Augustine, Sermones 234-243 (Classis II, de Tempore)

whom He found on the way! Be on the way yourself, and Christ will not be lacking as a guest. For do you think that it is no longer permitted to you to receive Christ? How, you say, is it permitted? Having now risen, He was made manifest to His disciples, He ascended into heaven, there He is at the right hand of the Father; He is not going to come except at the last age, to judge the living and the dead: but He will come in glory, not in weakness; to give a kingdom, not to seek hospitality. When He gives the kingdom, has it slipped your mind what He is going to say: Since you did it to one of the least of Mine, you did it to Me (Matt. 25:40)? That rich One is needy until the end of the age. He is needy indeed, not in the head, but in His members. Where is He needy? In those in whom He felt pain, when He said: Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me (Acts 9:4)? Let us therefore serve Christ. He is with us in His own, He is with us in ourselves: nor did He say in vain, Behold, I am with you until the consummation of the age (Matt. 28:20). By doing these things we recognize Christ in good works, not with the body, but with the heart; not with the eyes of the flesh, but with the eyes of faith. Because you have seen, you have believed, He said to a certain unbelieving disciple of His, who had said, I will not believe unless I touch. And the Lord: Come, touch, and do not be unbelieving. He touched, and cried out: My Lord and my God! And the Lord: Because you have seen Me, you have believed (John 20:25–29). That is the whole of your faith, that you believe what you see: I praise those who do not see, and believe; because when they see, they will rejoice.

Sermon 240. On the days of Easter, 11. On the resurrection of bodies, against the Gentiles.

Chapter I. — No. 1. Variety without discord among the Evangelists in the account of the resurrection. A defence of the faith necessary for those who waver. During these days, as your Charity recalls, the Gospel readings pertaining to the resurrection of the Lord are solemnly read. For all four Evangelists were unable to keep silent either about His passion or about His resurrection. For since the Lord Jesus did many things, not all of them wrote down everything: but one wrote these things, another those; yet there is the highest concord of truth. John the Evangelist also mentions that many things were done by the Lord Jesus Christ which have been written down by none of them. As many things were done as ought to have been done then: as many were written as ought to be read now. But to show that all four Evangelists, in what they all say together and do not pass over, that is, whether concerning the passion or concerning the resurrection of Christ, did not say things contrary to one another, is a very laborious task. For some have thought that they were contrary to one another, when they themselves were contrary to their own soul. And therefore pains were taken by those who were able, with the Lord's help, to show that they were not contrary to one another. But, as I said, if I were to show you this, and wished to treat these matters before the people, the multitude of hearers is overwhelmed by weariness before the knowledge of the truth is revealed. But I know your faith, that is, the faith of this whole

multitude, and of those who are not here today and yet are faithful; I know that their faith in the truthfulness of the Evangelists is so certain that they do not need my exposition. He who knows how to defend these things is more learned, not more faithful. He has faith, and he has the ability to defend the faith. Another has not the ability and the resources and the learning to defend the faith, but he has the faith itself. But he who knows how to defend the faith is necessary to those who waver, not to those who believe. For in the defence of the faith the wounds of doubt or of unbelief are healed. He therefore who defends the faith is a good physician: but in you there is no disease of unbelief. When does he know how to cure what you do not have? He knows how to apply the remedy, but in you there is no defect. There is no need of a physician for the healthy, but for those who are unwell (Matt. 9:12).

Chapter II. — 2. The resurrection is proved against unbelievers from the omnipotence of God. Nevertheless, it is not my intention to withhold from you the things that can be said more briefly, given the time, and heard more conveniently. Concerning the resurrection itself, of which the Lord set forth beforehand an example in Himself, so that we might know what we ought to hope for in our bodies too at the end of the world, many people dispute many things; some faithfully, some unfaithfully. Those who dispute faithfully wish to know more thoroughly what they should answer to unbelievers: but those who dispute unfaithfully argue against their own souls, disputing against the power of the Omnipotent, saying: How can it come about that a dead man should rise again? I say, It is God Who does it, and do you say, It cannot be done? I do not say, Give me a Christian, give me a Jew: but, give me a pagan, a worshipper of idols, a slave of demons, who does not say that God is omnipotent. He can deny Christ; he cannot deny God omnipotent. Him, then, in whom you believe (I speak as though to a pagan), Him whom you believe to be God omnipotent, I declare to be the raiser of the dead. If you say, It cannot be done, you detract from the Omnipotent. But if you believe Him to be omnipotent, why do you spurn me when I say these things?

