History of My Calamities & Works 3 part 1/9

I was gazing in a vision of the night, and behold: three men, coming by different paths, stood before me. At once, after the manner of a vision, I asked them of what profession they were, or why they had come to me. "We are men," they said, "who rest upon different sects of faith. For we all alike profess to be worshippers of the one God, yet we serve Him with differing faith and life. One of us, indeed, is a Gentile, of those whom they call philosophers, and is content with the natural law.

The other two, however, possess the Scriptures: of these, the one is called a Jew, the other a Christian. And after long conferring and disputing among ourselves concerning the differing sects of our faith, we have at length yielded to your judgment." Greatly marveling at this, I asked who had led them into this, or gathered them together, and above all, why they had chosen me as judge in these matters. The Philosopher answered: "This," he said, "is my undertaking; for it is the philosophers' own task to investigate the truth by reasons, and in all things to follow not the opinion of men but the guidance of reason.

Therefore, having applied my heart attentively to the schools of our masters, and being instructed as much by their reasonings as by their authorities, I at last betook myself to moral philosophy, which is the goal of all the disciplines, and for whose sake I judged that all else was to be tasted beforehand. Here, being instructed, so far as I could, concerning the highest good and the highest evil, and concerning those things which make a man either blessed or wretched, I forthwith diligently scrutinized the various sects of faith by which the world is now divided; and having examined them all and compared them one with another, I resolved to follow that which is more in accord with reason. I betook myself therefore also to the teaching of the Jews and of the Christians, examining the faith and the laws or the reasons of both.

I found the Jews foolish and the Christians mad—so let me speak this, with all due peace to you who are called a Christian. I conferred long with both; and our conference not yet having reached an end of its altercation, we resolved to commit the reasons of our several parties to your arbitration. For we know that neither the force of philosophical reasonings nor the bulwarks of either law lie hidden from you. Indeed, the Christian profession so rests upon its own law, which they call the New Testament, that nevertheless it does not presume to reject the Old, but bestows the greatest study upon the reading of both.

It behooved us to choose some judge, that our altercation might reach an end, and we could find no one save within some one of these three sects." And then, as if vending the oil of flattery and soothing my head with this ointment, he at once added: "By however great a keenness of intellect and a knowledge of any Scriptures whatever you are reputed to excel, by so much the more is it established that you prevail in favoring or defending this judgment, and that you can give satisfaction to the rebellion of any one of us.

Indeed, of what keenness your intellect is, and how greatly the treasury of your memory abounds with philosophical and divine maxims—beyond the customary studies of your schools, in which, in both fields of learning, you are established to have flourished above all masters, even your own, or above the very writers of the sciences that have been discovered—a certain proof has shown itself to us: that marvelous work of theology, which neither could envy bear nor avail to take away, but which, by persecuting it, it rendered the more glorious." Then I:

"I do not court," I said, "the favor of this honor which you have reserved for me—namely, that, the wise being passed over, you should appoint a fool as judge. For I too, like you, being accustomed to the empty contentions of this world, shall not find it grievous to hear those things in which I have been wont to take delight. You, however, philosopher, who, professing no law, yield to reason alone, should not reckon it any great matter if in this contest you seem to prevail. For you have two swords for the fight, whereas the others are armed against you with but one. You can act against them as much by Scripture as by reason;

they, however, since you follow no law, can object nothing to you from the law; and they can prevail the less against you by reasons, by as much as you, being more practiced in reasonings, possess the richer philosophical armament. Yet since you have established this by compact and by equal consent, and since I see that each of you trusts in his own powers, by no means shall our bashfulness inflict a repulse upon your boldness—especially since I believe I shall gain some instruction from these things. For, as one of our own has recorded, no teaching is so false that it does not mingle in some truth, and I judge no disputation to be so frivolous that it does not contain some lesson.

Whence even that greatest of the wise, at the very outset of his Proverbs, preparing for himself an attentive reader, says: A wise man hearing shall be wiser, and a man of understanding shall possess governance. And the apostle James says: Let every man be swift to hear, but slow to speak. They assent, rejoicing at our assent. The Philosopher: "It is mine," he said, "first to question the rest, I who am content with the natural law, which is the first. For this very purpose I have gathered you, that I might inquire concerning the writings superadded. The first, I say, not only in time but also in nature; for everything simpler is naturally prior to that which is more manifold.

