Sermon 348A augm
SERMON 348/A expanded.
Sermon of Saint Augustine against Pelagius.
Christ came into the world to save sinners.
The reason for the advent and incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ is that when He came, He found all sinners. The Apostle very clearly states this cause of His advent in this manner: It is a human saying, he says, and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners, of whom I am the first. Therefore, no other cause brought the Son of God, God and eternal God, and co-eternal and equal with the Father, from the heavens to the earth to take flesh and die for us, except that there was no life in us. The physician would not descend, unless to the sick; life would not descend, unless to the dead. Today, as the Apostle was being read, those of you who were attentive heard: He thus commends His love for us, he says, because, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us; much more now having been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. This is the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, which the prophets first proclaimed, then He Himself with His own mouth, then the apostles after His presence in the flesh, then the whole Church holds, declares, preaches, and commends and venerates. This is the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
To rise from ruin, we need the help of God.
Wherefore, your love ought first to know, or rather to recall what you know and have always heard: that no man can be saved by his own merits and strength. For man was easy to wound himself, just as in our own fleshly life it is easy for anyone to kill himself: but is he able to resurrect himself? Therefore, to fall, we needed no assistance; indeed, because we abandoned God's help, we fell. But to rise from our fall, let us ask for His aid, lest we remain in our sins. Christ died for us - you have heard the Apostle - not for Himself, but for us. Why not for Himself, but for us? Because He had no cause of death, in whom there was no sin. Death is the penalty of sin. For if Adam had not sinned, he would certainly not have died, nor would we be born mortal from his offspring. But one came without sin, to absolve all sins: for He who was not liable could untie the bound, nor could the guilty liberate the condemned. He took flesh from a virgin without man's concupiscence; the flesh taken was not a wound, but the medicine for the wound. Christ died for us.
God gave His only Son for us.
What else shall we seek from him? What is Christ? You have heard: when he asked his disciples, it was said by Peter: You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. He by nature the Son, we by grace; he the only one, we many, because he was born, we were adopted. Since God had one and only Son, he spared not his only begotten and own Son, but delivered him up for us all, as the Apostle says. What greater remedy could the human race ask for or hope for than that the only Son should be sent not to live with us, but to die for us? And in order to die for us, he took on flesh in which he could die, because, being the Word God with God the Father, he did not have the means by which to die. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Where is there visibility and tangibility in the Word, where is there suffering or death in God? That which cannot be seen can be seen only by the mind. But even the mind itself is covered in darkness, blinded by sins, the whole man weak, the whole man languid, the whole man wounded, I dare say the whole man dead and extinguished, how could it see the ubiquitous presence, not having a healthy inner eye, by which invisible things are seen?
"If we wish to live, let us not cling to death."
Therefore, there was nothing entirely healthy in us: the healer of body and soul descended, because he is the Savior of body and soul. For if these doctors can heal what they did not create from these medicines and herbs which they did not create, if the human doctor heals by the power of God, how much more does God heal his own? However, the human doctor heals the one destined to die, God heals the one who is to live eternally. And this very act of willing to die for us was our medicine. It is a great mercy, brothers, that our healer willed to cure us not with his ointment, but with his blood. Much more, he says, now being justified. By what? By his blood, not by our own strengths, not by our own merits, but by his blood, we will be saved from wrath through him, not through us, but through him. He bound himself to the cross: if we truly wish to live, let us not cling to death. He who clings to himself clings to death. For life is not in the dead. What can the dead presume about themselves? They could die by their own power, but they cannot revive themselves. We could and still can sin by ourselves, yet we will never be able to rise by ourselves. Our hope must be in God alone. Let us groan to him, let us place our trust in him; as far as it concerns us, let us strive by our will, that we may deserve through prayer.
Augustine exposes the error of the Pelagians.
