Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
Departing from Philippi, Paul went on to Thessalonica, where he converted many; but as the Jews were persecuting him, he went away to Berœa, and thence to Athens: where, from an altar dedicated to an Unknown God, demonstrating that this God was Christ, he drew many to His faith, and among them Dionysius the Areopagite.
Vulgate Text: Acts 17:1-34
1. Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. 2. And Paul, according to his custom, went in unto them, and for three sabbaths reasoned with them out of the Scriptures, 3. declaring and insinuating that Christ had to suffer, and to rise again from the dead: and that this is Jesus Christ, whom I preach to you. 4. And some of them believed, and were associated with Paul and Silas, and of the worshippers and of the Gentiles a great multitude, and not a few noblewomen. 5. But the Jews, being moved with envy, and taking unto them certain wicked men of the common sort, and making a tumult, set the city in an uproar; and besetting Jason's house, sought to bring them out to the people. 6. And when they found them not, they dragged Jason and certain brethren to the rulers of the city, crying: These who have set the city in an uproar have also come hither, 7. whom Jason has received, and these all act contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus. 8. And they stirred up the people and the rulers of the city who heard these things. 9. And having taken satisfaction of Jason and of the rest, they let them go. 10. But the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night to Berœa. Who, when they had come there, entered into the synagogue of the Jews. 11. Now these were more noble than those in Thessalonica, who received the word with all eagerness, daily searching the Scriptures, whether these things were so. 12. And many indeed of them believed, and of honorable Gentile women, and of men not a few. 13. And when the Jews of Thessalonica had knowledge that the word of God was preached by Paul also at Berœa, they came thither also, stirring up and troubling the multitude. 14. And then immediately the brethren sent away Paul, that he should go as far as the sea: but Silas and Timothy remained there. 15. And they who escorted Paul conducted him as far as Athens, and receiving a command from him to Silas and Timothy that they should come to him with all speed, they departed. 16. Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred within him, seeing the city wholly given to idolatry. 17. He therefore disputed in the synagogue with the Jews and the worshippers, and in the market-place every day with them that were there. 18. And certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers disputed with him; and some said: What does this babbler wish to say? But others: He seems to be a setter forth of new demons: because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection. 19. And taking hold of him, they brought him to the Areopagus, saying: May we know what this new doctrine is which is spoken of by you? 20. For you bring in certain new things to our ears: we would therefore know what these things mean. 21. (Now all the Athenians and strangers dwelling there employed themselves in nothing else, but either telling or hearing some new thing.) 22. But Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: You men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are as it were superstitious. 23. For passing by, and seeing your idols, I found an altar also on which was written: To the Unknown God. What therefore you worship without knowing it, this I preach to you. 24. God, who made the world and all things that are in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands, 25. nor is He served with human hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life and breath, and all things: 26. and He made of one all the race of men to dwell upon the whole face of the earth, determining appointed times, and the limits of their habitation, 27. that they should seek God, if perhaps they might feel after Him, or find Him, although He be not far from every one of us. 28. For in Him we live, and move, and are; as some also of your own poets have said: For we are also His offspring. 29. Being therefore the offspring of God, we ought not to suppose the Divinity to be like unto gold, or silver, or stone, the graving of art and device of man. 30. And God indeed having winked at the times of this ignorance, now declares to men that all should everywhere do penance, 31. because He has appointed a day wherein He will judge the world in equity, by the Man whom He has appointed, giving assurance to all, by raising Him up from the dead. 32. And when they had heard of the resurrection of the dead, some indeed mocked, but others said: We will hear you again concerning this matter. 33. So Paul went out from among them. 34. But certain men adhering to him, did believe: among whom was also Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.
Verse 1: When They Had Passed Through Amphipolis
1. NOW WHEN THEY HAD PASSED THROUGH AMPHIPOLIS. — It is a city of Macedonia, or of Thrace, neighboring Philippi: so called because it is surrounded on every side by waters, being joined only by a narrow isthmus of land; so Pollux, book IX. This city gave Philip of Macedon and the Athenians cause for wars. Brasidas, leader of the Lacedæmonians, seized it during the Peloponnesian War: so Thucydides, book IV.
APOLLONIA. — This town is near Thessalonica. For there were many other cities elsewhere of the same name.
THESSALONICA. — This was the first, or among the first, of the cities of Macedonia, so called from νίκη, that is victory, which Philip, king of the Macedonians, obtained there over the Thessalians. Now, by aphaeresis, it is called Salonica, in which the Jews have a synagogue, a printing press, indeed dominion: so Strabo, book VII, and Stephanus, book On Cities.
Verse 2: According to Custom; He Reasoned with Them out of the Scriptures
2. ACCORDING TO CUSTOM. — For Paul, says Chrysostom, was accustomed everywhere to go first to the synagogues of the Jews, and there to preach, even though he was often offended, expelled, and stoned by them, in order that he might show his constant love for his own nation and render good for evil; and thus that he might convert many of them, and render the rest, who were unwilling to be converted, inexcusable, lest, if he had first preached to the Gentiles, the Jews might pretend or object that he did not announce the true Messiah, inasmuch as this one had been promised to the Jews, not to the Gentiles.
HE REASONED WITH THEM OUT OF THE SCRIPTURES — ἀπὸ τῶν γραφῶν, that is, from the Scriptures: so the Tigurine and Pagninus. For from the Scriptures he proves Jesus Christ to be the Messiah and Savior of the world, by faith in whom all must be justified and saved. Our translator renders more aptly and forcefully, "concerning the Scriptures." For the Jews were accustomed in their synagogues to discuss nothing other than the Scriptures: hence, if Paul had treated of anything else, and especially if he had directly and expressly dealt with Christ crucified, the Jews would have shouted him down. Therefore Paul's theme was Scripture, but in such a way that from it at opportune places he might always introduce and insinuate Christ, as follows. Here note the shrewdness and dexterity of Paul, by which he artfully, as though busying himself with another matter, insinuates and preaches Christ to the Jews who are unwilling and averse to Christ. The same must be done by those who hunt souls immersed in vices and abhorring any discourse about virtue: they must first speak about other things which they know to be pleasing to them, and then latently descend to the vices and virtues.
Our founder, St. Ignatius, gave this axiom to his followers: "Enter with what is theirs, but go out with your own;" meaning that at the beginning we ought to accommodate ourselves to worldly men and become all things to all men, that we may gain all, and at last persuade them of the virtue which we intend. So hunters of birds and wild beasts, and fishermen of fish, cast food before them, but under the food they hide nets and hooks, with which they ensnare and catch them: let the hunter and fisherman of rational creatures do the same — creatures which, living like wild beasts and fish, gape after earthly things.
Thus St. Barlaam the Hermit, pretending to be a jeweler and to bring a gem of extraordinary splendor and worth (namely, the Evangelical faith), opened a way for himself and converted Josaphat, the son of the king of India, as Damascene relates in their History.
Thus St. Abraham, pretending to be a merchant, brought back his niece Mary, who had fallen into fornication, into the way of salvation, as St. Ephrem relates in her Life.
Thus in the Life of Astion the Martyr we read that the parents of Vigilantius, still being Gentiles, inquiring about the death of their son Astion, were told, with the truth concealed, that he was living in the region of the strong — namely, in heaven — and thus were consoled, and at length dexterously the noble martyrdom of their son was narrated to them, and they were converted to Christ.
Thus St. Xavier drew concubines away from their keepers, insinuating himself into their friendship, and now on one pretext, now on another, removing them one after another, until he had removed them all. Read Tursellinus in his Life, book VI, chapter X, near the end.
Verse 3: Opening and Insinuating; This Is Jesus Christ
3. OPENING, — as if to say: Gradually and opportunely opening up to them Christ hidden in the Scriptures, and from them showing that Christ had to suffer and to be crucified.
AND INSINUATING — παρατιθέμενος, that is, setting forth, explaining, showing; Pagninus and the Tigurine, "alleging;" others, "composing and comparing" the deeds and sufferings of Christ with the words of the Prophets, who foretold those very things, but more hiddenly and obscurely. Our translator more shrewdly and profoundly renders it "insinuating," for the reason already stated: perhaps he also reads παρεντιθέμενος, that is, inserting, interjecting, insinuating in passing and as if by way of parenthesis. Thus St. Peter, Epistle I, chapter V, verse 5, says: "And all of you, insinuate humility one to another," that is, put it into the bosom as if secretly and by doing something else, since they are unwilling and reluctant. Thus rhetoricians make use of insinuation, especially in an odious matter, that they may win over the minds of judges or hearers who are averse, and as it were open them up — concerning which Cicero, in book I Of Invention, says: "Insinuation is a speech which by a certain dissimulation and circumlocution obscurely enters the hearer's mind." And as Servius says on Æneid XI: "It is a shrewd and subtle approach to persuasion." Thus he is said to insinuate himself into another's friendship who does not enter friendship directly, but latently through certain bays and byways, and as it were creeps in.
AND THAT THIS IS JESUS CHRIST WHOM, etc., — as if to say: Because this Christ, so celebrated in the Scriptures and awaited by the Fathers, is none other than Jesus Christ, whom I preach to you. Or, as the Greek has it: "Because this is the Christ," namely "this Jesus whom I preach to you." For the Jews deny that Jesus is the Christ or Messiah, whom they say is to come at the end of the world. Others of them invent two Christs: one poor, suffering, and afflicted — this one being ours: whence R. Jacob, in his Collectanea from the Talmud, says that this Christ was sitting at Rome among the paupers, wretched and grieving (as Lyranus reports in his book Against the Jews); the other, noble and splendid like Solomon — and this one, they say, will be the Messiah of the Jews, and will come at the end of the world. Thus these mountebanks trifle or dream, since on the contrary Scripture, the ancient Rabbis, and all the Fathers commemorate only one Messiah, or Christ, namely Jesus crucified by the Jews.
Verse 4: And Some of Them Believed
4. AND SOME OF THEM (the Jews, about whom the discourse has preceded) BELIEVED, etc., AND OF THE WORSHIPPERS AND OF THE GENTILES A GREAT MULTITUDE. — "Worshippers" here means proselytes — namely Gentiles converted to Judaism: for they are distinguished from the Jews by nation and descent, and from the Gentiles living in paganism. He says therefore that some were converted from among the Jews, but from the proselytes and Gentiles many: so Bede, Hugh, the Gloss, Lyranus, and the Carthusian. The Greek codices and the Syriac make this verse two-membered, not three-membered: for they make the Gentiles and the worshippers to be the same. For thus they have: "And of the worshipping Gentiles a great multitude," so that "worshippers" means pious and religious Gentiles worshipping the one God. Whence the Syriac translates, "and many of those Greeks who feared God." Wherefore the Apostle, later writing to the Thessalonians, praises their promptness, alacrity, and constancy in believing. For thus he writes, I Thessal. I and II: "Our Gospel was not to you in word only, but in power, and in the Holy Spirit, and in much fullness, as you know what manner of men we have been among you for your sakes. And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, receiving the word in much tribulation with joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became a pattern to all those that believe in Macedonia and in Achaia," etc. See what is said there.
Verse 5: The Jews Being Moved with Envy; Wicked Men of the Common Sort; Besetting the House of Jason; Sought to Bring Them Out to the People
5. BUT THE JEWS, BEING MOVED WITH ENVY, — "unbelieving," as the Greek adds; and, as the Syriac, "wicked." See Paul describing the envy, malice, and depravity of these Jews, I Thessal. II, 14 and following.
AND TAKING UNTO THEM CERTAIN WICKED MEN OF THE COMMON SORT. — For "of the common sort," the Greek has τῶν ἀγοραίων, that is, "of the loungers-about-the-marketplace": so the Tigurine and Erasmus. Furthermore, Vatablus says, he calls loungers those who are accustomed to hang around the marketplace — whom Pagninus accordingly calls "forum-men," such as those who sell and buy, and also porters, idle and slothful men, likewise paupers who seek a master and offer their services for anything whether lawful or unlawful — of which kind there are many among the common folk in large cities, as Thessalonica was. For, as Sallust says in the Jugurtha: "To the utterly destitute, all things seem honorable if there is a price." And Silius Italicus, book XIII: "Poverty is prone to crime." But more divinely Solomon, Prov. XXX, 9: "Beggary give me not, lest, compelled by want, I steal, and forswear the name of my God."
Furthermore, many at Thessalonica were idle and slothful, hence paupers, hence restless, turbulent, rapacious, and thieves. For this reason the Apostle sharply chastises this idleness and sloth of theirs, II Thessal. III, 7 and following. Excellently does Diogenes the Cynic, cited in Laertius, book VI, say: "The business of the idle he called love and lust;" because this passion especially seizes those given over to idleness. For so it happens that, while they indulge in idleness, they fall into the most busy business of all, namely lust and desire for another's goods. And Appius Claudius, as Valerius Maximus attests, used to say that "it is far better to entrust the Roman people with business than with leisure;" because the mob is stirred by wars to virtue, but in peace and leisure slips away into pleasures and luxury, from which are born sedition, slaughter, rapine, and the ruin of the commonwealth.
WICKED. — In Greek πονηρούς, that is, depraved, rogues, scoundrels; likewise, needy, indigent, wretched, afflicted. Wickedness, says Chrysostom, hom. 7 on Acts, is called πονηρία because it brings πόνον, that is, a thousand labors and troubles to its author. Add that it often arises from πενίᾳ, that is, from poverty and want, as I have already said. This same thing Bulas, a most notorious robber, taught by word and example, who under the Emperor Severus, having gathered a band throughout all Italy of six hundred robbers, for two years committed the greatest depredations. And when he had captured a centurion plotting against his life, he sent him back — having shaved his head — to the Emperor Severus, saying: "Announce to your masters that they should feed their servants, lest they turn to brigandage." For Bulas had many of Caesar's servants with him, some hired for a small wage, others with no stipend at all; so Xiphilinus in the Life of Severus.
BESETTING THE HOUSE, — so that, having forced their way, they might burst in, and bring them — namely Paul and Silas — out of it to the people. Hence in Greek it is ἐπιστάντες, that is, "having attacked the house," or "pressing upon, standing over, and threatening the house"; so the Tigurine, Pagninus, Vatablus, and others.
OF JASON, — with whom Silas and Paul were lodging. Whence Bede judges that this Jason was a Christian, namely converted by Paul, who disputed about Christ from the Scriptures for three sabbaths in the synagogue at Thessalonica, verse 2. This Jason seems to be the same one of whom the Apostle, in Romans XVI, says: "Timothy, my fellow-worker, and Lucius and Jason and Sosipater, my kinsmen, salute you." For Jason seems to have gone with Paul from Thessalonica to Corinth, from where Paul wrote to the Romans in the year of Christ 58: so Baronius, Genebrardus in the Calendar of the Greeks which he prefixed to the Psalms, Sixtus of Siena in book II of the Library, and others. If this is true, it is clear that this Jason was a Christian, a kinsman, disciple, and familiar friend of Paul. Again, this Jason seems to be he who is found inscribed in the catalogue of the Saints in the Roman Martyrology, on July 12, in these words: "In Cyprus, St. Jason, an ancient disciple of Christ," for we never read of another Christian and saintly Jason from that age except this one. From these words, the authors already cited probably conjecture that this Jason is the same as Mnason, of whom it is said in Acts XXI, 16: "Bringing with them one with whom we might lodge, a certain Mnason of Cyprus, an ancient disciple." For these words plainly agree with the words of the Martyrology, except that they call him Mnason instead of Jason; but some copies read Jason for Mnason. Whence it is clear that Jason was originally from Cyprus, yet had his residence both at Thessalonica and at Jerusalem. The Menology of the Greeks on April 29, and Dorotheus in his Synopsis, assert that Jason was Bishop of Tarsus; but Hippolytus, in his book On the 72 Disciples, counts Jason among them and makes him Bishop in Syria. Baronius, however, in his Martyrology on July 12, judges that the Jason ascribed in the Martyrology is the same as Mnason of Acts XXI, 16, and was Bishop of Tarsus, but different from this Thessalonian Jason, who was Paul's host and disciple. Either view is probable: for nothing here is certain and evident.
THEY SOUGHT TO BRING THEM OUT TO THE PEOPLE. — So that, having been dragged forth by the people (stirred up and raging through the Jews), Paul and Silas might be torn to pieces, or severely punished. Here you see that the custom of the Jews is like the disease of heretics, who through tumults of the people drive Catholics out either from the city or from the senate: because they know that if they were to conduct their case quietly in a tribunal according to law and truth, they would lose the case before the judges.
Verse 6: They Dragged Jason; These Who Stir Up the City
6. THEY DRAGGED JASON — tumultuously; so that by the tumult of the raging people they might overwhelm him before the chief men of the city. Wherefore the Syriac translates less correctly, "they brought a lawsuit against Jason": for the matter was carried on by the Jews with tumult, not with a judicial suit, though they pretended so; for which reason they dragged him to the rulers of the city, as though to judges.
