The Unskilled Should Not Seek Authority

No one presumes to teach an art until he has first learned it by careful study. How rash it is, then, for the unskilled to take on pastoral authority, since the government of souls is the art of arts! For who does not know that the wounds of men’s thoughts are more hidden than the wounds of the inner organs? And yet how often men who have no knowledge at all of spiritual teachings boldly declare themselves physicians of the heart, while those who do not know the effects of drugs are ashamed to pose as physicians of the body! But because, by God’s ordering, all the highest in rank in this present age incline to reverence religion, there are some who, through the outward show of rule within the holy church, seek the glory of distinction. They want to appear as teachers. They covet superiority over others. As the Truth testifies, they seek the first greetings in the marketplace, the first places at feasts, the first seats in assemblies. And they are all the less able to carry out worthily the office of pastoral care they have taken on, because they have come to this teaching office of humility out of pride alone. For in a teaching office language itself is confused when one thing is learned and another is taught. [a]

Against such men the Lord complains through the prophet, saying, “They have reigned, but not through me; they have been set up as princes, and I did not know it.” For those reign of themselves, and not by the will of the supreme Ruler, who, supported by no virtues and in no way called by God, but inflamed by their own desire, seize the highest rule rather than attain it. Yet the Judge within both advances them and does not know them; for those whom he puts up with by permitting them, he surely does not know, by the judgment that rejects them. That is why he says to some who come to him even after miracles, “Depart from me, you workers of iniquity; I do not know who you are.” The voice of the Truth rebukes the lack of skill in shepherds when it is said through the prophet, “The shepherds themselves have not known understanding.” Again the Lord denounces them, saying, “And those who handled the law did not know me.” So the Truth complains that he is not known by them, and declares that he does not know the rule of those who do not know him. For in truth those who do not know the things of the Lord are not known by the Lord, as Paul testifies when he says, “But if anyone does not know, he will not be known.”

Yet this lack of skill in the shepherds often fits, no doubt, what those under them deserve. For though it is their own fault that they do not have the light of knowledge, it is still by the working of strict judgment that those who follow them also stumble through their ignorance. That is why in the Gospel the Truth himself says, “If the blind lead the blind, both fall into the ditch.” That is why the psalmist, not expressing his own wish but in his ministry as a prophet, denounces such men when he says, “Let their eyes be blinded so that they do not see, and bow down their back always.” For those people are the eyes who, placed in the very face of the highest dignity, have taken on the task of looking out the road ahead; while those who are attached to them and follow them are called the back. And so, when the eyes are blinded, the back is bent; because when those who go in front lose the light of knowledge, those who follow are bowed down to carry the burden of their sins.