Chapter III. — 3. The flesh will rise without defect. Sin is the cause of all calamities. If we were saying that the flesh will rise again in order to hunger, to thirst, to be sick, to toil, to be subject to corruptions, you would rightly refuse to believe it. For this flesh now has these necessities or calamities. And whence is this? The cause is sin. In one man we sinned, and we are all born unto corruption. The cause of all our evils is sin. For it is not without cause that men suffer these evils. God is just, God is omnipotent: we would in no way suffer these things if we did not deserve them. But since we were in punishments, into which we came from our sins, our Lord Jesus Christ willed to be in our punishments without sins of His own. By bearing the punishment without the fault, He did away with both the fault and the punishment. He did away with the fault by forgiving sins: He did away with the punishment by rising from the dead. This He promised, and He willed that we should walk in hope: let us persevere, and we shall come to the reality. The flesh will rise incorruptible, the flesh will rise without defect, without deformity, without mortality, without burden, without

weight. What now causes you torment will afterwards be an ornament to you. Therefore, if it is good to have an incorruptible body, why do we wish to despair of God's doing this?

Chapter IV. — 4. The opinions of the philosophers on the condition of the soul after death. The philosophers of this world, who were great and learned, and better than the rest, held that the human soul is immortal: and not only did they hold it, but they defended it with as many arguments as they could, and left their very defences written down for posterity. The books exist; they are read. I said that these philosophers were better than others by comparison with worse ones, because there were philosophers who would tell a man that, when he has died, no life remains afterwards. To such men those others are certainly to be preferred. And in the point in which they were better, although straying from the truth in many things, yet in the point in which they were superior, they had been drawing near to the truth. Those, then, who held and said that human souls are immortal sought the causes of the evils of men, of the hardships and errors of mortals, as far as men could; and they said, as far as they could, that some sins or other had gone before in another life, by the desert of which sins souls deserved these bodies as a prison. Then they were asked what will be afterwards, when a man has died. And here they wore out their wits; and they laboured, as much as they could, to render an account to men, either to themselves or to others: and they said that the souls of men who live badly, unclean with the worst habits, when they have gone out of their bodies, are straightway rolled back again into other bodies, and pay here the penalties which we see; but that those souls which have lived well, when they have gone out of their bodies, go to the heights of the heavens, rest there in the stars and in those visible lights, or in whatever heavenly and hidden secret places, forget all past evils, and again take delight in returning to bodies, and come once more to suffer these things. This, then, they would have to be the difference between the souls of sinners and the souls of the righteous: that the souls of sinners, forthwith and at once when they have gone out of their bodies, they say are rolled back into other bodies; but that the souls of the righteous are for a long time at rest; not, however, for ever, but they again take delight in bodies, and from the highest heavens, after such great righteousness, make a fall into these evils.

Chapter V. — The wisdom of the world is foolishness to God. Resurrection promised to the devout who believe in the Mediator. This is what very great philosophers said. More than this the philosophers of this world could find nothing, of whom our Scripture says: God has made foolish the wisdom of this world. If its wisdom, how much more its foolishness? If the wisdom of the world is foolishness with God, how far from God is the true foolishness of the world? Yet there is a certain foolishness of this world which attains to God, of which the Apostle says: Since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe. And he says: “Since the Jews ask for signs, and the Greeks seek wisdom: but we preach Christ