AND CERTAIN BRETHREN, — namely Christians.
THAT, — "that": for this is ὅτι.
THESE (that is, are) WHO STIR UP THE CITY. — The Greek for "city" reads οἰκουμένην, that is, "the world" or "the whole earth." So also the Syriac, the Complutensians, Clarius, Vatablus, and others. But it comes to the same thing: for by "world" they understand a vast and ample city hyperbolically, as if to say: These are they who stir up disturbances throughout the whole city and incite the whole people to sedition. Thus the Pharisees say of Christ preaching in Judæa alone, John XII, 19: "The whole world has gone after Him." And Athenæus, book I, calls Rome "the people of the world." For the people of the Roman city seem to be those of the whole world, because they flowed together to Rome from the whole world. Yet the Greek reading can have another more fitting sense, as if to say: These are they who everywhere in the world stir up tumults, and have also come here to raise up the same. Otherwise, if you read with our translator "the city," then take what is added — "and they have come here" — thus, as if to say: They are foreigners and strangers, not citizens and natives: whence we must beware of them in every way as unknown, innovators, and troublemakers. For they make them suspect by saying that they have come from elsewhere and are foreigners, unknown, wanderers, and vagabonds.
Verse 7: Whom He Has Received; Saying There Is Another King, Jesus
7. WHOM HE HAS RECEIVED — ὑποδέδεκται, that is, received secretly and furtively, as though they were criminals, innovators, and troublemakers; so the Tigurine, Pagninus, Gagneius, and others.
SAYING THAT THERE IS ANOTHER KING, JESUS. — This is a gross calumny; for the Pharisees could have cast this charge against Christ with some show of plausibility while He was alive, John X, 1, but not against Christ, who is now dead and reigning in heaven — who, lifted up from earth and human affairs, looks down on and tramples all these things beneath His feet as trifles, and whom the edicts of Caesar cannot bind or touch.
Verse 8: They Stirred Up the People
8. AND THEY STIRRED UP THE PEOPLE. — For the people is stirred by the mere name of a new king or tyrant, such as they here accused Christ of being, and does not grasp or ask whether He be alive or dead, on earth or in heaven; perhaps also they thought that He could return from heaven to earth, to occupy the whole of it and rule over it — especially because at this time Claudius the Emperor was reigning, who, being most fearful at the mere shadows and whispers of a new kingdom or tyranny, was wholly thrown into alarm, as Suetonius relates fully in his Life, chapters XXXV and XXXVI.
Verse 9: Having Taken Satisfaction
9. AND HAVING TAKEN SATISFACTION. — Of what kind it was, Scripture does not say. The Syriac explains it and says they were sureties: "But they received," he says, "sureties from Jason," who, namely, should guarantee that they would be faithful to Caesar and the Roman Empire, and would not stir up any novelty against it, says Cajetan. But Budaeus, and from him Gagneius and Sanchez, take "satisfaction" to mean "pledging," that is, suretyship, by which Jason gave himself as a surety for Paul, either to bring him before a tribunal or to give satisfaction on his behalf, if he were convicted of having offended in anything. Thirdly, Dionysius and Lorinus take "satisfaction" as an excuse and clearing, by which Jason showed that Paul was not seditious, nor introducing a new earthly king (namely Christ, inasmuch as He was long since dead and His kingdom is spiritual, not corporeal), as if to say: When Jason had sufficiently shown that Paul had not incited riots, he was dismissed. Fourthly, Peter of Alexandria, in his sermon On Penitence, takes "satisfaction" to mean a fine, namely money, which Jason gave for his own release. But this seems little probable, nor sufficiently worthy of the generosity and integrity of Paul and the Gospel. The earlier opinions therefore are more probable. Chrysostom admires the virtue of Jason, who exposed himself and his head to danger for Paul's sake.
Verse 10: Berœa; They Entered the Synagogue of the Jews
10. BERŒA. — It is a city of Macedonia, not far from Pella, the birthplace of Alexander the Great.
THEY ENTERED THE SYNAGOGUE OF THE JEWS. — Here admire the spirit and zeal of Paul: for having been twice and thrice maltreated by the Jews, he returns to them again; he does not yield to persecutions, but rises stronger from them, "and is borne more vehemently against his adversaries, and the increments of persecution become for him the cause of greater constancy, like a flame which, stirred by the wind, burns more fiercely," says St. Chrysostom, hom. 7 On the Praises of St. Paul. Thus virtue contends with vice, love with hatred, beneficence with maleficence: it contends and conquers. This is the manner of a lover, this the spirit of the brave and generous, that he may say to himself: "Yield not to misfortunes, but go against them more boldly." Excellently St. Bernard, in epistle 456 to Pope Eugenius: "I have read," he says, "in a certain wise man: He is not a brave man whose spirit does not grow in the very difficulty of things. But I say: a faithful man must trust all the more amid scourges."
Verse 11: Now These Were More Noble; Searching the Scriptures
11. NOW THESE, — as if to say: Berœa was nobler than Thessalonica, and the citizens of Berœa were nobler than those of Thessalonica: so St. Chrysostom, Gagneius, and Vatablus. But more aptly the Syriac, Lyranus, Hugh, and Cajetan restrict this to the Jews, about whom the preceding context is concerned, as if to say: the Jews living at Berœa were nobler than the Jews living at Thessalonica — for what follows applies to these alone: "Daily searching the Scriptures;" for these were proper to the Jews, not to the Gentiles. Verse 12 confirms the same thing, as will be clear there.
MORE NOBLE, — that is, most noble, both by birth and family and by generosity and character. For often nobility of birth brings with it nobility of soul, such as magnanimity, sincerity, civility, integrity, humanity, liberality: so Chrysostom, Œcumenius, Lyranus, and others. Luke says this to show that the Berœans, endowed with a noble disposition, were more teachable, and more capable and ready to grasp the doctrine of the Gospel. Whence he adds concerning them:
WHO (namely the Berœans, not the Thessalonians) RECEIVED THE WORD (of the Gospel preached by Paul) WITH ALL EAGERNESS. — In Greek προθυμίας, that is, with readiness of soul, or willingly and with minds bent toward it.
SEARCHING THE SCRIPTURES. — For they were not bound to believe, indeed they could not prudently believe at the beginnings of the Gospel, and in Paul as a new preacher announcing a new God, unless by examining the matter they had found that this preaching was consonant with the word of God and the oracles of the Prophets. Wherefore Christ said the same of Himself to the Jews, John V, 39: "Search," He says, "the Scriptures, for you think in them to have eternal life: and the same are they that give testimony of Me." It is otherwise now, when the Gospel and the faith has been examined more than enough from the start, proven and received for so many ages; and yet we can even now search the Scriptures, not to examine the faith, but to confirm ourselves in it and penetrate its mysteries better and more deeply, and impress them on ourselves and on others; and indeed it is probable that the Berœans did only this. For they had already received the word of God with all eagerness: they were not therefore searching the Scriptures in order that they might believe at the start, but that they might confirm themselves in the faith they had received, by examining each of the testimonies of Scripture concerning Christ cited by Paul, and comparing them with Paul's words. Wherefore heretics wrongly contend from this passage that their heresies should be tested by the Scriptures. For since it is established that they are heresies — that is, errors repugnant to the faith and tradition of the Fathers — they are not to be examined, but to be condemned and rejected at once.
Verse 12: And Many Indeed of Them Believed
12. AND MANY INDEED OF THEM BELIEVED, — namely, the Berœan Jews: for he contrasts these with the Gentile women and men, of whom likewise not a few believed in Christ. See what was said at the beginning of verse 11.
Verse 14: That He Should Go as Far as the Sea; Silas and Timothy Remained There
14. THAT HE SHOULD GO AS FAR AS THE SEA. — In Greek, ὡς ἐπὶ θάλασσαν, that is, "as if toward the sea": for the brethren, says Cajetan, did not wish Paul to flee openly, but to withdraw, as if going to the sea. But our translator, instead of ὡς, meaning "as if," reads ἕως, meaning "as far as." For Paul continued this journey without stopping and reached Athens.
BUT SILAS AND TIMOTHY REMAINED THERE, — in order to proclaim the faith to the Berœans who were eager for it, and to confirm in it those who had already believed. For the Jews sought only the head of Paul, as though of the chief-leader.
Verse 15: They Who Escorted Paul; Athens
15. AND THEY WHO ESCORTED PAUL, — both for honor and for safety, lest he should undergo any ambushes or danger from the Jews. For this is the Greek καθιστῶντες, that is, "confirming him with their escort and affording safety." The same is still done today for their preachers by fervent Catholics in England, Holland, Japan, and India.
ATHENS, — where there was a school of eloquence and wisdom, and consequently a multitude of Poets, Orators, and Philosophers, and moreover an abundance of idols, as is evident from the praises and encomiums of the Poets concerning their gods. Whence Theodoret, On the Cure of Greek Affections, gives the primacy of idolatry among all the cities of the world to Athens; and Paul insinuates the same, verses 16 and 22. Now Athens lies buried, reduced to a village. Therefore there was a great harvest at Athens for the Apostle, especially because from Athens — as from the head of wisdom — it was to be derived into the rest of Greece. Whence he quickly called his helpers, Silas and Timothy, there. Hence Tertullian, in his book On the Soul, chapter III, calls Athens "the tongued city," and says that there had been keepers of taverns of wisdom and eloquence. The Greeks call it Ἑλλάδος Ἑλλάδα, that is, "Greece of Greece"; just as Athenæus, in book I of the Deipnosophists, calls Rome ἐπιτομήν τῆς οἰκουμένης, that is, the compendium or city of the world.
Verse 16: His Spirit Was Stirred Within Him
16. HIS SPIRIT WAS STIRRED WITHIN HIM — παρωξύνετο, that is, he was irritated, grew hot: so Pagninus, the Tigurine, and Vatablus; the Syriac has, "was affected with grief;" St. Augustine, in book I Against Crescentius, chapter XII, reads, "he was stirred by the Holy Spirit within himself," as if to say: Paul's soul was burning — partly with sorrow and compassion for a city so learned yet so blind and wretched; partly with desire and zeal to aid, instruct, and save it; and on another side with wrath and indignation against idolatry and its author, the devil. Thus Jeremiah, chapter XX, 9, says of the word of God: "And it was in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones: and I was wearied, not being able to bear it." Where St. Jerome says: "The divine word, conceived in the soul, burns in the breast even when not uttered by the mouth." Whence Paul at Athens, seeing the city given over to idolatry, burned with his whole mind.
Verse 17: The Worshippers; In the Marketplace
17. WORSHIPPERS, — proselytes, says Chrysostom, that is, Gentiles converted to Judaism, or those zealous for their own salvation and for the true religion.
IN THE MARKETPLACE. — The Syriac has, "in the street." Thus the first Fathers and founders of our Society, like Paul, preached in the streets and marketplaces, as our men still do today in Rome — followers and emulators of the spirit of their fathers — with great concourse and fruit.
Verse 18: The Epicurean and Stoic Philosophers; What Does This Word-Sower Mean; Of New Demons; Because He Preached Jesus and the Resurrection
18. CERTAIN EPICUREAN PHILOSOPHERS. — Epicurus, a disciple of Xenocrates, beginning to philosophize as a boy of fourteen years in the gardens, placed every good and happiness of man in pleasure. Hence he denied the deity and providence of God: on which account he had very many followers; for although by some he is said to have been frugal and sparing, yet by most he is called voluptuary and swine, says St. Augustine, On the Utility of Believing, chapter IV. Whence that line of Horace: "A pig from the herd of Epicurus." For he denied the immortality of the soul, and consequently the resurrection, saying: "Eat, drink, play, for after death there is no pleasure." Whence Sidonius, in the Epithalamium of Polemius: "But virtue everywhere banishes the Epicureans." Timocrates, in Laertius, book X in the Life of Epicurus, asserts that Epicurus used to vomit twice daily from excess, and therefore was so miserably affected in body that he could not rise from his bed for many years: he spent a mina every day on his table; in the end he died of the stone. Nausiphanes used to call Epicurus, because of his gluttony, "lung," and "uneducated," and "circumscriber," and "whore." Furthermore, Epicurus was born in the third year of the 109th Olympiad, 7 years after Plato died: he lived 72 years.
Laertius recounts these axioms of his: "What is blessed and immortal neither has any business of its own, nor presents any to another — so that it is not moved either by anger or by favor: for in that in which such things are present, all this is weak." From this you may infer that God does not care for human affairs, nor punish the wicked. "Death is nothing to us. For what has been dissolved is without sensation; and what is without sensation is nothing to us." From this you may gather that the soul after death feels nothing, and perishes together with the body. "Happiness is placed in pleasure: for this is the beginning and end of living well and of the blessed life. Worlds are innumerable, and have coalesced from atoms coming together with one another: therefore atoms are the principle of all things, and they are infinite;" which he drew from his master Democritus. Whence St. Augustine, in book III Against the Academics, chapter X: "How," he says, "shall we judge between Democritus and the earlier physicists about one world or innumerable ones, when between him and his heir Epicurus concord could not remain? For this luxurious man, when he allowed his atoms — as his little handmaids, that is, the little bodies which he joyfully embraces in the dark — not to keep to their own path, but to decline everywhere spontaneously into foreign boundaries, even dissipated his whole patrimony through quarrels." And so Paul and the Christians waged always a sharp contest against the Epicureans, and καὶ ἀσπονδεῖς πολέμους (truceless wars).
AND STOIC. — Philosophers were so called from στοᾷ, that is, "portico," in which Zeno, their founder, was accustomed to teach and discourse — severe and rigid men, and therefore opposed to the Epicureans. Whence Cicero, in his oration for Murena: "But indeed," he says, "Cato deals with me austerely and stoically."
The paradoxes and errors of the Stoics which Paul had to refute were these. First, that fate exists, and that all things are ruled by fate: therefore fate is God. Thus they took away God and His providence, and substituted fate and nature in place of God; for they judged that all things flow by the course and necessity of nature. "Nature," says Lactantius, Book III, chapter xxviii, "they said was the mother of all things, as if to say that all things have sprung up of their own accord." Eminently does St. Eucherius, in his epistle to Valerianus, near the end, say: "That fate does not exist — let them ask the Gentiles, or at least their own laws, which certainly do not punish except for the intent of deeds." Therefore each man's act overthrows fate, namely liberty overthrows necessity.
Second: that virtue, in which they placed the highest good, lies in the power and industry of each person; whence it is not to be sought from God, as being situated in man's choice; therefore each man must glory in his own virtue. Thus St. Augustine, tome VI, treatise On the Epicureans and Stoics, chapter iv and following. They therefore said that the wise man is sufficient unto himself, and is content with himself alone: he alone is rich, free, a king, blessed, impeccable, apathetic, imperturbable, and equal to God. See Justus Lipsius, Manuduction to Stoic Philosophy, Book III, chapter xiv.
Third: that all virtues are equal and all vices equal; and whoever has one vice or one virtue has all the rest. Again, that vices exist by the providence of God, for the variety and ornament of the universe. Thus Cicero in his Paradoxes, and Plutarch Against the Stoics.
Fourth: that the offender who does wrong is not to be pardoned, nor is mercy to be shown, because mercy is a passion and sickness of the soul, which does not befall the wise man; and that justice's own place must be given, so that the guilty may be punished. Whence Cicero, pro Murena, quoting the Stoics, says, "no one is merciful unless he be foolish and frivolous." And Seneca, Book II On Clemency, chapter IV, condemns mercy as a vice. And in chapter vi: "Mercy," he says, "is akin to misery, for it has something of it and draws from it. Mercy is a vice of souls that too much favor misery." See Lipsius at the cited place, chapter XIX.
Fifth: that the wise man can sometimes take his own death, indeed that it is fitting and his duty to do so, lest he live miserably. Whence Seneca, in his Ajax: "A noble man ought either to live honorably, or die at once." So Cleanthes the Stoic, when an ulcer had formed in his mouth, on the physicians' advice had abstained from food for two days; and when the ulcer had improved and they called him back to eat, he refused, asserting "he would not return when the greater part of the journey had been completed." Thus he died by starvation. Zeno himself, at 98 years old, healthy and whole, as he came from the school and struck his foot and fell, striking the earth with his hand, intoned that verse of Euripides: "I come; why do you summon me?" See Seneca the Philosopher, On Anger Book iii, chapter xv, and letter 70. The same, in his Sentences: "Death is a good thing for a man," he says, "which extinguishes the evils of life." Hence dying himself, he permitted his wife, who wished to die with him, to be cut open with a sword, and encouraged her to it.
Sixth: that all the gods are mortal, except Jupiter, and that they will pass into Jupiter: thus in the conflagration of the world, the sun, they said, will transmute the moon and the other stars into itself. So Plutarch, in his book Against the Stoics. Where he also adds: The Stoics say that God is a body endowed with mind, and a mind dwelling in matter; declaring Him to be neither simple nor pure, but to exist from another and through another. See the same author, book On the Contradictions of the Stoics.
