A Stranger in the City

Let that much stand, then. And since this is how the one who truly knows stands toward the body and the soul — and toward his neighbors, whether the neighbor is a household slave, or an enemy in a lawful war, or anyone at all — he is found even-handed and always the same. He does not overlook his brother, who by the divine law comes of the same father and the same mother. Certainly he relieves the man in distress, helping him with comfort, with encouragement, and with what he needs to live; giving to everyone who is in need, though not to everyone alike, but justly, according to what each deserves; and, beyond that, giving to the man who persecutes and hates him, if that man needs it. He pays little attention to those who tell him he gave out of fear, if it is not out of fear that he gives but in order to help. For if men have no love of money even where their enemies are concerned, and hate what is evil, how much more are they moved by love toward their own? From this he goes on to know exactly whom he ought to give to first, and how much, and when, and how. [a]

And who could reasonably become the enemy of a man who gives no cause for enmity in any way? Is it not just as it is with God? We say that God is nobody’s adversary and nobody’s enemy — for he is the Maker of all things, and nothing that exists is what he does not want it to be. But we do say that the disobedient, and those who do not walk by his commands, are enemies to him, since they are the ones set against his covenant. We shall find exactly the same with the one who truly knows. He can never in any way become an enemy to anyone, though those who turn onto the opposite road may be counted enemies to him. In particular, the settled habit of open-handed giving that prevails among us is called “righteousness.” But the power to judge, in the matter of more and less, what each proper recipient deserves — that is righteousness in its very highest form.

There are things some people practice in a coarse way — mastery over pleasures, for one. Among the nations there are men who hold off from the delights set in front of them because they cannot get what they see, or out of fear of other men, or for the sake of greater pleasures later. In the same way, within the faith, some practice self-restraint either with an eye on the promise or out of fear of God. Well, such self-restraint is the foundation of knowledge, an approach to something better, and a reach after being made complete. For “the fear of the Lord,” it says, “is the beginning of wisdom.” But the perfect man, out of love, “bears all things, endures all things,” “not to please men, but God.” And though praise follows him as a consequence, it is not for his own advantage but so that those who praise him may imitate him and be helped.

On another account, the self-controlled man is not the one who merely has his passions in hand, but the one who has gained the mastery over good things as well, and has securely acquired the great achievements of knowledge, out of which he bears the activities of virtue as fruit. So the one who truly knows is never dislodged, when an emergency comes, from the habit that belongs to him. For the disciplined possession of what is good is firm and unchangeable, being the knowledge of things divine and human. Knowledge never turns into ignorance, and good does not change into evil. That is why he eats and drinks and marries — not as the chief ends of life, but as things that are necessary. I say marriage too, if the Word prescribes it and as is fitting. For once he has been made complete he has the apostles as his examples. A man is not really shown to be a man by choosing the single life; the one who surpasses other men is the man trained by marriage, by the begetting of children, and by the care of a household, who in his concern for the household, without pleasure or pain, has stayed inseparable from God’s love and has stood up under every temptation that comes through children and wife and slaves and property. The man with no household is to a great extent untempted. So, caring only for himself, he is surpassed by a man who is his inferior as far as his own salvation goes, but is superior in the conduct of life, since in his care for the truth he certainly keeps a small image.

But we must put the soul through as much varied preliminary training as we can, so that it becomes able to receive knowledge. Do you not see how wax is softened and bronze cleaned so as to take the stamp pressed on it? Just as death is the separation of the soul from the body, so knowledge is a kind of reasoned death: it drives the spirit away, separates it from the passions, and leads it on into the life of doing good, so that the soul may then say to God with confidence, “I live as you wish.” For the man whose purpose is to please men cannot please God, since the crowd chooses not what is useful but what is pleasant. But by pleasing God a man gets the goodwill of good men as a consequence. So how could anything to do with food and drink and sexual pleasure be agreeable to a man like this? He looks with suspicion even at a word that produces pleasure, and at a pleasurable movement and act of the mind. “No one can serve two masters, God and mammon,” it says — meaning not simply money, but the resources money supplies for one pleasure after another. In reality it is not possible for a man who greatly and truly knows God to serve pleasures that pull the other way.

There is one alone who from the beginning was free of craving — the Lord who loves humankind, who became man for us. And all who try to be shaped to the stamp he gave strive, by training, to become free of craving too. For a man who has exercised craving and then held himself back is like a widow who becomes a virgin again by self-control. This is the return that knowledge makes to the Savior and Teacher, the very thing he asked for: keeping away from what is evil, being active in doing good — and by these salvation is gained. So, just as men who have learned a trade make their living by what they were taught, the one who truly knows is saved in the same way, making his living by what he knows. For a man who has not formed the wish to root out the passion of his soul kills himself. Ignorance, it seems, is the soul’s starvation, and knowledge its food.

