City of God (Penguin Classics) (122 page)

Are these words going to be regarded as simply the words of one mere woman giving thanks for the birth of her son? Are men’s minds so turned away from the light of truth that they do not feel that the words poured out by this woman transcend the limit of her own thoughts? In truth, anyone who is appropriately moved by the events whose fulfilment has already begun, even in this earthly pilgrimage, cannot but attend to these words, and observe and recognize that through this woman (whose very name, Hannah, means ‘God’s grace’
¹¹
), there speaks, by the spirit of prophecy, the Christian religion itself, the City of God itself, whose king and founder is Christ; there speaks, in fact, the grace of God itself, from which the proud are estranged so that they fall, with which the humble are filled so that they rise up, which was in fact, the chief theme that rang out in her hymn of praise. Now it may be that someone will be ready to say that the woman gave voice to no prophecy, but merely praised God in an outburst of exultation for the son who was granted in answer to her prayer. If so, what is the meaning of this passage, ‘He has made weak the bow of the mighty ones, and the weak have girded themselves with strength. Those who were full of bread have been reduced to want, and the hungry have passed over the earth. Because the barren woman has given birth to seven, while she who has many children has become weak.’ Had Hannah herself really borne seven children, although she was barren? She had only one son when she spoke these words; and even afterwards she did not give birth to seven, or to six, which would have made Samuel the seventh. She had in fact three male and two female children. And then observe her concluding words, spoken among that people at a time when no one had yet been king over them: ‘He gives strength to our kings, and will exalt the horn of his anointed.’ How is it that she said this, if she was not uttering a prophecy?

Therefore, let the Church of Christ speak, the ‘City of the great king’,
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the Church that is ‘full of grace’,
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fruitful in children; let her speak the words that she recognizes as spoken prophetically about herself, so long ago, by the lips of this devout mother, ‘My heart is strengthened in the Lord; my horn is exalted in my God.’ Her heart is truly strengthened and her horn truly exalted, because it is ‘in the Lord her God’ not in herself that she finds strength and exaltation. ‘My mouth is enlarged over my enemies’; because even in the straits of oppression ‘the word of God is not bound’,
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not even when its
heralds are bound. ‘I have rejoiced’, she says, ‘in your salvation.’ This salvation is Christ Jesus; for we read in the Gospel that Simeon took him in his arms, an old man embracing a little child and recognizing his greatness, and he said, ‘Lord, you are now discharging your servant in peace; for my eyes have seen your salvation.’
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And so let the Church say, ‘I have rejoiced in your salvation. For there is none who is holy as the Lord is holy; there is none who is just as our God is just’; for he is holy – and he makes men holy; he is just – and he makes men just. ‘There is none holy besides you.’ For no one is made holy except by you. Then there follow these words: ‘Do not boast; do not speak lofty words; let no bragging talk come from your lips. For God is the God of all knowledge.’ He himself knows you, even where no one knows, since ‘he who thinks himself to be something important, when he is nothing, is fooling himself.’
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These words are directed to the adversaries of the City of God, who belong to Babylonia, who presume on their own strength, and glory in themselves, instead of in God. Among them are also the Israelites by physical descent, the earth-born citizens of the earthly Jerusalem, who, in the words of the Apostle, ‘know nothing of God’s righteousness’
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– that is, the righteousness which God gives, who alone is righteous and makes men righteous – ‘and desire to establish their own righteousness’ – that is, they suppose it to be something gained by themselves, instead of given by God and so they have not submitted to God’s righteousness. Arrogant as they are, they think that by their own righteousness, not God’s, they can please God, who is ‘the God of all knowledge’ and therefore also the judge of men’s inner thoughts; for in them he sees men’s imaginations, knowing them to be futile,
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if they are only men’s, and do not come from him.

