Sins We Choose

What is voluntary is what comes from desire, or from choice, or from deliberate intent. Three things stand close together here: sin, mishap, and wrong. To live in luxury and go without restraint is a sin. To wound a friend in ignorance, taking him for an enemy, is a mishap. To break into a grave or rob a temple is a wrong. We sin either because we cannot make out what ought to be done, or because we cannot do it — much as a man falls into a ditch either because he did not see it or because his body was too weak to jump it. But applying ourselves to training, and submitting to the commands, are in our own power. If we will have nothing to do with them and hand ourselves over entirely to craving, we will sin — or rather, we will wrong our own soul. As the famous Laius says in the tragedy: [a]

That is to say, he had handed himself over to passion. Medea too cries out on the stage:

Nor is Ajax silent. As he is about to kill himself he cries:

Anger made these into tragedies, and craving made countless others — Phaedra, Anthia, Eriphyle,

And another play brings on Thrasonides of the comedy, saying:

A mishap is a sin against reasoning. Sin that is willed is a wrong, and a wrong is willed wickedness. So sin, on my part, is voluntary. That is why the apostle says, “Sin will not be your master, since you are not under law but under grace.” And to those who have come to believe he says, “By his wounds we were healed.” A mishap is what someone else does to me without meaning it; a wrong alone is willed, whether I do it or another does.

The Psalmist points to these differences between sins when he calls those blessed whose lawless acts God has forgiven and whose sins he has covered. Some he does not charge against a man, and the rest he forgives. For it is written: “Blessed are those whose lawless acts are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not charge sin, and in whose mouth there is no deceit.” That blessing came on those whom God chose through Jesus Christ our Lord. For “love hides a multitude of sins,” and they are wiped out by the one “who wants a sinner’s repentance rather than his death.” What does not come from choice is not counted; for it says, “the man who has craved has already committed adultery.” And the Word who gives light forgives sins: “In that time, says the Lord, they will look for the lawlessness of Israel and it will not be there, and for the sins of Judah, and they will not be found.” “For who is like me, and who will stand before my face?” You see that one and the same God is declared good — paying each man what he deserves, and forgiving sins.

John too plainly teaches that sins differ, in his longer letter, where he says: “If anyone sees his brother committing a sin that does not lead to death, he will ask, and he will give him life” — for those, he says, whose sin does not lead to death. For “there is a sin that leads to death. I do not say a man should pray about that one. All wrongdoing is sin, and there is a sin that does not lead to death.”

David — and Moses before David — shows that he knew these three rules, in these words. “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly”: like the fish that go down into the dark depths, since the ones without scales, which Moses forbids touching, feed on the bottom of the sea. “Nor stands in the way of sinners”: like people who look as though they fear the Lord and sin all the same, like the pig, which squeals when it is hungry and does not know its owner when it is full. “Nor sits in the seat of the pestilent”: like birds waiting to pounce. And Moses gave orders not to eat the pig, or the eagle, or the hawk, or the raven, or any fish without scales. That much comes from Barnabas.

And I heard a man who knows about such things say that “the counsel of the ungodly” meant the Gentiles, “the way of sinners” the Jewish party, and “the seat of the pestilent” the sects. Another put it better: the first blessing belongs to those who have not followed wicked opinions that revolt against God, and the second to those who do not stay on the wide and broad road — whether they were brought up under the law, or are Gentiles who have repented. And “the seat of the pestilent” will be the theaters and the courts; or rather, going along with wicked and deadly powers and taking part in what they do. “But his delight is in the law of the Lord.” Peter, in his Preaching, called the Lord Law and Word.

The lawgiver seems to teach the meaning of the three kinds of sin in another way as well. By the voiceless fish he means sins of speech, since there are times when silence is better than speaking, and silence has a safe reward. By the grasping, flesh-eating birds he means sins of action. And the pig enjoys filth and dung — and we are not to have a conscience that is “defiled.”

So the prophet is right to say, “Not so the ungodly — no, they are like the chaff the wind drives off the face of the earth. That is why the ungodly will not stand up in the judgment” (they are condemned already, for “whoever does not believe is condemned already”), “nor sinners in the counsel of the righteous,” since they are condemned already and cannot be joined to those who have lived without stumbling. “For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, and the way of the ungodly will perish.”

Again, the Lord shows plainly that sins and offenses are in our own power, by prescribing cures that match the diseases. In Ezekiel he shows that he wants us corrected by the shepherds, and he blames some of them, I think, for not keeping the commands: “You have not strengthened what was weak,” and so on, down to “and there was no one to search them out or bring them back.”

For the Lord says, “There is great joy before the Father when one sinner is saved.” So Abraham deserved his high praise, because “he went as the Lord had told him.” It was from this instance that one of the wise men among the Greeks produced the maxim “Follow God.” “The godly,” says Isaiah, “have made wise plans.” Now counsel is the search for the right course in the circumstances at hand, and good counsel is wisdom in deliberating.

And consider: after the pardon given to Cain, does God not fittingly bring in Enoch not long after — Enoch, who had repented? It shows that pardon is what repentance naturally produces; and that pardon does not consist in letting the offense go, but in curing it. The people’s making of the calf in front of Aaron is a case of the same thing. That is where one of the wise men among the Greeks got his maxim, “Pardon is better than punishment.” And “Stand surety, and ruin is at your side” comes from the saying of Solomon: “My son, if you stand surety for your friend, you will put your hand into your enemy’s; for a man’s own lips are a strong trap to him, and he is caught by the words of his own mouth.”

