared by all human beings; we say this while recognizing that each certainly has their own. We certainly speak with complete truth when saying that one teaching impresses believers’ faith on each individual heart believing the same thing. What is believed differs from the faith through which it is believed. The former concerns things said to exist, to have existed, or to exist in the future; the latter is within the believer’s mind, visible only to its possessor; although a similar faith, rather than that very faith, is also present in others. It is one in kind rather than number; because of its likeness and complete lack of difference, we call it one rather than many. When we see two people who look extremely alike, we marvel and say they have one face. We can therefore more readily speak of many souls, a separate soul for each individual, among those described in the Acts of the Apostles as having one soul, than anyone would dare, when the apostle speaks of “one faith,” to speak of as many faiths as there are believers. Yet He who says, “Woman, your faith is great;” and to another, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” indicates that each has their own faith. Believers’ similar faith is called one just as a similar will among those willing is called one; even among those with the same will, each person sees their own will, but does not see another’s, although the other wants the same thing; if it makes itself known through signs, it is believed rather than seen. Each person, conscious of their own mind, certainly does not merely believe but directly and clearly sees their own will.

Living beings sharing the same rational nature have such close agreement that although one does not know what another wants, each knows some desires shared by all; although someone does not know what another individual wants, in some matters that person may know what everyone wants. This explains the story about the comic actor’s witty joke, promising to say in the theater during a later performance what everyone had in mind and wanted; when an even larger crowd gathered on the appointed day, waiting expectantly in suspense and silence, he is said to have announced: You want to buy cheaply and sell at a high price. Insignificant actor though he was, everyone recognized their own thoughts in his words and applauded him with remarkable enthusiasm for saying in everyone’s presence what was undeniably true, yet unexpected. Why did he raise such great expectations by promising to say what everyone wanted, unless because no one knows other people’s wills? Yet did he not know this desire? Does anyone not know it? Why, unless because people can reasonably infer some things about others from themselves, through shared feeling or agreement in fault or nature? Seeing one’s own will is different from inferring another’s, however certainly. In human affairs, I am as certain that Rome was built as that Constantinople was, although I have seen Rome with my eyes, but know nothing of the other city except what I have believed from others’ testimony. That comic actor believed everyone shared the desire to buy cheaply and sell at a high price, through observing himself or also gaining experience of others. Since this desire is actually a fault, anyone can acquire the opposing virtue or fall into the harm of another fault opposed to it, and so resist and overcome it. I know someone who was offered a manuscript to buy, realized that the seller did not know its value and was therefore asking very little, and gave the unsuspecting seller the fair price, which was much higher. What if someone is so wicked that he sells cheaply what his parents left him and buys expensively to satisfy his desires? Such reckless extravagance is not unbelievable, I think; we can find such people if we look for them, or even meet them without looking; through wickedness greater than the theater’s, they mock the theatrical proposition or announcement by buying disgrace at a high price while selling land cheaply. We also know of people who, in order to give generously, bought grain at a higher price and sold it to fellow citizens at a lower one. Consider too what the ancient poet Ennius said: that “all mortals want to be praised;” he undoubtedly inferred this about others from himself and those he knew through experience; he thus seems to have declared what everyone wants. If the comic actor had also said, You all want praise; none of you wants blame; he would likewise have seemed to express what everyone wants. Yet some people hate their own faults and do not want others to praise them for things they dislike in themselves; they are grateful for the kindness of those correcting them when the correction aims at their improvement. If he had said, You all want to be happy; you do not want to be miserable; he would have said something everyone would recognize in their own will. Whatever else someone may secretly want, that person does not abandon this desire, which everyone knows well and knows is present in everyone.

It is surprising, however, since everyone shares the desire to obtain and retain happiness, how such varied and different desires concerning happiness itself arise; not because anyone is unwilling to have it, but because not everyone knows it. If everyone knew it, some would not locate it in virtue of mind, others in bodily pleasure, others in both, and still others in one thing or another. As people find particular delight in one thing or another, they locate their idea of a happy life in it. How, then, does everyone love so intensely what not everyone knows? Who can love what they do not know? I have already discussed this in earlier books. Why, then, does everyone love happiness when not everyone knows it? Does everyone perhaps know what it is but not everyone know where to find it, with the disagreement arising from this? As though the issue concerned a place in this world where everyone wanting to live happily should want to live, and asking where happiness is were not included in asking what it is. Certainly, if it lies in bodily pleasure, the person enjoying bodily pleasure is happy; if in virtue of mind, the person enjoying this has it; if in both, the person enjoying both has it. When one person says, to live happily is to enjoy the pleasure of the body; and another says, to live happily is to enjoy virtue of mind; does this not mean that either both are ignorant of what a happy life is, or one knows while the other does not? How, then, do both love it if no one can love what they do not know? Or is what we assumed completely true and certain perhaps false, that everyone wants to live happily? If living happily means, for example, living according to virtue of mind, how does someone who does not want this want to live happily? Would it not be truer to say, That person does not want to live happily, because he does not want to live virtuously, which alone is living happily? Then not everyone wants to live happily; instead, few want this, if living happily simply means living according to virtue of mind, which many do not want to do. Should we consider false what even Cicero, an Academic philosopher, did not doubt (although Academics doubt everything), when he wanted in his dialogue Hortensius to find something certain, which no one doubted, as a starting point for his argument and said, We certainly all want to be happy? I would never say this is false. What, then? Should we say that although living happily means nothing other than living according to virtue of mind, someone who does not want this nevertheless wants to live happily? That seems completely absurd. It would be like saying, Even someone who does not want to live happily wants to live happily. Who could listen to or tolerate such a contradiction? Yet necessity forces us into this difficulty if everyone truly wants to live happily but not everyone wants to live in the only way that makes happiness possible.