Seventh: that God is the spirit and soul of the world. And so the spirit which animates the sea is called Neptune; that which animates the earth, Ceres; the air, Juno; the vines, Bacchus; the olives, Minerva; the sun and stars, Apollo; herbs and medicines, Aesculapius; tongues, Mercury; the aether, Jupiter. So Plutarch, in his book On Isis and Osiris. For because they saw that all things are born, fostered, and grow by spirit and heat, hence they held this spirit and heat, which they called fire, to be the eternal and uncreated principle and cause of all things, and therefore to be God. The same opinion was held before the Stoics by Hippocrates, On Principles: "It seems to me," he says, "that what we call heat or fire is immortal, and understands all things, and sees, and hears, and knows all things present and future." What could be said more absurd? for he attributes eternity, sensation, intellect, knowledge, and foreknowledge to fire. Hence Posidonius in Stobaeus defines God as a fiery spirit: "God," he says, "is an intelligent and fiery spirit, having no form Himself, but turning Himself into all things and assimilating Himself to all." And Democritus: "God," he says, "is mind in a spherical fire." And Athenagoras: "God," he says, "is a glowing substance according to the Stoics." And Pythagoras, from whom the Stoics derived their doctrine, judged, as Cicero says, Book I On the Nature of the Gods, that "God is a soul, pervading and permeating the whole nature of things."
Eighth: that the world is an animated, living, and rational animal: for it is governed by reason, and animated and watered by spirit. Finally, that the world is God. Hear Manilius, Book I:
That the world lives,
And is moved by the motion of reason, since one spirit
Dwells through all its parts, and waters the orb,
Flying through all things, and forms the animate body.
And again:
Whereby it is manifest that the world is turned by divine gift,
And is itself God.
And Seneca, the most acute of the Stoics, letter 37: "This whole," he says, "by which we are contained, is one, and is God; and we are His companions and members"; whom Lactantius refutes, Book VII, chapter iii: "If all these things which we see are members of God," he says, "then God is constituted insensible by them." Moreover, Varro, the most learned of the Romans, held the same view. Hear St. Augustine, Book VII On the City of God, chapter vi: "Varro," he says, "speaking of natural theology, declares that he considers God to be the soul of the world, and this very world itself to be God."
From what has been said, it is clear that both the Stoics and the Epicureans had their own atheists; and in fact they were atheists — nay, polytheists, and therefore all the more atheists. For whoever sets up many gods thereby removes the one true God, who alone is. These and other errors of the Stoics and Epicureans had to be uprooted by Paul, by teaching that all our virtue, good, and salvation consists in Christ crucified, by whose grace and power we are to be raised up to an immortal and blessed life; and therefore He alone is the mediator between God and men, and their Savior; and so His doctrine and a sober, chaste, just, pious, and holy life are to be embraced by us.
Morally: thus today no men are more opposed to Christian discipline and virtue than the Epicureans — that is, the voluptuaries immersed in the delights of the flesh — and the Stoics, that is, the arrogant, those who trust overmuch in their own wisdom and judgment, such as heretics are. Hence experience shows that all heresiarchs have been either Epicureans or Stoics — that is, belly-slaves and lechers, or proud men — and therefore have fallen into heresy. For heresy is never the first sin, but other sins go before it, which gradually lead a man down into this abyss of evils. Fittingly Barlaam, in Damascene, History chapter XII, gives King Josaphat the parable of the unicorn, that is, death, which pursues man: fleeing, the man lays hold of a tree in which is a little honey — that is, pleasure; and feeding on it, he falls down into the pit below, namely Gehenna:
Alas! what a sweet evil is added to mortals,
The love of sweet honey!
And Boethius, Book III, meter 7:
Every pleasure has this:
Where it has poured out pleasant honey,
It flees, and stings the stricken hearts
With too tenacious a bite.
On which account God forbade the Jews honey in sacrifice, as I said on Leviticus II, 11.
Truly St. Bernard, Sermon 30 on the Canticle: "Epicurus," he says, "prefers pleasure, Hippocrates good health; but Christ preaches contempt of both, saying: He who loves his soul shall lose it. Shall lose it, either by laying it down as a martyr, or by afflicting it as a penitent. Yet it is a kind of martyrdom to mortify by the spirit the deeds of the flesh — milder indeed in horror than that in which the limbs are cut by the sword, but more troublesome by its duration." Moreover Seneca, Book II On the Blessed Life, vii: "Virtue," he says, "is something lofty, exalted and royal, invincible, untiring; pleasure is lowly, slavish, weak, perishable, whose station and dwelling are brothels and taverns. Virtue you will find in the temple, in the forum, in the senate-house, standing before the walls, covered with dust, tanned in color, with calloused hands; pleasure, more often lurking and seeking the shadows."
THEY DISPUTED WITH HIM. — In Greek συνέβαλλον, that is, they came to encounter and contended with him. So Pagninus, Vatablus, and the Tigurine.
WHAT DOES THIS WORD-SOWER (seminiverbius) MEAN? — In Greek it is elegantly called σπερμολόγος, that is, spermologus, a word-sower, that is, a sower of words, as St. Augustine reads it, in the treatise Against the Epicureans and Stoics. Œcumenius thinks that there is an allusion to σπερμολόγον, a certain low bird of the jackdaw kind which gathers seeds, which you might therefore translate and call "seed-gatherer," of which Aristotle speaks in Book VIII, History of Animals, chapter iii. Hence Eustathius, on the Odyssey Book V, thinks that from this bird there are called spermologoi, men poor and abject, who gather in the marketplace the grains that have fallen and been neglected from the sacks, and live thereby. The Epicureans here properly call Paul a spermologus, that is, verbose, garrulous, who prattles nothing but words, and blabs anything for profit — as forensic quibblers and agyrtae (mountebanks), or hucksters going about the markets, do, who price and sell their trifles with words. Truly St. Augustine at the place cited just above: "It was said," he says, "by those who mocked, but not to be rejected by believers; for he was indeed a sower of words, but a reaper of morals." For his words were not words that strike the air, but darts that wound the mind. Spermologoi are the preachers of heretics, who indeed call themselves ministers of the word, because in reality they give nothing but words — not of God, but of the devil.
OF NEW (ξένων, that is, foreign, new, unheard-of, absurd) DEMONS. — The Syriac: "This fellow preaches strange gods." For the Gentiles considered demons to be lesser gods. Moreover since there are calodaemons and cacodaemons, that is, good and bad daemons (for "daemon" in Greek is the same as "knowing," as Plato says in the Cratylus; whence the daemon of Socrates is so called — though Eusebius, Book IV of the Preparation, chapter iii, derives the word dæmon from δειμαίνειν, that is, to strike with fear, to inject terror; others from δάεσθαι, that is, to rule, because they rule men), hence this statement can be taken of both good and evil dæmons: thus the Syriac, Vatablus, and others. Apuleius, in St. Augustine, Book VIII Of the City of God, chapter xvi: "He defines dæmons as animals in kind, passive in soul, rational in mind, aerial in body, eternal in time. Of these five characteristics, the first three are common to them with us, the fourth is proper to them, the fifth they have in common with the gods." But the last two are false, as is the first — unless by "eternal" you take "everlasting into the future," not into the past.
BECAUSE HE PREACHED JESUS AND THE RESURRECTION. — Jesus as God; ἀνάστασιν, that is, resurrection, as though a goddess, the patroness of resurrection, who would cause those devoted to her to rise from death. So St. Chrysostom, Œcumenius, and Sanchez. For so the Romans worshipped fortune, felicity, salvation, honor, etc., as goddesses who would bestow these things on their worshippers. See St. Augustine, Book IV On the City of God, chapter xi and following. But more simply, "announcer of new demons" can be referred to Jesus, whom Paul was announcing; and the word "seminiverbius" (word-sower) to the resurrection. For the Gentiles, since by the light of nature they did not grasp the resurrection — because it is above nature and a miracle, and therefore something that would come about through God's omnipotence, not through the power of nature — said that Paul, in preaching it, was sowing words, that is, preaching trifles, fables, and impossible things; and that he was an impostor who was seeking present gains by promising mountains of gold in a future resurrection, as the Bonzes among the Japanese do.
Verse 19: They Brought Him to the Areopagus; May We Know
19. THEY BROUGHT HIM TO THE AREOPAGUS. — Areopagus in Greek means the same as "the quarter of Mars," "the curia of Mars"; for Mars is called Ἄρης. In Greek it is εἰς τὸν Ἄρειον πάγον, that is, to the Martian district; just as in Rome there was the Campus Martius. For Athens was divided into five wards or districts, one of which was the Areopagus, so named from the temple of Mars, in which Pliny writes that the first capital judgment was held, Book VII, chapter LV. For nothing was more constant, more severe, more forceful than this judgment of the Areopagus, as Cicero says, Book I to Atticus, letter 9, so that there seemed to be as many Marses as there were judges. Hence they were called Areopagites, most severe judges, who judged in the temple of Mars or beside it. For when Mars was accused of homicide, and twelve gods judged in that district, he was acquitted by six votes, as the Greeks hand down; for when the votes were equal, the accused was acquitted, as being one who in a doubtful and tied case should be favored more than the accuser: for no one is to be condemned unless he is convicted to be guilty and harmful.
Varro, in St. Augustine, Book XVIII On the City of God, 1, refutes this opinion. Whence Œcumenius and Isidore of Pelusium, Book X, letter 91, hand down from Pausanias that Mars was accused in that place by Neptune of rape and condemned to capital punishment, and hence it was called the Areopagus. But Demosthenes, in his oration Against Aristocrates, thinks it was called the Areopagus because in it the Martian cases — concerning voluntary fights and homicides — were tried; for accidental ones were handled in the tribunal of the Palladium. The tribunal of the Areopagus was instituted by Cecrops, as Aristotle says, Book II of the Politics, and Eusebius in the Chronicle, in the year of the world 3694, and it endured even under the tyrants. Solon decreed that the Areopagites should be the watchmen and guardians of all things: whence he wished them to be chosen only from those who had been Archons, that is, princes and magistrates of the republic; so Plutarch, in his Solon. The Areopagites, therefore, were most blameless in reputation, most conspicuous in virtue, and most discerning in experience. Whence they judged at night in darkness, lest they be moved by the tears and appearance of the accused; and the accused were therefore ordered to tell their case in simple words and refrain from all affectation of words and gestures. Moreover they delivered their sentence not by speaking, but by casting a ballot of either acquittal or condemnation. Hence the proverb: "More silent than an Areopagite." Therefore the most serious cases throughout the whole world, even among the Romans, as Gellius attests, Book XII, chapter vii, were referred to the Areopagites for judgment; and so great was their gravity and majesty that Aristides in his Panathenaic Oration asserts that their sentences were reckoned equal to oracles, and that all thought it sacrilegious, out of reverence for the Areopagus, to laugh in its sight. Hence they mounted up to the Areopagus to judge only three times a month, namely on the 4th, 3rd, and day before the Calends. These and more things in Budaeus, on the Pandects, final law, On Sentences.
Paul therefore was led to the Areopagus, so that there he might be judged as though an asserter of a new religion, and if guilty, punished. For in this way Socrates was condemned to death at Athens by 281 votes, because he had introduced new gods or demons. Whence St. Chrysostom: "They led Paul to the Areopagus," he says, "not to learn something, but to punish him and inflict torments on him; for capital judgments were exercised there." But the providence of God turned these things to the contrary, and brought it about that great dignity accrued to the Gospel and to religion in the Areopagus, because there Paul proved it, and even converted the judge himself, namely Dionysius the Areopagite, to it.
Symbolically, the Areopagus signifies that those who wish to judge sincerely and rightly concerning any matter ought to put on a manly and martial spirit, so that they allow themselves to be made effeminate and corrupted by no desire or passion. For women often judge badly of things because they are women, and are driven by passions which obscure right judgment. For, as it is said: "A woman either loves or hates"; and love and mercy, to which women are prone, disturb judgment no less than hatred and cruelty.
CAN WE. — Shrewdly, civilly, and humanely they interrogate as though asking a favor, saying: "Can we?" as if to say, Does it please you to expound these new things to us? Then soon after they betray their mind, when they press him and almost force out an answer by violence, saying: "We wish therefore to know what these things may mean."
Verse 20: New Things
20. NEW THINGS. — Ξενίζοντα, that is, foreign things, namely a foreign faith, a foreign God, foreign doctrines; things unheard of at Athens, which you import and preach from elsewhere.
Verse 21: And the Visiting Strangers; Telling or Hearing Some New Thing
21. AND THE VISITING STRANGERS. — The Tigurine: "and the guests, or foreigners, who were sojourning there."
THEY SPENT THEIR TIME IN NOTHING ELSE BUT TO TELL OR TO HEAR SOME NEW THING. — So also Plutarch, in his treatise On Garrulity, reports that the Athenians were marvelously eager for news, and gives the example of a certain barber who, having learned from a slave who had escaped in flight the great disaster sustained by the Athenians in Sicily, left his shop and was the first to announce it in the city; and when he could not produce any source for this sad rumor, as if he had fabricated it himself, he was bound to the wheel and exposed to public ridicule. Soon afterwards messengers arrived who had escaped from that very disaster; and so everyone scattered to their own mourning, leaving the wretched barber bound to the wheel. And he, released at last, asked the lictor: "Had they heard also about Nicias the general of the army: how he had perished?" So unconquerable and incurable an evil does the craving for news become through habit. The same author, in his treatise On the Glory of the Athenians, says they were accustomed to spend more on the workshops of novelty, that is, plays, than on war: "That Spartan," he says, "said not ineptly that the Athenians sinned gravely in expending serious matters on trifles — that is, squandering the provisions and expense of great fleets and armies on the theater." So says Plutarch, who lived in the age of St. Paul and Luke, namely under the Emperor Domitian.
Morally, against novelty: Such people exist even today. For curiosity to see or hear something new is innate in human beings; new things please, new things delight. And because true novelties are not always at hand, hence many invent new things, and tell trifles and fables — often shameful ones — by which they tear at the reputation of their neighbor and hold him up to ridicule before others. Therefore curiosity is pernicious, as is also loquaciousness. Wherefore Euclid, being asked what the gods were like and what they delighted in, said: "Other things I do not know, but I know for certain that the curious are hateful to them"; so Maximus, sermon 21. Socrates always discoursed about morals, not about the stars or meteorology: asked why, he replied: "What is above us is nothing to us." He often used that saying of Homer:
What is done wrong or right in our own house.
So Laertius in his Life of him. Zeno brought to a mirror a certain young man who inquired too curiously about something, and urged him to look at himself. Then he asked whether it seemed fitting to such a face to propound such questions. So Laertius, Book VII, chapter i. Demonax, to a certain man asking whether the world is round and animated, said: "You are solicitous about the world, and do not care for your own filth;" so Maximus, sermon 21. It is told of an Egyptian porter who was carrying something covered with veils, and when someone asked him what he was carrying, he wisely answered: "Therefore it is covered, that you might not know: why do you inquisitively investigate what has been hidden?" Gorgias, hearing someone asking silly things and another answering sillily, said: "Which is more foolish — he who milks a he-goat, or he who holds under a sieve?" Someone wittily said that the Athenians had virtue on their lips but not in their deeds, as Plutarch says in the Laconica, because the talkative are not industrious. Hence those who chatter much accomplish little; for their whole mind is in their tongue, not in their hand. See what is said on Zephaniah chapter iii, 18: "I will gather the triflers who had departed from the law." Truly such men are wasters of time, wasters of words, wasters of gain, wasters of their ears, and often wasters of souls — upon whom Christ thunders: "I say unto you: That of every idle word that men shall speak, they shall render an account in the day of judgment," Matthew chapter xii, verse 36. Why do you seek new things, since there is nothing new under the sun? Ecclesiastes I, 10. "The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor is the ear filled with hearing," ibid., verse 8. A famous example is that of Machetes in Cassian, Book V On the Institutions of the Renouncers, chapter xxix, who in the longest spiritual conference never fell asleep, but in an idle and curious story instantly fell into sleep. And in chapter xxxi he teaches that it is the devil who brings it about that we fall asleep when hearing spiritual things, but wake up and pay attention when hearing fables.
