Teaching Christianity
people say, that they would much prefer to do without a body altogether, they are completely mistaken; it is not in fact their bodies that they really hate, but the weight of them and their liability to decay. And so it is not that they do not wish to have a body at all, but that they would like to have a body that does not decay and that is as fleet and swift as a bird. But they assume that if anything is like that, it is not a body, because they think that that is what the soul is like.[24]
As for their apparently harrying their bodies with selfrestraint and hard toil, if they are doing this in the right manner, they are not doing it in order not to have bodies at all, but in order to have them broken in and ready for any necessary work. They are aiming, you see, by subjecting the body to a kind of arduous drill, at extinguishing the lusts that make bad use of the body, that is to say the habits and tendencies of the soul to seek enjoyment in inferior things. They are not, after all, doing away with themselves, but taking care of their true health of mind and body.
25. As for those who do this in the wrong manner, they are waging war against their bodies as if they were their natural enemies. Here they are being misled by their reading of the text, The flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other (Gal 5:17). Now this was said with an eye to the undisciplined habits of the flesh, against which the spirit is lusting, not in order to do away with the body, but in order to break in its lusts, that is its bad habits, and thereby make it subject to the spirit, as the natural order of things requires. This, after all, is how it will be after the resurrection, that the body, being in every possible way quietly and supremely peacefully subject to the spirit, will enjoy a flourishing immortality; so thought has to be given even in this life to making changes for the better in the habits of the flesh, and not letting them put up a resistance to the spirit with their disordered impulses. But until this happens, the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. This does not mean that the spirit resists the flesh out of hatred, but out of principle, because it wishes what it loves all the more to be subordinate to the better. Nor does it mean that the flesh resists the spirit out of hatred, but only because it is being dragged along by the chains of habit, which have grown into a kind of law of nature, being rooted in the inheritance derived from our first parents.[25] So what the spirit is doing in taming the flesh is canceling as it were the perverse agreements made with bad habits, and making peace with good habits.
All the same, not even those who have been seduced by false ideas into loathing their bodies would be prepared to lose one eye, even if they felt no pain, and even if the sense of sight left in the other was as acute as it had been in both, unless they were constrained to it by some cause or thing that was clearly to be preferred. And so it is by such evidences as this that people who are seeking the truth without obstinately sticking to their opinions can be shown how definitive the apostle's judgment is, where he says, For nobody has ever hated his own flesh. He also added, but he nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the Church (Eph 5:29).
25, 26. So what human beings have to be instructed in is precisely the way in which we are to love ourselves so as to benefit from it. But to doubt whether we do love ourselves and wish to benefit from doing so is simply crazy. We also need to be instructed how to love our bodies, so as to care for them in an orderly and prudent manner. Because again, it is equally obvious that we do also love our bodies, and wish to have them hale and hearty. So then, you can, of course, love something more than the health and well-being of your body. We find, after all, that many people have willingly submitted to pain and the loss of some of their organs or limbs—but in order to obtain other benefits which they valued more highly. So it is no reason to say that people do not value the health and safety of their bodies, just because there is something they love more. Take the case of a miser, for instance; even though he loves money, he still buys himself bread, and when he does this he gives away money that he loves so much and wants to get more of. But this is because he places a higher value on the welfare of his body, which is maintained by that bread. It would be a waste of time to discuss such a totally obvious point any further, though for all that the error of godless people[26] so often obliges us to do so.
The right order of love
26, 27. So there is no need, then, for a commandment that we should love ourselves and our bodies, because it is by an unalterable law of nature that we do love what we are and what is below us but still part of us. The same law has been enacted for animals—I mean, animals too love themselves and their bodies. But the need remained for us to receive commandments about what is above us, and what is next to us. You shall love, he says, the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole mind; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depends the whole law, as well as the prophets (Mt 22:37.39–40). And so the end of the commandment is love (1 Tm 1:5), and this is twofold—love, that is to say, of God and neighbor.
But if you understand yourself as the whole of you, that is your spirit and body, and your neighbor as the whole of him, namely his spirit and body—man, after all, consists of spirit and body;[27] then no kind of things that are to be loved has been overlooked by these two commandments. When indeed love of God is put first, and the manner of that love is clearly prescribed, indicating that everything else is to converge on it, nothing seems to be said about love of yourself. But when it says, You shall love your neighbor as yourself, love of yourself by yourself is being simultaneously included.