Or can we perhaps escape this difficulty by saying that since everyone locates their idea of a happy life in what has pleased them most, as pleasure pleased Epicurus and virtue pleased Zeno, and other things pleased other people, living happily is simply living according to one’s own pleasure, so that everyone does truly want to live happily, because everyone wants what pleases them? If this too had been announced to the people in the theater, everyone would have recognized it in their own wills. Yet when Cicero proposed this objection to himself, he refuted it so effectively that those holding it should be ashamed. He says: “Look, people who are not philosophers, yet are ready to argue, say that everyone living as they wish is happy;” meaning what we meant by, as each pleases. He immediately adds: “This is certainly false. Wanting what is improper is itself utterly miserable; not getting what one wants is less miserable than wanting to get what one should not.” He speaks excellently and completely truthfully. Who could be so mentally blind, so estranged from every light of decency and wrapped in the darkness of indecency, as to call someone happy merely for living as they wish while living wickedly and disgracefully? No one restrains or punishes them, no one even dares blame them, and most people actually praise them, since, as divine Scripture says, “The sinner is praised for the desires of his heart: and the person doing evil is blessed.” They fulfill all their most criminal and shameful desires, although undoubtedly, while still miserable, they would be less miserable if they could obtain none of the things they wrongly wanted. An evil will makes anyone miserable, even if it goes no further than willing; the power to fulfill that evil will’s desire makes the person more miserable. Everyone truly wants to be happy, seeks this one thing with the most intense love, and seeks everything else for its sake. No one can love something without knowing at all what it is or what kind of thing it is, or be ignorant of what they know they want; it follows that everyone knows a happy life. Everyone who is happy has what they want, although not everyone having what they want is immediately happy. Those people are immediately miserable who either lack what they want or have what they wrongly want. Only the person is happy, therefore, who both has everything they want and wants nothing evil.

Since a happy life consists of these two things and is known and dear to everyone, why do we think that, when people cannot have both, they choose to have everything they want rather than want everything rightly, even without having those things? Is human corruption itself responsible for this? People know that a person lacking what they want is not happy, nor is someone possessing what they wrongly want, but only someone possessing all the good things they want and wanting nothing evil. Yet when both conditions of a happy life cannot be fulfilled, they prefer the choice taking them further from happiness. Someone obtaining what they wickedly desired is certainly further from it than someone merely failing to obtain what they desired. A good will should instead be chosen and preferred, even without obtaining what it seeks. Someone approaches happiness by wanting rightly whatever they want, wanting things that will make them happy when obtained. Certainly good things rather than evil things make people happy, when things do make them happy. Such a person already possesses something good, and something that should not be valued lightly: the good will itself. Such a person longs to enjoy the good things human nature is capable of receiving, rather than committing or acquiring any evil. They diligently pursue and obtain as far as possible, with a prudent, self-controlled, courageous, and just mind, the good things possible in this present miserable life. They remain good even amid evils, and become happy when all evils end and all good things are fulfilled.

For this reason, faith through which people believe in God is especially necessary in this mortal life, so full of errors and hardships. No good things at all, especially those that make someone good or will make someone happy, can be found to reach people and enrich their lives from any source except God. When someone good and faithful amid these miseries has passed from this life to the happy life, what is now entirely impossible will truly happen: a person will live as they wish. In that happiness the person will not want to live badly, want anything lacking, or lack anything wanted. Whatever is loved will be present; nothing absent will be longed for. Everything there will be good, and the supreme God will be the supreme good present to be enjoyed by those who love Him; and happiest of all, this will certainly remain so forever. Now, however, philosophers have devised for themselves, as each pleased, their own ideals of a happy life; trying to achieve, supposedly through their own power, what the shared mortal condition prevented them from doing: living as they wished. They recognized that no one could be happy except by having what they wanted and suffering nothing unwanted. Who would not want their life, whatever it is, which delights them and which they therefore call happy, to be so fully within their power that they could have it continually? Yet who has this? Who wants to suffer hardships in order to endure them courageously, although both willing and able to endure them if they occur? Who would want to live in torment, even if able to live admirably by patiently holding to righteousness amid it? Those who have endured these evils, whether wanting to gain or fearing to lose what they loved, whether wickedly or admirably, regarded these evils as temporary. Many have pressed courageously through temporary evils toward lasting goods. These people are undoubtedly happy through hope, even while suffering temporary evils through which they reach goods that will not pass away. Someone happy through hope is not yet happy: they patiently await a happiness they do not yet possess. Someone suffering torment without such hope, without such a reward, however much endurance they exercise, is not truly happy but courageously miserable. They are not free of misery merely because enduring misery impatiently would make them more miserable. Even without suffering unwanted things in their own body, they should not be considered happy, since they do not live as they wish. Leaving aside other things, the troubles of mind occurring even when the body remains unharmed, which we would prefer to live without, and which are countless, this person would at least want, if possible, to keep their body safe and sound, suffering no trouble from it, with this entirely within their control, or even through the body’s own freedom from decay; because they do not possess this and remain uncertain about it, they certainly do not live as they wish. Although courage may make this person ready to accept and bear calmly whatever adversities happen, they would prefer these not to happen and prevent them if possible; they are prepared for both alternatives in that, as far as possible, they desire one and avoid the other; if they encounter what they avoid, they bear it willingly because what they wanted could not happen. They therefore endure it to avoid being crushed; they would prefer not even to be burdened. How, then, do they live as they wish? Is it because they are willingly courageous in bearing what they did not want imposed on them? They want only what they can have because they cannot have what they want. This is the entire happiness of proud mortals, whether laughable or rather pitiable, I do not know. They boast that they live as they wish because they willingly endure patiently what they do not want to happen. This, they say, is what Terence wisely said: “Since what you want cannot happen, want what can.” Who denies that this is well said? Yet it is advice for a miserable person to avoid becoming more miserable. It cannot rightly or truthfully be said to a happy person, as everyone wishes to be, What you want cannot happen. If someone is happy, whatever they want can happen, because they do not want what cannot happen. Such a life does not belong to this mortal condition, and will not occur until immortality comes. If immortality could not be given to humanity at all, happiness too would be sought in vain, since it cannot exist without immortality.

