Letter 155, to Macedonius

See also: On the metaphysics of the blessed life in the philosophical thought of Augustine A.A. Tashchian Augustine the bishop, servant of Christ and his house, welcomes his dear son Macedonius in the Lord 1. Although I do not find in myself the wisdom that you ascribe to me, I still thank you (and owe you even more) for such sincere favor towards me. I am glad that such a great man liked my learned work 1 . But what is even more pleasing is that, as I have noticed, your spirit is filled with love for eternity and truth, and also for that divine and heavenly city, whose ruler is Christ, and in which alone one is destined to live forever and blissfully, if one lives here righteously and piously. I see your spirit approaching him and I appreciate his desire to penetrate him. From there comes true friendship, not measured by temporary gain, but valued by free love. One cannot truly be a friend to man without first being a friend to the truth. And there is no other way to be one than selflessly. 2. Philosophers have talked a lot about this, but they cannot find true piety - the true cult of the true God, from which all the rules of a righteous life should be derived. After all, they, as I think, wanted to create a blessed life for themselves, believing that it should be produced and not received, although only God is its giver. For only He makes man blessed, Who created him. It is He who bestows the great blessings of His creation on both the good and the evil, so that they may be human, have feelings, be filled with strength and abound in means. He will give Himself to the good, so that they may be blessed, for their goodness is also His gift. Those who in this difficult life, in mortal members, under the burden of corruptible flesh, desired to be the authors and, as it were, creators of their blessed life, as if seeking and maintaining it with their own virtues, were least of all able to experience God, who resists their pride, for they sought and were inspired in the wrong source of virtues. Therefore, they fell into the most absurd error: although they assure that the sage remains blessed even in the bull of Phalaris 2, they are forced to admit that sometimes a blessed life should be avoided. For they succumb to increased physical troubles and believe that in the most difficult hardships it is necessary to retreat from this life. And I don’t want to say here that an innocent person should not kill himself, because even a guilty person should not do this. I said a lot about this in the first 3 of those three books that you kindly and carefully read. But if you think soberly and judge without pride, what kind of blissful life are we talking about when the sage, holding on to it, is not happy about it, but is forced to reject it, laying hands on himself?! 3. As you know, Cicero in the last part of the fifth book of the Tusculan Discourses has a place worthy of attention in connection with this topic 4. When he spoke of bodily blindness and asserted that a sage can be blessed even when blind, he named many things that bring joy through hearing. And also, if he were deaf, then what brings joy would be transmitted by sight. But if such a person had lost both senses and become blind and deaf, then Cicero would not have dared to defend his opinion and call him blessed. But he also added severe bodily torment, which, even if it had not killed him, would have served as the reason for him to kill himself and, freed by his virtue, enter the harbor of insensibility 5 . This means that the sage gives in and submits to terrible misfortunes so much that he is forced to commit suicide because of them. And who would he pity to get rid of these evils, if he does not pity himself? The sage, of course, is always blessed and, of course, cannot, due to any disaster, lose the blessed life established in his power. But in blindness and deafness, as well as in wild bodily torments, he either loses the blessed life, or it turns out that if it is still there in these sorrows, then according to these thoughts of learned men, the blessed life is sometimes such that the sage cannot endure it. Or, what is absurd, it is such that the wise man should not endure it, but avoid, stop, abandon and deprive himself of it with the help of a sword, or poison, or other voluntary death. So he could not have remained in the haven of insensibility, as the Epicureans and others who shared similar stupidity believed; or he is blessed because he is freed from such a blissful life, as if from some kind of plague. O immeasurable self-praise of pride! If the blissful life consists of bodily pains, why should the sage not remain in it and enjoy it? If it is pitiful, then what, tell me, if not arrogance, keeps him from confessing, from praying to God, asking Him to be just and merciful, who can avert or tame the disasters of this life, or arm him with the firmness to endure them, or completely free him from them, and then bestow a truly blissful life, where no evil can be allowed and where the highest good can never be lost. 4. The reward of the pious is such that, in the hope of obtaining it, we lead our temporary and mortal life, not so much rejoicing as enduring. We endure its calamities with good will and with God's mercy, content with God's promise of eternal benefits to His faithfulness and our hopeful expectation. Paul exhorts us to this: “Be comforted by hope; be patient in tribulation.” 