Therefore, since these things are so, brothers, I will speak more openly to you, because there is nothing for us to hide: a certain new heresy, hiding and secretly and widely spreading, we endured in silence as much as we could, until it burst forth; we always refuted the error itself; we kept names silent, lest perhaps, when we refuted the error, people might be corrected; we kept names silent: for nothing is better, nothing more desirable, than that those hearing what was preached by us according to the most ancient foundation of the Church might fear to proclaim their errors and be healed in silence, converted to the one who heals all who call upon his name. We did this for a long time. For concerning this kind of impiety, we also wrote certain things and they were already in the hands of readers, and yet the names of those about whom we had written were not yet made known to you. Some of them were here and some were corrected, for the salvation of whom, in the name and mercy of the Lord, we rejoice. For some of those corrected from that error urged us greatly that we also write letters concerning that error itself.
Augustine sends a letter to Pelagius.
But now we have heard: the same person who is the chief and author of this pernicious teaching, they said was absolved in episcopal proceedings in the eastern regions and pronounced catholic. Therefore, he denied that the things objected to him were his own, and what others seemed to spread through his doctrine, he denied feeling, but also anathematized. The proceedings indeed have not yet reached us. Nevertheless, because we are accustomed to writing to him familiarly as a servant of God, just as last year, when my son, the presbyter Orosius, who is with us from Spain, a servant of God, went to the east with my letters, I wrote through the same Orosius to the same Pelagius, not marking him with my letters, but exhorting him to hear from the presbyter what I commanded. But the presbyter found the place where he was already very disturbed by his preachings and the dissensions of the brethren; hence he brought back letters to me from the much revered presbyter Jerome, for his age, sanctity, and erudition, known to all. This presbyter Jerome had already written a book against him on free will, which was also brought to us. However, as I said, he was absolved in church proceedings, confessing the grace of God which he seemed to deny and oppose by his disputations.
Augustine announces the deeds of Pelagius to the people.
Later, indeed, a few days ago, one of our citizens, Palatinus the deacon, the son of Gattus from Hippo — and many recognize both the name and more recognize the father; he is present; among the deacons he stands, he hears me, it is he — came to us from there. He brought me a certain brief book of Pelagius himself
The foundation of Pelagian doctrine is explained.
What therefore is the harm of this heresy, understand briefly, so that you may beware and, whoever you hear either whispering such things in secret or clamoring about them in open disputes, you do not conceal from us. For we fear that cancer may spread when it is spared, and suddenly we may find many such people, whom we can scarcely or never heal. Therefore, hear what harm this heresy has. That which I said a little before and commended to you, the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, this heresy attacks with its pestilential disputations. How, you ask? They say that human nature is able, that free will is so capable that, just as we became sinners by ourselves, so also we can be justified by ourselves. And whereas a just man is better than a man— for the name "man" is for nature, and the name "justice" is for happiness and blessedness — therefore, since a just man is better than any man, they say that God made the man, but the man made himself just, so that it seems the man gives himself more than God had given him.
The Pelagians subvert the notion of grace.
Therefore, let your charity attend: through the malicious disputations of these people our prayers are attacked. For they act and dispute in such a way that we seem to pray without cause. Our Lord has taught us how to pray, lest perhaps we ask for carnal and temporal things in our prayers, such as to ask that your head not ache, that you may not die, that you may not carry out your son, that you may not suffer loss, that you may not be thrown into prison oppressed by someone, and if any other similar things are temporal and secular. These they allow us to pray for; what the Lord taught, they take away, not because they dare to deny it, but because they dispute in such a manner as to remove it. For when he says to you: "It is sufficient for you to do justice; if you will, you do; if you will, you do not; you have no need of God's help to fulfill what he commands, for the grace of God is not that which helps you not to sin, but that grace which made you with free will." Therefore, when they say such things, they speak of the grace of God by which we were made, which grace we also have in common with the pagans. For we were not created, and they were not created, nor did we proceed from the workshop of another artificer than they: we and they have one God as Author, one Creator, one Maker, who makes His sun to rise on the good and the bad, and rains on the just and the unjust. This, they say, is the grace of God; they do not wish to speak of the other, not by which we are also men with pagans, but by which we are Christians. You know which grace they deny, hear more evidently.
Paul in the struggle with the flesh seeks the help of God.