Since everyone therefore wants to be happy, if their desire is true, they certainly also want to be immortal; otherwise they could not be happy. When asked about immortality too, as previously about happiness, everyone replies that they want it. Yet a happiness of whatever kind, so called rather than real, is sought, or rather invented, in this life, while immortality is despaired of, without which true happiness cannot exist. The person lives happily, as we have already sufficiently argued and established, who lives as they wish and wants nothing wrongly. No one wrongly wants immortality if God’s gift makes human nature capable of it; if it is not capable of immortality, it is not capable of happiness. For a person to live happily, that person must live. If life leaves someone through death, how can a happy life remain with them? When it leaves, they must either oppose its leaving, want it, or neither. If opposed, how is that life happy when it is wanted but not within their power? Since no one is happy while wanting something they lack, how much less happy is someone abandoned against their will, not by honor, possessions, or anything else, but by the happy life itself, since they will have no life at all? Although no feeling remains to make that life miserable (since the happy life leaves because life itself leaves), the person is miserable as long as they feel, knowing that what they love beyond everything else is being destroyed against their will, and that they love everything else for its sake. A life cannot therefore be happy yet leave someone against their will, since no one becomes happy against their will; how much more does it make someone miserable by leaving against their will, when possessing it against their will would make them miserable! If the person willingly lets it go, however, how was it a happy life when its possessor wanted it to perish? They can therefore only say that neither attitude is present in the happy person’s mind; they neither oppose nor want a happy life’s departure when death takes away life altogether; they stand firm with a calm heart, equally prepared for either alternative. Yet a life unworthy of the love of the person it makes happy is not a happy life. How can a life be happy if the happy person does not love it? How can something be loved when its flourishing or perishing is met with indifference? Unless perhaps the virtues, which we love solely for happiness, dare persuade us not to love happiness itself. If they did this, we would certainly stop loving the virtues themselves when we no longer love what alone made us love them. How would that claim be true, tested, sifted, and thoroughly refined, and so certain, that everyone wants to be happy, if those already happy neither want nor do not want to be happy? Or if they want happiness, as truth proclaims and nature compels, with that desire implanted in nature by the supremely good, unchangeably happy Creator, if happy people want to be happy, they certainly do not want to be unhappy. If they do not want to be unhappy, they undoubtedly do not want their happiness to be destroyed and perish. They cannot be happy unless alive; they therefore do not want their life to perish. Anyone truly happy or wanting to be happy therefore wants immortality. Someone lacking what they want does not live happily. It follows that life can never be truly happy unless it is eternal.

Whether human nature can receive this, while acknowledging it as desirable, is a substantial question. If faith is present, however, as in those Jesus has empowered to become God’s children, there is no question. Certainly, among those trying to discover it through human reasoning, very few, gifted with great abilities, with abundant leisure, and trained in the most subtle learning, have managed to investigate the immortality of the soul alone. Even for the soul they have not found a stable happy life, that is, a true one; they say it returns to this life’s miseries even after happiness. Those among them ashamed of this opinion, who think the purified soul should enter eternal happiness without a body, hold opinions about the world’s eternity into the past that refute their own opinion about the soul; demonstrating this here would take too long, but I think we have explained it sufficiently in Book 12 of the City of God. This faith, however, promises, through divine authority rather than human reasoning, that the whole human being, certainly consisting of soul and body, will be immortal and therefore truly happy. The Gospel therefore says that Jesus has given “power to become God’s children to those who received Him;” briefly explaining receiving Him as “To those who believe in His name;” it adds how they become God’s children: “Who were born not from blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor from a man’s will, but of God;” To keep the human weakness we all see and carry from despairing of such excellence, it immediately adds, “The Word became flesh and lived among us;” so that people might be persuaded, through the opposite case, of what seemed unbelievable. If He who is God’s Son by nature became the Son of man through mercy for the sake of human beings, for this means “The Word became flesh and lived among us” human beings, how much more believable is it that those human by nature should become God’s children through God’s grace and live in God, in whom alone and from whom alone happy people can share in that immortality, of which, to convince us, the Son of God shared in our mortality?