crucified; to the Jews indeed a stumbling block, to the Gentiles foolishness; but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:20–24). The Lord Christ came, the wisdom of God: heaven thunders: let the frogs be silent. What the truth said, that is true. What it said, that the human race is indeed in evil because of sin, is manifest. But whoever has believed in the Mediator, Who was established as the one in the middle between God and men (between God Who is just and men who are unjust, a just man in the middle, having humanity from below, justice from on high; and therefore in the middle: one thing from here, and one thing from there: for if both were from there, He would be there; if both were from here, He would lie with us, and would not be in the middle): whoever, then, has believed in the Mediator, and has lived faithfully and well, will indeed go out from the body, and will be at rest; but afterwards he will receive the body not for torment, but for adornment, and will live with God for ever. There is nothing to make him delight in coming back: for he has the body with him. Therefore, dearly beloved, since I have set before you today what even the philosophers of this world say, whose wisdom God has rejected as true folly, tomorrow, with the Lord's help, we shall be able to expound it.

Sermon 241. On the days of Easter, 12. On the resurrection of bodies, against the Gentiles.

Chapter I. — 1. The resurrection is the faith of Christians. God known by the philosophers from the works of the world. The proper faith of Christians is the resurrection of the dead. This, that is, the resurrection of the dead, Christ our Head showed in Himself, and furnished us an example of faith; so that the members may hope for in themselves this which went before in the Head. Yesterday we suggested to you that the wise men of the Gentiles, whom they call philosophers, those of them who were most excellent, had searched into nature, and from the works had come to know the Maker (in the preceding sermon). They did not hear the prophets, they did not receive the law of God: but God, in a certain manner silent, was speaking to them by the works of the world itself, and the beauty of the world was inviting them to seek the Maker of things: and they could not bring themselves to think that heaven and earth stand without an author. Of these the blessed apostle Paul speaks thus: The wrath of God, he says, is revealed from heaven upon all impiety. What is, upon all impiety? Not only upon the Jews, who received the law of God and offended the Giver of the law; but also upon all the impiety of the Gentiles the wrath of God is revealed from heaven. And lest anyone should say, Why, since they did not receive the law? he went on to add: And the injustice of those who hold back the truth in iniquity. Now you answer: What truth? For they did not receive the Law, for they did not hear a prophet. Hear what truth: Because what is known, he says, of God, is manifest in them. Whence manifest? Hear further: For God has manifested it to them.

If you still ask, How did He make it manifest to those to whom He did not give the law? hear how: For His invisible things, from the constitution of the world, are clearly seen, being understood through the things that have been made. His invisible things, that is, the invisible things of God: from the constitution of the world, that is, from the time He constituted the world: are clearly seen, being understood through the things that have been made; those are clearly seen, being understood through these. His eternal also; I am speaking the words of the Apostle, I weave them in: His eternal power also and divinity, and you supply in thought, are clearly seen, being understood. So that they are without excuse. Why without excuse? Because, knowing God, they did not glorify Him as God, or give thanks. He did not say, Not knowing God; but, knowing.

Chapter II. — 2. The beauty of creatures is the confession of the Creator. How the philosophers came from the knowledge of man to the knowledge of God. Knowing from where? From the things that He made. Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air spread wide and diffused, question the beauty of the sky, question the order of the stars, question the sun lighting up the day with its brightness, question the moon tempering with its splendour the darkness of the night that follows, question the living creatures that move in the waters, that dwell on the lands, that fly in the air; souls hidden, bodies plain to see; visible things to be ruled, invisible ones ruling: question these, they all answer you: Look, see, we are beautiful. Their beauty is their confession. Who made these beautiful mutable things, if not the unchangeable Beautiful One? Finally, in man himself, so that they might be able to understand and know God the creator of the whole world; in man himself, I say, they questioned these two, body and soul. They questioned that which they themselves also carried about: they saw the body, they did not see the soul. But they did not see the body except by means of the soul. For they saw through the eye, but within was the one who looked out through the windows. Finally, when the inhabitant departs, the house lies fallen: when that which ruled departs, that which was ruled falls: and because it falls, it is called a cadaver. Are not the eyes there intact? Even if they lie open, they see nothing. The ears are present; but the hearer has moved away: the instrument of the tongue remains; but the musician who moved it has gone away. So they questioned these two, the body which is seen, the soul which is not seen: and they found that what is not seen is better than what is seen; the hidden soul better, the visible flesh worse. They saw these things, they contemplated them, they examined each, and they found each mutable in man himself. The body mutable through the ages of life, through decay, through nourishment, through refreshment, through failing, through life, through death. They passed over to the soul, which they had certainly grasped as the better, and which they marvelled at even though invisible: they found it too mutable; now willing, now not willing; now knowing, now not knowing; now remembering, now forgetting; now fearing, now daring; now advancing into wisdom, now falling away into folly. They saw that it too was mutable, they passed beyond it too; for they were seeking something immutable.

