Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians

Latin source: Jerome's commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, in three books (written at Bethlehem about 386–388 for Paula and Eustochium), from Vallarsi's text as printed in J.-P. Migne, Patrologia Latina 26 (Paris, 1845), cols. 307–438, verified against the page images and collated with Vallarsi's edition (Venice, 1769). Scripture is translated as Jerome quotes it, from his own Latin; Psalms keep the Latin (LXX) numbering. The Scripture references are the editors', not Jerome's, and are given corrected where Migne misprinted them. The words of Galatians that Jerome expounds are in italics; the footnotes give the alternative readings printed in Migne and a few remarks on its text. This English translation is released into the public domain.

Prologue

Very few days have passed since, having interpreted Paul's epistle to Philemon, I had gone on to the Galatians, passing over many epistles in between, going backward; and behold, suddenly letters were brought to me from the City, announcing both that Albina, the venerable old woman, had been returned to the presence of the Lord, and that the holy Marcella, bereft of her mother's companionship, now more than ever begs for your consolation, O Paula and Eustochium. And since this cannot be done for the present, because of the great expanses of sea and land between us, I would wish at least to heal the wound so suddenly inflicted with the medicine of the Scriptures. I know, indeed, her ardor; I know her faith, what a flame she always has in her breast, how she rises above her sex, forgets the human, and, with the timbrel of the divine volumes sounding, crosses the Red Sea of this age. Certainly, when I was at Rome, she was never in such haste when she saw me that she did not ask me something about the Scriptures. Nor indeed, in the Pythagorean manner, did she think that whatever I had answered was right; nor did prejudged authority carry weight with her without reason; but she examined everything, and weighed all things with a shrewd mind, so that I felt I had not so much a disciple as a judge. Therefore, since I judge that it will be most welcome to her in her absence, and useful to you who are present, I shall undertake a work not attempted before me by the writers of our language, and taken up even by the Greeks themselves by scarcely a few, in the way the dignity of the subject demanded. Not that I am unaware that Gaius Marius Victorinus, who taught rhetoric at Rome when I was a boy, published Commentaries on the Apostle; but because he, occupied with the learning of secular letters, was wholly ignorant of the holy Scriptures; and no one, however eloquent, can discuss well what he does not know. What then, am I foolish or rash, who promise what he could not do? By no means. Rather, in this, as it seems to me, I am more cautious and more timid, in that, feeling the weakness of my powers, I have followed the Commentaries of Origen. For that man wrote five volumes properly on Paul's epistle to the Galatians, and filled the tenth book of his Stromata with a commatic discourse on its explanation; he also composed various Treatises and Excerpts, which even by themselves could¹ suffice. I pass over Didymus, my seer, and the Laodicean (Apollinaris), who has lately gone out from the Church, and Alexander, the old heretic, and also Eusebius of Emesa and Theodore of Heraclea, who likewise left some little commentaries² on this matter. If I were to pluck even a few things from these, something would result that would not be utterly despised. And so, to confess it plainly, I have read all these things, and, heaping up a great many of them in my mind, I summoned a secretary and dictated either my own thoughts or those of others, retaining a memory sometimes neither of the order, nor of the words, nor of the meanings. It now rests only with the Lord's mercy that the things others have said well should not perish through our unskillfulness, and that what pleases among its own people should not fail to please among strangers. Therefore, briefly summarizing the argument of this Epistle, I remind you by this preface, so that you may know that the subject matter of Paul's Epistle to the Galatians and of the one written to the Romans is the same. But the difference between the two is this: that in the latter he used a loftier sense and deeper arguments, while here, as though writing to those of whom he says in what follows, "O senseless Galatians", and, "So unwise are you", he tempered himself to such a style that he rebuked rather than taught, and used a style which even the foolish could understand, so as to clothe common thoughts in common speech, and so that authority might call back those whom reason could not persuade. There is indeed no discourse of the Apostle, whether by letter or in person, in which he does not labor to teach that the burdens of the ancient Law have been laid aside, and that all those things which went before in types and images, that is, the rest of the sabbath, the injury of circumcision, the recurrences of the Kalends and of the three solemn feasts in the year, the scrupulousness about foods, and the washings day after day that were to be soiled again, have ceased as the grace of the Gospel stole in, which not the blood of victims but the faith of the believing soul fulfills. But elsewhere this is discussed in part, and from the side, as this question presented itself to him while he was dealing with something else, and it is barely touched upon. In these two Epistles, however, as I have said, the cessation of the ancient law and the introduction of the new are specifically contained. But the Epistle to the Galatians has this peculiar to it, that he does not write to those who had believed in Christ from among the Jews and thought that their fathers' ceremonies ought to be observed, but to those who had received the faith of the Gospel from among the Gentiles and, having slipped back again, had been frightened off by the authority of certain men who asserted that Peter too, and James, and the whole churches of Judaea had mixed the Gospel of Christ with the old law; that Paul himself also did one thing in Judaea and preached another to the nations; and that they believed in the Crucified in vain if they thought that what the chiefs of the apostles observed should be neglected. For this reason he walks so cautiously between the two, and down the middle, that he neither betrays the grace of the Gospel, pressed by the weight and authority of his elders, nor does injury to his predecessors while he is the champion of grace; but going obliquely and as if secretly through tunnels, so as³ to teach that Peter did this for the sake of the people of the circumcision entrusted to him, lest, suddenly departing from their ancient way of life, they should be caused to stumble and not believe in the Cross; and that he himself, to whom the preaching to the Gentiles had been entrusted, judged it right to defend for the sake of truth what the other pretended for the sake of dispensation. Not understanding this at all, the Batanean, that wicked Porphyry, in the first book of his work against us, objected that Peter had been rebuked by Paul because he did not walk with a straight foot in preaching the gospel, wishing to brand the one with the stain of error and the other with that of insolence, and to accuse both in common of the falsehood of a fabricated doctrine, since the chiefs of the Churches disagree⁴ among themselves. These things, in what sense they were said, we touch on lightly even now at your prayers, and we will treat them more fully in their proper places. But it is now time to set down the words of the Apostle himself and to unfold each of them one by one.

Book One

1:1

Paul an apostle, not from men, nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead.

Not out of pride, as some think, but out of necessity, he declares that he is an Apostle neither from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, so that by this authority he might confound those who were bandying Paul about as being outside the twelve apostles, and were alleging that he had burst forth suddenly from I know not where, or had been ordained by those senior to him. It can also be taken as said obliquely against Peter and the rest, that the Gospel was not handed down to him by the apostles but by Jesus Christ himself, who had also chosen those apostles. All this, moreover, is prepared for this reason: that no one might be able to object to him, as he argues against the burdens of the Law on behalf of the grace of the Gospel: "But Peter said this," "But the apostles decreed this," "But your predecessors decided otherwise." This, which he now preludes as if in veiled language, he makes more plain in what follows, when he reports that nothing was conferred upon him by those who seemed to be something, and writes that he withstood Peter himself to his face, saying that he was compelled by no necessity to yield to the hypocrisy of the Jews. But if it seems rash to some that he should have spoken against the apostles, however covertly, he who went⁵ to Jerusalem for this very purpose, to confer with them about the Gospel, lest perhaps he should run or had run in vain, let us transfer the understanding to this: that to this day apostles are sent out by the patriarchs of the Jews, and by such men, I think, the Galatians were even then corrupted and began to observe the Law; or at any rate that others from among the Jews who believed in Christ went to Galatia, asserting that Peter too, the chief of the apostles, and James the brother of the Lord, kept the ceremonies of the Law. So, to distinguish between those who are sent by men and himself, who was sent by Christ, he made this his opening: Paul an apostle, not from men, nor through man. Now "apostle," that is, "sent," is properly a word of the Hebrews, and Silas⁶ also has this sound, he to whom the name "sent" was given from sending. The Hebrews say that among the prophets themselves and the holy men there are some who are both prophets and apostles, but others who are only prophets. Thus Moses, to whom it is said: "And I will send you to Pharaoh" (Exod. 3:10, 11); and who answers: "Provide another whom you may send"; and Isaiah, to whom God speaks: "Whom shall I send, and who will go to this people" (Isa. 6:8)? are both apostles and prophets. Hence we too can understand that John the Baptist also should be called both prophet and apostle, since indeed Scripture says: "There was a man sent from God, whose name was John" (John 1:6). And we can understand that in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Heb. 3) Paul, contrary to his usual custom, set at its head neither his own name nor the title of apostle for this reason, that he was going to say of Christ: "Having therefore the chief of priests and the apostle of our confession, Jesus"; and that it was not fitting that where Christ was to be called an apostle, Paul should also be set down there as an apostle. Now there are four kinds of apostles. One, which is neither from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father; another, which is indeed from God, but through man; a third, which is from man and not from God; a fourth, which is neither from God, nor through man, nor from man, but from oneself. Of the first kind can be Isaiah and the other prophets, and the apostle Paul himself, who was sent neither from men nor through man, but by God the Father and Christ. Of the second, Joshua the son of Nun, who was indeed appointed an apostle by God, but through a man, Moses. The third kind is when someone is ordained by the favor and zeal of men, as we now see very many put into the priesthood not by the judgment of God but by the purchased favor of the crowd. The fourth is that of the false prophets and false apostles, of whom the apostle says: "Such men", he says, "false apostles, workers of iniquity, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ, who say: Thus says the Lord; and the Lord has not sent them" (2 Cor. 11:13). But the apostle Paul is not such a one, he who was sent neither from men nor through man, but from God the Father through Jesus Christ. From this it is proved that the heresy of Ebion and Photinus is to be beaten back from this place too, because our Lord Jesus Christ is God: since the Apostle, because he was sent by Christ to preach the Gospel, denies that he was sent by a man. At this place the other heresies creep in, which, claiming for Christ a putative flesh, say that Christ is God and not man; and also the new heresy, which asserts a halved dispensation of Christ. And so the faith of the Church is set amid such great shipwrecks of false doctrines: if it confesses⁷ Christ to be man, Ebion and Photinus creep in; if it contends that he is God, Manichaeus and Marcion, the author of a novel doctrine, bubble up. Let them therefore hear in common that Christ is both God and man: not that God is one and man another, but that he who was always God deigned to become man for our salvation. It should also be known that in Marcion's Apostle the words and through God the Father are not written, since he wished to explain that Christ was raised not by God the Father but by himself, as in that saying: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (John 2:19); and also elsewhere: "No one takes my soul from me; but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and again I have power to take it up" (ibid., 10:18).

1:2

And all the brothers who are with me, to the churches⁸ of Galatia.

In the other Epistles Sosthenes and Silvanus, and sometimes Timothy as well, are placed first in the opening; in this one alone, because the authority of a great many was needed, the name of all the brothers is taken up. These too were perhaps of the circumcision, and were not held in contempt by the Galatians. For the judgment and agreement of many on one matter does a very great deal toward correcting a people. But as to his saying, to the churches of Galatia: this too is to be noted, that here alone he writes in general terms, not to one church of one city, but to the churches of a whole province, and that he calls churches those which he afterwards accuses of having been corrupted by error. From this we are to learn that the Church can be spoken of in two ways: both as that which has no spot or wrinkle and is truly the body of Christ, and as that which is gathered in the name of Christ without full and perfect virtues (Eph. 5). In the same way the wise are named in two senses: both those who are of full and perfect virtue, and those who are beginning and are set on the way of progress. Of the perfect it is said: "I will send wise men to you" (Luke 11:49). Of the unwise: "Rebuke a wise man, and he will love you" (Prov. 9:8). For he who is of full and consummate virtue does not need reproof. According to this sense the other virtues too are to be understood: namely, that brave and prudent, pious, chaste, righteous and temperate are taken sometimes in the full sense, sometimes loosely.

1:3

Grace to you, and peace from God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ.

Not as in the other Epistles does he set down the grace and the peace of God the Father and of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which, without the merit of works, both our former sins have been forgiven us and peace has been granted after pardon; but he is now prudently pleading the case against those who had been forestalled by the Law and thought that they could be justified by works, so that they might know that they had been saved by grace and ought to persevere in that which they had begun.

1:4-5

Who gave himself for our sins, to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of God and our Father, to whom is glory unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Neither did the Son give himself for our sins without the will of the Father, nor did the Father hand over the Son without the Son's will; rather, this is the will of the Son: to fulfill the will of the Father, as he himself says in the psalm: "That I might do your will, my God, I have willed" (Ps. 39:9). Now the Son gave himself in order that he, Righteousness, might overthrow the unrighteousness that was in us. Wisdom handed itself over to conquer foolishness. Holiness and strength offered itself to blot out filth and weakness. And so he has delivered us not only in the age to come, according to the promised hope by which we believe, but also here, from the present age: while, having died together with Christ, we are transfigured into newness of mind, and are not of this world, by which, deservedly, we are not loved either. It is asked how the present age has been called evil. For heretics are accustomed to seize occasions from this passage to assert that there is one creator of light and of the age to come, and another of darkness and of the present age. We, however, say that it is not so much the age itself, which runs on by day and night, by years and months, that is called evil, as, homonymously (ὁμωνύμως), the things that are done in the age: just as the day is said to have enough of its own evil (Matt. 6), and the days of Jacob are written to be few and very evil (Gen. 47). Not that the span of time in which Jacob lived was evil, but that the things he endured exercised him through various trials. Indeed, at the very time when he was serving for his wives and was struggling with many hardships (Gen. 29), Esau was at rest; and so the same span of time was good for one and evil for the other. Nor would it have been written in Ecclesiastes: "Do not say that my former⁹ days were good beyond these" (Eccles. 7:11), except with a view to the difference of evils. Hence John says: "The whole world is set in the wicked one" (1 John 5:19). Not that the world itself is evil, but that evils are done in the world by men who say, "Let us eat and drink", "for tomorrow we shall die" (Isa. 22:13). And the Apostle himself: "Redeeming", he says, "the time, because the days are evil" (Eph. 5:16). Woodlands too are given a bad name when they are full of robberies, not because the earth and the forests sin, but because the places too have drawn upon themselves the infamy of murder. We also detest the sword by which human blood has been shed, and the cup in which poison has been mixed, not for any sin of the sword or of the cup, but because those who have used them ill deserve hatred. So also the age, which is a span of times, is not in itself either good or evil, but is called good or evil through those who are in it. For this reason the ravings and fables of Valentinus are to be despised, who fabricated his thirty aeons (αἰῶνας) from the fact that "ages" are read of in the Scriptures, saying that they are living beings, and that by tetrads and ogdoads, and also decads and dodecads, they produced as many numbers of ages as the young that the sow of Aeneas brought forth. We must also inquire what difference there is between "age" and "age of the age," or "ages of ages," and where it is used for a short span of time, and where for eternity: for in Hebrew "age," that is, OLAM (עלם), when it has the letter VAV placed in it, signifies eternity, but when it is written without VAV, the fiftieth year, which they call the Jubilee. For this reason too that Hebrew who, because of his wife and children, loving his master, is subjected to servitude with his ear pierced, is ordered to serve "for ever" (in sæculum) (Exod. 21), that is, up to the fiftieth year. And the Moabites and Ammonites (Deut. 23) do not enter the church of the Lord up to the fifteenth generation, and "for ever": because every hard condition was dissolved at the coming of the Jubilee. Some say that there is the same sense in "ages of ages" as in "holy of holies," in "heavens of heavens," in "works of works," in "Song of Songs": and that the difference the heavens have with respect to those whose heavens they are, and the holy things which, in comparison with holy things, are holier, and the works which, preferred above works, are better, and the Songs which excel among all songs, the age too has the same difference with respect to those which, in comparison with ages, are ages. Accordingly they explain the present age by saying that it is to be counted from the time when heaven and earth were founded, and that it runs up to the consummation of the world, when Christ is to judge all things. They also go back beyond this and advance their step into earlier things, disputing about past and future ages, whether they were or will be good or evil: and they fall into such deep questions that they have even composed books and endless volumes on this discussion. As for the fact that Paul's prologue concludes with AMEN, a word of the Hebrew tongue: AMEN (אמן) the Seventy translated γένοιτο, that is, "let it be"; Aquila πεπιστωμένος, "truly" or "faithfully." This the Savior too always uses in the Gospel, confirming his own words by AMEN.

1:6-7

I marvel that you are so quickly transferred from him who called you into the grace of Christ Jesus, to another Gospel which is not another, unless there are some who trouble you and wish to overturn the Gospel of Christ.

We first read the word "transfer" in Genesis (Gen. 5), where "God transferred Enoch, and he was not found". And afterwards in the books of Kingdoms (1 Kings 21), when his wife Jezebel transferred Ahab from the worship of God to the veneration of idols, so that he did according to all that the Amorite did, whom the Lord destroyed from before the face of the children of Israel. But although each is a transfer, the one is God's, the other the devil's. He who is transferred by God is not found by his enemies, nor can the one who lies in wait creep up on him. This indeed is what I judge "and he was not found" to signify. But he who is transferred by the devil is transferred into that which seems to be, but is not. The wise men of the age, too, call those who are transferred from one doctrine to another "transferred": thus that Dionysius (whose opinion had formerly been that pain is not an evil, but who, after he was overwhelmed by calamities and tormented by pain, began to affirm that pain was the greatest of all evils) was called by them the Transposed (Transpositus), or the Transferred (Translatus), because, namely, departing from his former tenet, he had fallen back into its contrary. Paul therefore marvels: first, that they have been transferred from the freedom of the Gospel into the slavery of legal works; next, that they were transferred so quickly, since it is not the same guilt to be transferred by someone with difficulty and to be transferred quickly; just as in martyrdom he who without struggle and torments leapt forward at once to deny is not punished with the same penalty as he who, twisted amid the rack, the cords and the fires, was compelled to deny what he believed. The preaching of the Gospel was still recent; no great time lay in between since the Apostle had brought the Galatians over from idols to Christ. He marvels therefore how they had so quickly departed from him in whose name they had lately been made Christians. The passage itself also has a ὑπέρβατον (hyperbaton, a transposition of word order), which can be read in its proper order thus: I marvel that you are so¹⁰ quickly transferred from Christ Jesus, who called you into grace, saying: "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners" to repentance (Mark 2:17). For by grace we have been saved, and not through the law (Eph. 2:8). "But you have been transferred," he says, "to another Gospel, which is not another": because everything that is false does not subsist, and what is contrary to the truth is not, as in that verse: "Give not, O Lord, your scepter to those who are not" (Esther 14:11). And God called the things which were not, so as to make to be that which was not. Now if this is said of those who believed in the same God and had the same Scriptures, that they were transferred to another Gospel which is not a Gospel, what ought we to think of Marcion and the other heretics, who reject the Creator and feign a Christ of another God? They do not slip and fall in the interpretation of the law and the letter, or in the struggle of flesh and spirit, but they are at variance with the whole order of the Church. And he says finely: Unless there are some who trouble you, and wish to overturn the Gospel of Christ. "They wish," he says, "to change, to overturn, to disturb the Gospel of Christ": but they are not able. For its nature is such that it cannot be other than what is true. Everyone who interprets the Gospel in another spirit and mind than it was written troubles believers and overturns the Gospel of Christ, so as to put behind the back what is in front, and to turn into the front what is behind the back. If anyone follows only the letter, he puts the hinder parts in front. If anyone acquiesces in the interpretations of the Jews, he casts behind his back the things which by their own nature were set in front. And this too is fitting, that the word "transfer" has been fitted to the Galatians: for Galatia in our language means "transfer".

1:8-9

But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach the gospel to you other than what we have preached to you, let him be anathema. As we said before, and now I say again: if anyone has preached the gospel to you other than what you have received, let him be anathema.

It can also be taken as said hyperbolically: not that either an apostle or an angel could have preached otherwise than they had once spoken, but that, even if it could come about that both apostles and angels were changed, still one must not¹¹ depart from what had once been received; especially since the Apostle himself in another place shows the firmness of his faith, saying: "I know that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor strength, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 8:38). "I speak the truth, I do not lie, my conscience bearing me witness" (Rom. 9:1). These indeed are not the words of one who could at some time depart from the faith and love of Christ. But those who will not have this said καθ᾽ ὑπόθεσιν (hypothetically), but in earnest, namely that both apostles and angels can be turned to worse things, object that Paul himself also knew that he could fall if he acted too slackly, saying: "But I subdue my body and bring it into slavery, lest, while preaching to others, I myself be found reprobate" (1 Cor. 9:27); that angels too are changeable, who did not keep their principality but, leaving their own dwelling, are reserved under darkness in eternal chains for the judgment of the great day (Jude 6); that the nature of God alone is unchangeable, of whom it is written: "But you are the same" (Ps. 101:28). And he says of himself: "I am your God, and I do not change" (Mal. 3:6). That Lucifer fell, who rose in the morning, and that he who once sent to all the nations was crushed upon the earth. Elegantly, on this passage, that most learned man Tertullian, writing against Apelles and his virgin Philumene, whom a certain perverse angel of a devilish spirit had filled, writes that this is the angel on whom, long before Apelles was born, anathema was prophesied by the Apostle through the foretelling of the Holy Spirit. Moreover, ἀνάθεμα is properly a word of the Jews, and it is set down¹² both in Joshua son of Nun (Josh. 6:17) and in Numbers (Num. 21), when the Lord commanded that all the things that were in Jericho, and those of the Midianites, be held as objects of detestation and anathema. Let us ask those who assert that Christ and the apostle Paul are respectively the son and the slave of the good God, who was unknown until that time, a God who does not know how to curse and has never learned to condemn anyone: how is it that his Apostle now uses a word of the Jews, that is, of the Creator, and wishes either an angel or an apostle to perish, when he himself is not accustomed to take vengeance? But in adding as we said before, and now I say again, he shows that at the beginning too, guarding against this very thing, he had pronounced anathema on those who were going to preach otherwise, and that now, after the preaching has been done, he decrees the anathema which he had foretold before. And for this reason he pronounced anathema both on himself, whom they accused of doing one thing in Judea and teaching another among the Gentiles, and on an angel, who was admittedly greater even than the apostles who preceded him: so that the authority of Peter and John might not be thought great, since neither he himself, who had taught them before, nor an angel was permitted to preach otherwise than they had once learned. So he named himself and the angel expressly, but the others without a name: If anyone, he says, has preached the gospel to you, so that by a general term he might do no injury to his predecessors, and yet might covertly point to their names.

1:10

For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? If I were still pleasing men, I would not be the slave of Christ.

Let us not suppose that we are being taught by the Apostle to despise the judgments of men after his example, since in another place he said: "Knowing therefore the fear of the Lord, we persuade men; but to God we are manifest" (2 Cor. 5:11); and this: "Be without offense to the Jews, and to the Gentiles, and to the Church of God, just as I also please all men in all things, not seeking what is useful to me, but what is useful to many, that they may be saved" (1 Cor. 10). But if it can be that we please God and men alike, men too must be pleased. If, however, we do not please men otherwise than by displeasing God, we ought to please God rather than men. Besides, he himself also adds why he pleases all men in all things: "Not seeking", he says, "what is useful to me, but what is useful to many, that they may be saved". Now he who, out of that love which does not seek the things that are its own but the things that are another's, pleases all men that they may be saved, certainly pleases God first, to whom the salvation of men is a care. Moreover, the word that has been specially added here, now, also implies that men are either to be pleased or to be displeased according to the time: so that he who now does not please on account of the truth of the Gospel may once have pleased for the salvation of very many. Paul had at one time pleased the Jews, when, being a zealot for the ancestral traditions, he had formerly lived in the law without reproach; and he had so much ardor and faith in the ceremonies of the forefathers that he was¹³ a partaker in the killing of Stephen, and went on to Damascus to bind those who had fallen away from the law (Acts 9). But after he was transferred from a persecutor into a vessel of election and began to preach the faith which he had once fought against, he began likewise to displease the Jews whom he had pleased before. This, then, is what he says: Do I seek to please the Jews, by displeasing whom I have pleased God? For if I were pleasing them, I would still not be the slave of Christ. For I would be upholding the law and destroying the grace of the Gospel. But now, for this reason, I am not induced even into a pretense of observing the law: because I am not able¹⁴ to please God and the Jews alike; for whoever pleases them displeases God. The very word to persuade, too, is taken from human usage, when someone tries to implant in others as well what he himself holds and has once imbibed; and it is read in very many places of the Scriptures, among which is this: "The persuasion is not from him who called you" (Gal. 5:8). And also in the Acts of the Apostles: "So many Jews came to him at his lodging, to whom he expounded, testifying to them the kingdom of God, and persuading them concerning Jesus from the Law of Moses and the Prophets until evening". Now all this was because it had been disseminated¹⁵ concerning him that he secretly kept the Law, and that at Jerusalem he had entered into fellowship with those who were Judaizing.

1:11-12

For I make known to you, brothers, the Gospel which was preached by me: that it is not according to man; for neither did I receive it from man, nor did I learn it, but through the revelation of Jesus Christ.

By this passage the doctrine of Ebion and Photinus is crushed, in that Christ is God, and not only a man. For if the Gospel of Paul is not according to man, and he neither received it from man nor learned it, but through the revelation of Jesus Christ, then Jesus Christ, who revealed the Gospel to Paul, is certainly not a man. And if he is not a man, it follows that he is God. Not that we deny that a man was assumed, but that we reject that he is only a man. It is asked whether the Churches of the whole world have received the Gospel of God, or that of man: for how few of us have learned through the revelation of Christ, and have not come to know it through a man preaching? To this we shall answer that those who can say: "Do you seek a proof of him who speaks in me, Christ" (2 Cor. 13:3)? and: "But I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2:20), are not so much themselves the ones teaching as God in them, who says to the saints: "I have said, You are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High" (Ps. 81:6); and at once, of sinners: "But you shall die like men, and shall fall like one of the princes". Since, then, Paul speaks, and Peter, who do not die like men nor fall like one of the princes, it is manifest that they are gods. And those who are gods hand on the Gospel of God, and not of man. Marcion and Basilides and the other plagues of the heretics do not have the Gospel of God, because they do not have the Holy Spirit, without whom the Gospel that is taught becomes human. Nor let us think that the Gospel lies in the words of the Scriptures, but in the sense; not on the surface, but in the marrow; not in the leaves of the words, but in the root of the meaning. It is said in the prophet concerning God: "His words are good with him" (Mic. 2:7). Scripture is profitable to those who hear it only when it is not spoken without Christ, when it is not brought forward without the Father, when he who preaches does not instill it without the Spirit. Otherwise both the devil, who speaks from the Scriptures, and all the heresies, according to Ezekiel (ch. 13), sew for themselves from them pillows to place under the elbow of every age. I too, who am speaking, if I have Christ in me, do not have the Gospel of man; but if I am a sinner, it is said to me: "To the sinner God said: Why do you declare my righteous deeds, and take my Testament upon your lips? But you have hated discipline, and have cast my words behind you" (Ps. 49:16, 17), and the rest that follows. It is a great danger to speak in the Church, lest by a perverse interpretation the Gospel of Christ should become the gospel of man, or, what is worse, of the devil. Between receiving and learning, moreover, there is this difference: he receives the Gospel to whom it is first instilled and who is led to faith in it, so that he believes that the things written are yours. But he learns who comes to know, explained and set out in discourse, the things which are figured in it through enigmas and parables; and he comes to know them not by a man revealing them, but by Christ, who revealed them to Paul, or through Paul, in whom Christ speaks. The very word ἀποκαλύψεως, that is, of revelation, also belongs properly to the Scriptures, and was used by none of the wise men of the world among the Greeks. Hence it seems to me that, as with other words which the Seventy translators carried over from Hebrew into Greek, so with this one too they took great pains to express the proper character of a foreign tongue, fashioning new words for new things; and that it signifies when something covered and veiled, its covering taken off from above, is shown and brought forth into the light. That this may become plainer, take an example. Moses used to speak with God with face revealed and open (Exod. 33, 34), that is, without a veil; but when speaking to the people, because they were not able to look upon his face, he put a veil on his face (Num. 4). Before the Ark of the Testament, too, a veil had been spread: and when it had been drawn back, the things which before had been hidden were brought forth, and, to use the very word, were revealed. If, therefore, those who are accustomed to read the eloquent writers of the world begin to mock us for the novelty and meanness of our language, let us send them to the books of Cicero which are entitled On Questions of Philosophy, and let them see by how great a necessity he was compelled there to bring forth such monstrous words as the ear of a Latin man never heard; and this when he was translating into our tongue from Greek, which is a neighboring language. What do they endure who try to express the proper sense of Hebrew difficulties? And yet in such great volumes of the Scriptures there are far fewer things that have a ring of novelty than those which he gathered together in one small work. It can also be taken, as we said at the beginning when we were expounding "Paul an apostle, not from men, nor through man", so in the present passage too, as aimed obliquely at Peter and the others who preceded him: that he who has Christ alone as the teacher of the Gospel is moved by no one as by Law and authority. Moreover, he means that revelation when, going to Damascus, he was found worthy to hear the voice of Christ on the way, and with his eyes blinded beheld the true light of the world.

1:13-14

For you have heard of my conduct formerly in Judaism: that beyond measure I persecuted the Church of God, and fought against it; and I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries in my race, being more abundantly a zealot for the traditions of my fathers.

This narrative is of very great profit to the Galatians: how Paul, once the ravager of the Church and the fiercest defender of Judaism, was suddenly converted to the faith of Christ. And this at the time when the Crucified was first being proclaimed in the world, when the new doctrine was being driven from the bounds of the whole earth by both the Gentiles and the Jews. For they could say: If he who from an early age was trained in the disciplines of the Pharisees, who surpassed all his contemporaries in the Jewish tradition, now defends the Church which he once persecuted most vehemently, and would rather have the grace and newness of Christ with the ill will of all than the oldness of the Law with the praise of many, what ought we to do, who have begun to be Christians out of heathenism? And he fittingly added: Beyond measure I persecuted the Church of God, so that from this too admiration might arise, because it was not just anyone of those who persecuted the Church lightly, but he who outdid the rest in persecution, who was converted to the faith. And prudently, while narrating something else, he inserts that he had served not so much the Law of God as the ancestral traditions, that is, those of the Pharisees, who teach the doctrines and commandments of men (Matt. 15; Mark 7) and reject the Law of God in order to establish their own traditions. And how fine is the observation and the weight of the words: You have heard, he says, of my conduct formerly in Judaism: conduct, not grace; formerly, not now; in Judaism, not in the law of God. That beyond measure I persecuted the Church of God, and laid waste to it. He did not persecute as the others did, but beyond measure. Nor was a persecution, however vehement, enough for him: but like some brigand and robber he ravaged the Church. Nor does he say the Church of Christ, as he then thought¹⁶, Christ whom he held in contempt, whom he persecuted; but, as he now believes, the Church of God: signifying either that Christ himself is God, or that the Church belongs to the same God who was once the giver of the Law. And I advanced, he says, in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries in my race, being more abundantly a zealot for the traditions of my fathers. Again he calls it an advance not in the Law of God, but in Judaism. And not beyond all, but beyond very many; and not beyond the old, but beyond his contemporaries; so as both to relate his zeal in the Law and to avoid boasting. And in mentioning the traditions of the fathers, not the commandments of the Lord, he showed both that he was a Pharisee of Pharisees, and that he had indeed had a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. But to this very day those who understand the Scriptures in a Jewish sense persecute the Church of Christ and lay it waste, corrupted not by zeal for the Law of God but by the traditions of men.

1:15-16a

But when it pleased him who set me apart from my mother's womb, and called me through his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles.

Not only in this place, but also in writing to the Romans, Paul says that he was set apart for the Gospel of God. And Jeremiah, before he was formed in the womb and conceived in his mother's belly, is said to have been known to God and sanctified (Jer. 1). And in the person of the righteous man, or, as some think, in the person of the Savior, it is said (Ps. 21:11): "Upon you I was cast from the womb: from my mother's womb you are my God". On the other hand, David sings of sinners: "For behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins my mother conceived me" (Ps. 50:7). And in another place: "Sinners are estranged from the womb" (Ps. 57:4). And in both directions, before the little ones were born: "God loved Jacob, but Esau he held in hatred" (Mal. 1:1, 2). Here the heretics find an opening, who claim that there are diverse natures, namely the spiritual and the animal and the χοϊκὴν (earthy), and that one is saved, another perishes, and another stands between the two; for, they say, neither would the righteous man ever be chosen before he had done anything good, nor the sinner be hated before his sin, unless the nature of those who perish and of those who are to be saved were different. To this it can be answered simply that this comes about from the foreknowledge of God: that the one whom he knows will be righteous he loves before he comes forth from the womb, and the one whom he knows will be a sinner he hates before he sins; not that there is injustice in God, either in his love or in his hatred, but that he ought not to regard them otherwise, because he knows that they will be either sinners or righteous; we, as men, judge only of present things, whereas he, for whom future things are already done, passes sentence on the end of things, not on their beginnings. And these things indeed have been said rather simply, and without a loftier discussion they can in some measure satisfy the reader. But those who strive to assert that God is unjust, after the words we set down a little earlier, "sinners are estranged from the womb", also bring in the rest that follows: "They have gone astray from the womb, they have spoken falsehoods". And they say: how did sinners go astray straight from the womb and speak falsehoods, when they could have neither speech nor understanding? Or what is this righteousness of the foreknowledge of God, to love and guard one before he is born, and to detest another? And they refer the causes of this to a former life, holding that each one, according to his merit, is assigned from his very first birth to good or to evil angels. And that whole passage about Jacob and Esau, which we have just mentioned, as it is written to the Romans (Rom. 9), they toss about in such a way that they cannot be answered without sweat, and even the hellebore of Chrysippus. But to reveal his Son in me is not the same as if¹⁷ he were to say to reveal his Son to me. For to whom something is revealed, to him that can be revealed which was not in him before. But in whom something is revealed, that is revealed which was in him before and afterwards has been revealed. Similar is that saying in the Gospel: "He stands in the midst of you, whom you do not know" (John 1:26). And elsewhere: "That was the true light, which enlightens every man coming into the world" (ibid., 9). From this it becomes clear that the knowledge of God is present in all by nature, and that no one is born without Christ and without having in himself the seeds of wisdom and of righteousness and of the other virtues. Hence many, without faith and the Gospel of Christ, do some things either wisely or in a holy manner, such as obeying their parents, stretching out a hand to the needy, not oppressing their neighbors, not plundering what belongs to others; and they become¹⁸ all the more liable to the judgment of God, because, having in themselves the beginnings of the virtues and the seeds of God, they do not believe¹⁹ in him without whom they cannot exist. The Son of God revealed in Paul can also be understood otherwise: that, through his preaching, he was recognized by the Gentiles, who had not known him before.

1:16b

Immediately I did not acquiesce in flesh and blood.

Or, as it stands better in the Greek: "I did not confer with flesh and blood". I know that most people think this was said of the apostles. For Porphyry too raises the objection that after the revelation of Christ he did not deign to go to men and confer in discourse with them, lest, that is to say, after being taught by God he should be instructed by flesh and blood. But far be it from me to think Peter, John and James flesh and blood, which cannot possess the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 15:50). If the spiritual apostles are flesh and blood, what are we to think of the earthy (χοϊκοῖς)? Plainly, Paul did not confer with flesh and blood after the revelation of Christ, because he did not wish to cast pearls before swine, nor to give what is holy to dogs (Matt. 7). See what is written of sinners: "My spirit shall not remain in these men, because they are flesh²⁰" (Gen. 6:3). With such as were flesh and blood, which also did not reveal the Son of God to Peter (Matt. 16), the Apostle did not confer the Gospel that had been revealed to him, but little by little he turned them from flesh and blood into spirit, and only then did he entrust to them the hidden mysteries of the Gospel. Someone may say: If he did not immediately confer the Gospel with flesh and blood, yet it is understood by implication that he conferred with blood and flesh afterward; and this sense, by which the apostles are excused from being flesh and blood, will not be able to stand, since he who at the beginning did not confer with flesh and blood nonetheless afterward, as I said, conferred with flesh and blood. This placing of the word before constrains us to divide the sentence so that we do not join at once (statim), or immediately (continuo), with flesh and blood, but make it cling to what precedes, and it is read: "But when it pleased him who set me apart from my mother's womb"; and then: "To reveal his Son in me"; and finally: "That I might preach him among the Gentiles immediately"; so that "I did not confer with flesh and blood" begins from its own opening. And we should rather judge that the sense stands thus: that he who had been sent immediately after the revelation of Christ to announce the Gospel to the Gentiles did not stand still, nor drag out the time with certain delays by going to the apostles and conferring the Lord's revelation with men, but went away into Arabia, and having returned again to Damascus, preached the Gospel after three years, and only then, coming to Jerusalem, saw Peter, John and James.

1:17

Nor did I come to Jerusalem to the apostles, my predecessors.

If he had said of the apostles, "I did not confer with flesh and blood", what need had there been to repeat the very same thing by saying: Nor did I come to Jerusalem to the apostles, my predecessors? So the sense that we set out above must be held.