‘God’, says Hannah, ‘prepares his own designs.’ What do we suppose these designs are, except that the proud should fall and the humble arise? For no doubt she is elaborating these designs when she says, ‘The bow of the mighty ones has been weakened, and the weak have girded themselves with strength.’ The bow has been weakened –that is, the intention of those who seem to themselves so powerful that without the gift of God and without his aid they can fulfil the divine commands in human self-reliance. And men gird themselves with strength when their inner voice says, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am weak.’
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‘Those who were full of bread’, says Hannah, ‘have been reduced to want; and the hungry have passed over the earth’ Who are to be understood by those who were full of bread, except those supposedly ‘powerful ones’, that is, the Israelites, to whom the utterances of God were entrusted? But among that people the sons of the maidservant
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were ‘reduced.’ Now the verb
minorati sunt
(‘have been reduced’) is not a good Latin expression; but it expresses the meaning well, since they were reduced from major to minor importance. They were reduced, because while possessed of this bread, that is, the divine utterances, which the Israelites, alone of all the nations at that time, had received, they had a taste only for earthly things. On the other hand, nations to whom that Law had not been given, after they came to the knowledge of these utterances through the new covenant, passed over the earth in great hunger, since in these words it was the heavenly meaning, not the earthly, that they savoured. And Hannah seems to be looking for an explanation of how this happened, when she says, ‘For the barren woman has given birth to seven; while she who has many children is enfeebled.’ Here the whole of the prophecy becomes illuminated for those who recognize the significance of the number seven; for by that number the perfection of the universal Church is symbolized. This is the reason why the apostle John writes to seven churches;
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it is his way of showing that he is writing to the entirety of the one Church. In the Proverbs of Solomon also Wisdom prefigured this Church long before, when she ‘built her house and supported it on seven columns.’
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For the City of God was barren in all nations before the birth of the offspring we now behold. We also behold the en-feeblement of the earthly Jerusalem, who had many children; for her strength lay in whatever sons of the free woman were in that city. But now only the letter is there and not the spirit;
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and so her strength has been lost, and she has been enfeebled.

‘The Lord brings death, and he brings life.’ He brought death to her who had many sons; he brought life to the barren woman who gave birth to seven children. However, this might more suitably be understood to mean that he brings life to the same persons to whom he has brought death. For it looks as if she is repeating this statement when she adds, ‘He leads men down to the grave, and leads them back again.’ Now the Apostle says, ‘If you are dead’ with Christ, seek the realms on high, where Christ is seated on God’s right hand’:
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and
those to whom this is addressed are certainly brought to death by God for their own well-being. And he adds these words to them, ‘Savour the things on high, not the things on earth’; so that these are the same persons who ‘have passed over the earth in hunger.’

For St Paul says, ‘You are dead’ But see how healthfully God brings men to death! He goes on to say, ‘and your life’ is hidden with Christ in God.’
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See how God brings life to these same men! But is it true that those whom he has brought to the realm of the dead and those he has brought back again are the same people? Indeed it is, since there is, for believers, no disputing that we see both these actions fulfilled in him (and, remember, he is ‘our head’) ‘with whom’, as the Apostle says, ‘our life is hidden in God.’ For he ‘who did not spare his own son, but delivered him up on behalf of us all’,
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surely brought him to death in so doing; and in raising him from the dead, he brought him to life again. And since his voice is recognized in the prophecy, ‘You will not leave my soul in the underworld’,
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it was the same person whom he brought down to the realm of the dead and brought back again. By this poverty of his we have been enriched;
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for ‘the Lord makes men poor, and enriches them.’ Now to understand what this means, we must listen to what follows: ‘He humbles, and he exalts’; which clearly means that he humbles the arrogant and exalts the humble. For elsewhere we find those words: ‘God resists the proud, while he gives grace to the humble’;
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and this is the message of the whole discourse of Hannah, whose name means his ‘grace.’

As for the words that follow, ‘He raises up the poor from the earth’, I can find no better application of them than to him who ‘became poor for our sake, though he was rich, so that by his poverty’ – as I said just now – ‘we might be enriched.’
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For God raised him up from the earth so quickly that his flesh did not ‘see corruption.’
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And I shall not withdraw from him the application of what follows: ‘And he lifts up the needy from the dunghill.’ ‘The needy’ is certainly identical with ‘the poor’; and the dung from which he is raised is most correctly understood of the Jewish persecutors, among whom the Apostle counted himself, as having persecuted the Church, when he used these words: ‘The things which were my assets I have written off as losses for the sake of Christ; in fact I have counted them not only as drawbacks, but even as so much dung, so that I might have Christ as
my assets.’
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Thus that poor man was raised up from the earth above all the rich, so as to sit ‘with the men of power among the people’ to whom he says, ‘You will sit on twelve thrones.’
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‘Giving them also the seat of glory as their inheritance’ — for those ‘men of power’ had said, ‘Look, we have abandoned everything and have become your followers.’ This vow they had made with the utmost power. But whence did they derive the ability to do so, unless from him of whom Hannah’s song immediately goes on to say that he ‘grants fulfilment to him who makes a vow’? For no one could ever make a rightful vow to the Lord without receiving from him the fulfilment of his prayer.