Such are the souls of knowledge, which the Gospel compared to the consecrated virgins who wait for the Lord. They are virgins in that they keep away from what is evil; and in that they wait out of love for the Lord and light their lamps for the contemplation of things, they are the wise souls, saying: “Lord, for a long time we have wanted to receive you. We have lived by what you commanded, breaking none of your commands. So we claim the promises as well. And we pray for what is good for us, since it is not right to ask you for what is best. And we will take everything as good — even the exercises that meet us, which your arrangement brings on us to train our steadiness, though they look like evils.”

So the one who truly knows, out of the sheer greatness of his holiness, is better prepared to fail when he asks than to succeed when he does not ask. His whole life is prayer and conversation with God. And if he is clean of sins, he will by all means get what he wants. For God says to the righteous man: “Ask, and I will give you; think, and I will do it.” If a thing is good for him, he will receive it at once; if it is harmful, he will never ask for it, and so he will not receive it. So it will be as he wishes. But if someone says to us that even some sinners get what they ask for, we would answer that this happens rarely, and by reason of God’s righteous goodness. It is granted to men who are able to do others good. So the gift is not made for the sake of the man who asked for it; rather the divine plan, foreseeing that someone would be saved through him, makes the favor righteous after all. And to those who are worthy, things that are really good are given even without their asking.

So whenever a man is righteous not out of necessity or fear or hope, but by free choice, this is called the royal road, and it is the road the royal race travels. The side tracks are slippery and steep. Take away fear and honor, then, and I do not know whether the famous philosophers, who make such free use of plain speech, would put up with hardships any longer. Now cravings and other sins are called “briars and thorns.” So the one who truly knows works in the Lord’s vineyard — planting, pruning, watering — the divine farmer of what has been planted in faith. Men who have done no evil think it right to be paid the wages of a quiet life; but the man who has done good by free choice demands his pay as a good workman does. He will certainly receive double wages, both for what he did not do and for the good he did.

Such a man is tempted by no one except by God’s permission, and then for the good of those who are with him: he strengthens them for faith, encouraging them by his manly endurance. And it was certainly for this end — the establishing and strengthening of the churches — that the blessed apostles were brought to trial and to martyrdom. So when the one who truly knows hears a voice ringing in his ear that says, “Whomever I strike, you are to pity,” he begs that those who hate him may repent. The punishment of criminals, carried out to the end along the highways, is a sight for children; there is no possibility that a man who has trained himself by choice to be excellent and good will ever be taught anything by such spectacles or take pleasure in them. And since he has become incapable of being softened by pleasures, and never falls into sins, he is not corrected by the examples of other men’s sufferings. The man who has shown a noble contempt for the prospects held out in this world — divine though they are — is a long way from being pleased by earthly pleasures and shows.

So “not everyone who says Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of God, but the one who does the will of God.” Such is the workman of knowledge: he has the mastery of worldly desires while still in the flesh, and about things still to come and still unseen, which he knows, he has a firm conviction, so that he counts them more present than the things within reach. This able workman rejoices in what he knows, but is cramped because he is caught up in the necessities of life, not yet judged worthy of an active share in what he knows. So he uses this life as if it belonged to someone else — only so far, that is, as necessity requires.

He knows the riddles of the fasting of those days as well — I mean the Fourth day and the Preparation. The one takes its name from Hermes, the other from Aphrodite. He fasts in his life as regards greed and self-indulgence, out of which all the vices grow. For we have already shown, several times above, the three kinds of sexual immorality named by the apostle: love of pleasure, love of money, idolatry. So he fasts according to the Law, keeping away from bad deeds, and, according to the completeness of the good news, from bad thoughts as well. Trials are applied to him not to purify him but, as we have said, for the good of his neighbors, if he has made trial of toils and pains and has despised them and passed them by. The same holds for pleasure: it is the highest achievement to have had a taste of it and then to hold off afterward. For what is so great about a man restraining himself in what he has never known? In fulfilment of the command, and according to the good news, he keeps the Lord’s day when he throws off a bad disposition and takes on the disposition of one who knows, glorifying the Lord’s resurrection in himself. Furthermore, when he has taken in the understanding of disciplined contemplation, he counts that he sees the Lord, directing his eyes toward things unseen — even though he seems to be looking at what he does not want to look at; and he punishes the faculty of sight when he notices that he is being pleasurably affected by the use of his eyes, since he wants to see and hear only what concerns him.

When he is contemplating the souls of the brothers, he sees the beauty of the flesh as well, with the soul itself — a soul now in the habit of looking only at what is good, without pleasure of the flesh. And they really are brothers, since by their chosen creation, their oneness of character, and the nature of what they do, they do and think and speak the same holy and good works, in keeping with the mind the Lord wanted breathed into them as his chosen ones. For faith shows itself in their choosing the same things; knowledge, in their learning and thinking the same things; and hope, in their longing for the same things.

And if, because life makes it necessary, he spends a small part of his time on his own upkeep, he thinks he has been robbed, distracted by business. So not even in his dreams does he look at anything unfitting for a chosen man. For every such man is simply a stranger and a temporary resident through the whole of his life: he lives in the city and despises the things in it that other people admire, and lives in the city as though it were a desert, so that the place may not force his hand, but his manner of life may show him to be righteous. This man, to put it briefly, makes up for the absence of the apostles: by the uprightness of his life, by the exactness of his knowledge, by helping his relatives, by “removing the mountains” of his neighbors and clearing away the disorders of their souls — though each of us is his own vineyard and his own workman.

