Contra Priscillianistas Et Origenistas Ad Orosium

A Treatise of Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, to Orosius against the Priscillianists and Origenists. Chapter 1. — 1. I must not answer everything that you have set forth in your Memorial, my most beloved son Orosius, when you ask me; yet I must not altogether fail to answer, lest I seem to have despised your zeal, which is most gratifying to me, and thereby offend intemperately. For in certain of our little works, which you have either read or will be able to read, many things have been said which are able to avail against the heresy of the Priscillianists; although I did not propose to refute them, but while I was doing something else, I now understand that I have also done this, when I hear from you what they think. For what has been argued by me in many places against the Manichaeans concerning the soul, which, although according to its own mode it is immortal, is yet proved to be mutable by declining for the worse and by advancing for the better, and through this is shown most clearly not to be of the substance of God, at the same time overthrows the dogma of Priscillian. For with this one point most firmly established, which is also most true, and which each person, when admonished, most easily recognizes in himself, neither they nor those find whence to weave their fables. But what need is there to go through the loquacious error by cutting off its branches, when it is a short cut to dig up and tear out its root; especially since you yourself rejoice that those most fabulous ravings have already been refuted among you?

CHAPTER 2. — 2. But the question concerning the soul is still being debated, whether God (since it is now established that it is not a particle or emanation of Him) must be said to have created it from nothing, because it seems harsh and impious to say that the will of God, by which it was created, is nothing. This, indeed, no longer pertains to refuting the sacrilegious vanity of Priscillian. For whether the soul was made from nothing, or whether this should not be said because it was made by the will of God, which will is certainly not nothing, yet because it was made and is not of the nature of God, that heresy is certainly refuted, which contends that the soul was originally the nature of God, so that it has a basis for weaving together whatever other falsehood it adds. But because it is not right to spurn and leave this question undiscussed, we must ask of those who are unwilling to believe the soul was made from nothing, lest they assert that the will of God by which it was made is nothing. Therefore, we must ask them whether they affirm that no creature was made from nothing. For if they think this, it is to be feared that they are trying to introduce some other nature, which is neither God nor yet nothing, which, as a kind of matter subject to Him, God would not have been able to find to make whatever He made. For when it is asked from what God made His creature, a certain matter is sought, as wood is for a craftsman, or any body, which, if he did not have it, he would not be able to make those things that are demanded by his art.

When, therefore, the answer is given, "From nothing," what is answered but that no matter was subject to Him which He Himself had not made, so that He would have something from which to make if He wished, and that unless He had it, He could not make? For the matter of the world, which is discerned in mutable things in some way, was established by Him by whom the world was established. Wherefore, even if God made or makes something from some thing, He nevertheless did not make or make it from a thing which He Himself had not made. For this reason, having set aside for a little while the nature of the soul, if they confess that God made something from nothing, let them attend and see that whatever that is, He made it by will; for He would not have made anything unwillingly; yet that will is not therefore nothing, because something was made from nothing by His will. Why, then, do they fear to say about the soul what they do not doubt to say about any other things? Or if they maintain that the soul was made only by the will of God, but contend that other things were not made by will, what more absurd, what more insane can be said? But if all things which He made, He made by will; and yet, when we say this, we do not say that this will is nothing: let them accept this also about the soul.

CHAPTER III. — 5. For when it is said, "God made from nothing," nothing else is said but, "There was nothing from which He could make, and yet because He willed, He made." So far, therefore, is it from being the case that in that which He made from nothing, the will is said to be nothing, that it is especially commended. For to whom is it said, "Power is at hand for you when you will" (Wisdom 12:18): whether there is something from which to make, or there is not; the will suffices, where there is supreme power. How, then, in that which is created from nothing, is the will of the creator said to be nothing, when for that reason something can be created from nothing, because the will of the creator suffices even without matter? But if perhaps they wish to deny that not only the soul, but no creature at all, was made from nothing, because whatever God made, He made by will, which will is certainly not nothing; let them consider from what man was made according to the body. For certainly, as Scripture testifies, when God made him from the slime or dust of the earth (Genesis 2:7), and without doubt He made it by will: yet the will of God is not dust or slime. Therefore, just as in that which was made from slime, although it was made by will, the will is not slime; so in that which was made from nothing, although it was made by will, the will is not nothing.