Some ask, Did God have no other way to free humanity from this mortal misery than wanting the only-begotten Son, God eternally existing with Himself, to become human by taking on a human soul and flesh, becoming mortal and enduring death? In reply, it is not enough to say that the way God chooses to free us through the Mediator between God and humanity, the man Christ Jesus, is good and appropriate to God’s dignity; we must also show, not that God had no other possible way, since everything is equally subject to His power, but that there was no other way, nor should there have been one, more appropriate for healing our misery. What was more necessary for strengthening our hope and freeing mortal minds, cast down by their mortal condition, from despairing of immortality, than being shown how highly God valued us and how greatly He loved us? What clearer, more evident proof could there be than God’s Son, unchangeably good, remaining what He was in Himself, taking from us and for us what He was not, without any loss of His own nature, choosing to share our nature, first bearing our evils without having deserved any evil Himself, then freely and generously giving us His gifts, now that we believe how much God loves us and hope for what we formerly despaired of, without our having earned anything good, indeed despite our having previously deserved evil? Even what we call our merits are His gifts. So that faith may work through love, “God’s love is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us.” He was given when Jesus was glorified through the resurrection. Jesus then promised to send Him and sent Him; then, as was written and foretold about Him, “He ascended on high, took captivity captive, and gave gifts to humanity.” These gifts are our merits, through which we reach the highest good of immortal happiness. “But God,” says the apostle, “shows His love toward us, in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more, then, now justified by His blood, we will be saved from anger through Him.” He adds, “If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son; much more, being reconciled, we will be saved by His life.” Those first called sinners are later called God’s enemies; those first described as justified by His blood are later described as reconciled through God’s Son’s death; those first described as saved from anger through Him are later described as saved by His life. Before that grace, therefore, we were not merely sinners in some unspecified way, but in sins that made us God’s enemies. Earlier the same apostle repeatedly uses two names for us, sinners and God’s enemies, one seemingly very mild and the other clearly very severe, saying, “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” Those he called weak he also called ungodly. Weakness seems a small thing; sometimes it deserves to be called godlessness. Yet unless it were weakness, it would not need a physician, who is Jesus in Hebrew, Σωτήρ in Greek, and in our language salvator, “Savior.” Latin previously lacked this word, but could have it, as it did when it wanted it. This earlier statement of the apostle, where he says, “While we were still weak, at the right time He died for the ungodly,” connects with the two following statements; in one he spoke of sinners, in the other of God’s enemies, matching each term to its counterpart, sinners with the weak and God’s enemies with the ungodly.

What is meant by “justified in His blood?” What power does this blood have, I ask, that believers should be justified in it? What is meant by “being reconciled by the death of His Son?” Was God the Father angry with us, then saw His Son’s death for us and became appeased toward us? Was His Son already so appeased toward us that He even chose to die for us, while the Father was still so angry that only His Son’s death for us would appease Him? What, then, does the same teacher of the Gentiles say elsewhere: “What should we say about this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son but handed Him over for us all, how has He not also freely given us everything with Him?” Unless the Father was already appeased, would He have handed over His own Son without sparing Him for us? Does this statement not seem to contradict the other? In one, the Son dies for us, and the Father is reconciled to us by His death; in the other, as though the Father loved us first, He Himself does not spare the Son for our sake but hands Him over to death for us. I see, however, that the Father loved us beforehand, not only before the Son died for us, but before He created the world; as the apostle himself testifies: “As He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.” Nor was the Son handed over for us unwillingly, with the Father not sparing Him; it also says of Him, “Who loved me and handed Himself over for me.” The Father and Son therefore together, with the Spirit of both, do everything equally and harmoniously; yet we are justified in the blood of Christ, and we are reconciled to God by the death of His Son. I will explain here too, as well as I can, how this happened, as fully as seems necessary.

Through a certain justice of God, the human race was handed over to the devil’s power; the first man’s sin passed by descent to everyone of both sexes born through sexual union, and our first parents’ debt bound all their descendants. Genesis first indicates this handing over, where, after the serpent was told, “You will eat dust,” the man was told, “You are dust, and to dust you will return.” In the words, “You will return to dust,” bodily death is foretold, since he would not have experienced even that had he remained upright to the end, as he was created; telling him while still alive, “You are dust,” shows that the whole human being changed for the worse. “You are dust” is much the same as, “My spirit will not always remain in these people, because they too are flesh.” This showed that the human being was handed over to the one who had been told, “You shall eat dust.” The apostle states this more clearly: “And you, when you were dead in offenses and sins, in which you once lived according to this world’s course, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the children of unbelief; among whom we too once lived, in our flesh’s desires, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and mind; we were by nature children of anger, like the others.” The “children of unbelief” are unbelievers; who is not an unbeliever before becoming a believer? Everyone is therefore from birth under the prince of the power of the air, “who works in the children of unbelief.” What I have called “from birth” is what the apostle expresses when saying they were “by nature” like others; nature as corrupted by sin, not as created upright in the beginning. The way humanity was handed over to the devil’s power should not be understood as God doing this or commanding it; He only permitted it, and did so justly. When He abandoned the sinner, the originator of sin immediately invaded. Yet God certainly did not abandon His creature without showing Himself as God creating and giving life, giving many good things even to evil people amid evils of punishment. He has not withheld His compassion in anger. Nor did He release humanity from the law of His own power when allowing it to be under the devil’s power; even the devil himself is subject to the Almighty’s power and dependent on His goodness. From what source do even evil angels sustain whatever life they have, except Him who gives everything life? If committing sins subjected humanity to the devil through God’s just anger, forgiving sins certainly rescues humanity from the devil through God’s merciful reconciliation.