6 He shows how we must endure when he says, “Be comforted by hope.” To this hope I encourage our Lord through Jesus Christ. For God the Teacher Himself, with the hidden greatness of His divinity and the visible weakness of the flesh, not only taught with words of prophecy, but also strengthened it with the example of His suffering and resurrection. Thus, in one the apostle showed what we must endure, and in the other what we must hope for. Those [philosophers] would also have deserved His mercy if they had not tried in vain, being exalted and swollen with pride, to create for themselves that blessed life, which, as was truly promised only by God, would be granted to His admirers after this life. And therefore, another position of the same Cicero is more reasonable: “After all, this life is a kind of death, and, if you wish, I could be its mourner” 7. But how can one affirm her as blessed if it is right to mourn her? And is it not proved that she is pathetic because it is right to mourn her? So, I ask you, good man, learn for now to be blessed in hope, in order to be so in reality, when the reward of eternal happiness will be the payment for unchanging piety. 5. If my long letter is painful, then “you did it yourself” 8 by calling me a sage. I dared to say all this in order to show you wisdom not as it is for me, but as it should be. In this age it is the true cult of the true God, so that in the future it will be a reliable and wholesome fruit. Here it is unchangeable piety, and there it is eternal happiness. If I have anything from this one true wisdom, I received it from God, and did not take it from myself. And it will be perfected in me, as I believe and hope, by the One from Whom, as I humbly rejoice, it began to be. I have no doubt about what He has not yet given and am grateful for what He has already given. For if I am worthy of praise in anything, it is not by my innate intelligence or merit, but by His grace. After all, the most insightful and excellent minds fell into the greater delusions, the more arrogantly they hurried, as if on their own, instead of, begging and filled with trust, asking God to show them the way. What are the merits of any people if He, who came not with due retribution, but with free grace, found all sinners, being the only liberator free from sin. 6. Since true virtue pleases us, let us tell Him what we read in His Scripture: “I will love You, O Lord, my virtue” 9 . And if we want to be truly blessed (which we cannot help but desire), with a devoted heart we will adhere to what we learned in the same Scripture: “Blessed is the man for whom the name of the Lord is his hope and who does not look back at vanity and foolish lies” 10. By the power of what vanity, what madness, what lie can a mortal man, leading a hard life with changeable spirit and flesh, burdened with so many sins, subject to so many temptations, subject to so many disorders, doomed to a completely just punishment, rely on himself in order to become blessed, when even what he has in his advantage by the dignity of his nature, that is, mind and consciousness, he is not able to free from delusions, unless God, the light of minds, helps him? So, I ask you, throw away the vanity and crazy lies of false philosophers, for there will be no virtue in us unless He who supports us cooperates; nor bliss, if He Whom we enjoy does not cooperate, and the grace of immortality and innocence does not swallow up everything that is changeable and perishable in us, which in itself is weak and a kind of matter of disasters. 7. Since I know you as a statesman, look how it is clear from Scripture that the happiness of man and the state has one source. In Scripture, someone filled with the Holy Spirit, praying, says: “Deliver me from the hand of strange sons, whose lips are vain, and whose right hand is the right hand of unrighteousness. Their sons are like new growth in her youth. Their daughters are folded and decorated like a church. Their pantries are so full that they regurgitate the contents. Their sheep are fertile and multiply. Their oxen are fat. There is no break in the fences, no loss and noise on their streets. They called the people blessed who have all this. Blessed is the people whose Lord is their God." 11 8. Look: due to the increase in earthly happiness, only alien sons call the people blessed, who do not belong to the rebirth by which we will become sons of God. The suppliant asks to be delivered from their hand, so as not to be drawn into their opinions and ungodly sins. For, having spoken about their vanity, he also mentioned that “they called the people blessed who have all this,” which is the happiness sought by the lovers of this world. And he says “whose right hand is the right hand of unrighteousness,” because they put before what should have been put after, just as the right is preferred to the left. After all, even if you possess these blessings, you should not rely on a blissful life in them: they should be subordinate, and not main; followers, not leaders. And if we asked the one praying to be delivered and separated from alien sons, who called “blessed the people who have all this”: “Well, what do you think? What kind of people do you call blessed?”, would he really say: “Blessed is the people whose virtue is in their soul.” If he had said so, at least he would have separated this people from those who affirmed the blessed life in this visible bodily happiness, but he has not yet surpassed all vanity and deceitful madness, for, as Scripture teaches elsewhere: “Cursed is everyone who places his hope in man” 12 . This means that you cannot assume it in yourself, because it is the person himself. Therefore, in order to transcend the limits of all vanity and lying madness and place the blessed life where it truly is, he says: “Blessed is the people whose Lord is their God.” 9 . So, you see where you should ask for what all the learned and ignorant desire, although many, being mistaken and proud, do not know where to ask from and where to receive. In one divine psalm, both those and others are condemned at once: both those who rely on their virtue, and those who boast of the abundance of their riches, 13 that is, the philosophers of this age and those who hate such philosophy and call the people possessing earthly wealth blessed. Therefore, we must ask from the Lord our God, who created us, the gift of virtue in order to overcome the evil of this life, and a blessed life, which we could enjoy in its eternity after this life, so that both in virtue and in the reward for virtue, as the apostle says, the one who boasts can boast in the Lord 14. This is what we should wish for ourselves and the state of which we are citizens. For it is blessed from the same place as man, since it is nothing other than a unanimous multitude of people. 