Verse 22: As Though More Superstitious
22. AS THOUGH MORE SUPERSTITIOUS. — He mitigates the reproach with "as though," and by the comparative "more superstitious"; for he would have stung them more by calling them "superstitious" in the positive. The Syriac renders: "I see that you are excessive in the worship of demons"; for in Greek δεισιδαίμων is one who δέδιε τὰ δαιμόνια, that is, fears demons, says Œcumenius. Add that δεισιδαιμονίαν, as well as superstition, is often taken in a good sense for religion, as Plutarch takes it in his book Περὶ δεισιδαιμονίας; Cicero in his fourth action against Verres (when he says of the Sicilians that religion had seized the whole province, and superstition had pervaded the minds of all the Sicilians), and others; otherwise superstition differs from religion by excess, because it is a vain and diminished religion: "For those who prayed whole days and offered sacrifices that their own children might be their survivors were called superstitiosi," says Cicero, book On the Nature of the Gods. So also Servius: "From superstes (survivor)," he says, "is superstition named, which is proper to little old women, who outlive many in age, and who, devoted to vain things, while they wish to be too religious, become superstitious and so rave." Hence the superstitious is sometimes called religious, as in Terence, in the Heauton: "How foolish and miserable we are, all of us religious women." Better, Lactantius, Book II, chapter xxviii, asserts that "superstition" is said of those who worship the surviving memory of the dead as gods; or of those who worshipped their parents who were still surviving. But Isidore, Book VIII of the Etymologies, chapter iii, says: "Superstition was so called as it were 'super-statuted' and superfluous observance." And Lucretius, in Servius on Aeneid VIII, says: "Superstition is the empty fear of things standing above (superstantium) — namely heavenly and divine things that stand above us." Finally Nonius Marcellus thinks that those are called superstitious who, because of the worship of the gods, set aside other things, that is, neglect them; just as the religious, as though "relinquishers," are so called because, having left other things behind, they serve only sacrifices. More truly St. Augustine, book On True Religion, at the end, considers religion to be so named from religare (to bind back): because by it, "with the angels helping, as we strive toward the one God and bind back our souls to Him alone — whence religion is thought to be named — we may be free from all superstition. Behold, I worship one God, the one principle of all things and the one wisdom, by which whatever soul is wise is wise: and the very gift by which whatever things are blessed are blessed. Whoever among the angels loves this God, I am certain that he also loves me." Paul therefore says: I see you, O Athenians, everywhere too religious and superstitious: because everywhere I see your gods, vows, sacrifices, lights — but those gods, first, are false; second, are too many; third, are unknown. For no one prudently worships that which he does not know and of which he is ignorant. I therefore have come here, to change your superstition into true religion, so that in place of false gods you may recognize and worship the true one; in place of many, one; in place of unknown, one certain and known.
Excellently does St. Augustine say, Book IV Of the City of God, chapter xxx: "Let us give thanks," he says, "to the Lord our God, who has overthrown these superstitions — by the most profound humility of Christ, by the preaching of the Apostles, by the faith of the Martyrs dying for the truth and living with the truth — not only in religious hearts, but even in superstitious shrines, by the free service of His own." The same, Book VIII, chapter xvii: "What cause is there then, except pitiable foolishness and error, that you make yourself humble by venerating him (Jupiter, Venus, etc.) to whom you wish to be unlike in your living; and that you worship with religion one whom you will not imitate, when the sum of religion is to imitate Him whom you worship?" And in chapter xxiii, citing Mercury Trismegistus teaching that lifeless and senseless statues are not gods, and that therefore their worship would fall, and saying: "Are you ignorant, O Asclepius," he says, "that Egypt is an image of heaven, and more truly that our land is the temple of the whole world? etc. All their (Egyptians') sacred veneration will be frustrated, coming to naught." Augustine adds: "In which he seems to predict this time, in which the Christian religion, the truer and holier it is, the more vehemently and freely overthrows all fallacious fictions, so that the grace of the Savior frees man from those gods whom man made; and subjects him to the God by whom man was made." Moreover Plato, in the Timaeus, teaches that human souls were blended by God the Craftsman in the same bowl and from the same elements as the heavenly spirits, namely the angels and dæmons: whence we must beware lest we wish to be slaves of those whom God and nature have joined to us as brothers.
Verse 23: Seeing; Your Idols; I Found an Altar on Which Was Written: To the Unknown God
23. SEEING. — ἀναθεωρῶν, that is, inspecting and considering more attentively.
YOUR IDOLS. — Simulacrum (image), in ecclesiastical usage, is taken in a bad sense, for the image of a false deity, or idol. So called from simulando (feigning), because out of longing for the dead it was modeled after their likeness, so that those who had already departed might seem to live. Whence Plautus in the Mostellaria: "When he was born, I would have judged him to be similar and to have his image." Thus an idol is a simulacrum, because it simulates and falsely claims to be a deity. Lactantius, however, Book II of the Institutes, chapter ii, derives simulacrum from simulando (likening), because it is similar to the thing whose image it is; but in that case it should rather be spelled similacrum with an i.
I FOUND ALSO AN ALTAR ON WHICH WAS WRITTEN: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. — So Lucian, in the Philopatris, says that the Gentiles swore by the unknown at Athens.
You will ask, who is this unknown God? First, St. Chrysostom and more fully Œcumenius answer — whose words I will here set down as worth noting: "They give two reasons," he says, "why among the Athenians there was inscribed on an altar: To the Unknown God. For some say that the Athenians had sent Philippides to the Lacedaemonians to bring help, when the Persians were leading an army into Greece. To their messengers, near Mount Parthenium, the apparition of Pan met them; and he accused the Athenians of neglecting him and worshipping other gods, and promised help. And so when they had obtained victory, they erected a temple for him and built an altar, and as though guarding lest the same thing or something similar happen to them if they overlooked any God unknown to them, they set up that altar inscribing: To the Unknown God; saying: If any other is still unknown by us, let this altar be erected by us in his honor, that he may be propitious to us — though, being unknown, he is not worshipped. Others say that a plague once raged at Athens and so scorched them that they could not bear even the thinnest linens. Although they worshipped those who were held among them to be gods, they felt no help. Understanding therefore that perhaps there was some God whom they themselves had left without honor, who had sent the plague, they constructed a new altar and inscribed it: To the Unknown God. And when they had sacrificed, they were immediately cured. Paul therefore says that this one is Christ Jesus, the God of all, whom he declared he was announcing to them. But the whole inscription of the altar is this: Θεοῖς Ἀσίας, καὶ Εὐρώπης, καὶ Λιβύης, Θεῷ ἀγνώστῳ καὶ ξένῳ, that is: To the gods of Asia, Europe, and Libya, to the unknown and foreign God."
But, as Baronius well observes, at Athens there were many altars inscribed to unknown gods in the plural; but one altar was inscribed in the singular: "To the Unknown God." For this is what Paul asserts.
Second, Hugo, Lyranus and Sanchez here, and Michael Syncellus in his Encomium of St. Dionysius, think that the Unknown God at Athens was Christ crucified. For when Dionysius saw the eclipse that occurred at the death and on account of the death of Christ, he exclaimed: "The unknown God suffers in the flesh, and therefore the world is obscured by these shadows," says Syncellus. Therefore the Unknown God is the suffering God, namely Christ crucified. For to Him more than to the others the Athenians had erected an altar, for they considered Him a great God, to whom nature had rendered funeral honors with an admirable change and heavenly mourning.
Third, more probably Baronius, Lorinus and others think that the Athenians, from the Philosophers and Sibyls, and perhaps also from the Jews, had understood that the true God is invisible, hidden, sublime, inaccessible and incomprehensible, and therefore erected to Him an altar with this title: "To the Unknown God." For the Hebrews said that the name of God, Jehovah, was ἀπόρρητον καὶ ἀνεκφώνητον, that is, ineffable, as I said on Exodus vi, 3. Wherefore Clement of Alexandria, Book I Stromata IX, and St. Augustine, Book I Against Cresconius, chapter xxix, teach that the Athenians worshipped one true God, though unknown to themselves. And St. Jerome on Ezechiel chapter xvi says that the majesty of God was not wholly unknown to those Gentiles, as it was not to the Jews who used the ineffable tetragrammaton name. Whence Lucan, Book II: "Of God's nature uncertain" — uncertain, that is, unknown. That this unknown God was the true God, and not some false one from among the gods of the Gentiles, Paul intimates when he adds: "What therefore you worship without knowing, this I announce to you."
You will ask: Why then does he call them superstitious? I answer: First, because together with the unknown God they worshipped the images of the Gentiles and equated them to Him, according to that verse of Isaiah XL, 25: "To whom have you likened Me and made Me equal? says the Holy One." Second, because they called Him unknown: for no one worships or loves what he does not know. For "there is no desire for what is unknown." Third, because they truly did not know Him as they could and ought. For they did not recognize that He was the creator of heaven and earth, the giver of rain, harvest, fruits and all things; that He is present everywhere; that our life and breath is in His hand — wherefore Paul instructs them on these matters. Finally, the devil could lurk and hide under the name of an unknown God; as Nicephorus, Book VII, chapter L, reports that the Argonauts set up an image to the deity directing them, and afterwards St. Michael the Archangel signified to Constantine the Great that He (Michael) had directed them. Thus Christ, John IV, 22, rebukes the Samaritans saying: "You adore what you do not know; we adore what we do know."
An excellent passage indeed concerning the Unknown God occurs in Arnobius, Book I Against the Gentiles, before the middle, in these words: "Thou art, O first Cause, the place of things and their space, the foundation of all things whatsoever exist — infinite, unbegotten, immortal, everlasting, alone, whom no bodily form delineates, whom no limitation of quality determines, free from quantity, without position, motion and habit; concerning whom nothing can be said or expressed by the signification of mortal words; whom, in order to be understood, one must keep silent; and so that wandering surmise may investigate Thee through a shadow, nothing at all must be muttered. Grant pardon, highest King, to Thy servants who persecute Thee, and — as is proper to Thy kindness — pardon those who flee the worship of Thy name and religion. It is no wonder if Thou art not known; it is of greater wonder if Thou wert to be known."
Finely also does Tertullian say, in the Apologetic against the Gentiles, chapter xvii: "He whom we worship," he says, "is the one God, who brought forth out of nothing this whole mass with all the apparatus of elements, bodies, and spirits — by the word with which He commanded, by the reason with which He arranged, by the power by which He was able — for the ornament of His majesty. Whence also the Greeks have applied the name κόσμος to the world. He is invisible, although He is seen; incomprehensible, although through grace He is represented; inestimable, although He is estimated by human senses. So true is He, and so great. But that which can be seen in common, comprehended, and estimated, is less than the eyes which take it in, and the hands which touch it, and the senses which find it. But that which is immense is known to itself alone, this is what He is: He makes Himself to be estimated, while He does not admit of being estimated. For thus does the force of magnitude present Him both known and unknown to men. And this is the height of the fault of those unwilling to recognize Him whom they cannot be ignorant of." St. Cyril, Book III Against Julian: "Hermes Trismegistus," he says, "says that to understand God is indeed difficult, but to speak of Him is impossible. For it is impossible to signify the incorporeal by a body, and not possible to comprehend the perfect by the imperfect, and difficult to compare the eternal with the momentary. Hence if any incorporeal eye goes forth from the body to the contemplation of the Beautiful, and flies up and contemplates, seeking to behold not a figure, not a body, not species, but rather that which can make all things — that which is quiet, tranquil, solid, unchangeable, which is itself all things and alone, which is one, which is itself from itself, itself in itself, like to itself, unlike to any other. For He Himself is all virtue; nor must you think of Him as being in anything, nor again as though outside anything. For He it is who without limit is the limit of all things: and He who is comprehended by none, comprehends all things in Himself." And a little later: "Besides, the most wise Xenophon also says: It is therefore manifest that He is great and mighty, and shakes all things and confirms them; but what His form is is unknown, for neither does the most radiant sun appear to be seen, nor does it seem to permit itself to be beheld; but if anyone impudently gazes at it, he is deprived of his eyes." So says Cyril.
Simonides, being asked by Hiero the tyrant what God was, requested a day for thinking, then two days, then four days, then eight days, etc. When Hiero wondered and asked the reason, he said: "Because the longer I consider it, the more obscure the matter seems to me;" so Cicero, Book I On the Nature of the Gods.
Fourth, by the Unknown God some understand the God who was to appear in the flesh, namely Christ about to be incarnated: for the Athenians could have learned from the Sibyls and from the Hebrews the future incarnation of Christ, and have erected an altar to Him with this title: "To the Unknown God." For Christ before it was unknown and unrecognized to men. This is true, if true are the things which Hilduin, Archbishop of Rheims, writes in the Life of St. Dionysius. For he says thus: "When Paul had passed through all the altars and images of the false gods, among the other altars he found one altar which had the inscription written above it: To an unknown God; and turning to him, Paul asked him, saying: Who is that unknown God? To whom Dionysius replied: 'As yet,' he said, 'that God Himself has not been shown among the gods, but is unknown to us, and is to be in the age to come. For He is the God who shall reign in heaven and on earth, and His kingdom shall have no end.' And so Paul, continuing, said: Will He be man or spirit? Dionysius answered and said: 'True God and true man, and He Himself shall renew the world; but He is as yet unknown to men: for with God in His heaven is His dwelling.' And Paul said: That God I proclaim to you, whom you call unknown. For being born of the Virgin Mary, having suffered under Pontius Pilate, He died for the salvation of mankind, rose again, and ascending into the heavens sits at the right hand of God the Father: true God and true man, through whom all things were made; and He shall come at the end of the age as judge of all that is done: He who is already known in Judea as God, and great in Israel, and holy is His name. Wherefore Him whom you have hitherto held as unknown, now know; for He is the only God, and besides Him there is no other: who redeemed us from death unto life at the price of His blood; who joined heaven and earth — namely man and the angels — into the unity of His kingdom; who, being just, puts to death and, being merciful, gives life; who shuts and no one opens, opens and no one shuts." Hilduin adds that by these and other words of Paul, Dionysius was converted and kindled with the love of Christ, especially when he saw the blind man enlightened by Paul. But the credibility of this narrative rests with Hilduin: for to some it seems apocryphal.
Morally: Learn here the loftiness of God, by which He surpasses and transcends the gaze of all angels and men. "For He dwells in light inaccessible: whom no man has seen, nor can see (by the eyes and vision of mind and of nature)," 1 Timothy 6:16, especially if we look upon the Most Holy Trinity in the one indivisible unity of essence, if we consider the mystery of the Incarnation, the Passion, and the Eucharist. Hence Isaiah 45:15: "Truly Thou art a hidden God, the God of Israel the Saviour;" and the Psalmist, Psalm 17:12: "Who has made darkness His hiding-place." Wherefore the Seraphim, with veiled eyes, cry out to Him: "Holy, holy, holy," Isaiah 6:3. Seneca gives two reasons, Book VII of the Natural Questions, chap. XXX. The first is: "Because," he says, "such is His subtlety and brightness that human vision cannot attain to it." The second: "Because in a holier seclusion such great majesty has been hidden." Add a third from Damascene: "Knowledge," he says, "is of the things that are: but God is above being itself. Therefore He is also above and beyond knowledge, because He is above essence." And a fourth: because He is infinite and immeasurable in every direction, whether you consider His substance, or His power, or His wisdom, or His other attributes. Hear Seneca, Book II of the Questions, chap. XLV: "Do you wish to call Him fate? You will not be in error. He is that from which all things hang suspended, the cause of causes. Do you wish to call Him providence? You will rightly say so: for He is the one by whose counsel this world is provided for, that it may proceed unshaken and carry out its own acts. Do you wish to call Him nature? You will not sin: for He is the one from whom all things have been born, by whose spirit we live. Do you wish to call Him the world? For He Himself is the whole that you see, wholly imparted to His parts and sustaining Himself by His own power."
More divinely, St. Dionysius, in chap. XV of the Celestial Hierarchy, asserts that God is compared to the wind — indeed, that He walks upon the wings of the winds — because of His power of moving and animating, and His swift, insurmountable departure, and the unknown and invisible hiding-places of His noble beginnings and ends. And St. Augustine, Book X of the Confessions, chap. VI, says: "Lord, I love Thee. Thou hast struck my heart with Thy word, and I have loved Thee. But also heaven and earth and all the things that are in them — behold, from every side they tell me to love Thee, nor do they cease to say it to all, that they may be inexcusable. Yet more deeply Thou wilt have mercy on whom Thou hast had mercy, and wilt show mercy to whom Thou hast been merciful. Otherwise heaven and earth speak Thy praises to the deaf. But what do I love, when I love Thee? Not the beauty of a body, nor the adornment of time, nor the brightness of light — lo, so friendly to these eyes — not the sweet melodies of pleasant songs of every kind, not the fragrance of flowers and ointments and spices, not manna and honey, not limbs welcome to the embraces of the flesh. These I do not love, when I love my God: and yet I love a certain light, and a certain voice, and a certain fragrance, and a certain food, and a certain embrace, when I love my God — the light, voice, fragrance, food, embrace of my inner man: where there shines into my soul that which no place contains; and where there sounds that which no time snatches away; and where there is fragrance that no breath scatters; and where there is taste that no satiety diminishes; and where there clings that which no surfeit tears apart. This is what I love, when I love my God. And what is this? I asked the earth, and it said: I am not He: and whatever things are in it confessed the same. I asked the sea and the abysses and the creeping things of living souls, and they answered: We are not thy God; seek above us."
