Annotation LX

”Let both grow together until the harvest.” — Matthew 13:30

Whether heretics unwilling to repent are to be put to death.

Chrysostom, homily 47 on Matthew, examining this passage, has certain words which Hermann Bodius, in his Collectanea, adduces under the heading “On heretics,” in order to maintain that heretics — however pertinacious they may have been in [their] heresy — are not to be punished with the penalty of death. And these are they: “Christ does not forbid that the conventicles of heretics be broken up, [their] mouths be stopped, [their] freedom of speaking be cut off; but he forbids [that they] be killed and slaughtered. And see how gentle he is: for he not only forbids [it], but expounds the reason why he forbids [it], saying that the tares must be spared as long as they are in the field together with the wheat, because they can be changed into the condition of wheat.” This indeed is the opinion of Chrysostom — in which, since Augustine had once been [of the same mind], he afterward testifies that he changed it, in Letter 48 to Vincentius, the champion of the Rogatian heresy, writing thus: “My opinion at first was that no one is to be compelled to the unity of Christ; that [the matter] must be conducted by word, [that one] must fight by disputation, must conquer by reason — lest we should have as counterfeit catholics those whom we had known [to be] open heretics. But this opinion of mine was overcome, not by the words of gainsayers, but by [the] examples of those pointing [it] out. For first there was set against me my own city, which, whereas it was wholly on the side of the Donatists, was converted to catholic unity by the fear of the imperial laws — [the city] which we now see so detest the ruin of that [sect] that it might be believed never to have been in it. So too many others, which were named to me one by one, so that by the very facts I recognized that in this matter too there could rightly be understood that which is written: ‘Give an occasion to a wise man, and he will be the wiser.’” Thus far Augustine — who, in the book against the epistle of Parmenian, explaining the mind of Christ saying “Let both grow together until the harvest,” says that these words are to be observed only in that case, when the tares cannot be uprooted without the uprooting of the wheat —

— that is, when the heretics cannot be killed and extinguished unless the catholics too are slaughtered along with them. But when this fear is not present, and their crime is notorious and execrable, and they do not have such defenders through whom a schism could arise: then severity is to be exercised against them. For if emperors punish thefts and murders, why should they not punish heresies and sacrileges? Nor does Chrysostom disagree from this opinion of Augustine, as his own words openly show, prefixed to the aforesaid words, in this manner: “The Lord forbids the tares to be plucked up, lest perchance together with the tares the wheat-plant also be plucked up; for it was fitting that he should forbid wars and the effusion of blood: for if the heretics were then slaughtered, [it] would bring an atrocious and irreconcilable war upon the world.”

Euthymius, in the exposition of this sentence, following Chrysostom’s explanation, writes thus: “‘Let both grow together until the harvest.’ By ‘harvest’ he means the consummation of the world. He commands, therefore, that men of both kinds — that is, heretics — be allowed to live, growing and increased in number in the world, up to the consummation. For it is likely that before that time many heretics will be converted; and yet on this account one ought not to be mingled with them. For this world is spacious; and they ought to live by themselves — not taken away, indeed, but separated, lest by teaching they corrupt what is sown [as] wheat.” This passage was added, for the defense of heretics, by the Lutherans in Bodius’s work already cited. But moreover, from the words which immediately precede this period, it appears that Euthymius thought the same as Chrysostom; for he says: “He forbade the heretics to be taken away, lest the orthodox too be equally taken away — for it would come to pass that wars and slaughters should arise.”