Heresy VII, Of the Epistles of Paul the Apostle in General

OF THE EPISTLES OF PAUL THE APOSTLE IN GENERAL — Heresy VII (De epistolis Pauli Apostoli in universali. Haeresis VII)

To repudiate the Epistles of Paul the Apostle.

ASSERTORES HVIVS HAERESEOS [The Assertors of this Heresy]

Under this nefarious heresy there are many errors of heretics. Some reject all the epistles of Paul; and their leader and standard-bearer, as Irenaeus and Eusebius write, ¹ was Ebion, poor in understanding (for so his name sounds to the Hebrews); who — since he taught that the whole old law, together with the new, was to be observed by Christians, and perceived that Paul most vehemently cried out against him in this — cast away his epistles altogether, and (as Epiphanius relates) called the Apostle himself, by way of contumely, now “the Tarsian,” now “the Greek,” now “the Apostate of the law”: ² accusing him that, whereas he was a Greek, and of a Greek father, he went up to Jerusalem; and when he had remained there for some time, he desired to take the daughter of a priest to wife, and for her sake was made a proselyte and likewise circumcised; and then, when he had not obtained the girl, stirred up with wrath, he wrote against circumcision and against the law. To this Ebion there succeeded in error the Helcheseite heretics, in the time of Philippus Augustus, the first Christian Emperor; ³ who, Eusebius being witness, repudiated all the epistles of Paul entirely. There were other heretics who did not dare to reject all the epistles of Paul, but only those which they had recognized as most hostile to their own dogmas: such as the Encratites, the Severians, the Marcionites, the Manichaeans, the Arians, the Aerians, the Anabaptists, and very many other heretics. Of whom the Encratites — whose prince was Tatian, once the hearer of Justin the martyr — rejected the epistles to Titus and to Timothy; ⁴ Arius, the epistle to the Hebrews;

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Marcion, moreover, of Pontus, by fatherland a Sinopean, cast away entirely four out of the fourteen epistles of Paul which the Church has: namely, the two to Timothy, one to Titus, and the other to the Hebrews. ⁵ Now of those who [receive] some epistles of Paul: some accept those which they receive as entire and incorrupt; but others contend that even those which they receive have been falsified and vitiated in many places — as Marcion, who held those ten epistles of Paul which he accepted to be adulterated in numerous places, mutilated, truncated, and interlarded with very many foreign additions (ascititiis additamentis). And he compacted out of them a certain volume, which he called the Apostolic book; at the end (in calce) of which he added also a certain epistle to the Laodiceans, inscribed with the name of Paul. But those who keep certain epistles uncorrupted and uncontaminated (although they believe them to be Paul the Apostle’s, and confess that they have come down to us entire), yet do not accept all the things that are written in them, but reprobate some altogether: as a certain anonymous disciple of Fabritius, against whom Augustine, under the name of “the adversary of the law and the prophets,” put forth two books. ⁶ This man, as the same Augustine relates, said that Paul, according to the qualities of men’s wits, spoke under five diverse persons: of which the first was that of the Jews; the second, of those who are under the law; the third, of those who are not under the law; the fourth, of the infirm; and the fifth, of the perfect; and that in the four first persons he said many things which ought not to be received by the perfect. The Aerians also, as Epiphanius notes, ⁷ distinguishing the sayings of Paul, asserted that he said and wrote certain things full of the Holy Spirit, and that these were to be received without any contradiction; but that some things the same Paul spoke as a bare man, destitute of the Holy Spirit, and these they judged were to be cast away. But since the aforesaid heretics render no causes why they cast away all the Pauline epistles, or why they accept some and spurn others, or why in these epistles these sayings rather than others have been falsified, or why these things were said by Paul according to man rather than according to the Spirit, nothing occurs for us to say against them, except what Jerome writes against these rash men in the preface of the commentaries on Titus: “If they rendered causes” (says he) “why they did not think these epistles to be the Apostle’s, and worthy of the Apostle, we should attempt to answer them somewhat, and perhaps satisfy the reader. But now, since they pronounce by heretical authority, and say, ‘that epistle is Paul’s, this is not,’ let them understand themselves to be refuted, for the truth’s sake, by that same authority by which they themselves do not blush to counterfeit falsehoods.” In like manner we too can speak against all the aforesaid heretics — especially since elsewhere in this work we have shown that there is nothing in the divine scriptures which the holy men of God did not write from the breathing (afflatu) of the Holy Spirit, and that there is nothing in them which can be marked with any suspicion of falsity.