But I went away into Arabia: and again I returned to Damascus. The order of the history does not seem to agree with itself, since Luke relates in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 9) that when Paul, after his faith in Christ, had for many days been speaking the Gospel boldly at Damascus, a plot was laid against him, and he was let down through the wall by night in a basket, and came to Jerusalem trying to join himself to the disciples; and that, when they avoided him and were afraid to approach him, he was brought by Barnabas to the apostles, and there related how he had seen the Lord on the road, and how he had acted with confidence at Damascus in the name of the Lord²¹. "He was", he says, "with them, going in and going out in Jerusalem, acting with confidence²² in the name of the Lord. He also spoke and disputed with the Greeks: but they sought to kill him. And when the brothers had learned this, they brought him down to Caesarea, and sent him off to Tarsus" (Acts 9:28-30). Here, however, he says that he first went into Arabia; and that, having returned again to Damascus, he came after three years to Jerusalem, saw Peter, and stayed with him fifteen days, and met no one else besides James, the brother of the Lord. And so that these things may be believed true (for they could seem doubtful to those who were absent), he confirms them under oath, saying: "But the things that I say to you, behold, before God, I do not lie." We can therefore judge that Paul was indeed at Jerusalem, according to Luke's history, not as though going to the apostles who were his predecessors in order to learn something from them, but in order to escape the onslaught of persecution that had been stirred up against him at Damascus on account of the Gospel of Christ; and that he thus came to Jerusalem as he would to any other city. That from there he at once withdrew because of the plots, and came to Arabia, or to Damascus; and from there, after three years, returned to Jerusalem to see Peter. Or certainly thus: that as soon as he was baptized, and strengthened by taking food, he was with the disciples who were at Damascus for some days; and, while all were astonished, he at once preached in the synagogues of the Jews that Jesus was the Son of God; and that he then went into Arabia, and returned from Arabia to Damascus, and spent three years there: and these are the many days to which Scripture testifies, saying: "But when many days were fulfilled, the Jews took counsel to kill him" (Acts 9:23). But their plot became known to Saul: and they watched the gates day and night, in order to kill him. So his disciples took him by night and let him down through the wall, lowering him in a basket. And when he had come to Jerusalem, he tried to join himself to the disciples. And that Luke passed over Arabia for this reason, because perhaps he had accomplished nothing worthy of his apostleship in Arabia; and that he chose rather to tell, in a concise narrative, those things that seemed worthy of the Gospel of Christ. Nor is it to be counted as sloth on the Apostle's part if he was in Arabia to no purpose²³: rather, there was some dispensation and a command of God that he should keep silent. For afterward too we read that Paul, having set out with Silas, was forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia (Acts 16). Otherwise: "But I went away into Arabia; and again I returned to Damascus." What does this account profit me, if I read that Paul, after the revelation of Christ, at once went into Arabia, and from Arabia at once returned to Damascus, and yet I do not know what he did there, or what usefulness the going and the returning had? The Apostle himself, in this same Epistle, gives me occasion for a higher understanding, when, disputing about Abraham, Hagar and Sarah: "These things indeed", he says, "are spoken through allegory. For these are the two Testaments: the one from Mount Sinai, bearing children into slavery, which is Hagar. For Sinai is a mountain in Arabia, which is joined to that which is now Jerusalem" (Gal. 4:24, 25). And he teaches that the Old Testament, that is, the son of the handmaid²⁴, is set in Arabia (which means "humble and setting"). As soon, then, as Paul believed, he turned to the Law, to the Prophets, to the mysteries of the Old Testament, already placed in its setting, and sought Christ in them, whom he had been commanded to preach among the Gentiles: and having found him, he did not stay there longer, but returned to Damascus, that is, to the blood and passion of Christ; and from there, strengthened by the reading of the prophets, he goes on to Jerusalem, the place of vision and of peace, not so much to learn something from the apostles as to confer with them about the Gospel that he had taught.

1:18

Then after three years I came to Jerusalem to see Peter.

Not to look at his eyes, his cheeks and his face, whether he was lean or stout, whether his nose was hooked or straight, and whether hair covered his forehead or (as Clement relates in the Periodi of Peter) he had a bald head. Nor do I think it would have befitted apostolic gravity that, after so great a preparation of three years, he should have wished to look at something human in Peter. But he looked at him with those eyes with which he too is now seen in his Epistles. With those eyes Paul saw Cephas with which Paul himself is now beheld by all the wise. But if anyone does not see it so, let him join²⁵ all these things with the earlier sense: that the apostles conferred nothing on him. For the fact that he appears²⁶ to have gone to Jerusalem means that he went there in order to see the apostle, not from a desire to learn, since he himself had the same author of his preaching, but to pay honor to the earlier apostle.

And I remained with him fifteen days. He who had prepared himself for so long a time to see Peter did not need much instruction. And although to some it may seem superfluous to observe even the numbers that are in the Scriptures, yet I think it not beside the point that the fifteen days during which Paul stayed with Peter signify full knowledge and perfected doctrine. For there are fifteen songs in the Psalter, and fifteen steps by which they go up to sing to God, and by which the righteous man goes up to stand in his courts. Hezekiah too, when a span of fifteen years of life was granted him, deserves to receive a sign on the steps (Isa. 38); and the solemn feasts of God begin from the fifteenth day (Exod. 12). Moreover (since we follow a twofold understanding), he sets down fifteen days for this reason: to show that it was not a long time in which he could have learned anything from Peter, so that everything may be referred back to the sense with which he began: that he was taught not by man but by God.

1:19

But of the other apostles I saw none, except James the brother of the Lord.

I remember that while I was at Rome, at the urging of the brothers, I published a book on the perpetual virginity of holy Mary. In it I had to argue at some length about those who are called the brothers of the Lord. Hence, whatever the things we wrote there are worth, we ought to be content with them. For now let this suffice: that because of his excellent character, his incomparable faith and his uncommon wisdom he was called the brother of the Lord; and because he was the first to preside over the Church which, the first to believe in Christ, had been gathered from the Jews. The other apostles too are indeed called brothers of the Lord, as in the Gospel: "Go, tell my brothers: I go to my Father and to your Father, and to my God and to your God" (John 20:17). And in the psalm: "I will declare your name to my brothers; in the midst of the Church I will sing to you" (Ps. 21:22). But this man is called brother in a special way, to whom the Lord, as he was going to the Father, had entrusted the sons of his mother. And just as Job and the other patriarchs were indeed called servants of God, yet Moses had something as it were outstanding, so that it was written of him, "But not as Moses my servant" (Heb. 3:5): so too blessed James was specially called the brother of the Lord (as we said before). As for the fact that, apart from the twelve, certain men are called apostles, the reason is this: all who had seen the Lord and afterwards preached him were called apostles, as is written to the Corinthians: "That he was seen by Cephas, after this by the eleven; then he was seen by more than five hundred brothers at once, of whom many remain until now, but some have fallen asleep; then he was seen by James, then by all the apostles" (1 Cor. 15:5 ff.). But gradually, as time went on, and elsewhere, by those whom the Lord had chosen, apostles were ordained; as that passage to the Philippians declares, saying: "But I thought it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother, fellow worker and fellow soldier, but your apostle and the minister of my need" (Phil. 2:25). And to the Corinthians it is written of such men: "Or the apostles of the churches, the glory²⁷ of God" (2 Cor. 8:23). Silas also and Judas were named apostles by the apostles. Hence he erred greatly who thought that this James was the one in the Gospel, the apostle, the brother of John, who, it is agreed, shed his blood for Christ after Stephen, according to the testimony of the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 12). This James, however, was the first bishop of Jerusalem, surnamed the Just: a man of such holiness and of such renown among the people that they vied with one another in their eagerness to touch the fringe of his garment. He too was afterwards thrown down from the temple by the Jews, and had as his successor Simon, who also, they relate, was crucified for the Lord. He therefore denies that he met any of the apostles besides these, lest a hidden objection should arise: "Even if you were not taught by Peter, you had other apostles as your teachers." And he did not see them, not because he held them in contempt, but because they had been scattered over the whole world to preach the Gospel.

1:20

But the things I write to you: behold, before God, I do not lie.

This may be taken either simply, so that the sense is: The things I write to you are true, and I confirm with God as witness that they are colored by no art of words and by no falsehood. Or more deeply, so that it is read: The things I write to you are before God, that is, worthy of God's sight. But why worthy of God's sight? Because, namely, I do not lie. And just as the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous (Ps. 33), but he turns away his face from the sight of the ungodly, so now the things that are written are before the Lord, since I who write do not lie; they would not be before the Lord if I were lying. Now this can be taken not only of the things he now writes to the Galatians, but also generally of all his Epistles: since the things he writes are not false, and his heart and his words do not disagree.

1:21

Then I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia.

After seeing Jerusalem he came to Syria, which in our tongue is called "lofty and sublime." And from there he passed over to Cilicia, which he desired to take up into the faith of Christ, proclaiming to it the calling of repentance: for Cilicia means "taken up," or "lamentable calling."

1:22-24

But I was unknown by face to the churches of Judaea which were in Christ Jesus. But they had only heard that he who once persecuted us now preaches the faith which he formerly fought against; and they glorified God in me.

The churches that were in Judaea had known Paul only by report. Of these, most had seen him as a persecutor rather than as an apostle. But Syria and the regions of Cilicia, Arabia and Damascus had perhaps known him by face as well, because the Teacher of the Gentiles was preaching the Gospel of Christ not to the Jews but to the Gentiles. Now the whole of what he is doing is this: to teach that he could never, from being a persecutor, have become glorious among those very people whom he had previously persecuted, unless his preaching had been approved by the judgment even of those who had earlier known him as a wicked man. And he covertly returns to his purpose, confirming that he had spent so short a time in Judaea that he was unknown even by face to the believers. From this he shows that he had not had Peter, not James, not John as his teachers, but Christ, who had revealed the Gospel to him. At the same time it should be noted that above he is said to have fought against the Church, here against the faith: there men, here a thing; so that now²⁸ it might more fittingly be added: "He preaches the faith which he once fought against." For the words could not have sounded the same way of the Church.

2:1-2

Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along also. And I went up according to revelation; and I conferred with them the Gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but privately with those who seemed, lest perhaps I should run, or had run, in vain.

What the Latin translator had rendered above as "I acquiesced" (acquievi), in the place where it is written: "Immediately I did not acquiesce to flesh and blood", he has in the present place translated I conferred (contuli) rather than "I acquiesced" (acquievi). And to speak more truly, the Greek word ἀνεθέμην means something other than is understood among us: namely, when we confer with a friend the things we know, and as it were lay them up in his bosom and his conscience, so that by a shared counsel the things we know may be either approved or disapproved. He went up, therefore, to Jerusalem after fourteen years; and he who earlier had gone only to see Peter, and had stayed with him fifteen days, now says that he went for this reason, that he might confer the Gospel with the apostles, taking along Barnabas, who was circumcised, and Titus, from the Gentiles, who had a foreskin: so that at the mouth of two and three witnesses every word might stand (Deut. 19:15). But it is one thing to confer, another to learn. Among those who confer there is equality; between one who teaches and one who learns, the one who learns is the lesser. At the beginning of his faith he saw²⁹ the apostles in passing. After (as he himself says) seventeen years, he speaks with them fully, and humbles himself, and inquires whether perhaps he might be running or might have run in vain. This was for a twofold reason: so that both the humility of Paul might be shown, who, though already the teacher of the Gentiles in the whole world, had run to the apostles who preceded him; and so that the Galatians might learn³⁰ that even those who presided over the churches in Judaea had not rejected his Gospel. At the same time he also teaches this: that for the faith of Christ and the freedom of the Gospel he dared to bring Titus, an uncircumcised man, before the very men who had come to know many things about him, namely that he was breaking the Law, destroying Moses and doing away with circumcision entirely. And amid so great a multitude of Jews and of his own enemies, who, as if out of zeal for the Law, longed to drain his blood, neither he himself nor Titus was overcome by any terror into yielding to necessity. Such a yielding could have had pardon, whether on account of the place, or of the authority of the elders, or of the number of the churches which, from among the Jews, believed in Christ, or on account of the time, lest they should bear so great an ill will all at once. Some say that he went up to Jerusalem after fourteen years at the time when, as the Acts of the Apostles relate, a dissension arose among the believers at Antioch over questions of keeping or setting aside the Law, and it was decided to go to Jerusalem and await the judgment of the elders, when Paul himself too and Barnabas were sent; and that this is what is read in the Latin codices: "To whom we yielded in subjection for an hour, that the truth of the Gospel might continue with you." That is to say, for this reason Paul and Barnabas, about a clear matter as though it were doubtful, allowed themselves to be sent³¹ to Jerusalem: so that the grace of the Gospel, confirmed also by the judgment of the elders, might be proved to the believers, and that no doubt about the abandonment of circumcision might remain any longer, since it had been commanded by the letter of the apostles that the yoke of the Law was to be removed from those of the Gentiles who had believed in Christ. But what he says: "I conferred with them the Gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but privately with those who seemed, lest perhaps I should run, or had run, in vain", can also be understood thus: that he conferred secretly with the apostles on the grace of evangelical freedom and the oldness of the abolished Law, on account of the multitude of believing Jews, who could not yet bear to hear that Christ is the fulfillment and end of the Law, and who, even in Paul's absence, had loudly declared³² at Jerusalem that he was running, or had run, in vain, since he thought that the old Law was not to be followed. Not that Paul feared that for seventeen years he had preached a false Gospel among the Gentiles, but so that he might show his predecessors that he was not running, nor had run, in vain, as they in their ignorance had supposed.

2:3-5

But neither was Titus, who was with me, compelled to be circumcised, though he was of the Gentiles. But because of the false brothers brought in by stealth, who stole in to spy out our freedom, which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might reduce us to slavery: to whom we did not yield in subjection even for an hour, that the truth of the Gospel may remain with you.

If Titus, though he was of the Gentiles, could be compelled by no terror to be circumcised at Jerusalem, in the metropolis of the Jews, in which Paul was inflamed by such great odium for blasphemy against Moses that he was afterwards almost killed by the Jews, when he is freed by the tribune and sent in chains to Rome to Caesar: how is it that some think it should be read, "to whom we yielded in subjection for an hour, that the truth of the Gospel may remain with you", and understood to mean that Titus himself, who could not be compelled to circumcision before, was afterward circumcised and made subject? Or what is this truth of the Gospel: to yield to the hypocrisy of the Jews, and to observe the things which you formerly reckoned as dung and despised as losses, and to reckon them to be something, when they are nothing? But it is also strongly opposed to the sense of the Epistle itself to call the Galatians back to circumcision. Through the whole fabric of his discourse he works at this: to teach that he, a Hebrew of Hebrews, who once kept all the works of the Law, circumcised on the eighth day according to the Law of the Pharisees, nevertheless despises all things for the sake of the grace of Christ. For when he had gone to Jerusalem, and the false brothers who had believed from the circumcision wished to drive him to circumcise Titus, he teaches that neither Titus nor he himself yielded to violence so as to fail to guard the truth of the Gospel. But if he says that he was overcome by necessity so as to circumcise Titus, how does he call the Galatians back from circumcision, from which he could not exempt even Titus, who had been with him, one of the Gentiles, at Jerusalem? Therefore either we must read according to the Greek manuscripts, "To whom we did not yield in subjection even for an hour", so that what follows can be understood consistently: "that the truth of the Gospel may remain with you." Or, if anyone is satisfied with the reliability of the Latin copy, we ought to take it according to the sense given above: that the yielding for an hour was not one of circumcising Titus, but of going to Jerusalem. In this, namely, Paul and Barnabas yielded to the subjection of going to Jerusalem, for this reason, when a sedition had been stirred up at Antioch over the Law: that through the Epistle of the apostles their own view might be confirmed, and the truth of the Gospel might remain with the Galatians, a truth which would not be in the letter but in the spirit; not in a carnal sense but in spiritual understanding; nor in manifest Judaism but in the hidden. It should be known, moreover, that the conjunction but (autem), which is placed in the present passage, But because of the false brothers brought in by stealth, is superfluous; and if it is read, it has nothing to answer to it and to complete it; rather, the order of the reading and of the sense is: But neither was Titus, who was with me, compelled to be circumcised, though he was of the Gentiles. And at once he adds what the cause was that he was being driven to circumcision against his will: Because of the false brothers brought in by stealth, he says, who stole in to spy out our freedom, which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might reduce us to slavery. Though they terrified us with threats and wished by their numbers to lead us over from the freedom of Christ into the slavery of the Law, we did not yield to them even for a time, so as to circumcise Titus; especially since some necessity, for the sake of the Church's peace, could also have excused us; and we did all this so that no occasion might arise for you to withdraw from the grace of the Gospel. If, then, we at Jerusalem, among so many Jews, with false brothers pressing upon us from this side and that, and with those who were greater holding us back in some measure, could be compelled by no force or reasoning to observe the circumcision which we knew to be ended: you, from the Gentiles, you in Galatia, you on whom no force can be brought to bear, withdrawing of your own accord from grace, have passed over to the oldness of the Law, which is already abolished.

2:6

But from those who seemed to be something, what they once were makes no difference to me: God does not accept the person of man.

Although, he says, the Lord had Peter and John with Him as apostles, and they saw Him transfigured on the mountain (Matt. 17; Mark 9), and the foundation of the Church has been laid upon them, yet to me it matters nothing, because I am not speaking against those who followed the Lord at that time, but I am speaking against those who now set the Law before grace. I do not disparage my predecessors, nor do I in any respect accuse my elders, but I say this: that God does not accept the person of man. For He did not accept that of Moses, He did not accept that of David, He did not accept that of others; nor, therefore, will He accept that of those who seem to yield to certain people for a time, even though they themselves agree with me, since Peter too says: "In truth I perceive that God is not an acceptor of persons, but in every place he who fears Him and works righteousness is acceptable to Him" (Acts 10:34, 35). And so the very argument which the holy apostle Peter himself uses against those who found a stumbling block in Cornelius, baptized from among the Gentiles and not circumcised, when he placates them by saying that he could not deny water to those who had received the Holy Spirit, is the same one by which the holy apostle Paul now disputes against Peter himself: that God is not an acceptor of persons, but judges each one according to the truth. And so cautiously and step by step does he walk a middle way between praise and rebuke of Peter, that he both defers to the apostle who preceded him and nonetheless boldly withstands him to his face, compelled by the truth.

For to me those who seemed conferred nothing. He himself, above, conferred with them and reported to them many things that he was accomplishing among the Gentiles; they conferred nothing on him, but, merely approving what had been said by him, gave the right hands of fellowship and confirmed their own Gospel and Paul's as one. Again it must be noted that "conferred" (contulerunt) is in the Greek the very word which we discussed before.

2:7-9

But on the contrary, when they had seen that the Gospel of the uncircumcision was entrusted to me, as that of the circumcision to Peter. For he who worked in Peter for the apostleship of the circumcision worked also in me among the Gentiles. And when they had recognized the grace that was given to me, Peter and James and John, who seemed to be pillars, gave to me and to Barnabas the right hands of fellowship: that we should go to the Gentiles, and they themselves to the circumcision.

It is a ὑπέρβατον (hyperbaton, a transposition of word order), and once the many things inserted in the middle are removed, it can be read briefly thus: For those who seemed to be conferred nothing on me; but on the contrary they gave to me and to Barnabas the right hands of fellowship. Or certainly that hidden sense, free of any boasting of himself, is this: Those who seemed to be something conferred nothing on me; but on the contrary something was conferred on them by me, while they become firmer in the grace of the Gospel. But the whole of what he says is this: one and the same entrusted the Gospel of the uncircumcision to me, and that of the circumcision to Peter. He sent me to the Gentiles; he placed him in Judaea. For neither could the Gentiles, already of adult age, be tormented by the pain of circumcision, which would profit them nothing, and abstain from foods to which they had always been accustomed and which God had created for use; nor could those who had believed from among the Jews and were circumcised, and who, out of custom, as if it were a second nature, thought that they had something more than the other nations, easily despise the things in which they gloried. And so by the providence of God one apostle was given to the circumcised, who might seem to acquiesce in the shadows of the Law, and another to those placed in uncircumcision, who would not think the grace of the Gospel to be slavery, but free faith; lest on some pretext a hindrance to faith should arise, and on account of circumcision or uncircumcision men should not believe in Christ. Nor do we say this as though Peter, who also himself testified in the Acts of the Apostles that no man is common (Acts 10), and who was taught in that vessel which he had seen let down from heaven by its four corners that it makes no difference whether someone is a Jew or a Gentile, had, as if forgetful of his former understanding, thought the Law was to be observed over and above the grace of the Gospel; but rather that he too, pretending to keep the Law, might little by little lead the Jews away from their ancient manner of living. For they could not suddenly despise, as refuse and loss, so great a labor of observance and the most scrupulous conduct of their old life. From this we perceive that the right hands of fellowship were given to Paul and Barnabas by Peter, James and John for this reason: lest, through a differing observance, the Gospel of Christ should be thought to be diverse; but that there should be one communion both of the circumcised and of those who have the uncircumcision. And he has prepared the ground beautifully, saying: For he who worked in Peter for the apostleship of the circumcision: lest anyone should think that he was disparaging Peter; but rather so that, his praises having been set forth beforehand, it might be understood that Peter for this reason took up circumcision in some measure, that he might gain those from among the Jews who had been entrusted to him, and keep them in the faith and Gospel of Christ. He also implies that if Peter did this without fault, even by observing for a time what is not lawful, lest he lose those entrusted to him, all the more ought he himself, for the truth of the Gospel, to do what was entrusted to him in the uncircumcision, lest the Gentiles, frightened off by the burden and difficulty of the Law, should depart from the faith and belief of Christ. Here a hidden question arises: What then? If Peter had found any from among the Gentiles, did he not bring them to the faith? Or if Paul had come upon some from the circumcision, did he not call them to the baptism of Christ? It is resolved thus: we say that to each one a principal charge was given, toward the Jews and toward the Gentiles, so that those who defended the Law should have someone to follow, and those who preferred grace to the Law should not lack a teacher and guide. But they had this purpose in common, to gather a Church for Christ out of all the nations. For we read both that the Gentile Cornelius was baptized by holy Peter, and that Christ was very often preached by Paul in the synagogues of the Jews. "Peter, and John, and James, who seemed to be pillars" (Acts 10, 13, 17). Three times above we read concerning the apostles: "But privately to those who seemed." And: "By those who seemed to be something." And: "For those who seemed to be something conferred nothing on me." And so I was anxiously asking what it might be that he meant by "those who seemed"; but now he has freed me from every scruple by adding, who seemed to be pillars. The apostles, therefore, are the pillars of the Church, and especially Peter, James and John, two of whom were found worthy to go up the mountain with the Lord, and one of whom in the Apocalypse introduces the Savior speaking: "Whoever conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God" (Rev. 3:12), teaching that all believers who conquer the adversary can become pillars of the Church. And Paul, writing to Timothy, says: "That you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth" (1 Tim. 3:15). By these and other passages we are instructed that in the Scriptures the apostles and all believers, as well as the Church itself, are called a pillar, and that it makes no difference whether something is said of the body or of the members, since the body too is divided into members, and the members belong to the body. So Peter and James and John, who seemed to be pillars, gave to Paul and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship; but to Titus, who was with them, they did not give their right hands. For he had not yet come to such a measure that the merchandise of Christ could³³ be entrusted to him on equal terms with his elders, and that he could hold the same place in the trade that Barnabas held, and Paul.

2:10

Only that we should be mindful of the poor, which I also was anxious to do, this very thing.

The holy poor, whose care is enjoined especially by the apostles upon Paul and Barnabas, are those who, believing from among the Jews, brought the prices of their possessions to the feet of the apostles to be bestowed upon the needy, or because they were held in detestation and as an abomination by their fellow tribesmen, their kinsmen and their parents, as deserters of the Law and as believers in a crucified man. With how much labor the holy apostle Paul toiled in ministering to these, his Epistles are witnesses, as he writes to the Corinthians and to the Thessalonians, and to all the churches of the Gentiles, that they should prepare this gift, to be carried to Jerusalem by themselves or by others who pleased them. Hence he now says confidently, which I also was anxious to do, this very thing. But the poor can also be taken in another sense, those of whom it is said in the Gospel: "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:3). Such men indeed deserve to be in the memory of the apostles. And also those poor of whom it is written in Solomon: "The ransom of a man's soul is his own riches" (Prov. 13:8). But the poor man does not bear the threat. For he cannot hear the future³⁴ terror of punishments, poor in faith, poor in grace, not having spiritual riches, nor the knowledge of the Scriptures, which are compared to gold and silver and precious stone. Since, therefore, it is not the healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick, for this reason it was agreed with the apostles also, in the giving of right hands, that they should not spurn the poor, should not despise sinners, but should always be mindful of them, just as Paul was mindful of that Corinthian whom, after he had grieved him for a time in the first Epistle, so that, the body laboring through penitence, he might be saved in spirit (1 Cor. 5), in the second he calls back to the Church, lest he be swallowed up by excessive grief. And he asks all of them to confirm their love toward him, and to forgive the brother, just as he himself had forgiven each one of them in the face of Christ, fulfilling the pact which he had made at Jerusalem, that he would always remember the poor.

2:11-13

But when Peter had come to Antioch, I withstood him to his face, because he was reprehensible. For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they had come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing those who were of the circumcision; and the other Jews also consented to his pretense, so that even Barnabas was led by them into that pretense.

From the fact that Peter, before certain men came from Jerusalem to Antioch, used to eat with the Gentiles, it is shown that he had not forgotten the precept: to call no man common and unclean. But because, on account of those who still thought that the Law must be observed, he had withdrawn himself a little from table-fellowship with the Gentiles (so that even the rest who were of the Jews did likewise, and Barnabas, who was preaching the Gospel among the Gentiles together with Paul, was compelled to do this), those at Antioch who had believed from among the Gentiles and had not been circumcised were being driven to cross over to the burdens of the Law, not understanding the dispensation of Peter, by which he wished the Jews to be saved, but thinking that this was how the principle of the Gospel stood. And so, when the apostle Paul saw that the grace of Christ was in peril, the old warrior used a new art of fighting, so that he himself might correct the dispensation of Peter, by which Peter wished the Jews to be saved, by a new dispensation of contradiction, and might withstand him to his face: not censuring his purpose, but contradicting him as it were in public, so that, through the fact that Paul resisted him and censured him, those who had believed from among the Gentiles might be preserved. But if anyone thinks that Paul truly withstood the apostle Peter, and for the truth of the Gospel fearlessly did injury to his predecessor, his view will not stand against the fact that Paul himself also became a Jew to the Jews, in order to win the Jews; and Paul will be held guilty of the same pretense, when he shaved his head at Cenchreae and, having made himself bald, offered an offering in Jerusalem (Acts 18), and circumcised Timothy (ibid., 16), and practiced the barefoot rites, which certainly belong most manifestly to the ceremonies of the Jews. If, therefore, he who had been sent to preach to the Gentiles did not think it beside the point to say: "Be without offense to the Jews and to the Church of God" (1 Cor. 10:32); just as I too please all men in all things, not seeking what is profitable to me, but what is profitable to many, that they may be saved; and if he did some things that were contrary to the freedom of the Gospel, so as not to cause the Jews to stumble: by what authority, with what face does he dare to reprehend in Peter, who was the apostle of the circumcision, what he himself, the apostle of the Gentiles, is charged with having committed? But, as we have already said before, he withstood Peter and the others before the public face, so that the hypocrisy of observing the Law, which was harming those who had believed from among the Gentiles, might be corrected by the hypocrisy of rebuke, and both peoples might be saved, while those who praise circumcision follow Peter, and those who are unwilling to be circumcised proclaim the freedom of Paul. As for his saying he was reprehensible, he therefore moderated the abstinence from food³⁵, so that we may understand that Peter was reprehensible not so much to Paul as to those brothers with whom he had formerly eaten and from whom he afterwards separated himself. That pretense is useful, and to be adopted at the right time, let the example of Jehu, king of Israel, teach us: he could not have killed the priests of Baal unless he had feigned that he wished to worship the idol, saying: "Gather³⁶ to me all the priests of Baal: for if Ahab served Baal in a few things, I will serve him in many" (2 Kings 10:18). And David, when he changed his face before Abimelech, and he dismissed him, and he went away (1 Sam. 21). Nor is it surprising that men, although righteous, should nevertheless pretend some things for a time, for their own salvation and that of others, since even our Lord himself, having no sin, nor the flesh of sin, took on the pretense of sinful flesh, so that, condemning sin in the flesh, he might make us in himself the righteousness of God. Paul had certainly read in the Gospel the Lord commanding: "But if your brother sins against you, go and rebuke him between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother" (Matt. 18:15). And how, when the Lord had commanded that this be done even concerning the least of the brothers, did he dare to censure the greatest of the apostles to his public face so impudently, so resolutely, unless it had pleased Peter too to be censured in this way, and Paul was not doing injury to him of whom he had said before: "I came to Jerusalem to see Peter, and stayed with him fifteen days: but other of the apostles I saw none"? And again: "For he who worked in Peter for the apostleship of the circumcision". And below: "Peter and James and John, who seemed to be pillars", and the rest that he declaims in his praise. Several times, when as a young man at Rome I was declaiming controversies and exercising myself for real contests with fictitious lawsuits, I used to run to the tribunals of the judges, and I saw the most eloquent of the orators contending with one another with such bitterness that, often leaving the cases aside, they turned to insults of their own and bit one another with a jesting tooth. If they do this so as to incur no suspicion of collusion in the eyes of the defendants, and deceive the people standing around, what do we think such great pillars of the Church, Peter and Paul, such great vessels of wisdom, ought to have done between the disagreeing Jews and Gentiles, except that their pretended contention should become the peace of the believers, and the faith of the Church should be brought into harmony by a holy quarrel between them³⁷? There are those who do not think that Cephas, whom Paul here writes that he withstood to his face, is the apostle Peter, but another of the seventy disciples called by this name. And they say that Peter could by no means have withdrawn himself from table-fellowship with the Gentiles, since he had even baptized the centurion Cornelius; and, when he had gone up to Jerusalem, as those who were of the Circumcision disputed against him and said: "Why did you go in to men who have the foreskin, and eat with them" (Acts 11:3)? he concluded his response, after the narration of the vision, with this ending: "If therefore God gave them the same grace as he gave us also, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I, that I could forbid God? When they heard these things they were silent, and glorified God, saying: Then God has given repentance unto life to the Gentiles also"; especially since Luke, the writer of the history, makes no mention of this dissension, nor ever says that Peter was at Antioch with Paul; and that room would be given to Porphyry in his blasphemy if Peter is believed to have erred, or Paul to have impudently refuted the prince of the apostles. To these we must reply, first, that we do not know the name of some other Cephas, except him who in the Gospel, and in the other Epistles of Paul, and in this one too, is written now Cephas, now Peter. Not that Peter signifies one thing and Cephas another, but that what we in Latin and Greek call petra, "rock", the Hebrews and Syrians, because of the nearness of their languages to one another, call Cephas. Next, that the whole argument of the epistle, in what is said obliquely about Peter, James and John, is opposed to this understanding. Nor is it surprising if Luke kept silent about this matter, since by the historian's license he also passed over many other things which Paul recounts that he endured; and it is not at once a contradiction if one writer thought something worth relating for some reason, while another left it out among other things. Finally, we have received that Peter was the first bishop of the Church of Antioch, and was translated from there to Rome, which Luke omitted entirely. Lastly, if on account of Porphyry's blasphemy another Cephas must be invented by us, so that Peter may not be thought to have erred, countless things will have to be erased from the divine Scriptures which he attacks because he does not understand them. But against Porphyry too we shall fight in another work, if Christ commands; now let us pursue the rest.

2:14

But when I had seen that they do not walk with an upright foot toward the truth of the Gospel, I said to Peter before all.

Just as those who, though their steps are sound, pretend to limp have no defect in their feet, but there is some reason why they limp, so also Peter, knowing that circumcision and uncircumcision are nothing, but rather the observance of the commandments of God, did indeed eat with the Gentiles before, but for the time being withdrew himself from them, lest he should lose the Jews from the faith of Christ. Hence Paul too, by the same art with which Peter was pretending, withstood him to his face, and speaks before all; not so much in order to rebuke Peter as in order that those on whose account Peter had pretended might be corrected, or also that pride might be taken away from the Jews and despair from the Gentiles. But if this sense does not please someone, a sense in which Peter is shown neither to have sinned nor Paul to have impudently rebuked his senior, he must explain by what consistency Paul censures in another what he himself committed.

If you, though you are a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how do you compel the Gentiles to Judaize? He binds Peter with an indissoluble argument, or rather, through Peter, binds those who were compelling him to do things that conflicted with one another. If, he says, O Peter, you are a Jew by nature, circumcised from an early age and keeping all the precepts of the Law, and now, on account of the grace of Christ, you know that they have no usefulness in themselves, but are patterns and images of things to come, and you take food with those who are from the Gentiles, no longer superstitiously as before, but living freely and without distinction: how is it that now, withdrawing from those who have believed from among the Gentiles, and as it were separating and setting yourself apart from the contaminated, you compel them to Judaize? For if those from whom you withdraw are unclean, and you withdraw for this reason, because they do not have circumcision, you compel them to be circumcised and to become Jews, although you yourself, born a Jew, have lived like a Gentile. And he gladly shows the reason why he disputed against him: namely, because by his pretense he was compelling the Gentiles to Judaize, while they desire to imitate him.

2:15

We, Jews by nature, and not sinners from among the Gentiles.

At this place the heretics creep in, who, inventing certain ridiculous and silly notions, say that a spiritual nature cannot sin, nor an earthly nature do anything righteously. Let us ask them why branches were broken off from the good olive, and why branches from the wild olive were grafted into the root of the good olive, if nothing can either fall from the good or rise from the bad? Or how Paul either persecuted the Church earlier, if he was of a spiritual nature, or was afterward made an Apostle, if he was begotten of earthly dregs. But if they contend that he was not earthly, let us set down his own words: "We were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest" (Eph. 2:3). He is a Jew by nature who is of the race of Abraham and was circumcised by his parents on the eighth day. He is not a Jew by nature who was afterward made one from among the Gentiles. But to take in the whole argument in a brief discourse, this is the sense that is being woven: We, that is, I and you, Peter (for he joined his own person to Peter's, so as not to seem to do him an injury), since we were, he says, Jews by nature, doing those things which are commanded in the law, and not sinners from among the Gentiles (who either are sinners generally, because they serve idols, or are those whom we now regard as unclean), knowing that we cannot be saved by the work of the Law but by faith in Christ, have believed in Christ, so that what the Law had not given us, the faith which we had³⁸ in Christ might bestow. But if, withdrawing from the Law, in which we could not be saved, we have crossed over to faith, in which it is not circumcision of the flesh that is sought but the devotion of a pure heart; and if now, by withdrawing from the Gentiles, we bring it about that whoever is not circumcised is unclean: then faith in Christ, in which we formerly thought we were saved, is the minister of sin rather than of righteousness, since it takes away circumcision, and whoever does not have circumcision is unclean. But far be it from me to lay claim again to what I once destroyed and knew had been of no profit to me. Departing once for all from the Law, I died to the Law, that I might live in Christ, and, fastened to his cross and reborn into the new man, might subsist by faith rather than by the flesh, and might go forth from the world with Christ. What I once undertook, I hold fast. Christ did not die for me for nothing: in him I believed in vain, if I could have been saved in the old Law without faith in him.

2:16a

But knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law, except through faith in Jesus Christ: we too have believed in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified in faith in Christ, and not by the works of the Law.

Some say: if what Paul affirms is true, that no one is justified by the works of the Law but by faith in Jesus Christ, then the patriarchs and prophets and the saints who lived before the coming of Christ were imperfect. We must remind them that those are here said not to have attained righteousness who believe that they can be justified by works alone; but that the saints who lived in ancient times were justified by faith in Christ. For indeed Abraham saw the day of Christ, and rejoiced. And Moses esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasure of the Egyptians; for he looked to the reward. And Isaiah saw the glory of Christ (Isa. 6), as John the Evangelist records; and Jude speaks of all in general: "I would remind you," he says, "since you once knew all things, that Jesus, saving the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe" (Jude 5). Hence it is not so much the works of the Law that are condemned as those who trust that they can be justified by works alone, since the Savior too says to his disciples: "Unless your righteousness abounds more than that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:20). At this point we must gather³⁹ how many precepts there are in the Law which no one is able to fulfill. And on the other hand it must be said that some things of the Law are done even by those who do not know it; but that those who do them are not justified, for this reason, that they are done without faith in Christ: for example, not to lie with a man as one lies with a woman, not to commit adultery, not to steal, but rather to honor father and mother, and to do the other things that have been commanded. But if they bring forward to us examples from holy men, that, being versed in the Law, they performed the things that belonged to the Law, we shall say: Because the Law is not laid down for the righteous, but for the unjust and the insubordinate, for the ungodly and sinners, for the defiled and unclean (1 Tim. 1). And that one who has been taught by God has no need to be taught even about love, as Paul says: "But concerning love I have no need to write to you: for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another" (1 Thess. 4:9).

2:16b-18

On account of which, by the works of the Law all flesh shall not be justified. But if, seeking to be justified in Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is Christ then the minister of sin? God forbid. For if I build up again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor.

