Appendix to Augustine's Sermones: Sermones supposititii, Sermones 241-257

produced nuts, was an image of the Lord's body. For a nut has in its body a threefold union of substance: the rind, the shell and the kernel. To the rind the flesh, to the shell the bones, to the kernel the inner soul is compared. In the rind of the nut it signifies the flesh of the Saviour, which had in itself the harshness or bitterness of the passion. In the kernel it declares the inner sweetness of the Godhead, which provides nourishment and supplies the service of light. In the shell it sets in between the wood of the cross, which did not separate that which was outside and inside, but by the interposition of the wood of the Mediator joined together the things that were earthly and heavenly, as the blessed Apostle says, For He Himself through the blood of His cross has pacified all things that are in the heavens and that are on earth (Col. 1:20): Who lives with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ages of ages. Amen.

Sermon 246. On the Mystery of the Trinity and of the Incarnation, 2.

1. The Arians raise as an objection what is said of Wisdom, The Lord created me, etc. The answer is, first, that it can be understood of the wisdom given to Solomon; second, that there are two natures in Christ, united indeed, but not confused. We have received, brethren, the words of the Lord saying to His disciples, Let not your heart be troubled (John 14:1), etc. Who would not so love Christ as both to rejoice that his own nature is already immortal in Christ, and to hope that he himself will be so through Christ? The Arians, asserting that the Son of God is a creature, raise against us the objection: What is it that Solomon agrees to on this point, speaking in the person of Christ, and says, 'The Lord created me in the beginning of His ways for His works; before the age He founded me in the beginning, before He made the earth, before the springs of waters came forth, before the mountains were established: and before all the hills He begot me' (Prov. 8:22–25)? Against them we reply thus: Many most learned men assert that this was said in the person of that wisdom which Solomon had received for judging and ruling the people. But since you with stubborn mind demand from us that this be said in the person of Christ, we do not struggle against it nor resist; but strengthened by the help of the truth itself, wherever you lead we follow. First indeed, as we said above, although we believe one person in Christ, yet we confess that there are two substances, that is, natures, namely of divinity and of humanity, the assuming and the assumed, the creating and the created: which substances nevertheless are not confused but united, and inseparable in one and the same person, and remaining always in their own property. Therefore to each substance its own things must indeed be fitted, that is, the infirmities to the humanity, which was created; but the signs or wonders to the divinity, which created. For so far are these two natures united and conjoined with one another, that one and the same Christ, God and man, sometimes either does or speaks human things, but sometimes divine: as is that He sleeps in the boat, and commands the winds and the sea; or that He hungered, and that He satisfied five thousand men from five loaves and two fishes; finally, that He dies, and that by divine authority He commands Lazarus, four days dead, to be called back from the dead.

2. By reason of the human nature He says He was created; but by reason of the divine, [that He was] before every creature. From this you ought not to wonder if Christ said of His humanity, The Lord created me in the beginning of His ways for His works: because the saying that follows, set after the former, shows what befitted the divinity, saying, 'Before the age He founded me in the beginning, before He made the earth, and before He made the abysses, before the springs of waters came forth, before the mountains were established: and before all the hills He begot me.' That is to say, Although God created me so that I might show the beginning of the ways and

of His works through the Gospel; but before the age, that is, before the beginning, before heaven or earth or times came to be, He begot me: that is, so that He might show that He was begotten of the Father without time and without beginning. For, to sum up the whole briefly, Christ the Son of God, God and man, was according to His divinity begotten of the Father before times, without beginning, ineffably, as Isaiah says, Who shall declare His generation? (Isa. 53:8). But in the last time He was created according to His humanity. For the divinity, coming into the womb of the virgin Mary, by that authority by which in paradise He formed Adam from the mud, fashioned flesh for Himself out of the substance of Mary herself: and taking this up for our salvation, and uniting it to Himself, He was born God and man. This generation Matthew narrates, saying, Now the generation of Christ was thus (Matt. 1:18), etc.