The words that follow, ‘and he has blessed the years of the righteous’, mean, we can be sure, that the righteous will live without end with him to whom it was said, ‘Your years will never come to an end.’
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For there the years stand still, whereas here they pass by; in fact, they perish. For before they come they do not exist, and when they have come, they will exist no more, because when they come they bring with them their own end. Now of the two statements, ‘granting fulfilment to one who makes a vow’ and ‘he has blessed the years of the righteous’, one refers to something we do, the other to something we get. But the second is not acquired through God’s generosity, unless the former has been accomplished with his assistance. For ‘man is not powerful in his own strength; the Lord will make weak his adversary’, which means, of course, one who in malice resists the man who makes a vow, so that he may be incapable of fulfilling his vow. But there is an ambiguityin the Greek, and it may be taken as ‘his own adversary.’ For as soon as God has begun to possess us, then straightway he who was our adversary becomes God’s adversary, and will be conquered by us, but not by our own powers, ‘because a man is not powerful in his own strength.’ Thus ‘the Lord will make weak his own adversary; the Lord is holy’; so that the adversary is overcome by holy men, sanctified by the holy Lord of holy people.

And for this reason ‘let the prudent man not glory in his prudence, nor the powerful glory in his power, nor the rich man glory in his riches. He who glories, let him glory in this: to understand and know the Lord, and to perform justice and righteousness in the midst of the earth.’ It is in no trivial measure that a man understands and knows God, when he understands and knows that this knowledge and understanding is itself the gift of God. ‘For what do you possess’, says the Apostle, ‘which you have not received? Then, if you have received it,
why do you boast, as if you had not received it?’
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That is, why do you behave as if the ground of your boasting came from your own achievement? Now the man who lives rightly ‘performs justice and righteousness’; and that man is he who obeys God’s bidding. And ‘the end of the commandment’, that is the object to which it is directed, ‘is the love that springs from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a faith that is without pretence.’
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Moreover, as the apostle John testifies, ‘this love comes from God.’
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Thus the ability to ‘perform justice and righteousness’ comes from God.

But what is the meaning of ‘in the midst of the earth’? It is certainly not that those who live at the ends of the earth are exempt from the duty of doing justice and righteousness. Would anyone say this? Why, then, the addition of the words, ‘in the midst of the earth’? Without the addition, the remaining words, ‘to perform justice and righteousness’ would make the command applicable to both classes: those who live in the midst of the earth, and those on the shores of the ocean. My belief is that the words were added to preclude the notion that after the end of the life lived in this mortal body a period remains for the performance of justice and righteousness, which a man has failed to achieve while in the flesh, and so there is a chance of escaping the divine judgement. The words therefore mean, in my view, ‘while each man lives in the body.’ Certainly in this life each man carries his ‘earth’ around him, and the common earth receives it when he thes, to restore it, as we know, when the man rises again. It follows that ‘in the midst of the earth’, that is, as long as our soul is enclosed in this earthly body, we must ‘perform justice and righteousness’ for our benefit in the future when ‘everyone receives either good or bad, according to his actions done through the body.’
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Here we can see that by ‘through the body’ the Apostle means ‘throughout the time when he lived in the body.’ For it is not implied that anyone who blasphemes against God, the wickedness being in his mind and the impiety in his thoughts, without his bodily organs being involved, is exempt from judgement simply because there was no bodily activity in this behaviour; for he behaved in this way during the time when he inhabited the body. We can appropriately apply the same line of interpretation to a passage in the psalms, where it says, ‘Now God our king before the ages has achieved salvation
in the midst of the earth
.’
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We may take ‘our God’ to mean the Lord Jesus, who is before the ages (since the ages were created by him); for he ‘achieved
salvation in the midst of the earth’ when the Word was made flesh and dwelt in a human body.