And “Know yourself” has been taken, in a more hidden sense, from this: “You have seen your brother, you have seen your God.” So too: “You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and your neighbor as yourself” — for it is said, “On these commands the law and the prophets hang and depend.” These agree with them as well: “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be complete; and this is my command, that you love one another as I have loved you.” “For the Lord is merciful and full of pity, and the Lord is kind to all.” Moses puts “Know yourself” more clearly, and often, when he commands, “Watch yourself.” “By gifts of mercy, then, and by acts of faith, sins are cleansed.” “And by the fear of the Lord each man turns away from evil.” “And the fear of the Lord is discipline and wisdom.”

Here the fault-finders come forward again and say that joy and pain are passions of the soul. They define joy as a reasonable lift and elation of spirit, a gladness over something good; and pity as pain over a man who suffers what he does not deserve; and they call such feelings states and passions of the soul. But we, it seems, never stop reading the Scriptures on these matters in a fleshly way. We start from our own feelings and read the will of a God who cannot suffer as if it were our own agitation; and because that is all we are able to take in by hearing, we assume the Almighty is the same, and go wrong in a way that dishonors him. For what God is cannot be stated as it is. The prophets spoke to us in the way that we, chained in flesh, were able to listen — the Lord fitting himself to human weakness in order to save us. [y]

So then: God wills that the man who obeys the commands and repents of his sins should be saved, and we rejoice over our own salvation; and the Lord, speaking through the prophets, took our joy to himself as his own. In the same loving way he says in the Gospel: “I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. Whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me.” So, just as he is fed — though not in his own person — when someone he wants fed is fed, so he rejoices without undergoing any change, because the man who has repented is glad, as he wanted him to be.

And God pities richly, since he is good: giving commands through the law and the prophets, and closer still through the appearing of his Son, saving and pitying, as was said, those who have found mercy. Now properly it is the greater who pities the lesser. One man cannot be greater than a man, since he is a man by nature; but God is greater than man in every way. If, then, it is the greater who pities the lesser, God alone will pity us. A man is made to share with others by doing what is right, and he passes on what he received from God, out of the goodwill and kinship that are natural to him and out of the commands he obeys.

But God has no natural kinship with us, whatever the founders of the sects want — not on the supposition that he made us out of nothing, and not on the supposition that he formed us out of matter. For nothing did not exist at all, and matter is altogether other than God. Unless, that is, we are going to dare to say that we are a part of him and of the same being as God. And I do not know how anyone who knows God can bear to hear that, when he looks at the life we lead and sees the evils we are tangled in. For it would follow — and it is an outrage even to say it — that God sinned in some of his portions, if the portions are parts of the whole and complete the whole. And if they do not complete it, they cannot be parts of it either.

But God, rich in pity by nature, cares for us out of his own goodness, though we are neither portions of himself nor his children by nature. And this is the greatest proof of God’s goodness: that this is how we stand toward him, wholly estranged by nature, and still he cares for us. An animal’s affection for its young is natural, and the friendship of like minds comes of being close. But God’s mercy is rich toward us, who are related to him in no respect at all — not in our being, I mean, nor in our nature, nor in the activity that belongs to our being, but only in this, that we are the work of his will. And the man who willingly takes on discipline and teaching and receives the knowledge of the truth, God calls to be made his son, which is the greatest advance there is. “Lawless acts trap a man, and each man is tied fast with the cords of his own sins.” And God is not to blame. Truly, “blessed is the man who is always on his guard, out of reverence.”

Systematic knowledge is a settled state of the mind, from which the act of knowing follows, and it becomes a grasp of things that reason cannot shake loose. In the same way ignorance is an impression that gives way, and reason can drive it out. And what reason overthrows, as much as what reason works up, is in our own power. Close to systematic knowledge stand experience, cognition, understanding, thought, and knowledge. Cognition is the knowing of universals by their kind. Experience is the knowing that takes a thing in as a whole, and looks into the nature of each thing. Thought is the knowing of what only the mind can reach. Understanding is the knowing of things set side by side — a comparison that cannot be undone, or the power of comparing the objects that judgment and systematic knowledge are busy with: one and each and all that go to make up a single account. And knowledge is the knowing of the thing itself, or the knowing that agrees with what actually happens. Truth is the knowing of what is true, and a settled habit of truth is the knowing of the things that are true. Knowledge is put together by reason, and no other reason can overthrow it. [ac]

Whatever we do not do, we leave undone either because we cannot, or because we do not want to, or both. We do not fly, since we neither can nor want to. We are not swimming at present, say, since we can but do not choose to. And we are not what the Lord is, since we want to be but cannot: “no disciple is above his teacher, and it is enough for us to be like the teacher.” Not in our being — a thing that is a son by adoption cannot be equal in substance to what is Son by nature — but only in this: that we have been made immortal, that we are occupied with the contemplation of the things that are, and that we see the Father through what belongs to him.

So the will comes first in everything, since the powers of the mind are the will’s servants. “Will it,” as the saying goes, “and you will be able.” And in the one who truly knows, will, judgment, and effort are one and the same. For if the decisions are the same, so are the opinions and the judgments; and then his words and his life and his conduct all keep to the rule. “An upright heart searches out perception, and hears it.” “God taught me wisdom, and I have come to know the knowledge of holy things.”