Valerius Maximus saw this through a shadow, Book I, chap. I: "Whatever," he says, "is placed on a lofty height, it is fitting that it be empty of lowly and worn custom, so that it may be more venerable." And Iamblichus, Protrepticus, chap. III: "The knowledge of God," he says, "is perfect happiness," which we cannot attain in this life. Clement of Alexandria, Book V of the Stromata, cites and praises these verses of Orpheus concerning God:
One, perfect through Himself, from One all things were made.
No mortal sees Him,
but He Himself beholds all.
I do not see Him, for a solid cloud is set around in a circle,
And of Cleanthes the Stoic, who thus depicts God:
That which is ordered and religious and holy,
Just, master of itself, seemly and useful,
That which is severe, grave, always profitable,
Free from fear, pain, and annoyance,
Helpful, pleasing, beautifully agreeing with itself,
Bright, not insolent; modest and vehement,
That which endures, and which no one can imitate.
This is the divine darkness which St. Dionysius vividly depicts in his book On Mystical Theology, chap. I and following, where he also calls the soul's highest ascent into God "darkness and light" — darkness to the soul, light to God. From which Tauler, Suso, Ruysbroeck, and other contemplatives drew their doctrines of contemplation concerning entering into the divine darkness.
Clement of Alexandria, Book V of the Stromata, citing this saying of Paul, confirms it by a saying of Euripides:
What house, constructed by architects, could contain
the body of God within the woven circuit of its walls?
And of Zeno, who says "that temples ought not to be made, nor images; for nothing that is composite is worthy of the gods." And of Plato, who says "that God dwells afar off in the region of the ideas, and that the world is the temple of God: wherefore he forbade anyone to have images of the gods in private. For gold and silver," he says, "privately and in sacred things, is an invidious thing: but ivory, which has lost its soul, is an unlawful coinage: while iron and bronze are instruments of wars. But from wood which is compacted from a single piece of wood, let one offer whatever he will: likewise also from stone for common sacred things." Thus Plato.
Verse 24: God Who Made the World; He Does Not Dwell in Temples Made with Hands
24. GOD WHO MADE THE WORLD. — He censures the Epicureans, who denied God and God's providence; and the Stoics, who thought the world existed by fate or by nature. For both denied that the free God had freely created the world. Thus Chrysostom. From the creation therefore and the fashioning of the world, God its Creator can be recognized and ought to be worshipped. "For the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims the works of His hands," Psalm 18:1. Moreover Euripides also says: "The stars in heaven are the variety of a wise craftsman," — namely, of God. See St. Augustine, Book VII Of the City of God, chap. XXIX, where he enumerates and celebrates the chief works of God the Artificer.
HE DOES NOT DWELL IN TEMPLES MADE WITH HANDS, — as though, being corporeal, He delighted in corporeal temples, and were bound, enclosed, and circumscribed by them, just as a king dwells in the royal palace and is circumscribed by its precincts. For God is not bound by place, still less limited by it; but extends Himself above all the heavens through the immense spaces of the void.
Thus St. Justin, Philosopher and Martyr, who lived a hundred years after St. Paul (for he suffered martyrdom in the year of the Lord 165, as Baronius attests), when asked by the Prefect of the city in what place the Christians were accustomed to assemble, answered that each assembled there where he would and could: "For the God of the Christians," he says, "is circumscribed by no place: but since He is invisible, He fills heaven and earth, and is everywhere adored by the faithful, and His glory is celebrated." He added, however, that he himself lodged in the Thermae Timothinae, or Novatianae (which was the house of the senator Pudens, and the common lodging of Christian strangers, and is now the Church of St. Pudentiana: for Pudens was the father of Sts. Timothy, Novatus, Praxedes, and Pudentiana). "But if anyone," he says, "wished to come to me, with him I shared the doctrine of truth." So his Life and Martyrdom has it, which Baronius recounts from the public acts under the year of Christ 163, although the Alexandrine Chronicle, which our Raderus published after Baronius's death, asserts that Justin suffered martyrdom in the year 435 from the ascension of Christ, which was 468 from His nativity.
Verse 25: Neither Is He Worshipped with Human Hands
25. NEITHER IS HE WORSHIPPED WITH HUMAN HANDS, — so that statues, idols, altars, and shrines should be fashioned, erected, and dedicated to Him by the hands of men, in which carnal sacrifices might be offered to Him: as though idols were the members and body of God, altars and shrines His houses and palaces, sacrifices His food and delicacies — as the Gentiles supposed. Yet this does not prevent God from being rightly worshipped by Christians in an image and a statue: for Christians know that God does not depend on the image; but that the image is merely an image, which represents God to men who are led by sense. See what was said on Deuteronomy 5:8. Yet formerly, when the Gentiles were passing over to Christianity, the Fathers carefully guarded against images, and still more against statues, of God, lest the newly converted Gentiles, out of their former habit, should worship them as gods. Hence Lactantius, Book II, chap. II, and Justin, Apology II, forbid that an image of God be made.
The Syriac translates: nor is He ministered to by the hands of men. For the Gentiles were accustomed to render to their gods such services as servants render to their masters, especially to kings — rousing them, clothing them, combing their hair, bathing them, handing them food and drink — just as if their gods had been men; as indeed Jupiter, Venus, Mars, Mercury, and the rest were powerful men, but tyrants and criminals. See St. Augustine, Book VI Of the City of God, chap. X. God therefore does not need this ministry of hands, nor is He worshipped by human services, but by angelic ministries. The Emperor Constantine the Great converted a shrine erected by the Argonauts to the saving Deity — called from it Sosthenium — into a Michaelium, that is, a temple of St. Michael (as Nicephorus attests, Book VII, chap. L), because it was St. Michael who had helped the Argonauts, not Jupiter or any other deity, as the Argonauts had thought. For St. Michael himself, appearing to Constantine, affirmed this.
...He assigns no mishaps, nor day, nor any rest, nor does even a slight moment of His time pass by idle of benefits. Again the Egyptians, says Horus Apollo, Book I Hieroglyph., chap. VI, when wishing to signify God used to paint a hawk, both because this animal is fertile and long-lived, and because it is an image of the sun, inasmuch as it gazes with most intense eyes upon its rays, and the Sun is the visible hieroglyphic of God. Beautifully Horace, Book I Carm.:
Who rules the affairs of men and of gods,
Who tempers the sea and lands, and the world
With its varied seasons.
More sublimely our Boethius, Book III On Consolation, meter 9:
O You who govern the world by perpetual reason;
Founder of earth and heaven, who bid time go from eternity,
And remaining steadfast grant all things to be moved.
And St. Dionysius On the Divine Names, chap. IX: "God is called Great," he says, "both from His own greatness, by which He communicates Himself and with all things that are great, and diffuses and extends Himself through every greatness, contains every place, surpasses every number, transcends every infinity; and from the supreme force and greatness of action, and gifts, which flow as from a fountain from Himself, inasmuch as, although communicated to all with infinite profusion, yet they remain whole, and have the same exuberance of multitude, and are not diminished by communications, but rather even overflow and abound."
AND ALL THINGS. — In Greek, κατὰ πάντα, that is, according to all things, namely the principles and organs required for life and respiration, says Cajetan. But for κατά we should read καὶ τά. For thus St. Chrysostom reads, translating as Our author does, and all things. Wherefore Clement of Alexandria, Book III Paedagog.: "Let us praise," he says, "the one Father and the Son together with the Holy Spirit, who alone is all things, in whom are all things, through whom are all things, who is wholly good, wholly beautiful, wholly wise, wholly just, to whom be glory now and forever." And St. Augustine, sermon 19 on John: "God is all things to you: if you hunger, He is bread; if you thirst, He is water for you; if you are in darkness, He is light for you; if you are naked, He is the garment of immortality for you." The same on Psalm XXVI: "Whatever is besides God is not sweet. Whatever my Lord wishes to give me, let Him take all away, and give Himself to me." Savorly the Psalmist, Psalm XLIV: "Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; and of His greatness there is no end. Generation and generation shall praise Thy works, and they shall declare Thy power. They shall speak of the magnificence of the glory of Thy holiness, and shall tell of Thy greatness. They shall utter the memory of the abundance of Thy sweetness, and shall rejoice in Thy justice. The Lord is sweet to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works. Let all Thy works, O Lord, praise Thee, and let Thy saints bless Thee."
NEEDING ANYTHING, SINCE HE HIMSELF GIVES TO ALL LIFE AND BREATH (spirit, or vital breath) AND ALL THINGS. — To all, understand fittingly, namely to those who have life: for God does not give life to stones. Again take life broadly for any life, even vegetative and sensitive. Less correctly therefore Lyranus limits life to angelic and spiritual. By inspiration, in Greek πνοήν, understand breath, spirit; or, as the Syriac, sensitive soul: for those who have this, breathe. So Cajetan. Further Chrysostom rightly limits this to the rational soul, which God breathed into Adam, Genesis 2:7. For Paul alludes to this: for he is speaking about men, as I have already said. In a similar way Plato, Speusippus and Apuleius, cited in Rhodiginus, Book XII, chap. II, define God thus: "God is an immortal living being, sufficient in Himself for beatitude, eternal essence, the cause of the good itself, incorporeal being, unbounded, blessed, beatific, father of all, best, needing nothing, conferring all things." Moreover God is the cause of all beings: first, efficient; second, final; third, exemplary. Hence Timaeus the Pythagorean calls God the exemplary world: because He Himself is the greatest world of wisdom, of holiness, of intelligence, of life, of reasons, of forms, of species and of things, all of which He holds embraced in Himself and contains, just as the world surrounds us, and all kinds of things within its compass: of which matter Eusebius presents a beautiful Egyptian hieroglyphic, Book III On the Preparation for the Gospel, chap. III.
Wherefore the world is God's book, as St. Anthony used to say, God's tablet, God's song and canticle, as St. Paulinus says, on the 9th Nativity of St. Felix, constantly praising God and proclaiming His majesty and beneficence to all peoples: whence it comes about that no one is so uncivilized and barbarous, who if he looks up to heaven, does not see God as Ruler, does not perceive Him and detect Him as a lion from its claw, as Apelles from a line. For God is as it were an immense and most beneficent sun, because He illumines all things with His light, quickens all things with His warmth, creates and produces all things by His omnipotence. For this cause in Hebrew He is called Shaddai, that is, of the breast, a cornucopia, most sufficient, most liberal. See what has been said on Genesis 17:1. The Gentiles saw the same thing, who painted Isis as a breasted goddess, that is entirely composed of breasts, to represent the fecundity of the earth, the parent and nurse of all. They were in error: for Isis is not a goddess, nor is the earth of itself breasted; but whatever it has, it receives from God. God therefore is wholly breast, wholly teat, constantly nursing the earth, the plants, living beings and men with the milk of His beneficence. Hence Apuleius, Metam., Book XI: "God," he says, [shows] the sweet affection of a mother toward the wretched...Thee. For all things of their own accord seek their Author. For with nature as guide they are referred to God from whom they are born, so that from whence they drew life, they may receive also the nourishment of life and glory, always clinging to their origin. Wherefore fittingly Cassiodorus, defining God on Psalm XLVII: "God," he says, "is inexplicable power, incomprehensible kindness, ineffable wisdom, whose definition is to have no end in the praises of the Saints." This therefore is the philosophy of Christ and Paul, and true and pious theology, which teaches us to have nothing of ourselves, but all things from God: which St. Francis mastered, who often in praying would repeat: "Lord, who art Thou? who am I? Thou art all, I am nothing: Thou art the abyss of being and of good, I am the abyss of nothingness and of evil. To Thee therefore I prostrate myself with abyssal humility and reverence, my God and all things."
Verse 26: He Made of One All Mankind to Dwell upon the Whole Face of the Earth
26. AND HE MADE OF ONE. — The Greek adds blood: because from the one blood and flesh of Adam the first-formed, all men are propagated and descended: therefore from blood, that is, from man, by synecdoche. Blood signifies the manner of propagation, namely by generation, which is accomplished by seed, which is nothing other than blood more concocted, and therefore purer and nobler. Why God willed all to be born from one, St. Augustine gives the cause, Book XII Of the City of God, chap. XXI: "That in this way the unity of society and the bond of concord might be more forcefully commended to man, if men were bound not only by the similarity of nature among themselves, but also by the affection of kinship; and for that reason He produced Eve from Adam."
TO DWELL UPON THE WHOLE FACE (that is, surface) OF THE EARTH. — For the whole earth is habitable and inhabited: whence the Antipodes inhabit the earth opposite us. See what was said on Genesis X. As if to say: God not only created men, but also continuously governs them, and defines the place and time of life for each one.
Appointing the set times, — as if to say: God has predefined for each man, nation and kingdom his own measure of time and age, namely that man should live seventy or eighty years, Psalm 89:10; that these men should first be born and rule, then these and those; that the Assyrians should obtain the first monarchy, the Persians the second, the Greeks the third, the Romans the fourth. Paul notes the Athenians, who boasted of being the most ancient and first of all men, and called themselves αὐτόχθονας, that is, earthborn, descended from their own land: so Cicero, oration For Flaccus.
And the bounds of their habitation, — as if to say: God has prescribed to each nation a limit both of time and of the place in which it dwells, lest it occupy or invade a neighbor's place. This is what Moses sings, Deuteronomy 32:8, saying: "He appointed the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the children of Israel."
Verse 27: That They Should Seek God, If Perhaps They May Feel After Him; Although He Is Not Far From Every One of Us
27. TO SEEK GOD, — as if to say: To this end God so distributes and orders men through times and places, that they may investigate and seek Him, know, love, and worship Him. For the world is as it were an animal, whose spirit and as it were soul is God; whose eyes are the moon and the sun; whose liver, veins, blood and phlegm are fountains, veins and rivers; whose offspring are the trees, herbs, flowers, animals, men: all of which God vivifies, quickens, cherishes and nourishes. Whence from these He can easily be found and known. See Theodoret in the ten sermons which he eruditely wrote on God's providence, or on the Deity; and our Lessius on the same subject; and Cicero, Book II On the Nature of the Gods; and St. Anselm, in the Monologion and Proslogion. Plato, in the Cratylus, says ἥλιος, that is, the sun, is named from "turning," because by its rays, light, warmth, and efficacy it turns all things and all eyes toward itself: God does this much more, who is an immense sun both in light and in warmth and in beneficence toward all and each. Truly St. Justin, cited by Damascene, Book I Paralip., chap. LXV: "As the good of the body," he says, "is health, so the good of the soul is knowledge of God: which is as it were a certain health of the soul, through which the divine likeness is acquired." The same, cited by Antony, in Melissa, Book II, sermon XLIII: "The end of philosophizing is to be assimilated to God, as far as is possible."
IF PERCHANCE THEY MIGHT FEEL AFTER HIM. — In Greek, ψηλαφήσειαν, that is, let them touch Him, as a blind man in the darkness, groping, tests out the path and the place. So Pagninus, Vatablus and others. It means that God cannot be seen and clearly known by us in this life, and that we, as it were blindly, by groping at the traces of God, namely creatures, come to knowledge of Him. For as a blind man by groping arrives at the place to which he is going, so we by groping and tracking creatures arrive at God their Creator. Truly St. Augustine, epistle 120 to Honoratus, chap. III, and tract 1 on John: "As a blind man placed in the sun," he says, "the sun is present to him, but he himself is absent from the sun: so every fool, every iniquitous man, so every impious man is blind in heart; wisdom is present to him, but when present to a blind man, it is absent from his eyes, not because it is absent from him, but because he is absent from it." Say the same proportionally of any man, even a just one: for every man with respect to God is blind. For although God is wholly light, yet He is light to Himself alone, by which He perceives all things most clearly, but to us He is transcendent and inaccessible light. Tiberius Caesar had eyes so bright that in darkness by their light he saw all nearby things, says Suetonius in his Life; God has far brighter eyes: therefore seeing all things, He is seen by none. The sense therefore is, if perchance men might feel after God, not by bodily touch, but by a metaphorical and mental one, that is, if they might reach, find and know God with the mind, so as to venerate, love and invoke Him: know Him, I say, from His operation and production of fruits and of all things. For as a blind man, if he were in the densest woods, or in a most crowded house, if he moved even slightly, would bump into trees, walls, or other things: so everywhere God meets, indeed rushes upon, man. For who, if he more deeply considers his body and its members and organs, so many and so varied; if his soul and its senses, powers, motions and actions; if his being, so wondrous and manifold; especially when he does not understand by what reason these things were made and are made, would not at once conclude that there is a divinity within himself, who fashioned this fabric like a clock, fitted with so many machines and organs, set it in order, safeguards and governs it; who stirs up those admirable motions, who by divine art mingles, tempers and most closely joins into one composite that stupendous harmony of body and soul, of senses and members, of mind and flesh among themselves? So Sanchez. For in every thing and every motion one must come to some immovable principle, as to a first cause. Whence Plato, in the Timaeus, defines God to be one same, and always similar to Himself, the one unbegotten principle of all things. For if He were begotten, certainly He would not be a principle, but produced by another principle. See St. Augustine, Book VIII Of the City of God, chap. VI.