10. Therefore, if all your prudence with which you care about human things, if all your courage with which you are not afraid of injustice on anyone’s part; if all the abstinence by which you are kept from the decay that you suffer in everyday life; if all the righteousness with which you judge fairly and give to each his own; if all this is working and straining so that those for whom you wish it will be physically healthy; so that they, safe and protected from any encroachment, have sons like new shoots in her youth, daughters decorated like a church, full storerooms regurgitating their contents, fertile sheep, fat oxen, and so that they have no breach in the fences, no loss and no noise in their streets; then this will not be your true virtues, just as all that will not be bliss. Here, my restraint, which you favorably praised in your letter 15, should not prevent me from expressing the truth. If, I say, any kind of your leadership, provided by the virtues I mentioned, aims to arrange so that people do not experience any harm or torment in the flesh, and you do not consider as yours that through which they bring that peace that you are trying to preserve, i.e. (to put it bluntly) as they honor the true God, in whom is every fruit of a peaceful life, then all these efforts will not help you in the least in achieving a truly blissful life. 11. I seem to say this with less restraint and have somewhat forgotten my usual manner of retorting. But if restraint is nothing more than the fear of not being liked, then I am not holding back because of this fear. For if I am more constrained in admonishing what I consider it salutary to admonish myself about, I fear lest first and rightly I should displease God, and then the friendship with which you have honored me. May I be more restrained when I contradict you on behalf of others. When I object in your defense, the more free I am, the more friendly I am, for the more friendly I am, the more faithful I am. However, I wouldn’t tell you this if I didn’t want to be discreet. For if, as you yourself wrote, restraint “among good people is the most effective means of mastering difficulties,” 16 then let it help me in your defense before yourself, so that I can enjoy you in the One who opened me access and inspired confidence in you, especially since what I advise (as I can easily guess) is already in your soul, being supported and strengthened by many divine gifts. 12. If, realizing from whom you received the virtues, and to whom you thank, you attribute them to His cult even in this worldly post of yours; if you raise people under your authority and lead them to honor Him through the example of your religious life and through zealous care with the help of encouragement or intimidation; if in the fact that through your help they live more serenely, you do not strive for anything other than so that in this world they can earn the reward of the One with whom they will live blissfully; then those same virtues will be true, and through the assistance of Him whose generosity they are bestowed, they will grow and improve so much that they will undoubtedly lead you to a truly blessed life, which is nothing less than eternal. In it there will no longer be a need to distinguish good from bad, which will not exist; courageously endure the opposite, for there will only be what we love, and there will not be what we endure; by abstinence to curb the impulse, for we will not feel any impulses; with justice to provide support to those in need, for there will be no needy people. There will be one virtue, and it will be both a virtue and a reward for it, as the person who loves it says in Scripture: “It is good for me to cleave to God” 17 . There it will be complete and eternal wisdom, and it is truly a blessed life. And this, of course, is the achievement of the eternal and highest good, clinging to which in eternity is the limit of our good. Let this virtue also be called prudence, for it will prudently cling to the good that cannot be lost; and courage, for she will cling most firmly to the good, from which she cannot be torn away; and self-control, for it will cling to good in the most impeccable way, from which it cannot be perverted; and justice, for it will cleave in the highest degree of righteousness to the good to which it is deservedly subordinated. 