You know that Paul the Apostle placed our struggle with the flesh, so that we live piously and justly, the very contest in which we labor, before our eyes, saying: "I delight in the law of God according to the inner man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin - and death - which is in my members." In this difficulty he cried out and said: "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" And it was as if the answer was: "The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord." They do not deny him this grace, but they hear that you struggle with the flesh and the bad habit of your sins: "It is sufficient for you to conquer. Why do you ask for help? You can accomplish this by your own strength." But the Apostle succumbed. He confessed his weakness to obtain healing: "I see," he said, "another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin." What good is it to me that the inner man delights in the law of God with my mind? Behold, I am fought against, behold, I am dragged, behold, I am crushed, behold, I am taken captive. See, as if looking up to God from great oppression, he cried out. If he had said: "Who will deliver me from this body of death, except my own strength?" he would be seen to have spoken proudly, but perhaps we would also understand this, because he could not say it except of God, to whom the psalm says: "I will love You, O Lord, my strength." Did he therefore say: "Who will deliver me, except my nature, except my will, except the powers of my choice and ability?" He did not say that. He humbled himself to be exalted: "The grace of God," he said, "through Jesus Christ our Lord."
In the Lord's Prayer, we seek the grace of the delivering God.
For this reason, the Lord has enjoined us what we should pray: Hallowed be - and what? - thy name. Is not the name of God holy? What is "hallowed," if not in us? Now you, if you can of your own free will and by the power of your own nature hallow the name of God within you, why do you pray, why do you ask from the highest majesty what you have in your power? What more? {(1.) Those two: Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors, and: Lead us not into temptation, when these are proposed, what do you think they reply? I shuddered, my brothers, when I heard. Indeed, I did not hear with my own ears, but my holy brother and fellow bishop, our Urbanus, who was a presbyter here and now is bishop of Sicca, when he had returned from the city of Rome and there was contending with someone holding such opinions, or was reporting that he had contended, he told me that he said this, when he was pressed by the weight of the Lord's prayer. For he was pressing him and saying: "If it is within our power not to sin and within our power to overcome all temptations of sins by our own wills alone, why do we say to God not to lead us into temptation?" What do you think he replied? "We ask," he says, "God not to lead us into temptation, lest we suffer any evil, which we do not have in our power: lest I fall from a horse and break a leg, lest a robber kills me, and anything of this sort. For these," he says, "I do not have in my power. For to overcome the temptations of my sins, if I am willing, I both can and am able, nor do I need the aid of God."
What is the temptation into which we ask not to be led?
(2.) You see, brothers, what a wicked heresy! You see how all of you shudder: beware lest you be seized! For I know the cunning and evasions of impious men averse to the truth and, because they have already fallen into their opinions, unwilling to be conquered. Look, I beseech you. For behold, he found something to say, therefore we say: Lead us not into temptation, lest something happen to us which we do not have in our power according to bodily temptation. Hence the Lord said: Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation? Did He say this: Watch and pray, lest you break a foot, or lest your head ache, or lest you incur damage? He did not say this, but what did He say? What He said to Peter: I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail. I have prayed, He says, for you. God says to man, the Lord to the servant, the teacher to the disciple, the doctor to the sick: I have prayed for you. What? That it might not fail. What? Your hand? your foot? your eye? your tongue, any paralysis, that is, the dissolution of your limbs? No, but that your faith may not fail. According to these we have in our power, that our faith may not fail.
For doing good, the will of man alone is not sufficient.
(3.) Why is God entreated for us? That He may grant us what they say we ought not to ask from the eternal majesty, but to have in our power. Blessings, my brothers, the blessings which we bestow upon you, they nullify, empty, crush. You heard me, I believe, my brothers, when I say: “Turned to the Lord, let us bless His name. May He grant us to persevere in His commandments, to walk in the straight path of His instruction, to please Him in every good work, and such things.” “Certainly,” they say, “all this is established in our power.” Therefore, we wish such things upon you in vain. Let us defend ourselves and you, so that neither we bless in vain, nor you subscribe “Amen” in vain. My brothers, your “Amen” is your subscription, your “Amen” is your stipulation, your consent. Lest perhaps some of them condemn both us and you, let us defend ourselves with the Apostle Paul: let us see if he wished such things for his people as we pray over you. Listen to what he said in a certain place. I speak briefly. What do you say, O new heretic, whoever you are who hears me, if you are present? What do you say? “That we have the power not to sin, so that we can accomplish this without the help of divine grace.” Do you say this? “This,” he says. Therefore, do we have the power not to sin without the help of God? “Indeed,” he says, “our free will suffices for this.” Then what is it that the Apostle says writing to the Corinthians: But we pray to God that you may do no evil? You have attended, you have heard, you have received; and because it is most manifest, without doubt you have understood what the Apostle prayed. We pray, he says, to the Lord that you may do no evil. He could have said: We admonish you, that you may do no evil; we teach you, that you may do no evil; we command you, we instruct you. Which indeed, if he had said, he would have rightly said, because our will also does something; for our will does not act nothing, but by itself it does not suffice. Yet he preferred to say: We pray, so that he might commend grace, so that they might understand, when they do no evil, that they avoid evil not by their own will alone, but by fulfilling what is commanded with the help of God.