OBIECTIONES HAERETICORVM [The Objections of the Heretics]

1. Faustus contends that the epistles of Paul have been falsified in all those places in which it is read that Christ was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, as is written in the beginning of the epistle to the Romans. ⁸ “For it is not credible,” says he, “that the Apostle of God could write things contrary to himself, and hold now this, now that opinion concerning Christ — so that, writing to the Romans, he should say that Christ was the son of David according to the flesh, ⁹ and afterward, writing to the Corinthians, should correct that opinion as false, or rather reject it, saying: ‘We know no man according to the flesh; and if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him no longer.’ ¹⁰ Wherefore, since there is so great a difference between these two passages (capitula) — that the one affirms Christ to be known according to the flesh, the other not known — it remains either that Paul erred in the first passage, and then in the second, making progress, changed his opinion; or that the epistle of Paul was corrupted by the falsity of those who inserted that first place, and others like it, into the epistles of Paul. But since it is not lawful [to hold] that the Apostle of God destroys what he once built up, it is better to say that the epistle of Paul was vitiated by the depravity of another than that it was made vicious by his own error.”

2. But that unnamed disciple of Fabritius added to this calumny of Faustus a much graver blasphemy, saying that there are many things in these epistles to be rejected, in which Paul, accommodating himself to the infirmity of his hearers, brought forth an opinion other than what he really thought. ¹¹ “For it is well known that the Apostle spoke in five persons, according to the qualities of men’s wits: for, insinuating the things of God to a people as yet rude, he ought not to have begun from the more perfect things, and — excluding from them their long-accustomed usage (consuetudinem vetustatis) — to commence from the more difficult, lest he should disturb those yet new to the faith with perfect doctrine. Which is proved out of the Apostle’s own words, when he says: ‘For whereas I was free as to all, I made myself the servant of all, that I might gain the more: and I became to the Jews as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; and to those who are under the law, as if I were under the law, that I might gain those who are under the law; and to those who were without the law, as if I were without the law (though I am not without the law of God), that I might gain those who are without the law. I became to the infirm, infirm, that I might gain the infirm. I became all things to all men, that I might gain all.’ ¹² To which four persons — namely, one of the Jews; another of those who are under the law; a third of those who are not under the law; a fourth of the infirm — he added also a fifth, the person of the perfect, saying: ‘We speak wisdom among the perfect’; ¹³ indicating by these words that he spoke many things in favor of those whose persons he had assumed, concerning which he thought far otherwise in his heart; and that he often feigned himself to be something other than he was.”

3. The Aerians next, and certain other unnamed heretics, whom Jerome recounts in the preface of the commentaries on Titus, ¹⁴ contemn many things in the epistles of Paul as said by Paul humanly (humanitus), and not divinely; and among the rest they cast away even the whole epistle of Paul to Philemon — because, even if it be Paul’s, yet it has nothing that can edify, since it was written only in the office of a familiar communication, and not for the sake of teaching. They say that the Apostle did not always speak all things with Christ speaking in him; because his human weakness could not have borne always the same tenor of the Spirit; but that there was at times a season in which Paul spoke and acted as a common man, and either spoke something of the necessities of his own poor body (corpusculi),