ALTHOUGH, — καίτοιγε, that is, although, or for. Whence the Syriac translates, since indeed, and that is very fitting here, as if to say: It is easy to find God, since indeed He Himself is not far from any one of us. Our author however, Pagninus, the Tigurine edition and others translate although: let us therefore follow this and expound it.
ALTHOUGH HE IS NOT FAR FROM EVERY ONE OF US. — Lest anyone should think, from what Paul had said — "To seek God, if perchance they might feel after Him, or find Him" — that God is absent from us: for we seek and find absent things; as it were correcting this, he explains by adding that God is not far from each one of us, both in situation and place, but rather in operation: for from this it is easy to feel after and to know God, inasmuch as He gives us life, motion, food and all things, as follows, as if to say: As the sea is not far from the fish, because fish are generated, nourished and live in it and from it, whence they perceive it: so God is not far from us, because in Him and from Him as from a sea of all goods we draw life, motion and all things: whence it is easy to feel after Him and to know Him. For although He Himself is an invisible spirit, nevertheless through these His effects He shows Himself to be known and as it were felt by blind men. "God," says St. Augustine, Book VII Of the City of God, chap. XXX, "everywhere whole, enclosed by no places, bound by no chains, divisible into no parts, changeable in no part, filling heaven and earth with His present power, not absent in nature. From this one and true God we hope for eternal life."
Gabriel Vasquez shrewdly notes, part I, disp. XXVIII, chap. IV, num. 17, that Paul here does not directly and of set purpose treat of God's immensity, but of how easily He can be felt by us from His works, not with hands, but with mind, that is, can be known and worshipped. For God is near to us by His operation, indeed most inward, like the air in which we live and which by breathing we draw in. As therefore we as it were feel and sense the air by breathing, while it cools us; so we know and as it were feel after God operating in us. Wherefore less correctly do Cajetan and others gather from this passage that God's reason and foundation for existing in things is His operation itself, as in bodies quantity is the reason for filling place. For operation is the sign and effect of God's and an angel's presence, not its cause. For it is prior that God, or an angel, be present somewhere, than that He operate there, indeed often an angel is present, and does nothing. Paul therefore here treats rather of the presence of the divine operation, as if to say: We perceive God's operation in us: for He Himself works in us life, motion and existence; for in Him we live, we move and we are: therefore He is not unknown to us, as you Athenians think, but can most easily be known and felt after from His operation. Yet it is true that God's operation is joined with the presence of the divine substance, and presupposes it: for because God is immense, hence He is everywhere present according to substance, nor can He operate anywhere unless He be present, because that requires it — not operation, or God's mode of operating, but His immensity. For if He operated somewhere where He is not, He would not be immense, and consequently would not be God, nor could He operate as God. Furthermore God can be perceived and felt after from operation, not from presence, since He is a spirit and invisible. All these things Paul here signifies. The sense therefore is, as if to say: God is present to us, even though He is not seen by us. For He is immense and everywhere: whence also everywhere He operates and presents Himself to all to be known. From operation therefore you can know God, that is, the first cause, the first and immense being, for this, as it is everywhere, so everywhere operates. It is otherwise with the sun, which absent operates at a distance, because it is not immense. Add that, as we perceive place, for instance air, by respiration, cooling or heat, so also God: for God is the place of places. This sense I will explain more at length presently.
Verse 28: For in Him We Live, and Move, and Are; As Certain Also of Your Own Poets Have Said: For We Are Also His Offspring
28. For in Him we live, and move, and are. — Not as though we were situated in God's very substance and were part of it, as some have stupidly imagined, says St. Cyril, Book IX on John, chap. XL; St. Augustine, Book IV On Genesis according to the Letter, chap. XII. But first, "in Him," that is, through Him, says St. Cyril. For Paul proves that God gives to all life, breath and all things, from the fact that in Him, that is, through Him, we live, move and are. Therefore we are in Him as in a cause efficient and conserving, that is, continually as it were creating: for conservation is the continuation of creation, and a continuous creation. For God conserves our soul, life, motion, sense and essence, always flowing them into us, just as He originally created them; just as the sun conserves its rays, continually emanating and producing them.
Secondly, concomitantly we are in Him, as in a continent and a divine place, as I have already said. "God is near," says Seneca, epistle 41, "to thee: and when He is, He is within. A sacred spirit sits within us." For God, as He is the age of ages, so He is the space of spaces and the place of places, without whom no place is, or can be. For as every being flows from God's essence, and all time and every duration flows from God's eternity; so also every space and every place flows from God's immensity, as our Lessius learnedly teaches, Book On the Divine Attributes, treating of God's immensity. God therefore is as it were a certain immense sea extended through infinite spaces, in which the world and all things that are in it float, as a sponge in the ocean, says St. Augustine, Book VII Confess., chap. V.
Wherefore learnedly and elegantly St. Gregory, describing God's immensity, Book II Moralia, chap. VIII: "He Himself," he says, "remains within all things, Himself outside all things, Himself above all things, Himself below all things: and He is superior through power and inferior through sustaining, exterior through greatness, interior through subtlety: ruling from above, holding together from below, encompassing from without, penetrating within: nor is He on one side superior, on another inferior; or on one side exterior, and on another remaining interior; but one and the same whole, everywhere by presiding sustaining, by sustaining presiding, by encompassing penetrating, by penetrating encompassing: whence presiding above, thence sustaining below; and whence surrounding without, thence filling within: without disquiet ruling above, without labor sustaining below; within without attenuation penetrating, without without extension encompassing. He is therefore both inferior and superior without place, more ample without breadth, subtler without attenuation."
And Minucius Felix, in the Octavius, responding to the Gentiles who objected that Christians worship a God whom they did not see: "Rather," he says, "from this we believe in God, because we can perceive Him, although we cannot see Him. For in His works, and in all things of the world we behold His power ever present, when it thunders, flashes, strikes with lightning, when it clears." And shortly after: "You who cannot bear even the sun's maker, the very fount of light; when you turn yourself away from its flashes, hide yourself from its bolts?" And below: "He is everywhere not only near to us, but infused in us. Turn again to the sun: fixed in the sky, but diffused through all lands: equally present everywhere He is engaged, and is mingled with all (for nowhere is His brightness violated): how much more does God, Author of all and Beholder of all, from whom no secret can be concealed, pervade the darkness, pervade our thoughts, as if these were other darknesses? Not only do we act under Him; but with Him, I might almost say, we live."
In God therefore, as in an infinite ether, we live and move, within Him we stand and dwell: He penetrates us with His essence and substance, penetrates the whole body, and the whole of our soul and all its recesses, angles and hiding places: we cannot go out of Him, because He is everywhere: and because He is immutable, where He once is, He always is. For this reason Paul says pointedly: In Him we live, not through Him, to signify that God is so the efficient cause of our life, that He is also local and as it were material, inasmuch as He supplies to us every matter of bodily life and essence, and the whole subject, just as the sea supplies fish, but by far a better reason. For God created matter from nothing, and by conserving as it were continuously creates it: the sea however receives it created by God, and imparts it to the fish. As therefore fish live in water and from water by a natural sympathy and dependence, so that they cannot live outside it: so we live in God and from God, so that we cannot live outside Him, to such an extent that if, by an impossibility, God did not exist in us, or in the place in which we are, we could not exist and subsist in the same. For as our substance depends on God's substance: so our existence in place depends on God's existence in the same place, as a ray on the sun, as an embryo on mother and matrix, as a bird on the air, as a man on breathing; and more plainly as the body lives, is moved, is and is sustained by the soul. As therefore it can be said of the soul, that in it we live, move and are, so much more is the same said of God: for He Himself is the soul not only of the body, but also of every soul, everywhere present to it and vivifying, moving and sustaining it. See therefore how we are joined to God physically, and morally ought to be joined, that as often as we draw the air, so often we may draw God, think of and invoke Him, in whom as in the air we live, move and are. So St. Chrysostom: "As," he says, "it is impossible to be ignorant of the air, diffused everywhere, and not far from every one of us, so assuredly also of the Maker of all things. See how he says all things are His, the providence is His; conservation is from Him; operative power; that it has act, and does not perish." Profoundly Lyranus: "He," he says, "is more inward to us than we ourselves: because He Himself joins the intrinsic principles, by which, namely, each of us is substantially constituted." Furthermore God is in us, and we in turn are in God, as light is in the air, and the air in the light. See St. Augustine, Book IV On Genesis according to the Letter, chap. XII, and Book XIV On the Trinity, chap. XII; and St. Cyril, Book III on John, chap. XL.
Thirdly, in God we live, move and are, as in a circle, or a wheel enclosing and surrounding us. Whence Empedocles: "God," he says, "is a circle whose center is everywhere, its circumference nowhere." And the circle is a symbol of the perfection and eternity of God, as Pierius teaches, Hieroglyph., Book XXXIX. Divinely St. Dionysius, chap. VII On the Divine Names, says that the divine Monad, or unity in three persons, diffuses Himself from the heavenly things into all things, even the lowest, as being the first, he says, principle and cause of all essence; and that He contains the same in an excellent manner with His embrace, which is invincible.
Fourthly, juridically in God, that is in God's dominion and jurisdiction we live, and by Him we are surrounded, so that we cannot escape His right and hand, according to that of Psalm 138:7: "Whither shall I go from Thy spirit, and whither shall I flee from Thy face? if I ascend into heaven, Thou art there: if I descend into hell, Thou art present," etc., but He Himself as a potter forms, moves, rules, changes us, as He wills. Whence St. Augustine on that of Matthew VI: Our Father, etc. "God," he says, "is in Himself, as Alpha and Omega; in the world, as Ruler and Author: in the angels, as savor and beauty: in the Church, as the father of the household in his house; in the soul, as the Bridegroom in the bridal chamber; in the just, as Helper and Protector; in the reprobate, as dread and horror."
And Aristotle, or whoever is the author, in the book On the World: "What," he says, "the steersman is in a ship, the charioteer in a chariot, the precentor in a chorus, the law in a city, the commander in an army, this same thing God is in the world;" and consequently the world in turn is in God, as a kingdom is in the king by whom it is ruled. This preposition in, therefore, signifies that we depend intimately on God, and that God is as it were our soul and life, according to that of St. Augustine, sermon 18 On the Words of the Apostle: "The life of the body is the soul, the life of the soul is God." For man, and any thing whatsoever, depends more on God than on himself: because both its matter and its form are not of itself, but has all its being from God, and it has that for as long as it pleases God. For if He should withdraw His hand from it, immediately every thing falls back into its nothingness, from which it was drawn out by God through creation. Therefore we depend more on God than rays on the sun, light on brightness, heat on fire, life on the soul, breathing on breath. And this is the reason why we ought to love God more than ourselves, that is, our life and soul: because, namely, we and the whole universe, of which we are part, depend more on God, as on a fontal principle, than on ourselves. So D. Thomas and the Scholastics, II-II Quaest. XXVI, art. 3.
Morally: "in Him we live" signifies first, that from our life and soul we easily ascend by grade to God. Whence St. Augustine, Book VII Confessions, chap. X, having cited these words of Paul: "And thence," he says, "being admonished to return to myself, I entered into my innermost parts, with Thee as leader, and I was able, because Thou wast made my helper. I entered, and saw with some sort of eye of my soul, above that same eye of my soul, above my mind, the immutable light of the Lord — not this common one visible to all flesh, nor as it were of the same kind. It was greater, as if this one should shine much, much more clearly, and occupy the whole with its magnitude. It was not this, but another; another very different from all these. Nor was it above my mind as oil is above water, nor as heaven above earth, but superior: because it made me; and I was inferior, because I was made by it. Whoever knows truth, knows it; and whoever knows it, knows eternity. Charity knows it. O eternal truth, and true charity, and dear eternity! Thou art my God, to Thee I sigh day and night."
Secondly, "in Him" signifies that God holds in His hand our life, our breath, our being, and consequently our grace and glory, our eternal felicity and damnation. "In Thy hands are my lots," says David, Psalm 30:16. This is what Daniel thunders, announcing ruin to king Belshazzar: "Gods," he says, "of silver and gold, etc., thou hast praised. Moreover the God who has thy breath in His hand, and all thy ways, thou hast not glorified," Daniel 5:23.
Symbolically, in God Himself we live and are as in an exemplary cause: for the Ideas of us all, according to which we have been established, are properly in God: for in Him, says St. Augustine, live the eternal reasons of all things. In God therefore I am and live, because my Idea and exemplar properly is, and lives in God. See St. Thomas and the Scholastics, part I, Quaest. XV.
Again, in God, that is in God's mind, wisdom, will, care and providence we live, move and are. For He always thinks of us, cares for our affairs, rules, directs, and provides for us in all things. If therefore we wish to be grateful, we ought continually to think in turn of our God, to obey Him and to please Him in all things. For as there is no moment in which we do not enjoy God's benefits, so there should be no moment in which we do not think of Him. For who would forget his own soul, or his own breath in which he lives, moves and is? Thus St. Dominic, St. Thomas and other Saints continually spoke of God or with God. Thus St. Augustine in the Soliloquies, chap. XVIII: "At every moment," he says, "Thou bindest me to Thyself, Lord, while at every moment Thou bestowest on me Thy great benefits; as therefore there is no hour or point in all my life in which I do not use Thy benefit, so there should be no moment in which I do not have Thee before my eyes, in my memory, and do not love Thee with all my strength." Wherefore God, as He is the center of our soul, so He ought to be the center of all our thoughts, intentions and actions.
The same thing Cassian elegantly teaches, Conferences XXIV, chap. VI, by the example of a vault, or arched roof, whose roundness must meet together and be fastened at the center, otherwise it will fall down: "So also," he says, "unless our mind, holding only the charity of the Lord as an immovably fixed center, turning about through all the moments of our works and undertakings the compass of charity, shall have either fitted or repelled the quality of all thoughts, it will in no way construct with probable art that structure of the spiritual edifice, of which Paul is the architect, 1 Corinthians III, nor will it possess the beauty of that house, which blessed David, desiring to exhibit in his heart to his Lord, said: 'Lord, I have loved the beauty of Thy house, and the place where Thy glory dwelleth.'"
And St. Augustine, book On the Spirit and the Soul, chap. XVII, or whoever is the author. For that it is not by St. Augustine, but by someone later than him, is clear from chap. XXXVII, where he cites Boethius, who was killed by Theodoric, king of the Goths, in the year of Christ 526, whereas St. Augustine lived around the year of Christ 420. And in chap. XLVIII, he cites many things from Gennadius, book On Ecclesiastical Dogmas, who is likewise later than Augustine. This author, I say, piously and elegantly describing God's common and proper benefits, and His care and providence, adds: "These and many other things my God has done for me, of which it is sweet to me always to speak, always to think, always to give thanks, that for all His benefits I may be able always to praise and love Him. For since He presides over all, fills each one, is everywhere present, bears care of all, and provides both for each and for all, I see Him so entirely occupied with my custody, that if I should stand over my custody, it is as if He had forgotten all and wished to attend to me alone. He always shows Himself present, always offers Himself ready, if He finds me ready. Wherever I turn myself, He does not desert me, unless I first desert Him. Wherever I shall be, He does not depart from me, since He is everywhere, so that wherever I go I find Him, with whom I can be. Whatever I do, He is present with me, as perpetual inspector of all my thoughts, intentions and actions. When I diligently consider these things, I am equally confounded with fear and with great shame, because I behold Him present to me everywhere, and seeing all my hidden things. For there are many things in me, of which I blush before His eyes, and for which I greatly fear to displease Him. Nor for all these things have I anything to repay Him, except only that I love Him. For nothing is better or more fitting than that what has been given through love should be repaid through love."
Wherefore St. Bernard, book On the Way of Living Well, chap. XXIX, gives this pious and salutary teaching to his sister: "Sin there, where thou dost not know God to be. For nothing is concealed before God. He sees hidden things, who made the hidden. The Lord is everywhere present. The Spirit fills all. The Majesty of the omnipotent God penetrates all elements, there is no place outside God. The Lord knows the thoughts of men." Again St. Augustine, sermon 255 On the Season: "In us," he says, "two altars are established, namely of our body and of our heart. God requires a double sacrifice from us: one, that we be of chaste body; the other, that we ought to be of pure heart. Therefore on the exterior altar, that is in our body, let good works be offered; in the heart let holy thought give forth the odor of sweetness, so that the heart, as it were the altar of incense, may continually breathe forth from God the incense of praise and thanksgiving." The same, Book XIV On the Trinity, chap. XII: "Great," he says, "is a man's misery to be without Him, without whom he cannot be, that is, subsist. For in whom he is, without doubt without Him he is not; and yet if he does not remember Him, and does not understand and love Him, he is not with Him." These things physically concerning natural being, by which we naturally live, move and are in God.