Not justified⁴⁰ by the works of the Law shall be that flesh of which it is written: "All flesh is grass, and all its glory as the flower of the field" (Isa. 40:6). But justified by the faith of Jesus Christ is that flesh of which it is said in the mystery of the resurrection: "All flesh shall see the salvation of God" (Luke 3:6). But also, according to a humbler understanding, formerly not all flesh was justified by the Law, but only those men who were in Palestine; now, however, all flesh is justified by the faith of Jesus Christ, while His Church is being founded in the whole world.

2:19

For I through the Law have died to the Law, that I may live to God.

It is one thing to die through the Law, another to die to the Law. He who dies to the Law was living to it before he died, observing sabbaths and new moons and feast days, and the typological scrupulousness about victims, and Jewish fables and genealogies. But after Christ came, and the Law of which it is written: "But we know that the Law is spiritual" (Rom. 7:14), through the Gospel law he died to the former Law: and the soul which, according to what is written to the Romans, was called an adulteress if it had married while the husband was living, now that its husband, that is, the old law, is dead, has married the spiritual Law, so that it might bear fruit to God. Hence in Hosea too it is said to her: "From me your fruit has been found" (Hos. 14:9). To which that mystical saying is beautifully added: "Who is wise, and will understand these things: understanding, and will know them?" He, therefore, who through the spiritual law dies to the Law of the letter lives to God, since he is not without the law of God, but is in the law of Christ. But he who dies to the law on account of sins is indeed dead; but what follows cannot be said of him, that he may live to God. And that there is another, spiritual law besides the Law of the letter, the Apostle teaches elsewhere too, saying: "So the law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good" (Rom. 7:12). And Ezekiel, in the person of God: "I led out", he says, "them", that is, the people of the Jews, "from the land of Egypt: and I led them into the desert: and I gave them my precepts, and showed them my justifications: which a man shall do, and live in them" (Ezek. 20:10). But concerning that law which works wrath, to which the Apostle too died, he adds afterward: "And I gave them precepts that were not good, and justifications in which they shall not live in them" (ibid., 25). The very same thing is signified in the Psalter as well: "Because I have not known letter-learning, I will enter into the strength of the Lord" (Ps. 70:15).

I am fastened to the cross with Christ. Since he had said that he had died to the law through the law, he shows how he died: I am fastened to the cross with Christ, taking up his cross and following Christ, and in the very passion beseeching: "Remember me when you come into your kingdom" (Luke 23:42, 43). And at once hearing: "Today you will be with me in paradise". If anyone, having put to death his members which are upon the earth, and being dead to the world, has been conformed to the death of Jesus Christ, he is crucified with Jesus, and fixes the trophy of his own mortification on the wood of the Lord's passion.

2:20

And I live, now not I: but Christ lives in me.

He no longer lives who once lived in the Law, he, namely, who persecuted the Church. But Christ lives in him: wisdom, strength, the Word, peace, joy and the other virtues; and whoever does not have these cannot say: But Christ lives in me. All this, however, he argues in his own person against Peter, about Peter.

And that I now live in the flesh. It is one thing to be in the flesh, and another to live in the flesh. "For those who are in the flesh cannot please God" (Rom. 8:8, 9). Hence it is said to those who live well: "But you are not in the flesh".

I live in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and delivered himself up for me. To the Romans he speaks of God, that he did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us. But now he speaks of Christ, that he delivered himself up: Who loved me, he says, and delivered himself up for me. In the Gospel, moreover, where the apostles are enumerated, it is added: "And Judas Iscariot⁴¹, who also delivered him up" (Luke 6:16). Again in the same: "Behold, he who will deliver me up has drawn near" (Matt. 26:46). And of the chief priests and the elders of the people, Scripture records that they condemned Jesus to death, and binding him, led him away and delivered him up to Pilate the governor (ibid. 27, and Mark 15). And next, of Pilate: "He released Barabbas to them, but Jesus, when he had been scourged, he delivered up to them, that they might crucify him" (John 19). Therefore both the Father delivered up the Son, and the Son delivered himself up, and Judas and the priests delivered him up to the rulers, and finally Pilate himself delivered up the one who had been delivered up to him. But the Father delivered him up in order to save a lost world; Jesus delivered himself up in order to do the will of the Father and his own; but Judas and the priests and the elders of the people, and Pilate, unknowingly delivered up Life to death. And since Life itself also delivered itself up for our salvation, blessed and very happy is he who, with Christ living in him, can say through each of his thoughts and works: I live in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered himself up for me.

2:21

I do not cast away the grace of God: for if righteousness is through the Law, then Christ died for nothing.

He casts away the grace of God, both he who after the Gospel lives in the Law and he who after baptism is defiled by sins. But he who can say, in accordance with the Apostle, "His grace in me was not void" (1 Cor. 15:10), that man also says this with confidence: I do not cast away the grace of God. And what follows is very necessary against those who think that, after faith in Christ, the precepts of the Law must be kept. For one must say to them: If righteousness is through the law, then⁴² Christ died for nothing⁴³. Or at any rate let them show how Christ did not die for nothing, if works justify⁴⁴. But however dull they may be, they will not dare to say that Christ died without cause. Therefore, to the part of the syllogism which is put forward here, that is, For if righteousness is through the Law, then Christ died for nothing, we must add as the assumption what follows by consequence and cannot be denied, But Christ did not die for nothing; and conclude, Therefore righteousness is not through the Law. Thus far against Peter; now he returns to the Galatians.

3:1

O senseless Galatians, who has bewitched you?

This passage can be understood in two ways. Either the Galatians were called senseless for this reason, that coming from greater things to lesser they had begun in the spirit and were being finished in the flesh; or on account of this, that each province has its own peculiar characteristics. The Apostle confirms that the Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy bellies, as was truly said by the poet Epimenides. The Latin historian lashes the vain Moors and the fierce Dalmatians. All the poets tear at the timid Phrygians. The philosophers boast that readier minds are born at Athens. Tully, before Gaius Caesar, taunts the Greeks as fickle, saying: Either of the fickle Greeks or of the savage barbarians. And in the speech for Flaccus: Inborn, he says, fickleness, and learned vanity. All the Scriptures reprove Israel itself for its heavy heart and stiff neck. In this way, then, I think that the Apostle too lashed the Galatians with the peculiar characteristic of their region. Some, it is true, thrusting themselves into deep questions, as if under the pretext of avoiding the heresy that introduces diverse natures, say that the Tyrians and Sidonians too, the Moabites and Ammonites and Edomites, the Babylonians and Egyptians, and all the peoples that are named in the Scriptures, have certain peculiarities from preceding causes and by the merit of former works, so that the righteousness of God may not come into doubt, since each nation is asserted to have some good or some evil that another does not have. We, declining these depths, shall follow what was said above: either that they are charged with folly, by which they cannot discern the spirit of the Law from the letter; or that they are rebuked for the fault⁴⁵ of their nation, in that they are unteachable and witless and rather slow to wisdom. But what follows, Who has bewitched you, we ought to explain in a manner worthy of Paul (who, though he is unskilled in speech, is not so in knowledge [2 Cor. 11:6]): not that he knew that there is such a thing as the evil eye, which is commonly thought to do harm, but that he used the speech of the crossroads⁴⁶, and, as elsewhere, so in this place too he took up a word of everyday conversation. We read in Proverbs: "The gift of the envious man torments the eyes". What with us is "envious" is put more expressively in the Greek as "bewitcher"; and in the Wisdom that is ascribed to Solomon: "The bewitching of malice obscures good things" (Wisd. 4:12). By these examples we are taught either that the envious man is tormented by another's happiness, or that he in whom there are some good things is harmed when another bewitches him, that is, envies him. The evil eye is said properly to harm infants and those of tender age, and those who do not yet plant their step with a firm footing. Hence also one of the Gentiles says: Some eye or other bewitches my tender lambs. (Virgil, Eclogues 3.) Whether this is true or not, God will see; for it may be that demons too serve this sin, and turn away from good works whomever they know either to have begun or to have made progress in the work of God. For now, the point at issue is that we think the example was taken from the opinion of the common people: so that, just as tender age is said to be harmed by the evil eye, so also the Galatians, newly born in the faith of Christ and nourished with milk and not with solid food (1 Cor. 3), were harmed as though by someone bewitching them, and, with the stomach of their faith nauseated⁴⁷, vomited up the food of the Holy Spirit. But if anyone objects, let him explain how it is taken from common opinion that there is the valley of the Titans in the books of Kingdoms (2 Kings 23), Sirens and Onocentaurs in Isaiah (ch. 34), Arcturus and Orion and the Pleiades in Job (ch. 9), and other things like these, which names certainly have both the causes and the origins of the fables of the Gentiles. Let us ask Marcion, then, who rejects the prophets, how he interprets in this place what follows.

Before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed (proscriptus), crucified among you. For Christ was rightly portrayed beforehand (præscriptus) for us, of whose gibbet and passion, blows and scourgings the whole choir of the prophets foretells, so that we have known his cross not from the Gospel alone, in which he is related to have been crucified, but long before he deigned to descend to the earth and to take up the man who was crucified. Nor is it small praise of the Galatians that they believed in the Crucified in such a way as he had been portrayed beforehand (præscriptus) to them: namely, that by reading the prophets again and again and knowing all the mysteries of the old Law, they came to believe by a way and an order. In some codices is read: "Who has bewitched you, not to believe the truth?" But because this is not found in the copies of Adamantius, we have omitted it.

3:2

This only I wish to learn from you: did you receive the spirit by works of the Law, or by the hearing of faith?

There are indeed, he says, many things that could compel you by questioning to admit that the Gospel is to be preferred to the Law; but since you are senseless and can by no means hear them, I speak with you in plain language and ask about what is ready to hand: the Holy Spirit whom you received, did the works of the Law, the observance of the sabbath, the superstition of circumcision and of new moons give him to you, or the hearing of faith, through which you believed, coming from the Gentiles? But if it cannot be denied that the Holy Spirit, and the powers which at the beginning of faith followed the Spirit once received, were given not by works of the Law but by faith in Christ, it is manifest that you, having begun from better things⁴⁸, are collapsing into worse. Let us consider carefully, however, that he did not say: I wish to learn from you whether you received the Spirit by works; but added: by works of the Law. For he knew that Cornelius the centurion too had received the Spirit by works (Acts 10), but not by works of the Law, which he did not know. But if it is said on the contrary, "Then the Spirit can be received even without the hearing of faith," we shall answer that he did indeed receive the Spirit, but by the hearing of faith and by the natural law, which speaks in our hearts that every good thing is to be done and evil things avoided; by which, as we have related before, Abraham, Moses and the other saints were also justified; and which the observance of works and the righteousness of the Law⁴⁹ can afterwards increase: not, however, of the carnal law, which has passed away, but of the spiritual, because the Law is spiritual. Nor indeed, because we prefer faith, do we destroy the works of the Law (Rom. 3), nor do we say, as certain people do: "Let us do evil things until good things come" (whose condemnation is just); but we set grace before slavery. And we say that what the Jews do out of fear, we do out of love: that they are slaves, we sons; that they are compelled to the good, we take up the good of our own accord. Therefore from faith in Christ there is not born a license to sin; rather, from the love of faith the will to do good works is increased, since we do good things not because we dread the judge, but because we know that they please him in whom we believe. Someone may ask: if faith is not except by hearing, how can those who were born deaf become Christians? For anyone can understand God the Father from the greatness and beauty of creatures, and the Creator is consequently recognized from the things created; but the birth, the cross, the death and the resurrection of Christ cannot be known except by hearing. Either, then, the deaf are not Christians; or, if the deaf are Christians, what is said elsewhere by the apostle is false: "So faith is by hearing, and hearing through the word of God". To this, one who is content with a simple answer says that he did not say generally, "The faith of all is by hearing," but "faith is by hearing," which can be taken both in part and in whole: that is, the faith of those who hear, who believe, is by hearing. But one who tries to satisfy this scruple will first attempt to assert that the deaf can learn the Gospel by nods too, and by daily intercourse, and, so to speak, by the speaking gesture of the whole body; and then also this, that the word of God, to whom nothing is deaf, speaks rather to those ears of which he himself says in the Gospel: "He who has ears to hear, let him hear" (Luke 8:8). And in the Apocalypse: "He who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches" (Rev. 2:11). And Isaiah: "The Lord added to me an ear" (Isa. 50:4-5). This is the other man, to whom God speaks in secret, who cries in the heart of the believer: "Abba, Father" (Rom. 8:15); and (as we have often explained) just as the body has all its members and senses, so the soul too has all the senses and members, and among the rest ears as well; and whoever has these will not greatly need these ears of the body for coming to know the Gospel of Christ. At the same time, observe this too, that here the Spirit, without any addition, is understood as the Holy Spirit, whom we obtain by the gift of God, and not as the spirit of man, of which it is written elsewhere: "The incorruptible Spirit is in all things" (Wisd. 12:1). And: "The Spirit himself bears witness⁵⁰ to our spirit" (Rom. 8:16). And in another place: "No one knows the things that are in a man except the spirit of the man that is in him" (1 Cor. 2:11). And in Daniel: "Bless the Lord, you spirits and souls of the righteous" (Dan. 3:86).

3:3

Are you so foolish that, though you began with the Spirit, you are now made perfect in the flesh?

If the Galatians had received the Holy Spirit, how were they foolish? But this is at once resolved: they had indeed begun with the Spirit, but when they were being made perfect in the flesh, the Spirit was taken away from them. Hence they suffered so many things in vain, as many as they suffered. That this might not befall him after his sin, David prays, saying: "Take not your holy Spirit from me" (Ps. 50:13). Notice carefully that he who follows the Scriptures according to the letter is said to be made perfect in the flesh. Wherefore that which is written to the Corinthians: "Living in the flesh, we do not wage war according to the flesh" (2 Cor. 10:3), can better be understood thus, that those are said to wage war in the flesh who expound the Old Testament in a lowly manner. But those who follow the spiritual understanding may indeed be in the flesh, because they have the same letter as the Jews, yet they do not wage war according to the flesh, since they pass over from the flesh to the spirit. When you see one who first believes from among the Gentiles, and puts his hand to the plough of Christ, and, with some prudent teacher going before him, so advances along the road of the Law to the Gospel that he understands all those things which are written there, about the sabbath, about unleavened bread, about circumcision, about victims, in a manner worthy of God; and then, after the reading of the Gospel, is persuaded by some Jew, or by an associate of the Jews, to abandon the shadows and the clouds of allegory and to interpret the Scriptures just as they are written: of him you can say: Are you so foolish that, though you began with the spirit, you are now made perfect in the flesh?

3:4

Have you suffered so much without cause, if indeed it is without cause?

Let us consider the unhappy Jews, with how great superstition and labor of observance they live among the other nations, saying, touch not, taste not, handle not; and we shall prove that what is said is true: Have you suffered so much without cause; but the sentence is not at once tempered toward them, and it becomes doubtful, if indeed it is without cause, because it is said of those who are able to return from the Law to the Gospel. But it can better be understood thus: that the Galatians, when they first believed in the Crucified, suffered many reproaches both from the Jews and from the Gentiles, and endured no small persecutions. These they are charged with having suffered in vain, if they withdraw from the grace of Christ, for the sake of which they suffered so much. At the same time there is also this hope: that whoever has labored for the faith of Christ and has afterward fallen into sin, just as he is said to have suffered his former things without cause while he sins, so in turn he does not lose them, if he returns to his original faith and to his former zeal. Otherwise: If, he says, you think that circumcision ought to be followed after grace, then all that you have suffered while living until the present time without circumcision has been brought to nothing. And indeed you seem to me not to have endured these things in vain, for I know that the Law has no force after the Gospel. Or certainly thus: It would have been no light loss if, by following circumcision, you had lost only your former labor of faith; but now the penalty of transgression is also joined to this harm, so that you have both suffered the past things without cause and will be tormented in the future. Some understand it in a more forced way, thus: Consider the former freedom of grace and the burdens of the present observance in the Law, and you will see how many things you have done with fruitless zeal; although the fruit of this error is not to be wholly despaired of, since you were led to this very thing by zeal for God. For pardon can be granted to the ignorant, if, turned to better things, you show that it was your knowledge that wavered in you, not your zeal.

3:5

He therefore who gives you the Spirit and works miracles among you, does he do it by the works of the Law, or by the hearing of faith?

Gives (tribuit), that is, ministers (administrat), is to be read in the present tense, so as to show that the Holy Spirit is ministered to the worthy always, every hour and moment; and that the more anyone has advanced in the work and love of God, the more he has in himself the powers of the Holy Spirit, which the hearing of faith, and not the works of the Law, brings to completion. Not that the works of the Law are to be despised, and simple faith sought without them; but that the works themselves are to be adorned by faith in Christ. For shrewd is that saying of a wise man: "Not that the faithful man lives by righteousness, but that the righteous man lives by faith." At the same time it is shown that the Galatians, having received the Holy Spirit after they believed, had gifts of powers, that is, prophecy, kinds of tongues, healings of diseases, and the rest that are enumerated to the Corinthians among the spiritual gifts (1 Cor. 12). And yet after such great things (because perhaps they did not have the grace of discerning spirits) they were ensnared by false teachers. It must also be observed that miracles are said to be worked among those who do not hold the truth of the Gospel: as among those who, not following the Lord, were doing signs in his name, John especially complaining: "Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we forbade him, because he does not follow with us" (Mark 9:37). This is against the heretics, who think the proof of their faith lies in whether they have done some sign. Though they have eaten and drunk in the name of the Lord (for they too have a sacrilegious altar), and boast that they have done many signs by invoking the Savior, on the day of judgment they will deserve to hear: "I do not know you; depart from me, you who work iniquity" (Matt. 7:23).

3:6

Even as Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.

From this place up to the one where it is written: "Those who are of faith shall be blessed with faithful Abraham", Marcion erased the text from his own Apostle. But what did it profit him to have removed this, when the rest that he left is opposed to his madness? Now Abraham believed God when he went out from his homeland into a land he did not know (Gen. 12 ff.); when he trusted that Sarah, ninety years old and barren, would give birth; and when, having heard God's promise that in Isaac his seed would be called, he offered that very Isaac as a victim, and yet did not doubt the Lord's promise. Rightly is faith reckoned as righteousness to such a man, who, having gone beyond the works of the Law, won the favor of God not by fear but by love⁵¹.

3:7

You know, therefore, that those who are of faith, these are the sons of Abraham.

He argues this more fully in the Epistle to the Romans: that faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness, not in circumcision but in uncircumcision (Rom. 4). And, observing it carefully, he teaches that those are sons of Abraham, whoever have believed with the same mind with which Abraham believed while uncircumcised, he who rejoiced to see the day of the Lord, and saw it, and was glad (John 8). Hence it is also said to the unbelieving Jews: "If you were sons of Abraham, you would do the works of Abraham" (ibid. 39). But what other works (at that time, when these things were being said) did the Lord seek from them, except belief in the Son of God, whom the Father had sent, and who says: "He who believes in me, does not believe in me, but in him who sent me" (John 12:44)? Hence also in another place, to those who were applauding themselves on the antiquity and nobility of their race, the answer is given: "And do not say, We have Abraham as our father. For God is able from these stones to raise up sons to Abraham" (Matt. 3:9). No one doubts that the stones there signify the hard hearts of the Gentiles, which were afterwards softened and received the seal of faith. Count up, diligent reader, the virtues of Abraham by which he pleased God before circumcision, and whomever you find in like work, say that they are sons of Abraham, who was justified in uncircumcision and who received circumcision not on account of the merit of works, but as a sign of his earlier faith. For since Christ was to spring from his seed (in whom the blessing of all the nations had been promised, and many ages were to pass between Abraham and Christ), God, providing that the offspring of beloved Abraham should not be mingled with the other nations and his family little by little become uncertain, marked the Israelite flock with a kind of brand of circumcision, so that, living among the Egyptians, among the Assyrians, Babylonians and Chaldeans, they might be distinguished by this seal. Accordingly, for forty years in the desert no one was circumcised: for they were living alone, without any admixture of another nation; as soon as the people had crossed the bank of the Jordan and the Jewish swarm had poured itself into the land of Palestine, circumcision, now necessary, provided against the confusion that would come from mingling with the nations. But that the people is written to have been circumcised a second time by Joshua (Jesu) their leader (Josh. 5) signifies both that circumcision, which had been reasonably practiced in Egypt, ceased in the desert, and that believers were to be cleansed by the Lord Jesus Christ with a spiritual circumcision.

3:8-9

But the Scripture, foreseeing that God justifies the Gentiles by faith, announced beforehand to Abraham that all the Gentiles shall be blessed in you. Therefore those who are of faith shall be blessed with faithful Abraham.

Not that Scripture itself, that is, the ink and the parchment, which are without sense, can foreknow future things; but that the Holy Spirit, and the sense which lies hidden in the letter, foretold things that were to come many ages later. Moreover, the example that has been taken from Genesis is contained thus in its own book: "And in your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed" (Gen. 26:4). Interpreting this of Christ, the Apostle says: "It is not written 'of seeds,' as in many, but as in one, 'and your seed,' which is Christ". And this we ought to observe in almost all⁵² the testimonies that have been taken from the old books into the New Testament: that the evangelists or apostles trusted to memory, and, setting out only the sense, often changed the order, and sometimes either took words away or added them. But no one doubts that it was not in Isaac and Jacob, or in the twelve patriarchs, and the others who descend from the stock of Abraham, that all the nations were blessed, but in Christ Jesus, through whom all the Gentiles praise God, and a new name is blessed upon the earth. It can also be understood that the Apostle took the example of the seed from another place of Genesis, where it is written: "Now there led out of doors" (no doubt, Abraham) "God, and said to him: Look into heaven and number the stars, if you shall be able to number them. And he said to him: So shall your seed be; and Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness" (Gen. 15:5, 6). Whoever therefore believe shall be blessed with faithful Abraham, who, because of his outstanding faith in God, is related to have been the first to believe in him; just as Enosh, because of his preeminent hope in God, one that stood out among the rest, is written to have hoped to call upon the Lord God (Gen. 4:26). Not that Abel also, of whom the Lord says: "The voice of your brother's blood cries to me" (ibid. 4:10), and the others after him, did not hope to call upon God; but that each one is named from that quality which he possesses most of all.

Book Two

What I had left untouched in the first book of the Commentaries on Galatians, when I was discussing the characteristics of the nations, it now seems I should render in the second: who the Galatians are, or whither and whence they crossed over; whether the land they now inhabit poured them forth as natives or received them as newcomers; and whether they lost their language through intermarriage, or both learned a new one and did not lose their own. Marcus Varro, the most diligent investigator of all antiquities, and the others who have imitated him, have handed down many things about this people, and things worthy of memory. But since it is our purpose not to bring uncircumcised men into the temple of God (and, to confess it plainly, it is many years now since we ceased to read these things), we shall set down the words of our Lactantius, what he held about this people in the third volume to Probus: "The Gauls," he says, "were anciently called Galatae from the whiteness of their bodies; and the Sibyl calls them so. This is what the poet meant to signify when he says: Then their milk-white necks — are entwined with gold (Virgil, Aeneid 8): when he could have said 'white.' Hence, certainly, the province of Galatia, into which the Gauls came at one time and mingled themselves with the Greeks. Whence that region was first named Gallograecia, afterward Galatia." Nor is it surprising if he said this of the Galatians, and recorded that Western peoples, passing over such great spaces of the lands in between, settled in the region of the East, since it is established that swarms from the East and from Greece, conversely, reached the farthest bounds of the West. The Phocaeans founded Marseilles, and Varro says they are trilingual, because they speak Greek and Latin and Gallic. Colonists of the Rhodians founded the town of Rhoda, from which the river Rhone received its name. I pass over the Tyrians, founders of Carthage, and the city of Agenor; I pass by the Thebes of Liber, which he founded in Africa, a city now called Thebestis. I leave aside that part of Libya which is full of Greek cities. I cross over to the Spains: did not Greeks setting out from the island of Zacynthus found Saguntum, and are not the Ionians, Greek men, reported to have founded the town of Tartessus, which is now called Carteia? The mountains of the Spains too, Calpe, Idrus, Pyrene, and likewise the islands Aphrodisiades and Gymnesiae, which are called the Balearics, do they not show traces of the Greek tongue? Italy itself, occupied by Greek peoples, was once called Greater Greece. Certainly, and this cannot be denied, the Romans were begotten of the stock of Aeneas, a man of Asia. From this it comes about that in the West talents of Greek sharpness are often found, and in the East they smack of barbarian stupidity. Nor do we say this as though diverse things were not born in each place according to the region, but because for the most part even the other things that are not alike are so named. Therefore it is not surprising that the Galatians were called foolish and slower of understanding, since even Hilary, the Rhone of Latin eloquence, himself a Gaul and born at Poitiers, in his Song of Hymns calls the Gauls unteachable. And that they are now fertile in orators pertains not so much to the diligence of the region as to the clamor of the rhetoricians⁵³, especially since Aquitaine⁵⁴ boasts of a Greek origin, and the Galatians set out not from that part of the lands but from the fiercer Gauls. Do you wish to know, O Paula and Eustochium, how the Apostle marked each province with its own characteristics? To this very day the same traces remain, whether of virtues or of errors. The faith of the Roman people is praised (Rom. 1). Where else do people run with such zeal and in such crowds to the churches and to the tombs of the martyrs? Where does the Amen so resound, like heavenly thunder, that the empty temples of the idols are shaken? Not that the Romans have another faith than this which all the churches of Christ have, but that devotion is greater in them, and simplicity in believing. Again, they are accused of facility and of pride. Of facility, as there: "I beseech you, brothers, that you watch those who cause dissensions and offenses, contrary to the doctrine which you have learned; and turn aside from them; for such men do not serve Christ the Lord⁵⁵, but their own belly; and by sweet words and blessings they seduce the hearts of the innocent. For your obedience is spread abroad to every place. I rejoice therefore in you, and I wish you to be wise in good and simple in evil" (Rom. 16:17 ff.). And of pride: "Be not high-minded, but fear" (Rom. 11:20, 25). And: "I do not wish you to be ignorant, brothers, of this mystery, that you may not be wise in yourselves". And in what follows: "For I say, through the grace that has been given to me, to all who are among you: not to be wise beyond what one ought to be wise, but to be wise unto sobriety" (Rom. 12:3). And more openly: "To rejoice with those who rejoice; to weep with those who weep. Being of the same mind toward one another. Not minding high things, but consenting to the humble. Do not be prudent in your own sight" (Rom. 12:15-16). He also marks the Corinthians, because their women are with uncovered head and the men let their hair grow (1 Cor. 11), and they eat indifferently in temples⁵⁶ (1 Cor. 8:10), and, puffed up with secular wisdom, they deny the resurrection of the flesh. That these things in part remain to this day, no one who has seen Achaia can doubt (1 Cor. 4). The Macedonians are praised for love, and for hospitality and the reception of the brothers. Hence it is written to them: "But concerning the love of the brotherhood we have no need to write to you. For you yourselves have learned from God to love one another. And indeed you do it toward all the brothers in all Macedonia" (1 Thess. 4:9). But they are rebuked because they go idly round the houses, and, looking for another's food, while they desire to please each one and run about hither and thither, they report what is done at each person's house. For it follows: "But we beseech you, brothers, that you abound more, and take pains to be quiet, and that you do your own business, and work with your hands, as we commanded you, so that you may walk honestly toward those who are outside, and may desire nothing of anyone" (1 Thess. 4:10-11). And lest anyone think this was urged more from the duty of a teacher than because of a fault of the people, in the second letter to the same he presses and repeats it, saying: "For even when we were with you, we declared this to you, that if anyone will not work, neither let him eat. For we have heard that some among you walk restlessly, doing no work, but acting as busybodies. Now those who are such we charge and beseech in the Lord Jesus Christ, that, working in silence, they eat their own bread" (2 Thess. 3:10 ff.). It would be long if I wished to note, from the Apostle and from all the Scriptures, either the virtues or the vices of the individual nations, since we have come down to these very things we have said from the fact that the Galatians were pronounced foolish and senseless. Whoever has seen Ancyra⁵⁷, the metropolitan city of Galatia, knows with me by how many⁵⁸ schisms it is torn even now, by how many⁵⁹ varieties of doctrines it is defiled. I pass over the Cataphrygians, Ophites, Borborites and Manichaeans; for these are by now familiar names of human calamity. Who has ever heard, in any part of the Roman world, of the Passalorynchites and Ascodrobi and Artotyrites, and the rest, monsters rather than names⁶⁰? Traces of the ancient folly remain to this day. One thing we add, and so pay what was promised at the beginning: that the Galatians, apart from the Greek speech which the whole East speaks, have their own language, almost the same as the Treveri, and it does not matter if they have corrupted some things in it, since the Africans too have in some part changed the language of the Phoenicians, and Latinity itself changes daily both by regions and by time. But now let us return to our purpose.

3:10

For whoever are of the works of the Law are under the curse. For it is written: Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all the things that are written in the book of the Law, that he may do them.

I have this custom: whenever something is taken by the apostles from the Old Instrument, I go back to the original books and examine carefully how it is written in its own place. And so I found this very passage set down in Deuteronomy by the Seventy translators thus: "Cursed is every man who does not continue in all the words of this Law, that he may do them: and all the people shall say⁶¹, So be it" (Deut. 27:26). In Aquila, however, thus: "Cursed is he who does not establish the words of this Law, that he may do them: and all the people shall say, Truly". Symmachus: "Cursed is he who does not make firm the words⁶² of that Law, that he may do them, and all the people shall say, Amen". Theodotion, moreover, translated it thus: "Cursed is he who does not raise up the words of this Law, to do them, and all the people shall say, Amen". From this we understand that the Apostle, as in other places, set down the sense of the testimony rather than the words; and we hold it uncertain whether the Seventy Translators added "every man" (omnis homo) and "in all" (in omnibus), or whether it was so in the old Hebrew and was afterwards deleted by the Jews. Now what spurs me to this suspicion is this: the word "every" (omnis) and "in all" (in omnibus), as though necessary to his sense for proving that whoever are of the works of the Law are under the curse, the Apostle, a man of Hebrew learning and most learned in the Law, would never have brought forward unless it were found in the Hebrew volumes. For this reason, reading through the Hebrew volumes of the Samaritans, I found that CHOL, which means "every" or "all", is written there and agrees with the Seventy translators. In vain, therefore, did the Jews remove it, so as not to seem to be under the curse if they could not fulfill all the things that are written, since the more ancient letters of another nation too testify that it was set down. Now that no one can fulfill the Law and do all the things that are commanded, the Apostle testifies elsewhere as well, saying: "For what was impossible to the Law, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin, from sin condemned sin in the flesh" (Rom. 8). If this is true, it can be objected to us: Then are Moses too, and Isaiah, and the other prophets, who were under the works of the Law, under the curse? He will not fear to grant this who has read the Apostle saying: "Because Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, being made a curse for us"; and to answer that each one of the saints was in his own time made a curse for the people. Nor, in granting this to righteous men as well, will he at once seem to detract from the Savior, as though he had nothing special and excellent in being made a curse for us, since the others too were made a curse for others. For none of them, although he himself was made a curse, freed anyone from the curse, save only the Lord Jesus Christ, who with his precious blood redeemed from the curse of the Law both all of us and them too, I mean Moses and Aaron and all the prophets and patriarchs. And do not think that this is said from my own sense; Scripture is witness: that "Christ by the grace of God", or, as is read in some copies, "without God, died for all" (2 Cor. 5). But if for all, then also for Moses and for all the prophets, none of whom was able to blot out the old handwriting that was written against us and fix it to the cross (Col. 2): "All have sinned, and lack the glory [that is, grace] of God" (Rom. 3:23). Ecclesiastes too confirms this judgment: "There is not a righteous man on earth who⁶³ does good and does not sin" (Eccles. 7:21). Finally, the Apostle's statement further below also plainly teaches that neither Moses nor any illustrious man among the ancients could be justified before God through the Law. For there follows:

3:11-12

But since in the Law no one is justified before God, it is manifest that the righteous lives by faith. But the Law is not of faith, but he who has done these things shall live in them.

The example by which it is proved that the righteous lives by faith, and not by works, he took from Habakkuk, which the Seventy translators rendered thus: "But the righteous lives by my faith" (Hab. 2:4). Aquila and Theodotion: "But the righteous lives by his faith", that is, God's. It must therefore be considered that he did not say "a human being" or "a man lives by faith", lest he should give occasion for despising the works of the virtues; but the righteous lives by faith: so that whoever was faithful and was to live through faith could⁶⁴ not otherwise come to faith, or live in it, unless he had first been righteous, and had ascended by purity of life as by certain steps to faith. It can therefore happen that someone is righteous, and yet does not live, being without faith in Christ. If a scruple is stirred in the reader, let him take up the words of Paul, in which he says of himself: "As to the righteousness which is in the Law, without reproach" (Phil. 3:6). Paul therefore was at that time righteous in the Law, but could not yet live, because he did not have within himself Christ, who says: "I am the life" (John 11:25). Believing in him afterwards, he began also to live. Let us too make something similar to what is said, the righteous lives by faith; and let us say: the chaste lives by faith, the wise lives by faith, the brave lives by faith, and from the remaining parts of the virtues let us bring forward a like sentence against those who, not believing in Christ, think themselves brave and wise, temperate or righteous: so that they may know that no one lives without Christ, without whom every virtue is in vice. The present testimony can also be read thus: that the righteous by faith, so that there is then added, lives⁶⁵. But in what he says, The Law is not of faith, but he who has done these things shall live in them, it is most manifestly shown that it is not life simply that is meant, but that life which is referred to something. For the righteous lives by faith: and there is not added "in these" or "in them". But he who lives in the Law, who has done these things, lives in them, that is, in the things which he did, which he thought good: having as the reward of his labor only those works which he did, whether length of life (as the Jews think) or escape from the penalty by which the transgressor of the Law is put to death. But let us not think that to live in them are the words of the Apostle, but of the prophet Ezekiel, who says: "And I led them out into the desert, and I gave them my precepts, and showed them my ordinances, which a man shall do, and shall live in them" (Ezek. 20:10, 11). And when he had said that those who had walked in the precepts and ordinances live, he added: "And I gave them precepts not good, and ordinances in which they should not live in them" (ibid., 25). How much care in the words! Where he said: "I gave them precepts and ordinances in which they should live in them", he did not add "good". But where he put "in which they should not live in them", he added: "And I gave them precepts not good, and ordinances in which they shall not live in them". But these things more fully in Ezekiel: now let us return to the order of the Epistle.

3:13

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, made a curse for us.

In this place Marcion creeps in concerning the power of the Creator, whom he defames as bloodthirsty, cruel and an avenger⁶⁶, asserting that we have been redeemed by Christ, who is the Son of another, good God. If he understood how buying and redeeming differ⁶⁷ (for he who buys, buys what belongs to another; but he who redeems buys, in the proper sense, that which was his own and had ceased to be his own), he would never twist the simple words of the Scriptures into a calumny in support of his doctrine. Christ therefore redeemed us from the curse of the Law, which was established for those who sin, whom he himself rebukes through the prophet, saying: "Behold, you have been sold for your sins, and in your iniquities I have put away your mother" (Isa. 50:1). And the Apostle repeats this very thing, saying: "But I am carnal, sold under sin" (Rom. 7:14). The curses of the Law too, which are written in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, are not fulfilled with God as their author; rather, by a prophetic spirit, the things that are to come upon those who were going to sin are announced to them. But if he should wish to hem us in with the testimony of the Apostle, who says: "Whoever are of the works of the Law are under a curse: for it is written: Cursed is everyone who does not remain in all things that are written in the book of the Law, to do them" (Deut. 27:26), and to assert that all who were under the Law were cursed, let us ask him whether those who are under the Gospel of Christ and do not do its precepts are cursed or not. If he says they are cursed, he will have in the Gospel what we have in the Law. If he denies that they are cursed, then the precepts of the Gospel have been laid down in vain, and those who have fulfilled them will be without reward. Both points, therefore, are resolved in this way: just as Christ Jesus freed us from the curse of the Law, made a curse for us, so also from the curse of the Gospel, which has been established over those who have not done its precepts, he has rescued us, himself made a curse for us, knowing how not to remit even the smallest portion of a talent, and to exact the last farthing (Matt. 5, and Mark 12).

3:14

Because it is written: Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree: that the blessing of Abraham might come among the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the spirit through faith.