Now the natural law—that is, the knowledge of morals, which we call ethics—consists in moral teachings alone. But the doctrine of your laws has added to these certain precepts of outward signs, which seem to us altogether superfluous, concerning which also we must confer in its proper place." Both grant to the philosopher the first place in the encounter of this contest. Then he said: "One thing I first ask of you both together, which I see pertains equally to you who rely most upon Scripture: namely, whether some reason led you into these sects of faith, or whether you here follow only the opinion of men and the love of your own kind. Of these, if it be the former, it is most to be approved, just as the latter is utterly to be disapproved.

Yet that the latter is true, I believe no man of discernment would, in conscience, deny. For so deeply is implanted in individual men a love of their own kind and of those among whom they are reared, that they shudder at whatever is said against their faith; and turning custom into nature, whatever they have learned as boys they hold fast obstinately as grown men, and they affirm that they believe before they are even able to grasp the things that are said. For, as the poet too has recorded: The jar, once it has been steeped while new, will long preserve the odor. Such men a certain one of the philosophers indeed reproaches, saying:

"Let them not, if they have received anything in childish disciplines, judge it sacrosanct, since indeed the more mature treatise of philosophy often eliminates the things fitted to tender ears." For what is wondrous is this: though through the succession of ages and of times human understanding grows in all other things, yet in faith—whose error involves the highest peril—there is no advance. But the lesser are said to think upon this matter equally with the greater, the rustic equally with the lettered; and he is called most firm in faith who does not exceed the common sense of the people. Which assuredly is certain to happen for this reason: that no one is permitted, among his own, to inquire what ought to be believed, nor to doubt with impunity concerning those things which are said by all.

For men are ashamed to be questioned about those things concerning which they cannot answer. Indeed, no one willingly approaches a conflict who distrusts his own powers, and he runs eagerly to the fight who hopes for the glory of victory. These men also often break out into such madness that they are not ashamed to profess that they believe what they confess they cannot understand—as though faith consisted rather in the utterance of words than in the comprehension of the mind, and were of the mouth rather than of the heart. And in this above all they glory, when they seem to believe such great things as can neither be discussed by mouth nor conceived by mind.

And the singularity of his own sect makes them so presumptuous and puffed up that whomsoever they have seen divided from themselves in faith, they judge to be estranged from the mercy of God, and, with all others condemned, proclaim themselves alone blessed. Long, therefore, considering this blindness and pride of the human race, I betook myself to the divine mercy, humbly and continually imploring it, that it might deign to lead me out of so great an abyss of errors and so wretched a Charybdis, and to direct me out of such tempests to the gate of salvation. Concerning which even now you see me anxious, and intently bent, like a disciple, upon the instructions of your answers. The Jew:

You questioned two of us together, but it is not fitting for two to answer at once, lest the multitude of speakers hinder understanding. I will answer first, if it please you, because we came first into the worship of God, or first received the discipline of the law. But this brother, who professes himself a Christian, where he shall observe me failing or proving insufficient, will supply to my imperfection what may be lacking—he who, bearing as it were two horns in the two Testaments, will, being thus armed, be able the more mightily to resist the foe and to do battle. The Philosopher: I agree. The Jew:

But this one thing, before the contest of our conference, I wish to forewarn you of: that if perchance you should seem to overcome my simplicity by the truth of philosophical reasons, you should not therefore glory that you have conquered us, nor turn the feebleness of one little man into the disgrace of a whole people, nor refute the faith from the fault of a man, nor slander it as erroneous because I am less able to expound it. The Philosopher: This too seems to have been said prudently enough, but it was premised by no necessity—since indeed you do not doubt that I labor for the inquiry of truth, not for the ostentation of pride, nor to wrangle as a sophist, but to scrutinize reasons as a philosopher, and—what is greatest—to hunt for the salvation of my soul. The Jew:

May the Lord Himself, who is seen to have inspired this zeal in you, that you should seek Him with so great a solicitude for the salvation of your soul, grant us this conference, through which you may be able to find Him unto salvation. Now it remains for me to answer the questions, as far as He Himself shall grant. The Philosopher: So indeed it is fitting, according to the agreement of our purpose. The Jew: It is established that all men, while they are little ones and do not yet possess the age of discernment, follow the faith or the custom of those men with whom they consort, and most of all of those whom they love the more. But after they are grown, so that they can be ruled by their own judgment, they ought to be committed not to another's but to their own judgment, and it is fitting not so much to follow opinion as to scrutinize truth.