Chapter III. — 3. The philosophers, after God was known, idolaters. Thus, then, they came to knowing

God who made [them], through these things which He made. But they did not honour Him as God, or give thanks: the Apostle himself says it. But they became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened. Saying that they were wise, they became fools. By claiming for themselves what they had received, they lost what they held. Saying that they were, as it were, great, they became fools. And where did they end up? And they changed, he says, the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man. He means idols. And it was a small thing to make an idol in the form of a man, and to bind the craftsman to the likeness of his own work: this was a small thing. But what besides? And of birds, and of four-footed beasts, and of serpents (Rom. 1:18–23). For all these dumb and irrational animals those men, as if great sages, made gods for themselves. I used to rebuke you when you worshipped the image of a man: what am I to do with you when you worship the image of a dog, the image of a snake, the image of a crocodile? They went as far as this. As far as they were carried up into the heights in their seeking, so far were they plunged into the depths in their falling. For that which falls from on high sinks the deeper.

Chapter IV. — 4. What the philosophers thought about the state of souls after death. Those men, then, as I reminded you yesterday, inquired what comes afterwards, that is, what comes after this life. They inquired as men: but when would they find it, since they were men? They did not have the teaching of God, they did not listen to the Prophets: they could not find, they conjectured. I related to you yesterday their conjectures. Evil souls go out, they say; and because they are unclean, they are at once rolled back into other bodies: the souls of the wise and the just go out; and because they have lived well, they fly to heaven. Well done, well done, you have found them a place: flying, they reach heaven. And what there? There they will be, they say, and will rest with the gods: their seats will be the stars. Not a bad dwelling have you found for them: at least leave them there, do not throw them down. But, they say, after long ages, having utterly forgotten their old miseries, they begin to wish to return into bodies; and it will delight them to come, and they come again to suffer these things, to endure these things, to forget God, to blaspheme God, to follow the pleasures of the body, to the battles against lusts. They come to these miseries, from where, and to where? Tell me, why? Because they forget. If they forget all evils, let them forget also the delight of the flesh. This alone they remember, to their own harm, the place from which they fell. They come: why? Because it delights them to dwell again in bodies. Whence does it delight them, if not through memory, because they once dwelt there? Wipe out the whole memory, and perhaps you will leave wisdom as what remains: let nothing remain that might call them back.

Chapter V. — 5. The doctrine of the return of souls into bodies does not please Virgil. That souls cannot be blessed under that opinion. A certain author of theirs shuddered at it, to whom it was being shown, or rather who introduced, in the underworld, a father showing it to his son. For nearly all of you know this; and would that few of you knew it. But few of you know

in books, many in theatres, that Aeneas descended to the underworld, and his father showed him the souls of great Romans who were to come into bodies: Aeneas himself was terrified, and said:

O father, is it to be thought that some souls go hence on high to heaven, and return again to sluggish bodies?

Is it to be believed, he says, that they go to heaven, and come back again?

What so dire a longing for the light do the wretched have? (Virgil, Aeneid, book 6, lines 719-721.)