Before we discuss the sense and the words of the Apostle, it seems right to go over briefly the testimony of Deuteronomy, from which the Apostle also took these words (Deut. 21:22, 23), and to compare it with the other editions. The Seventy translators, then, rendered this passage thus: "But if there be in anyone a sin and a judgment of death, and he has died, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not sleep upon the tree, but burying you shall bury him on that day; because cursed by God is everyone who hangs on a tree: and you shall not defile your land, which the Lord your God will give you for an inheritance". Aquila: "And when there is in a man a sin unto⁶⁸ a judgment of death, and he has been slain, and you hang him upon a tree, his carcass shall not remain upon the tree, but burying you shall bury him on that day, because he who is hanged is the curse of God: and you shall not defile your ground, which the Lord your God will give you as an inheritance". Symmachus: "But if there be in a man a sin bringing a judgment of death, and he has been slain, and you hang him upon a tree: his corpse shall not stay the night upon the tree, but with burial you shall bury him⁶⁹ on that same day, because he was hanged on account of blasphemy of God: and you shall not defile your land, which the Lord your God will give you for an inheritance". Theodotion: "And because there will be in a man a sin unto⁷⁰ a judgment of death, and he will die, and you will hang him on a tree, his carcass shall not sleep upon the tree, because with burial you shall bury him on that same day, because the one hanged is the curse of God: and you shall not defile your adama⁷¹, which the Lord your God shall have given you as an inheritance". Now ADAMA (אדמה) is the word in the Hebrew language for "earth" or "ground". But in the place where Aquila and Theodotion translated alike, saying: "because the one hanged is the curse of God", the Hebrew has it thus: CHI CALALATH ELOIM THALUI. These words Ebion, that heresiarch, half-Christian and half-Jew, interpreted thus: ὅτι ὕβρις Θεοῦ ὁ κρεμάμενος, that is, "because the one hanged is an insult to God". I remember that in the Dispute of Jason and Papiscus, which is written in the Greek language, I found it thus: λοιδορία Θεοῦ ὁ κρεμάμενος, that is, "a curse of God is he who is hung up". The Hebrew who instructed me in some measure in the Scriptures used to tell me that it can also be read thus: "because God was hanged shamefully". We have gathered these things together for this reason: because it is a most notorious question, and the Jews are accustomed to throw it at us as a disgrace that our Savior and Lord was under the curse of God. First, then, we must observe that not whoever has hung on a tree is cursed before God, but he who has sinned, and on account of a crime has been sentenced to death and raised up on a cross: he is cursed not because he was crucified, but because he fell into such guilt that he deserved to be crucified. Next we must set against them this point: that further on the cause of the gallows is set out more fully, Scripture relating that he was crucified on account of a curse and blasphemy of God. Symmachus translated this more plainly, saying: "because he was hanged on account of blasphemy of God". Lastly, let us ask them whether, if Ananias and Azarias and Misael, refusing to worship the idol of Nebuchadnezzar, had been hanged on a tree (Dan. 3), and Eleazar too, a man of ninety under Antiochus king of Syria, and the glorious mother with her seven sons (2 Macc. 7), they would have reckoned them cursed, or most worthy of every blessing? Surely, if Haman had not himself mounted, as he deserved, the cross that he had prepared for Mordecai (Esther 7), I think Mordecai would have ascended⁷² it not as one cursed, but as a holy man. By these and other similar examples it is proved that he is cursed who has committed a crime worthy of the gallows, not he who has been crucified through the iniquity of judges and the power of enemies, or the clamor of the mob, or envy of his virtues, or the anger of a king. Naboth⁷³ too was once condemned to death by the whole city of Jezreel at the letters of Jezebel (1 Kings 21); but his blood, as a type of Christ, is avenged many ages later, the Lord saying to Hosea: "Call his name Jezreel, for yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu." (Hos. 1:4). So much against the Jews. But to bring the discussion back to ourselves, I cannot know why the Apostle, in what is written: "Cursed by God is everyone who hangs on a tree" (Deut. 21:23), has either taken something away or added something. For if he was once following the authority of the Seventy translators, he ought, as it was published by them, to have added the name of God as well. But if, as a Hebrew of the Hebrews, he thought that what he had read in his own language was most true, he ought not to have taken up⁷⁴ either "everyone" or "on a tree", which are not found in the Hebrew. From this it seems to me either that the ancient books of the Hebrews had it otherwise than they have it now; or that the Apostle (as I have already said before) set down the sense of the Scriptures, not the words; or, what is rather to be supposed, that after the passion of Christ the name of God was added by someone, both in the Hebrew codices and in ours, so as to brand with infamy us who believe in a Christ cursed by God. With a bold foot, therefore, I advance to this contest, to appeal to the books: that in no place is it written that anyone is cursed by God, and wherever a curse is set down, the name of God is never added. "Cursed are you by all the beasts" (Gen. 3:14), is said to the serpent. And to Adam: "Cursed is the ground in your works" (ibid., 17). And to Cain: "Cursed are you upon the earth" (Gen. 4:11). And elsewhere: "Cursed be Canaan the boy, he shall be a servant to his brothers" (Gen. 9:25). And also in another place: "Cursed be their fury, because it is bold, and their anger, because it is harsh" (Gen. 49:7). It would be long if I were to list all the curses that are written in Leviticus, and in Deuteronomy, and in Joshua son of Nun; and yet in none of them is the name of God added: so much so that even Satan himself, when he was promising concerning Job that, if he were pressed by great distresses, he would blaspheme, expressed this by the better word, saying: "If he does not bless you to your face" (Job 1:11). And in the books of Kingdoms Naboth⁷⁵ is reported to have been stoned for this reason: "because he blessed God and the king" (1 Kings 21). But no one ought to be troubled that Christ was made a curse for us, since God also, who is said to have made him a curse, himself (although Christ knew no sin) made him sin for us; and the Savior emptied himself from the fullness of the Father, taking the form of a slave (Phil. 2): Life died⁷⁶, and the wisdom of God was called foolishness, so that what was foolish of God might become wiser than men (1 Cor. 1). And in the sixty-eighth psalm he speaks of himself: "O God, you know my foolishness, and my offenses are not hidden from you" (Ps. 68:7). The Lord's insult, therefore, is our glory. He died, that we might live. He went down to the underworld, that we might ascend to heaven. He was made foolishness, that we might be made wisdom. He emptied himself of the fullness and the form of God, taking the form of a slave, that the fullness of divinity might dwell in us, and that from slaves we might become the Lord's. He hung on a tree, that, hung upon a tree, he might blot out the sin which we had committed by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. His cross turned bitter waters into a sweet taste, and, cast into the streams of the Jordan, it raised the axe that had been lost and sunk into the depths (2 Kings 6). Finally, he was made a curse, made, I say, not born: so that the blessings which had been promised to Abraham might, through him as author and forerunner, be transferred to the Gentiles, and the promise of the spirit might be fulfilled in us through faith in him: which we ought to take in two ways, either of the spiritual gifts of the virtues, or of the spiritual understanding of the Scriptures (1 Cor. 9).

3:15-18

Brothers, I speak according to man: yet a man's testament, once confirmed, no one despises or adds to: to Abraham were the promises spoken, and to his seed. He does not say, "and to seeds," as of many, but as of one, "and to your seed," who is Christ. But this I say: the testament confirmed by God, the Law, which was made after four hundred and thirty years, does not make void so as to annul the promise; for if the inheritance is from the Law, it is no longer from promise. But God gave it to Abraham through promise.

The Apostle, who became all things to all men that he might gain all, a debtor to Greeks and Barbarians, to the wise and the unwise, became foolish to the Galatians too, whom a little before he had called foolish. For he did not use with them the arguments he used with the Romans, but simpler ones, such as the foolish could understand, and almost from the street corner. And lest he seem to have done this from lack of skill and not by art, he first placates the prudent reader, and tempers what he is about to say with a preface set before it: Brothers, I speak according to man. For what I am about to say, I do not say according to God; I do not say it according to hidden wisdom and to those who can feed on solid food, but according to those who, because of the tenderness of their stomach, are nourished on a milky dew and are by no means able to hear things that are great (1 Cor. 5). Hence also to the Corinthians, among whom fornication was reported, and such fornication as is not even among the Gentiles, he says: "I say, and not the Lord" (1 Cor. 7:12). And to the same in the second letter: "What I speak, I do not speak according to the Lord, but as it were in foolishness" (2 Cor. 11:17). Some think that he said Brothers, I speak according to man because he was about to discuss a man's testament, the death of the testator, and other examples drawn from human likeness; but it seems to me that it was set before⁷⁷ partly, indeed, on account of what they suppose, but chiefly on account of what follows, that is: He does not say, "and to seeds," as of many, but as of one, "and to your seed," who is Christ. Ranging through all the Scriptures in mind and memory, I have never found "seeds" written in the plural number, but, whether in a good sense or in a bad, always in the singular number. So too with what he adds: But this I say: the testament confirmed by God; if anyone carefully compares the Hebrew volumes and the other editions with the translation of the Seventy translators, he will find that where testament is written, it does not sound "testament" (testamentum) but "pact" (pactum), which in the Hebrew tongue is called BERITH (ברית). From this it is plain that the Apostle did what he promised, and did not use hidden meanings with the Galatians, but everyday and cheap ones, such as could (had he not set before them I speak according to man) displease the prudent. In this place the years must be reckoned from the time when the Lord spoke to Abraham, saying: "And in your seed shall all the nations be blessed" (Gen. 22:18), down to Moses the lawgiver: whether they are four hundred and thirty, or how in Genesis the Lord promises Abraham himself that after four hundred years his sons would go out from the land of slavery. For it is no small matter, and though it has been sought by many, I do not know whether it has been found by anyone. That too which is read in the same book about Tamar and her two little ones (Gen. 38), namely that the first, who is called Zerah, put out his hand, and the midwife tied a scarlet thread on it, and then, as he drew his hand back inside, the later one, who is called Perez, stretched out his hand, fits the present place: that Israel showed its hand in the work of the Law, and drew it back defiled with the blood of the prophets and of the Savior himself. But afterward the people of the Gentiles broke forth, on whose account it is said to have been destroyed many times, and the middle wall which had stood between the Jews and the Gentiles to have been broken down, so that there might be one flock and one shepherd, and glory and honor and peace to everyone who works good, to the Jew first and to the Greek. But the simple sense woven in this place has this force: the Apostle teaches that the promises made earlier to Abraham cannot be destroyed through the Law, which was given afterward, nor can later things prejudice earlier ones, since the promises were given to Abraham four hundred and thirty years before, that all the nations would be blessed in him; whereas the observance of the Law, that whoever had done it should live in it, was given to Moses on Mount Sinai four hundred and thirty years later. On the contrary, it could be said here: What need was there, then, for the Law to be given so long a time after the promise, since, once the Law was given, a suspicion that the pledge had been destroyed could⁷⁸ arise, and since, while the promise remained, a Law that would profit nothing was given? Foreseeing this question, the Apostle himself puts it to himself in what follows and unravels it, saying:

3:19-20

What then? The Law was set down because of transgressions, until the seed should come to whom it had been promised, ordained through angels in the hand of a mediator. Now a mediator is not of one, but God is one.

Since, while the promise that had been made to Abraham still stood, the Law given afterwards through Moses seemed to have been brought in to no purpose, he explains why it was given: because of transgressions, he says. For after the offense of the people in the desert, after the worship of the calf and the murmuring against the Lord, the Law followed to forbid transgressions. "For the law is not set down for the righteous man, but for the unjust and the unsubmissive, for the ungodly and sinners" (1 Tim. 1:9). And, to go back further: after the idolatry to which they had been enslaved in Egypt, so that they forgot the God of their fathers and afterwards said, "These are your gods, Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt", the rite of worshipping God and the punishment of offenders were ordained in the hand of the mediator Christ Jesus, because all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made: not only heaven, earth, sea and all the things that we see, but also those things that were laid through Moses upon a hard people as the yoke of the Law (John 1). It is also written to Timothy: "For there is one God, and one mediator also of God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim. 2:5). After the mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, deigned for our salvation to be born from the Virgin's womb, he was called the go-between (sequester). But before he took up a human body, while he was with the Father in the beginning as God the Word, toward all the saints to whom the word of God came, namely Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and afterwards Moses and all the Prophets whom Scripture records, he is called only mediator, without the addition of the man, whom he had not yet assumed. And when he says, the Law ordained through angels, he wants this to be understood: that throughout the Old Testament, where an angel is first reported to have been seen and is afterwards introduced as if God were speaking, an angel indeed, whichever one of the many ministers it may be, was truly seen, but in him the mediator speaks, who says: "I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob" (Exod. 3:6). Nor is it surprising if God speaks in angels, since God also speaks in the prophets through the angels who are in men, as Zechariah says: "And the angel who spoke in me said" (Zech. 2:3); and next adds: "Thus says the Lord almighty". For the angel who had been said to be in the prophet did not dare to say in his own person: "Thus says the Lord almighty". By the hand of the mediator we ought to understand his power and might. Though according to God he is himself one with the Father, according to the office of mediator he is understood as other than he. But since the order of the reading is confused and thrown into disorder by a hyperbaton, it seems to us that it should be restored thus: The Law was set down through angels in the hand of a mediator, ordained through angels because of transgressions, until the seed should come to whom the promise had been made. Now there is no doubt that the seed signifies Christ, who is shown by the opening of Matthew also to be the son of Abraham, as Scripture relates: "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham".

3:21-23

Is the Law then against the promises of God? God forbid. For if a Law had been given which could give life, righteousness would truly be from the Law. But Scripture has shut up all things under sin, that the promise by the faith of Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto that faith which was to be revealed.

Just as the mediator of God and men stood in the middle between the one who gave the Law and the one who received it, so the Law itself, which was given after the promise, crept in as something in the middle between the promise and its fulfillment. It must not be thought to exclude the promise on the ground that, having followed afterwards, it seems to abolish that which came before; rather, from the fact that it could not give life, nor bestow what the first promise had pledged, it is manifest that it was given for the safekeeping of the promise, not for its overthrow. For if a Law had been given which could furnish life, and deliver what the promise had pledged, then truly the promise would be thought to have been excluded through the Law. But now, having been laid down because of transgressions, as we said above, it rather convicts as sinners those to whom, after the promise, it was given as a custody and, so to speak, as a prison, so that, since through the freedom of their will they had been unwilling to await the promise in innocence, they might be held fast by the bonds of the Law and brought into the slavery of the commandments, and so be kept against the coming of the faith that was to be in Christ, which would bring the promise to its fulfillment. Nor indeed should it be supposed that Scripture is the author of sin because it is said to have shut up all things under sin, since the commandment which is enjoined by right rather shows and convicts sin than is the cause of sin. So too a judge is not the author of a crime by binding wicked men: rather he shuts them up and, by the authority of his sentence, pronounces them guilty, so that afterwards, if he so wills, the sovereign may by his indulgence absolve those who are liable to punishment.

3:24-26

Therefore the Law was our pedagogue in Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But when faith came, we are no longer under a pedagogue. For you are all sons of God through faith, which is in Christ Jesus.

A pedagogue is assigned to little children, so that a wanton age may be reined in and hearts prone to vices may be held in check, while tender infancy is trained in studies and, restrained by fear of punishment, is prepared for the greater disciplines of philosophy and of governing the commonwealth. Yet the pedagogue is not the master and father, nor does the one who is being trained expect the inheritance and the knowledge of the pedagogue; rather, the pedagogue guards another man's son, and is to withdraw from him once he has arrived at the lawful time for taking up the inheritance. Indeed, the very name of pedagogue signifies this, and it is compounded from the fact that he leads (agat) boys, that is, conducts them. And so the law of Moses too was set over a wanton people after the likeness of a rather severe pedagogue, to guard them and to prepare them for the faith to come; and after this came, and we believed in Christ, we are no longer under a pedagogue, the guardian and the trustee depart from us, and, entering upon the lawful time of our age, we are called true sons of God, to whom not the Law, now abolished, but mother Faith, which is in Christ Jesus, begets us. But if anyone, after the time of his age has been completed, when he is now called heir and free and son, should wish to be under a pedagogue, let him know that he cannot live by the laws of a little child. For where now can that be fulfilled: "Three times in the year all your males shall appear in the sight of the Lord your God" (Exod. 23:17), now that Jerusalem has been overthrown and the temple scattered even to ashes? Where are the peace offerings and the victims for sin? Where is the eternal fire of the burnt offerings, after the likeness of the heavenly stars, now that the altar has been utterly destroyed? And what punishment will be able to be decreed for the guilty, when Scripture says: "You shall take away the evil from the midst of you" (Deut. 13:5), while the Jews are in servitude and the Romans reign? And so it will come about that they live neither under a father nor under a pedagogue: since the Law cannot be fulfilled after faith has succeeded it, and faith, while the Law as pedagogue is sought after, is not held.

3:27-28

For as many of you as have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.

He shows how we are born sons of God through the faith which is in Christ Jesus, saying: For as many of you as have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ. That Christ is a garment, moreover, is proved not only from the present passage but also from another, where the same Paul exhorts: "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. 13:14). If, therefore, those who have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ, it is plain that those who have not put on Christ were not baptized in Christ. For it was to those who were thought to be believers and to have obtained the baptism of Christ that it was said: "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ". If anyone receives only the bodily washing of water, the one that is seen with the eyes of the flesh, he has not put on the Lord Jesus Christ. For Simon too, the one in the Acts of the Apostles, had received the washing of water; but because he did not have the Holy Spirit, he had not put on Christ (Acts 8). And heretics or hypocrites, and those who live sordidly, seem indeed to receive baptism, but I do not know whether they have the garment of Christ. Let us therefore take care lest perhaps someone be found among us too who, from the fact that he does not have the garment of Christ, is shown not to have been baptized in Christ. But when someone has once put on Christ and, cast into the flame, has glowed white with the ardor of the Holy Spirit, one cannot tell whether he is gold or silver. So long as the heat holds the mass in this way, there is a single fiery color, and every difference of race, condition and bodies is taken away by a garment of this kind. For there is neither Jew nor Greek. By "Greek" we ought to understand Gentile, because Ἕλλην signifies both a Greek and a heathen. Nor is the Jew better for being circumcised, nor the Gentile worse for being uncircumcised; rather, it is according to the quality of their faith that either the Jew or the Greek is better or worse. Slave also and free are separated not by condition but by faith, since a slave can be better than a free man, and a free man can surpass a slave in the quality of his faith. Male and female likewise are separated by the strength and weakness of their bodies. But faith is reckoned according to the devotion of the mind, and it often happens both that a woman becomes the cause of salvation for a man and that a man goes before a woman in religion. Since, then, this is how the matter stands, and every difference of race, condition and bodies is taken away by the baptism of Christ and by his garment, we are all one in Christ Jesus: so that, as the Father and the Son are one in each other, so we too may be one in them.

3:29

But if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, heirs according to the promise.

Since the promises were made to Abraham and to his seed, which is Christ Jesus, it follows that those who are sons of Christ, that is, his seed, are also called the seed of Abraham, whose seed they are from his seed. But whenever our Lord Jesus is named the seed of Abraham, it is to be understood bodily, in that he is begotten of his stock. Whenever, however, it is we who are so named, we who, having received the Savior's word, have believed in him and have taken up the nobility of the lineage of Abraham, to whom the promise was made, then we ought to take it spiritually as the seed of faith and of preaching. Next, this too must be considered: that when he speaks of the Lord, "Now to Abraham were the promises spoken, and to his seed", that is, to Christ Jesus, he puts "promises" in the plural; but when it concerns those who through Christ are the seed of Abraham, it is called "promise" in the singular, as in the present place: Then you are Abraham's seed, heirs according to the promise. For it was fitting that what was spoken in the plural in the one Christ should be put in the singular among many men. There follows:

4:1-2

Now I say, as long as the heir is a little child, he differs nothing from a slave, though he is Lord of all, but he is under guardians and stewards until the time appointed beforehand by the father.

This little heir, who differs nothing from a slave though he is Lord of all, but is under guardians and stewards until the time appointed beforehand by the father, signifies the whole human race up to the coming of Christ, and, to say more, up to the consummation of the world. For just as all die in Adam, the first-formed man, though not yet born, so also all, even those who were born before the coming of Christ, are made alive in the second Adam. And so it comes about both that we served the Law in the fathers, and that they are saved by grace in the sons. This understanding accords with the Catholic Church, which asserts one providence of both the Old and the New Testament, and does not separate in time those whom it has joined in condition. We are all built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ our Lord, the cornerstone, holding us together, who made both one, and, breaking down the middle wall, destroyed in his flesh the enmity of both peoples, and changed the difficulty of the ancient Law by the integrity of the Gospel doctrines (Eph. 2:20). Truly in Christ we are all one bread, and we two have agreed upon earth. And just as we are founded upon the prophets, so too the patriarchs have stood upon the foundation of the apostles. Now the guardians and stewards can also be taken to be the prophets, by whose words we were daily instructed toward the coming of the Savior, just as the Law of Moses was discussed above as a pedagogue; and the angels of the little ones, who daily see the face of the Father and intercede for them. Of these it was said: "He will send the angels of the Lord round about those who fear him, and will deliver them" (Ps. 33:8). The priests and princes too can be understood, who then ruled over the people and are now held to provide a pattern. And rightly are those said to be under guardians and stewards who, having the spirit of fear, have not yet deserved to receive the spirit of freedom and adoption. For the age of infancy trembles at sins, fears the pedagogue, and does not trust that it is free, although by nature it is mistress. And according to both understandings, by which we have said that the guardians and stewards are either the prophets or the angels, this little one is under stewards and guardians for as long as it takes him to complete the lawful time of the perfect man. Now just as the lawful time under the Roman laws is bounded by a span of twenty-five years, so for the perfection of the human race the coming of Christ is reckoned as that time. As soon as he has come, and we have all grown up into the perfect man, the pedagogue and guardian depart from us. Then we shall fully enjoy the authority of the Lord and the possession of the inheritance, in which we, born earlier, were in a manner regarded as strangers.

4:3

So we also, when we were little children, were in bondage under the elements of this world.

He has called the elements of the world the same ones whom above he had called guardians and stewards: because, set first under these very overseers, since we could not yet grasp the coming of the Son of God to us, we were being instructed in the meantime. Some think that they are angels who preside over the four elements of the world, namely earth, water, fire and air, and that it is necessary that, before anyone believes in Christ, he be governed by those as his overseers. Many think that heaven and earth, and the things that are within them, are called the elements of the world: because, namely, the wise men of Greece, and the barbarian nations, and the Romans, the cesspool of all superstitions, worship the sun, the moon, the seas, and the gods of the forests and the mountains; from which we are set free when Christ has come, understanding that they are creatures, not divinities. Others interpret the elements of the world as the Law of Moses and the utterances of the prophets: because through these, as through the beginnings and first rudiments of letters, we take up the fear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom. Finally, to those who ought already to have been perfect, and who, having neglected the truth, still clung to the first principles of instruction, the Apostle writes in the Epistle to the Hebrews: "For when by reason of the time you ought to be teachers, you have need again to be taught what are the elements of the beginning of the words of God" (Heb. 5:12). On the contrary, it can be objected to us that Paul the apostle, writing to the Colossians, has named other things the elements of the world: "See", he says, "that no one plunder you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ" (Col. 2:8). But from what he added, "according to the tradition of men, and empty deceit", he shows that the same elements are not named to the Colossians and to the Galatians. For from these elements, after the fullness of time has come, we are redeemed, and, advancing to greater things, we receive the adoption of sons. But of those nothing of the kind is said as something that follows; rather, the elements are taken simply for letters. Therefore, as we have said, the Law of Moses and the prophets can be taken for the elements of letters, because through them syllables and names are joined, and they are learned not so much for their own usefulness as for that of something else: so that we may be able to read connected discourse, in which the sense and the order of the words, rather than the first principles of the letters, are considered. And as for our having interpreted the Law and the prophets as the elements of the world, the world is commonly taken for those who are in the world, as the same Paul says: "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself" (2 Cor. 5:19). And in the Gospel: "And the world was made through him, and the world does not receive him" (John 1:10). Some, moreover, range more freely in this matter: so that, since the Law has a shadow of good things to come, they inquire whether in another world, of which the Savior says: "I am not of this world" (John 8:23), we are first little children and, set under the elements of the beginnings, advance little by little to the highest point, and receive again the place of adoption which we once lost.

4:4-5

But when the fullness of time came, God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the Law, that he might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive back the adoption of sons.

Pay careful attention to the fact that he did not say made through a woman, as Marcion and the other heresies would have it, which pretend that the flesh of Christ was merely apparent, but of a woman, so that he may be believed to have been born not through her but of her. And as for his calling the holy and blessed Mother of the Lord woman (mulierem), not Virgin (Virginem), this same thing is written also in the Gospel κατὰ Ματθαῖον (according to Matthew), where she is called the wife of Joseph (Luke 2), and where she is rebuked by the Lord himself as a woman (John 2). For it was not necessary always to say Virgin, as if cautiously and timidly, since woman (mulier) signifies the sex rather than union with a man; and according to the sense of the Greek language, γυνή can be translated as either wife or woman. But to pass over all this: just as he was made under the law that he might redeem those who were under the law, so for the sake of those who had been born of a woman he willed to be born of a woman. For this is also why he received baptism in the stream of the Jordan as if he were a penitent, though he was free from sins: to teach the rest that they must be cleansed through baptism and be begotten as sons by the new adoption of the Spirit. John the Baptist, by no means understanding this, tried to keep him from coming to the washing, saying: "I ought to be baptized by you" (Matt. 3:14). And at once the mystery⁷⁹ is taught: "Permit it now; for thus it befits us to fulfill all righteousness", so that he who had come for the salvation of men should not pass over anything of the manner of life of men. Someone may ask and say: If he was made under the Law for this reason, that he might redeem those who were under the Law (since, evidently, it would have been impossible for those who were under the Law to be redeemed unless he himself had been made under the Law), then either he was made without the Law, that he might redeem those who were not under the Law; or, if he himself was not made without the Law, he does not redeem those who had not been under the Law. But if it was possible for those who were without the Law to be redeemed in such a way that he himself did not become without the Law, then he was made under the Law superfluously in order to redeem those who were under the Law. One will resolve this question briefly if one uses that example: "and he was reckoned with those who were without the Law". For although in the Latin manuscripts, owing to the simplicity of the translators, it has been badly rendered: "And he was reckoned with the iniquitous" (Luke 22:37), yet one must know that among the Greeks ἄνομον, which is written here, means one thing, and ἄδικον, which is found in the Latin volumes, another. For ἄνομος is said of one who is without law and is bound by no right, whereas ἄδικος means iniquitous, or unjust. Hence the Apostle himself too, in another place: "since I was not", he says, "without the Law of God, but was in the Law of Christ" (1 Cor. 9); and certainly in this testimony also ἄνομος is written in the Greek; and he who translated well here could have translated the same word likewise there too, had the ambiguity not deceived him. Another, however, will look more keenly at the very word might redeem, and will say that those are signified as redeemed who were first on God's side and afterwards ceased to be so, while those who had not been under the Law are not so much redeemed as bought. Hence to the Corinthians too, among whom fornication was heard of, and such fornication as is not even among the Gentiles (ibid. 5), it is written: "You have been bought at a price", not redeemed; for they had not been under the Law. We therefore receive back the adoption of the sons of God, and, redeemed by Christ, we cease to be under the slavery of the elements of the world and the power of guardians. And just as we have shown what difference there is between redeeming (redimere) and buying (emere), so let us consider what difference there is between receiving (accipere) and receiving back (recipere) the adoption of sons.

4:6

And because you are sons of God, God sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.

The apostle Paul plainly names three spirits: the Spirit of the Son of God, as in the present passage, "God sent the Spirit of the Son into our hearts" (Rom. 8:14); and the Spirit of God, as in that passage: "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God"; and the Holy Spirit, as there: "Your bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you" (1 Cor. 6:19). That the Holy Spirit is other than the Son of God is plainly proved in the Gospel as well: "Whoever speaks a word against the Son of man, it will be forgiven him. But whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, neither here nor in the age to come" (Luke 12:10). I say this for the following reason: because many, through ignorance of the Scriptures (as Firmianus also does in the eighth book of his Letters to Demetrianus), assert that the Holy Spirit is often named the Father, often the Son. And although we clearly believe in the Trinity, they take away the third Person and will have him to be not a substance but a name. But not to be long (for it is a commentary, not a dialogue, that is being written), I shall show briefly from the fiftieth psalm that three spirits are named, the prophet saying: "Create a clean heart in me, O God, and renew a right spirit in my inward parts. Do not cast me away from your face, and do not take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and strengthen me with a princely spirit". By the princely spirit he means the Father, because the Son is from the Father, and not the Father from the Son. But by the right spirit, the spirit of truth and righteousness, he signifies Christ the Lord: "For the Father has given all judgment to the Son" (John 5:22), as David says: "O God, give your judgment to the king, and your power to the king's son" (Ps. 71:1). Further, he calls the Holy Spirit by his open name. And though these differ in names and persons, they are joined in substance and nature; and, because of the fellowship of nature, the same Spirit is said without distinction to be now of the Father, now of the Son. Now the argument by which he is trying to assert that we are no longer under the Law but under the grace of the Lord Jesus, he concludes with an ending of this kind. Above he had said, "that we might receive the adoption of sons"; now he proves that we are sons of God from the spirit which we have within us. For we should never dare, he says, to say: "Our Father, who are in heaven, hallowed be your name", except from the consciousness of the Spirit dwelling in us and crying with a great voice of understanding and of doctrines: "Abba, Father" (Rom. 8:15). Abba is Hebrew, meaning the very same thing as Father. And Scripture keeps this custom in many places, setting a Hebrew word together with its interpretation: Bartimaeus, "son of Timaeus"; Asher, "riches"; Tabitha, "Dorcas" (Acts 9); and in Genesis, Mesech, "home-born slave" (Gen. 15), and other things like these. But since Abba means Father in the Hebrew and Syriac tongue, and our Lord in the Gospel commands that no one is to be called father except God (Matt. 23), I do not know by what license in the monasteries we either call others by this name or consent to be called by it ourselves. And certainly he gave this command who had said that one must not swear (Matt. 5). If we do not swear, let us not name anyone father either. If we interpret the saying about a father otherwise, we shall be compelled⁸⁰ to think otherwise about swearing as well. It should be noted also that in the Scriptures a cry is to be understood not as the emitting of a loud voice but as the greatness of knowledge and of doctrines. For in Exodus too the Lord answered Moses: "Why do you cry to me" (Exod. 14:15)? although no voice of Moses at all had gone before. But Scripture called a cry his heart, pierced with compunction and groaning tearfully for the people. Just as, therefore, he who has the Spirit of the Son of God is a son of God, so conversely he who does not have the spirit of the Son of God cannot be called a son of God.

4:7

Therefore he is now not a slave, but a son. And if a son, an heir also through Christ.

Having, he says, the spirit of the Son of God in you crying, Abba, Father, you have begun to be not slaves but sons. For before, you differed in nothing from a slave, although you were indeed God's by nature; but you lived as little ones under guardians and stewards. But if you are sons, the inheritance is consequently owed to you, so that, just as by receiving the spirit of the Son of God you have been made sons of God, so, changed from slavery into freedom, you may be heirs with the Father's heir, Christ Jesus, who speaks in the psalm in the person of the man he assumed: "The Lord said to me, You are my Son, today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession" (Ps. 2:7, 8). Now what we say in this place we ought to observe in the other places as well: that the whole human race is being discussed in the singular number. For all of us who believe are one in Christ Jesus, and members of his body, and, brought to a perfect man, we have him as our head, because the head of the man is Christ (1 Cor. 11:3).

4:8-9

But then indeed, not knowing God, you served those who by nature were not gods. But now, knowing God, or rather being known by him, how is it that you turn again to the weak and needy elements, which you wish to serve once more?

He rebukes the Galatians, whom they had brought over from the worship of idols to faith in the true God: how is it that, having abandoned the idols, which by nature were not gods, and knowing God, or rather being known by him, and having also received the spirit of adoption, they are once more, as if they were little children, and desiring to be under guardians and a pedagogue, going back to the weak and poor elements, which were given in the desert to the people for this reason, because of its weak and poor understanding, since it could not receive and bear greater things. Now the same elements which he has now called weak and needy he set down above simply as the elements of the world. And where they were called elements of the world, weak and needy was not added there. Here again, where they are called weak, the name "of the world", as we said above, is passed over in silence. I think, therefore, that as long as someone is a little child and has not completed the time fixed by the father, so that he can be called son and heir, he is under the elements of the world, that is to say, the Law of Moses. But when, after the freedom owed to the son, he has gone back again to the Law, wishing to be circumcised and to follow the whole letter of the Jewish superstition, then the things which before had been for him only the elements of the world are also called weak and needy beginnings. For they are of so little profit to their worshippers that they cannot even offer them what they had provided before, since Jerusalem, the temple and the altar have been destroyed. Someone may answer and say: If the law and the precepts written in the Law are weak and needy elements, and those who have known God, or rather have been known by him, ought not to observe the Law (lest they begin not so much to worship the God by whom they have been known as to go back to those who by nature are not gods), then either Moses and the prophets observed the Law and did not know God, nor were known by him; or, if they knew God, they did not at all fulfill the commandments of the Law. Either of these is dangerous to say: either that they did not do the things of the Law, and so knew God; or that they did not know God, while they kept the weak and needy elements of the Law. This can indeed be resolved in this way, by saying that, just as Paul became a Jew to the Jews in order to win the Jews (1 Cor. 9), and at Cenchreae cut his hair in fulfillment of a vow (Acts 18), and at Jerusalem in the temple practiced the going barefoot and the shaving of the head, in order to calm the ill will of those who had been instructed about him that he was acting against the Law of Moses and the God of the prophets: so also the holy men did indeed do the things that belonged to the Law, but followed the sense of the Law rather than the letter. They, no less than Abraham, with the veil taken from their face, desired to see the day of Christ, and they saw it and were glad: they became weak to a weak people, in order to win the weak (1 Cor. 9), and to those who were under the Law as though they themselves were under the Law, in order to separate them from the idols to which they had grown accustomed in Egypt. For it is absurd that Moses and the others who conversed with God should have been in such a condition that we do not believe that for them too the time fixed by the Father had come, and that they were redeemed from legal slavery, and obtained the adoption of sons, and received the inheritance with Christ. For whatever the wisdom of God has granted to the whole human race as to one Son, this same it has always bestowed on each of the saints in his own order and dispensation. When we call the Law of Moses weak and needy elements, the heretics find an occasion to disparage the Creator, because he founded the world and established the Law. To them we shall answer what we said above: that the elements are weak and needy for those who go back to them after the grace of the Gospel. But before the time fixed by the Father came, the elements were called not so much weak and needy as elements of the world. In short, before the Gospel of Christ shone out in the whole world, the precepts of the Law had their own brightness; but after the greater light of the grace of the Gospel shone forth, and the sun of righteousness showed itself to the whole world, the light of the stars was hidden and their rays grew dim, so that the Apostle says in another place: "For what was glorified in this respect was not glorified, because of the surpassing glory" (2 Cor. 3). This he now says in other words, meaning that the Law of Moses, which before the Gospel was rich and wealthy and splendid, after the coming of Christ, by comparison with him, as being weak and needy, has been diminished and destroyed by him who was greater than Solomon, and the temple, and Jonah. For what is written, "He must increase, but I must decrease" (John 3:30), I think was said not so much in the person of John as in the person of the Law, because lesser things always give way to greater, and perfect things are set before beginnings. In another way, however, we shall affirm that the weak and needy elements are the traditions of the Jews and the base understanding according to the letter, which are statutes that are not good and precepts that are not good. For the spiritual understanding of the Law is strong and rich (Ezek. 20), so that either it ought not to be called an element at all, or it is indeed an element by comparison with the age to come and with the life in Christ Jesus, by which the angels and the heavenly powers now live. But compared with the Jewish sense, it should be called not so much an element, that is, a beginning, as perfection. And when he says: But now, knowing God, or rather being known by him, this shows that after the worship of idols the Galatians came to understand God, or rather that they themselves were judged worthy of his knowledge. Not that God, the Creator of all things, is ignorant of anything; but that he is said to know only those who have exchanged error for piety. "The Lord knows those who are his" (2 Tim. 2:19). And the Savior in the Gospel: "I am", he says, "the good shepherd, and I know mine, and mine know me" (John 10:14). On the contrary, to the ungodly: "I do not know you; depart from me, workers of iniquity" (Luke 13:27). And to the foolish virgins: "I do not know who you are⁸¹" (Matt. 25:12).

4:10-11

You observe days, and months, and times, and years; I fear you, lest perhaps I have labored in vain among you.