These things I have premised for this reason: that perhaps it was first the affection of fleshly origin and the custom which we first knew that led us into this faith. But now reason rather than opinion detains us here. The Philosopher: Open to us, I beseech you, this reason, and it suffices. The Jew: This law which we follow, if, as we believe, it was given to us by God, we are not to be reproved for obeying it—nay, we are rather to be rewarded for our obedience; and those who despise it err greatly. But if we cannot compel you to grant that it was given by God, neither are you able to refute this. And that we may take an example from the custom of human life, give me, I beseech you, your counsel!

I am the servant of a certain master, and I fear greatly to offend him, and I have many fellow-servants troubled by the same fear. They tell me that our master, in my absence, has commanded something to all his servants which I do not know, which they too perform and exhort me to cooperate in. What do you commend that I should do, if I should doubt concerning that precept at which I was not present? I do not believe that you or any other would counsel me, with the counsel of all my fellow-servants spurned, to follow my own sense and to set myself alone apart from that which they in common do, and which they all testify the master has commanded—especially since the precept seems such as can be refuted by no reason.

What need is there for me to doubt concerning a danger from which I can remain secure? If the Lord has commanded this—which is confirmed by the testimony of many and has the most of reason—I am altogether inexcusable if I do not obey. But if, deceived by the counsel or exhortation and example of my fellow-servants, I do what may not have been commanded, then even if it ought not to have been done, it is to be imputed to them rather than to me, whom the reverence of the master drew to this. The Philosopher: Certainly you yourself have opened the very counsel which you sought, and no man of discernment would judge against this; but fit the example of the proposed likeness to that toward which we tend! The Jew:

Many generations, as you yourself know, have gone before, from the time when our people, by obeying, have kept this Testament, which they declare was given to them by God; and all alike have instructed their posterity, as much by word as by example, concerning the observance of it; and well-nigh the whole world consents in this, that this law was given to us by God. Concerning which, even if we cannot perhaps compel some unbelievers, yet there is no one who can by any reason refute this which we believe. For it is pious to feel, and altogether consonant with reason, and as befitting the divine goodness as the salvation of man, that God should take such great care of men that He would deign also to instruct them by the writing of a law, and at least by the fear of penalties to restrain our malice.

For if the laws of secular princes have been salutarily instituted for this end, who would gainsay that the highest and most benign Prince of all has taken care of this matter also? For how can anyone govern a subject people without a law, if indeed each one, left to his own judgment, should follow what he chose? Or how shall He justly check their malice by punishing the wicked, unless first a law be established which forbids evils to be done? By this reasoning I believe it to be clear that the divine law preceded among men, so that the world might take the beginning and authority of this good also from God, when by the institution of certain laws He willed to bridle malice.

Otherwise it might easily seem that God does not care for human affairs, and that the very state of the world is driven rather by chance than ruled by providence. But if any law is believed to have been given to the world by God, concerning which is it more to be thought than concerning ours, which has obtained so great an authority from antiquity and from the common opinion of men? Let it finally be doubtful to me as to you, that God instituted this law—which nevertheless is confirmed by so many testimonies and by reason—yet you are compelled, according to the induction of the supposed likeness, to counsel me to obey it, especially since my own conscience invites me to this.

I hold in common with you a faith in the truth of the one God; perhaps I love Him equally with you, and from works which you do not have I moreover render Him this. How do these works hinder me, if they do not profit, even if they are not commanded, since they are not forbidden? Who, moreover, could reproach me, if, bound by no precept, I labor the more for the Lord? Who would reproach this faith, which, as has been said, most of all commends the divine goodness and kindles our charity toward Him in the highest degree—Him who is so solicitous for our salvation that He deigns even to instruct us by the writing of a law? Either therefore reprove something in this law, or cease to inquire why we follow it!