The devil was to be overcome, through God’s righteousness rather than His power. What is more powerful than the Almighty? What creature’s power can be compared to its Creator’s? Since the devil, through his own corrupt fault, became a lover of power who abandoned and attacked righteousness, and people imitate him all the more as they set their hearts on power, neglecting or even hating righteousness, and either rejoice at obtaining power or burn with desire for it, God chose, to rescue humanity from the devil’s grasp, to conquer the devil through righteousness rather than power; people imitating Christ should likewise seek to conquer the devil through righteousness rather than power. Power should not be avoided as though evil; the proper order must be preserved, with righteousness coming first. How great can mortal power be? Let mortals therefore hold to righteousness; power will be given to immortals. Compared to this power, the power of those called powerful on earth, however great, proves laughable weakness, and a pit is dug for the sinner where evil people seem most powerful. The righteous person sings, “Happy is the person You discipline, Lord, and teach from Your law: to give him rest from days of adversity, until a pit is dug for the sinner. The Lord will not reject His people or abandon His inheritance, until righteousness returns to judgment, and all who have it are upright in heart.” Psalm 94:12-15 At present, while the power of God’s people is delayed, “the Lord will not reject His people or abandon His inheritance,” however bitter and undeserved the things His humble, weak people suffer, “until the righteousness,” which the weakness of the pious now possesses, “returns to judgment,” that is, receives authority to judge. This is kept for the righteous at the end when power follows righteousness in its proper order. Power joined to righteousness, or righteousness added to power, creates judicial authority. Righteousness belongs to a good will; that is why the angels said at Christ’s birth: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people of good will.” Power should follow righteousness rather than precede it; it therefore belongs to “favorable” circumstances, literally “following” circumstances; the Latin word secunda, meaning “second” or “favorable,” comes from sequi, “to follow.” Two things make someone happy, as we argued above: wanting rightly and being able to do what one wants. People should not be so misguided, as noted in that discussion, as to choose from the two conditions of happiness the ability to do what they want, neglecting to want what they should; they should first have a good will, and great power afterward. A good will must also be cleansed of vices, which, when they overcome someone, overcome them by making them want evil; how will their will still be good then? We should therefore wish for power now, but power against vices, which people do not seek power to conquer, although seeking power to conquer other people. Why, unless to achieve apparent victories while actually defeated, victorious in opinion rather than truth? Let someone want to be prudent, courageous, self-controlled, and just; to possess these things truly, let that person certainly desire power and seek to be powerful within themselves, and (strange though it is) against themselves for their own sake. As for everything else they rightly want but cannot have, such as immortality and true, complete happiness, let them keep longing for it and patiently wait.

What, then, is the righteousness through which the devil was conquered? What but Jesus Christ’s righteousness? And how was he conquered? Because the devil found nothing deserving death in Him, yet killed Him. It is certainly just that we, whom the devil held as debtors, should be set free by believing in Him whom he killed without any debt. This is how we are said to be justified in Christ’s blood. That innocent blood was shed to forgive our sins. He therefore calls Himself in the Psalms, “Free among the dead.” He alone has died free from the debt of death. In another psalm He also says, “Then I paid back what I had not stolen;” meaning sin by the stolen thing, because sin unlawfully takes possession. He also says through His own human mouth, as we read in the Gospel: “The prince of this world is coming and finds nothing in me,” that is, no sin; but “so that everyone may know,” He says, “that I do my Father’s will; get up, let us leave.” He then goes on to His suffering, to pay for us debtors what He Himself did not owe. Would the devil be conquered through this perfectly just right if Christ had chosen to deal with him through power rather than righteousness? He postponed what He could do to do first what He should. He therefore needed to be both human and God. Unless He were human, He could not have been killed; unless He were also God, people would not have believed that He chose not to do what He could, but that He could not do what He wanted. We would not have thought He preferred righteousness to power, but that He lacked power. As it was, He suffered human things for us because He was human; had He not wished to, He could have avoided suffering these things, because He was also God. Righteousness therefore became more appealing in humility, because the great power of His divinity could have avoided undergoing humility had He not wished it. Thus, dying with such power, He both showed the worth of righteousness and promised power to us weak mortals. He accomplished one through dying and the other through rising again. What is more righteous than going even to death on a cross for righteousness? What is more powerful than rising from the dead and ascending into heaven in the very flesh in which He was killed? He therefore conquered the devil first through righteousness and afterward through power: through righteousness, because He had no sin, and the devil killed Him completely unjustly; through power, because after dying He lived again, never to die again. He would have conquered the devil through power even if the devil could not have killed Him; although greater power is needed to conquer death itself through rising again than to avoid death by remaining alive. Yet our justification in Christ’s blood has a different reason, as we are rescued from the devil’s power through forgiveness of sins; it concerns the fact that Christ conquers the devil through righteousness rather than power. Christ was crucified not through immortal power, but through the weakness He took on in mortal flesh; yet the apostle says of this weakness, “God’s weakness is stronger than human beings.”