He who does not worship the Father in spirit and truth does not know the sabbath rest laid up for the saints, of which God speaks: "If they shall enter into my rest" (Ps. 94:11); and he does not remember those times of which it is written: "Remember the days of the age" (Isa. 46:9). And elsewhere: "I remembered the ancient days, and I had the eternal years in mind" (Ps. 76:6). He observes Jewish days, and months, and times, and years. Days, such as those of the sabbath and of the new moon, and from the tenth of the first month to the fourteenth, on which the bodily lamb is kept for sacrifice, and from the fourteenth to the twenty-first of the same month, when unleavened bread is eaten, not that of sincerity and truth, but in the old leaven of the malice and wickedness of the Pharisees. He too who, by the Jewish rite, counts seven weeks after the unleavened bread keeps the days of the Israelite Pentecost; and likewise the blast of trumpets in the seventh month, on the first of the month. Those too who keep the tenth of the same month, the expiation and the fast, and who pitch the booths of the Feast of Tabernacles according to custom, observe Jewish days. And they keep months who observe the first and the seventh month, not understanding the mystery of the truth. They also keep times who, coming to Jerusalem three times every year, think they are fulfilling the precept of the Lord, who says: "Three times in the year you shall keep a feast day to me: the solemnity of unleavened bread, and the solemnity of the harvest of the firstfruits, and the solemnity of the completion at the going out of the year" (Exod. 23:14 ff.). And elsewhere: "Three times in the year your male shall appear in the sight of the Lord your God" (Exod. 23:17). But as for his saying and years, I think it is said of the seventh year, that of remission, and of the fiftieth, which they call the Jubilee. The Apostle explains this passage more fully to the Colossians, saying: "Let no one therefore judge you in food, or in drink, or in part of a feast day, or of a new moon, or of sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come" (Col. 2:16). He put "part of a feast day" here to distinguish it from the perpetual festival, so that we may hold not a brief one and, so to speak, some small particle of the whole body, but the whole span of our life as a perpetual solemnity in Christ. And, to connect the earlier with the later, what he thinks of the law of Moses and of superfluous fussiness about foods in this same Epistle he at once adds, saying: "For if you have died with Christ from the elements of this world, why do you still, as though living in this world, lay down decrees? Do not touch, nor taste, nor handle, which things all are for destruction by the very use, according to the precepts and doctrines of men". Someone may say: If it is not permitted to observe days, and months, and times, and years, we too incur a similar charge when we observe the fourth day of the week, and the Preparation, and the Lord's day, and the fast of Lent, and the festival of the Pasch, and the gladness of Pentecost, and the various times appointed, according to the variety of regions, in honor of the martyrs. He who answers this simply will say that the days of the Jewish observance are not the same as ours. For we do not celebrate a pasch of unleavened bread, but of the resurrection and of the cross. Nor do we number seven weeks at Pentecost after the custom of Israel, but we venerate the coming of the Holy Spirit. And lest a disorderly gathering of the people should diminish faith in Christ, for that reason certain days have been appointed, so that we might all come together into one place. Not that the day on which we assemble is more festive, but that, on whatever day we are to assemble, a greater joy may arise from the sight⁸² of one another. He, however, who tries to answer the opposing question more acutely affirms this: that all days are equal, and that Christ is not crucified only on the Preparation and does not rise only on the Lord's day, but that it is always the holy day of the resurrection and always one may feed on the Lord's flesh; and that fasts and assemblies on days in between were appointed by prudent men on account of those who are more free for the world than for God, and who cannot, or rather will not, gather in the church through the whole time of their life and, before their human business, offer to God the sacrifice of their prayers. For how many are there who always practice even these few things that have been appointed, the times either of praying or of fasting? And so, just as it is permitted to us either to fast always or always to pray, and, rejoicing, to celebrate the Lord's day unceasingly, having received the Lord's body, it is not likewise lawful for the Jews to sacrifice the lamb at all times, to keep Pentecost, to pitch tabernacles, to fast daily. Quite cautiously, however, has he tempered his words between the authority of the Apostle and the gentleness of a holy man, adding: I fear you, lest perhaps I have labored in vain among you. For had he wished to condemn them abruptly, he would certainly have said: I fear you: for I have labored in vain among you. But now, seeing that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge, he neither wholly despaired of the salvation of those who had been deceived by a pious error, nor, on the other hand, did he leave them unreproved, lest he should give both to them an occasion of persevering in error and to the rest likewise an occasion of erring. But I fear you, he set down in place of I fear for you. A teacher labors in vain when he himself calls his disciples on to greater things, and they, slipping back, roll down again to lesser and lowly things.

4:12

Be as I also am, because I also am as you.

What he says is this: just as I became weak to you who were weak, and could not speak to you as to spiritual men but as to carnal men and little ones in Christ, and, because you were not yet able to feed on solid food, gave you only the milk of the Gospel to drink, not wishing you to remain forever in the age of infancy but to lead you little by little on to adolescence and youth, so that you might be able to take solid food: so you too ought to be as I also am, namely to have a taste for more perfect things and, leaving milk behind, to pass on to stronger foods and to greater pastures. And he says this as an imitator of the Savior, who did not think it robbery to be equal to God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave; and was found in habit as a man, so that we might become gods from men and no longer die; but, rising together with Christ, might be called his friends and brothers, and so that the disciple might be as the teacher, and the slave as the master. But it can also be understood thus: I beseech you, he says, brothers, that, despising the Jewish observance of days, months, seasons and years, which are shadows of things to come, you imitate me, who, having lived without reproach in the Law, counted all things as refuse and rubbish, that I might gain Christ. For I too was as you now are, when I was held bound by the same observances, and, because the Church of Christ did not do these things, I persecuted it and laid it waste.

4:13

Brothers, I beseech you, you have done me no injury. And you know that through infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel to you some time ago.

Join what follows to the preceding sentence; and to make this clearer, let the order be the one we construct: I beseech you, brothers, be as I am, because I also am as you are. Like this is that saying: "We entreat on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God" (2 Cor. 5:20). And elsewhere too: "I beseech that first of all supplications, prayers, petitions, thanksgivings be made" (1 Tim. 2:1). So also the words of Peter, who says: "The elders among you I entreat, who am myself a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ" (1 Pet. 5:1). These words indeed both summon us to humility and strike down the haughty brow of bishops who, as though set upon some lofty watchtower, scarcely deign to look at mortals and to speak to their fellow slaves. Let them learn from the Apostle that the erring and unwise Galatians are called brothers. Let them learn from him who, after rebuke, speaks gentle words: "I beseech you" (1 Cor. 11). And what he beseeches is this, that they be imitators of him, as he himself is of Christ; or rather, to keep to the present passage, what he asks is nothing great: that just as he himself for their sake was made lesser from greater, so they should climb up from lesser things to greater. In nothing, he says, have you injured me. A disciple injures his master if through his own negligence he wastes his precepts and his labor. The Galatians had not injured the Apostle, since up to the present time they were keeping his Gospel and his commandments. Or certainly thus: When I first announced the Gospel to you, and on account of the infirmity of your flesh, because you could not receive the greater mysteries, I preached to you as to little children, and pretended that I myself was weak, so that I might gain you who were weak: did you not receive me as an angel, as Christ Jesus? Since, then, you did me no injury in anything at that time⁸³, and thought me, humble and cast down for your sake, like the Son of God, how is it that, when I summon you to greater things, I am injured by you, through the waste of my labor, and that you now mourn⁸⁴, with the work made void, that dispensation by which I had pretended to be a little one? Now Paul announces the Gospel to the Galatians through the infirmity of the flesh, not his own but that of his hearers, who could not subject the flesh to the word of God, but, being as it were fleshly, received nothing of spiritual understanding. To make this more evident, let us set out an example. He teaches through the infirmity of the flesh who says: "If they do not contain themselves, let them marry". And: "A woman, if her husband has died, is free: let her marry whom she will, only in the Lord" (1 Cor. 7:9, 39). But he by no means teaches through the infirmity of the flesh when he records these things: "You are loosed from a wife: do not seek a wife". And: "It is time that those who have wives be as though they had none" (ibid. 27, 29). For some precepts are given to the spiritual, others to the fleshly. And it is one thing that is commanded by way of command, another by way of indulgence.

4:14

And your temptation, which was in my flesh, you did not despise nor reject; but you received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus.

An obscure passage, and one to be attended to more keenly. I, he says, long ago preached the Gospel to you as to little ones and sucklings, because of the weakness of your flesh, beginning from the lesser things and (so to speak) almost stammering among you. This dispensation and pretense of a weak preaching was indeed my management; but it was your temptation, to see whether those things would please you and seem great which in their own condition were lesser, and were brought forth by me as if lowly. And you, taking them not as small but as great, admired them so much that you welcomed me, who spoke them, as an angel and, to say more, as the Son of God. This temptation of yours, then, by which I was tempting you in the carnal proclamation of my discourse, was not despised, nor was it held cheap; but it had more dignity than I reckoned. This passage can also be explained thus: when I came to you, I did not come in the word of wisdom, but as a lowly and despised man, bringing nothing great: the Crucified. When, therefore, you saw me placed in a body subject to infirmities, promising the heavenly kingdoms, you did not laugh at me, nor did you reckon me worthy of contempt: for you understood that the lowliness of my flesh and the meanness of my very bearing came about for your temptation, namely, whether you would despise him who was thought pitiable by unbelievers; but on the contrary you welcomed that lowly, mean and despised man as an angel, and more than an angel. Or surely we can suspect that the Apostle, at the time when he first came to the Galatians, was sick; and that, though held back by some infirmity of his poor body, he nevertheless did not cease nor hold back his voice in silence from preaching the Gospel he had begun. For they relate that he often suffered a most severe pain of the head, and that this is the angel of Satan who was set upon him to buffet him in the flesh, lest he be lifted up. This infirmity and this sickness of the body was a temptation for those to whom the Gospel was proclaimed: whether they would despise him who promised sublime things, whom they saw subject to the sicknesses of the body. It can also be said that at the beginning of his coming to the Galatians he endured insults and persecutions and blows on his body from those who opposed the Gospel; and that this was the very greatest temptation for the Galatians, seeing the Apostle of Christ beaten. But when he says, as an angel, as Christ Jesus you welcomed me, he both shows that Christ is greater than an angel⁸⁵, Christ whom the Psalmist had sung as lesser according to the dispensation of the body, saying: "You have made him a little less than the angels" (Ps. 8:6); and he demonstrates that his own words at the beginning had such force that they were thought to be those of an angel and of Christ.

4:15-16

Where then is your blessedness? For I bear you witness that, if it could have been done, you would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me. Have I then become your enemy, telling you the truth?

Blessed is he who walks in the way of the virtues, but only if he arrives all the way to the virtues. Nor does it profit to have withdrawn from vices unless you lay hold of the best things. For in good pursuits it is not so much the beginnings that are to be praised as the end. For just as in the vineyard there are many stages of the grape up to the press: first the vine must bud into leafy shoots and hold out hope in its blossoms; then, once the flower has fallen, the form of the future cluster is shaped, and little by little the grape, swelling, comes to its birth, so that, pressed in the winepresses, it may sweat out sweet must. So also in teaching there are single advances⁸⁶ of blessedness: that someone hears the word of God, that he conceives it, that it grows in the womb of his soul and comes all the way to birth; that, when he has brought it forth, he nourishes it with milk and leads it through infancy, boyhood, adolescence and youth all the way to the perfect man. Since, then, the single stages, as we have said, have their blessedness according to their advances, if the end, and, so to speak, the finishing hand is lacking to the work, all the labor will become void; and it will be said: Where then is your blessedness? Although, he says, at the time when you received the Gospel according to the flesh I called you blessed because you were fervent in the beginnings, yet now, because I do not see the roof set upon the building, and the foundations hardly laid at all, I am compelled to say: Where then is your blessedness, for which, judging you blessed, I used to praise you before? For truly I myself also confess that you so loved me in the beginning, when I preached lowly things to you and was beset by persecutions, that, if it could have been done (and what he says is to be taken as hyperbole), you would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me, so that I might see more with the lights of all of you. For you wished to be blind yourselves through an ineffable love toward me, so that the light of the Gospel might rise more fully in my heart; you wished my gain to grow by your losses: and this at that time when, whether because of the weakness of your flesh I announced small and lowly things to you as to little ones and sucklings, or because of the injuries of my own flesh, I did not seem worthy of belief. But now, because I have begun to call you on from the elements and syllables and the reading of boys to greater studies, so that you may hold books in your hands and may learn words full of learning and of meanings, you kick back, you are angry, the perfection of teachings seems burdensome to you; and you are changed to other feelings to such a degree that me, whom you had received as an angel and as Christ, to whom you wished to hand over your eyes, you now hold as an enemy, because I announce to you the full truth. And he has elegantly ended the sentence, saying: Have I then become your enemy, telling you the truth? in order to show that the beginnings of the preaching were not so much the truth as the shadow and image of the truth. Like this is that famous sentence of the poet among the Romans (Terence, Andria 1.1): Compliance begets friends, truth hatred. But see how much better the one here is than that one; for the Apostle tempered this sentence for those whom he had called foolish, whom he had named little ones, and made it particular, since he directed it properly to the persons and to the Galatians. But that one, declaring it both general and as holding so among all men, erred badly. For compliance, by which he thought friends are made, once truth is taken away, is not so much compliance as flattery and fawning; and it is plain that these ought to be called hidden enmities rather than friendships. At the same time this too must be considered, that today also, so long as we explain the Scriptures according to the letter to little ones and sucklings, and to those in whose hearts Christ never grows up nor advances in age and wisdom and grace with God and men, we are praised, looked up to, held in admiration. But when we have begun a little to call them on to pass over to greater things, from being our heralds they become enemies, and they would rather follow the Jews than the apostles, who, withdrawing from the teaching and traditions of the Pharisees, entered into Christ himself, the propitiatory, and the perfection of the Law; nor do they deign to accept the divine word, which bids the teachers of the Church to climb to loftier doctrines, to raise the voice with all their strength, and not to fear the clamor of the little ones barking around them, saying⁸⁷: "Go up on a lofty mountain, you who bring good tidings to Sion. Lift up your voice in strength, you who bring good tidings to Jerusalem. Lift it up, do not fear" (Isa. 40:9).

4:17-18

They emulate you not well: but they wish to shut you out, that you may emulate them. But emulate the good in a good thing always: and not only when I am present with you.

They emulate well who, when they see graces, gifts and powers in certain people, themselves desire to be such: and they strive to imitate the faith, life and diligence of those people, through which they merited those things, so that they too may be able to attain the things that are good and worthy of emulation. Of these the Apostle also says: "Emulate spiritual things: but rather that you may prophesy". And next: "So you also, since you are emulators of spiritual things, seek to abound for the edification of the Church". And again: "Therefore, brothers, emulate to prophesy, and do not forbid to speak in tongues". But they emulate not well who do not so much desire to be better themselves, by imitating those who are worthy of emulation, as wish to make those very people worse, and to drag them backward by a perverse emulation. Let it be said by way of example: someone is a Christian; he reads Moses and the prophets; he knows that all things went before for that people in shadow and in image, but were written for our sake, upon whom the ends of the ages have come down. He understands circumcision not so much of the foreskin as of the ears and of the heart. He has risen with Christ: he seeks the things that are above. He has been freed from the burden and slavery of the Law, which commands: touch not, taste not, defile not. If anyone should wish to persuade this man by the words of the Scriptures to receive the things that are written not through tropology but according to the killing letter, so that he becomes a Jew outwardly, not inwardly, that person emulates him not well: rather he hastens to drag back one who is advancing at a swift pace toward greater things, so that the other may instead emulate him who is going backward; or at the least he keeps him from advancing much further. He speaks, therefore, to the Galatians, who had been induced by the champions of the Law to imitate them, when those men ought rather to have imitated the Galatians. And since it is natural that the greater should be made from the lesser, not the lesser from the greater, he also says: Emulate the good in a good thing, that is, do not imitate the champions of Jewish observance, but imitate the things that are good. For just as one who imitates someone's riches, power and rank emulates not so much good things as things that ought to be shunned, so you, on the contrary, emulate the good in a good thing, seeking spiritual things rather than carnal ones, so that it is not they who teach you to be Jews, but you who teach them to be Christians. And do this always, so that with persevering step you may be able to reach the end of the good work. For indeed you emulated the good in a good thing formerly, when I was with you; but after I departed from you, you lost everything I had handed on to you, drawn away from a sure anchorage and a trusty harbor out again into the deep by the ebbing wave. Nor is it any wonder if, when the Apostle departed, the vessel of election, in whom Christ the Lord spoke, the Galatians were changed, since even now we see the very same thing happen in the churches too. For if ever there happens to be in a church a teacher adorned in speech and in life, who rouses his hearers to virtues as if with certain goads, we see the whole people hasten, burn with fervor and run to and fro over almsgiving, fasting, chastity, the receiving of the poor, the burial of the dead and other such things. But when he has departed, we see it little by little wither away, and, its food withdrawn, grow thin, turn pale and languish, and the ruin follow of everything that had flourished before. Wherefore, since the harvest is great but the laborers are few (Matt. 9:37), let us pray the Lord of the harvest to send laborers to reap, who may reap and gather the ears of the Christian people that stand in the Church, made ready to be the wheat to come, and, carrying them into the barns, may by no means allow them to perish. This is said of that zeal and perverse emulation of which it is also said elsewhere: "Do not emulate among the evildoers" (Ps. 36:1); and here: They emulate you not well. But we find also another zeal, with which the sons of Jacob were zealous against their brother Joseph (Gen. 37 ff.), and Miriam and Aaron against Moses, the friend of the Lord (Num. 12). For neither the former nor the latter were stirred to zeal in order to become better than Joseph and Moses, but because they grieved that those men were better. This zeal is a near neighbor of envy. It would be a long task if I wished to bring forth from the treasury of the Scriptures all the kinds of zeal, whether good or bad. We read of the good zeal of Phinehas (Num. 25), of Elijah (1 Kings 19), of Mattathias (1 Macc. 2), and of the apostle Judas (but not the traitor), who on account of the remarkable power of zeal in him received also the name of Zealot (Acts 1). And bad zeal, as that of Cain against Abel (Gen. 4), and of others against others. And the zeal of a husband, of which it is written: "And the spirit of zeal come upon him" (Num. 5). Unless perhaps this zeal is intermediate, and can be taken neither in a good nor in a bad sense, but, standing between the two, is rather called jealousy. Otherwise: those who were of the circumcision, seeing that the Galatians from the Gentiles abounded in the powers of the Holy Spirit, while they themselves did not speak in tongues, did not have gifts of healings, nor the grace of prophecy, were spurred on by the goads of zeal and desired to bring them over to the burdens of the Law, so that they too might begin to become like them.

4:19

My little children, of whom I travail again, until Christ be formed in you.

With what great difficulties and pain offspring are brought forth from the womb, the first curse declares, saying: "In sorrow you shall bear children" (Gen. 3:16). Wishing therefore to show the solicitude of teachers for their disciples, and what feelings they suffer lest their followers fall away from salvation, Paul says: My little children, of whom I travail again. For he who in another place had said as a father: "Though you have ten thousand pedagogues in Christ, yet not many fathers" (1 Cor. 4:15), now speaks in Christ no longer as a father but as a mother, so that they may recognize in him the anxiety and the tender devotion of both parents. Something of the sort Moses too said of the people: "Did I receive all this people in my womb" (Num. 11:12)? Which of us, do you think, is so anxious for the salvation of his disciples that he is tormented not for a few hours, or at most for two or three days, but for the whole time of his life, until Christ is formed in them? The example he has taken of a pregnant woman, conceiving and forming the seed within herself, must be carefully held to, so that we may understand what is said. Nature is not to be blushed at, but revered. For just as the seed is first cast without form into a woman's womb, so that it clings to its furrows and floor as if with a kind of glue (and the prophet too, remembering his own beginning, says of it: "Your eyes saw my unformed state" (Ps. 138:16)); then through nine months, the blood being held back, the future man is curdled, given a body, nourished and articulated into parts; so that, after it has stirred in the womb, at the appointed time it is poured forth into the light, and is born with as great difficulties as those with which it is afterwards nursed lest it perish: so too the seed of the word of Christ, when it has fallen into the soul of the hearer, grows by its own stages, and, to pass over many things (for we can easily transfer the bodily description to the spiritual understanding), it remains in a precarious state for as long as it takes until he who conceived gives birth. Nor is the end of the effort reached at once in having brought forth; rather, then comes the beginning of another labor: to lead the suckling infancy, with diligent nourishment and pains, up to the full age of Christ. And just as in marriage the husband's seed is often the cause that children are not begotten, sometimes a barren wife does not retain the seed, frequently neither is fit for begetting, and on the contrary both are fruitful: so too among those who sow the word of God this fourfold division holds: either the teacher indeed fulfills his office, but the hearer is barren; or the hearer is of good disposition, but through the teacher's want of skill the seed of the word perishes; or surely the one who is taught is as senseless as the one who instructs; and rarely does it happen that master and disciple are in accord with each other, namely that the one teaches as much as the other can draw in, or that the one taught takes in as much as the teacher pours in. But now we are all judges. We do not know what number a psalm is, what part of prophecy, what chapter of the Law, and by mere facility of speech we boldly interpret what we in no way understand. It is no concern of ours that Christ be formed in the people, that each one, returning to his own home, may have the seed of the word of God, so that when he has conceived it he may say with the prophet: "From fear of you, O Lord, we have conceived and brought forth; we have made children of your salvation upon the earth" (Isa. 26:17, 18). Such people pass over into the apostles, and deserve⁸⁸ to hear from the Savior: "Whoever shall do the will of my Father, he is my brother, and sister, and mother" (Matt. 12:50): the diversity of their progress being shown⁸⁹ in the different names. Christ is also formed in the heart of believers when all mysteries are laid open to them, and the things that seemed obscure become clear. But this too must be observed: that he who through sin had in a certain manner ceased to be a man is conceived by the master through penitence, and the forming of Christ in him is promised once again. This is against the Novatians, who will not have those whom sins have once crushed formed anew.

4:20

But I would wish to be with you now, and to change my voice, because I am confounded in you.

Divine Scripture edifies even when it is read; but it profits much more if it is turned from letters into voice, so that he who had taught through the Epistle may, being present, instruct his hearers. For the living voice has great force: a voice resounding from the mouth of its author, which is uttered and articulated with the very delivery with which it was generated in its own man's heart. The Apostle, therefore, knowing that speech addressed to those who are present has greater force, desires to change the epistolary voice, the voice confined in letters, into presence: and, because this was more expedient for those who had been perverted in error, to draw them back to the truth by living speech. And this for the reason that he was confounded⁹⁰ in them: which indeed is said more properly in Greek. For Ἀποροῦμαι signifies not so much confusion, which among them is called αἰσχύνη or σύγχυσις, as need and want. This, then, is the sense: I would wish to be with you now, and to utter in person, being present myself, the voice of my letters, because I am in need in you. For I do not have the fruits that teachers are accustomed to have from their disciples; and the seed of teachings has been sown in vain, since I suffer utter destitution in you: so that I could break out in the words of Jeremiah: "I have not profited, nor has anyone profited me" (Jer. 15:10). This passage can also be interpreted another way: Paul the apostle, who had become a Jew to the Jews, that he might gain the Jews (1 Cor. 9), and to those who were under the Law as though he himself were under the Law, and weak to the weak, that he might gain the weak: according to the character of those whom he desired to save, he would change his voice, and, in the manner of actors (for indeed he was made a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men [1 Cor. 4]), he would turn his bearing and his voices into various shapes. Not that he was what he pretended to be; but that he only seemed to be what was of profit to the others. He perceives that the Galatians need another teaching, that they must be saved by another way, not by that by which they had first been brought over from heathenism to the faith of Christ: and he is compelled to say: I would wish now to be with you, and to change my voice, because I am confounded in you. I do not see, he says, that I am of profit if I speak the things that I spoke before; because of which, not knowing what to do, and drawn in different directions, I am torn, confounded and rent apart. And just as physicians, when they have seen that the force of their art does not prevail with the first remedy, pass on to another, and go on trying for so long which of several may help, until they arrive at a cure, so that what could by no means be healed by the softness of some plaster may be healed by a more biting powder and a harsher treatment: so I too, because I am confounded in you and am drawn hither and thither by not knowing, would wish, being present, to utter the voice of my letters from my own mouth, so that I myself might rebuke you more severely than usual; since a letter cannot express the voice of one who rebukes; it cannot make the outcry of one who is angry resound, nor unfold the pain of the breast in strokes of the pen. But it can also be understood more simply: I have just now used gentle words with you, saying: "Brothers, I beseech you". And: "My little children, of whom I am again in labor until Christ be formed in you"; but I, gentle and mild, who spoke to you as a father, out of that love by which I do not suffer my sons to perish and to wander perpetually, would wish now to be present, if the chains of my confession did not confine me, and to change my gentle voice into the words of one who rebukes. Nor is it fickleness if I now coax, now grow angry; love impels me, sorrow impels me, to speak with differing feelings. For I do not know into what words I should first break out, and with what remedy I ought to heal you, because I am confounded in you.

4:21

Tell me, you who wish to be under the Law, have you not heard the Law?

It must be noted that here the history of Genesis is called the Law: not, as people commonly suppose, the things that are to be done or are to be avoided, but the whole account that is woven together about Abraham and his wives and children is called law (John 15). We read in another place too that the Prophets are also called the Law. He therefore hears the Law who, according to Paul, looks not into its surface but into its marrow. He does not hear the Law who, like the Galatians, follows only the outer bark.

4:22-23

For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the bondwoman and one by the free woman. But he who was by the bondwoman was born according to the flesh; but he who was by the free woman, through the promise.

It is a matter of very great difficulty to show that only Isaac, who was born of Sarah, was begotten by promise, and not Ishmael too, who sprang from Hagar, the Egyptian bondwoman. For Scripture relates that when, with Sarah persecuting her, Hagar had fled while with child, and an angel had come to her in the desert and was warning her to submit herself to her mistress's authority, that same angel also spoke these words: "Multiplying I will multiply your seed, and it shall not be numbered for multitude" (Gen. 16:10). And afterward, concerning Ishmael (and no one would doubt that these are certainly words of promise): "He shall be a rustic man, his hand over all, and the hands of all over him, and he shall dwell over against the face of all his brothers". But it can be answered that the promise of an angel is of lesser authority than that of God himself. For just as a star does not glow when the sun has risen, so too the words of the angel, in comparison with the promise of God, are obscured, and vanish, and are counted as nothing. This answer does indeed seem to have some weight; but it is at once crushed by the authority of the Scripture that follows. For it is written: "But Abraham said to God: Let this Ishmael live in your sight" (ibid., 17:18 ff.); and God answered him thus: "Behold, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac, and I will establish my testament with him, for an everlasting testament, and with his seed after him. But concerning Ishmael: Behold, I have heard you, and behold, I have blessed him, and I will increase him, and I will multiply him exceedingly. He shall beget twelve nations, and I will make him a great nation; but my testament I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time, in the coming year". From these words it is evident, by the very speech of God as well, that Ishmael was begotten according to promise. But this too is resolved thus: the promise is properly fulfilled in the giving of the testament, and it is one thing to bless, to increase, to multiply exceedingly, which is written of Ishmael, and another to make an heir through a testament, which is said of Isaac: "I will establish my testament with him, for an everlasting testament, and with his seed after him". And in what follows: "But my testament I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you" (Gen. 17:19). And just as gifts are one thing and the substance another, legacies one thing and the inheritance another (for we read that gifts were handed over to the sons of Abraham's concubines, but to the son of Sarah was left the inheritance of the whole substance), so, as we have said, blessing and legacies are one thing, the testament another. And this too can be said: that concerning Ishmael either the angel or God spoke after he had been conceived, whereas concerning Isaac God made the promise before he was conceived in Sarah's womb. Let this be said for the present, as far as the mediocrity of our talent allows. But if anyone can find something greater, as to how Ishmael, who was born of the bondwoman, is not the son of promise, but Isaac, who was born of the free woman, is, he should rather be listened to. "And if", says the Apostle, "you think anything otherwise, God has revealed this also to you". Now we must briefly reach toward higher things, so as to say that each one of us is at first not born according to promise, as long as he is instructed by the simple words of the Scriptures and still delights in Jewish expositions; but when he has crossed over to more sublime things and has understood the Law as spiritual, then he is begotten of promise; and, to speak more plainly, those who do the works of Abraham are born of Abraham daily. But those who have the spirit of slavery again in fear are begotten of the Egyptian bondwoman, while those who have received the spirit of adoption are begotten of Sarah, the free woman: the freedom with which we have been endowed by Christ. The Lord speaks to the Jews, who still preferred to be sons of the bondwoman: "If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free" (John 8:31, 32). Hence they too, not knowing that what was said was mystical, say: "We are the seed of Abraham, and we have never been slaves to anyone: how do you say, You will be free? Jesus answered them: Amen, amen I say to you, that everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. But the slave does not remain in the house forever; but the son remains forever". If we are slaves of sin, Hagar the Egyptian has begotten us; if sin does not reign in our mortal body, we are truly sons of God.

4:24a

Which things are said through allegory.

Allegory belongs properly to the art of grammar, and how it differs from metaphor or the other tropes, we learn as little children in the schools. It puts forward one thing in the words and signifies another in the sense. The books of the orators (supply: of allegories) and of the poets are full of it. Divine Scripture too is woven together through it in no small part. Understanding this, Paul the apostle (since he had touched secular letters to some extent) used the very word of the figure, so as to call it allegory, as it is called among his own people: namely, so that by this sense he might show more fully the loose use (abusionem) of the Greek word in this place. That Paul knew secular letters, though not to perfection, his own words testify: "One of them, a prophet of their own, said: Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies" (Titus 1:12). This heroic verse is by the poet Epimenides, whom both Plato and the other ancient writers recall. Among the Athenians also, when he was making his defense in the Areopagus, he added this: "As also certain of your poets have said: For we are also his offspring" (Acts 17:28). This half-line is found in Aratus, who wrote about the heaven and the stars. And also this: "Very evil conversations corrupt good morals" (1 Cor. 15:33); it is an iambic trimeter taken from a comedy of Menander. From these and other passages it is evident that Paul was not ignorant of secular letters, and that what he here called allegory he elsewhere called spiritual understanding. As there: "For we know that the Law is spiritual" (Rom. 7:14), in place of saying allegory, or figured allegorically. And elsewhere: "All ate the same spiritual food, and drank the same spiritual drink. And they drank of the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ" (1 Cor. 10:3-4). There is no one who doubts that the manna here, and the eruption of the sudden spring, and the rock itself that follows, are to be taken allegorically. I know what can be objected on the contrary: "Brothers, if a man has been overtaken in some fault, you who are spiritual instruct such a one in the spirit of gentleness" (below, 6:1). And in another place: "But the spiritual man judges all things, yet he himself is judged by no one" (1 Cor. 2:15): namely, that the word spiritual sounds something other than what we said above. But we call that man spiritual, in that he judges all things and is himself judged by no one, who, knowing all the mysteries of the Scriptures, understands them in a lofty way, and, seeing Christ in the divine books, admits in them nothing of Jewish tradition.

4:24b-26

For these are the two testaments, one indeed from Mount Sinai, bearing children into slavery, which is Hagar. For Sinai is a mountain in Arabia, which borders on that which is now Jerusalem, and is in slavery with her sons. But that Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.

The explanation of nearly everyone on this passage is this: they interpret Hagar, the slave woman, as the Law and the people of the Jews, but Sarah, the free woman, as the Church, which has been gathered from the Gentiles and which is the mother of the saints, as Paul says: Which is the mother of us all. She did not give birth for a long time, before Christ was born of the Virgin, and she was barren, since Isaac, the laughter of the world, was not yet resounding from the chosen father with the voice of sublime doctrines; for indeed Abraham too is rendered in our language "chosen father with sound." But Hagar, which means παροικία, that is, "sojourning," or "pilgrimage," or "tarrying," begets Ishmael, who only hears the precepts of God and does not do them, a rustic man, bloodthirsty, haunting the deserts, who is an enemy to all his brothers born of the free woman and resists them with a hostile front. Nor is it any wonder that the Old Testament, which was established and written down on Mount Sinai, which is in Arabia and borders on that which is now Jerusalem, is not perpetual: since sojourning, too, is different from perpetual possession, and the name of Mount Sinai sounds "temptation," and Arabia signifies "setting"; and, on the contrary, that Jerusalem which is above, which is free and the mother of the saints, shows that this Jerusalem which exists at present is below, and sunk in what is low and lowest. There are some who understand the two Testaments in another way as well: so that they interpret divine Scripture, the old as well as the new, either as the slave woman or as the free woman, according to the diversity of understanding and the judgment of those who read it; and they would have those who still serve the letter and have the spirit of fear unto slavery be begotten of Hagar the Egyptian, but those who ascend to higher things and are willing to understand allegorically what is written be the sons of Sarah, whose name in our language means ἄρχουσα, that is, "princess," in the feminine gender. And they assert⁹¹ that they adopt this view out of the following necessity: because it would be unjust to understand Moses and all the prophets as born of the slave woman, but any of the Gentiles whatever as born of the free woman. Hence, they say, it is better that we should judge not only, concerning those who are in the Church, some to be slaves and others free according to the diversity of their understandings (as we said above), but also, concerning one and the same man, that as long as he follows the history he is the son of the slave woman; but when, as Jesus opens the Scriptures, his heart has been set on fire, and in the breaking of the bread he has looked upon him whom before he did not see (Luke 24), then he too is called a son of Sarah. Marcion and Manichaeus were unwilling to remove from their codex this passage in which the Apostle said: "Which things indeed are allegorical", and the rest that follows, thinking that it was left there against us: namely, that the Law is to be understood otherwise than it is written; whereas, certainly, even if it is to be taken allegorically (which we too confess, and Paul teaches), it was so composed not at the will of the reader, but by the authority of the writer; and by the very thing which they seemed to keep against us they are crushed: that Moses, the servant of God the Creator, wrote spiritual things, their Apostle too teaching that very thing, he whom they themselves assert to be the preacher of another Christ and of a better God.

4:27

For it is written: Rejoice, barren one, you who do not bear; break forth and cry out, you who do not travail: for many more are the children of the desolate than of her who has a husband (Isa. 54:1.)

The synagogue had the Law as her husband; and, according also to the prophecy of Hannah, she was once fruitful in children (1 Sam. 1). But the barren Church, without Christ as husband, without any address of the Bridegroom's word, lay long in the desert. But after the synagogue received the bill of divorce into her hands, and turned all her husband's ornaments into the ornament of an idol, then the husband, his former girdle rotting, wove another belt for his loins, another loincloth out of the Gentiles; and she, as soon as she was joined to her husband, conceived and gave birth. And in Isaac⁹² the Lord cries out through the prophet: "Is a nation born all at once?" (Isa. 66:8): when in a single day, in the Acts of the Apostles, three thousand and five thousand men believed (Acts 3 ff.). Nor do I think it necessary for us to speak of the Christian multitude and of the fewness of the Jews, since the banners of the cross shine forth in the whole world, and a Jew scarcely appears in the cities, rare and conspicuous.

4:28

But we, brothers, are children of promise according to Isaac.

That the Apostle and those like him are children of promise according to Isaac presents no difficulty of understanding. But since Origen, in expounding this passage, set down the Apostle's text thus: "But you, brothers, are children of promise according to Isaac", the question is raised how he now calls the Galatians, whom he had called senseless, and of whom he had said that they had begun in the spirit and were finishing in the flesh, children of the promise according to Isaac. We say, therefore, that the Apostle calls them children of the promise according to Isaac for this reason: because he does not utterly despair of their salvation, and he reckons that they will once more return to the spirit in which they had begun, and become children of the free woman. But if they are brought to completion in the flesh, they are children of the slave woman.

4:29-5:1a

But as then the one who had been born according to the flesh persecuted the one according to the spirit, so it is now also. But what does the Scripture say? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with my son Isaac. Therefore, brothers, we are not sons of the bondwoman, but of the free woman. With which freedom Christ has made us free.

I do not think that we can find where Ishmael persecuted Isaac, but only this: that when the son of the Egyptian woman, who was the elder by birth, was playing with Isaac, Sarah was indignant and said to Abraham: "Cast out the bondwoman and her son: For the son of the bondwoman shall not inherit with my son Isaac" (Gen. 21:10). And surely simple play among infants does not deserve expulsion and disinheritance. But the Apostle, as a Hebrew of the Hebrews, and taught at the feet of the master Gamaliel (who once restrained in council the Pharisees raging against the Lord⁹³), understood from the words of Sarah, who said: "for the son of the bondwoman shall not inherit with my son Isaac", that that play had not been simple. But because perhaps Ishmael, as the elder by birth, and circumcised at a time when he could already understand and feel what he suffered, was claiming the birthright for himself, Scripture called the quarrel of the little ones play. Hence Sarah too, not bearing these words, and not enduring the habit of the bondwoman's son, who from an early age claimed the birthright for himself, broke out in speech: "Cast out the bondwoman with her son: For the son of the bondwoman shall not inherit with my son Isaac". And when it seemed hard to Abraham (for more is always owed to the firstborn) that Ishmael should not only cease to be the first, but should not even receive an equal portion with his younger brother, God, who willed that the free woman be within and the bondwoman be driven out of doors, confirms Sarah's words and speaks to Abraham: "Let it not be hard in your sight concerning the boy and the bondwoman. In all that Sarah shall say⁹⁴ to you, hear her voice: for in Isaac shall your seed be called". As then, therefore, the elder brother Ishmael persecuted Isaac, who was still nursing and little, claiming for himself the prerogative of circumcision, claiming for himself the birthright: so now also Israel⁹⁵ according to the flesh is raised up, is puffed up, is exalted against the younger brother, the Christian people from the Gentiles. Let us consider the madness of the Jews, who killed both the Lord and the prophets, and persecuted the apostles, and oppose the will of God: and we shall see that far greater persecutions, as histories also teach us, have been stirred up by the Jews against the Christians than by the Gentiles. Do we wonder at the Jews? Today also those who are little ones in Christ and live carnally persecute those who have been born of water and the spirit, and who, rising with Christ, seek the things that are above, not below. Let them do what they will: let them with Ishmael persecute Isaac: they will be cast out of doors with their mother, the Egyptian bondwoman, nor will they receive the inheritance, which he alone who was born of the promise shall obtain. And elegant too is this, that he who was born according to the flesh persecutes the spiritual one. For the spiritual man never persecutes the carnal, but pardons him as a rustic brother: he knows that he can make progress in time. And if ever he sees the son of the Egyptian woman angry, he remembers the one father, who created light, oxen and the gnat, and that in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and earthenware. Therefore let us say with the apostle Paul: We are not sons of the bondwoman, but of the free woman (2 Tim. 2); and, renewed in Christ, let us hear the words of the Lord speaking to the Jews: "If you abide in my word, you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:31, 32). Made free by this freedom, the Apostle too said: For though I am free from all. "He who commits sin is the slave of sin" (1 Cor. 9:19). He, because he knew himself free from all vices and a stranger to all concupiscence and error, rightly rejoiced in the freedom of Christ, saying: We are not sons of the bondwoman, but of the free woman: with which freedom Christ has made us free (John 8:34).