13. However, in this life, virtue is nothing more than loving what should be loved. Choosing is a matter of prudence; not giving in to any difficulties is a matter of courage; temptations – abstinence; pride - justice. Why do we choose what we especially love, if not because we find nothing better? This best is God, and if we, loving something, prefer it to Him or compare it with Him, we do not know how to love ourselves. For the best thing for us is the extent to which we enter into Him, than Whom there is nothing better. We enter not by moving our feet, but by loving. And He will be present to us the more, the more pure love we are able to love the One to whom we strive (for He does not extend and is not contained in bodily space). Therefore, one can come to Him, who exists everywhere and everywhere entirely, not with feet, but with morals. After all, we usually judge our morals not by what everyone knows about them, but by what they love, so that good or bad morals are determined by good or bad love. Because of our crookedness, we are removed from the straight path of God, so we are corrected by loving the straight path, so that, having been corrected, we can cleave to the straight path. 14. This means that if we, loving Him, already know how to love ourselves, we will try, as much as we can, to make sure that those whom we love as ourselves reach Him. After all, Christ, i.e. The truth says that the whole law and the prophets are contained in these two commandments: to love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and to love your neighbors as yourself 18. It is clear that a person is considered a neighbor not by blood relationship, but by a commonality of mind in which all people participate. For if monetary relations make us partners, then how much more common is natural reason for us (according to the law of birth, and not of business)! Therefore, that comedian (since bright minds are not deprived of the brilliance of truth) makes one old man say to another: Don't you have enough to do, Khremet? You're getting into someone else's business! It's up to you Nothing human is alien to me 19. They say that even the theater, full of fools and ignoramuses, applauded this phrase. For the community of human souls naturally affects the state of mind of everyone so much that there is not a single person in it who does not feel close to someone else. 15. So, according to the love prescribed by the divine law, a person must love God, himself and his neighbor. However, not three commandments are given, and it is not said “In these three...”, but “in these two commandments are contained all the law and the prophets,” i.e. in loving God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and in loving your neighbor as yourself. It is clear that there is no other love in which everyone loves himself, except that which loves God. For it should be said that he who loves himself otherwise probably hates himself. After all, he becomes unjust and deprived of the light of justice when, turning away from the better and more excellent good and turning from it towards himself, he inevitably turns to the lower and meager. What happens to him is what is truly said: “He who loves untruth hates his own soul” 20 . For, therefore, only by loving God can one love oneself. Therefore, there was no need for man, having already received the commandment of love for God, to be still ordered to love himself, since, by loving God, he loves himself. This means that he must love his loved one as himself, so that, knowing that “all the law and the prophets are contained in these two commandments,” he can lead him to honor God, be it through the consolation of mercy, learned instruction, or education through punishment. 16. He who chooses with sober discernment is prudent; one who does not deviate from it because of suffering is courageous, because of pleasure he is temperate, and because of pride he is just. Endowed from above with these virtues, through the grace of God's Mediator with the Father and us - the man Jesus Christ 21, through whom we, after the enmity of unrighteousness, are reconciled with God in the Spirit of love; So, endowed from above with these virtues, we now lead a good life, and later, as a reward for it, we are given a blessed life, which cannot but be eternal. For here the same virtues are in perfection, and there they are in perfection; here they are in labor, and there in reward; here - in work, and there - in completion. Therefore, all the good and holy, supported by divine support in any calamity, are called blessed in the hope of that outcome, with the achievement of which they will be blessed. After all, if they always remained in the same misfortunes and terrible torments, then with a sound mind no one would doubt that they are pathetic with any virtues. 17. So, piety - the true cult of the true God - is useful for everything 22. It averts or alleviates the torments of this life and leads to that life and salvation where we will no longer suffer from evil and will enjoy the eternal highest good. Like myself, I urge you to pursue piety with ever greater perfection and to adhere to it with the greatest tenacity. If you were not already a communicant of it and did not consider that your temporary post should serve him, you would not have said, upon taking office, to the Donatist heretics, calling them to the unity and peace of Christ: “For your sake this is being done, for your sake both the priests work in unshakable faith, and the Emperor Augustus, and we, his judges”; and much more, set out in your edict in such a way as to make it clear that even in the earthly garb of a judge you think a lot about the heavenly state. That is why, if I wished to talk with you longer about true virtues and a truly blessed life, then I pray that you do not consider me a burden for your affairs, for I firmly hope that I am not like that, because you have such a great and praiseworthy soul that you, without abandoning your previous concerns, would be more willing and thorough about these. Translation from Latin and notes by A.A. Tashchiana 23. In ep. 154 Macedonius reports that he read the first three books ciu. Execution weapon used by the tyrant of Akragant Phalaris (VI century BC). Terence. Self-torturer, 1, 1, 75–77. Per. A.V. Artyushkova. Translated from: CSEL, 44, 430–47.