It is therefore easy to see that the devil was conquered when the one he killed rose again. It is something greater and more profound to see that the devil was conquered when he thought he had won, when Christ was killed. Then that blood, belonging to one entirely without sin, was poured out for the forgiveness of our sins; because the devil rightly held those guilty of sin, binding them through the condition of death, he should rightly release them through Him who suffered the undeserved punishment of death while guilty of no sin. This righteousness conquered the strong man, binding him with this chain, so that his vessels could be taken away, vessels of anger that had been with him and his angels, to become vessels of mercy. The Apostle Paul tells us that our Lord Jesus Christ Himself spoke these words to him from heaven when he was first called. Among the other things he heard, he reports these words: “I have appeared to you for this purpose, to make you a servant and witness of what you have seen from me and of those things in which I also go before you; rescuing you from the people and the Gentiles, to whom I now send you, to open blind eyes, and to turn them from darkness [to light], and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and an inheritance among the sanctified, and faith that is in me.” The same apostle therefore urges believers to give thanks to God the Father, saying: “Who has rescued us from darkness’s power and transferred us into His beloved Son’s kingdom: in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” In this redemption Christ’s blood was given, so to speak, as our price, which bound rather than enriched the devil when he accepted it, so that we could be freed from his bonds, and he could not entangle with himself in sin’s nets and drag toward the destruction of the second, eternal death anyone whom Christ, free of all debt, had redeemed by pouring out His blood without owing it. Instead, those belonging to Christ’s grace, foreknown, predestined, and chosen before the foundation of the world should die only as far as Christ Himself died for them, only through death of the flesh, not the spirit.

Although bodily death itself originated from the sin of the first man, using it well has produced glorious martyrs. So not only death itself, but all the evils of this world, and human sorrows and labors, although deserved because of sins and especially original sin, which bound life itself with death’s bond, have rightly remained even after sin is forgiven. This gives people something to struggle against for the truth, and something through which believers’ goodness can be trained, so that through the new covenant the new person can be prepared among the evils of this world for a new world, by wisely enduring the misery this condemned life deserved, by rejoicing soberly that it will end, and by faithfully and patiently awaiting the happiness that the future life, being set free, will enjoy forever. The devil has been expelled from his dominion and from believers’ hearts. Although condemned himself, he reigned through their condemnation and unbelief. Under the conditions of this mortal life, he is allowed to oppose them only as far as God knows will benefit them. Scripture speaks of this through the apostle: “God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you can bear; but with the temptation will also provide a way out, so that you can bear it.” The evils that believers endure faithfully help either to correct sins, to train and test righteousness, or to reveal this life’s misery, so that the life of true, lasting happiness may be desired more intensely and sought more earnestly. These evils remain for the sake of those of whom the apostle says: “For we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, those called according to His purpose. For those He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers. Those He predestined, He also called; those He called, He also justified; and those He justified, He also glorified.” Not one of these predestined people will perish with the devil; not one will remain until death under the power of the devil. Next comes what I quoted earlier: “What, then, should we say about this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son but handed Him over for us all, how has He not also freely given us everything with Him?” Why, then, should Christ’s death not have happened? Better still, why should this death not have been chosen above all else, passing over the countless other ways the Almighty could have used to free us: this death in which His divinity was neither diminished nor changed, and such great benefit came to people through the humanity He assumed, that the eternal Son of God paid a temporal death He did not owe, being also the Son of man, to free them from the eternal death they did owe? The devil held our sins fast and through them rightly held us in death. The one with no sins of His own canceled them, and the devil led Him undeservedly to death. That blood was so valuable that the one who killed Christ, even temporarily, through an undeserved death has no right to hold anyone clothed in Christ in the eternal death they deserved. Therefore “God demonstrates His love for us, because while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more, then, now justified in His blood, we will be saved from anger through Him.” Justified, he says, in His blood: clearly justified because we are freed from all sin; and freed from all sin, because the Son of God, who had no sin, was killed for us. Therefore “we will be saved from anger through Him;” that is, God’s anger, which is simply just retribution. God’s anger is not an emotional disturbance like human anger; it is the anger of the one to whom Scripture says elsewhere, “But You, Lord of powers, judge calmly.” If God’s just retribution is given this name, how else can reconciliation with God rightly be understood except as the ending of this anger? We were enemies of God only as sins are enemies of righteousness; when these are forgiven, this hostility ends, and those He justifies are reconciled to the Just One. Yet He certainly loved them while they were still enemies, since “He did not spare His own Son but handed Him over for us all,” when we were still enemies. The apostle therefore rightly added: “For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through His Son’s death,” through which sins were forgiven, “much more, now reconciled, we will be saved in His life.” Saved in life, after being reconciled through death. Who can doubt that He will give His life to His friends, for whom He gave His death when they were enemies? “And more than that,” he says, “we also rejoice in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” “Not only,” he says, “will we be saved,” but “we also rejoice;” and not in ourselves, but “in God;” and not through ourselves, “but through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation,” as we argued earlier. The apostle then adds, “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin; and so death spread to all people, in whom all sinned;” and so on. Here he discusses the two men at length: one is the first Adam, through whose sin and death we, his descendants, are bound as though by inherited evils; the other is the second Adam, both man and God, through whose payment for us of what He did not owe we are freed from the debts both of our first father and of ourselves. Since the devil held, because of the first Adam, all born through his corrupted bodily desire, it is right that because of the second Adam he should release all who are regenerated through His unstained spiritual grace.