CHAPTER IV. — 4. Now as to what you added, that from the heresy of Priscillian some men among you had lapsed into the error of Origen, and could not be cured of that plague unless the medicine itself had brought in something morbid: that grief is not indeed to be blamed; for truth ought to have driven out falsehood, not falsehood; for this is to exchange evil, not to avoid it. Nevertheless, because concerning God Himself, the creator of all creatures, that is, concerning the coeternal and immutable Trinity, what you recall was handed down by those who brought the books of Origen to you is what truth holds; against which truth Priscillian revived the ancient dogma of Sabellius, that the Father Himself is the Son, who is also the Holy Spirit; this is worse, that he also thinks about the soul in such a way that he does not want it to have its own nature, but dares to affirm with the Manichaeans that it flows down from God Himself like a little particle, and is so disgracefully polluted and changed for the worse. Your province has received no small benefit from those books, especially in that matter in which there is capital error; for it is about the Creator, not about the creature, that such false and nefarious things are thought. Therefore, whether those who had deviated were restored to this faith, or those who did not yet know it learned by reading those disputations, let them rejoice that they have learned what is sound.

But as for what error there is in them, although I see that you have already come to know it, yet you will be better able to learn how to argue against such things in the place where the error itself both arose long ago and was exposed long ago. CHAPTER V. — 5. As far as I can, however, I also advise that you dare to think nothing about the correction of the devil and his angels and their restoration to their former state: not because we begrudge the devil and the demons, as if we were repaying them in some way with a return of malevolence, since they, driven by the goads of envy, try to disturb our paths by which we strive toward God; but because we ought to add nothing to the final sentence of the highest and most truthful Judge out of our own presumption. For He Himself foretold that He would say to their like: "Go into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels." Nor should we be moved to take "eternal" in this passage as meaning "long-lasting," because it is written elsewhere, "For ever and for the age of the age" (Psalm 5:6). For the Latin translator did not wish to say, "For ever and for the ever of the eternal." But since the Greek word can be interpreted as both "age" and "eternal," other translators have more suitably rendered it, "For the age and for the age of the age." But this is not what was said where it is said, "Go into the eternal fire." For it is not said "secular," which, if it were derived from "age," would be called "secular" in Latin, not "eternal," which no translator has ever dared to say.

Therefore, although in Latin "saeculum" is understood with some end, "aeternum" is not usually called anything except that which is without end; but in Greek, "aion" is sometimes understood to mean "alternum," sometimes "saeculum." Nevertheless, what is derived and named from this word, not even the Greeks themselves, as far as I think, usually understand except that which has no end. But we, whether we say "aeternum" or "perpetuum," do not usually say anything except "aeternum"; but we say "saeculum" as well, but "aeternum" only. Although some sometimes even dare to say "aeternale," lest the Latin language seem to lack a derivation from the same word. And perhaps indeed, according to the custom of the Scriptures, these people find something also said that is without end, just as God in the books of the Old Testament repeatedly says: "This will be for you a perpetual statute" (Exod. 28; Lev. 16:34, etc.), which the Greek has as "aionion," when he often commands about such sacraments that were to have an end; although if the words are understood more diligently, perhaps those things which were signified by those sacraments were not to have an end. Thus, not to go too far, we say "eternal God," not certainly these two very short syllables, but what is signified by them. And the Apostle said "eternal times prior and ancient" (2 Tim. 1:9), which in Greek is read as "aionon." For writing to Titus he says: "Hope of eternal life which not lying God promised before eternal times" (Titus 1:2).

But if times from the establishment of the world seem to have a beginning backward, how are they eternal, unless because it said "eternal" of things that have no time before them? CHAPTER VI. — 7. But whoever prudently notes that what was said, "Go into the eternal fire," is said of that which has no end, proves from the contrary by that same Gospel passage about the eternal life which the just are to receive: for that too has no end. For it concluded thus: "They will go into the eternal burning; but the just, into eternal life" (Matthew 25:41, 46). In both the Greek has αἰώνιον. If mercy prompts us to believe that the punishment of the impious will not be without end, what are we to believe about the reward of the just, since in both parts, in the same place, the same sentence, the same word pronounces eternity? Or shall we say that the just too will relapse from that sanctification and eternal life into the filth of sins and into death? Far be this from the soundness of the Christian faith. Therefore both are said to be eternal without end, that is: lest while we grieve the punishments of the devil, we doubt the kingdom of Christ. Finally, if "aeternum" or "aeternale," that is, αἰώνιον, is customarily used in the Scriptures under both meanings, sometimes without end, sometimes with an end; what are we to answer concerning those words of the prophet, where it is written, "Their worm will not die, and their fire will not be extinguished" (Isaiah 66:24)?