5:1b

Stand, and do not be held again by the yoke of slavery.

From this too it is shown that he who clings to the yoke of slavery does not stand; and also that he who has been granted freedom by Christ was under the yoke for as long as he had the spirit of slavery in fear and followed the beginnings of the Law. When he says, stand, he urges a firm and stable faith in Christ, so that the churches of Galatia may remain with foot fixed upon the Savior. Of this the righteous man also speaks in another place: "He set my feet upon the rock" (Ps. 39:3), in place of what is, "upon Christ": namely, that they may not be carried about by every wind of doctrine and swept off in different directions (Eph. 4). Hence it is also said to those who stand: "And he who stands, let him see that he does not fall" (1 Cor. 10:12). And in another place: "Stand, act manfully, be strengthened" (ibid. 16:13), so that they may stand with him whom Stephen, persevering in martyrdom, saw standing at the right hand of the Father (Acts 7), and who spoke to Moses: "But you, stand with me" (Exod. 34:2). Now by the yoke of slavery he means the Law, hard, difficult, laborious, which day and night wears out its worshippers with heavy toil. As Peter too says in the Acts of the Apostles: "Why do you try", he says, "to put a heavy yoke upon the neck of the brothers, which neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear" (Acts 15:10)? And when he added, not again, it is not that the Galatians had kept the Law before; but that the yoke of idolatry too is heavy, the yoke by which the people of the Egyptians was oppressed and sank like lead in the Red Sea (Exod. 15). In this sense he had also said above: "How are you turning again to the weak and needy elements, which you wish to serve once more, observing days, and months, and times, and years?" For the Galatians, who at the preaching of the apostle Paul had abandoned idols and at once risen to the grace of the Gospel, were not returning to the slavery of the Jewish Law, which they had never known before; but in wishing to observe times, to be circumcised in the flesh and to offer bodily sacrifices, they were in a manner returning to the same rites which they had served before in idolatry. For they say that the priests of Egypt, and the Ishmaelites, and the Midianites have no foreskin. And that the nations observe days, months and years, would that we did not know, so that⁹⁶ there might never be a festivity shared by us with them.

5:2

Behold, I Paul say to you that if you be circumcised, Christ profits you nothing.

In the Gospel the Savior speaks to the disciples: "He who hears you hears me; he who receives you receives me" (Luke 10:16). And the Apostle testifies, saying: "And I live, now not I; but Christ lives in me" (above, 2:20); and elsewhere: "Or do you seek a proof of him who speaks in me, Christ" (2 Cor. 13:3)? From this it is clearly proved that what he now says, Behold, I Paul say to you, is to be received not as the words of Paul only, but of the Lord. For when in the first Epistle to the Corinthians he had first set down: "But to those who are married I give charge, not I, but the Lord" (1 Cor. 7:10); and had at once added: "but to the rest I command" (ibid., 12), then, lest his authority be thought cheap, "I think," he says, "that I too have the spirit of God": so that, with the spirit and Christ speaking in him, he who, imitating the prophets, might say, "Thus says the Lord almighty", would not be held in contempt. But what has been said, Behold, I Paul say to you that if you be circumcised, Christ profits you nothing, will become greater if it is joined with the beginning, where he says: "Paul an apostle, not from men, nor through man, but through Jesus Christ", and the rest: so that the hearers may be moved not so much by the authority of the one sent as by that of the one sending. Someone may say: Contrary to this passage is what is written to the Romans: "Circumcision indeed profits, if you keep the Law" (Rom. 2:25); and below: "What then has the Jew more, or what is the profit of circumcision? Much in every way. First indeed, because the oracles of God were entrusted to them" (Rom. 3:1-2). For if Christ profits nothing to those who have been circumcised, how does circumcision profit those who keep the Law? This indeed will be resolved by this answer, that we say⁹⁷ that the Epistle written to the Romans was dictated to those who had believed from among the Jews and the Gentiles, and that Paul acted so that⁹⁸ neither people would be offended: namely, so that each people might possess its own privilege, so that neither would the Gentiles be circumcised, nor would the circumcised draw forward a foreskin. But writing to the Galatians he used another argument. For they were not of the circumcision, but of the Gentiles who had believed. Nor could circumcision profit those who, after the grace of the Gospel, were turning back again to the elements of the Law. And in the Acts of the Apostles the history relates (Acts 15) that, when certain men of the circumcision had risen up and asserted that those who had believed from among the Gentiles ought to be circumcised and to keep the law of Moses, the elders who were at Jerusalem, and the apostles gathered together with them, decreed by letter that the yoke of the Law should not be laid upon them, and that they should observe nothing further, except only to keep themselves from things sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from fornication, or, as is written in some copies, "and from things strangled". And lest any doubt remain that circumcision profits nothing, but that it was on account of those who had believed from among the Jews that he tempered his judgment on circumcision to the Romans, coming down little by little to the later parts of the same Epistle he showed that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, saying: "Circumcision therefore is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God" (1 Cor. 7:19). For circumcision is nothing to such a degree that it profited nothing even the house of Israel, which boasted of circumcision, as the prophet records: "All the nations are uncircumcised in flesh, but the house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart" (Ezek. 44:9); and the uncircumcised Melchizedek blessed the circumcised Abraham. For what he says, If you be circumcised (Gen. 14), is as if he had meant to say: if you be circumcised in the flesh. This in another place he calls not circumcision but mutilation, saying: "See the mutilation. For we are the circumcision, who serve by the spirit of God, and glory in Christ, and do not trust in the flesh" (Phil. 3:2-3). He does not trust in the flesh who expects every benefit from Christ, and does not sow in the flesh, so as to reap corruption from the flesh, but in the spirit, from which eternal life is brought forth. The sentence must be examined more closely: If you be circumcised, Christ profits you nothing. That is, not only that, if they are circumcised, circumcision itself does not profit them; but that, even if they seem to have the other virtues in Christ apart from circumcision, all of them perish once they have been circumcised after faith in Christ. What then? Did circumcision profit Timothy nothing? Much in every way. For he was circumcised not so much in order that he might think he could gain some advantage from circumcision itself, as that he might win the rest (1 Cor. 9). He became a Jew to the Jews, so that by his circumcision he might bring the Jews over to the faith of Christ. For circumcision does not profit precisely when it is thought to bring some benefit⁹⁹ of itself.

5:3

And I solemnly testify to every man who circumcises himself, that he is a debtor to do the whole Law.

God, who commanded circumcision first to Abraham and then through Moses in the Law, appointed not circumcision alone but many other things as well to be observed: feast days to be attended at Jerusalem; whole burnt offerings of victims, always morning and evening; the sacrifice of the lamb in one place only; rest for the land in its seventh season; the fiftieth year of release; and the rest, which it is easy for every reader to gather for himself from the Scriptures. We shall therefore hem in Ebion and his followers, who think that those who believe in Christ after the Gospel must be circumcised, so that either they practice circumcision together with the other things that are commanded in the Law, or else, if it is impossible for all of them to be done, circumcision too should cease, since it has been passed over along with the rest as useless. But if they answer that they are bound to do only what is possible (for God, they say, does not demand of us the things we cannot fulfill, but those we can), we shall tell them that it does not belong to the same God both to wish the Law to be kept and to abandon those who keep the Law. Or how could he make them guilty for leaving the Law undone, when, even if they wish it, they cannot fulfill it all? We, for our part, follow the spiritual law, which says: "You shall not bridle the mouth of the ox that treads out the grain" (Deut. 25:4), and with the Apostle we understand: "Does God care about oxen" (1 Tim. 5:18; 1 Cor. 9:9)? Surely he says it for our sake; and we keep delightful sabbaths (Isa. 58:13), not so that our ox and ass and our worthless cattle may rejoice on the sabbath, but those men and beasts of whom it is written: "Men and beasts you will save, O Lord" (Ps. 35:7). By men we mean all who are rational and spiritual; by beasts, those who are of slower wit and are taught by the spiritual to keep the sabbaths of the Lord. Nor is what was said above, "If you are circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing", and what follows, "I testify to every man who circumcises himself, that he is a debtor to do the whole Law", contrary to what we are now bringing forward. For it is not the hearers of the Law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified. For the doer of the Law is the one who can say: "We are not the circumcision"¹⁰⁰; and, "A Jew in secret"; and, "We know that the Law is spiritual". But whoever follows the mutilation and the letter that kills is not a doer of the Law, but truly an enemy of the law, above all after the coming of the Savior, who takes away the veil from the heart of those who turn to him, so that all of us, beholding the glory of the Lord with unveiled face, may be transfigured from the oldness of the letter into the newness of the spirit.

5:4

You have been made void from Christ: you who are justified in the Law have fallen away from grace.

Just as no one can serve two masters (Matt. 6), so it is difficult to fulfil at one and the same time both the shadow and the truth of the Law. The shadow is in the old Law, until the day breathes and the shadows are removed; the truth is in the Gospel of Christ: "For grace and truth were made through Jesus Christ" (John 1:17). Therefore he who thinks that he is justified in some observance of the Law loses the grace of Christ, and lets go the Gospel which he had held; and when he has lost grace, he is deprived of faith in Christ, and ceases in His work. For κατηργήθητε ἀπὸ τοῦ Χριστοῦ is rather to be understood, not as it has been badly translated in the Latin, You have been made void from Christ (Evacuati estis a Christo), but as "you have ceased in the work of Christ¹⁰¹" (in Christi opere cessastis), so that what he had commanded above specifically about circumcision, saying, "if you are circumcised, Christ profits you nothing", he now applies generally to the whole Law: that those make no progress in the work of Christ who have believed that they are to be justified in any observance whatever of the Law.

5:5

For we through the spirit, by faith, wait for the hope of righteousness.

He put "spirit" to distinguish it from the letter. But by the hope of righteousness Christ is to be understood, because He Himself is truth, patience, hope, righteousness and all the virtues; whose second coming we await, since He is to judge all things, and will then be present no longer in patience but in righteousness, to render to each one according to his works. Awaiting the presence of this God, the apostle, and those who are like him, say: "Thy kingdom come" (Matt. 6:10), so that when the Son has delivered the kingdom to God and the Father, and He Himself also has been subjected in all who are subjected, then the head may be subjected in the body, and God may be all in all (1 Cor. 15). For He who now is in part, through individuals, will then begin to be wholly through all.

5:6

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision avails anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith which works through love.

For those who wish to live in Christ Jesus, virtues are to be sought, vices to be shunned; but the intermediate things, which lie between virtues and vices, are neither to be shunned nor to be sought, such as circumcision and uncircumcision and other things like them. Circumcision indeed profits, if you keep the Law. It was useful for this reason to those who lived under the Law: not because they were circumcised, but because the oracles of God were entrusted to them, and turning these into works they were not strangers to salvation. Nor should it trouble us that it was Zipporah who, taking a stone, circumcised her son and kept the strangling angel away from her husband (Exod. 4), or however else it is reported to be written in the Hebrew; for he has now testified not so much that circumcision profits nothing at all, as that it does not avail in Christ Jesus, since indeed from the time when the Gospel shone out over the whole world, the injury of circumcision is superfluous. It availed then, as did the other things of the Law as well, when carnal blessings too were promised to those who kept the Law: namely, that if they fulfilled it, they would be blessed in the city, blessed in the field, would have full barns, and many other things that are contained in the promises (Deut. 28). We, however, wish to avail and be strengthened in Christ Jesus, that is, in the true circumcision, and not in the Jewish mutilation. "For he is not a Jew who is one openly, nor is circumcision that which is manifest in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one in secret, and circumcision is of the heart, in the spirit, not the letter" (Rom. 2:28, 29). Circumcision of the flesh, therefore, profits nothing in Christ, but circumcision of the heart and of the ears does, which takes away that reproach of the Jews: "Behold, your ears are uncircumcised, and you cannot hear" (Exod. 6:12). Circumcision of the lips profits, which Moses, in his humility, pleaded that he did not yet have, as is written in the Hebrew: "But I am one having uncircumcision in my lips". Circumcision also affords much benefit in matters of sex, when unchastity is cut away through chastity. Therefore in Christ Jesus neither circumcision avails nor bodily uncircumcision, because they are placed in the middle, that is, between vices and virtues; but faith, which works through love, so that both the faith which was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness may be approved, and every work of faith may be set in love, since the whole Law and the Prophets hang on love. For in these two commandments, "You shall love your God, and you shall love your neighbor", the Savior declared that the Law and the Prophets consist. And Paul in another place: "For you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Rom. 13:9). If, then, every commandment is summed up in what was said, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself", and faith working through love avails very much, it is manifest that the working of faith through love contains the fullness of all the commandments. But just as, according to the apostle James, faith without works is dead (Jas. 2:17, 20), so without faith, even though works be good, they are reckoned dead. Those, therefore, who do not believe in Christ and are of upright morals, what more do they have than works of virtue? Let that harlot from the Gospel supply an example of the faith which works through love: when, in the house of the Pharisee, she had washed with her tears the feet of the Lord as he reclined at table, wiped them with her hair, and anointed¹⁰² them with ointment, and the Lord had put to the murmuring Pharisee the parable of the debtors of fifty and five hundred denarii, he added: "Wherefore I say to you: Her many sins are forgiven her, because she loved much" (Luke 7:47 and 50). And turning to the woman herself, he said: "Your faith has made you safe: go in peace". For in this place it is openly shown that this woman had faith working through love, which availed much in Christ. Suppose someone should say: He rightly showed that circumcision avails nothing in Christ, since he knew that it had once availed; but was anyone in doubt about uncircumcision too, that he should say, nor uncircumcision? But if we consider that very many Christians, that is, of our own number, who from the wild olive have been grafted into the root of the good olive (Rom. 11), exult against the broken branches of the Jewish people and say that uncircumcision, in which Abraham pleased God and faith was reckoned to him for righteousness, avails more than circumcision, which was given as a sign of faith and did not profit Israel who had it: we shall see that this presumption of certain people too is now most carefully excluded.

Book Three

This third volume on Galatians, O Paula and Eustochium, we are now hammering out: not unaware of our own weakness, and sensing that the little stream of our slender talent scarcely makes a faint murmur. For now these things are sought even in the churches: the simplicity and purity of the apostolic words are abandoned, and people gather as though to the Athenaeum and the lecture halls, so that the applause of the bystanders may be roused; so that speech, painted with the falsehood of the rhetorical art, may go out in public like some little harlot, not so much to instruct the peoples as to seek the favor of the people, and, in the manner of a psaltery and a flute playing sweetly, may soothe the senses of the hearers; so that the words of the prophet Ezekiel may truly be fitted to our times, when the Lord says to him: "And you have become to them like the voice of a lyre playing sweetly and well tuned: and they hear your words, and do not do them" (Ezek. 33:32). But what am I to do? Shall I keep silent? But it is written: "You shall not appear in the sight of your Lord empty." And Isaiah (as it is found, however, in the Hebrew volumes) groans: "Woe is me, wretched one, because I have kept silent." Shall I speak? But the grating harshness of Hebrew reading has soiled all elegance of speech and all the charm of Latin eloquence. For you yourselves also know that it is more than fifteen years since never Tully, never Maro, never any author of the Gentiles' literature has come into my hands: and if anything from there perhaps creeps in while we speak, we recall it as if through the mist of an old dream. What I have gained from my untiring study of that language, I leave to the judgment of others: what I have lost in my own, I know. Add to this that, because of the weakness of my eyes and of my whole poor body, I do not write with my own hand: nor can I make up for slowness of expression by labor and diligence, as they also report of Virgil, that he shaped his books by licking them, in the manner of bears with their cubs¹⁰³: but, once a secretary has been called, either I dictate at once whatever comes into my mouth, or, if I wish to reflect a little in order to produce something better, then he silently reproaches me, draws in his hand, wrinkles his brow, and testifies with every gesture of his body that he is present to no purpose. Speech, moreover, even if it has come from a talent of good natural gifts, and is marked out by its inventions and adorned with the flower of words, yet unless it has been filed and polished by its author's own hand, is not lustrous, and does not have gravity mixed with grace; but, in the manner of rich rustics, it is rather exposed by its wealth than adorned by it. To what end is this? Clearly so that an answer may be given both to you and to the others (who perhaps may wish to read) that I am writing not a panegyric or a controversia, but a commentary; that is, that my purpose is not that my own words may be praised, but that what has been well said by another may be understood as it was said. It is my duty to discuss what is obscure, to touch briefly on what is plain, to dwell on what is doubtful. That is why the work of commentaries is also called by many an explanation. If anyone seeks eloquence or delights in declamations, he has in either language Demosthenes and Tully, Polemon and Quintilian. The Church of Christ was gathered not from the Academy and the Lyceum, but from the common rabble. That is why the Apostle too: "See", he says, "your calling, brothers, that not many are wise according to the flesh, not many powerful, not many noble; but the foolish things of this world God has chosen, to confound the wise: and the weak things of the world God has chosen, to confound the strong: and the base things of this world, and the contemptible, God has chosen, and the things that are not, to destroy the things that are" (1 Cor. 1:26, 27, 28). For since, from the order, the variety and the constancy of created things, the world through wisdom had not known God, it pleased God through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe: not in wisdom of word, lest the cross of Christ be made void. For where is the wise man, where the grammarian, where the searchers of natural causes? Nor was it in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of power and of the spirit: so that the faith of believers might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. For this reason the Apostle himself also said to the same Corinthians: "And I, brothers, when I came to you, came not with loftiness of speech and of wisdom, announcing to you the testimony of the Lord. For I did not judge that I knew anything among you, except Christ Jesus, and him crucified" (1 Cor. 2:1, 2). And lest perhaps, in saying this, he should be thought a preacher of foolishness, with a mind that foresaw it he overturned what could be objected. "But he speaks", he says, "the wisdom of God in a mystery, which is hidden: which none of the princes of this age knew." How few now read Aristotle? How many know either the books or the name of Plato? Scarcely do idle old men recall them in corners. But our rustics and fishermen the whole globe speaks of, the entire world resounds with them. And so their simple words must be laid open in simple speech. The words, I say, not the sense. But if, through your prayers, I can¹⁰⁴ have in expounding their Epistles that spirit which they had in dictating, then you will see¹⁰⁵ that there was in them as great a majesty and breadth of true wisdom as there was arrogance and vanity in the learned men of the age. Briefly I confess to you the secret of my mind: whoever is going to understand the Apostle through me, I do not want him to understand my writings with difficulty, and to seek another interpreter in order to understand the interpreter. But now it is time for us to pursue what remains.

5:7

You were running well; who hindered you from obeying the truth?

What the Latin translator has now set down, not to obey the truth (veritati non obedire), which in the Greek is written τῇ ἀληθείᾳ μὴ πείθεσθαι, he rendered in an earlier passage thus: "not to believe the truth" (non credere veritati). This, indeed, we noted in its proper place is not found in the old manuscripts, although the Greek copies too have been confused by this error. But the sense is this: You were worshiping the Father in spirit and truth, and, receiving of the fullness of Christ, you knew that the Law was only given to the people through Moses, and not also made; but grace and truth were not only given but also made through Jesus Christ. Since, therefore, you were running so well, serving the truth rather than images, by what perverse teacher have you been hindered, that you follow the shadow of the Law and abandon the truth of the Gospel? There follows:

Consent to no one. But since we have found this written neither in the Greek books nor in those who have commented on the Apostle, it seems it should be passed over.

5:8

Your persuasion is not from him who called you.

In the Latin manuscripts I have found it written thus: "Your persuasion is from God, who called you." I think, indeed, that this was originally from him (ex eo), and that, not being understood, "from God" (ex Deo) gradually became common because of the similarity, in place of what is from him (ex eo). But not even so can the sense stand, namely that he should now, on the contrary, assert that the persuasion and obedience of those whom he had just accused of not obeying the truth, showing that it lay in their own choice either to obey or not to obey, is not so much from those who are called as from him who calls. It is therefore better and more truly read thus: Your persuasion is not from him who called you. For the work of God is one thing, the work of men another. It is the work of God to call; it is the work of men either to believe or not to believe. And if anywhere in the Scriptures the free will of man is affirmed, as there: "If you will be willing and will hear me" (Exod. 19:5); and again: "And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you?" (Deut. 10:12), it is also proved most of all from this passage. But certain of the simpler sort, thinking that they were deferring to God by making our persuasion also lie in his power, have taken away the part of speech not and rendered a sense contrary to the Apostle. Whether, therefore, in the good sense or in the bad, neither God nor the devil is the cause, because our persuasion is not from him who called us, but from ourselves, who either consent or do not consent to the one who calls. Otherwise: This persuasion which you now follow is not from God, who called you in the beginning, but from those who afterwards troubled you.

5:9

A little leaven leavens the whole lump.

It is badly rendered in our codices: "A little leaven corrupts the whole mass", and the translator has rendered his own sense rather than the words of the Apostle. Now Paul uses this very same saying to the Corinthians as well, where he commanded that the man who had his father's wife should be taken away from their midst and handed over to penance, for the destruction and affliction of the flesh through fasts and sicknesses, so that the spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord¹⁰⁶ Jesus Christ. For he says: "Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven corrupts the whole mass" (1 Cor. 5:5, 6 ff.)? or (as we have already¹⁰⁷ corrected it) leavens the whole lump? And at once he added: "Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as you are unleavened; for Christ our pasch has been sacrificed. Therefore let us feast, not in the old leaven, nor in the leaven of malice and wickedness, but in the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." But now, by this same saying, he teaches that the spiritual bread of the Church, which came down from heaven, ought not to be violated by a Jewish interpretation; and the Lord commanded the very same thing to the disciples, that they should beware of the leaven of the Pharisees (John 6). The evangelist, making this plainer, added: "Now he had spoken to them of the doctrine of the Pharisees" (Matt. 16:12). And what is this other doctrine of the Pharisees, if not the observance of the Law according to the flesh? So this is the sense: Do not think that the snares of a few men, who come from Judea and teach something different, are to be despised. A spark is a small thing, and while it is being looked at it is almost not seen; but if it catches hold of tinder, and the fire, however small, finds what feeds it, it consumes walls, cities, the widest forests and whole regions. Leaven too, whose parable in the Gospel is turned to the other side (Luke 13), seems a small thing and of no account; but when it has been mixed into flour and has corrupted the whole mass by its strength, everything that has been mixed with it passes over into its power. So too a perverse doctrine, beginning from one man, at first, in its beginning, scarcely finds two or three hearers; but little by little it creeps through the body like a cancer, and, as the common proverb has it, the scab of one beast befouls the whole flock. Therefore the spark must be put out as soon as it appears, and the leaven removed from the neighborhood of the mass, the rotting flesh cut away, and the scabby animal driven from the sheepfolds, lest the whole house, mass, body and flock burn, be corrupted, rot and perish. Arius in Alexandria was a single spark; but because it was not put out at once¹⁰⁸, its flame laid waste the whole world.

5:10a

I have confidence in you in the Lord that you will think nothing else.

Not by conjecture, as some would have it, but by the prophetic spirit Paul declares that the Galatians will return to the way of truth which they had lost (1 Cor. 12). For he who exhorted others to be zealous for spiritual gifts, but rather that they might prophesy, himself also, full of the same grace, said: "We know in part, and we prophesy in part" (ibid., 13:9). Foreseeing therefore in the spirit that they would believe nothing else than what they were being taught through the Epistle, he says: I have confidence in you in the Lord that you will think nothing else. For the addition of the Lord's name too signifies this very thing. For if he had been reckoning this by conjecture, he could have said: I have confidence in you. But now, by adding in the Lord, trusting in a certain divine spirit, he prophesied what he had known would come to pass.

5:10b

But he who troubles you shall bear judgment, whoever he is.

He is covertly tearing at Peter, they say, whom he writes above that he withstood to his face because he did not walk with a straight foot toward the truth of the Gospel. But neither would Paul speak with so insolent a curse about the prince of the Church (Gal. 2), nor did Peter deserve to be made guilty of troubling the Church. From this it must be judged that it is said of some other person, who either had been with the apostles, or had come from Judea, or had believed from among the Pharisees, or at any rate was esteemed great among the Galatians, so that he bears the judgment for the troubled Church, whoever he is. Now "to bear judgment" is what he said in other words in what follows: "Each one shall bear his own burden." And I think that in the Scriptures "burden" can be taken both in a good and in a bad sense, that is, both of those who are weighed down by grave sins, and of those who sustain the light burdens of the virtues. Of sins the penitent speaks in the psalm: "My iniquities are lifted up over my head; like a heavy burden they have weighed heavily upon me" (Ps. 37:5). Of the virtues, and of the teaching of the virtues, the Savior says: "For my yoke is sweet, and my burden is light" (Matt. 11:30). And that teaching too is taken for a burden is made plain in the Gospel. For the Pharisees bind heavy burdens, and such as cannot be borne, and lay¹⁰⁹ them upon the shoulders of men, but they themselves are unwilling to touch them with one finger (ibid. 23). How grave a thing it is to disturb someone out of tranquility, and to stir up the calm hearts of men as if with waves, the words of the Savior to the apostles testify, when he says: "Let not your heart be troubled, nor be afraid" (John 14). For it is better for him who troubles anyone in the Church and causes him to stumble that a millstone be put around his neck and he be cast with it into the sea, than that he cause to stumble one of these least ones who are pointed out by the Savior (Luke 17). The Galatians, then, had been troubled between spirit and letter, circumcision and mutilation, hidden and manifest Judaism, not knowing what to do. It can also be taken more briefly in this way: Whoever he is who draws you back to the teaching of the Pharisees and desires to be circumcised in the flesh; though he be eloquent and boast of his learning in the Law, I say nothing more except this (which even you cannot deny): that he shall bear judgment for this work, and shall receive the reward for his labor.

5:11

But I, brothers, if I preach circumcision, why do I still suffer persecution? Then has been made void (or, as the Greek has it better, has ceased) the stumbling block of the cross.

We read in the Acts of the Apostles, and the apostle Paul himself also often mentions in his Epistles, that he endured very frequent persecutions from the Jews, because he taught that those from among the Gentiles who had believed in Christ ought not to be circumcised. These, then, of whom he said above: "But he who troubles you shall bear judgment, whoever he is", in order to deceive the Galatians, added this too: Not only do Peter and James and John and the other apostles in Judea observe circumcision and the other precepts of the Law, but Paul himself as well, who taught you otherwise than the truth of the matter stands, circumcised Timothy, and frequently became a Jew to the Jews, the truth compelling him. Wishing now to remove this opinion from the minds of the Galatians, Paul says: But I, brothers, if I preach circumcision, why do I still suffer persecution? All the hatred of the Jews against me, he says, and the madness with which they rage against me, is on account of nothing else than that I teach the Gentiles that they ought not to be circumcised and to keep the burdens of the Law, which are superfluous and already abolished. But since I suffer persecution, it is manifest that I do not preach circumcision, which I destroy. For I do not suffer persecution from the Jews so much because I preach the Crucified, and say that Jesus is the Christ whom the Law and the prophets foretold, as because I teach that the Law has been fulfilled. And that the cross is a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles, our Lord himself shows, who is called a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling (Matt. 21; Luke 20): for no other reason, I think, than that preaching, when it has advanced toward its hearers under full sail, strikes against the cross as soon as it comes to it, and can by no means proceed further on a free course. But this cross, which among the Jews is a stumbling block and among the Gentiles foolishness, is to us who believe power and wisdom. "For Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God" (1 Cor. 1:24), so that, because of that which was called foolishness, the foolishness of God might become wiser than men; and because of that which was called weakness and a stumbling block, the weakness of God might become stronger than men. But since, he says, the stumbling block of the cross of Christ remains, and I suffer persecution, which I would not suffer if the stumbling block did not remain, in vain do certain people keep boasting that I preach circumcision, by attacking which I endure persecution.

5:12

Would that they were even cut off who trouble you.

It is asked how Paul, the disciple of him who says: "Bless those who curse you," and who himself says: "Bless, and do not curse" (Rom. 12:14), and in another place: "Nor shall cursers possess the kingdom of God" (1 Cor. 6:10), has now both cursed those who trouble¹¹⁰ the churches of Galatia, and cursed them with the prayer of one who wishes it: Would that they were even cut off who trouble you. For the suffering of castration is so detestable that both he who has inflicted it on the unwilling is punished by the public laws, and he who has castrated himself is held infamous. For granted, they say, that this is true: "Christ lives in me"; and this: "Or do you seek a proof of Christ who speaks in me?" (2 Cor. 13:3), certainly a word of cursing cannot be understood as coming from him who says: "Learn from me, because I am humble, and meek, and gentle of heart" (Matt. 11:29). And it is thought rather that he was unable to restrain himself out of Jewish fury and a kind of unbridled madness than that he imitated him who, like a lamb before its shearer, did not open his mouth, and did not curse in return those who cursed him (Isa. 53). But, condemned, he handed himself over to death. To this, whoever answers on Paul's behalf will say the following: that the words he spoke were not so much of fury against his adversaries as of love for the churches of God. For he saw that the whole province, which he himself, with his own blood and his perils, had brought over from idolatry to the faith of Christ, was thrown into confusion by a sudden persuasion, and with an apostle's grief, a father's grief, he could not contain himself: he changed his voice, and was angry with those whom he had coaxed, so that those whom he had been unable to hold by gentleness he might at least hold by rebuke. Nor is it to be wondered at if the Apostle, as a man, and one still shut up in a weak little vessel, and seeing another law in his body taking him captive and leading him in the law of sin, said this once, a thing into which we see that holy men frequently fall. But this too can be said (although to some it may seem superfluous): that Paul did not so much curse them as pray for them, that they might lose those parts of the body through which they were driven to sin. And just as it was said in the Gospel that it is better for someone to enter the kingdom of heaven without an eye, and without a hand, and without a foot, and without any other part of the members, than to go whole into Gehenna (Matt. 18), so now too he wishes them rather to lose one part of the body than, by occasion of the whole body, to be condemned to everlasting fire. If ever this passage is censured by the heathen, we have shown how they can be answered. Now let it be brought forward by us against the heretics, namely Marcion and Valentinus and all who bark against the Old Testament: by what reasoning can those who accuse the Creator of being bloodthirsty, a stern warrior and only a judge, excuse this in the Apostle of the good God? And certainly I think there is no sentence anywhere in the old Law so savage, so bloody, as would that they were cut off who trouble you. Nor can they say that the Apostle prayed for the enemies of Christ, who were troubling his churches. Nor that it was uttered out of love, since the very weight of the words shows it to be full of swelling anger and indignation. Whatever excuse, therefore, they bring forward for the Apostle, this we shall not plead in defense of the old Law.

5:13

For you have been called to freedom, brothers: only do not (it is understood) give freedom as an occasion to the flesh:

because this is not found in the Greek, the Latin translator put it in. Since this passage is very obscure, I have decided to translate it word for word from the tenth book of the Stromata. Not that the individual parts cannot be explained in their own places and senses; but because, separated from the preceding subject matter, they form a single difficult body: and if they are understood just as they sound, they seem to clash with one another inconsequently and abruptly, and to be all in a ferment. These, then, are Origen's words: "The passage is difficult, and it seems to us that it should be discussed thus. He who is free, and in a higher sense follows the spirit and the truth, despises both the preceding types and the letter: he ought not on that account to look down on the lesser, and give those who cannot perceive more sublimely an occasion to despair of themselves utterly. For although they are weak and are called flesh in comparison with the spirit, yet they are the flesh of Christ. For if he understands the mystery of love that serves the weaker, let him do something for the sake of the weak, lest in his knowledge a brother perish, for whom Christ died. Pay careful attention, therefore, whether this sense is woven together from what follows. You, he says, brothers, have been called to freedom: perhaps for this reason, that not all were able to grasp the calling of freedom. That is why you now hear: Only do not give freedom as an occasion to the flesh. For through love the greater ought to serve the lesser: because he who wishes to be greater will be the slave of all (Matt. 20; Mark 10). So let the spiritual man neither tear the flesh of Christ, nor give them an occasion to bite back at him when he provokes them, lest they be consumed by one another. He, then, who walks by the spirit, and pursues the words of the Scriptures by the spirit, must not fulfill the desire of their flesh. But if we understand what is said, 'Walk by the spirit, and you will not fulfill the desire of the flesh', in the simple way (as most people think), Paul will suddenly break out into these things against the argument and the hypothesis of the whole Epistle; for immediately there follows: 'But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the Law.' And although up to this point the discourse holds together in some measure, again, if we follow the simple understanding, it suddenly carries us over to disordered precepts, discussing flesh and spirit, that is: 'Now the works of the flesh are manifest, this one and that one.' And on the other hand: 'But the fruit of the spirit is love', and the rest. But neither in these should we despair of the sequence; for the history of the divine volumes contains the works of the flesh, and it does not greatly help those who understand it just as it is written. For who will not be taught to serve licentiousness and to count fornication as nothing, when he has read of Judah going in to a harlot (Gen. 38), and that the patriarchs had many wives at the same time? How will he not be provoked to idolatry who supposes that the blood of bulls and the other victims of Leviticus signify nothing more than what sounds in the letter? And that the word of Scripture, set out in the open, teaches enmities is proved also from this passage: 'O wretched daughter of Babylon, blessed is he who will repay you your repayment with which you repaid us. Blessed is he who will seize and dash your little ones against the rock' (Ps. 136:8, 9). And from that one: 'In the morning I killed all the sinners of the land' (Ps. 100:8), and other things like these: namely, concerning strifes, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions. To these things (unless we perceive something higher) the examples of the history provoke us more than they forbid them. Heresies too have arisen more from the carnal understanding of Scripture than from the work of our flesh, as very many suppose. Envy and drunkenness, moreover, we learn through the letter of the Law. Noah gets drunk after the flood, and the patriarchs with their brother Joseph in Egypt (Gen. 9 and 43). And carousings too are written in the book of Kingdoms, with David dancing and beating the timbrels before the Ark of the covenant of God (1 Sam. 6), and things like these. It is asked how the simple word of divine Scripture, which is called flesh, provokes us to sorceries and to evil arts, unless we cross over to the spirit of that same Scripture. I think this is what is signified by Daniel and the three youths being found ten times wiser than the magi, the enchanters, the Gazarenes and the Chaldeans, and by Moses being learned in all the wisdom and teaching of the Egyptians. It is therefore the occasion of many evils if anyone remains in the flesh of Scripture. Those who do such things will not obtain the kingdom of God. Wherefore let us seek the spirit of Scripture and its fruits, which are not said to be manifest. For it is with much labor and sweat, and with fitting cultivation, that the fruit of the spirit is found in the Scriptures. Hence I judge that Paul spoke carefully and cautiously when he said of the carnal senses of Scripture: 'Now the works of the flesh are manifest' (Gal. 5:19). But of the spiritual he did not set down, as there, 'the fruit of the spirit is manifest'; but thus: 'But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace', and the rest (ibid., 22). But if, leaving the types behind, we pass over to the truth and the spirit of Scripture, at once love is first opened to us, and stepping on from there to joy, we arrive at peace, through which we attain patience. And who would not be instructed in mercy and goodness, when he has understood that even those things in the Law which some think grim (I mean punishments and battles, and the overthrow of nations, and the threats against peoples through the prophets) are remedies rather than penalties? For the Lord will not be angry forever (Isa. 57). When these things, then, have been opened to us, we shall have a more reasonable faith, and temperance will accompany our corrected morals, and self-control and chastity will follow it: and after all these things the Law will begin to be for us." Thus far Origen. To which we can add, saying that those called from the slavery of the Law to the freedom of the Gospel (to whom it was said above: "Stand, and do not cling again to the yoke of slavery") are even now admonished that, following the light yoke of Christ and the delightful precepts of the Gospel, they should by no means think it permitted to them to use this very freedom of living as an occasion of the flesh: that is, to live according to the flesh, to be circumcised according to the flesh; but rather to stand in the spirit, to cut off the foreskin of the flesh in the spirit, and, stretching toward the higher things of the spirit, to leave behind the lowliness of the letter. It can also be understood otherwise. Let someone learn: If I have ceased, O Paul, to be under the Law, and I have been called from slavery to freedom, then I ought to live as befits freedom, and not be bound by any precepts, but whatever has pleased me and my will has suggested, this I should do, fulfill, pursue. To this the Apostle replied: that we have indeed been called into the freedom of the spirit, but in such a way that freedom itself does not serve the flesh. Nor let us think that, because all things are lawful for us, all things are expedient: rather, because we have ceased to be slaves of the Law, having been made free, let us all the more serve one another through love, so that the precepts of the sprawling Law may be summed up in the single heading of love.