Whoever judges that the perseverance of this our zeal, enduring such great things, is empty of reward, makes God out to be most cruel. For no nation is known, or even believed, ever to have endured such great things for God as we continually endure for Him; and there can be no rust of sin which the furnace of this affliction ought not to be granted to consume. Are we not, scattered among all nations, alone, without an earthly king or prince, burdened with such great exactions that on well-nigh every single day of our wretched life we must pay an intolerable ransom? For we are reckoned worthy of such great contempt and hatred by all, that whoever inflicts upon us any injury believes it the greatest justice and the highest sacrifice offered to God.

For they declare that the calamity of so great a captivity has befallen us only out of the highest hatred of God, and they impute to just vengeance whatever savagery they exercise against us, both Gentiles and Christians. The Gentiles, indeed, mindful of the ancient oppressions by which we first possessed their land and afterward, by long persecutions, ground them down and destroyed them, impute to deserved vengeance whatever they heap upon us. But the Christians, because, as they say, we killed their God, seem to have a greater cause of persecution against us. Behold among what manner of men our pilgrimage is exiled, and on whose protection we must rely! We commit our life to our deadliest enemies, and we are compelled to entrust ourselves to the good faith of the faithless.

Sleep itself, which most fosters and refreshes our relaxed nature, disquiets us with such great solicitude that even while sleeping we are permitted to think of nothing but the peril of our own throat. Nowhere, save to heaven, does a safe entrance lie open to us, for whom the very place of our dwelling is perilous. About to go forth to any neighboring places, we hire at no small price an escort—the very one in whom we have little confidence. The princes themselves, who preside over us and whose protection we buy dearly, desire our death the more, by as much as the more licentiously they plunder what we possess. And, bound and oppressed by these, as though the world had conspired against us alone, this itself is a marvel—that it is permitted us to live;

nor is it granted to us to have fields or vineyards or any earthly possessions, because there is no one who can protect them for us from open or hidden molestation. Whence there remains to us chiefly this gain: that, lending at interest to foreigners, we may thereby sustain our wretched life—which indeed makes us most odious to those very men, who reckon themselves greatly burdened in this. But concerning this supreme misery of our life, and the perils by which we ceaselessly toil, our very state suffices to speak to all more than the tongue could. The very precepts of the law, too—with how great difficulty they are entangled—lies hidden from no one who has touched them, so that we are intolerably afflicted both by the oppression of men and by the yoke of the law.

Who would not shrink or tremble to receive the very sacrament of our circumcision, both from the shame and from the pain of it? What portion of the human body is so tender as that on which the law inflicts this wound, even in the very infants? What is so great a bitterness of the wild lettuces which we take in the seasoning of the paschal sacrifice? Who would not see that almost all delicate foods, and most of all those which can be easily procured, are forbidden to us? Any flesh foretasted by beasts is unclean to us, and any carrion or strangled thing is interdicted to us.

Nor is it permitted us to eat of beasts, save those which we ourselves have slaughtered and carefully purged of fat and veins—which also burdens us not a little, and most of all when we are not able to buy a whole beast. For just as we abhor the flesh slaughtered by the Gentiles, so do they abhor that procured by us. From wine too, procured by others, we all alike abstain. From which it is clearly established how hard it is that our pilgrimage should live among you for the sake of God. Who, finally, would not shrink not only to endure the austerity of the legal penalties, but even to inflict it upon the guilty?

Who could bear to take from his brother a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye, a soul also for a soul—still less to consent to endure these things upon himself, lest indeed he stand contrary to the law? From these, and from countless other observances, it is plain that each one of us, obeying the law, rightly professes to God that word of the Psalmist: Because of the words of Thy lips I have kept hard ways. The Philosopher: Truly this zeal, which you seem to have toward God, endures many and great things, with whatever intention. But it makes the greatest difference whether this intention be right or erroneous. For there is no sect of faith which does not believe that it serves God, and does not work for His sake those things which it judges to please Him.

Yet you do not therefore approve the sects of all, you who strive to defend yours alone, or to prefer it far above the rest. But how much this is dissonant from reason, I wish you to weigh, and to be reproved from the very writing of the law which you follow. The Jew: This too I gladly undertake. The Philosopher: It is established that, before the very giving of the law or the observances of the legal sacraments, very many, content with the natural law—which, namely, consists in the love of God and of neighbor—cultivated justice and proved most acceptable to God: such as Abel, Enoch, Noah, and his sons, Abraham too, and Lot, and Melchizedek, whom even your law commemorates and greatly commends.