Whatever kind of punishment is signified by the name of worm and fire, certainly if it does not die nor is extinguished, it is predicted without end; nor was the Prophet doing anything else when he said this, except to predict it without end. CHAPTER VII. — 8. Concerning the kingdom of Christ also, not according to that which in the beginning was the Word, God with God (John 1:1); for no one has ever doubted that he is king of all ages: but according to the assumption of man and the mystery of the mediator and the incarnation from the virgin, it is most openly said that it will have no end, where the angel speaking to Mary, the future mother who would remain a virgin, says among other things: "He will be great, and will be called the son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end" (Luke 1:32, 33). According to what will his kingdom have no end, except according to that which he will reign over the house of Jacob? For this which it says, "forever," on account of the ambiguity itself, it explained by adding, "of his kingdom there will be no end": lest anyone should understand "forever" here as one understands an age that will have an end at some time. But can the reign over the house of Jacob and on the throne of David be understood, except in the Church and in that people who are his kingdom? concerning which the Apostle also says, "When he has delivered the kingdom to God the Father" (1 Cor.

...bring them to the contemplation of the Father, and certainly to His own contemplation, insofar as He is God equal to the Father. For He does not hand it over in such a way that He Himself loses it, because the Father also gave the Son to have life in Himself (John 5:26), and He certainly did not lose it Himself. And through this, if there will be no end of His kingdom, then certainly His saints, who are His kingdom, will reign with Him without end. But what the Apostle says in that passage, "Then the end, when He has handed over the kingdom to God the Father," there he signifies an end that is not consuming but perfecting, as it is said: "For the end of the law is Christ, for the justice of every believer" (Romans 10:4), by which the law is perfected, not abolished. And that is also signified where He says: "I have not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it" (Matthew 5:17). CHAPTER VIII. 9. But as for what they say about rational creatures—that is, holy angels and unclean demons, and also human souls—that a greater place has been merited by a lesser fault, I do not see with what shamelessness they try to persuade the Church of Christ. Therefore it is better to believe that God was not led to the construction of the world by the sins of rational spirits, lest those absurdities follow—that we would need to have two suns, or three, or four, or however many, if the greatest number of spirits through free will...

...such great guilt would precede the third, as would require them to be enclosed in similar globes of celestial bodies; but that the world was made by the goodness of God, great, good, from the highest and uncreated good; in which all things would be made very good according to their nature, and some better than others, ordered by distinct grades from the highest creatures down to the lowest, so that all things would exist in that way, while not only the better ones existed, and they would have the limit of that number which the creator God of all natures and creatures saw to be established within Himself, who did not learn them after they were made, but knew them to be made. Hence what they say, that in His wisdom all things were already made before they were brought forth into these forms and proper modes and appeared in their orders, is not said soberly. For how could they be made when they were not yet made? But in the wisdom of God there could be the reasons of all things to be made, yet not the things themselves made. For all things are made through it, and it itself is not made: because it is the Word of which it is said, "All things were made through Him" (John 1:3). Therefore God knew all things which He made before He made them. For we cannot say that He made them unknown, and learned them only after they were made; that He did not know what He was doing, but knew what He had done. For if we were to say this of any human craftsman, we would be most foolish. Therefore He knew them to be made, not made; He knew them in order to make them, not because He was making them.