Mystically, these things are truer in the supernatural order and grade. For supernaturally we live in God through grace, we are moved through charity and the other virtues, we are through the highest union with God, by which, being partakers of the divine nature, we have been made a new and supernatural creature. For through justification God becomes present in the soul of the just man in a new way, so that if, by an impossibility, He had not previously been present in it by essence, presence and power, forthwith by the power of grace and justice He would be made present by essence, presence and power, as I have shown from D. Thomas, Suarez and other Scholastics on Hosea 1:10. Whence St. Ambrose, book On the Good of Death, last chapter: "We are moved," he says, "in God, as in a way; we are, as in the truth; we live, as in eternal life." And St. Cyprian, book On the Baptism of Christ, applies these things to the Most Holy Trinity: "In the Father," he says, "we are, in the Son we live, in the Holy Spirit we are moved and advance." This is what Isaiah says, chap. 26:12, that God works in us all our works, likewise all in all, as Paul says, 1 Corinthians 12:6, and that He works in us to will and to accomplish, Philippians 2:23. This is what Christ distinctly asserts, John 14:23: "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him; and We will come to him, and make Our abode with him."
"In Thee therefore, O Lord, we live, move and are, as an infant in the bosom, indeed in the womb of the mother, by whom he is begotten, formed, nourished, and receives all his being; as a little fish in the sea, as a bird in the air, as herbs and grasses in the earth, as those sailing in a ship, as those riding in a chariot. For Thou art the chariot of Israel and its charioteer, Thou sustainest and bearest us as a chariot: as a charioteer Thou governest, directest and leadest us by right paths to heaven. Why do I ask that Thou come into me, who would not be, unless Thou wert in me? Or rather would I not be, unless I were in Thee?" says St. Augustine, I Confessions, chap. II.
"In Thee, that is, in Thy memory, understanding and will we always live; Thou art continually mindful of us, thinkest, disposest and orderest. Grant that we likewise may always live, so that we remember nothing but Thee, understand, will, and love nothing but Thee, so that by tracking Thee we may daily more and more know and love Thee. For what," says St. Augustine, Book I of the Confessions, chap. 14, "are You, my God? What, I ask, but the Lord God? For who is Lord but the Lord, or who is God but our God? Most high, best, most powerful, most almighty, most merciful and most just, most hidden and most present, most beautiful and most strong, stable and incomprehensible, immutable yet changing all things, never new, never old, renewing all things, and leading the proud into decrepitude, and they know it not. Always active, always at rest; gathering, yet not in need; carrying, and filling, and protecting; creating, and nourishing, and perfecting; seeking, though nothing is lacking to You: You love, but do not burn; You are zealous, and yet secure; You repent, yet do not grieve; You are angered, yet tranquil; You change Your works, but not Your counsel; You receive what You find, yet have never lost anything; never poor, yet You rejoice in gain; never greedy, yet You demand usury: and more is given to You so that You may owe, and who possesses anything that is not Yours? You repay debts, owing nothing to anyone; You forgive debts, losing nothing. And what do we say, my God, my life, my holy sweetness? Or what does anyone say when he speaks of You? And woe to those who are silent about You, for the talkative are mute."
And from these things gather and measure how great is the divine goodness and beneficence, both present and still more future; and how great are the goods and joys which God has prepared in heaven for those who love Him — measure them by this standard and rule. For, as St. Eucherius says in his letter to Valerian: "Since God in this life bestows such glorious things on the just and unjust alike, what must we think of what He reserves for the just? Let us consider: He who has given so much, how much will He restore? He who is so great in gifts, how great will He be in rewards? If the generosity of the giver is so inestimable, what will be the generosity of the rewarder? Unspeakable are the things God has prepared for those who love Him: how greatly will He repay the good, who so greatly bestows upon the ungrateful?"
How then ought we to have God always present in mind and always represent His presence to ourselves, so that we may do, will, and think nothing unworthy of Him that would offend His eyes! How holy it behooves us to be, who live, move, and have our being in holiness itself, in God, I say, as in an uncreated temple! Philo in turn said, and from him Lactantius in his book On the Wrath of God, chap. 14, that "the whole world is a certain most holy temple, worthy of God." Much more is the microcosm, namely man, especially the faithful and holy man, a living and animated temple of God, in which God dwells substantially, and therefore in it he can and must always contemplate, revere, and worship Him. "Let this," says Nazianzen in his Sentences, "be your perpetual study: to construct your mind as a temple to God: for thus you will have Him as a spiritual statue in your inmost heart." Thus St. Gorgonia, sister of Nazianzen, presented herself as a living temple to God, and therefore dying she uttered this swan-song: "In peace in Him I will sleep and rest," as he himself testifies in oration 11, which is about St. Gorgonia.
IN HIM WE LIVE, AND MOVE, AND ARE. — These three, as antistrophes, correspond to and confirm the three things which Paul said men receive from God in verse 25, when he says: "Since He Himself gives to all life, and breath, and all things," as if to say: God gives us life, because in Him we live; He gives respiration, because in Him we move: for respiration itself is motion; for it is a continual inhalation and exhalation of air, which is produced by the contraction and dilation of the lungs like bellows, to cool the heart. Again, respiration is conjoined with motion: for those things which have motive power breathe: hence when they move more strongly, they breathe more: for motion excites heat, which must be cooled and tempered by respiration. Finally, He Himself gives all things, because in Him we are, that is, from Him we suck and draw all our being, all that we have, all that we are: for besides life and motion, we have many other things from God.
Note: In God we live, not formally, as if He Himself were the formal cause of our life, as some have held: and the heretical Apollinarists denied Christ as man a mind and soul, saying that His divinity fulfilled their office. Again, some Scholastics held that the life which consists in the vision of God occurs by the mere influx of the divinity or light of glory into the soul, so that the soul does nothing, nor actively elicits the act of beatific vision, but holds itself merely passively, only receiving it. But these views contradict both Philosophy and Theology, which teach that vital acts, such as vision, intellection, love, etc., have an essential order to the soul of the living being in which they exist, so that they must vitally flow and be produced from it: otherwise they would not be vital acts, but dead qualities and actions. For a vital act is distinguished from a non-vital one in that the former proceeds vitally from an intrinsic principle, the latter does not.
Note secondly, the phrase in whom we move. From this it is clear that God immediately concurs with every one of our motions, just as with every operation of a secondary cause; and therefore from this the Apostle rightly concludes that God is not far from us, but is everywhere present; because, namely, everywhere He immediately touches not only us, but also all our movements and actions, and cooperates with them, so that without His concurrence and cooperation we could neither extend a finger, nor produce the smallest nod or motion. Thus the Scholastics, with St. Thomas, I part, Question XVIII, article 4, ad 1, teach against Durandus, in Book II, distinction I, Question V (where he teaches that God only gives and conserves the motive power, but does not concur with the motion itself). For every thing depends on and flows from God: therefore action too does; for action itself is a thing and a certain being.
Gabriel Vasquez, and Sanchez after him, take genus not as offspring, but as work, as if to say: We are the work and creature of God. Hence Clement of Alexandria, Book V of the Stromata, near the end: "We are of His genus," he says, namely by creation: for γένος signifies not only to beget, but also to produce. Hence the book is called Genesis, in which the creation and production of things is narrated. Thus in Job 38, God is called the father of rain, that is, its producer; so that the sense is, as if to say: If we who are His genus, that is, the work of God, far surpass wooden and stone idols — indeed, these images are formed by the hand of man — much more does God surpass them: wherefore it is impious to equate those with God or to worship them as God.
But others commonly take genus as offspring and progeny. Thus the Greek poets call the Heroes διογενεῖς, διοτρεφεῖς and δίους, that is, begotten by God, nourished by God, and divine. Man therefore is of the genus of God, who is created to the image and likeness of God, as it were God's offspring and son; who therefore participates in His essence beyond other creatures, and in the highest grade of being, namely a rational nature. See what was said on Genesis chap. 2. Far more excellently and more perfectly are we of the genus, that is, sons of God, through grace, by which we are adopted as sons of God, even partakers of the divine nature, as St. Peter says in 2 Peter 1:4. Hence St. Gregory, Book XX of the Morals, chap. xvi, and Bede: "We are," they say, "of the genus of God, not because we are of God's substance or a part of it, but because we have been re-created through His Spirit, and voluntarily through adoption," for in justification not only some quality, such as grace and charity, but the very Holy Spirit Himself, and the whole Holy Trinity, is given to us, as I said a little before, which unites us to itself substantially and transforms us, as it were, into itself, so that we may be of His same genus and same body, and thus one genus with Him, nay, one spirit, as it is said in 1 Corinthians 6:17. Thus St. Gregory of Nyssa writes about his brother St. Basil the Great in his Funeral Oration: "Indeed his (Basil's) genus and kinship was with God: but his fatherland was virtue." Further, from the fact that we are God's genus, the Apostle rightly confirms his statement, that in Him we live, move, and have our being, since we are the genus of God in such a way that we are intimately united to Him and His substance, and are wholly penetrated and possessed by Him; and consequently that God is not remote from us, nor unknown, as the Athenians thought; but known and near, not only in place, but also in knowledge and substance: because we are of the genus and stock of God, as it were His offspring and progeny; for Aratus, as is clear from his verses cited a little before, says that we are the genus of God in such a way that He, turning in every direction, fills and completes all things (namely the macrocosm, and much more the microcosm, that is, men) with Himself and His divine power, that is, with His substance, presence, operation, and continual beneficence, and that we all need Him, and use Him, and enjoy Him perpetually, namely while we live, move, and are in Him, as the Apostle explains.
AS CERTAIN ALSO OF YOUR OWN POETS (the Syriac: of the wise men: for the Poets of the Gentiles were Wise men and as it were Prophets) HAVE SAID. — Virgil, Georgics IV:
For God goes through all
lands and the tracts of the sea and the deep heaven.
From this come flocks, herds, men, and every race of wild beasts,
each one drawing its tender life at birth from Him.
Plato, and from him Virgil, Aeneid VI:
A Spirit within sustains, and Mind, infused through the members,
stirs the whole mass, and mingles with the great body.
Thence the race of men and of beasts, and the life of flying things.
If God is the soul of the world and of the macrocosm, much more is He the soul of the microcosm, namely, of man. Lucan, Book IX:
Jupiter is whatever you see, wherever you move.
Again:
All things are full of Jove.
Ennius in Cicero, Book II On the Nature of the Gods:
You see above the boundless, outpoured aether,
which embraces the earth in its tender compass;
hold this to be the highest god, call this Jove.
Aratus has similar things, of whom shortly.
FOR WE ARE ALSO HIS OFFSPRING. — These are the words of Aratus in the Phaenomena. Aratus was an ancient and famous Poet, a favorite of King Antiochus, in the 125th Olympiad, in the year 472 after the founding of Rome; his native country was Soli, not far from Tarsus; and therefore he was almost a fellow citizen of Paul. He wrote excellently about the stars and celestial signs; hence Cicero translated his verses into Latin in Book II On the Nature of the Gods. Aratus therefore begins thus:
The beginning is from Jove, whom we never leave
unsung: all the crossroads are full of Jove,
all the gatherings of men, and the sea is full,
and the harbors; and everywhere we all have need of Jove.
Some, instead of "we have need," translate "we use" or "we enjoy," as if χρεώμεθα were derived from χρῶμαι, that is "I use," not from χρηίζω, that is "I need." But χρῶμαι is construed with the dative, χρηίζω with the genitive; such as is here Διός, that is "of Jove":
For we are indeed of His genus.
Paul cites only this hemistich for the sake of brevity, and because it suffices to confirm what he had said: "In Him we live, and move, and have our being." Aratus adds that Jove provided the fixed times of sowing, germinating, reaping, etc. Whence he concludes: "Hail, Father, great wonder, great benefit to men." Morally, by Paul's example learn that the sayings of the pagans are to be cited by a Christian preacher rarely and soberly: on which our Lorinus has much here.
But the first sense is genuine, as is clear to one who examines Aratus. Hence the ancient Philosophers and Poets, such as Orpheus in the Hymns, Soranus, Varro, and Philo, say that God is both father and mother to creatures, namely, that He is μητροπάτωρ and πατρομήτωρ, that is, mother-father and father-mother. First, because, just as a man receives his being and goods from father and mother, so much more does He Himself, and does any other creature, receive them from God. Secondly, because, as Philo says in the book On Drunkenness, the name "father" denotes power, that of "mother" knowledge, namely the idea, which conceives and forms the fabric of the thing like a mother. God therefore is Father through omnipotence, and He is also Mother through omniscience, and the idea of all things, which is attributed to the Word, namely the Son. He therefore is as it were the mind and mother of all things. Thirdly, because God is Father through the production and creation of all things: He is also Mother through the goodness and beneficence by which He creates, preserves, feeds, and governs all. Hence God the Father, to whom creation is attributed, is Father; the Holy Spirit, to whom goodness is attributed, is as it were the mother of all. Fourthly, because God in the world and through the world sends forth the seeds of things to be produced, like a father: and receives the same, like a mother. So say Varro and Soranus, who however erred in this, that they held the world itself to be God. Hear St. Augustine citing and refuting them, Book VII Of the City of God, chap. IX: "They are wont," he says, "to attribute the universe to Jove. Hence that saying: 'All things are full of Jove.' Therefore they cannot regard Jove, inasmuch as he is a god, and especially as king of the gods, as other than the world: so that according to them, in the other gods he reigns through his parts. On this view Varro also expounds certain verses of Valerius Soranus in the book which he wrote separately from these on the worship of the gods; which verses are these:
Almighty Jupiter, King of kings, Himself God and
Progenitor, and Mother of the gods, one God and all.
But they are explained in the same book in such a way that they considered him male, inasmuch as he emitted seed; female, inasmuch as he received it: and that Jove is the world, and that he emits all seeds from himself and receives them into himself; for which cause, he says, Soranus wrote: Jupiter progenitor and progenitress; nor with less reason is he one and all the same. For the world is one, and in that one all things are."
Fifthly, very aptly the Word made flesh is πατρομήτωρ. For the Deity is as it were father, the humanity in Christ is as it were our mother: for God became man for this reason, that He who was Father, might also be our Mother, about which more in 1 John 1:1.
Secondly, the phrase "for we are also His offspring" could be referred, in the Hebrew manner, further back to the earlier part of verse 27: "That they should seek God, if perhaps they may feel after Him, or find Him," so that it is a proof of that, rather than of what just preceded: "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being;" as if to say: We are of the genus of God, His kin and sons: therefore we can easily find and know Him: for a son naturally recognizes his father, a kinsman his kinsman, a blood-relative his relative, one of the same genus one of the same genus; just as an ox recognizes and loves an ox, a nightingale a nightingale, a horse a horse, a lion a lion. It is commonly said: "Like rejoices in like: Cicada is dear to cicada, ant to ant: ass to ass, pig is beautiful to pig: the jackdaw always sits by the jackdaw."
Thirdly, others think it is an argument from the greater to the lesser, as if to say: It ought not seem strange to you, O wise men, what I have said, namely, that we live, move, and have our being in God; since your Poet attributes still more to Him, and teaches that there is a greater conjunction of us with Him, when he says that we are God's genus, or progeny; because, namely, He Himself created us, as well as the angels, to His own image, and made us to be participants in His own freedom, reason, and spiritual essence.
For God is as it were the soul of the world, which diffuses itself through the whole world, and in it produces men as sons from itself and in itself, just as the sea produces fishes in itself and out of itself: so that, like fishes, we live, swim, move, and are in the ocean of God and the Godhead.
Wherefore, although among men and animals sons are separated from their parents, yet in God they are joined to Him both in place and operation, because He Himself is immense and fills, penetrates, and occupies all things. Hence again, although a man once begotten by his father is no longer begotten by him, nor receives body or life from him, it is otherwise in God: for we continually depend on Him as a ray on the sun. We are therefore so God's genus, that He Himself continually as it were generates us, by preserving and continually pouring into us life, motion, and all our being.
Finally, Aratus rightly proves that we all need God, from the fact that we are His genus, that is, His offspring and sons. For sons need the help of the father, inasmuch as from him they receive life, food, clothing, inheritance, and all things: but especially they need the help of the divine Father, God Himself, who is the Father of all being and of all existence and essence, and therefore in Him we live, move, and have our being, as the Apostle reasons.
Morally: Learn here how great is the nobility of the soul, namely that it is heavenly, divine, the offspring and progeny of God; and therefore it is unworthy for it to cast itself down to brutish desires: wherefore it must lead a divine, heavenly, and angelic life, that it may imitate God its father, and return to Him to be blessed. Wherefore the other Poets have said the same thing as Aratus here, namely, that the soul of man is a "particle of divine breath." Ovid, Book I of the Metamorphoses:
There was still lacking a holier animal and one more capable of high mind,
and one that could have dominion over the rest:
Man was born, whether that Maker of things, the origin of a better world,
formed him from divine seed.
Manilius, Book IV:
Can there be any doubt that God dwells within our breast,
and that souls return to heaven, and come from heaven?