There are many other things in Christ’s incarnation that we can profitably observe and consider, although it displeases the proud. One is that humanity has been shown its place among God’s creatures, since human nature could be so joined to God that one person could be formed from two substances, and therefore from three: God, soul, and flesh. This keeps those proud, evil spirits who insert themselves as mediators to deceive while pretending to help from daring to place themselves above humanity because they have no flesh; especially because the Son of God willingly humbled Himself to die in this same flesh, so that their apparent immortality should not persuade people to worship them as gods. Another is that God’s grace, without any prior merits, might be made clear to us in the man Christ; for even He did not earn through any prior merits such a great union with the true God, becoming the Son of God, one Person with Him; rather, from the moment He began to be man, He is also God. This is why it says, “The Word became flesh.” Another is that human pride, the chief obstacle to clinging to God, can be exposed and healed through God’s profound humility. People also learn how far they have strayed from God, a knowledge whose pain helps heal them, when they return through such a Mediator, who as God helps people through His divinity and as man shares their weakness. What greater example of obedience could be given to us, who perished through disobedience, than God the Son obedient to God the Father, even to death on the cross? And where could the reward of obedience itself be better shown than in the flesh of so great a Mediator, which rose to eternal life? The Creator’s justice and goodness also required that the devil be conquered by the same rational creature he rejoiced in conquering, by someone from that very race which he held entirely through the corruption of its origin in one man.

God certainly could have assumed humanity to be the Mediator between God and humanity in that human nature, from a different source, rather than from Adam’s race, which Adam bound by his sin; just as the first man He created did not come from someone else’s race. He could therefore have created another man in this way or any other way He wished, to conquer the first man’s conqueror. But God judged it better to assume humanity from the very race that had been conquered, to conquer the human race’s enemy through this man; and yet to do this from a virgin, whose conception was preceded by spirit rather than flesh, faith rather than lust. The bodily desire through which other people are begotten and conceived, inheriting original sin, did not intervene; instead, holy virginity became pregnant through faith rather than marital intercourse, with lust entirely absent, so that the one born from the first man’s stock would inherit his race’s origin, without inheriting its guilt. What was born was the sole remedy for all such corruptions, rather than a nature corrupted by sin’s contagion. A Man was born, I say, who had no sin at all and would never have any; through whom those unable to be born without sin would be reborn to be freed from sin. Although marital chastity rightly uses the bodily desire in our sexual organs, this desire still has involuntary movements, showing either that it could not have existed in paradise before sin or, if it did, that it did not then sometimes resist the will. Now, however, we experience it as something that opposes the mind’s law and urges us toward sexual intercourse even when procreation is not intended; if people yield to it, it is satisfied through sin; if they do not, it is restrained through refusal. Who could doubt that both these things were foreign to paradise before sin? The chastity of that time did nothing improper, and its happiness suffered no disturbance. This bodily desire therefore had to be entirely absent when the Virgin’s child was conceived; the author of death would find nothing in Him deserving death, yet would kill Him, to be conquered through the death of the Author of life. The first Adam’s conqueror, who held the human race, was conquered by the second Adam and lost the Christian race, freed out of the human race from human guilt through Him who shared the race without sharing its guilt. Thus this deceiver would be conquered by the race he had conquered through guilt. This happened so that people would not become proud, but “that whoever boasts should boast in the Lord.” The one conquered was only human; he was conquered because he proudly desired to be a god. But the conqueror was both man and God; and He conquered in this way, born from a virgin, because God in humility did not merely govern this Man as He governs other saints, but bore Him [as a Son]. These great gifts of God, and any others that would take too long to investigate and discuss here, could not exist unless the Word had become flesh.

