Teaching Christianity (continued)
Lord"; the third, "about the promises and the law"; the fourth, "about species and genus"; the fifth, "about times"; the sixth, "about recapitulation"; the seventh, "about the devil and his body."
When looked at indeed as employed by him, they are of no small assistance in penetrating the hidden meanings of the divine utterances. All the same, not everything that is so written as not to be easily understood can be deciphered by these rules; but a number of other ways are required which this man did not include in his list of seven, to the extent, indeed, that he himself explains many obscurities without applying any of these rules, since in fact they are not needed there. Nothing like them, in fact, is employed or looked for, where he is inquiring in John's Apocalypse how the angels of the seven Churches are to be understood, to whom he is commanded to write;[63] and he produces many arguments to conclude that we should understand the Churches themselves as being the angels. In this wide-ranging discussion there is no mention of these rules, and it is a very obscure point that is being examined there. That must be sufficient by way of an example, because it would take far too long and be much too much trouble to list all the places in the canonical scriptures which are so obscure that none of these seven keys may be expected to unlock them.[64]
43. When this man, though, was putting these forward as rules, he attributed such effective force to them, that if only we knew and applied them well, we would be enabled to understand everything that we find stated obscurely in the law, that is in the divine books. At least, he opened this very book with these words: "I considered it necessary, before all the other ideas I have, to write a little book of rules, and to forge as it were keys and lamps for the hidden secrets of the law. For there are certain mystical rules which can gain admittance to the inner chambers of the whole law, and render visible the treasures of truth that are invisible to some people. If my account of these rules is accepted ungrudgingly, in the spirit in which I offer it, all closed doors will be opened and dark places lit up, so that anyone strolling through the vast forest of prophecy will be protected by these rules from error, being guided by them, so to say, along paths of light."
Here, if he had said, "for there are certain mystical rules which can gain admittance to not a few of the inner chambers of the law," or even, "which can gain admittance to the important inner chambers of the law," and not what he actually did say, "the inner chambers of the whole law," and if he had not said, "all closed doors will be opened," but "many closed doors will be opened," what he said would have been true, and he would not have raised false hopes in those who wish to read and know his extremely painstaking and useful work, by giving it a bigger boost than the actual matter calls for. The reason I thought this had to be said is that on the one hand this book ought to be read by serious students, because it is of the greatest help in understanding the scriptures, and on the other one should not hope to get from it what it cannot provide. It certainly needs to be read with caution, not only because of some points on which he erred just by being human, but supremely because of the things he says precisely as a Donatist heretic. But let me now briefly indicate what these seven rules teach or advise us.
31, 44. The first one is "about the Lord and his body." We know that we are sometimes being given hints that head and body, that is Christ and Church, constitute one person— after all, it was not without reason that the faithful were told Then you are the seed of Abraham (Gal 3:29), although there is only one seed of Abraham, which is Christ. So according to this first rule we should not let it baffle us when a text passes from head to body and from body to head, and yet still refers to one and the same person. It is one person speaking, you see, where it says, He placed a turban on my head as on a bridegroom, and adorned me with ornaments as a bride (Is 61:10); and yet of course we have to understand which of these two fits the head, which the body; which fits Christ, that is, and which the Church.
32, 45. The second one is "about the twofold body of the Lord." It should not in fact have been called that, because that which will not remain with him for ever in eternity is not really the body of the Lord; but it should have been called "about the true and the mixed body of the Lord," or "the true and pretended body," or something else like that; because it is not only in eternity but even now that hypocrites should not be said to be with him, even though they appear to be in his Church. Hence this rule could also have been given a name and title such as "about the Church as a mixture."
This rule calls for wide-awake understanding, when a text, which is in fact already addressed to others, seems to be addressed to the very people whom it was addressing[65]—as though both sorts belonged to one body, because they are temporarily mixed up together, and share the same sacraments. This from the Song of Songs, for example: I am swarthy and beautiful as the camps of Kedar, as the tents of Solomon (Sg 1:5). She did not say, you see, "I was dusky as the camps of Kedar, and I am beautiful as the tents of Solomon," but she said she was each of them at the same time because of the temporary unity within a single net of both good and bad fish together. The camps of Kedar, after all, belong to Ishmael, who will not be an heir with the son of the free woman.[66]
So too, while God says about the good sort, I will lead the blind along a road which they have not known, and they shall tread paths which they have not known, and I will turn darkness into light for them, and make what is crooked straight; these are the words I will perform, and I will not abandon them, he goes on immediately to say, They however turned backward (Is 42:16–17), although others are now being meant by these words, namely the other bad sort that are mixed in together with the good.[67] But since they are now all in one body together, he appears to be speaking about the same ones as he was speaking about first; they will not, however, always be in one and the same body. This in fact is that servant mentioned in the gospel, whose master, when he comes, will divide him and put part of him with the hypocrites (Mt 24:51).[68]
33, 46. The third rule is "about the promises and the law," which could otherwise be called "about the spirit and the letter," which is what I myself called it when I wrote a book on this topic. It could also be called "about grace and commandments." It strikes me, though, as being more a very large question, than a rule to be applied to the settling of questions. This is the thing the Pelagians failed to understand, and so either laid the foundations of their heresy or built more on them. Tychonius did some good work in his treatment of it, but still left something to be desired. While discussing faith and works, he said that our works are given to us by God on the strength of our faith, but that faith itself comes from us in such a way that we do not have it from God.[69] He failed to notice what the apostle says, Peace to the brethren, and charity with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (Eph 6:23).
But then he had had no experience of this heresy, which has arisen in our time, and has engaged us so much in defending against it the grace of God that comes to us through our Lord Jesus Christ; and according to the apostle's words, There must be heresies, so that those who are tried and tested may be shown up (1 Cor 11:19), it has made us much more vigilant and alert, so that we notice in the holy scriptures what escaped the attention of Tychonius, lacking as he did an enemy to make him wary, namely that faith too is a gift of the one who assigns the measure of it to each one (Rom 12:3). By the same token others were told, To you it has been granted for Christ's sake, not only that you should believe in him, but also that you should suffer for him (Phil 1:29). Who then, on hearing with faithful intelligence that each thing has been granted, could doubt that each is a gift of God? There are also many other passages that could be quoted to support the point, but this is not what we are dealing with at the present moment; we have, though, dealt with it often enough in all sorts of other places.[70]
34, 47. Tychonius' fourth rule is "about species and genus." That, you see, is what he calls it, wishing "species" to be understood as the part, "genus" as the whole, of which that is a part which he calls species. Thus any city[71] is of course a part of the totality of nations; so he calls it a species, while he calls all the nations the genus. Nor do we have in this case to make the subtle distinction which is taught by the logicians, who go in for very keen arguments about the difference between "part" and "species." The same rule applies if anything of the sort is found in the divine literature, not about some city, but about some province or single nation or kingdom. It is not only, for example, a matter of something being said about Jerusalem or some other city of the nations, whether Tyre or Babylon or any other you like, that exceeds its limitations and is suited rather to all the nations, but also of what is said about Judea, about Egypt, about Assyria and any other nation in which there is any number of cities. Such countries, all the same, are not the whole world but parts of it, and things are sometimes said about them that exceed their limits and are applicable rather to the whole of which they are parts—or in this man's terms to the genus of which they are the species.
It is from this usage, in fact, that these words have entered the common language, so that even the uneducated understand what is of special and what is of general application in any imperial decree. The same rule also applies to people, as when things said about Solomon exceed