Paul’s Way of Dealing with an Erring Brother

This action is yours, my brother, yours alone. It is clear that no one in the church has been your companion or partner in it, except that Barabbas whom you mention so often. What other spirit than that of the Jews would dare to tamper with the records of the church handed down from the apostles? It is they, my brother, you who were so dear to me before you were taken captive by the Jews, it is they who are hurrying you into this abyss of evil. It is their doing that those books of yours are put out, in which you brand your Christian brothers, not sparing even the martyrs, and heap up accusations, both speakable and unspeakable, against Christians of every rank, and disturb our peace, and cause a scandal to the church. It is they who make you pass sentence on yourself and your own writings, as on words you once spoke as a Christian. All of us have become worthless in your eyes, while they and their evil deeds are your whole delight. [a]

If only you had listened to Paul, where he says in his letter, “If a brother is overtaken in a fault, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness,” you would never have let your passions swell up until they broke clean through the order of our spiritual discipline. Suppose I had written something harmful to you. Suppose I had done some injustice to you, a man of the highest eloquence, my brother and my fellow presbyter, whom I had also declared worthy of imitation in your method of translating. Even so, this was the first complaint you had received of any injury from me since our friendship had been restored, and restored with difficulty and much trouble. Or suppose you had reason to be offended because, in my translation of Origen, I passed over some things that seemed to me unedifying in point of doctrine, though in this I only did what you had done. Possibly I deserved blame and correction for it. You say that some of the brothers sent you letters demanding that the translator’s faults be pointed out. What then did you do, you who are a man of spiritual attainments? What a model, what an example of conduct in such matters you have given!

You not only proclaim your brother’s shameful nakedness to those outside, but you yourself tear away the covering from it. Suppose even that what I did was not done as you had done it. Suppose that some fit of drunkenness crept over me unawares, and I had laid bare my own shame, as the patriarch did. Would you have brought a curse on yourself if you had walked backward and made your reply like a soft cloak to cover my disgrace, if the letter of the brother who was wide awake had veiled the brother who lay exposed through his own drowsiness in writing?