A Life Sworn to Truth

A man whose reverence for God has been tested is the last person to lie or to swear an oath. For an oath is a statement that settles a matter, and it takes up God’s name to do it. How could a man who has once become trustworthy show himself untrustworthy, so that an oath would be wanted from him — as though his own life were not a sure and settled oath already? He lives, he goes about his business, and he shows that what he says can be relied on, by a life and a manner of speech that never wavers. And if the wrong lies in the judgment of the man who does and says the thing, and not in what the injured party suffers, then he will not lie and will not swear falsely and so wrong God, since he knows that God by his own nature cannot be harmed. Nor will he lie or break any rule for the sake of his neighbor either, whom he has learned to love even where there is no close friendship between them. So much the less, then, will he lie or perjure himself on his own account, since he can never be found willingly doing wrong to himself. [a]

He does not even swear. He would rather simply state the case — “yes” when he affirms it, “no” when he denies it. For to swear is to take an oath, and so is bringing anything out of your mind to back your word up in the shape of an oath. It is enough for him to add to his yes or his no the words “I am telling the truth,” for the sake of people who cannot see how certain his answer already is. For he ought, I think, to keep up a life that inspires confidence in outsiders, so that no one even asks him to swear — and toward himself and the people he lives among, a goodwill that is righteousness freely chosen.

The one who truly knows swears truly, but he is not a man given to swearing; he has recourse to an oath only rarely, as we have said. And his telling the truth on oath comes out of his agreement with the truth itself. So truth-telling under oath turns out to be the result of getting his duties right. What need, then, has a man of an oath, when he lives by the strictest truth? A man who does not swear at all is a long way from swearing falsely. And a man who breaks nothing that agreements have ratified will never need to swear, since both the breaking and the keeping of an agreement are ratified by what a man does — just as lying in a statement and perjury in an oath are alike contrary to duty. But the man who lives justly, failing in none of his duties, swears the truth by his actions, when the verdict of truth is examined. In his case testimony from the tongue is unnecessary.

So, always convinced that God is everywhere, unafraid to speak the truth, and knowing that lying is beneath him, he is content with what God knows of him and with what he knows himself, and with nothing else. He does not lie, and he does nothing contrary to his agreements. He does not swear even when an oath is demanded of him, and he never denies the truth in order to say something false — not if he has to die under torture for it.

The dignity that belongs to knowledge is raised higher still in the man who has taken the first place in teaching others, and who has been entrusted, in word and in deed, with the management of the greatest good on earth — the good by which he brings people into contact and fellowship with God. People who worship the things of earth pray to them as though they could hear, and ratify their agreements in front of them. In the same way, among human beings who are living images, the true majesty of the Word is received in the trustworthy teacher; and the kindness shown to such teachers is carried up to the Lord. It is after the Lord’s own image that a man who has himself been made truly human by instruction shapes his pupil and brings him into tune, making him new for salvation. The Greeks called iron “Ares” and wine “Dionysus,” because of a certain relation between the thing and the god. In the same way the man who truly knows, counting the good of his neighbors as his own salvation, may be called a living image of the Lord — not because his features are like the Lord’s, but as a token of the same power and a likeness in what he preaches. [g]

So whatever he has in his mind he carries on his tongue, to those who deserve to hear it, both speaking and living out of conviction and inclination. He thinks the truth and he speaks the truth — unless at some point, as a remedy, the way a doctor acts for the safety of a sick man, he misleads or says something untrue, as the Sophists put it.

Take an example. The noble apostle circumcised Timothy, though he declared aloud and wrote that circumcision done by hand is worth nothing. He did it so as not to drag the Hebrews, who listened to him unwillingly, all at once away from the law to the circumcision of the heart that comes by faith, and so force them to break with the synagogue. He “adapted himself to the Jews, and became a Jew, so that he might win them all.” Now the man who lets himself be adapted purely for his neighbors’ benefit, for the salvation of the very people he adapts himself to, and who takes no part in any pretense meant to escape the danger that hangs over the righteous from those who envy them — such a man is under no compulsion at all. For his neighbors’ good alone he will do things he would never have done as a matter of first choice, if he were not doing them on their account. Such a man gives himself for the church, for the disciples he has fathered in faith; as an example to those able to take in the supreme ordering of things worked out by the Instructor, who loves both people and God; as confirmation that his words are true; and as an exercise of love toward the Lord. Such a man is no slave to fear, true in what he says, steady under hard work, never willing to lie in a spoken word, and in that he keeps himself always clear of sin — since a lie, spoken as it is with some deceit in it, is not an idle word but does real harm.

On every side, then, it is the one who truly knows, and he alone, who bears witness to the truth in deed and in word. For he always acts rightly in everything — in word, in action, and in the thought itself. This, in short, is the Christian’s reverence for God. If he does these things according to duty and right reason, he does them reverently and justly. And if that is so, then the one who truly knows is the only man who is genuinely reverent, and just, and God-fearing.

The Christian is not godless. That was the point we had to prove to the philosophers. He will never in any way do anything bad or shameful — which is what injustice is. So he is not godless. He alone fears God, worshipping the true God in holiness and duty, the Ruler of all, and King, and Master, with true reverence.