3. They ask: Was He begotten while He was, or while He was not? It is declared that He always coexists with the Father, and in what respect He is distinguished from the Father. Likewise they are accustomed to compose against us a poisoned syllogism of this kind, saying: If you believe the Son coeternal with the Father, tell us, we ask, was He begotten while He was, or while He was not? If while He was, then there were two unbegotten beforehand, and afterwards one begot the other: or if, as true reason allows, He was begotten while He was not, He will certainly be later than the Father. Against this nothing else is to be done by us but to resist so great a malice of the heretics with apostolic examples, by which worldly wisdom is easily crushed. When, therefore, they have raised against us the objections mentioned above, we say: Just as we know the Father alone to be always and without beginning unbegotten, so we confess the Son to be always and without beginning begotten of the Father. Nor is there any other cause which makes the distinction of the persons, except that this one is unbegotten and that one begotten, that is, this one is Father and that one Son: because the Father is always father, never son; because, as we have said, He was not begotten, but Himself begot: and the Son is always son, never father; because He did not beget, but was begotten.

4. This is illustrated by the example of radiance. On this matter no other than the Apostle himself is to be called forward into our midst, who, foreseeing the malice of Eunomius and Arius, tried by examples of visible things to explain an invisible, ineffable and incomprehensible thing, as far as he could and as the thing itself permitted. For what does he say of the Son when writing to the Hebrews? Who is, he says, the radiance of glory, and the figure of His substance (Heb. 1:3). Let us see, then, what the reason is why he named the Son radiance. For, unless I am mistaken, we speak of radiance only of the sun, or of the moon, or of some particular light. What, then, does this mean? Are we so mad as to think that the Apostle likened that inestimable form of the divinity to the sun or to fire? Far from it: but so that by that example we might understand that, just as radiance is born from the substance of the sun, so also the Son is begotten from the substance of the Father. So too the sun or fire is not prior to its radiance, although the radiance is born from it; but from the moment the sun or fire came forth, its radiance also appeared together with it; nor can the radiance be called later than the sun or the fire, although, as I have said, it is born from it. If, then, something is found among creatures which is both born and is not later than its begetter, why, heretic, should you despair that this can come about from the Creator? Take also another likeness of this matter. Just as the radiance born from the sun fills the whole world, and yet is never cut off from its begetter, nor withdraws from it: so the Son begotten of the Father, while He is everywhere, remains always in the Father. And just as the radiance is substantially in the sun, and the sun in the radiance, so the Father is substantially in the Son, and the Son in the Father. And just as, while the sun and the radiance have one substance, there is nevertheless not one person, because we neither say that the sun is the radiance nor that the radiance is the sun, since we know that the sun begot the radiance, and the radiance was born from the sun: so also the Father and the Son, although they are of one essence, are nevertheless not of one person, as we have already set out fully above. And just as the sun through its radiance both warms, and illuminates, and dries, and dissolves, and whitens, and blackens, and carries out all things which

have been enjoined on it by God: so too we read that the Father has performed all things through His only-begotten Son.

5. They reply that He is created, not begotten. If that were so, He would be a servant, and ought not to be worshipped. The adoration of the body of Christ. They say that the Son is created by the Father, not begotten. To this the brief answer is: if He is created, then He is certainly also a servant; because everything that is created must serve its Creator: and if the Son is a servant, how did He, established in the form of God, take the form of a servant (Phil. 2:7)? For a servant cannot take the form of a servant. Again, they say that the Son of God is not so by nature, but created. Against questions of this kind one must answer in the usual way: that if the Son is not God by nature, but a creature, then He is not to be worshipped at all, nor adored as God, since the Apostle says, And they worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, Who is blessed for ever (Rom. 1:25); and to the Galatians, But then, not knowing God, you served those who by nature are not gods (Gal. 4:8). But they will reply to this and say: What of the fact that you adore His flesh, which you do not deny is a creature, together with His divinity, and serve it no less than the divinity? I adore the Lord's flesh, indeed the perfect humanity in Christ, for this reason, that it has been assumed by the divinity and united to the Godhead: so that I confess not one and another, but one and the same God and man to be the Son of God. Finally, if you separate the man from God, as Photinus or Paul of Samosata do, in him I never believe, nor do I serve him. Just as, if one of us were to find a purple robe or a royal diadem lying on the ground, would he try to adore them? But when the king has put them on, a man incurs the danger of death if he scorns to adore them together with the king: so too in Christ the Lord, if anyone scorns to adore the humanity, not alone or bare, but united to His divinity, one Son of God, true God and true man, he will suffer the penalty of eternal death.