Therefore, although they were already known, because they would not be made except by one who knows, yet they did not begin to be made, which were known to be made, unless after those things were made which were known to be made rightly before they were made. But since truth, which neither opines about the unknown nor deceives anyone, promises that our purification, indeed even perfection, will be future even after the resurrection of spiritual bodies, up to equality with the angels (Luke 20:36), how are the holy angels themselves, to whom the most purified will be equal, said to be still in need of purification from their sins? And since God promises a new heaven and a new earth as a dwelling place for the saints and for those purified from every stain of this age (Isaiah 66:22), with what audacity, I ask, is it affirmed that the world, that is, heaven and earth, would not have existed except for the necessity of purifying rational spirits, who would not be in heaven or on earth except for the merits of their sins? What need, then, do the purified have of a new heaven and a new earth, if the purified are restored so that they are as they were before heaven and earth, without heaven and earth? For if this were entirely true, we ought to direct our hope toward that which Scripture promises. And if we were to be transferred from there into something better, it would be much more reasonable for us to learn this then, already placed there, than now not only to believe it rashly, but also to attempt to teach it impudently.

What, then, is more absurd than to say that heaven and earth would not exist unless the structure of the world were necessary for the purging of souls, when Scripture promises another heaven and another earth to those who are purged? Moreover, regarding the sun and moon and the other stars, we see that they are celestial bodies; that they are animate beings we do not see. Let this be read in the divine books, and we believe it. For the testimony from the Apostle’s Epistle, which you said they are accustomed to cite, can also be understood of human beings alone; since in each individual human being there is every creature, not universally as heaven and earth and all things that are in them exist, but in a certain generic way: because in him there is the rational part, which angels are either proven or believed to have; and, so to speak, the sentient part, which beasts also do not lack—for they too are stirred by senses and sensory motions to seek what is useful and avoid what is harmful; and the vital part lacking sense, such as can be observed in trees; for in us too bodily growth occurs without our sensation, and hairs, when cut, do not feel, yet they grow. And indeed the corporeal creature itself appears more evidently in us, which, although made and formed from earth, nevertheless contains within it certain particles from all the elements of this material world, for the sake of the balance of health.

For by heat the limbs are invigorated, which heat comes from fire, whose light also flashes forth through the eyes; and by air the courses of the veins, which they call arteries, and the breathings of the lung are filled; and if there were no moisture, no spittle would collect, and dryness would consume life. For blood itself, filling other veins with its moist flow, is diffused through all parts like streams and rivers. Thus there is no kind of creature that cannot be recognized in man: and so all creation groans and grieves in him, awaiting the revelation of the sons of God (Rom. 8:22); which, through the resurrection of the body as well, even if not in all men, will nevertheless be freed entirely from the servitude of corruption, because in each individual all creation exists. And if in some other, more familiar way the same passage of the apostolic letters can be understood, still it does not follow from those same words that we should believe that the sun and moon and stars groan together until, at the end of the age, they are freed from the servitude of corruption.

Chapter IX. — 12. Now since I have said, "Let it be read in the Divine Books, and we believe," lest perhaps you be deceived by what those who assert these things are accustomed to adduce from the book of holy Job, where it is written: "How can a man be just before the Lord, or how shall he cleanse himself who is born of a woman? If He commands the moon, and it does not shine, nor are the stars clean before Him; how much more is man putrefaction and the son of man a worm" (Job 25:4-6)? For from this they wish to understand that the stars have a rational spirit and are not clean from sin, but are in the heavens because a lesser or better place was merited by a lesser fault. I do not think that this opinion is to be received on divine authority: for Job himself did not utter it, to whom singular testimony is in a certain way divinely given, that he did not sin with his lips before the Lord (Job 1:22); but it was one of his friends, who are all called comforters of many (Job 16:2), and were reproved by divine judgment.

Just as in the Gospel, although it is entirely true that things were said, yet not everything that was said is believed to be true, since the truthful Gospel Scripture testifies that many false and impious things were said by the Jews; so in this book, where many persons are narrated to have spoken, it must be considered not only what is said, but also by whom it is said, lest, indiscriminately accepting what is written in any holy book, we be forced to admit—which God forbid—that what the foolish woman suggested to the holy husband, that he might be freed from that unbearable punishment by saying something against God and dying, was true and just (Job 2:9). I have not said this because those friends, reproved by the Lord and justly blamed by the holy servant of God himself, could have spoken nothing true; but because not everything they said is to be thought true. For although they said nothing true against Job, yet one who knows how to discern wisely what is said can also take from their words some sound opinion as a testimony of truth. But when, in our inquiries, we wish something to be proven to us by the testimony of holy scriptures, let it not be said to us that we must believe even what is written in the Gospel, if perhaps the evangelist records that he said it to whom faith is not to be given. For it was said there by the Jews to the Lord Christ, "Do we not speak truly, that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?" (John 8:48).