He too wants to escape men’s notice while he does the most excellent things, persuading the Lord along with himself that he is living by the commandments, and preferring these things because he believes they exist. “For where anyone’s mind is, there is his treasure too.” He makes himself poor so that he may never overlook a brother who has been brought into hardship, through the completeness that is in love — especially if he knows he will bear the lack more easily than his brother will. He reckons the other man’s pain his own grief; and if he suffers any hardship by contributing out of his own poverty in order to do good, he does not fret about it, but increases his kindness all the more. For he holds in its unmixed form the faith that is exercised in the ordinary affairs of life, and he praises the good news in practice and in contemplation. And in truth he wins his praise “not from men, but from God,” by doing what the Lord taught.

Drawn on by his own hope, he does not taste the good things that are in the world, holding everything here in noble contempt; pitying those who are punished after death, who make their confession unwillingly under punishment; keeping a clear conscience about his own departure; always ready, as “a stranger and a temporary resident,” where the inheritances here are concerned; mindful only of what is his own, and counting everything here as not his own; not only admiring the Lord’s commandments but, so to speak, sharing by knowledge itself in the divine will; a genuinely chosen intimate of the Lord and of his commands because he is righteous; princely and kingly because he knows; despising all the gold on the earth and under it, and rule from one shore of the ocean to the other, so that he may hold to the one service of the Lord. And so in eating and drinking and marrying (if the Word enjoins it), and even in the dreams he sees, he does and thinks what is holy. So he is always pure for prayer. He prays in the company of angels as one already of angelic rank, and he is never outside their holy keeping; and even when he prays alone, he has the choir of the holy ones standing with him.

He recognizes two things in faith: the activity of the one who believes, and the excellence of what is believed, measured by its worth — since righteousness is twofold as well, the righteousness that comes of love and the righteousness that comes of fear. That is why it is said, “The fear of the Lord is pure, and remains forever and ever.” For those who turn from fear to faith and righteousness remain forever. Fear works keeping away from what is evil; love urges a man on to doing good, building him up to the point where he acts of his own accord, so that he may hear from the Lord, “I no longer call you servants, but friends,” and may now apply himself to prayer with confidence. And the form of his prayer is thanksgiving — for the past, for the present, and for the future as already present through faith. Before it comes the receiving of knowledge. And he asks to live out the life allotted to him in the flesh as one who knows, as one free of the flesh, and to reach the best things and escape the worse. He asks too for relief in the things in which we have sinned, and for a turning to the acknowledgment of them.

At his departure he follows the one who calls him — as quickly, one might say, as the one who goes on ahead calls — hurrying, because of a good conscience, to give thanks; and having arrived there with Christ, he shows himself worthy, through his purity, to possess by a kind of blending the power of God that Christ hands on. For he does not want to be warm by sharing in heat, or bright by sharing in flame, but to be wholly light.

He knows exactly what the saying means: “Unless you hate father and mother, and your own life besides, and unless you bear the sign.” For he hates the disordered affections of the flesh, which hold the powerful spell of pleasure, and he holds in noble contempt everything belonging to the making and the feeding of the flesh. He also stands up against the bodily soul, putting a bit in the mouth of the restive irrational spirit: “for the flesh sets its craving against the Spirit.” And “to bear the sign” is to carry death about, saying goodbye to everything while still alive; for there is not an equal love in “having sown to the flesh” and in having formed the soul for knowledge. Having acquired the habit of doing good, he practices kindness well, quicker than he can speak of it; praying that he may get a share in his brothers’ sins, so that his kindred may confess and turn; and eager to give those dearest to him a share of his own good things. And so these become his friends. Then, promoting the growth of the seeds put in him, according to the farming the Lord commanded, he continues free of sin, becomes self-controlled, and lives in spirit with those like himself among the choirs of the holy ones, though he is still held on earth.

All day and all night, speaking and doing the Lord’s commands, he is full of joy — not only when he gets up in the morning and at midday, but also when he is walking about, when he is asleep, when he is dressing and undressing. And he teaches his son, if he has a son. He is never apart from the commandment and from hope, and is always giving thanks to God, like the living creatures Isaiah speaks of in figures; and, submissive in every trial, he says, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away.” For that is what Job was like: after the plundering of his goods, along with the health of his body, he gave everything up out of love for the Lord. For “he was,” it says, “righteous, holy, and kept away from all wickedness.” Now the word “holy” points to all the duties owed to God and to the whole course of a life. Knowing this, he was a man of knowledge. For we must not cling too closely to such things, even if they are good, since they are human; nor, on the other hand, must we detest them if they are bad. We must be above both, treading the bad underfoot and passing the good on to those who need it. But the one who truly knows is careful when he adapts himself to others, in case it slips past his notice and the adapting becomes a settled disposition.