Sermon 247. Why Christ was born and suffered.

1. Wisdom could have brought man back to itself through power. It preferred to accomplish this gently. This was its reason for assuming man. Nor is it on that account diminished. The Maker of the world, by a secret and wonderful counsel, through the mystery of the incarnate Word, willed to repair the world corrupted by original and actual sins, the fall of that same world, He Who by the word by which He was able to create all things from nothing, was able to reform the things that had been lost. For He spoke, and they were made; He commanded, and they were created (Ps. 32:9). We do not believe this power of His diminished, we do not believe it changed, with Whom there is no change nor shadow of alteration (Jas. 1:17), so that He should be less powerful and wise in reforming than He had been in fashioning. For the hand of the almighty potter, all Whose ways are mercy and truth (Ps. 24:10), which had raised clay taken from the earth to the dignity of a rational nature, willed to reform the ruin of the fragile vessel in such a way that it neither left man's sin unpunished, because He is just, nor left it incurable, because He is merciful. If He were only just, He Whose wisdom reaches from end to end mightily, and orders all things sweetly (Wis. 8:1), could have contended by His strength against the seducer of the human race, and restored to His dominion the lost sheep brought back to the flock. But in this way He would have seemed to show only the eminence of His power, not to have bestowed healing mercy on the redeemed: nor would it have appeared with how great love the Creator loved the creature by which He sought to be loved through manifold kindness; so that wretched man, with grace going before, might obtain also through merit

what was being paid back to him, ill-deserving as he was, as something not due. What, therefore, the Wisdom of God could have done wisely and mightily, He willed to do gently, uniting to Himself the infirmity of our flesh, so that He might first heal it in Himself, and through this, as it were, medicinal preparation restore health to the human race: not that it could not have been done otherwise, as far as the skill and power of the Physician are concerned, but because no more suitable antidote could be procured, as far as the constitution of the sick man is concerned. For the weakness of God is stronger than men, and the foolishness of God is wiser than men (1 Cor. 1:25). This seems to us to be the special reason why the Son of God willed to put on man and to dwell among men: that He might overcome by dying the mortality which He received from us, and might call back our nature with Himself to immortality, restored above the dignity of its first origin; so that the lowliness of the flock might follow to where the loftiness of the shepherd had gone before. Thus a ray of the sun dries up the moisture which it draws to itself; yet it neither lessens nor alters the power of its own heat and brightness. Thus fire converts into itself the matter which it takes up; yet it does not for that reason change or diminish its own nature. Much more mightily did that fire of which it is said, Our God is a consuming fire (Deut. 4:24), take up our mortality and passibility into Himself and consume it; and thence, by the grace of health, He took up again the whole body. A wonderful and incomparable kind of medicine, for the sake of which the physician willed to be sick, and determined to heal by His own infirmity the sick for whom He was procuring the remedy of salvation.

2. Nor did He add anything to Himself. For He has no need of anything of ours. In this it appears with what incomparable love He loved us: because in seeking His deserters, taking hold of the seed of Abraham, bringing back the wanderers, and healing the wounded, He added nothing to Himself; He was not made higher by it, He was not made more blessed by it. This whole dispensation took thought for our advantage and fought for our salvation: it contributed nothing to the divine power. For even when we were vessels of dishonour, we could not escape the hand of the almighty potter: He used the vessels of wrath as He willed for the manifestation of His glory; for thus it was said to Pharaoh, For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be proclaimed in all the earth (Exod. 9:19). Did not the demons also, when they were being cast out by the Lord from the bodies they had possessed, glorify the Lord, when they said, What have we to do with Thee, Jesus, Son of the living God? Why hast Thou come before the time to torment us (Matt. 8:29)? It is therefore evident from these and other such things that the divine power had no need of our restoration; but yet, by the same goodness by which He created us, He willed to reform us: and for this He applied a remedy, not the most powerful He could have applied, but the one He saw would suit most gently the constitution of the sick man.