Virgil, Book VI of the Aeneid:
Fiery is the vigor in them (that is, in souls), and their origin is heavenly.
St. Paulinus to Ausonius, epistle 14:
For the Mind, which survives the fallen limbs,
endures, being of heavenly stock.
Juvenal, satire 15:
We have drawn sense sent down from the heavenly citadel.
Claudian, in the 4th Panegyric of Honorius, says that Prometheus, in order to fashion men and animate them, "stole the unsullied mind of the Father from Olympus," and inserted it into man as his soul.
Hesiod and Homer often say that Jupiter is πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε, that is, as Virgil, following Homer in his own manner, translates in Aeneid XI: "sower of men and of gods."
Verse 29: Being Then the Offspring of God, We Ought Not to Think That the Divinity Is Like Unto Gold or Silver
29. BEING THEN THE OFFSPRING OF GOD, WE OUGHT NOT TO THINK THAT THE DIVINITY IS LIKE UNTO GOLD, etc. — This is the Apostle's argument: Man is not formed out of gold, silver, or stone, but out of flesh and a rational soul, which far surpasses all gold and silver; but man is the genus, offspring, and image of God: therefore God too is not formed out of gold or silver, but is a pure, uncreated, omnipotent spirit. For if a living man far surpasses a golden statue, as being mute and inanimate, much more does God surpass it. Again, God cannot be fabricated by man, but rather vice versa man was made by God, and is His genus and offspring; but the images are fabricated by man: therefore they cannot be gods. Or rather this is the Apostle's argument: Our soul, according to which we are the genus of God, cannot be painted or represented in gold, silver, or carved stone, since it is incorporeal and spiritual; therefore much less can the divinity, which is the purest spirit and the source and origin of all spirits, be painted, represented, and portrayed in the same. Finally, by this sentence Paul strikes at the Epicureans and the Anthropomorphites, who said that God was corporeal. For we are the genus of God according to the rational soul, not according to the body. Therefore, as Cato says:
If God is a mind, as the poems tell us,
then He must especially be worshipped by you with a pure mind.
WE OUGHT NOT TO THINK. — νομίζειν, to consider, to think.
GRAVING BY ART, AND DEVICE OF MAN. — The word sculpturae is not in the nominative case, as if to say: Gold, silver, or stone, which are sculptures or images artfully carved; but in the dative: for in Greek it is χαράγματι, so it is an apposition or epexegesis, as if to say: We ought not to consider God and the divinity similar to gold, silver, or stone, namely to a sculpture formed by the art and device of man. Hence Pagninus and the Tigurine translate: we ought not consider the deity similar to gold and silver, or to stone carved by art or invented by man.
OF DEVICE. — Developments, that is, of thought, meditation, conception, imagination, namely of the idea which the craftsman and sculptor imagined, conceived, and devised. Irenaeus, Book III, chap. xii, renders it as "of desire": "To stone," he says, "deformed by the art or desire of man."
THE GODHEAD. — tò θεῖον, that is, the divinity. So the Syriac; or "numen," as Pagninus and the Tigurine translate.
Verse 30: God Indeed Having Looked Down Upon the Times of This Ignorance, Now Declares Unto Men, That All Should Everywhere Do Penance
30. AND THE TIMES OF THIS IGNORANCE INDEED (the Syriac: of idolatry) GOD, LOOKING DOWN UPON THEM. — Looking down, that is, looking down from on high and having pity, according to that saying of Luke 1:78: "Through the bowels of the mercy of our God, in which the dayspring from on high has visited us." For this is properly ὑπεριδεῖν, that is, to look down, namely to look downward, as the Latins note. And thus it is taken in Psalm 53:9: "For You have delivered me from all trouble, and my eye has looked down on my enemies." Thus was St. Francis's maxim: "Look down on earth, look up to heaven." So Emmanuel Sa.
Secondly, others interpret ὑπεριδών, that is "looking down," as "despising" or "disregarding," as if to say: God has hitherto neglected and disregarded, by conniving, this ignorance of your fathers and of yourselves, and has not punished you, so that by this His longsuffering, through my preaching, by which I announce the true God to you, you may come to your senses, do penance, and be converted to Him. Thus Chrysostom and Oecumenius, as if to say: Up to now God has been silent and disregarded the injury done to Him: but now He will no longer disregard it: whence He speaks through me, and commands the images to be abolished and Himself to be worshipped as the true God.
Thirdly, Lyranus refers looking down not to men, but to the gods and idols, as if to say: God, looking down upon and abominating the idols, has now determined to put an end to them and overthrow them, so that they may no longer be held for gods or worshipped.
Fourthly, and genuinely, ὑπεριδών is an aorist signifying "when He despised" in the past, as if to say: Hitherto God despised, that is neglected, the idolatrous Gentiles, permitting them to serve idols, as if He did not care for them, and they did not pertain to His paternal providence: but now after Christ and through the merits of Christ, He does not despise them, but looks upon them with paternal eyes, and has determined to extend His care to them: wherefore He announces to you through me the true faith, grace, and salvation of the one God. For Paul says the same thing here that he said in a similar sermon to the Lycaonians, chap. 14:15: "Who in times past permitted all nations to walk in their own ways:" for what he there calls "permitted," he here calls "despised." So Sanchez. The causes why God permitted the nations, St. Augustine gives in epistle 47, book II of the Questions, where he responds to Porphyry who was cavilling about this very thing.
Paul notes the unhappiness of earlier times and the happiness of the present, namely of the new law, which is as it were a golden age, and a perpetual jubilee of grace, joy, virtues, and all good things; so that we must give infinite thanks to God that He caused us to be born in this time of the shining Gospel, in which we can easily attain beatitude; whereas our ancestors were born in a time of ignorance of God and of idolatry, and therefore perished and were damned with the other idolaters. Socrates gloried that he was born at Athens, as though in a school of wisdom. King Philip gloried that Alexander was born to him in the time of Aristotle, so that he could be instructed by him: much more should a Christian glory that he was born in the time of Christ, in which he learns the faith and wisdom of God in His Church; and let him not be ungrateful for such great grace of God, nor receive it in vain; but strenuously cooperate with it for his own salvation and that of others.
THAT ALL MEN EVERYWHERE SHOULD DO PENANCE. — for their ignorance, that is, idolatry and other sins.
Verse 31: Because He Hath Appointed a Day Wherein He Will Judge the World, by the Man Whom He Hath Appointed
31. BECAUSE HE HAS APPOINTED A DAY WHEREIN HE WILL JUDGE THE WORLD. — Paul preached the same thing to governor Felix, Acts 24:25, and Peter to Cornelius, Acts 10:42: "He commanded us," he said, "to preach to the people and to testify that it is He who has been appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead," namely so that they may believe in Him as Redeemer and obey Him, whom they expect as Judge. Let the preacher frequently preach the same thing. For threats and terrors strike and pierce the hardened hearts of sinners more than flatteries and promises do. I heard in Belgium a notable and powerful preacher who in all his sermons with many and effective words revived and impressed upon the people the memory of judgment, and stirred vehement movements of souls and converted many.
Excellently St. Justin in Damascene, Paralipomena Book II, chap. LXXVII: "Just as," he says, "all bodies created by God have this implanted in them, that they have a shadow; so it is also fitting that God, who is endowed with justice, should bestow rewards and punishments according to each one's merits, both on those who have chosen to cultivate virtue, and on those who have preferred to embrace vice," as if to say: Just as a shadow inseparably follows a body, so providence and retribution accompany God.
BY THE MAN WHOM HE HATH APPOINTED. — Pagninus and the Tigurine: through that man through whom He had decreed, namely through Christ. Hence it is clear that Christ will be judge according to His humanity, by which He is man and a male, not as He is God. For it is fitting that the judge of men be a man, so that He can be seen, perceived, and heard by them. Christ, then, is the man appointed by God as judge. Hence the Council of Ephesus, chap. xxxi, at the end: "In Him," it says, "who will appear outwardly and will be plainly seen by all who are to be judged, the divine nature, secretly hidden, will exercise judgment." St. Ambrose notes, Book VI, on chapter IX of Luke, that Paul prudently first preached Christ's humanity alone, and gradually through it made the ascent to His divinity, lest, if he had at once declared Him to be God and man, he should be hooted and mocked by the Athenian Sophists, as he was mocked on account of the resurrection of Christ. Let the preacher and teacher imitate the same among the uncultivated, the averse, and those imbued with contrary errors, such as pagans, heretics, etc. Finally, St. Dionysius, On the Divine Names, chapters II and III: "When," he says, "that highest God took the substance of our flesh, and was called a man, etc., He was supernatural in our natural things, He was above essence in those things which belong to our essence, possessing all our things from us and above us in an excellent manner."
FIDEM PRAEBENS OMNIBUS — GIVING FAITH TO ALL. — as if to say: making faith credible and publicly declaring that He will be judge, through His resuscitation to immortal and glorious life. For this is a sufficient testimony for creating faith, namely, that He was resuscitated for the very purpose that He might reign gloriously and be judge of the world. So Chrysostom and Cajetan. Secondly, others explain as follows: God showed Himself faithful in His promises when He raised Christ from the dead: because He had promised He would do this, in Psalm 15:10. Thirdly, Lyranus and Hugo: God gave faith in our resurrection through the resurrection of Christ, namely that He will raise us up in like manner, just as He raised up Christ. Fourthly, others: God through Christ gave faith in those things which He willed to be believed about Himself, about judgment, about penance, and about the other things which preceded. But the first sense is most connected with the preceding, and therefore genuine. Therefore here "faith" does not signify Christian faith, but proof or argument, in the way that Aristotle, in Topics I, chap. viii, says: "One faith is by induction, another by syllogism," etc.; as if to say: God made faith, that is, sufficiently proved to men, that Christ is that man through whom He is going to judge the world, since for the proof and confirmation of this matter He resuscitated Him first of all to immortal life. For, as the Apostle says, Romans 14:9: "For to this end Christ died and rose again, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living."
Verse 34: But Certain Men Adhering to Him Did Believe; Among Whom Was Also Dionysius the Areopagite, and a Woman Named Damaris
34. BUT CERTAIN MEN ADHERING TO HIM, DID BELIEVE. — Arator marvels at this conversion of the Sophists through Paul, and astonished he exclaims:
O Paul, ravenous wolf, what now will remain in the world,
that you will not drag with your mouth, since Greek cleverness
has yielded, and you conquer Athens, untaught in doctrine?
AMONG WHOM WAS ALSO DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE. — In Greek there is the article ὁ, as if to say: That famous and celebrated Areopagite judge Dionysius, foremost in the senate of the Areopagites. This is the one who wrote those sublime books On the Celestial and Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, On the Divine Names, On Mystical Theology, etc., in which he so graphically describes the heavenly city of the angels and the attributes of God, as if he had beheld them in heaven with his eyes. Wherefore he is called by St. Chrysostom οὐράνιος ὁ Διονύσιος, that is, "the bird of heaven": by others "the most divine," with the native first name Ionicus, and the Christian surname Macarius, the apostle of Gaul. He was made Bishop of Athens by Paul. Hence the Church of Athens flourished wonderfully on his account; Origen says, in Book III Against Celsus, and it brought forth men most illustrious in doctrine and sanctity, Quadratus, Athenagoras, Publius, whom he substituted for himself in the Athenian episcopate when about to go to Rome, etc.
His books have been learnedly defended from the calumnies of the heretics Scaliger and Erasmus by Baronius, Delrio, and formerly by Maximus, Anastasius, Hincmar, Hilduin and others. Indeed their very profundity and the sublimity and majesty of their eloquence, by which they surpass the writings of all Theologians and Fathers, indicate that their author was a Pauline and divine man. Again, that this Dionysius is the same as Dionysius, Bishop of Paris, and not a different man, as some following Ado hold, Baronius demonstrates in the Martyrology, on the 9th of October.
Moreover, a great cause or occasion of the conversion of St. Dionysius was the vision of the miraculous eclipse in the year of Christ 34, on Good Friday, while Christ was being crucified, which he himself saw at Heliopolis in Egypt, with Apollophanes, as he himself testifies in his letter to the same Apollophanes, and in epistle 11 to Polycarp. For then, astonished, he exclaimed: "Either the God of nature is suffering, or the fabric of the world is being dissolved:" or, as Suidas relates, and Michael Syncellus in the Encomium of St. Dionysius, saying he had received it from his elders: "The unknown God is suffering in the flesh, and therefore the world is darkened by these shadows, and shaken." St. Dionysius adds, in the letter to Apollophanes, that he was then 25 years of age: so that since Paul preached in Athens in the 19th year after the passion of Christ, which was in the 52nd year from His nativity, and the 10th of Claudius, it follows that Dionysius was then converted at the same time, when he was 44 years of age. Thereupon for three years he adhered to St. Paul, in order thoroughly to learn the mysteries of the Christian religion; soon afterwards, made by him first Bishop of Athens, he wondrously propagated there the faith of Christ: then going up with Paul to Jerusalem, he was present at the death and funeral of the Blessed Virgin, the Mother of God, as he himself asserts, On the Divine Names, chap. III. After this he consoled St. John the Apostle, banished by Domitian to Patmos, in the year of Christ 97, by a letter in which he foretold his speedy return: for in the following year Domitian was slain; soon afterwards St. John returned from exile, at whose exhortation St. Dionysius set out for Rome to St. Clement: by whom, sent into Gaul with Rusticus and Eleutherius, after great and long labors by which he propagated the faith and praised the Gallican Church, at length he was crowned with a noble martyrdom at Paris around the year of the Lord 119, in the reign of Hadrian, when he was 110 years of age, as Baronius shows: when a prodigy unheard of for ages occurred, namely that he himself received into his hands his head cut off by the executioner, and carried it for two miles, with angels accompanying and singing, as if triumphing over death and the tyrant. So says his Life and the tradition of the Gallican Church.
A follower of St. Dionysius both in erudition and wisdom, and in virtue and life, and in martyrdom and the miraculous carrying of the head, was that great Severinus Boethius, father-in-law of Symmachus, put to death with him by Theodoric, the Arian king, in the year of the Lord 526. Hear Julius Martianus in his Life, and Baronius from him: "The inhabitants of Ticinum [Pavia] constantly affirm, as a tradition handed down from their elders, that Severinus, when the royal executioner had inflicted the fatal wound, held up with both hands his severed head; and being asked by whom he thought himself struck? answered: 'By impious men:' and so when he had come to a nearby church, and having knelt before the altar had received the sacred things (the Holy Eucharist), shortly afterward expired. Deceased, he obtained divine honors (those which are wont to be shown to Martyrs) from our people, because he had undergone death for the Catholics against the perfidy of Arius." At Ticinum his prison and sepulchre are to be seen in the church of St. Augustine.
AND A WOMAN NAMED DAMARIS. — St. Chrysostom, in Book IV On the Priesthood, and Hilduinus, in the Life of St. Dionysius, hold that she was the wife of Dionysius, and St. Ambrose insinuates the same, in his letter to the Church of Vercelli. And the Greek γυνή signifies both "wife" and "woman." But in that case Luke would have added αὐτοῦ, and said "his wife": but now he speaks absolutely in the general term γυνή, that is, "woman": whence it signifies that she was not the wife of Dionysius, but a prominent woman: so Pagninus, the Tigurine, and others generally.
AND OTHERS WITH THEM. — Many think that one of them was Hierotheus. For the Greeks, and among them Ambrosius Morales in the History of Spain, and Juan Mariana, Book IV On the Affairs of Spain, chap. III, report that he was an Athenian, and that the name itself indicates he was Greek; for in Greek ἱερόθεος is the same as sacred or consecrated to God. Hence also in the Roman Martyrology, on the 4th of October, we read of him thus: "At Athens, of St. Hierotheus, disciple of St. Paul." And on the same day the Menology of the Greeks has: "The birthday [into heaven] of our holy father Hierotheus, who was one of the number of the Areopagites, who was instructed by the apostle Paul together with that great Dionysius, and when he had lived religiously, migrated to the Lord." Some add that Hierotheus was Bishop of Athens; but the Menology has nothing of the sort. The Spanish, however, hold that Hierotheus was a Spaniard, or rather Prefect of Spain; and that he was converted there by Paul: so Morales, and Ribadeneira in the Life of St. Dionysius. Moreover, Hierotheus is marvellously praised throughout by St. Dionysius. For, in chap. II Of the Divine Names, he is called by him "our illustrious teacher, οὐ μόνον μαθὼν, ἀλλὰ καὶ παθὼν τὰ θεῖα, that is, not only learning, but also experiencing divine things, consummate," etc. And in chap. III, that next after the Apostles he was judged the praiseworthy one by all, and therefore he sets him in the place of guarantor: "He surpassed," he says, "all the Doctors, wholly exceeding them, wholly placed outside himself, inspired by divine power, seized by God, divine — that is, a certain sacred God, and our divine teacher."