5:14

But through love serve one another, for the whole law is fulfilled in one word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

He who, though he was free from all, made himself the slave of all for love's sake, that he might win the more (1 Cor. 9:19), rightly exhorts the others too to serve one another through love, which seeks not what is its own but what is its neighbor's. For he who wishes to become first shall be the slave of all (Mark 10:44); so that, just as the Savior, being in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, and the death of the cross (Phil. 2), so we too should now know that whatever things we formerly seemed to do under the compulsion of the Law, we, being free, must do rather through love. And love is so great a good that the whole law is summed up in it. In another place also the Apostle enumerates the good things of love, saying: "It is not jealous, it does not act wrongly" (1 Cor. 13:4). And having unfolded many things in between, at the end he concludes: "It hopes all things, it endures all things, love never fails." And the Savior in the Gospel says that this is the sign of his disciple: if¹¹¹ he loves his neighbor (Matt. 22). This indeed, I think, applies not only to men but also to angels. The same thing is said in other words: "What you do not wish to be done to you, do not do to others; and whatever you wish that men should do to you, do you also likewise the same to them" (ibid. 7:12). I do not wish my wife to be defiled by adultery, I do not wish my property to be plundered, I do not wish to be crushed by false testimony, and, to comprise everything in a brief word, I take it ill that anything unjust should be done to me. If, through love working in me, I either do or wish these same things for another, the whole law is fulfilled. Nor is it difficult to show how all the precepts, you shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, and the rest like these, are held together by the single observance of love. What is hard to show is how the sacrifices too that are prescribed in Leviticus, and the abstinence from foods or the permission of them, since some are called clean and others unclean, and also the continual recurrence of the solemn feasts through the years, are summed up in the one precept of love. Unless perhaps one should go over to this position, so as to affirm that the Law is spiritual, and that we served the images and patterns of heavenly things before the true High Priest came; and that after he, offering himself once as a victim, redeemed us by his own blood, all that variety and difficulty of the ancient Law was fulfilled in his love toward men. For the Father so loved the world that he gave his most dear and only-begotten Son for us. But for him who, once living by the spirit, has put to death the works of the flesh, and, being loved by the Savior, is called no longer a slave but a friend, the Law is no longer laid down, which was established for the ungodly and sinners, and for the insubordinate and the wicked. But now, while we do all the things that are more difficult, if only in small part, this one thing alone we do not do, which is both easier to do and without which all that we do is void. The body feels the injury of fasting; vigils waste the flesh; alms are sought by labor; blood in martyrdom, however much faith burns, is still not shed without pain and fear. There are those who do all these things: love alone is without labor. And because it alone makes the heart clean, it is assailed in us by the devil, so that we may not see God with a pure mind. For when I sit and speak against my brother, and lay a stumbling block against my mother's son (Ps. 49:20), when I am tormented by another's happiness and make another's good my evil, is not what follows fulfilled in me: "If you bite and devour one another, see that you are not consumed by one another"? The possession of love is rare. Who, following the Apostle, is willing himself to be anathema from Christ for his brothers? Who, mourning with those who mourn and rejoicing with those who rejoice, is wounded by another's wound? Who is slain by a brother's death? We are all lovers of ourselves rather than lovers of God. See how great is the good of love. If we undergo martyrdom in such a way that we wish our relics to be honored by men; if, pursuing the good opinion of the crowd, we fearlessly shed our blood and give away our substance even to the point of our own beggary, to this¹¹² work is owed not so much a reward as a penalty, and these are the torments of faithlessness rather than a crown of victory.

5:15

But if you bite and devour one another, see that you are not consumed by one another.

This can also be taken simply: that we should not disparage one another, nor think to avenge ourselves with a curse, nor, when grieved, desire to grieve in return, and, like beasts, bite and likewise be bitten back, so that after the bites there follow destruction and consumption. But it is better, lest Paul, against reason and the sequence of the whole Epistle, should suddenly break out into extraneous precepts, to understand it in such a way that we refer everything to circumcision and the observance of the Law. If others, he says, trouble you, you for your part are thrown into turmoil. If, reading the whole old Scripture, you understand it just as it is written: "An eye for an eye: a tooth for a tooth" (Deut. 19:21), and anger desires vengeance, while vengeance inflicts pain (which the Law not only does not forbid but even commands, restoring righteousness through retaliation), it follows that the one stripped strips in turn, the one wounded wounds in turn, the one devoured bites back, and what seems to be righteousness is consumption, avenging not one but consuming both.

5:16

But I say: Walk in the Spirit, and you will not fulfil the desire of the flesh.

This too, in keeping with what precedes, is to be taken in two ways, so that we say that those who by the spirit have put to death the works of the flesh and have sown in the spirit, so as to reap eternal life from the spirit, whenever they feel the pleasure of the flesh tickling them, do not fulfil its desire (which indeed, if it has been satisfied, seems to flatter for a time), but rein it in by the spirit, and, according to the maxim of the Historian (Sallust), live rather by the command of the mind and the service of the body. And this as well: since the Law is spiritual (Rom. 7), and he is not a Jew who is one openly, but he who is one in secret, and circumcision is of the heart, in the spirit, not in the letter, we say that those walk in the spirit and do not fulfil the desire of the flesh who go out of Egypt spiritually, and draw spiritual food and drink from the spiritual rock, who are not judged in food, or in drink, or in respect of a feast day, or of the new moon and the sabbath, but walk spiritually in all things, not fulfilling the desire of the carnal law or of the letter, but reaping the fruits of spiritual understanding. A third interpretation too has been put forward by some on this passage, though one that does not differ much from the second: they assert that the desire of the flesh is in those who are little ones in Christ, but the way of the spirit in perfect men, and that the sense is: Walk in the gravity of the spirit, that is, in the way of the perfect man, and you will not do the desires of little ones.

5:17

For the flesh lusts against the spirit, but the spirit against the flesh. For these are opposed to one another, so that you do not do whatever things you will.

The flesh delights in things present and brief; the spirit in things perpetual and future. In the midst of this quarrel the soul stands in the middle, having indeed in its own power good and evil, to will and not to will, but not having this very willing and not willing as something perpetual: because it can happen that, when it has consented to the flesh and done its works, it again stings itself through repentance, is joined to the spirit and accomplishes its works. This, then, is what he says: For these are opposed to one another, that is, the flesh and the spirit; so that you do not do whatever things you will. Not that he has taken away from us our own free choice, by which we assent either to the flesh or to the spirit; but because what we do is not properly ours, but the work itself is reckoned¹¹³ either to the flesh or to the spirit. It is a matter of great labor and of excessive disputation, once the works of the flesh and of the spirit have been set out, to find some middle things which seem to belong neither to the flesh nor to the spirit. We are called carnal when we give ourselves wholly to pleasures; spiritual, when we follow the Holy Spirit going before us, that is, when we are wise with Him instructing us, and are taught with Him as our authority. The animal men (animales), I think, are the philosophers, who suppose their own thoughts to be wisdom, of whom it is rightly said: "But the animal man does not receive¹¹⁴ the things that are of the spirit. For it is foolishness to him". To make this clearer, let us take an example: let the flesh be called earth, the soul gold, the spirit fire. As long as the gold is in the earth, it loses its own name, and is called after the earth with which it is mixed. But when, separated from the soil, it has received both the appearance and the name of gold, it is indeed called gold, but not yet tested. If, however, it has been smelted and purged through fire, then it receives the splendor of gold and the dignity of its own adornment. So too the soul, standing between soil and fire, that is, between flesh and spirit, when it has handed itself over to the flesh, is called flesh; when to the spirit, it is called spirit. But if it has trusted its own thought, and has supposed that it finds the truth without the grace of the Holy Spirit, it is marked¹¹⁵, like impure gold, with the name of the animal man. This passage can be better explained thus, and become as it were one sequence and one body, linking itself together and not disagreeing with itself. Brothers, you have been called from the slavery of the Law into the freedom of the Gospel. But I beseech you not to abuse freedom as license, and think that all things which are lawful are expedient for you, and give occasion to the flesh and to licentiousness. Rather, learn that this freedom is a greater slavery, so that the obedience which formerly the Law extorted from the unwilling, you now render by serving one another through love. For indeed all that burden of the Law, and its manifold precepts, have not so much been shut out by the grace of the Gospel as abridged in the one word of love, that we love our neighbor as ourselves. For he who loves his neighbor fulfills the whole law (Matt. 22), bestowing good things on him and not inflicting evils. But if affection ceases, and there is no love, through which the whole law is fulfilled, there will be a kind of public brigandage among men, so that, raging¹¹⁶ against one another and biting one another, they are consumed by one another. But you, brothers, ought for this reason to live according to the spiritual law, so that you do not accomplish the desires that belong to the flesh. For the flesh fears cold, spurns hunger, is wasted by vigils, burns with lusts, desires whatever is soft and pleasant. The spirit, on the contrary, seeks the things that are contrary to the flesh and that can weaken it. And so it comes about that you should not think yourselves free just because you have ceased to be under the slavery of the Law, but should rather know that you are held fast by the law of nature; because it does not follow at once that, if the law does not command, nature too has ceased, so that, namely, works should not follow your will; but you are often compelled, the flesh fighting against the spirit, to do the things you do not will to do. Therefore, brothers, I beseech you not to give your freedom as an occasion for the flesh, but rather to serve the spirit, so that you may begin to do the things you will, and to owe nothing to the law, that is, not to be under the flesh. For you will truly be able to have in the Gospel the freedom of the abolished law when the flesh in no way compels you to do what you do not will, but, serving the spirit, you have shown that you are not under the Law. And since above we had begun to expound this passage according to a twofold understanding, we must render what we omitted. The flesh lusts against the spirit, that is, the history and the fleshly understanding of Scripture fight against allegory and spiritual teaching. But the spirit against the flesh, that is, the more sublime things resist the lowly, the eternal the brief, the truth the shadow. And the fleshly sense of Scripture, which cannot be fulfilled¹¹⁷ (for we are not able to do all the things that are written), shows that we are not placed in our own power to fulfill the Law, since, even if we wish to follow the letter, impossibility does not allow it.

5:18

But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the Law.

By spirit he means not that one of which the Apostle speaks in another place: "The Spirit himself bears witness to our spirit that we are sons of God" (Rom. 8:16), that is, not the spirit of the man which is in him, but the Holy Spirit: following him, we are made spiritual and cease to be under the Law. It must be noted, therefore, that here spirit is not named with the ἄρθρῳ (article) and with some addition, as we read in other places, the spirit of gentleness and the spirit of faith, but is called simply Spirit: and these minutiae, observed more in Greek than in our own language (for we have no ἄρθρα at all), seem to carry some weight. The question is raised in this place, if whoever is led by the spirit is not under the Law, whether Moses and the prophets were both driven by the spirit and lived under the Law, which the Apostle denies; or, having the spirit, were not under the Law, which the Apostle here affirms; or, which is the third possibility, living under the Law, did not have the spirit, which it is impious to believe of such great men. To this we shall answer briefly: it is not the same thing to be under the Law and to be as if under the Law, just as it is not the very same thing to be in the likeness of the flesh of sin and to be in the flesh of sin. Nor does a true serpent mean the same as the likeness of a bronze serpent, which Moses hung up in the desert (Num. 21). So, therefore, the holy prophets too, and Moses, walking by the spirit and living by the spirit, lived not under the Law but as if under the Law, so that they themselves seemed indeed to be under the Law, but might gain those who were under the Law and call them forth from the lowliness of the letter to the height of the spirit. For Paul too, who became a Jew to the Jews, and all things to all, that he might gain all (1 Cor. 9), did not say "made under the Law", but "made as if under the Law", to show that he had kept not the truth of the Law but its likeness. We seem to ourselves to have solved the question proposed. But what shall we do about that passage of Paul, where he says: "But when the fullness of time came, God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the Law, that he might redeem those who were under the Law" (above)? For if Christ was under the Law, and not as if under the Law, that whole preceding discussion will become empty. But this objection too will be resolved from its own passage. For he who was made under the Law for this reason, that he might redeem those who were under the Law, surely, since he was free from the Law, subjected himself to the Law of his own will; and he was far freer than Paul, who testified that he had been not under the Law but as if under the Law. And just as he went down into the mire and abyss of death for our sake, who were praying and saying: "Who will deliver me from the body of this death" (Rom. 7:24)? so too he willed to be born of a woman and to be under the Law, that he might save those who had been born of a woman and under the Law. And certainly he was not born of a woman, that is, of a married woman, but of a virgin. But the virgin was called a woman by a loose use of the word, on account of those who did not know that she had been a virgin. So, then, just as "woman" was put for "virgin" on account of those who thought that holy Mary had a husband, so, on account of those who supposed that Christ was under the Law, not knowing that to those who were under the Law he had become as if under the Law, he too is said to have been made under the Law.

5:19-21

Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorceries, enmities, strifes, jealousies, angers, quarrels, dissensions, heresies, envyings, drunkenness, carousings, and things like these, which I foretell to you, as I have also foretold: that those who do these things shall not possess the kingdom of God.

Above, when we were expounding about the flesh and the spirit, we had spoken of a threefold understanding: either that those are fleshly who, being little ones and bodily, could not take solid food in Christ and the nourishment of full age; or that those are carnal who, in the Jewish manner, follow only the history and the letter; or certainly, according to the simple sense, that flesh and spirit subsist in the fashioning of man, and that according to the difference of substance there are works either of the flesh or of the spirit. Now therefore the works of the flesh which are named here, namely fornication, impurity, licentiousness and the rest that follow, seem to me to refer rather to the simple understanding of flesh and spirit than to the flesh of the Law and to the little ones in Christ, although in that place above, where we translated word for word from the tenth book of Origen's Stromata, what may also be thought about these things has been set out. And when he says: Now the works of the flesh are manifest, he shows either that they are known to all, because they are plainly evil of themselves and to be shunned, so much so that even those who do them wish to hide what they do; or certainly that they are manifest only to those who have believed in Christ. For very many of the Gentiles glory in their shames, and think that if they have satisfied their pleasure, they have won a kind of victory of disgraceful deeds. But this too is elegantly done, that he placed works in the flesh and fruits in the spirit: because vices come to an end in themselves and perish, while virtues sprout with fruits and overflow. Nor let us think that the soul has no work, if vices are assigned to the flesh and virtues to the spirit. For the soul (as we said above), placed in a kind of middle ground, is either joined to the flesh, and it is said of it: "My spirit shall not remain in these men, because they are flesh" (Gen. 6:3); or it is united to the spirit and passes into the name of spirit. "For he who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit" (1 Cor. 6:17). So the first work of the flesh is fornication. He put the manifest ones at the beginning, so that we should not be in doubt about those in the middle. For whatever a man does is outside the body, but he who commits fornication sins against his own body. And we are not our own: for we have been bought with a price; let us glorify and carry God in our body. In this the fornicator is of greater guilt: because he takes the members of Christ and makes them the members of a harlot. For the two shall be in one flesh. He who is not a believer and does not believe in Christ makes his own members the members of a harlot; he who believes and commits fornication makes the members of Christ the members of a harlot. On the other hand, whether the unbeliever in his fornication violates a temple or builds a temple to an idol, I do not know. For demons are worshiped above all through vices. This one thing I know: that he who commits fornication after faith in Christ violates the temple of God. The second work of the flesh is called impurity, and licentiousness follows it as its companion. For just as in the old Law Scripture embraced in general terms the abominable crimes which are done in secret, and which it is most shameful even to name (lest both the mouth of the speaker and the ears of the hearers be defiled), saying: "Modest", or "reverent, make the sons of Israel, away from all impurity" (Lev. 15:31): so in this place he has named as impurity and licentiousness the other extraordinary pleasures, and even the works of marriage itself, if they are not done modestly and with decency, as under the eyes of God, so that only the begetting of children is served. Fourth in the catalogue of the works of the flesh, idolatry holds its place. For he who has once given himself over to licentiousness and pleasure does not look back to the Creator. Besides, all idolatry delights in festivity, gluttony, the belly, and the things that are below the belly. And lest sorceries and the arts of witchcraft should perhaps seem not to be forbidden in the New Testament, they too are named among the works of the flesh. For it often happens to the wretched through magic arts both to love and to be loved. Enmity too, which is placed after sorceries: what guilt it carries is declared by its being placed right after a manifest crime. For as far as lies in us, we ought to be no one's enemy, but to have peace with all. But if, by speaking the truth, we earn some enemies, it is not so much we who are their enemies as they who are enemies of the truth. For what is also said to Abraham in Genesis: "I will be an enemy to your enemies, and I will oppose those who oppose you", is to be understood as above: not so much that Abraham was an enemy to them, as that they were enemies to the virtues and religion of Abraham, by which, having trampled on idols, he worshiped the God he had come to know. That too which is commanded to the people of Israel, that with everlasting hatred and a discord handed down to their descendants they should be enemies to the Midianites (Num. 31), is said as to those who were under the pedagogue, and who in another place deserved to hear: "You shall hate your enemy" (Matt. 5:43). Or certainly the dissension was made not so much between persons as between ways of life: so that, just as God usefully put enmities between the serpent and the woman, lest their friendship, through which man was cast out of paradise, should be harmful to man, so also in the Israelites and the Midianites it was rather a dissimilar way of life than one nation that was condemned. The seventh place among the works of the flesh is held by strife, set as it were in a sacred and eminent number among the vices. "But the slave of the Lord ought not to quarrel, but to be gentle toward all, a teacher, long-suffering, instructing with gentleness even those who argue against him" (2 Tim. 2:24, 25). After strife there follows, eighth, jealousy, which in the Greek language is called more expressively and more familiarly ζῆλος. From this evil, indeed, I do not know which of us is free. For both the patriarchs were jealous of their brother Joseph, and Miriam and Aaron, the prophetess of God and the priest, were deceived by such a passion against Moses (Gen. 37; Num. 12): so much so that she of whom Scripture had told, saying: "And Miriam the prophetess, taking a timbrel" (Exod. 15:20), and the rest, was afterwards cast out of the camp, defiled with the disease of leprosy, and marked a longer penance by a separation of seven days (Num. 12). Then anger follows, which does not work the righteousness of God (Jas. 1), and is a species of fury. Between irascibility and anger, however, there is this difference: that the irascible man is always angry, while the angry man is roused for a time. And I do not know who could possess the kingdom of God, when he who is angry is separated from the kingdom (Matt. 5). Quarrels too, which the Greeks, signifying something else, call ἐριθείας (since a quarrel is called μάχη), keep men from the kingdom of God. Now ἐριθεία is when someone, always ready to contradict, delights in another's vexation, and contends with womanish wrangling, and provokes the one who contends with him. Among the Greeks this is called by another name, φιλονεικία (love of contention). Dissensions too are works of the flesh: when someone, being by no means perfect in the same mind and the same judgment, says: "I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ" (1 Cor. 1:12). But this same dissension is also found within households among themselves: namely of husband against wife, father against son, brother against brother, fellow slave against fellow slave, soldier against tent-mate, craftsman against craftsman of the same trade. Sometimes it happens that dissension arises even in the expositions of the Scriptures: from which the heresies too, which are now placed among the works of the flesh, bubble up. For if the wisdom of the flesh is hostile to God (Rom. 8) (and all doctrines of falsehood that fight against God are hostile to him), consequently heresies also, being hostile to God, are referred to the works of the flesh. Now Αἵρεσις in Greek is named from choice: because, namely, each one chooses for himself that discipline which he thinks is better. Whoever, therefore, understands Scripture otherwise than the sense of the Holy Spirit, by which it was written, demands, although he has not withdrawn from the Church, can nevertheless be called a heretic, and is of the works of the flesh, choosing the things that are worse. Envy follows heresies, which let us not think to be the same as zeal. For zeal can also be taken in a good sense, when someone strives to emulate the things that are better. But envy is tormented by another's happiness, and is split into a twofold passion: when either one is something oneself in that in which one does not wish another to be, or, seeing another to be better, one grieves that one is not like him. One of the moderns, translating a Greek verse, played finely in elegiac meter on envy, saying: Nothing is more just than envy, which straightway gnaws its own author and tortures his mind. The blessed Cyprian also wrote a very excellent book On Zeal and Envy, and whoever reads it will not hesitate to number envy among the works of the flesh. Between the envious man and the envied man there is this difference: that the envious man envies one more fortunate, while the envied man is he who suffers envy from another. The fourteenth place among the works of the flesh is held by drunkenness. For drunkards shall not possess the kingdom of God. And the Lord to the disciples: "Take heed", he says, "lest perhaps your hearts be weighed down with wine and debauchery" (Luke 21:34). By wine a man's senses are overturned, his feet stumble, his mind wavers, lust is kindled. Hence the Apostle cries out: "And wine, in which is licentiousness" (Eph. 5:18). Each one has the power of his own opinion. I follow the Apostle: that in wine there is licentiousness, in wine drunkenness. And that drunkenness and licentiousness are numbered among the works of the flesh, not even he who is overcome by these same passions can deny. And although some think I deserve blame in that book which I wrote on preserving virginity, because I said that young girls ought to flee wine like poison, I shall not repent of the opinion. For there it was rather the work of wine than a creature of God that was condemned by us; and we took away license from a virgin glowing with the natural heat of her age, lest under the pretext of drinking a little she should drink more and perish. Otherwise, we knew both that wine is consecrated into the blood of Christ and that Timothy was commanded to drink wine. Drunkenness, moreover, can come about as much from wine as from the other kinds of drink that are prepared in various ways; whence it is also said of the saint: "He shall not drink wine and strong drink (siceram)" (Luke 1:15). Sicera means "drunkenness". And lest anyone who does not drink wine should think that something else might be drunk by him, the pretext is excluded, since everything that can make drunk is taken away together with wine. The fifteenth, which is also the last among the works of the flesh, is carousing. "For the people ate and drank, and rose up to play" (Exod. 32:6). Licentiousness is always joined to drunkenness. A certain not undistinguished orator, describing a drunken man roused from sleep, said finely: "Once roused, he could not sleep, and being drunk, he could not stay awake." By this saying he expressed that in a certain way he was neither dead nor alive. It would be long to unfold all the works of the flesh and make a catalogue of the vices. So he included them all in one word, saying: and things like these. Would that we could avoid them as easily as we understand them! "I foretell", he says, "to you, as I foretold: that those who do such things shall not attain the kingdom of God". Where he had foretold it before: "Let not sin reign", he says, "in your mortal body, so as to obey its desires" (Rom. 6:12). Sin has all these species, on distinguishing which we have perhaps lingered now longer than was fitting. Therefore in a soul in which sin has reigned, the kingdom of God cannot reign. "For what partnership has righteousness with iniquity? What communion has light with darkness? What agreement has Christ with Belial?" (2 Cor. 6:14, 15). And we think that we attain the kingdom of God if we are free from fornication, idolatry and sorceries. Behold, enmities, strife, anger, quarrel, dissension, drunkenness too, and the rest which we consider small, exclude us from the kingdom of God. Nor does it matter whether one is excluded from blessedness by one or by several, since all alike exclude. In the Latin codices adultery also, and unchastity, and murders are reported as written in this catalogue of vices. But it must be known that no more than fifteen works of the flesh are named, and these we have also discussed.

5:22-23

But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no Law.

And what other among the fruits of the spirit ought to hold the first place, if not love, without which the other virtues are not reckoned to be virtues, and from which are born all things that are good? Indeed, both in the Law and in the Gospel it holds the chief place: "You shall love the Lord your God from your whole heart, and from your whole soul, and from your whole strength; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Deut. 6:5; Matt. 22:37). With how many good things love is filled we have both touched on briefly above, and now let it suffice to have said even a little: that love does not seek the things that are its own, but those of another (1 Cor. 13). And although someone, by his own fault, is an enemy to the one who loves, and strives to stir up his tranquillity into the waves of hatred, yet he is never disturbed; never does he judge a creature of God worthy of hatred. For love covers a multitude of sins (1 Pet. 4:8). That saying too which is spoken by the Savior, "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruits, nor an evil tree bring forth good fruits" (Matt. 7:18), I think was pronounced not so much about men as about the fruits of the flesh and of the spirit: because neither can the spirit ever commit those vices which have been enumerated among the works of the flesh, nor can the flesh abound in these fruits which arise from the spirit. It can happen, however, through the negligence of the one who possesses it, that the spirit which dwells in a man does not have its fruits; and, on the contrary, that the flesh, its works having been put to death, ceases to sin. Yet they do not go so far that the tree of the spirit, when neglected, bears the works of the flesh, and the tree of the flesh, when cultivated, puts forth spiritual fruits. In the second place among the spiritual fruits joy has been set, which the Stoics too, who distinguish between words rather subtly, judge to be something other than gladness. For joy, they say, is the elation of a mind exulting over things that are worthy; but gladness is an unbridled elation of the mind, which knows no measure, and rejoices even in things that are mixed with vice. Others set pleasure over against joy: not that pleasure which stirs the body to lust, tickles the senses, and flatters with a sweet feeling, but another bearing the same name as this (ὁμώνυμον), which without moderation and without any seemliness of gladness lifts up its voice in laughter. But if this is true, and their distinction between words neither deceives nor is deceived, let us consider whether perhaps it was for this reason that it was said: "There is no rejoicing for the ungodly, says the Lord" (Isa. 57:21). At the same time this too must be noted, that joy follows after love. For he who loves anyone always rejoices in his happiness. And if he sees him deceived by some error and fallen on the slippery ground of sins, he will grieve indeed, and will hasten to rescue him; but sadness will not be able to change his joy, since he knows that none of the rational creatures perishes forever before God. The third fruit of the spirit is peace, from which Solomon too, who went before as a type of Christ, received his name. And concerning the Church the Psalmist sings: "His place has been made in peace" (Ps. 75:2). And among the eight blessings of the Gospel it is written: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God" (Matt. 5:9). In the first psalm of the steps, too, it is sung: "With those who hated peace I was peaceable" (Ps. 119:6). And let us not think that peace is to be sought only in this, that we do not quarrel with another; rather, the peace of Christ, that is, our inheritance, is with us then, if a tranquil mind is disturbed by no passions. After peace follows long-suffering (longanimitas), or patience (patientia), because we can render μακροθυμίαν in either way. Contrary to this is faint-heartedness, of which it is written: "The faint-hearted man is exceedingly foolish; but he who is patient and bears all things is a wise man" (Sir. 7). And with intensification (ἐπιτάσει) he is called "very wise", as is also written in Proverbs: "A long-suffering man is great in prudence" (Prov. 14:29). Kindness (benignitas) also, or sweetness (suavitas) (since among the Greeks χρηστότης sounds as both), is a mild virtue, winning, tranquil, and fitted for the fellowship of all good men, inviting to familiarity with itself, sweet in speech, temperate in manners. Finally the Stoics too define it thus: Kindness is a virtue disposed of its own accord to doing good. Goodness is not much different from kindness, because it too seems disposed to doing good. But it differs in this, that goodness can be rather sombre, and with a brow furrowed by severe manners it can indeed do good and grant what is asked, yet not be sweet in fellowship and invite all by its own sweetness. This too the followers of Zeno define thus: Goodness is a virtue that profits; or, a virtue from which usefulness arises; or, a virtue for its own sake; or, a disposition which is the fountain of usefulnesses.

Among the fruits of the spirit, faith possesses the seventh and more sacred place, which elsewhere too is set among three: hope, faith, love. Nor is it any wonder if hope is not mentioned in this catalogue, since what is hoped for is in faith, and the Apostle, writing to the Hebrews, defines it thus: "Now faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the proof of things not yet appearing" (Heb. 11:1). For that which we hope will come, and which is not yet in the present, we possess by faith, hoping that we hold what we believe. It is asked also how faith has been set in love. He who loves never judges himself to be wronged; he never suspects anything except that he loves and is loved. But when love has gone far away, faith departs along with it. After faith gentleness is counted, which is opposed to anger, quarrels and dissensions, and is never provoked to its contraries, truly sprouting forth good fruits from the good tree of the spirit. Through this Moses, the servant of God, deserved to receive the testimony of Scripture, which says: "Moses was gentle, beyond all men upon the earth" (Num. 12:3). Upon the earth, he says. For he could not be beyond those who saw God face to face, because we are often compelled to do many things through the weakness of the flesh. Concerning David too (although many judge that it was prophesied of our Lord, which we also do not deny), the Holy Spirit sings, as a type of the one to come: "Remember, O Lord, David, and all his gentleness" (Ps. 131:1). Whose gentleness shone forth more than all toward Saul, Absalom and Shimei (1 Sam. 24; 2 Sam. 15)? When the one wished to kill him; the other, plotting a revolution, strove to cheat him of his rule; the other, throwing stones at him and tossing up dust, shouted and said: "Go out, go out, you wicked man" (ibid., 16:7). Self-control is placed last among the fruits of the spirit. This we ought to understand not only of chastity, but also of food and drink, of anger too and agitation of mind, and of the lust for disparaging others. Between modesty and self-control, however, there is this difference: that modesty is found in perfect men and those of consummate virtue, of whom the Savior says: "Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth" (Matt. 5:4); and of himself: "Learn from me, for I am meek, and humble, and gentle of heart" (Matt. 11:29). Self-control, on the other hand, is indeed on the road of virtue, but has not yet reached the goal, because desires still arise in the thought of the one who controls himself and pollute the ruling part of the mind, although they do not overcome him nor drag the one who thinks them into the deed. And self-control is necessary not only in desires and cupidity, but also in the three remaining passions, namely grief, gladness and fear. Against such fruits of the spirit there is no Law. "For the Law is not laid down for the righteous man, but for the wicked and the insubordinate, for the ungodly and sinners" (1 Tim. 1:9). The Law says to me: "You shall not commit adultery; you shall not kill; you shall not speak false testimony; you shall not defraud; you shall not desire what belongs to others; you shall not swear falsely; you shall not steal" (Exod. 20:12 ff.). If I do none of these things, because love, the fruit of the spirit, reigns in me, the precepts of the Law are superfluous to me. Finally, the wise men of the world too held this opinion about philosophy: that what the public laws compel men to do by necessity, philosophy persuades them to do by will.

5:24

But those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with vices and lusts.

Origen, linking this passage with the preceding ones, reads it thus: "Against such there is no Law, who have crucified the flesh of Christ with vices and lusts": so that he is not saying, as it sounds in the Latin, that those who are Christ's have crucified their own flesh with vices and lusts, but that the flesh of Christ has been crucified by them with vices and lusts. And he asks how, in the case of those who have the fruits of the spirit, and against whom the Law has ceased to be, the crucifixion of the Lord's flesh is set down as praise, when in Hebrews it is set down as reproach: "Crucifying again in themselves the Son of God, and holding him up to display" (Heb. 6:6). For "crucifying again" there is in the Greek, better, a single compound word, ἀνασταυροῦντες, which we can render "re-crucifying" (recrucifigentes). First, then, it must be noted that to crucify is one thing, to re-crucify another. Next, that to re-crucify the Son of God is not the same thing as to crucify the flesh of Christ with vices and lusts. For the flesh of Christ is not principally and properly the Son of God, but Jesus Christ, who, though he was in the beginning with the Father, God the Word, was made flesh and emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, so that he might crucify the flesh and despoil the principalities and powers, triumphing over them on the tree (Phil. 2), so that that saying of the Apostle might be fulfilled: "For in that he died, he died to sin once" (Rom. 6:10). Therefore, if our bodies are members of Christ, it follows that our flesh too is the flesh of Christ, which we crucify, mortifying through it, upon the earth, fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire and avarice; and it is now set down in praise of us, who have crucified the flesh of Christ Jesus with vices and lusts, and always carry about the mortification of Jesus in our body, so that his life also may be made manifest in our flesh. Yet it is no small labor so to live in the present age that even now the life of Jesus is made manifest in our flesh. For thus will our mortal bodies also be quickened through the spirit dwelling in us. Where the Latin translator put "vices", in the Greek παθήματα, that is, "passions", is read. And since passion can signify both pain and the other necessities of the poor body, the Apostle cautiously added "desires", so that he might not seem to deny the nature of the body in spiritual men, but the vices. And let this warning be given thus if we follow the common edition (Vulgatam editionem), reading: But those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with vices and lusts: so that we say they have crucified not the flesh of Christ but their own. I had almost forgotten the second interpretation. For I had said beforehand that all that follows is to be referred to the Law and to circumcision. The sense, therefore, is this: those in whom is the fruit of the spirit, love, joy and the rest, have crucified the bodily understanding of Scripture, which is now called the flesh of Christ, with its passions and desires, which breed fuel for vices in little ones and sucklings. He has crucified the flesh of Christ who does not wage war according to the flesh of history, but follows the spirit of allegory going before him.

5:25

If we live by the spirit, let us also walk by the spirit.

Let us use this testimony against those who refuse to understand the Scriptures spiritually. But who is it that lives by the spirit, if not our hidden man, who is also at times accustomed to live according to the flesh? But when he has lived by the spirit, he walks by the spirit. When he has chosen to walk in the flesh, though living he is dead. The man perfect in Christ always lives in the spirit: he obeys the spirit, he never lives in the flesh. And on the contrary: whoever has given himself wholly to the flesh and has consigned himself to the passions never lives in the spirit. Between these are those in the middle, whom we can call neither spiritual nor fleshly; rather, those who, wavering between virtues and vices, are now drawn back to better things, and are spirit; now are tripped up by the slipperiness of the flesh, and are flesh.

5:26

Let us not become desirous of empty glory, provoking one another, envying one another.

The single word κενόδοξοι (vainglorious) among the Greeks the Latin translator has expressed by a circumlocution of three words. How many definitions and meanings glory has, both the innumerable books of the philosophers and the two volumes that Cicero wrote on glory give evidence. But since we are attempting to discuss not the etymologies of words but the sense of Scripture, we will connect this passage with what precedes in this way: If we live by the spirit, let us obey the spirit, serving one another not at all through the Law but through love. We ought not to contend about the interpretation of the Scriptures and say: "Circumcision is better"; "No, rather uncircumcision"; "History is to be despised and allegory followed"; "Nay, allegory is empty and shadowy, and fixed by no roots of truth." From this it comes about that envyings arise against one another. "For they wish", he says, "to shut you out, that you may emulate them": wishing not so much to teach the truth of the Law as to win. But so that we may not pass over the word glory entirely untouched, leaving the philosophers their trifles, let us go over some points from the Scriptures. The name of glory denotes the opinion of the crowd and praise sought through the favor of men, where it is said: "But they do all things that they may be glorified by men" (Matt. 23:5). And elsewhere: "How can you believe, seeking glory from one another" (John 5:44)? Further, in a good sense, in the same place: "And not seeking the glory that is from him who alone is". From this we understand that the same word signifies now a virtue, now a vice. If I seek glory from men, it is a vice; if from God, it is a virtue, for he also exhorts us to true glory, saying: "But those who glorify me I will glorify". Glory also signifies something else in the divine Scriptures, when something more august and more divine presents itself to the gaze of men. The glory of the Lord was seen in the tabernacle (Exod. 40), and in the temple that was built by Solomon there was glory (1 Kings 8:10-11), and in the face of Moses, when he did not know that his countenance had been glorified; and of this glory of the countenance I think the Apostle too speaks: "But we all, contemplating the glory of the Lord with unveiled face, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the spirit of God" (2 Cor. 3:18). And the Savior himself has been called the splendor of glory and the figure of the substance of God (Heb. 1). Stephen too saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at his right hand (Acts 7). Now, that we too may take upon ourselves the license of coining names (for new things, as someone says, new names must be coined): since here it is said, Let us not become desirous of empty, or of vacant glory, let us assert that those are desirous of full glory who desire the glory of God, and the praise worthy of virtue, and a sight showing forth something more divine. Hence too in very many places our translators have rendered "majesty" in place of glory. For a long time now I have been longing to burst out into words, but I am held back by fear of speaking. Yet I will speak, and I will not keep silent about my own passion, a passion almost common to all: not about riches, not about power, not about beauty and comeliness of body, for these are plainly named among the works of the flesh. Almsgiving, if it is done for the sake of praise, is empty glory; so is long prayer, and the pallor that follows from fasting. These are not my words, but those of the Savior thundering in the Gospel (Matt. 6). Chastity itself too, in marriage, in widowhood, in virgins, often seeks human applause; and, what I have long been afraid to say, yet it must be said, martyrdom itself, if it is undergone so that we may be held in admiration and praise by the brothers: the blood has been shed in vain. Let the Apostle speak, let the vessel of election speak: "If I hand over my body that I may glory, but have not love, it profits me nothing" (1 Cor. 13:3). To him who had said: "I know a man in Christ fourteen years ago, whether in the body, I do not know, or out of the body, I do not know, God knows, caught up as far as the third heaven" (2 Cor. 12:2); and a little after: "Caught up into paradise, he heard secret words which it is not lawful for a man to speak": to him, I say, who labored more than all, lest the greatness of the revelations should exalt him, there was given a goad of his flesh, an angel of Satan, to buffet him, so that he might not be lifted up. And indeed three times he asked the Lord that it might depart from him; but it was said to him: "My grace is sufficient for you: for power is perfected in weakness". What is so much the work of God as to read the Scriptures, to preach in the Church, to desire the priesthood, to minister before the altar of the Lord? Yet even these, unless one guards his heart with all diligence, spring from the desire for praise. You may see very many (as Tully too says) inscribing their books "On despising glory", and, for the sake of glory, setting the titles of their own name at the head. We interpret the Scriptures; we often turn the stylus; we write things worthy to be read; and unless these are done for the sake of Christ, but for remembrance among posterity and fame among the peoples, the whole labor will be made void, and we shall be like a sounding drum and a clanging cymbal (1 Cor. 13). You may see very many contending among themselves about the Scriptures and making the word of God an athletic arena: they provoke one another, and if they are beaten, they envy; for they are desirous of empty glory. I know that in the Latin codices, in the testimony we set down above, "If I hand over my body that I may glory", they have "that I may burn" (ardeam) in place of "that I may glory" (glorier); but because of the similarity of the word, by which among the Greeks "I may burn" and "I may glory", that is, καυθήσομαι and καυχήσομαι, are distinguished by part of a single letter, the error has grown up among our people. But among the Greeks themselves, too, the copies differ.