Recognize the will, recognize the grace!
(4.) Therefore, brothers, when something is commanded, acknowledge the choice of will; when what is commanded is prayed for, acknowledge the benefit of grace. For you have both in the Scriptures: it is both commanded and prayed for; what is commanded, that is prayed for. See what I say. It is commanded that we understand. How is it commanded that we understand? Do not be like the horse and the mule, which have no understanding. You have heard that it was commanded: ask, that you may be able to fulfill what was commanded. "How," you ask, "do I ask?" Listen to the Scripture. What was commanded of you? Do not be like the horse and the mule, which have no understanding. Because it was commanded, you recognized the will. Hear that it is prayed for, to recognize grace. Give me understanding, that I may learn your commandments. It was commanded that we have wisdom. Since it was commanded, I read. "Where do you read?" he says. Listen: You foolish ones among the people, and you fools, at least become wise. Now what does he say? "Do you see how God commanded us to be wise?" Therefore wisdom is in our power? I have already said, I heard the command, I recognized the will: listen to the prayer, so that you may also recognize grace. It concerns wisdom, which was commanded to us. Let us hear what the apostle James says: But if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously. Continence is commanded to us. Where is it commanded? The apostle to Timothy: Keep yourself pure. It is a command, a precept: it must be heard, it must be done. But unless God helps, we remain. We indeed try to do by will, and the will strives something. Power should not presume, unless weakness is helped. Certainly it was commanded: Keep yourself pure. Hear another place in Scripture: And when I knew, he says, that no one can be continent unless God gives it, and that this itself was wisdom, to know whose gift it was. "And what," he says, "did I do?" I approached the Lord and entreated Him. What is the need to run through many things, my brothers? Whatever is commanded to us, it should be prayed for that it may be fulfilled. But not in such a way that we dismiss ourselves and lie supine like lazy ones and say: "Let God rain food on our faces, so that we utterly do not wish to act at all"; and when the food has rained down upon our mouth, let us even say: "Let God swallow it for us." We too must do something, we must strive, we must endeavor and in that which we are able, give thanks; in that which we are not able, we must pray. When you give thanks, you avoid being condemned as ungrateful; but when you ask for what you do not yet have, you avoid being left empty, because you are hindered.
Augustine will disclose to the people if he discovers anything new about the error of Pelagius.
Think therefore on these things, my brothers: whoever comes to you and says to you, "What then shall we do? We have nothing in our power unless God gives everything. Therefore God will not crown us, but will crown Himself," you see already that he comes from that poisonous vein. It is a vein, but it has venom. For it has been struck by a serpent, it is not healthy. For this indeed is what Satan now daily strives to do, how through the poisons of heretics he drives out from the Church, just as then through the poison of the serpent he drove out from paradise. Let no one say that anyone is absolved from the bishops. It is an absolution, but confession itself is almost a correction, because the things which were said before the bishops seemed catholic; but what he wrote in his books, the bishops who absolved him did not know. And perhaps he has been corrected: for we ought not to despair of a man who perhaps chose to join himself to the catholic faith and fled to its grace and help. Perhaps this has been done: however, not the heresy is absolved, but the man denying the heresy. But when we shall have read the deeds, when they come into our hands, whatever more clearly we may know about this evil or perhaps about his correction, we ought to announce to your charity with the Lord's help.