3. The analogy of Christ with a skilled physician. Those skilled in medicine are accustomed to cure the sicknesses which they undertake to heal sometimes by contraries, sometimes by likes. This our Lord Jesus Christ did, enriching us by His poverty, raising us up by His humility, healing us by His infirmity, giving us life by His death. Thus, by the method of medicine, dry things are set against moist, moist against dry, hot against cold: and weaker contraries are overcome by stronger contraries coming upon them. By a like method, likes are applied to likes, when the length or breadth of poultices is measured according to the size of wounds or swellings. Thus the flesh of a scorpion cooked in oil heals the stings of scorpions; thus theriac made from the flesh of a serpent counters serpents' bites, and, taken as a drink, expels poisoned potions. After this likeness our Physician healed the death of our flesh, which came from the serpent, by the death of His own flesh, and reformed it for the form of His immortality, to be completed at the time of restoration. Here it must be attended to more carefully that the death which came through a tree was overcome through a tree. And the very shape of the tree is fashioned to the length and breadth and height of the human body: so that, just as the whole body was moved so that the hands were stretched out to the forbidden thing, so the body in all its members

should be stretched out on the cross, and so that the whole of what had been broken by the guilt of the paternal transgression might be made firm again by the kneading of this plaster. But with this medicine, compounded by likeness, there was also mixed a medicine made by opposition. For here obedience healed what disobedience had corrupted there; and what the delight of the gullet had defiled there, the torment of the cross restores here.

4. The mystical figure of the cross. There is contained in this figure of the cross a higher sacrament: and the higher it is, the more diligently it must be attended to. For in the breadth of the cross is understood the love of neighbour, which must be extended not only as far as friends, but even as far as loving enemies. In its length, too, is understood the long and persevering endurance of labours and persecutions, which our pilgrimage, sighing for the homeland, ought to bear patiently, as much for the love of neighbours as for the performance of all good works. By like reasoning there is figured in its height the eminence of hope, penetrating even to the inner things of the veil; where those who here are harassed in many ways by the citizens of Babylon will enjoy the vision of peace, until they are freed from the servitude of this corruption into the liberty of the glory of the sons of God. The Lord Jesus signified this breadth of charity on the cross, raising His head towards the east, lowering His feet towards the west, stretching out His hands towards the north and the south; so that He might fulfil what He had foretold of Himself before His passion, When I am lifted up from the earth, that is, when I am crucified, I will draw all things to Myself (John 12:32), that is, I will call the whole world together to Myself. By this sacrament of the cross holy Elisha, applying mouth to mouth and his hands to the boy's hands, raised the son of the Shunammite woman by praying, and restored him alive to his mother (2 Kgs. 4:34). By the power of the same sacrament Moses in the desert struck the flint twice with his rod, and brought forth water from the rock for the thirsting people (Num. 20:11). For the twofold striking is figuratively understood as the joining of two beams made in the cross. So the rock is struck twice when Christ, of Whom the Apostle says, But the rock was Christ (1 Cor. 10:4), stretched out on the two beams of the cross, is pierced with a lance. From this rock water flowed forth when the blood of redemption and the water of baptism, by which we are transformed into the new man, flowed from the side of Christ.

5. Especially the depth. On the mystery of our restoration. God is just in condemning man, merciful in redeeming him. He would have been unjust had He restored the impenitent. Moreover, among these dimensions of the cross the depth of the cross must be carefully attended to: for deep is the mystery of the cross, in which the minds of many who were called wise have failed; because they dared to find fault with what they could not comprehend by human reason: namely, why the Word, coeternal with God the Father, containing all things, filling all things, enclosed His whole self in the man He assumed, and yet did not cease to rule, fill and contain the whole world: not sufficiently considering that what has power in the lesser can much more have power in the greater; since one voice proceeds whole from the mouth of the speaker, and reaches whole the ears of many people. Let those who dispute too scrupulously about this question, and grope at the wall as though the door were shut, first hear the Apostle saying, O man, who are you that you should answer back to God? (Rom. 9:20). Then let them grow gentle and knock with piety, so that it may be opened to them: and they will understand that the Creator was just in condemning and merciful in redeeming; and that what the justice of the Almighty had justly condemned could not be healed without mercy. From this they will consequently perceive why the divine omnipotence, which in paradise had condemned guilty man by a just sentence, humbled itself even to the poverty of captive man and the ignominy of the cross. For when he was charged by the Lord with the disobedience he had committed, he did not accuse himself humbly, as his fault required; but proudly accused the author, saying, The woman whom Thou gavest me gave me of the fruit, and I ate (Gen. 3:12). By saying this he thought himself excused, and the Creator, the maker of the woman