The son understood better than the father was explaining. He rebukes the desire of souls wishing to return again into bodies. He called it a dire desire, he called them wretched; and he did not blush for them. To this, philosophers, you have brought it: that souls are purged, reach the highest purity, and through that very purity forget all things, and through forgetfulness of miseries return to the miseries of bodies. Tell me, I beseech you: even if these things were true, would they not be better not known? Even if they were true, I say, though without doubt they are false, because they are foul; would they not be better not known? Or perhaps you are going to say to me: You will not be wise if you do not know these things? Why should I know them? Can I now be better than I shall be then in heaven? If in heaven, when I shall be better and more perfect, I shall forget all that I have learned here, and being better there I am going not to know these things; let me not know them now. You say that the one dwelling in heaven forgets all things: let me on earth be ignorant of all of them. Next, I ask you, do these souls in heaven know that they are going to suffer again the miseries of this life, or do they not know? Choose which you like. If they know that they are going to suffer such great miseries, how are they blessed, while thinking about their future miseries? how are they blessed, where they are without security? But I see what you choose: you are going to say, They do not know. So you praise this ignorance there, which you do not allow me to have now, by teaching me on earth what you say I shall not know in heaven. They do not know, you say. If they do not know, and do not think that they are going to suffer, they are blessed by erring. For what they are going to suffer, they think they will not suffer: and to think what is false, what else is it than to err? So they will be happy by error; they will be blessed; not by eternity, but by falsity. May the truth set us free, so that we may be truly blessed: since the word of our Redeemer is not empty, If the Son sets you free, then you will be truly free. For He Himself said: If you abide in My word, you will truly be My disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free (John 8:36, 31, 32).

Chapter VI. — 6. Hope here would be happier than in that happiness. Next hear something worse, something to be lamented or rather to be laughed at. You wise man here, you philosopher here, that is, on earth (for example, Pythagoras, Plato, Porphyry, and I know not what other of them), why do you philosophize? For the sake of the blessed life, he says. When will you have this blessed life? When I have left this body on earth, he says. So now a wretched life is led, but there is hope of a blessed life: there a blessed life is led, but there is hope of a wretched life. Therefore the hope of our unhappiness

is happy, and that of happiness unhappy. Let us cast these things away, and either laugh because they are false, or grieve because they are thought great. For these, my brothers, are the great ravings of great doctors. How much better do we hold the great mysteries of the great saints? They say that souls purged, cleansed, wise, return out of love of bodies: that purged souls return to bodies out of love of bodies. So does a purged soul love in this way? Is not that love great filth?

Chapter VII. — 7. The opinion of Porphyry about fleeing every body. It is refuted. But, [they say,] every body is to be fled. Their great philosopher of later times, Porphyry, a most bitter enemy of the Christian faith, who lived already in Christian times, yet who, blushing at those very ravings and corrected in some measure by the Christians, said, wrote: Every body is to be fled. He said "every", as if every body were a wretched chain of the soul. And indeed, if a body of whatever kind is to be fled, there is no point in your praising the body to him, and telling him how, with God teaching, our faith praises the body: because even the body which we have now, although we have from it a punishment for sin, and the body which is corrupted weighs down the soul (Wis. 9:15), yet this body has its own beauty, the arrangement of its members, the distinction of its senses, its upright stature, and the other things at which those who consider them well are amazed. That [body], however, will be wholly incorruptible, wholly immortal, wholly nimble and easy in moving. But Porphyry says: Without cause do you praise the body to me; whatever kind of body it may be, if the soul wishes to be blessed, every body is to be fled. This is what the philosophers say: but they err, but they rave. I prove it quickly: I do not wish to dispute at length; because that which has been extolled must have something subject to it. For these two are connected with one another, the extolled and the subject. God surpasses all things: to Him all things are subject. And the soul, if it has any honour with God, must have something subject to it. But I do not wish to dispute on this at greater length; I read your books: you say that this world is a living being, that is, the heaven, the earth, the seas, all the things that are huge bodies, elements immense on every side; all this, and the universal body which is made up of all these elements, you say is a great living being, that is, that it has its own soul, but does not have bodily senses, because outside it there is nothing that could be perceived: yet that it has understanding, that it cleaves to God: and that this very soul of the world is called Jupiter, or is called Hecate, that is, as it were the universal soul ruling the world and making it one single living being. And you say that this same world is eternal, will always be, will have no end. If therefore the world is eternal, and the world remains without end, and the world is a living being, that soul is always held in the world: is every body surely to be fled? What is it that you were saying, Every body is to be fled? I say that blessed souls, incorruptible bodies always