We detest that statement all the more, the dearer Christ is to us; yet we cannot doubt that it was uttered by the Jews, since we believe the Gospel narrative to be most true. Thus we neither detract from the faith of the Evangelist who wrote it, nor do we execrate the voice of the blaspheming Jew. Nor do we accord canonical authority to the faith even of impious and nefarious men, nor even of those who are still small in faith and still raw and untaught, who happen to be mentioned as speaking there. For, just because the man whose blind eyes the Lord had opened said, "We know that God does not hear sinners" (John 9), we ought not to accept that statement as if it were of Gospel authority, so as to resist the very words of the Lord in the Gospel, who by divine testimony confirmed that the one who said, "Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner," came down from the temple more justified than the Pharisee who recalled and boasted of his own righteousnesses (Luke 18:10-14). Nor should this recently enlightened man in the flesh be angry that we said that, in the apprenticeship of his faith, when he still did not know who it was who had healed him, he put forward a less circumspect statement, that God does not hear sinners: since even the Apostles themselves, chosen above all others and clinging to the Lord's side and hanging on his words, are found to have said many things worthy of reproach, which it would be lengthy to recount, just as blessed Peter, concerning some of his own words, not only deserved to be rebuked but even to be called Satan (Matthew 16:23).

CHAPTER X.—13. However, in comparison with the justice of God, if not even the holy angels are said to be just, this opinion does not seem to me untimely: not because they fell from justice in order to be what they are, but because they were made, and are not God, and cannot possess as much spiritual light as He who made them. For there is supreme justice where there is supreme wisdom: and this is God, of whom it is said, "Only to the wise God" (Rom. 16:27). But it is another question how much of His justice the angels grasp, and how much they do not grasp. For by whose participation they are just, by comparison with Him they are not just. CHAPTER XI.—14. But that, as I said, is another question; another is about the stars and the sun and the moon, whether they have rational spirits in these visible and luminous bodies: which bodies whoever doubts does not know what a body is at all. Nor do these matters much concern us, so that we should take great pains to investigate them, which are remote from our senses and from the weakness of human understanding, nor are they so placed in the Scriptures that their knowledge is commanded to us. Indeed, lest we rush headlong with suspicion into sacrilegious fables, divine Scripture cries out, "Do not seek things higher than yourself, and do not scrutinize things stronger than yourself; but always think of what the Lord has commanded you" (Sirach 3:22): so that in these matters rash presumption seems more blameworthy than cautious ignorance.

The Apostle certainly says: "Whether Thrones, or Dominations, or Principalities, or Powers" (Colossians 1:16). And so I most firmly believe that there are Thrones, Dominations, Principalities, Powers in the heavenly arrangements, and I hold with undoubted faith that they differ among themselves in some respect; but, to your contempt, you who think me a great teacher, I do not know what these are and how they differ among themselves. Nor do I think I am endangered by that ignorance, as I would be by disobedience if I neglected the Lord's precepts; and I think that the Spirit of God, through our authors, the writers of the holy scriptures, did not fully explain these things, but touched upon them briefly and cursorily; so that if perhaps someone like us, through a higher revelation, has had something of this kind shown to him, he should not believe that those through whom the holy proclamations of the canonical Scriptures were ministered to us were inferior to him. For however much one advances in knowledge, he will find himself so far below those Scriptures, which God established as a firmament above all human hearts. Therefore it is not necessary to know more, but to know with moderation, just as God has apportioned to each the measure of faith (Romans 12:3). Perhaps those more learned than I will lead you, if you turn to them with as great a desire for learning as you have a zeal for knowing; lest you think unknown things are known; lest you believe what should not be believed, or not believe what should be believed. Rather, that one true Master will teach you, whether through them or not.

or in whatever ways He wills, He who, for the sake of His Church, looks upon you laboring and has bestowed this also upon you, will Himself more fully disclose the truth, He who sees you knocking, and to whom He has deigned to grant charity.