who had drawn the man into sin, to blame. And if he had humbly accused himself, and had not twisted the blame back onto his Maker, he would not have been exiled from paradise. But it would have been against divine justice if He had restored the impenitent defendant to his former rank, and had not compelled him, by whatever means He wished, all the way to the worthy fruit of penitence. By divine sentence, therefore, he was adjudged to death, and with all the posterity that was to proceed from his loins he was cast out of paradise and condemned to a toilsome exile. And because without penitence he could not return to his former state, he had to be moved and admonished to penitence, so that a voluntary and submissive humility might reform what an evilly exalted iniquity had corrupted. For it was not fitting that he who had fallen of his own accord into punishment should be dragged unwilling to penitence, lest he should likewise prove ungrateful for his reformation, just as he had proved ungrateful for his first condition.

6. How He prepared him for this grace. Such a remedy was therefore provided as suited the sick man: one that would so soften the hardness of the swelling that, once softened, it would of its own accord pour out the deadly poison, as the Psalmist says, Pour out your hearts before Him (Ps. 61:9): that is, through confession cast out of your consciences all unclean things. For as long as the world delayed to do this, so long did it remain unclean. So that this might be done, then, our Physician sent His heralds and witnesses before Him, the lawgivers and the Prophets, to prepare the hearts of their hearers for penitence and to bear witness to Him in the time of grace. The Physician Himself came in the fullness of time. Having become a doctor of medicine, He publicly proclaimed the cause of His coming, saying, Do penance; for the kingdom of heaven has drawn near (Matt. 3:2); and again, Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved (Mark 16:16). Many received this counsel of medicine, and many despised it. To the despisers the hiss of the destroying serpent was still more pleasing than the persuasion of the redeeming Physician. But the son of adoption heard, and he obeyed the voice of the One Who promised, he who in paradise had not obeyed the command that threatened death. When the dispensation of His teaching had been completed, and blindness persisted in part in Israel, at length He showed Himself a physician and made of Himself a medicine; He showed Himself a priest and made Himself a sacrifice. He did this so that He might accomplish that for which He had come, and prove with how great a love He had loved those for whom He was offering His body on the altar of the cross. Hence in His Gospel He had also foretold, Greater love no one has than that one should lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13). Hence it is that the Apostle says, God commends His love in us; for when we were enemies, He reconciled us to Himself through the death of His Son (Rom. 5:8). And because it is natural that people love those who love them, by this humility and love the hardness of the world was humbled and melted, so that it might acknowledge the benefit of its restoration, the world which had not acknowledged the excellence of its condition. Hence the Psalmist says: Man, when he was in honour, did not understand: he has been compared to senseless beasts of burden, and has become like them (Ps. 48:13). But after he returned to himself, he came to know, through the love of the One redeeming and the instruction of the One admonishing, from how great a glory he had fallen and in how great a misery he was living. He then found by experience that he stood in need of great mercy, and what the Psalmist says was fulfilled: Their infirmities were multiplied; afterwards they made haste (Ps. 15:4).

7. The use and power of the cross. Thereafter the power of the cross was proclaimed throughout the whole world. With its parts the cross is stretched out through the four parts of the world, and with its softening it has embraced the whole world. Nor could the world any longer be wholly ungrateful, since it had been healed by so great a love. Our Crucified One rose from death and ascended to the heavens. He left us the cross in remembrance of His passion; He left the cross for healing. By this sign demons are put to flight; by this antidote healings are accomplished. This sign