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or acted [as a common man] — as when he arranged a meal, when he took food, was hungry, was filled, digested what he had eaten and evacuated what was spent, and either asked from others the things necessary for his body, or commanded others [to provide them]. For at such times Paul, being as the rest of men, would not have dared to say: “Do you seek a proof of him who speaketh in me, Christ?” and, “I live, now not I: but Christ liveth in me.” ¹⁵ Nor did they think it any wonder (they added), if Paul at times lived and spoke as a common man, without the Spirit of God, since this is read to have happened in the prophets also: as the scripture says of Ezechiel and the other prophets — “The word of the Lord was made to Ezechiel” ¹⁶ — who, after the vaticination was completed, returning again into himself, became a common man out of a prophet; and, except in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit remained permanently in no one — which sign John the Baptist also had received, that upon whomsoever he should see the Holy Spirit descend, and remain upon him, he should know that this was he. ¹⁷ From which it is shown that the Holy Spirit indeed descends upon many, but that this is the proper ensign of the Savior — that he remains in him. Therefore in the epistles of Paul (they say) many things were written by him when, destitute of the Holy Spirit, he spoke as a pure man — as those passages indicate which are found scattered throughout them: namely, to the Galatians, “Would that they were even cut off who trouble you”; ¹⁸ and to Timothy, “The cloak which I left at Troas, with Cyprus [sic — the print reads apud Cyprum for the Vulgate’s apud Carpum, ‘with Carpus’], bring with thee when thou comest, and likewise the books and the parchments”; ¹⁹ and to Philemon, “Prepare me a lodging,” etc. ²⁰ — examples of this sort of human weakness: in which, since no proof of Christ speaking in Paul is recognized, it will be lawful (they say) at one’s own judgment either to receive them or to cast them away.

DILVTIO OBIECTORVM [The Dissolution of the Objections]

1. “Something, says Faustus, has been falsified in Paul: because both cannot be true — both what he writes in the epistle to the Romans, and what in the epistle to the Corinthians. ²¹ Let us then demonstrate that both can be true, and that these two are not contrary to one another. For that one of them is not Paul’s we can in no wise say, since in that place the authority of the codices nowhere varies. For although in certain Latin exemplars there is read not FACTVS [‘made’] but ‘born of the seed of David’ — since the Greek [books] have FACTVS, whence the Latin interpreter wished to translate not word for word but according to the sense, saying ‘born’ — nevertheless, that Christ is of the seed of David according to the flesh, the authority of all books and all tongues agrees. ²² But that Paul at some time erred in this, and afterward, making progress, changed his opinion — far be it from us to say. Neither passage, therefore, is dissonant from the other; but both agree soundly in the same rule of faith. ²³ For that the Son of God was made of the seed of David, the same Apostle says in more places than one, and the other holy scriptures most openly proclaim. And as to what he says — ‘and if we have known Christ according to the flesh, but now we know him no longer’ — the very circumstance of that place of scripture sufficiently shows what the Apostle is speaking of: for after his own manner [he speaks of] our future life, which is already completed in the man Christ himself, the mediator, our head, now risen again; so that with sure hope it is meditated upon, as though it were already present, and held as a thing at hand — which life assuredly will not be according to the flesh, even as the life of Christ is not according to the flesh. For by ‘flesh’ in this place he wishes to be understood not the very substance of our body — which the Lord even after his resurrection calls flesh, saying: ‘Handle and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see me to have’ ²⁴ — but the corruption and mortality of the flesh, which will not then be in us, as it is now no longer in Christ. We knew Christ, therefore, according to the flesh — that is, according to the mortality of the flesh — before he rose again; but now we no longer know him according to the quality of carnal corruption: because, as the same Apostle says, ‘Christ, rising from the dead, now dieth no more, and death shall have dominion over him no longer.’ ²⁵ We knew him according to the flesh while he was yet to die; for there was in his body a mortality, which the Apostle properly calls flesh. But now we know him [thus] no more: for that mortal part of him has now put on immortality; whence, according to its former mortality, it can no longer be called flesh. But if Faustus holds himself to the propriety of the words, then Paul lied when he said, ‘We knew Christ according to the flesh’ — if Christ, as Faustus says, never existed according to the flesh. For no one ever knew what was not. And he did not say, ‘we thought Christ according to the flesh,’ but, ‘we knew.’ Nevertheless, not to press upon a word — lest anyone should affirm that the Apostle spoke by abuse [of language], so that for ‘we thought’ he said ‘we knew’ — this I marvel that blind men do not attend to (or rather I marvel not that the blind do not see): that if Christ therefore had no flesh because the Apostle said that he now no longer knew Christ according to the flesh, then neither did those men have flesh of whom he says in the same place: ‘Therefore henceforth we know no man according to the flesh.’ ‘Henceforth,’ says he, ‘we know no man according to the flesh’ — that is, we hold so certain a hope of our future incorruption and immortality that henceforth, in the very contemplation of immortality, almost forgetting all the corruption of mortality, we rejoice. ‘Henceforth we know no man according to the flesh’ is understood not yet in fact (in re), but in hope: because our hope is in Christ, because in him is already completed what we hope for as promised to us.”

