Rooms in the Temple

People like these, according to David, “rest on God’s holy hill” — in the Church far up above, where the philosophers of God are gathered, “true Israelites, pure in heart, with no deceit in them.” They do not stay in the seventh place, the seat of rest. They are promoted, through the active doing of good that belongs to the likeness of God, into the inheritance of doing good, which is the eighth grade; and there they give themselves to the pure sight of a contemplation that never has enough. [a]

The Lord says this as well: “And there are other sheep of mine, which are not of this fold.” They are judged worthy of another fold and another dwelling, in proportion to their faith. But of his own he says, “My sheep hear my voice.” That is, they understand the commands as men who know. And this has to be taken in a large and worthy sense, together with the reward and with the works that come along with it. So when we hear, “Your faith has saved you,” we do not understand him to be saying, without any qualification, that people who have believed in whatever way at all will be saved, unless works follow too. He spoke that sentence to Jews only — men who had kept the law and lived blamelessly, and who lacked nothing but faith in the Lord. No one, then, can be a believer and licentious at the same time. Even when he leaves the flesh behind, he must strip off the passions if he is to be able to reach his own dwelling.

Now knowing is more than believing, in the same way that being honored with the highest honor after being saved is a greater thing than being saved. And so the believer, going through great discipline and putting the passions off him, passes over into the dwelling that is better than the one he had — that is, into the greatest torment; and he takes with him the mark of repentance for the sins he committed after his baptism. He is tormented still more, since he does not yet obtain, or does not quite obtain, what he sees that others have got. Besides that, he is ashamed of his offenses. The greatest torments, in fact, are assigned to the believer. For God’s righteousness is good, and his goodness is righteous. And although the punishments come to an end as the paying-off and cleansing of each person is completed, still those who are found worthy of the other fold have very great and lasting grief, because they are not among those who have been glorified through righteousness.

Solomon, for instance, calls the one who truly knows wise, and speaks this way of the people who marvel at the dignity of his dwelling: “For they will see the end of the wise man, and how far the Lord has established him.” And of his glory they will say: “This is the man we once held up to be laughed at, and made a byword of contempt — fools that we were! We thought his life was madness and his end dishonorable. How is he now counted among the sons of God, and his inheritance among the holy ones?”

It is not only the believer, then, but the man of the nations as well who is judged with perfect justice. For since God knew beforehand that he would not believe, he nevertheless gave him philosophy, so that he might arrive at the perfection proper to him — gave it to him, that is, before faith. And he gave the sun and the moon and the stars to be worshipped, “which God,” the Law says, “made for the nations,” so that they would not become atheists altogether and perish outright. But with this command too they lost their senses and gave themselves over to carved images, and they are judged unless they repent — some of them because, though they were able, they refused to believe God; others because, though they were willing, they did not take the trouble it takes to become believers. And there were others besides, who from the worship of the heavenly bodies never went back to the maker of them. For that worship was the rule handed to the nations, a way for them to climb up to God. But those who would not stay with the heavenly bodies assigned to them, and fell away from them to blocks of wood and stone, “were counted,” as it says, “like fine dust and like a drop out of a jar” — outside of saving, cast out of the body.

Just as being saved plainly and simply is the result of middling actions, while being saved rightly and fittingly is right action, so every action of the one who truly knows may be called right action; the action of the plain believer is middling action, not yet perfected by reason, not yet made right by knowledge; and the action of any man of the nations is sinful. For what the Scriptures set out as required is not simply doing well, but doing things with a certain aim, and acting according to reason.

Lyres ought not to be touched by people with no skill at the lyre, nor flutes by people unskilled at the flute; and in the same way, men who have no knowledge, and do not know how to use things through the whole of life, should not put their hand to affairs. The struggle for freedom, then, is not waged only by the athletes of the contests of war, but at dinner parties as well, and in bed, and before the judges, by men anointed with the word, who would be ashamed to become the prisoners of pleasures.

“I would never trade virtue for dishonest gain.” And plainly, dishonest gain means pleasure and pain, toil and fear — to put it all together, the passions of the soul, whose present is delightful and whose future is a misery. “For what is the profit,” it says, “if you gain the world and lose your soul?” It is clear, then, that people who do not do good actions do not know what is to their own advantage. And if that is so, they are not able to pray as they should either, so as to receive good things from God; and if they did receive them, they would not perceive the gift; and if they did enjoy them, they would not enjoy worthily what they do not know — both because they do not know how to use the good things given them, and because in their sheer stupidity they have no idea how to make use of God’s gifts.

Now stupidity is the cause of ignorance. And it seems to me the boast of a bragging soul — though of one with a good conscience — to cry out against whatever circumstances bring:

But a good conscience like that keeps holiness toward God and justice toward men, keeping the soul pure with grave thoughts and pure words and just deeds. Taking in the Lord’s power this way, the soul trains itself to be God, counting nothing bad but ignorance and action against right reason. It gives thanks always and for everything to God, by upright listening and by the reading of the divine writings, by true inquiry, by holy offering, by blessed prayer; praising, singing, blessing, glorifying — a soul like that is never at any time separated from God. So it is rightly said, “Those who trust him will understand truth, and the faithful in love will remain with him.” You see what statements Wisdom makes about those who truly know.

So then, in keeping with all this, there are various dwellings, according to the worth of those who have believed. Solomon says as much, to the point: “For there will be given to him the choice grace of faith, and a more pleasant lot in the temple of the Lord.” The comparative shows that there are lower parts of the temple of God, which is the whole Church; and a superlative remains to be conceived of, where the Lord is. These chosen dwellings are three, and they are indicated by the numbers in the Gospel — the thirty, the sixty, the hundred. And the perfect inheritance belongs to those who arrive at “a perfect man,” after the image of the Lord. And the likeness is not, as some imagine, a likeness of human shape; that idea is irreverent. Nor is likeness to the first Cause a likeness in virtue. That statement is irreverent as well, coming from men who have supposed that virtue in a man and virtue in God who rules over all are one and the same thing. He says: “You supposed lawlessness — that I would be like you.” But the Teacher says: “It is enough for the disciple to become like his teacher.” So the man who is brought into adoption and into friendship with God is brought to the likeness of God, to the just inheritance of the lords and gods — if he is perfected, as the Gospel has it, in the way the Lord himself taught.