Everything the Word made flesh did and endured for us in time and place belongs, according to the distinction we set out to demonstrate, to knowledge, not to wisdom. As Word, however, He is outside time and place, coeternal with the Father, and wholly present everywhere; if anyone can speak truly about this Word, as far as they can, their discourse will belong to wisdom. Thus the Word made flesh, Christ Jesus, has the treasures both of wisdom and of knowledge. Writing to the Colossians, the apostle says: “I want you to know how greatly I struggle for you, for those in Laodicea, and for all who have not seen me in person; so that their hearts may be encouraged, united in love and in all the riches of complete understanding, to know God’s mystery, which is Christ: in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden.” Who can know how fully the apostle knew these treasures, how deeply he penetrated them, or what heights he reached in them? For my part, in accordance with the words, “The Spirit’s manifestation is given to each of us for our benefit; to one the word of wisdom is given through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit;” if these two are distinguished by assigning wisdom to divine things and knowledge to human things, I recognize both in Christ, as does every believer with me. When I read, “The Word became flesh and lived among us,” I understand the Word as the true Son of God and recognize the flesh as the true Son of man, both joined together in one Person, God and man, through an indescribable abundance of grace. For this reason the apostle continues, “And we saw His glory, glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” If we refer grace to knowledge, and truth to wisdom, I think we will remain faithful to the distinction we have established between them. Among things originating in time, the highest grace is humanity’s union with God in one person; among eternal things, the highest truth is rightly attributed to God’s Word. The fact that this same one is Himself the Only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth has this purpose: the one acting for us in time is Himself the one for whom that same faith cleanses us, so that we may steadily contemplate Him in eternal things. The eminent pagan philosophers who could understand and perceive God’s invisible things through created things nevertheless, as it is said of them, “suppressed the truth in unrighteousness;” because they philosophized without a Mediator, the man Christ, believing neither the prophets’ announcement that He would come nor the apostles’ announcement that He had come. Living among these lowest things, they inevitably sought intermediaries through which to reach the lofty things they had understood; and so they fell in with deceitful spirits, through whom “they exchanged the incorruptible God’s glory for the likeness of an image of corruptible humanity, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles.” In these forms they also established or worshiped idols. Christ, then, is our knowledge, and this same Christ is our wisdom. He Himself plants faith about temporal things in us and reveals the truth about eternal things. Through Him we go to Him: through knowledge we reach toward wisdom; yet we do not leave the very same Christ, “in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden.” For now we discuss knowledge; later we will discuss wisdom as much as He Himself grants. We should not understand this distinction as forbidding us to speak of wisdom about human things or knowledge about divine things. In broader usage, both can be called wisdom and both knowledge. Yet the apostle could never have written, “To one the word of wisdom is given, to another the word of knowledge,” unless these different things also had their own proper names. We are now discussing their distinction.

Let us now see what this lengthy discussion has accomplished, what it has gathered, and where it has led. Everyone wants to be happy; yet not everyone has the faith that cleanses the heart and leads to happiness. Thus we must reach the happiness everyone wants through the faith not everyone wants. Everyone sees in their own heart that they want to be happy; human nature agrees so completely about this that someone who infers this about another’s mind from their own is not mistaken: indeed, we know that everyone wants this. Yet many despair of being immortal, although no one can otherwise be what everyone wants to be: happy. They also want to be immortal if they can; but because they do not believe they can, they do not live in a way that makes it possible. Faith is therefore necessary for us to attain happiness in all the goods of human nature, both soul and body. This same faith holds that its definite content is in Christ, who rose bodily from the dead, never to die again; that only through Him is anyone freed from the devil’s dominion through forgiveness of sins; and that in the devil’s realm life must be both miserable and never-ending, deserving the name death rather than life. I have discussed all this in this book as far as time allowed, having already said much about it in the fourth book of this work; there for one purpose, here for another — there to show why and how the Father sent Christ in the fullness of time, in response to those who say that the sender and the one sent cannot be equal in nature; here to distinguish practical knowledge from contemplative wisdom. We wanted to ascend, as though by steps, and seek a trinity of its own kind in both the knowledge and wisdom of the inner person, as we previously sought in the outer person; so that with minds better trained in these lower things we may come to the contemplation of that Trinity which is God, within our limited capacity, if indeed we can do even this, at least in a riddle and through a mirror. If someone has memorized only the sounds of this faith’s words without knowing their meaning, as people commonly memorize Greek words without knowing Greek, or similarly Latin words or words in any other language they do not know, does this person not have a kind of trinity in their mind? First, the words’ sounds are in their memory even when they are not thinking about them; next, these sounds form the mind’s gaze (acies) in recollection when the person thinks of them; and finally, the will of the person remembering and thinking unites both. Yet we should certainly say that this involves a trinity of the outer person rather than the inner person; the person remembers only what belongs to the bodily sense called hearing, and contemplates it whenever and as far as they wish. This thought deals only with images of bodily things: sounds. But if the person retains and recalls what these words mean, something of the inner person is now active; even so, we should not yet say or think that they live according to a trinity of the inner person if they do not love what is proclaimed, commanded, and promised there. They could also retain and think about these things as falsehoods they intend to refute. The will that here unites what is held in memory with what memory impresses on the mind’s eye in thought does complete a kind of trinity, since it is a third added to two others; but the person does not live according to this trinity when the thoughts are rejected as false. But when these things are believed to be true, and what should be loved in them is loved, then the person finally lives according to a trinity of the inner person; for everyone lives according to what they love. But how can things be loved that are only believed rather than known? We discussed this question in earlier books and found that no one loves what they know absolutely nothing about, and that when unknown things are said to be loved, they are loved through what is known. We now close this book by reminding the righteous to live by faith, a faith that works through love, so that the virtues themselves, through which one lives prudently, courageously, temperately, and justly, are all directed toward this same faith; otherwise they cannot be true virtues. Yet in this life these virtues are not so effective that forgiveness of sins of some kind is never needed; this forgiveness comes only through Him who conquered the prince of sinners by His own blood. Whatever ideas this faith and way of life produce in a believer’s mind, when held in memory, examined in recollection, and pleasing to the will, form a trinity of their own kind. But God’s image, which we will discuss later with His help, is not yet in this trinity; this will become clearer when we show where it is, as the reader can expect in the next book.