2. Next, the disciple of Fabritius rises up against Paul; who turns what the Apostle said out of the affection of one suffering-with (compatientis affectu) into a detestable deceit. ²⁶ “But how openly this impious fellow blasphemes, who does not see? For if the Apostle had feigned himself such as this madman barks — namely, without the law among the gentiles, who were without the law — he would not have proposed to them, with such great praises (præconiis), the faith of Abraham for imitation: [Abraham] whom they knew not, being a foreigner, the father of the Hebrew nation, far removed from their manners, far from their rites and kinships; rather he ought to have found some prince, whether of the Romans or of the Greeks, or some one of the Philosophers, whom he might set before them for imitation. Likewise, if to those who were under the law — the Jews — he had deceitfully become as one under the law, why did he say that they are not heirs by the law? and, ‘The law worketh wrath’? and, ‘The law is a ministration of death’? and, ²⁷

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‘The law was set in place because of transgressors’? — things which those who gloried in the law could not bear with an even mind. Never, therefore, did Paul put on diverse persons out of a zeal to deceive; but keeping always the same person of a teacher, as well among the gentiles as among the Jews, he preached the same God, the same law and prophets, and the same gospel, to Israelites, gentiles, the infirm, and the perfect. But someone will say: In vain, then, did the Apostle say, ‘I was made all things to all men’; and, ‘I could not speak to you spiritual things, but as it were to carnal men I gave you milk, and not meat.’ ²⁸ But far be it from us to think that the Apostle did these things so as to deceive some men by feigning to be others. He was made all things to all men, not by the cunning of a deceiver, but by the affection of one who suffers-with (compatientis affectu), coming to the aid of the diverse diseases of souls with diverse affections of mercy: giving, namely, to the little ones little things — not false things — milky things, not noxious; nourishing, not destructive; that is, the first rudiments of the faith; but to the perfect, grander mysteries: accommodating to each what was healthful according to his capacity.”

3. For the rest, the Aerians err greatly, together with the other heretics their followers, if they think that Paul did not have the Holy Spirit when he spoke of the necessities of human weakness, or that he was destitute of the Holy Spirit when he was fulfilling the needs of the body: thinking that to buy food, to prepare a lodging, to procure garments, is sin, and that the Holy Spirit is put to flight from us if we serve for a little while the necessities of our poor body. ²⁹ For the Holy Spirit is saddened and driven from us not by the ministries of this life, but by unclean works and by many vices; which when the Prophet had set out in order, he brought in at the end: “In all these things thou didst sadden me.” But to offer a cup of cold water, to wash feet, to sacrifice a calf, to prepare a meal — so far are these from being sins, that we read that by these things certain men were adopted as sons of God. Accordingly, it is by no means to be believed that Paul was at any time destitute of the Holy Spirit on account of things of this kind; but it is to be held most firmly that, from that day on which the Apostle of Christ was made Paul out of Saul — and, out of a vessel of contumely, a vessel of election and of grace, that he might carry the name of Christ among the nations — the spirit of Christ never failed in him for any space of time; by which spirit all the things that he wrote were marvelously dictated.