kind of wave of mocking criticism of Christians for worshiping a God who could die. These attacks
196 SAINT A UGUSTINE - SERMONS mixed with flesh than God with man; and yet no human being would be human unless a human spirit were mixed with a human body. Yet to produce a human being, a human spirit, though it isn't body, and a human body, though it isn't spirit, have been mixed together. So how much easier must it have been for God, who is spirit, in order to produce one Christ from both, to be mixed in a spiritual partnership, not with a body apart from spirit, but with a man who had a spirit?5
Go along with a humble God
4. So let us too take pride in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world may be crucified to us and we to the world.6 It was to save us from being ashamed of that cross that we placed it right on our foreheads, that is, on the dwelling place of shame.7
But now, if we were to attempt to explain what lesson in patience is to be found in this cross, or how salutary it is, what words could do justice to the subject, what time suffice for the words?8 Could anyone, I mean, who genuinely and seriously believes in Christ, have the audacity to be proud, when God teaches humility not only by word but by example? How useful this lesson is, though, the following sentence from holy scripture briefly assures us: Before ruin the heart is lifted up, and before glory it is humbled (Prv 18:12);9 which accords with that other text, God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble (1 Pt 5:5; Jas 4:6; Prv 3:34 LXX); and that other one, Any who exalt themselves shall be humbled, and any who humble themselves shall be exalted (Lk 14:11; 18:14).
Accordingly, since the apostle urges us not to have big ideas, but to go along with humble folk,10 we should consider, as far as we can, over what precipice of pride we human beings may tumble if we don't go along with a humble God; and how pernicious it must be for us human beings to be impatient in bearing what a just God wills, when God was so patient in enduring what an unjust enemy willed.
NOTES
1. This sermon, urging the congregation not to be ashamed of the cross, seems to presuppose a kind of wave of mocking criticism of Christians for worshiping a God who could die. These attacks would come from pagans of some education and philosophical pretensions; and such pagans were most volubly inclined to attack Christianity after the sack of Rome by the Goths in 410, when many refugees from the city fled, incidentally, to North Africa. So it is more than possible that this sermon was preached round about then, about the same time as Augustine was beginning to write The City of God in defense of Christianity precisely against this sort of attack. But some scholars prefer to date this sermon before 410.
2. I supply the word "ungodly," which is missing at least from my text; I think it must be a misprint. It reads, qui eisdem donavit adhuc mortem. The adhuc, still, just hangs in the air, not governing anything: still what? The only possible answer is adhuc impiis.