Of these, Enoch indeed is reported to have so pleased God that the Lord is said to have taken him up alive into paradise, as also a certain one of you affirms with these words: Enoch pleased God and was translated into paradise, that he might give to the nations repentance. But Noah too—as it is written, a just and perfect man in his generations—how greatly the Lord loved him, He showed by manifest deeds, when, namely, with all others submerged by the flood, He reserved him alone and his household as a seed for the human race.

To these add also those illustrious patriarchs of yours, namely Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in whom and in whose seed the blessing of all nations is promised to be future, who also preceded the law; and see how much more excellent is their prerogative than that of the others who existed after the law. Whence God is also specially said to be theirs, and the lawgiver Moses himself, through their merits and the promises made to them, reconciles the Lord, angry, to the people. For it is written: But Moses prayed to the Lord, saying: Let Thy anger be quieted, and be appeasable concerning the wickedness of Thy people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel Thy servants, to whom Thou didst swear by Thine own self, saying:

I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land of which I have spoken I will give to your seed, and you shall possess it forever. And the Lord was appeased, that He should not do the evil which He had spoken. From which it is clearly gathered how acceptable to God were those freely-given services of the earlier fathers, to which as yet no law constrained them—in which we still serve Him with that liberty. But if you should say that in Abraham the law in some manner began, namely on account of the sacrament of circumcision, you will assuredly find that he obtained from this no reward with God—lest there be for you any glorying from the law—nor that he attained anything of justification, nor that he was even on this account commended by the Lord.

For it is written that he, while not yet circumcised, was justified through faith, like the earlier fathers, when it is said: Abraham believed God, and it was reputed to him unto justice. Whose religion, moreover, had beforehand received the promise of the land and of the future multiplication, both for himself and for his seed. And afterward, being circumcised, when he heard from the Lord that in himself or in his seed all nations were to be blessed, he merited this not from circumcision, but from that obedience by which he was willing to immolate his son.

Finally, if you should turn over the whole history of your Testament, you will find no reward of circumcision promised, but only this established by the Lord: that whoever of the seed of Abraham shall not have been circumcised should not be numbered among his people—that is, among the sons of Abraham. For thus it is written, the Lord saying to Abraham: I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your seed after you, etc. This is the covenant which you shall observe: Every male among you shall be circumcised; the infant of eight days shall be circumcised among you. The male whose foreskin's flesh shall not have been circumcised—that soul shall perish from his people, etc.

And if you should say that this 'perishing' is to be understood also of the damnation of the soul, then the institution of circumcision has so much the less reason, by as much as it is the more perilous not to have it—without which, before, it did no harm to be. Which sentence also pre-builds the kingdom of heaven for infants dying before the eighth day, who nevertheless have committed as yet no harm whereby they might have deserved to be damned. Consider too, diligently, what reward of the observance of the whole law the Lord promises and prefixes. Nothing at all can you expect thence from Him save earthly prosperity, since you see nothing else there promised.

Since he does not even show whether you at least obtain this much—you who by your own judgment also are afflicted above all mortals—it is no small wonder by what hope you endure so many and such great hardships in this obedience to the Law, seeing that you have been cheated above all of that very advantage which ought especially to be awaited by you from the very obligation of the promise itself. Either, then, you do not fulfill the Law, and through this you incur the curse of the Law and deserve damnation; or else he who promised these things to those who fulfill the Law does not prove truthful in his promises. But whichever of these you choose, I see nothing in the Law in which you ought to place confidence, and that it earns but little toward blessedness.

What, I ask, was the reason that, when God invited you to the observance of the Law by its reward, he promised what is least, yet was utterly silent about what is greatest? Surely he did not plead the case discerningly, if he knew that both alike sufficed for obedience to the Law, since he wholly passed over that which had the greatest power of persuasion. For nothing, as has been said, is there commemorated in the reward concerning that true and eternal blessedness, but earthly prosperity is intimated to such a degree that this alone is set forth as the ground of obedience; and it is so commended that, by this response, every inquiry of those who came after is deemed to be satisfied.