27, 28. But living a just and holy life requires one to be capable of an objective and impartial evaluation of things; to love things, that is to say, in the right order, so that you do not love what is not to be loved, or fail to love what is to be loved, or have a greater love for what should be loved less, or an equal love for things that should be loved less or more, or a lesser or greater love for things that should be loved equally. No sinner, precisely as sinner, is to be loved; and every human being, precisely as human, is to be loved on God's account, God though on his own. And if God is to be loved more than any human being, we all ought to love God more than ourselves. Again, other people are to be loved more than our own bodies, because all these things are to be loved for God's sake, and other people are capable of enjoying God together with us, which our bodies cannot do, because what gives life to our bodies is our souls, and it is with these that we enjoy God.
28, 29. All people are to be loved equally; but since you cannot be of service to everyone, you have to take greater care of those who are more closely joined to you by a turn, so to say, of fortune's wheel, whether by occasion of place or time, or any other such circumstance. Say, for example, that you had a surplus of something, which ought properly to be given to anyone who had none of it, but there was not enough to give to two people. If you came across two people of whom neither was more obviously in need, or more closely related to you than the other, there is nothing more just that you could do than to toss for it, to decide which of them should be given what could not be given to both. In the same way, as you are unable to take care of all your fellow men, treat it as the luck of the draw when time and circumstance brings some into closer contact with you than others.[28]
29, 30. Now of all those who are able to enjoy God together with us, some we love as people we can help, some as people we can be helped by, some as ones both whose help we need, and whose needs we help to meet, while there are some on whom we ourselves confer no benefits, and from whom we do not expect any either. Still, we ought to want all of them to love God together with us, and all our helping them or being helped by them is to be referred to that one single end.
If, for example, in the theaters of godlessness someone has a favorite actor, and enjoys his art as a great, not to say the greatest good, he also loves all those who share his love for this actor, not loving them for their own sakes, but on account of the man they all love together; and the more ardent his love for him is, the more he tries in whatever way he can to get him loved by more people, and the more he longs to show him off to as many others as he can. And if he notices someone is rather cool about him, he tries to stir him up by singing the actor's praises, while if he finds someone who takes an opposite view of his favorite actor, he hates and detests that person's dislike of his favorite, and sets about trying to eradicate it in whatever way he can.
So what in comparison ought we, in the fellowship of the love of God, to be doing, seeing that enjoying him means living in bliss, and that from him all those who love him derive both their very existence and their love for him, and that about him it is impossible to fear that anyone who knows him should dislike him, and that it is his will that he should be loved, not to gain anything from it himself, but in order to confer on those who love him an eternal reward, which is in fact himself, the very one they love? The consequence of this is that we should love our enemies; after all, we have nothing to fear from them, because they cannot possibly deprive us of what we love; instead we feel sorry for them, because the more they hate us, the more it shows how far they are cut off from the one whom we love. If, however, they are converted and turn back to him, they must needs love both him as their bliss-conferring good, and us as their companions in enjoying such an unimaginable good.
Whether we are also commanded to love the angels
30, 31. Here, however, quite a considerable question arises about the angels. They, after all, are in bliss by enjoying the one we too are eager to enjoy; and the more we enjoy him in this life, at least in a mirror or in a riddle (1 Cor 13:12), the more tolerable we find it to put up with our wanderings away from him, and the more ardently we long for them to come to an end. But the question can be asked, not unreasonably, whether love for the angels is included in those two commandments. That the one who commanded us to love our neighbor made no exception of any human being is something the Lord himself showed us in the gospel, as well as the apostle Paul. You remember that when the man to whom he quoted those two commandments, saying that the whole law and the prophets depended on them, went on to ask him, And who is my neighbor? (Lk 10:29),[29] he presented him with the case of a certain man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, who fell among thieves and was badly wounded by them, and left seriously hurt and half dead. The lesson he taught was that the only one who acted as neighbor to this man was the one who took pity on him to the extent of reviving him and treating his wounds, as the man who had asked him the question was obliged to admit when questioned in his turn. To him the Lord said, Go and do likewise yourself (Lk 10:37).
In this way we are given to understand that anyone is our neighbor to whom the duty of compassion is to be extended when needed.[30] From which it now follows that anyone by whom such a kindness in turn should be shown to us is also our neighbor. But anybody can see that no exception is made of any to whom the duty of compassion can be denied, when