6:1

Brothers, and if a man has been overtaken in some fault, you who are spiritual, instruct such a one in the spirit of gentleness, considering yourself, lest you too be tempted.

Paul knew that he was a worshiper of that God who does not want the death of the sinner, but his repentance (Ezek. 18, 33), and that, the Trinity excepted, every creature, even if it does not sin, nevertheless can sin; so he exhorts even the one who is spiritual, through fear for himself lest he sin, to stretch out his hand to one who is falling. And he fittingly calls the one overtaken in a fault a "man," one who can die, showing by the very name the frailty of his condition, so that he who, as a man deceived by error and plunged into a whirlpool, cannot raise himself up without help and a helper may be worthy of pardon. But to the spiritual one "man" is not added; rather, it is commanded as though to God, that he should instruct the man overtaken in a fault, or (as the Greek has it better) perfect him, in the spirit of mildness. Now he who is being perfected does not lack everything, but some things. In short, if he has gone astray overtaken not by many sins but by some vice, let the spiritual man apply the spirit of mildness and gentleness in correcting the sinner, lest he wish to correct the one who errs while rigid, while angry and severe; but let him call him forth, pledging salvation, promising pardon; let him bring forward the testimony of Christ, that he invites those weighed down by the heavy burden of the law and of sins to his sweet yoke and light burden, that they may learn that he is humble and meek and gentle of heart (Matt. 11), and may find rest for their souls. Let us use this testimony against the heretics who, inventing fables of diverse natures, say that the spiritual is a good tree and never bears bad fruit. Behold, the Apostle, whose authority they themselves also follow, says that those who are spiritual can sin, if through the loftiness of their heart they are puffed up and fall. This we too likewise confess; and also that the χοϊκοὺς ("earthly") become spiritual, if they turn back to better things. There may be set against us what is written to the Corinthians: "What do you want? Shall I come to you with a rod, or in love and the spirit of gentleness" (1 Cor. 4:21)? For if there he says that he comes to sinners not in the spirit of gentleness but with a rod, how is it that here, to those who have been overtaken in some sin, he applies not the rod but the spirit of gentleness? But there it is said to those who, after their sin, not perceiving their error, were unwilling to be subject to their superiors and to be corrected by repentance. Where, however, the sinner, understanding his wound, hands himself over to the physician to be cured, there the rod is not necessary, but the spirit of mildness. But perhaps this too may be asked: if someone ought to instruct a sinner in the spirit of mildness for this reason, that he considers himself lest he too be tempted, then the righteous man, who is certain of his own mind, who knows that he cannot fall, ought not to instruct the sinner in the spirit of mildness? To this we shall say that even if the righteous man has conquered, knowing with how much labor he overcame, he will all the more grant pardon to the one who sins. For the Savior too was tempted for this reason, in all things like us, without sin, so that he might be able to suffer with us and to grieve with our infirmities, taught by his own example how difficult victory is in the flesh. If anyone has remained a virgin right up to old age, let him pardon the one who was once deceived by the heat of youth, knowing with what difficulties he passed through that age. If anyone, tortured for confessing the name of Christ, sees another, in torments, deny, let him have compassion on the wounds of the denier, and let him marvel not so much that the other was conquered as that he himself conquered. Notice also the caution of the writer, in that he did not say: Considering yourself, lest you fall; but, lest you too be tempted. For to be conquered or to conquer is sometimes in our power; but to be tempted is in the power of the tempter. For if the Savior was tempted, who can be secure that he will cross the seas of this life untempted? Let those who think that Paul said out of humility, and not truly, "Even if I am unskilled in speech, yet not in knowledge", defend the coherence of this passage. For according to proper order he ought to have said: "You who are spiritual, instruct such a one in the spirit of mildness, considering yourselves, lest you too be tempted"; and not to bring in the singular number after the plural. A Hebrew of the Hebrews, then, and one who was most learned in his native tongue, was not able to express deep meanings in a foreign language; nor did he care greatly about words, since he had the sense safe. These things according to the simple understanding. But, so that we may also pursue the order of the second exposition, this passage is to be opened up from the end of the Epistle to the Romans. For there, when he was likewise writing about the foods and observances of the Jews, and was describing those who despised the precepts of the Law according to the letter as strong and perfect, but those who were still led by the ancient custom as weak and little ones, and saw that there was a quarrel between the spiritual and the fleshly, he admonished the spiritual not to despise the fleshly, and said: "But take up the one who is weak in faith, not in disputes over thoughts. For one believes he may eat all things; but he who is weak, let him eat vegetables. Let him who eats not despise him who does not eat; and let him who does not eat not judge him who eats, for God has taken him up. Who are you to judge another's slave? To his own master he stands or falls. But he will stand: for God is able to make him stand" (Rom. 14:1 ff.). And after discussing much in between on this sense, he added at the end: "Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God". And again: "But we who are stronger ought to bear the weaknesses of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of you please his neighbor for good edification" (Rom. 15:1, 2).

6:2

Bear one another's burdens, and so you will fulfil the law of Christ.

That sin is a burden, the Psalmist too testifies, saying: "My iniquities are lifted up over my head; like a heavy burden they have weighed heavily upon me" (Ps. 37:5). And Zechariah saw iniquity, in the form of a woman, sitting upon a talent of lead (Zech. 5). This burden the Savior bore for us, teaching us by his own example what we ought to do. For he himself carries our iniquities and grieves for us (Isa. 53), and those who are weighed down by the burden of sins and of the Law he invites to the light burden of virtue, saying: "My yoke is sweet, and my burden light" (Matt. 11:30). Whoever, therefore, does not despair of a brother's salvation, but stretches out his hand to him as he pleads, and, as far as lies in him, weeps with the one who weeps, is weak with the weak, and judges the sins of others to be his own, he through love fulfils the law of Christ. What is the law of Christ? "This is my commandment, that you love one another" (John 13:34). What is the law of the Son of God? "Love one another, as I also have loved you". How did the Son of God love us? "There is no greater love than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). Whoever has no clemency, and has not put on the bowels of mercy and of tears, though he be spiritual, will not fulfil the law of Christ. But let us also join this passage with what went before. For we follow a twofold understanding. If anyone is weak in the faith, and is still nourished on the milk of infancy, and cannot so quickly pass from the observance of the Law to the spiritual mysteries, you who are stronger, bear his burdens, so that the brother for whom Christ died may not perish through your knowledge. He also bears a brother's need who helps a poor man weighed down by the burden of want, and makes himself friends of the mammon of iniquity (Luke 16); and him Christ addresses after the resurrection: "Come to me, you blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink" (Matt. 25:34, 35). In accordance with this sense Paul also, teaching Timothy in another Epistle, added: "Command the rich of this age not to be high-minded" (that is to say, "not to be proud"), "nor to hope in the uncertainty of riches, but in God, who furnishes all things abundantly for enjoyment; to do good, to be rich in good works, to give readily, to share, to lay up for themselves a good foundation for the future, that they may lay hold of the true life" (1 Tim. 6:17-19). Whoever has laid hold of the true life, that is, of him who says: "I am the life" (John 14:6), has fulfilled the law of Christ, which tends toward life.

6:3

For if anyone thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, he leads himself astray.

If anyone will not carry the burdens of others, and, without mercy, is content with his own work and virtue alone, seeking not the things that are another's but the things that are his own, that is, a lover of himself alone and not also of God, he himself leads himself astray. Now this can be read and punctuated in two ways: either, "if anyone thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing"; or thus: "If anyone thinks himself to be something", so that we afterwards add, "when he is nothing, he leads himself astray". And this difference resounds more in the Greek than in the Latin. The sense of the first punctuation is this: He who thinks himself to be something, and is nothing, deceives himself. The second sense is loftier, and is the one that pleases us more: If anyone thinks himself to be something, in that he supposes himself to be something, and judges himself not by clemency toward his neighbor but by his own work and labor, content with his own virtue alone, that man by this very arrogance becomes nothing, and he himself deceives himself: which is better said in the Greek, φρεναπατᾷ, that is, he deceives his own mind; for which the Latin translator put "he leads himself astray" (se ipse seducit). And he deceives his own mind who supposes himself to be wise, and, according to Isaiah, is wise in himself and understanding in his own sight (Isa. 5). With reference to circumcision and the Law, the understanding of this passage is connected thus: He who is spiritual, and has no mercy toward his neighbor, despising the lowly because he himself is loftier, he himself deceives himself, not knowing that this is the law of the spirit, that we love one another.

6:4

But let every man prove his own work: and so he shall have glory in himself only, and not in another.

This is the sense: You who reckon yourself spiritual, and are stronger by reason of another's weakness, ought not to consider the feebleness of the one who lies fallen, but your own strength. For if another cannot pass perfectly from Judaism to Christianity, it does not follow that you are therefore a perfect Christian; but if your own conscience does not reproach you, you have glory in yourself and not in another. An athlete is not strong because he has defeated a weak man and overcome the feeble limbs of his opponent; but if he is sturdy, and glories in his own strength, not in the weakness of another. It can also be understood in another way: he who has the consciousness of a good work, and, considering himself, finds no fault with his own work, ought not to glory about this before another, and pour out his praise abroad, and share it with everyone, and seek a boast from the favor of men; but let him have glory in himself, and say: "But far be it from me to glory, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world". He who seeks glory from another, to him the world has not been crucified, nor has he himself been crucified with Christ. For he has received his reward, what he was seeking from men.

6:5

For each one shall bear his own burden.

This seems to contradict what went before, where he says: "Bear one another's burdens": for if each one shall bear his own burden, one will not be able to bear another's burdens. But we must see that there he commanded that in this life we should support one another when we sin, and be a help to each other in the present age; here, however, he speaks¹¹⁸ of the Lord's judgment upon us: that it is not by another's sin and by comparison with someone worse, but according to our own work, that we are judged by him either sinners or saints, each one receiving according to his own work. Though obscurely, we are taught through this little saying a new doctrine that lies hidden: that while we are in the present age we can help one another, whether by prayers or by counsels; but when we have come before the judgment seat of Christ, neither Job nor Daniel nor Noah can intercede for anyone, but each one bears his own work (Ezek. 14).

6:6

But let him who is catechized in the word share with him who catechizes him in all good things.

Marcion interpreted this passage in such a way as to think that the faithful and the catechumens ought to pray together, and that the teacher ought to share in prayer with his disciples; he was especially carried away by the fact that there follows in all good things. Yet surely, if the discourse had been about prayer, the command ought not to have been given to him who is catechized, but to him who catechizes him, that is, not to the disciple, but to the teacher. Then, too, the other things that follow do not agree with his exposition: "Whatever a man has sown, that he will also reap". And: "But in doing good let us not fail: for in its own time we shall reap, not failing". This, therefore, is the sense: since above he had commanded the spiritual to instruct in a spirit of gentleness those who had been overtaken in some fault, and to bear one another's burdens, fulfilling the law of Christ, now, on the contrary, he commands those who were still weaker, and disciples, and carnal, that, just as they themselves reap spiritual things from their teachers, so they should furnish carnal things to their teachers, who, giving themselves wholly to divine learning and study, are in need of the necessities of this life; and so that may come to pass which is written of the manna: "He who had much did not have too much; and he who had little did not have too little" (2 Cor. 8:15). Now in the present passage he has called good things, according to the custom of the crowd and common usage, food and clothing and the other things that men count among good things. "For having food and clothing, with these we are content" (1 Tim. 6:8). Nor is it surprising if Paul designated the things that were necessary to the body by the name of good, since even our Savior, to those who had not yet ascended to the summit of the virtues but were still walking on a lower level, and who were asking that faith be added to them, said: "If therefore you, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him" (Matt. 7:11)! I think that Job too, when he was speaking to his wife as to one of the foolish women, spoke of bodily riches with regard to her, who thought so: "If we have received good things from the hand of the Lord" (Job 2:10); and again, of the straits and afflictions and temptation, which bring victory: "Why should we not endure evil?" Whereas, surely, evil and good are placed not in riches and afflictions, but in virtues and vices, as the righteous man says in the psalm: "Who is the man who wants life, desires to see good days? Keep your tongue from evil, and let your lips not speak deceit. Turn away from evil, and do good" (Ps. 33:13 ff., and 36:27). Properly, evil is called that which must be avoided; good, that which we ought to do. That rich man too in the Gospel, who did not have the knowledge of evil and good, rightly reckoned the fruitfulness of his fields to be good things, saying: "Soul, you have good things laid up for many years: rest, eat, drink, and be merry" (Luke 12:19). And the other, who lay in purple and abounded in delights, hears from Abraham in the underworld: "You received good things in your life" (Luke 16:25). This also must be considered, whether perhaps it may also be understood that a command is given to the disciples to share the word with those who instruct them, to obey them, and to show themselves teachable and compliant; yet in those things that are good, that are spiritual, and not perverted by heretical or Jewish depravity.

6:7

Be not deceived, God is not mocked: for what things a man sows, these he shall also reap.

Foreseeing in the spirit that those who are taught, and who ought to supply their teachers with expenses and the necessities of life, could plead poverty and say: My field has dried up this year with drought; hail has crushed my vineyard; the taxes have carried off the revenues that there could have been¹¹⁹; I have nothing from which to give what is commanded, he added: Be not deceived, God is not mocked. He knows, he says, your hearts; he is not ignorant of your means. A plausible excuse can somehow placate a man; it cannot deceive God. And at the same time he exhorts them to render what has been commanded, calling it seed, so that one should not think lost what he is going to receive back with multiplied interest. To the Corinthians too he taught the reckoning of what is given and received by a similar example: "He who sows sparingly shall also reap sparingly: and he who sows in blessing shall also reap of blessing. Each one as he has purposed in his heart, not out of sadness or of necessity: for God loves a cheerful giver" (2 Cor. 9:6-7).

6:8

For he who sows in his own flesh, from the flesh shall also reap corruption. But he who sows in the spirit, from the spirit shall reap life everlasting.

Everything that we speak, do and think is sown in two fields, the flesh and the spirit. If the things brought forth from hand, mouth and heart are good, sown in the spirit, they will overflow with the fruits of eternal life. If they are evil, received by the field of the flesh, they will sprout for us a harvest of corruption. Another way: he who understands the law carnally also expects carnal promises, and things that are corrupted in the present age. But he who is a spiritual hearer sows in the spirit, and from the spirit shall reap life everlasting. At the same time let us note the sequence of the discourse and link it with what went before: the one who sows in the spirit is called a man, and when he has begun to reap life everlasting, he perhaps ceases to be a man. Cassianus, who, bringing in a putative (merely apparent) flesh of Christ, judges every union of male with female unclean, the most vehement heresiarch of the Encratites, used against us, on the occasion of the present testimony, an argument of this sort: If anyone sows in the flesh, from the flesh he shall reap corruption; but he who is joined to a woman sows in the flesh; therefore he too who has intercourse with a wife, and sows in her flesh, from the flesh shall reap corruption. He will be answered, first, that Paul did not say, "he who sows in the flesh," but, in his own flesh. Yet no one lies with himself and sows in his own flesh. Next, even if we grant him, over and above, this observation which we have noted, in his own flesh, it must be added that, by his reckoning, those also who eat and drink and sleep and do anything for the refreshment of the body sow in the flesh, and from it reap corruption. But if he takes refuge in saying that those who, whether they drink or eat or sleep, nevertheless do everything with reason in the name of the Lord do not sow in the flesh but in the spirit, we too will answer him in like manner that those also who follow God's first sentence, acting with reason: "Increase and multiply, and fill the earth" (Gen. 1:22), sow not in the flesh but in the spirit. And so his syllogism, futile and tottering, deceives the hearer at first by a sophism; but, carefully inspected, it is easily resolved. For we cannot say that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the other holy men who were born of the promise, and even the Lord's forerunner himself, because he was born in the flesh, sprouted from a seed of corruption. This also must likewise be observed, that he who sows in the flesh is set down with the addition "of his own flesh," whereas he who sows in the spirit is not said to sow in his own spirit, but simply in the spirit. For he who sows good things sows not in anything of his own, but in the spirit of God, from which he is also to reap life eternal.

6:9

But in doing good let us not fail: for in its own time we shall reap, if we do not fail.

He exhorts to zeal for perseverance those who expect the reward of a good work in this life, not knowing that, just as with seed there is one time for sowing and another for harvest, so also in the present life the works are the sowing (which are reaped either in the spirit or in the flesh), while the harvest is the judgment to come; and that according to the quality or the diversity of the sowing we make diverse harvests, the hundredfold, and the sixtyfold, and the thirtyfold fruit, a crop which no one who fails can reap. "For he who has persevered to the end, he shall be saved" (Matt. 10:22). As it is also commanded in another place: "Be not failing" (Isa. 5). But what sort of thing is it that, while sinners daily increase in evil works, we should grow weary in good work?

6:10

Therefore, while we have time, let us work good toward all, but most of all toward those of the household of faith.

The time of sowing, as we have said, is the present time and the life which we run. In this life we may sow what we will; when this life has passed, the time for working is taken away. Hence the Savior too says: "Work while it is day: the night will come, when no one will any longer be able to work" (John 9:4). The Word of God, the true sun, has risen for us, and the beasts have gathered together, withdrawing into their dens: let us go forth as men to our work, and let us labor until the evening, as is mystically sung in the psalm: "You have set darkness, and it became night. In it the beasts of the forest will pass through, the young lions roaring to seize their prey and to seek their food from God. The sun has risen, and they have gathered together, and in their dens they have slept. Man shall go forth to his work, and to his labor until the evening" (Ps. 103:20 ff.). Whether we are sick or whether we are healthy, lowly or powerful, poor, rich, of low birth, honored, hungry or whether well fed, let us do all things in the name of the Lord with patience and equanimity, and there will be fulfilled in us that which is written: "But for those who love the Lord, all things work together for good". Anger itself and lust, and the injury that desires vengeance, if I rein myself in, if for God's sake I keep silent, if at each of the goads of agitation and the incitements of the vices I remember God looking upon me from above, become for me an occasion of triumphs. Let us not say in giving: That one is a friend, this one I do not know; this one ought to receive, that one to be despised. Let us imitate our Father, who makes his sun rise upon the good and the evil, and rains upon the righteous and the unrighteous (Matt. 5). The fountain of goodness lies open to all. Slave and free, commoner and king, rich and poor drink from it alike. A lamp, when it has been lit in a house, gives light to all equally. But if the reins of liberality are slackened toward all without distinction, how much more toward those of the household of faith, and toward Christians, who have the same Father and are reckoned by the name of his Master! It seems to me, however, that this passage can also cohere with what precedes, so that by those of the household of faith he means the teachers, whom he had commanded above to be ministered to by their hearers in all things that are reckoned good. Short is the course of this life. This very thing that I speak, that I dictate, that I write, that I correct, that I read over, is either added to me or lost from my time. Titus, the son of Vespasian, who, after overthrowing Jerusalem in vengeance for the Lord's blood, entered Rome as victor, is said to have been of such great goodness that, when one night late at dinner he recalled that he had done nothing good that day, he said to his friends: Today I have lost a day. Do we think that no hour, day, moments, time, ages are lost to us when we speak an idle word, for which we are to render an account on the day of judgment (Matt. 12)? But if he, without the Law, without the Gospel, without the teaching of the Savior and of the apostles, both said and did this by nature, what ought we to do, to whose condemnation Juno has her women once married, and Vesta her virgins, and other idols their continent votaries? The blessed John the Evangelist, when he was staying at Ephesus until extreme old age, and could scarcely be carried to the church in the arms of his disciples, and could not join his voice to many words, used to utter nothing else at each of the gatherings but this: Little children, love one another. At length the disciples and brothers who were present, wearied because they always heard the same things, said: Master, why do you always say this? He gave an answer worthy of John: Because it is the Lord's command, and if it alone is done, it is enough. This on account of the present command of the Apostle: Let us work good toward all: but most of all toward those of the household of faith.

6:11

See with what letters I have written to you with my own hand.

Those who wanted the Galatians to be circumcised had spread it about that Paul did one thing and preached another, and destroyed his word by his own deed, since he who asserted that the Law was abolished was himself found in the Law. Because Paul could not overturn this opinion by being present in person among them all (for he was hindered by the chains which he was enduring for the witness of Christ), he makes himself present through a letter. And so that no suspicion of a forged Epistle might arise, from this place to the end he wrote it out with his own hand, showing that what came before had been written down by another. That Epistles were being sent under his name by false teachers he also shows when writing to the Thessalonians: "But we beseech you, brothers, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, that you be not quickly moved from your mind, nor be terrified, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by an Epistle as if sent by us, as though the day of the Lord were at hand; let no one deceive you in any way" (2 Thess. 2:1 ff.). And to rescue the whole Epistle he was sending from the suspicion of falsity, he signed it at the end with his own hand, saying: "The greeting with my own hand, Paul's, which is the sign in every Epistle: thus I write: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all" (2 Thess. 3:17, 18). The letter to the Colossians too, which he had dictated, he likewise signed underneath with his own hand: "The greeting with my own hand, Paul's: Be mindful of my chains". And wherever he knew that false teachers were present who might sow new doctrines by means of the Apostle's authority, he signed the Epistle with his own hand. Finally, writing also to the Corinthians, among whom there were schisms and heresies, each one saying: "I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, but I of Cephas" (1 Cor. 1:12), he sealed his letter with such an annotation: "The greeting with my own hand, Paul's: If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema, maranatha", and the rest. For this reason, therefore, wishing to take away every occasion from the false teachers, who had also perverted the Galatians from the truth of the Gospel, he completed the end of the letter with an annotation in his own hand, saying: See with what letters I have written to you; not that the letters were large (for that is indeed what πηλίκοις conveys in the Greek), but that the traces of his hand were known to them, so that while they recognized the strokes of the letters, they might think they saw the very man who had written. On this passage a man exceedingly learned in our times, I wonder how he came to say something ridiculous. Paul, he says, was a Hebrew and did not know Greek letters; and because necessity required that he sign the letter with his own hand, contrary to his habit he could scarcely trace the curving paths of the letters, in large strokes, showing even in this the tokens of his love for the Galatians, that for their sake he tried to do even what he could not do. Paul therefore wrote the letter in large letters because the sense in the letters was large, and it had been written down by the spirit of the living God, not with ink nor with a reed pen. And as for his adding with my own hand, let us understand works by "hands." For this reason it is also often written in the prophets: "The word of God which came in the hand of Jeremiah", or "of Haggai", so that by this likeness too we may know that the word of God came in the hand of Paul. Paul writes large letters not only then to the Galatians but also today to all, and although the strokes with which his Epistles are written are small, yet the letters are great, because in the letters the sense is great.

6:12-13

Whoever wish to please in the flesh, these compel you to be circumcised, only so that they may not suffer the persecution of the cross of Christ.

Above he showed from what point he had subscribed with his own hand; now he goes back over what he wrote. Gaius Caesar, and Octavian Augustus, and Tiberius the successor of Augustus, had promulgated laws that the Jews who were dispersed throughout the whole world of the Roman Empire should live by their own rite and devote themselves to their ancestral ceremonies. Whoever, therefore, was circumcised, even though he believed in Christ, was regarded by the Gentiles as a Jew. But whoever, being without circumcision, displayed by his uncircumcision that he was not a Jew, became liable to persecutions both of the Gentiles and of the Jews. Therefore those who had corrupted the Galatians, desiring to escape these persecutions, urged circumcision upon their disciples as a defense; and this the Apostle now calls confidence in the flesh, namely because they held out circumcision in persecution as much to the Gentiles¹²⁰, whom they feared, as to the Jews, who wished to please. For neither the Jews could persecute them, nor the Gentiles, since they saw¹²¹ them both circumcising proselytes and themselves keeping the precepts of the Law.

For neither do those who are circumcised, these, keep the Law; but they wish you to be circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh. Because of the weakness of the flesh, he says, the Law cannot be fulfilled. Hence the Jews too keep the precepts and doctrines of men rather than the commandments of God, doing neither the bodily Law (for that indeed is impossible) nor the spiritual Law, which they do not understand. Hence this is all that they are eager for, all that they do, all that they strive after: that among the Jews they may glory over the injury done to your flesh, and boast that Gentiles have been circumcised under their own teaching. And all this they do so that they may please the Jews, and the ill will over the fight against the Law may die down.

6:14

But far be it from me to glory, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world.

He alone can glory in the cross of Christ who takes it up and follows the Savior, who has crucified his flesh with its vices and lusts, who has died to the world and does not contemplate the things that are seen, but those that are not seen: seeing the world crucified, and its form passing away. Now that world is crucified to the righteous man of which the Savior says: "I have overcome the world" (John 16:33). And: "Do not love the world". And: "You have not received the spirit from the world". He to whom the world is crucified, to him the world is also dead; and already the consummation of the world has come for him, and, having been made worthy of a new heaven and a new earth and a new Testament, he sings a new song and receives a new name written on a pebble, which no one knows except him who has received it. It is asked how Paul now says: But far be it from me to glory, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, when in another place he glories in other things, as he says there: "By your glory, which I have in Christ Jesus" (1 Cor. 15:31). And again: "Gladly will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me" (2 Cor. 12:9). And in another place: "But it is good for me rather to die than that anyone should make my glory void" (1 Cor. 9:15), and the other things written in this manner. But it must be understood that all that glorying, being referred to the cross, is the glory of the cross; and whatever worthy thing is accomplished in the virtues, this is done on account of the Lord's passion.

6:15

For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.

Just as the faithful man and the unbeliever, though one in substance, are divided into two according to the difference of their understanding, as the Apostle says: "Stripping yourselves of the old man with his works, and putting on the new, who is renewed unto knowledge according to the image of the Creator" (Col. 3:9, 10): so also the world, though it is one according to substance, becomes now one thing, now another, according to the mind. To the sinner the world is old; to the saint, new. For when the world has been crucified to the saint, there is for him no circumcision and uncircumcision, no Jew and no Gentile, but a new creature, into which the body of our lowliness is transfigured, conformed to the body of the glory of Christ: for the old things have passed away; behold, all things are made new (2 Cor. 5). And as there is one glory of the sun, another of the moon, another of the stars: "For star differs from star in glory: so also is the resurrection of the dead" (1 Cor. 15:41, 42). Concerning which Daniel too agrees with one voice, saying: "Very many of those who sleep shall rise from the dust of the earth: these to eternal life, and these to reproach and to eternal confusion" (Dan. 12:2); and: "Those who understand shall shine like the splendor of the firmament". And of the righteous: "Many like the stars for ever". For neither in the sun and moon, the firmament and the stars, does circumcision avail anything, or uncircumcision: but there is a new creation, without those parts of bodies that can be cut. So therefore we too, who love God, and for whom have been prepared the things that eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have they ascended into the heart of man (1 Cor. 2), when we have been transformed from the body of lowliness into the body of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, shall have that body which neither the Jew could cut, nor the Gentile keep with its foreskin. Not that it is something other according to substance, but that it is different according to glory. "For this mortal must put on immortality, and this corruptible be clothed with incorruption" (1 Cor. 15:53). Perceiving something similar to this, the blessed evangelist John also spoke: "Dearly beloved, now we are sons of God: and it is not yet manifest what we shall be. We know that if it is made manifest, we shall be like him: because we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2). Since, then, that body of the glory of Jesus Christ has not yet been made manifest¹²² — the body which both had the marks of the nails after the resurrection and entered through closed doors — let us, who even now in baptism have risen again with Christ, reborn into the new man, serve neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, but let us believe that even now we are what we shall be.

6:16

And whoever follow this rule, peace upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.

All things are directed by a norm; and whether they are crooked or straight is shown up once the rule has been laid against them. So too the teaching of God is, as it were, a kind of norm of speech, which judges between what is righteous and what is unrighteous: whoever follows it will have in himself the peace which surpasses all understanding; and after peace, mercy, which is preeminent in the Israel of God. Now he is called the Israel of God to distinguish him from the one who has ceased to be the Israel of God. For they say that they are Jews, and are not, but they lie, since they are of the synagogue of Satan. And do not wonder if, in imitation of the spiritual Israel, there is a carnal Israel, which has neither peace nor mercy; of which it is also written to the Corinthians: "See Israel according to the flesh" (1 Cor. 10:18); since, in imitation of God and the Lord as well, there are many gods and many lords, whether in heaven or on earth. And beautifully, so as to end the epistle in keeping with the argument he had set out, he called it in a single phrase the Israel of God; so that, namely, all the things said above may be shown to have been argued not beside the case, but from the case.

6:17

From now on let no man be troublesome to me.

Not as though he had grown weary in teaching; but so that the farmer too may have this toil if the young shoots he has planted dry up, and the shepherd anxiety if the flocks which he had gathered are scattered and torn to pieces. It is therefore better read in the Greek, "From now on let no one cause me labors"; that is, lest I should again have the need of laboring among you. He causes labor to his teacher who both lives and thinks otherwise than the teacher has both taught and done. He may also be forestalling the contentiousness of those, if any should wish to contradict him hereafter, as he also did to the Corinthians concerning the veiling of a woman's head and the man's not veiling, when after much argument he concluded, saying: "But if anyone seems to be contentious: we have no such custom, nor has the Church of God" (1 Cor. 11:16); that is, we have said what seemed to us honorable and just; but if anyone, unwilling to acquiesce in the truth, seeks what to answer, and on what grounds they may strive against it, let him know that he is not worthy of a response, since he is more ready to contend than to be taught.

But I bear the marks of the Lord Jesus in my body. He who after the coming of Christ is circumcised in the flesh does not bear the marks of the Lord Jesus, but has glory in his shame. But he who was in stripes above measure, in prisons frequently, was three times beaten with rods, once stoned, and the rest that are written in the catalogue of his glorying, he bears the marks of the Lord Jesus in his body. Perhaps also he who chastens his body and brings it into subjection, lest while preaching to others he himself should be found reprobate, bears the marks of the Lord Jesus in his body (1 Cor. 9). The apostles too rejoiced that they had been counted worthy to suffer insult for the name of Jesus (Acts 5).

6:18

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen.

Not dissension, not slavery of the Law, not quarreling, not wrangling, but the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. By no means with the flesh, by no means with the soul; either because, having been made spiritual, you cease to be flesh and soul, or because in the principal part those things too that are lesser are comprehended. For the soul and the flesh are subject to the spirit. Of which Ecclesiastes also speaks: "The spirit shall return to him who gave it" (Eccles. 12:7). And Paul in another place: "The Spirit himself bears witness to our spirit" (Rom. 8:16). But this grace of the Lord Jesus is not with all, but with those who deserve to be called brothers by the apostle, faithful brothers and true (germani) brothers, which is what the Hebrew word AMEN signifies. For the Seventy translators rendered Amen as "so be it" (fiat); Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion as "faithfully" (fideliter), or "truly" (vere). And just as in the Old Testament God confirms his words by a certain custom of swearing, saying: "I live, says the Lord" (Num. 14:28), and one also swears by the saints: "As your soul lives"; so too our Savior in the Gospel shows by the word Amen that the things he speaks are true. And that Amen signifies the assent of the hearer and is a seal of truth, the first Epistle to the Corinthians also teaches us, in which Paul says: "But if you bless with the spirit, who fills the place of the unlearned? How will he say amen over your blessing, since indeed he does not know what you are saying" (1 Cor. 14:16)? From which he shows that the unlearned man cannot answer that what is said is true unless he has understood what is being taught.

1 Another reading: possent.
2 Another reading: Commentarios, "commentaries".
3 Another reading: et, "and".
4 Another reading: discreparent.
5 Another reading: perrexerat.
6 Another reading: Silai, "Silai".
7 Another reading: fateretur.
8 Another reading: Ecclesiæ, "church".
9 Another reading: pejores, "worse".
10 Another reading adds sic, "so".
11 Another reading: esset.
12 Another reading: proprium, "proper".
13 Another reading: fieret, "became".
14 Another reading: quæro, "seek".
15 Another reading: diffamatum, "rumored".
16 Another reading: putabatur, "as was then thought".
17 Another reading: quasi, "as if".
18 Another reading: fiunt.
19 Another reading: credant.
20 Another reading: carnes, "fleshes".
21 Another reading adds Jesu, "Jesus".
22 Another reading: agentes.
23 Another reading: commoratus sit, "stayed".
24 Another reading: in ancillæ, "into the handmaid's".
25 Another reading: junget.
26 Another reading: jussus, "was bidden".
27 Another reading: in gloria, "in the glory".
28 Another reading: tunc, "then".
29 Another reading: videt, "sees".
30 Another reading: dicerent, "say".
31 Another reading: sint.
32 Another reading: jactitaverant, "had kept loudly declaring".
33 Another reading: possint.
34 Another reading: futurarum, "of future".
35 So the edition; the critical text reads leniter, "gently".
36 Another reading: congrega.
37 Another reading: se, "themselves".
38 Another reading: habemus, "we have".
39 Another reading: considerandum, "consider".
40 Another reading: justificatur, "is justified".
41 Another reading: Scarioth, "Scarioth".
42 Another reading: quod, "that".
43 Another reading: sit.
44 Another reading: justificent.
45 Another reading: via, "way".
46 Another reading: trito, "worn".
47 Another reading: nauseantes, "being nauseated".
48 Another reading: exosos, "having come to loathe".
49 Another reading: Legis quoque, "of the Law also".
50 Another reading: reddet.
51 Another reading: promeruit.
52 Another reading: novis, "new".
53 Another reading: rhetoricum, "rhetorical".
54 Another reading: Aquitanica.
55 Another reading adds nostro, "our".
56 Another reading: tempus, "time".
57 Another reading: Anchiram, "Anchira".
58 Another reading: quod, "that".
59 Another reading: quod, "that".
60 Another reading: numina, "deities".
61 Another reading: dicit, "says".
62 Another reading adds istos, "these".
63 Another reading: qua, "where".
64 Another reading: possit.
65 Another reading: vivet, "shall live".
66 Another reading: judicem, "judge".
67 Another reading: differrent.
68 Another reading: et, "and".
69 Another reading: illud, "it".
70 Another reading omits in, "in".
71 Another reading: adamam.
72 Another reading: ascenderat, "had ascended".
73 Another reading: Nabutham.
74 Another reading: assumeret.
75 Another reading: Nabutham.
76 Another reading: mortuus.
77 Another reading: promissum, "promised".
78 Another reading: putaverit, "thought".
79 Another reading: sacramento, "by the mystery".
80 Another reading: cogemus, "we shall compel".
81 Another reading: sitis.
82 Another reading: et aspectu, "and from the view".
83 Another reading: læsistis.
84 So the edition; its footnote reports a manuscript reading lugens, "I mourn".
85 Another reading: angelis, "than the angels".
86 Another reading: profectus, "progresses".
87 Another reading: dicens.
88 Another reading: merebantur, "deserved".
89 Another reading: ostendente, "showing".
90 Another reading: confundatur.
91 Another reading: asserat, "he asserts".
92 So the edition; the words quoted are Isaiah's.
93 Another reading: eum, "him".
94 Another reading: dixit.
95 Another reading: Ismael, "Ishmael".
96 Another reading: nec, "nor".
97 Another reading: dicatur, "it be said".
98 Another reading: ne, "lest".
99 Another reading: utilitas.
100 So the edition; Phil. 3:3 reads "We are the circumcision".
101 Another reading: Christo.
102 Another reading: levisset.
103 Another reading: fetuum.
104 Another reading: possem.
105 Another reading: videretis, "you would see".
106 Another reading adds nostri, "our".
107 Another reading: et jam, "and already".
108 Another reading: oppressus, "he was not crushed".
109 Another reading: ponunt, "put".
110 Another reading: conturbabant, "were troubling".
111 Another reading: ut, "that".
112 Another reading: hinc, "hence".
113 Another reading: deputetur.
114 Another reading: percipit, "perceive".
115 Another reading: signabitur.
116 Another reading: deferentes, "denouncing".
117 Another reading: quia impleri, "because it cannot be fulfilled".
118 Another reading: dicebat, "was speaking".
119 Another reading: poterunt, "there will be able to be".
120 Another reading: Gentilibus.
121 Another reading: volebant, "wished".
122 Another reading: manifestum.