Knowledge, broadly speaking, is the bringing of a human being to completion as a human being, and it is brought to its own completion by acquaintance with divine things — in character, in life, and in speech, all of them agreeing with itself and with the divine Word. By knowledge faith is completed, since it is by knowledge alone that a believer is brought to completion. Faith is an inward good; without going out to search for God it acknowledges that he is, and glorifies him as being. So we start from this faith, and are developed by it, and by the grace of God we are to gain knowledge about him as far as we can. [l]

Now we say that knowledge is not the same thing as the wisdom that comes from teaching. As far as a thing is knowledge, it is certainly wisdom as well; but as far as a thing is wisdom, it is not necessarily knowledge. For the word “wisdom” shows itself only in the knowledge of what is spoken aloud.

The foundation of knowledge is not doubting about God but believing. And Christ is both the foundation and the building raised on it; through him come both the beginning and the ends. The two extremes, the beginning and the end — I mean faith and love — are not things that get taught. But knowledge, handed on by God’s grace as a trust, is committed to those who show themselves worthy of it; and out of knowledge the dignity of love blazes out, from light to light. For it is said, “To the one who has, more will be given.” To faith, knowledge; to knowledge, love; and to love, the inheritance.

This happens whenever a man hangs on the Lord by faith, by knowledge, by love, and goes up with him to where the God who guards our faith and our love is. That is why, in the end, knowledge is committed only to those who are fit and picked out for it: a great deal of preparation and previous training is needed — to hear what is being said, to bring one’s life into order, and to advance intelligently past the righteousness the law requires. Knowledge leads us to the end that has no end and lacks nothing, teaching us in advance the life we shall live in time to come, according to God and in the company of gods, once we are set free from all the punishment and penalty we undergo on account of our sins, as a discipline that heals. After that redemption the reward and the honors are assigned to those who have been brought to completion — when they are done with purification and have left off all service, holy service though it is, and carried out among holy people. Then, pure in heart and near the Lord, what awaits them is restoration to everlasting contemplation. And they are called by the name of gods, since they are to sit on thrones beside the other gods who were set in their places first by the Savior.

Knowledge, then, is quick to purify, and suited to that welcome change for the better. It easily moves the soul across to what is akin to it, what is divine and holy, and by its own light carries a man up through the hidden stages of advance, until it sets the pure in heart down in the crowning place of rest, teaching him to gaze on God face to face, with knowledge and with understanding. For the completion of the soul that knows lies in just this: being with the Lord, directly under him, after rising above all purification and all service.

Faith, then, is a kind of summary knowledge of what is urgently needed, and knowledge is the strong and sure demonstration of what faith has received, built on faith by the Lord’s teaching, carrying the soul on to certainty, understanding, and grasp. In my view the first change that saves is the change from the ways of the nations to faith, as I said before, and the second is from faith to knowledge. And this second change ends in love, and from then on gives the one who loves to the one loved, the one who knows to the one known. Perhaps such a man has already reached the state of “being equal to the angels.” So, after the highest excellence attainable in the flesh, always changing as he should for the better, he presses his flight to the ancestral hall, up through the holy seven, to the Lord’s own dwelling — there to be a light, steady, lasting forever, wholly and in every part unchangeable.

The first way the Lord works, which we mentioned, is a display of what reverence for God is repaid with. Out of the very many testimonies there are, I will bring forward one, put briefly by the prophet David:

In my opinion the prophet has pointed briefly to the man who truly knows. And David has evidently shown in passing that the Savior is God, by calling him “the face of the God of Jacob” — the Savior who preached and taught about the Spirit. That is why the apostle also calls the Son “the stamped image of the Father’s glory”: the Son who taught the truth about God and made it plain that the Almighty is the one and only God and Father, “whom no one knows except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” That God is one is hinted at by the phrase “those who seek the face of the God of Jacob”; and this God, the only God, our Savior and God describes as the good Father. And “the generation of those who seek him” is the chosen race, given over to the search for knowledge. That is why the apostle says, “I shall be no use to you unless I speak to you either by revelation, or by knowledge, or by prophecy, or by teaching.”

Even people who do not have this knowledge do some things rightly, though not according to reason — courage, for example. Some men are high-spirited by nature, and have then fed that disposition without any reasoning at all, and so they rush at all sorts of things and behave like brave men, sometimes bringing off the very same results. Endurance comes easily to a manual laborer in the same way. But it is not from the same cause or with the same aim, not even if they were to hand over their whole body. “For they do not have love,” as the apostle says.

So every action of a man who has knowledge is right action, and what a man without knowledge does is wrong action, even if he is following a plan; since it is not out of reflection that he acts bravely, and he does not steer what he does, in the things that lead on from one virtue to another, toward any useful end.

The same holds for the other virtues, and the same correspondence is kept in the worship of God. So the man who truly knows is not such only in what concerns holiness: the commands about the rest of the conduct of life match the reverence for God that knowledge brings. For our purpose at present is to describe the life of the man who truly knows, not to lay out the system of teachings, which we shall explain later at the fitting time, keeping the order of topics.